Lincoln (35 page)

“They will support the President, entirely.”

At the other end of the room Elihu B. Washburne was not so certain. “The President will only get about half of the four hundred million dollars that he wants.”

“But,” asked the English journalist, “will he get the four hundred thousand men that he’s asked for?”

Washburne had been prepared to dislike William Howard Russell, the stout, florid, London
Times
correspondent, but in life, if not in print, this somewhat prickly chronicler of wars from the Crimea to India proved to
be a most engaging if hard-drinking and plain-speaking man. Washburne nodded. “We’re doing well with new volunteers …”

“But not so well with your three-month enlistment lads. Just now, as I was coming out of Willard’s, one of them came up to me and begged me for some pennies to buy whiskey.”

“Did you give them?” asked the slender young army captain who had gravitated to England’s greatest observer of warfare.

“Certainly not!” Russell laughed until his face turned the color of Washington’s indigenous brick. “I do want you people to win. But you’ve got to train your men better. They are rabble. Not like the Southerners. I was impressed with
them
, let me tell you.”

“You’ve been at the South—lately?” Washburne was surprised.

“I’ve only just got back. I went everywhere. Saw everybody. Pleasant chap, Mr. Davis. But looks sickly. No wonder. That climate! Those mosquitoes! Even so, they’re spoiling for a fight. I’ve never seen any people like them.”

“We are the same, sir,” said the young captain, whom Washburne now recognized as General McDowell’s aide, a rich New Yorker named William Sanford.

“No, Captain, you’re not. That’s the problem. Every single one of those Southerners is fighting for his own country against invaders, which is what you are to him. Of course, the North is more populous, more rich. But where are your soldiers to be found? Mostly immigrants from Europe. Mostly German and Irish, who’ve only just arrived. They are truly alien, sir; and have nothing to fight for except the pennies that you pay them.”

Since this was exactly Washburne’s private view, he was obliged to object strenuously, as befitted an American statesman.

Russell was genial, but unconvinced. “Farmers and hunters will fight for their own land in a way no factory worker will, much less a new arrival who doesn’t even know the language. You know what I heard in Charleston?” Russell chuckled at the memory. “A group of quite serious people told me that if we’d send them a royal prince or princess as sovereign, they would rejoin our empire.”

“I never thought the rebels had that much sense of humor.” But this was something new, and Washburne wondered if some capital might not be made out of the South’s treason not only to the United States but to the great republican principle itself.

“They have no sense of humor, as far as I can tell. They are serious, like you.”

There was a stir as the President entered the Blue Room. Absently,
Lincoln held a folder in his right hand, which he then moved to the left hand, as he greeted Mrs. Lincoln’s guests. Finally, he put the folder on a console. “He looks somewhat …” Russell paused.

“Tired,” said Washburne, not about to allow the Englishman a characterizing adjective that might look disagreeable in the hostile columns of the London
Times
.

“That, too,” said Russell, with a smile.

“My father,” said young Captain Sanford, suddenly, “told me that Mr. Lincoln was the best railroad lawyer in the country.”

“Did he mean that as a compliment?” Russell positively grinned.

“Of course he did.” Washburne was emphatic. “And your father’s right. Is he a railroad man?”

“No, sir. We have mills. In Lowell, Massachusetts. Encaustic tiles. And jean and cotton. But when this is over”—the young man gestured vaguely at a painting of classical ruins which, presumably, represented to him a land at peace—“we shall go into railroads.”

“With Mr. Lincoln as your counsel?” asked Russell, eyes on the President, who was being harangued by Sumner.

“I’m sure Mr. Lincoln is beyond all that now,” said the young man sadly.

Mrs. Lincoln had begun making a circuit of the room, on the arm of Chevalier Wikoff. When she saw Russell, she stopped; and smiled with what Washburne took to be real pleasure. “Mr. Russell, sir! You are back. Did you get the flowers?”

Russell kissed her hand in a graceful gesture which involved, Washburne noted, the actual presentation of his lips not to the back of her hand, as Washburne had always imagined this abominable European transaction required, but to his own thumb. “I’ve already written you a long letter. Your flowers were the first thing that I saw when I entered the two furnished clothes chests that my landlord tells me is an apartment.”

“You’ve left Willard’s?” Mrs. Lincoln gave her hand to Washburne, who did not kiss it, old friend that he was, and to Captain Sanford, who bowed low and looked nervous.

Washburne had heard that Mrs. Lincoln had taken to sending flowers from the White House conservatories to various esteemed personages. He was somewhat surprised that Mr. Russell of the
Times
should be so favored. For one thing, he was a great friend of Seward. For another, the
Times
was, editorially, more and more pro-rebel. But the President had gone out of his way to be amiable to the famous correspondent; and Washburne knew that there were times when seemingly ill-matched husband and wife worked smoothly as a political team.

“A powerful newspaper, the
Times
,” Lincoln had said when he first met Russell; and he had affected wonder. “I can’t think of anything on earth anywhere so powerful, unless maybe the Mississippi River.”

“Is it true,” asked the Chevalier Wikoff, “that the rebels would like to re-join the British crown?”

“That is what many of them told me,” said Russell.

“Poor Queen Victoria.” Mary was serene. “I would not wish them on her.”

“Why,” Russell boomed, “we would handle them just the way we do the Irish!” As all laughed, Mrs. Lincoln continued her circuit, pausing, finally, at a console where Senator Trumbull of Illinois stood. As always, Mary was glad to see him; but she often wondered if he was ever glad to see her. Despite so much idle speculation about her and Judge Douglas, the only man that she had ever loved in youth was the handsome elegant Lyman Trumbull, whose wife, Julia, she could not help but hate, even though they had once been close. Mary spoke to Trumbull of the Coterie days, when they had all been friends. “In another age,” she heard herself say, as she smiled up at him.

Washburne joined the President and Sumner at the window through which could be seen the President’s Park. The area around the unfinished obelisk had recently been made into an abattoir for the army. Here, in plain view of the White House, cattle and hogs were daily slaughtered; then hung on hooks. As a result, the blocks of white marble were now all splattered with blood and when the wind was from the south the stench of blood combined with the odor of the stagnant canal was overpowering.

Sumner was trying to draw out the President on the timing of the attack on Richmond. “The New York
Herald
says that the rebels expect an attack before their so-called Congress meets, but our own
Daily Morning Chronicle
predicts a Fourth of July attack.”

“Do they?” Lincoln gazed absently out the window. Since at least one congressional committee had been shown McDowell’s plan, Washburne wondered just why Sumner was so pressing. Of course, no date had been given. But there were rumors that McDowell would not be ready in time to stop the Confederate Congress from meeting. Certainly, a Fourth of July attack was out of the question.

“I realize,” said Sumner, “that the press is hardly reliable.”

Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. “Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able.”

As Washburne laughed, he was pleased to note that the humorless Sumner had remembered to smile. Then Breckinridge joined them. Lincoln
was amiable: “Well, sir. I’m always glad to see a brand-new senator from my native state.”

“I’m always happy to see you, sir—as Cousin Mary’s husband, naturally.”

“Naturally. Anyway, your presence in this session of Congress is bound to … elevate the tone of the discourse.” Lincoln was courtly. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Sumner?”

“Tea,” said the most eloquent man of his time, “does wonders for the dyspeptic.” Sumner stalked away, in the general direction of the silver urn.

“I shall do my best to represent … our state, sir.” Breckinridge made the “our” sound very dramatic indeed.

But Lincoln chose to ignore the drama. “I’m sure you will. And I’ll be curious to see how you react to my Message to the Congress, which is …” Lincoln held up both hands, as if one of them might contain the document; then, anxiously, he felt his coat pocket. “What did I do with it?”

Washburne motioned to the console where Mrs. Lincoln had been standing; but stood no longer. “You put it down there. On that table. I saw you.”

“But where is it?”

Suddenly, Chevalier Wikoff was at the President’s side. He presented the folder to Lincoln. “I thought it wise, Your Excellency, to hold this for you.”

“Well, that was good of you, Mr. Wikoff. And careless of me.” Lincoln put the folder under his arm. He turned to Wikoff. “What news of our friend Mr. Bennett?”

Washburne knew that for over a year Lincoln had been doing his best to woo James Gordon Bennett, the publisher of the
New York Herald
, the most powerful of the country’s newspapers and the most read in the European capitals. Everyone was agreed that Bennett was a singularly coarse and repellent man. To the extent that he was at all political, he was a pro-Southern Democrat. The previous summer, when Lincoln had begun his wooing of Bennett, Washburne had advised him to write Bennett off. But Lincoln was stubborn. “I must bell that cat, somehow,” he said. The first attempt was a complete failure. Bennett had supported the Democratic party in the election. Lately, Thurlow Weed had been conducting secret negotiations with the publisher, who had everything on earth a man could want in the way of power and money but lacked the one thing that he ought not to have cared about but did, a position in the world of the brightest society.

To Washburne’s disgust, Lincoln was now ready to offer Bennett the ambassadorship to France. “That is a small price to pay, Brother Washburne, for a good account of the Union in Europe.” So far, the bait had not been taken by His Satanic Majesty, as Bennett was known to even the few who liked him. Since Chevalier Wikoff was Bennett’s personal ambassador to the White House—and as the Chevalier was equally enamored of both Satanic majesty and Republican excellencies—he was often able to mediate between the warring powers. He did so now. “Mr. Bennett would like to give his yacht to the revenue service.”

“That is a fine gesture.” At this point Breckinridge saw fit to withdraw as temporal power and ephemeral press met in not-atypical
agon
. “Mr. Chase will be gratified, I know.”

“Mr. Bennett is more and more Your Excellency’s admirer …” Wikoff began.

“Then I admire the tactful way that he keeps this admiration out of his paper.”

“I think that will change. You know he has a son, James Gordon Bennett, Junior, a young man dedicated to you and to the Union. He would like to fight.”

“I shall not stop him, Mr. Wikoff. That is a promise.”

“He would like to fight as a lieutenant in the navy, Mr. Lincoln.”

Although Washburne had spent his entire career as a politician in making trades of this sort, he was somewhat taken aback by the boldness of His Satanic Majesty’s ambassador. One yacht for one commission as a naval lieutenant was hardly exorbitant. But that was not the point. Yacht and commission cancelled each other out, and Bennett would still be in no way committed to support the Administration. Plainly, Lincoln was going to lose this round, too.

The President nodded. “Tell him to send the young man to me. And to send the yacht to Mr. Chase. But
not
the other way round. Now I must return to my labors.” Lincoln patted Washburne’s arm and crossed the room to the door, followed by Wikoff.

As Lincoln shook hands with Breckinridge, Washburne stared idly at the folder under Lincoln’s arm. Then Washburne, as idly, looked at Wikoff, who was again in attendance upon Mrs. Lincoln. Then, not so idly, Washburne wondered why Wikoff should have taken from the console Lincoln’s only copy of the Message to Congress, whose contents no one but Lincoln and his secretaries knew.

F
OR ONCE
David Herold preferred the dark back room of the drugstore to the lively and gregarious front room. Today the heat was peculiarly unbearable—more like August than July. Although David sweated quite as much in the windowless room, he was at least spared the sight of the bronze-bright sun that made Lafayette Square’s greenery shimmer like the surface of a pond after a frog’s sudden leap. All morning, in his shirt-sleeves, he’d been thinking of cool ponds, frogs, swift rivers, fish, dark woods, as he prepared prescriptions, his tie loosened and collar opened and shirt stuck with sweat to his back.

Mr. Thompson’s call: “David!” was not welcome. But he mopped his face with a towel, and joined his employer in the shop. The fierce light from the windows brought tears to his eyes. He wondered if there was any water left in him. He wanted, desperately, a glass of beer. Mysteriously, Mr. Thompson did not sweat, ever. He held in his waters. On the hottest of days—and this was one—the pale face slightly pinkened; and that was it. Mr. Thompson wore his linen coat, coolly. “David, take this”—he gave David a package—“to Mrs. Greenhow’s.”

“Just down the road?” David was annoyed at being called from his dark lair in order to make a delivery a block away on Sixteenth Street. “Where’s her giri?”

“I don’t know where her girl is, and I don’t care where her girl is.” Thus did the heat get to the usually equable and always dry Mr. Thompson. “But I got the message for you to deliver this quinine right away. She’s got the ague.”