Lincoln (80 page)

“The danger now, Mr. President,” said Senator Morgan, “is the reopening of the draft offices. Governor Seymour has done what he could to placate the immigrants, but they are in a devilish mood. He would like a clear statement from you that the draft will at least be postponed in the city.”

“He will never get that, Senator. If you postpone the draft in one state, you will give other states the notion that they, too, can have postponements.”

“But you do realize, sir, that the city will explode again if you try to impose conscription.” Tilden watched Lincoln’s face intently: one lawyer testing another.

“
I
do not impose conscription, Mr. Tilden. Congress does. The Conscription Act was much debated and thought out. It is not perfect. The Constitution is not perfect either. But at least the Conscription Act was passed almost unanimously. It is the law; and I must execute it.” Seward thought that Lincoln must, presently and characteristically, soften his line. But, to Seward’s surprise, Lincoln grew even more hard and legalistic.
“To that end, ten thousand infantrymen are on their way to the city. Also, several artillery batteries.”

“You will place the city under martial law?” Tilden probed.

“In effect, Mr. Tilden, the whole Union is under a kind of martial law; as it is wartime. Now I know that you and Governor Seymour and a number of other Democrats think that we have torn up the Constitution down here. But we are simply trying to salvage it, and the nation.” To Seward’s relief, Lincoln finally struck the conciliatory note. “Tell the governor that the principle to which I propose adhering is to proceed with the draft while, at the same time, applying”—Lincoln paused for a strong word; found one that Seward thought too strong—“
infallible
means to avoid any great wrongs.”

“This,” said Tilden, eyeing the bait, “is to be interpreted as giving a certain leeway to New York’s conduct of the draft?”

“
I
did not say that. But I cannot control every interpretation put on my words.”

“Yes,” said Tilden, nodding. Seward was pleased. The two distinguished lawyers had understood each other.

But Senator Morgan had not got the point. “What do we say when demagogues cry out against the three-hundred-dollar exemption? ‘Rich man’s money against the poor man’s blood,’ they say. You know there is a lot of communist sentiment in the city; and all this just heats it up.”

“To have an army, you must first have men.” Lincoln was reasonable. “Ideally, they should be volunteers. Otherwise, we must have conscription. After all, other countries—republics as well as monarchies—have it. The exemption seems to me a fair enough thing. At least it brings money to the Treasury, which helps the war.”

Senator Morgan was not pleased. “Why can’t you wait until the Supreme Court has determined whether or not the Conscription Act is Constitutional?”

“Because I don’t have the time, Senator. The war grows bloodier with each day. The rebels are conscripting every male who can walk; and they send them off to be slaughtered like cattle. Are we so degenerate that we cannot, with our greater numbers, raise an adequate army through a lawful draft?”

“Then you refuse, sir, to wait for the Supreme Court to rule?” Morgan was now very tense.

Seward looked at Lincoln, who, for no perceptible reason, was smiling. “Sir, I will not wait upon anyone. The time for argument is past. If this is not agreeable to you, then we shall just have to see who is the stronger.”

Seward felt an involuntary shudder in his limbs. He was also ravished
by the irony of the moment. For nearly three years, a thousand voices, including his own, had called for a Cromwell, a dictator, a despot; and in all that time, no one had suspected that there had been, from the beginning, a single-minded dictator in the White House, a Lord Protector of the Union by whose will alone the war had been prosecuted. For the first time, Seward understood the nature of Lincoln’s political genius. He had been able to make himself absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything more than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer, given to fits of humility in the presence of all the strutting military and political peacocks that flocked about him.

The two New Yorkers also appeared to have some inkling of who the man was that they were dealing with; or being dealt by. Senator Morgan fell silent, while Mr. Tilden belched softly. The President then read a page or two from Artemus Ward, lightening the mood.

As the meeting ended Tilden looked up at Lincoln and said, “Mr. Van Buren had the greatest respect for your tenacity and your general judgment in this war.”

Lincoln could not resist the obvious joke. “My ‘general’ judgment has been on the whole pretty bad. But I am tenacious all right. I am glad he appreciated that.”

“He was also much amused,” said Tilden, ignoring the joke, “when he recollected an adjective you once used to describe
his
presidency.”

Lincoln frowned. “What was that?”

“ ‘Monarchial,’ Mr. President. He was much tickled by the word, as coming from you. In fact, at the end, Mr. Van Buren felt that you were bent on outdoing him.”

Lincoln laughed, showing all his white teeth. “Well, if I am monarchial, it is the times that shoved the crown on my head. Anyway, when the war is won, I’ll lose my crown fast enough, and probably my head, too. And, frankly, between us, I am heartily sick of both.”

How
does
such a sovereign lay down his scepter? Seward wondered, as he walked down the main stairs of the Mansion, Senator Morgan to his left and Mr. Tilden to his right.

“Mr. Lincoln seems,” said Tilden, thoughtfully, “a man of good will.”

“Oh, Mr. Tilden!” Seward exclaimed, “I can testify to that! Mr. Lincoln’s will is very good indeed. In fact, his will is all that we have here.”

PART III

O
N A COLD
gray afternoon, David reported backstage at Grover’s Theater. He was suffering, so Mr. Thompson had been told, from the smallpox, which was now sweeping the periphery of the city, particularly in the Negro sections and around the Navy Yard. Actually, David was in excellent health; but he had decided to reserve for himself the month of October. He had saved a certain amount of money. He was now living at home again, a quieter place since two—or was it three?—of the sisters had moved out of the house and into matrimony or its appearance. Although the ham-lady was angry with him, Sal Austin could always be counted on to give him odd jobs to do around Marble Alley, where he was paid in kind. He also worked at Mr. Ford’s theater from time to time; as well as at Mr. Grover’s new establishment, which had opened with much excitement the previous week, a brand-new theater fashioned from the ruins of the old National Theater in E Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets. Mr. Grover was a pleasant man, though a Yankee from western New York. He knew David by sight—as opposed to Mr. Ford, a Marylander, who knew him by name.

The backstage entrance was in a narrow alley just back of E. The scenery for the next night’s play was still in its wagon. E. L. Davenport and J. W. Wallack, two actors David admired, were embarked upon a season, whose highlight would be a single charity performance by Charlotte Cushman as Lady Macbeth in
Macbeth
, a play that David disliked almost as much as he did the famous Miss Cushman, a tragedienne who looked like an elderly mare; and always stayed with Mr. Seward when she
was in Washington. Had she been less hideous and he less old, there would have been a scandal. As it was, no one at all cared.

Backstage, the manager shouted to David to help out with the third-act set, which was yet to be assembled. A dozen stagehands were arranging tables and chairs and putting scenery in order. The painted flats suggested a production both opulent and exotic. Kerosene lamps lit the back of the theater to reveal a jungle of ropes and high, perilous walkways, of furniture and scenery flats. Expensive gaslight was only used during performances.

As the curtain was now up, David could just make out the newly remodelled interior of the theater, ghostly in the dim light from backstage. There was the usual smell of glue and wood shavings and cheap paint; later, during performance, there would be the heady smell of sweaty actors and perfumed actresses and the acrid burnt-oxygen odor of calcium light mingled with that aromatic dust which seemed to cover everything during a performance. David could never get enough of the theater backstage or, for that matter, out front in the audience.

To David’s surprise, he found himself working with Edward Spangler, one of Mr. Ford’s regular stagehands. “But the boys needed some help back here tonight, so Mr. Ford looked the other way.” Spangler was a slow-talking Marylander; although red of face from drink, he was highly reliable and much in demand.

David helped Spangler assemble an arbor of green paper leaves glued to a fragile wooden trellis. “What’s the play?” asked David, who almost never read newspapers; and had not been near the theaters in a week.

“
The Pearl of Savoy
, whatever that is. Nine scene changes, I think. And they want a horse in this act but I don’t think Mr. Grover’s going to let them after what happened last week.”

“What happened?”

“Well, what happened was what always happens when you let a horse up on a stage.”

David giggled, appreciatively. “I saw that when Forrest was here, in Shakespeare.”

“Well, they don’t want to see it tonight. So the heroine will say, ‘Lookee, now, there’s yonder white steed in the gloamin’! I must go and mount it.’ Oh, you should see this one.” Spangler whistled.

“Who is she?”

“Davie, I don’t know, never know, their names. I just like their looks, or not, as the case may be. You want some work at Ford’s?”

David nodded; carefully, he put the arbor right-side up. “I’m taking
time off from Thompson’s. He thinks I’m sick, which I am—of that drugstore of his.”

“Don’t ever give that up,” warned Spangler to David’s annoyance. Apparently, a life spent as a prescription clerk in the back room of a Fifteenth Street drugstore seemed perfection to everyone that he knew. At least his secesh friends knew that he had another life, but Spangler, though himself secesh, knew nothing of night-riders and the Colonel, of Mr. Henderson and Surrattsville. He simply thought that David Herold had a good job, suitable to his station in life; and should keep it.

“What’s at Ford’s?” asked David, not wanting to go into the sore subject of his current employment and limited prospects.

“Old Junius Brutus’s boy is going to play for two weeks, starts first of November. I was pretty fond of his father. Fact, I built most of his house for him near Baltimore, at Cockeysville, when Johnny was a boy.”

“Is he really the youngest star in the world?” asked David. They were now carrying what looked to be a moss-covered stone wall to its place at stage right.

“Danged if I know, Davie. Why?”

“That’s what the sign said when he played here last spring. I saw him in
Richard III
. But I couldn’t tell how young he was, with the whiskers and the nose and all.”