The Path of the King Part 30

"That reminds me of Artemus Ward. He observes that at the last election he voted for Henry Clay. It's true, he says, that Henry was dead, but since all the politicians that he knew were fifteenth-rate he preferred to vote for a first-cla.s.s corpse."

Stanton moved impatiently. He hated the President's pocket humorists and had small patience with his tales. "Was ever a great war fought," he cried, "with such a camp-following as our Congressmen?"

Lincoln looked comically surprised.

"You're too harsh, Mr. Stanton. I admit there are one or two rascals who'd be better hanged. But the trouble is that most of them are too high-principled. They are that set on liberty that they won't take the trouble to safeguard it. They would rather lose the war than give up their little notions. I've a great regard for principles, but I have no use for them when they get so high that they become foolishness."

"Every idle pedant thinks he knows better how to fight a war than the men who are labouring sixteen hours a day at it," said Stanton bitterly.

"They want to hurry things quicker than the Almighty means them to go. I don't altogether blame them either, for I'm mortally impatient myself.

But it's no good thinking that saying a thing should be so will make it so. We're not the Creator of this universe. You've got to judge results according to your instruments. Horace Greeley is always telling me what I should do, but Horace omits to explain how I am to find the means. You can't properly manure a fifty-acre patch with only a bad smell."

Lincoln ran his finger over the leaves of the small Bible he had taken from his pocket. "Seems to me Moses had the same difficulties to contend with. Read the sixteenth chapter of the book of Numbers at your leisure, Mr. Secretary. It's mighty pertinent to our situation. The people have been a deal kinder to me than I deserve and I've got more cause for thankfulness than complaint. But sometimes I get just a little out of patience with our critics. I want to say to them as Moses said to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram--'Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi!'"

Lincoln's speech had broadened into something like the dialect of his boyhood. Stanton finished the paper on which he had been engaged and stepped aside from his desk. His face was heavily preoccupied and he kept an eye always on the door leading to his private secretary's room.

"At this moment," he said, "Hooker is engaged with Lee." He put a finger on a map which was stretched on a frame behind him. "There! On the Rappahannock, where it is joined by the Rapidan.... Near the hamlet of Chancellorsville.... Battle was joined two days ago, and so far it has been indecisive. Tonight we should know the result. That was the news you came here to-night about, Mr. President?"

Lincoln nodded. "I am desperately anxious. I needn't conceal that from you, Mr. Stanton."

"So am I. I wish to G.o.d I had more confidence in General Hooker. I never liked that appointment, Mr. President. I should have preferred Meade or Reynolds. Hooker is a bl.u.s.tering thick-headed fellow, good enough, maybe, for a division or even a corps, but not for an army."

"I visited him three weeks back," said Lincoln, "and I'm bound to say he has marvellously pulled round the Army of the Potomac. There's a new spirit in their ranks. You're unjust to Joe Hooker, Mr. Stanton. He's a fine organiser, and he'll fight--he's eager to fight, which McClellan and Burnside never were."

"But what on earth is the good of being willing to fight if you're going to lose? He hasn't the brains to command. And he's opposed by Lee and Jackson. Do you realise the surpa.s.sing ability of those two men? We have no generals fit to hold a candle to them."

"We've a bigger and a better army. I'm not going to be depressed, Mr.

Stanton. Joe has two men to every one of Lee's, he's safe over the Rappahannock, and I reckon he will make a road to Richmond. I've seen his troops, and they are fairly bursting to get at the enemy. I insist on being hopeful. What's the last news from the Mississippi?"

"Nothing new. Grant has got to Port Gibson and has his base at Grand Gulf. He now proposes to cut loose and make for Vicksburg. So far he has done well, but the risk is terrific. Still, I am inclined to think you were right about that man. He has capacity."

"Grant stops still and saws wood," said Lincoln "He don't talk a great deal, but he fights. I can't help feeling hopeful to-night, for it seems to me we have the enemy in a fix. You've heard me talk of the shrinking quadrilateral, which is the rebel States, as I see the proposition."

"Often," said the other drily.

"I never could get McClellan rightly to understand it. I look on the Confederacy as a quadrilateral of which at present we hold two sides--the east and the south--the salt-water sides. The north side is Virginia, the west side the line of the Mississippi. If Grant and Farragut between them can win the control of the Father of Waters, we've got the west side. Then it's the business of the Armies on the Mississippi to press east and the Army of the Potomac to press south.

It may take a time, but if we keep a stiff upper lip we're bound to have the rebels whipped. I reckon they're whipped already in spite of Lee.

I've heard of a turtle that an old n.i.g.g.e.r man decapitated. Next day he was amusing himself poking sticks at it and the turtle was snapping back. His master comes along and says to him, 'Why, Pomp, I thought that turtle was dead.' 'Well, he am dead, ma.s.sa,' says Pompey, 'but the critter don't know enough ter be sensible ob it.' I reckon the Confederacy's dead, but Jeff Davis don't know enough to be sensible of it."

A young man in uniform came hurriedly through the private secretary's door and handed the Secretary for War a telegram. He stood at attention, and the President observed that his face was pale. Stanton read the message, but gave no sign of its contents. He turned to the map behind him and traced a line on it with his forefinger.

"Any more news?" he asked the messenger.

"Nothing official, sir," was the answer. "But there is a report that General Jackson has been killed in the moment of victory."

The officer withdrew and Stanton turned to the President. Lincoln's face was terrible in its strain, for the words "in the moment of victory" had rung the knell of his hopes.

When Stanton spoke his voice was controlled and level. "Unlike your turtle," he said, "the Confederacy is suddenly and terribly alive. Lee has whipped Hooker to blazes. We have lost more than fifteen thousand men. To-day we are back on the north side of the Rappahannock."

Lincoln was on his feet and for a moment the bronze mask of his face was distorted by suffering.

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "What will the country say? What will the country say?"

"It matters little what the country says. The point is what will the country suffer. In a fortnight Lee will be in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Your quadrilateral will not shrink, it will extend. In a month we shall be fighting to hold Washington and Baltimore, aye, and Philadelphia."

The bitterness of the words seemed to calm Lincoln. He was walking up and down the floor, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his expression was once again one of patient humility.

"I take all the blame," he said. "You have done n.o.bly, Mr. Stanton, and all the mistakes are mine. I reckon I am about the poorest effigy of a War President that ever cursed an unhappy country."

The other did not reply. He was an honest man who did not deal in smooth phrases.

"I'd resign to-morrow," Lincoln went on. "No railsplitter ever laid down his axe at the end of a hard day so gladly as I would lay down my office. But I've got to be sure first that my successor will keep faith with this nation. I've got to find a man who will keep the right course."

"Which is?" Stanton asked.

"To fight it out to the very end. To the last drop of blood and the last cent. There can be no going back. If I surrendered my post to any successor, though he were an archangel from heaven, who would weaken on that great purpose, I should deserve to be execrated as the betrayer of my country."

Into Stanton's sour face there came a sudden gleam which made it almost beautiful.

"Mr. President," he said, "I have often differed from you. I have used great freedom in criticism of your acts, and I take leave to think that I have been generally in the right. You know that I am no flatterer. But I tell you, sir, from my inmost heart that you are the only man to lead the people, because you are the only man whose courage never fails. G.o.d knows how you manage it. I am of the bull-dog type and hold on because I do not know how to let go. Most of my work I do in utter hopelessness.

But you, sir, you never come within a mile of despair. The blacker the clouds get the more confident you are that there is sunlight behind them. I carp and cavil at you, but I also take off my hat to you, for you are by far the greatest of us."

Lincoln's face broke into a slow smile, which made the eyes seem curiously child-like.

"I thank you, my old friend," he said. "I don't admit I have your courage, for I haven't half of it. But if a man feels that he is only a pipe for Omnipotence to sound through, he is not so apt to worry.

Besides, these last weeks G.o.d has been very good to me and I've been given a kind of a.s.surance. I know the country will grumble a bit about my ways of doing things, but will follow me in the end. I know that we shall win a clean victory. Jordan has been a hard road to travel, but I feel that in spite of all our frailties we'll be dumped on the right side of that stream. After that..."

"After that," said Stanton, with something like enthusiasm in his voice, "you'll be the first President of a truly united America, with a power and prestige the greatest since Washington."

Lincoln's gaze had left the other's face and was fixed on the blue dusk now gathering in the window.

"I don't know about that," he said. "When the war's over, I think I'll go home."

IV

Two years pa.s.sed and once again it was spring in Washington--about half-past ten of the evening of the 14th of April--Good Friday--the first Eastertide of peace. The streets had been illuminated for victory, and the gas jets were still blazing, while a young moon, climbing the sky, was dimming their murky yellow with its cold pure light. Tenth Street was packed from end to end by a silent mob. As a sponge cleans a slate, so exhilaration had been wiped off their souls. On the porch of Ford's Theatre some gaudy posters advertised Tom Taylor's comedy, Our American Cousin, and the steps were littered with paper and orange peel and torn fragments of women's clothes, for the exit of the audience had been hasty. Lights still blazed in the building, for there was n.o.body to put them out. In front on the side-walk was a cordon of soldiers.

Stanton elbowed his way through the throng to the little house, Mr.

Peterson's, across the street. The messenger from the War Department had poured wild news into his ear,--wholesale murder, everybody--the President--Seward--Grant. Incredulous he had hurried forth and the sight of that huge still crowd woke fear in him. The guards at Mr. Peterson's door recognised him and he was admitted. As he crossed the threshold he saw ominous dark stains.

A kitchen candle burned below the hat-rack in the narrow hall, and showed further stains on the oilcloth. From a room on the left hand came the sound of women weeping.

The door at the end of the pa.s.sage was ajar. It opened on a bare little place, once perhaps the surgery of some doctor in small practice, but now a bedroom. A door gave at the farther side on a tiny verandah, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting bolster.

A man was leaving whom Stanton recognised as Dr. Stone, the Lincoln family physician. The doctor answered his unspoken question. "Dying," he said. "Through the brain. The bullet is now below the left eye. He may live for a few hours--scarcely the night."

Stanton moved to the foot of the bed like one in a dream. He saw that Barnes, the Surgeon-General, sat on a deal chair on the left side, holding the dying man's hand. Dr. Gurley, the minister, sat beside the bed. He noted Sumner and Welles and General Halleck and Governor Dennison, and back in the gloom the young Robert Lincoln. But he observed them only as he would have observed figures in a picture. They were but shadows; the living man was he who was struggling on the bed with death.