Lincoln (90 page)

“Was all that stuff of Frank Blair’s about trade permits true?” asked Sprague suddenly.

“Certainly not!” Sprague’s wife answered for her father. “That people sell permits back and forth to one another is something Father cannot control. Certainly
he
does not benefit.”

“We have a pretty good case against Frank Blair now,” said Henry D. “We’ll spring it on him next month. In the House.”

“Too late,” said Kate.

“Revenge is never too late,” said Senator Pomeroy with a gentle smile. “We shall also show that he and Lincoln are in cahoots to destroy Mr. Chase. Some good will come out of it, never fear.”

Chase listened to his friends talk as if he were, somehow, present at his own funeral. Everything was now past tense. Henry D. was off to Europe for a rest cure: or to avoid indictment in the Hurtt affair. Jay Cooke was winding up the affairs of the Chase campaign in which some ninety thousand dollars had been spent. Sprague continued to finance Sixth and E, but he was now less than generous when it came to political funding. As Chase had feared, Kate and Sprague were ill-matched. She was too intelligent; he too dull. She was also far too distracted by her father’s collapsing political future to give Sprague the attention that he needed. As Chase listened to the far-off funereal voices, he composed his political epitaph: “I believe that I would rather that the people should wonder why I wasn’t president than why I was.”

Meanwhile, Washburne was staring at the one man in the United States who could be elected president by acclamation, burying Lincoln and all the rest. The short, slight man was at the reception desk at Willard’s. Washburne had just come from the barbershop when he heard General Ulysses S. Grant say to the clerk, “I’d like a room. For myself and my son here.” The son was a weedy boy of fourteen, who was staring about the crowded lobby with a certain wonder.

The clerk said, wearily, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve got nothing at all except a small room on the top floor.”

“Well, we’ll take what we can get.” Grant filled out the registration card. The clerk took it; glanced at it perfunctorily; then said, without the slightest change in his manner, “You shall have the presidential suite, General Grant. It will be free within the hour, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“No,” said Grant, “I don’t mind. We’ll get something to eat.”

“I’ll join you,” said Washburne.

“Well, how did you know I’d be here?” asked Grant, a smile just visible beneath the thick brown beard.

“I didn’t. I was in the barbershop. Where’s your escort?”

“I don’t have one. I’ve only got two staff members with me, and they’ve checked into the National. This is my son Fred.”

Washburne shook the boy’s hand warmly; and was relieved to see that he had not inherited his mother’s startlingly crossed eyes. As they walked through the lobby, Grant said, “Since there was nobody from the War Department at the depot, we just hailed a cab and came on here.”

They entered the large dining room. Washburne told the head waiter that they would like a quiet corner, which was found. In that huge, noisy, roast-meat-smelling room, no one paid the slightest attention to what was easily the shabbiest of a hundred Union officers at table. Even the two stars on each shoulder strap excited no interest: Washington was filled with major-generals.

But Grant was about to be a lieutenant-general; and Washburne took seriously his role as the congressman of the Union’s greatest general. “I finally got the bill through the House, allowing for such a rank to be revived. It was not easy.”

“I suppose not.” Grant did not seem very interested. The pale-blue eyes were alert but somewhat bloodshot. Washburne wondered if the general might have been drunk on the cars from Nashville. At the moment he was drinking quantities of water and eating bread as they waited for the waiter to bring them the day’s soup. Fred was chewing his nails and counting the number of generals in the room.

“Well, there hasn’t been such a rank since George Washington. Winfield Scott’s lieutenant-generalcy was more … emeritus?”

“Brevet,” said Grant, precisely.

“That’s the word. Garfield thought the honor too great for any man while the war is still going on.”

“Did he?” Grant smiled, and chewed bread.

“He did. Anyway, I got the bill through and tomorrow the President will give you your commission. We don’t anticipate any trouble from the Senate.”

“I have a condition of acceptance,” said Grant. “I will not make my headquarters here.”

Washburne was surprised. “But you will be commanding all the armies …” The soup arrived.

“I can do that from the west.” Grant proceeded to eat the soup like a man digging a ditch. The spoon was there to empty the plate, and so the
spoon was used; and thus the plate was emptied. He was, as soldier and man, all of a piece, thought Washburne.

“You know there is a lot of speculation going on about you.” Washburne paused so that Grant might ask, of what nature? But the general simply stared at the spoon, which now lay in the center of the empty soup plate. “Speculation as to whether or not you’ll be tempted to run for president in the fall. Certainly, the Democrats would nominate you, and perhaps even the Republicans.” This was not, Washburne realized sadly, the most subtle political approach that he had ever made. But Grant was not a man for the usual political ellipsis.

“I’ve said I don’t want the job.” Grant looked up from the plate. “I hate this city. Sherman warned me against Washington.” Grant lowered his voice so that Fred could not hear. “Worse than Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said. “Besides, I like what I’m doing. Tell Mr. Lincoln he has nothing to fear from me.”

This was almost too direct for Washburne’s taste. “Well, I’m not sure exactly what General Sherman had in mind in his characterization of Washington, but this is a city devoted to intrigue, and with an election approaching, it is more than usually mephitic.”

Grant was now carefully slicing up the entirety of a steak, preparatory to eating it. Fred reported that five major-generals and eighteen brigadiers were in the dining room. “But you outrank ’em all, Pa.”

“If the President wants me to, and the Senate agrees, I do. Otherwise, I don’t.” Grant was not about to tempt fate.

“The President is curious to know if politics tempt you. You know, perhaps,
after
the war …” Washburne was amazed at his own maladroit-ness. Plainly, there was something in Grant’s blunt, matter-of-fact nature that brought out a certain crudeness in his own.

“Well,” said Grant, speaking and chewing at the same time, “I do have a certain political interest for after the war. If I survive this business, I mean to run for mayor of Galena and, if elected, I intend to have the sidewalk fixed up between my house and the depot.”

Suddenly, there was a cry, “General Grant!” To Washburne’s amazement and Grant’s discomfiture, half the diners in the room were now converging on their table. Grant had been recognized. He stood at his place and shook hands until it was plain that he was not going to be allowed to finish his dinner. Suddenly, he blurted out, “Let’s go, Fred.” With that, the general, followed by Fred and Washburne, cut through the crowd to the lobby, where Grant said to Washburne, “I think I’ll hide out in my room now.”

“But you’ll be seeing the President this evening, won’t you?”

“I’m not invited.” Absently Grant continued to shake a series of proffered hands while never once looking up to see to whom the hands belonged.

“It’s the weekly reception. Everyone’s invited.”

“Oh.” Grant seemed to think a moment. Then he said, “What time?”

“I’ll come and pick you up at nine-thirty. We’ll walk over together.”

“Can I come, Pa?”

“No,” said General Grant.

At nine-thirty, Grant’s two aides were waiting for him at the White House portico. One of them said, “Word’s got around that you might be here. There’s quite a crowd in there.”

Grant looked at Washburne, as if to ascertain what to do next. Then he entered the Mansion first.

In the entrance hall, guests were milling about. At first, the arrival of three shabby officers and one rumpled familiar member of Congress interested no one. Also, when it came to generalissimos, the capital was used to white-haired or at least grizzled commanders. At forty-one, Grant’s hair was still entirely brown—and all his own, unlike that of Gideon Welles, who was the first to recognize Grant as he and Washburne made their way to the Blue Room, where the President and Mrs. Lincoln were receiving their guests. Welles bowed to Grant, who gave him a half salute. Grant insisted on joining the long line in front of the Blue Room. When Washburne suggested that he go straight in to the President, Grant said, “No.” Grant seemed very fond, Washburne decided, of that monosyllable.

As Grant stepped up to the President, Lamon started to ask him his name so that he could make the presentation, but Lincoln had recognized the small figure. “Why,” he said, with a smile that was all white teeth, “here is General Grant!” He shook Grant’s hand warmly. “Well, this is a great pleasure for me.”

As Grant mumbled something in reply, Lincoln motioned for Mary to come forward and shake the general’s hand, which she did with genuine interest. “We have looked forward, sir,” she said, “to seeing you here, sir, for quite some time.” Then the line disintegrated, and everyone rushed into the Blue Room. Washburne was shoved to one side, and only the formidable Lamon was able to keep the Lincolns from being physically overwhelmed, while only the quick-thinking Seward saved Grant from being trampled.

From nowhere, Seward had suddenly materialized at Grant’s side. Small as Seward was, he could, through gestures alone, appear to occupy a large space or, in this case, create a sufficient space about himself and Grant. Arms flailing the air, Seward shouted, “This way, General! To the
East Room!” He then propelled Grant out the door, followed by everyone else. In less than a minute the Lincolns were left alone with Lamon.

“I have never seen anything like that!” Mary was truly astonished.

“Well, it’s the first time the folks have ever got a look at a really successful general,” said Lincoln. “It’s sort of like Tom Thumb all over again.”

From the East Room, there was a sound of cheering. “Come on, Mother, we may as well see the sights, too.”

The Lincolns arrived at the door to the East Room just as Seward was coaxing the red-faced Grant onto a sofa, where he now stood, swaying slightly, in plain view of everyone. “Father,” said Mary, deeply alarmed, “he is running for President!”

“Well, Mother, he has said that he has no such base ambitions.”

“
Everyone
says that.” Mary could not believe that here in the Mansion the President was entirely ignored, while what looked to be a dry-goods clerk was staggering about on a newly reupholstered crimson sofa, and everyone in the room was cheering him and trying to shake his hand, while Seward more than ever resembled an eccentric parrot, hopping about the hero of the hour. “They would nominate him, wouldn’t they?” Mary was upset.

“If he were to win the war for us before June, of course they would. But as that’s only four months from now, I don’t think he’s apt to defeat General Lee all that fast. If he does, of course, I’ll help him get elected.”

“Don’t say such a thing!” The thought that Lincoln might not be reelected was the worst of Mary’s night terrors. She was close to thirty thousand dollars in debt, and now, without John Watt to help her borrow money in New York, she was at a loss how to pay her personal bills, many of them years overdue. As long as it looked as if she would be First Lady for another four years, she could intimidate her creditors. But at the first sign that her husband might be defeated, they would fall upon her like wolves. Keckley had begged her to tell the President; but she could not. He had already had to endure so much on her account. Could she bear, she wondered, to part with the new diamond-and-pearl earrings that she was wearing? They had cost three thousand dollars. She touched one of them with her forefinger. She thought of the matching brooch which she had declined to buy. She
could
show restraint, she knew. Besides, one of the Republicans who owed so much to Mr. Lincoln might buy it for her. Since so many men that he had appointed to office had made fortunes, it was only justice that they provide for her when she was financially embarrassed. One of them, William Mortimer, had just given her a gold-and-enamel brooch with forty-seven diamonds. She still had friends. But
would they remain friends if the President were not reelected? The thought made her shudder.

Seward was now proposing three cheers for the victor of Vicksburg, and the East Room echoed with a thousand voices, including Lincoln’s if not Mary’s. Then Grant got off the sofa. As the crowd that circled him tried to shake his hand, he visibly shrank from them. “I don’t think he’s running for president just yet,” said Lincoln, whose practised eye was taking in the scene. “He’s too scared of the folks. But once he gets the knack of handling them, there’ll be no stopping him.”

“Let us hope that that won’t be until after next November.”

Lincoln nodded. “Let us hope so. Because there is nothing on this earth quite as useless in a war as a general who is running for president. On that subject, I am the world’s greatest—and saddest—authority.”

Seward took the same view. Clearly, Grant was as ambitious as all the others and like all great men and a good many not so great, he had no modesty. He had been spoken of as a presidential candidate ever since the battle of Lookout Mountain. The American public had a curious appetite for military leaders in politics and though Seward tended to deplore this peculiar craving, he would cater for it if he had to. If Grant won the war, he could be groomed. But did Grant truly understand his situation? That was the question.

Lincoln seemed to think that Grant did. The two men were seated in the President’s office. In the next room, Cabinet and interested parties were gathering for Grant’s investiture as lieutenant-general in command of all the armies of the United States.

“Grant
seems
a sensible fellow,” said the President, holding up a plaster copy of the curiously ugly gold medallion that Congress had ordered to be struck in the general’s honor.