Lincoln (84 page)

Barney was also a friend of Sprague’s; and of Harris Hoyt. “He’s escaped,” said Barney in a low voice, as he allowed a waiter to carve him a number of slices from a Virginia ham so thoroughly cured that it was more black than red. “The doctor says I am not to eat salt,” he said, chewing the ham slowly. “But I am disobedient. He is in Matamoros, Mexico.”

Sprague looked at Barney; and said nothing. During the last spring and summer, thanks to Hoyt, a fair amount of cotton had found its way from Texas to Rhode Island. It was Barney who had helped Hoyt get his guns through New York customs. Officially, the guns were intended for the Spanish provincial government at Havana. In due course, guns and cotton mill had arrived in Texas by way of Havana and Matamoros, a port just below Confederate-held Galveston. Hoyt had immediately gone to General Magruder—late of Jamestown—and got his permit to establish a cotton mill. Magruder had then asked for a further ten thousand stand of rifles in exchange for which Hoyt would be exempted from impressment for two thousand bales of cotton, to be exported to A. & W. Sprague & Company. But since Hoyt did not have the rifles, he decided to run for it, with the cotton. Shortly before he was about to sail, Hoyt was arrested at Magruder’s order. Now, somehow, according to Barney, he had escaped; nor did Barney say how it was that he had heard the news, but, “He’ll be in New York some time this winter.”

“Damn fool,” said Sprague, finishing the champagne. “Bad enough for that ship of his to get caught in the blockade. Now he goes and ruins himself with the Texans. He can’t go back. So what do we do?”

“Let us hope that the war will end soon.” Barney was not helpful.

“Lucky there was nothing about any of us on that boat they caught. What was it called?”

“
America
,” said Barney, mouth filled with ham.

“Well, we made sixty percent on our investment in Hoyt.” Sprague brightened somewhat. “That ain’t too bad.”

The buffet rooms began to fill up with guests. Hay suddenly found himself in front of the wedding cake, where stood Bessie Hale and the actor Wilkes Booth. “I saw you last night,” said Hay to Booth. “You were Romeo.”

“He is always Romeo,” breathed Bessie.

“Mercutio has the better part.” Booth was somewhat sour. “Romeo is a hopeless sort of character to play. But he’s what people want.” Hay had admired Booth’s agility. The actor had climbed like a squirrel to Juliet’s balcony. Later, he had leapt off a ten-foot wall and the audience had cheered him.

“Why aren’t you playing tonight?” asked Hay, aware that the Tycoon was now at the other end of the room, holding a glass of champagne in his left hand while pumping hands with the right.

“Tonight I’m producing. It’s a play called
Money
. The theme,” said Booth with a small smile, “is whether or not a girl should marry a man for his money.”

“Why,” asked Hay with, he thought, sublime innocence, “did you put that play on tonight of all nights?”

“Because,” said Booth, with equal innocence, “it’s the only one in my repertoire in which I don’t appear. I wanted to come here, with Miss Hale and observe …”

“The real thing?”

“Now, Mr. Hay!” Bessie exclaimed. “They are perfectly matched, Katie and Mr. Sprague.”

Booth glanced toward the door where Lincoln stood. “I saw him the other night—and you, too. In the box.”

Hay nodded. “We enjoyed you in
The Marble Heart
.” Actually, they had all been somewhat bored; and Mrs. Lincoln had nodded off.

“It was a dull performance,” said Booth. Hay was always amazed at how actors knew, instinctively, if they were good or not; or, rather, if the audience was with them or not. “I’d hoped the President might have come last night. He is said to know Shakespeare well.” Hay was not about to say that, after
The Marble Heart
, there was no further enthusiasm at the White House to see the world’s youngest star. Also, the Tycoon did not much care for
Romeo and Juliet
.

“Would you like to meet the President?” asked Hay, politely.

Booth shook his head. “He looks much too busy and too tired to talk to an actor. So, what do
you
think of the songs?”

As an innovation, Booth had added modern sentimental songs to the various plays in his repertoire. He had been much criticized for doing this;
particularly in
Richard III
. Hay said, truthfully, “I thought they were charming last night.”

“You see?” Bessie turned to Booth. “I told you to take no notice of the
Sunday Chronicle
, which is practically a rebel paper, anyway.”

“They called me a second-class actor,” said Booth. “Did you see the article?” He turned to Hay.

Hay nodded. “I must read everything. But at least the press is a lot kinder to you than to my employer. Second-rate would be high praise for Mr. Lincoln from Horace Greeley.”

“Others think,” said Booth, “that if Lincoln is reelected he will be another Bonaparte. He will make himself king.”

Hay laughed at the absurdity. “You must have been reading the Chicago
Times.
”

Booth nodded. “I was. Curious,” he said, agate stare turned toward Bessie. “The
Times
was the only paper that preferred my Romeo to William Wheatley’s Mercutio.”

“A sound paper,” said Hay.

Booth suddenly smiled. “A sound paper,” he repeated.

In the crowded first parlor, Chase was also concerned with the soundness of the press. “I can’t think where these rumors come from,” he said to Ben Wade. “I have in no way encouraged any one to put me forward as president. Yet they keep printing these stories like … like …”

“Like greenbacks,” said Wade, his usual sneer now an amiable snarl, in honor of the nuptials. Chase had always counted on Wade as an ally. But, lately, he had sensed a certain reluctance on Wade’s part to commit himself. Certainly, each was a radical in regard to abolition and to the reconstruction of the once-conquered Southern states. Each was from Ohio.
Each
despised Lincoln. But Wade’s manner to Chase had subtly altered since that confrontation between Cabinet and Senate which had not been, Chase knew, his finest hour. Lately, Senator Pomeroy had been sounding out Wade and the other powerful radicals in Congress. All preferred Chase to Lincoln and yet …

“I see you in one place and one place only, Mr. Chase,” said Wade, abruptly.

“Naturally,” Chase began his usual demur, “I do not put myself forward …”

“Naturally,” said Wade, bluntly. “Because you can’t. I see you as Chief Justice of the United States.”

“Oh.” Chase was entirely defeated. In dark moments, he had also seen himself in that high isolated place, out of the swift currents of history. But he could not believe that Wade was saying this to him at a moment when
their faction of the party had no other alternative to Lincoln, who could not, in any case, win reelection. “There exists,” said Chase, rather weakly, “a Chief Justice.”

“But he is eighty-six. He has been fading rapidly for more than a decade. You know, all through Buchanan’s Administration I prayed most earnestly for the life of Chief Justice Taney to be spared and, by God, I’m a little afraid I overdid the matter.”

Chase laughed politely at Wade’s favorite joke. None of their party had wanted Buchanan to appoint another pro-slavery, pro-states-rights Chief Justice. Fortunately, the old man had survived Buchanan’s presidency; now, if he were to die within the next year, Lincoln would appoint his successor. Should Taney live more than a year, Chase, as president, would make the appointment. Chase was direct. “Frankly, Mr. Wade, I had always thought that if the appointment were mine to give, you would be my choice.”

Wade looked as surprised as Wade could ever look. Then he said, “I am very moved, Mr. Chase.” He had recovered his usual coolness of manner. “Am I to take this as the beginning of a trade?”

“Oh, no, no!” But Chase was pleased with the turn of the conversation. “I do not trade, of course. I merely expressed a personal sentiment that is also general.”

The President was now leaving. “I seemed to have stayed two hours,” he said to Chase, as Wade smiled up at him. “But then I wanted to take the cuss off the meagerness of my party of one.”

“I hope Mrs. Lincoln is well.” Chase was polite.

“She has her ups and downs. That bang on the head last summer still bothers her.”

Ben Wade said, “Sir, I was just telling Mr. Chase what a splendid Chief Justice he would make.”

Chase felt as if deep in the cellar beneath his feet a charge of dynamite had been set off. As he swayed, he wondered why others did not respond to the vibrating floor. Weakly, he said, “I told Senator Wade that
he
was my own private choice.”

“Well, Mr. Wade,” said Lincoln, a half smile on his lips, “you would both look mighty nice up there on that dais in the Capitol. While Mr. Chase here”—Lincoln looked down at Chase, who looked up at him, blindly, like a child expecting a kiss—“would adorn any office in the land, including the one which I, temporarily, hold so”—Lincoln’s head now turned from Chase’s uplifted face to that of Ben Wade’s—“unworthily.”

“Hardly, sir!” Chase heard himself strike the sycophantish note. “You inspire us all.”

“Then come with me next week to Pennsylvania, where I’m going to need all the help that I can get, helping our greatest orator, Edward Everett, inspire the nation.”

“What is happening in Pennsylvania?” asked Wade.

A servant was now helping the President into his topcoat. “We are dedicating a cemetery at Gettysburg, right on the battlefield. Governor Seward and Mr. Stanton are coming with me.”

“If only I could,” said Chase. As he started to describe the next week’s business, the President took his hat and stick. “I have said farewell to the young married couple. Now I say it to you, Mr. Chase. Mr. Wade.”

“I wish I could go with you, sir,” said Chase to the President’s back.

“Let the politically dead,” said Wade in a voice that Chase knew that Lincoln could hear, “bury the dead.”

Shocked, Chase hurried to lead the President out the front door and into the street where, late as it was, hundreds of people still watched as the carriages came and went.

When they saw the President, silhouetted, unmistakably, in the door, there was a cheer. He raised his hat. “It is for the
living
, Mr. Chase,” he said serenely, “that we honor the dead. They are well out of it, as we shall be, in due course.” He looked at Chase; and smiled. “Politically—or otherwise.” Then Lincoln got into the presidential carriage; and drove off.

A
T THE
last moment, Madam decided that she could not leave Tad, who was still sick, while Stanton said that he must stay at the War Department in order to follow Grant’s attack on Chattanooga. So, in the end, Seward and Blair and Usher were the only members of the Cabinet to accompany the President. The ubiquitous Lamon was, as always, at Lincoln’s side, while, for once, Nicolay decided that he, too, would like an outing; so both secretaries attended the President at Gettysburg.

The morning of November 19, 1863, was warm and still. Indian summer had set in. The celebrated old orator Edward Everett had already sent the
President a printed copy of his speech. “My God, John!” Lincoln had said, as he sat in the special railroad car. “He will speak for two hours.” Lincoln had handed the thick pamphlet to Hay; and taken off his glasses.

“I suppose that is what he’s always expected to do.” Hay had decided not to read what he would be obliged to hear.

“A splendid old man.” Lincoln had held in one hand a single sheet of White House notepaper on which he had written half of what would be, he said, “a short, short, short speech,” dedicating the cemetery. “You know, I have heard of Everett all my life, and he has always been famous, and yet I never could find out why.”

“Our greatest orator?”

“Greater than Clay or Webster?” Lincoln had smiled. “No, he is just famous, that’s all. There are people like that in public life. They are there, and no one ever really knows why.”

They
were all there the next morning on Cemetery Hill. There were seven governors, among them Seymour and Curtin; many diplomats and members of Congress. A platform had been erected, with a tall flagpole next to it. In the warm stillness, the flag hung listlessly. A military band played. A crowd of some thirty thousand people had already gathered when, finally, at ten o’clock, the presidential procession came into view, and the military band struck up “Hail to the Chief.”

Lincoln rode at the head of the ragged column of notables. He sat very straight on a sorrel horse too small for him. He was like some huge effigy, thought Hay, who rode with Nico behind him. It was odd that the biggest man in the country should also be among the very biggest—or at least tallest—of men. Seward looked sublimely sloppy at the Tycoon’s side. Trousers pulled up to reveal thick, wrinkled gray stockings, the premier was blithely indifferent to how he or anyone else looked.

Earlier that morning, Nico had gone to the house where the President had spent the night; and he had stayed alone with the Tycoon for an hour. “What news?” asked Hay. The procession was now stopped by crowds singing, “We are coming, Father Abraham.” Hay could see Lamon furiously shouting orders; but no one listened. The people wanted to see and touch the President.

“Tad is improved,” said Nico.

“That is earth-shaking. What else?”

“A battle has begun at Chattanooga. Grant is attacking. Burnside is safe at Knoxville; he does not attack.”

“How is the Tycoon?”

“He just finished rewording the speech an hour ago. He complains of dizziness.”

Alarmed, Hay turned to Nico. “Oh, God! You know, in the train, he told me that he felt weak.”

Nico nodded. “There’s something wrong. I don’t know what.”

But if there was something wrong with the Ancient, there was nothing wrong with the Tycoon, who sat dutifully through Edward Everett’s extended version of Pericles’s commemoration of the Athenian dead. But where Pericles had been very much to the Attic point, Everett was to a myriad of New England points.