How Few Remain Part 36

His beefsteak, when in due course it arrived, occasioned another interruption, a rapturous one. Across the table from him, Lincoln methodically demolished half a chicken. Both men drank whiskey with their meals.

"How you stay so lean with such an appet.i.te is beyond me," Dougla.s.s said, patting his own considerable girth.

Lincoln shrugged. "I eat-and I am eaten." He had not drunk to excess, any more than Dougla.s.s had, but perhaps it was the spirits that let his frustration with the world in which he found himself come forth to a degree he did not usually permit. Or perhaps it was something else. After one of his self-deprecating chuckles, he said, "I bear up well in the presence of mine enemies; only with my friends do I let my sorrows show. Having so few friends these days, I am most often quite the jolly gentleman."

He looked as jolly as an undertaker. He usually looked that way, regardless of how he felt. Dougla.s.s said, "Surely the state of the Republican Party cannot be so bad as you implied in your invitation to this supper."

"Can't it? Why not?" Lincoln asked, and Dougla.s.s had no answer. The former president went on, "This may be the last supper of the Republican Party."

"With the way the war has gone, I fear you're likely right," Dougla.s.s said. "I had such hopes when we began it, and now ..." His voice trailed away.

"Now we've both come closer than we would have liked to making the acquaintance of the hangman," Lincoln said, and Dougla.s.s winced and nodded. Lincoln continued, "But that is not what I meant. Our party would face hard sledding, and face it soon, even had the war gone as we should have liked."

"You are, I believe, too much the pessimist," Dougla.s.s said. "Had we succeeded in forcing the Confederate States to disgorge Chihuahua and Sonora, Republican strength would have been a.s.sured for years to come."

But Lincoln shook his head. "Try as I will, I cannot make myself believe it, for we have abandoned the principles upon which we-you and I and others-founded the party in the first place. When was the last time you heard a Republican speak up for a fair shake for the working man or for justice and equality for all men? Those are the ideals we espoused when we were young. Have they changed from boons to evils as we grew old?"

Dougla.s.s frowned and looked down into his gla.s.s of whiskey. In those charged, heady days before the War of Secession, everything had seemed possible. He spoke carefully: "Since the war, we may perhaps have grown too concerned with giving the country back its spine and allowing it to stand tall in the world, and-"

"What about caring what it stands for when it stands tall?" Lincoln broke in. "We have forgotten the working man as the capitalist ground him into the dirt. We have looked outward too much much, and at ourselves too little little, and so a pit yawns beneath the party. Unless the ma.s.s of men believe we represent them and can better their lot, they will cast their ballots elsewhere, and I for one shall not blame them. In their shoes-when they have shoes-I should cast my vote elsewhere, too."

"I look outward," Dougla.s.s said. "I look south, to my brethren yet in bondage."

"I know you do, old friend," Lincoln said. "Nor do I presume to condemn you, for there your heart lies. But do you not see that the factory owners in the United States abuse the working cla.s.ses in much the same way as the slaveowners in the Confederate States abuse the Negro?"

"It might seem so, to a white man," Dougla.s.s snapped. But then he softened: "We have disagreed here for years, you and I. I ask you, Abraham: where is the factory owner who, when a pretty woman in his employ strikes his fancy, can abuse her chast.i.ty as he wishes?" His mouth tightened. The color of his skin, the shape of his features, testified that he was the product of such a union.

Lincoln replied, "Where is the slaveowner who, when times are slack or when a hand grows old, can turn him out to starve without a backwards glance, as if he were discarding a torn glove? The evils are not identical, but both spring from superiors enjoying untrammeled power over those they call inferiors, which is, as I have long maintained, destructive of democracy."

"The plight of the Negro is worse, and more deserving of attention," Dougla.s.s insisted.

"The plight of the Negro in the United States is not far different from the plight of other proletarians in the United States, and grows less different day by day," Lincoln said. "In looking toward the Negro in the Confederate States, for whom we can do little, you ignore both the Negro and the white man in the United States, for whom we can do a great deal."

"I look to amend the worst evil I see," Dougla.s.s said stiffly.

"Which is also the one least susceptible to amendment." Then Lincoln laughed, which irked the Negro orator and journalist, who found nothing amusing in the discussion. Seeing his expression, the ex-president explained: "I went through what they call the Lincoln-Douglas debates more than twenty years ago, and now I find myself in the midst of the Lincoln-Dougla.s.s debate."

"After some of the things the Little Giant said about the colored man, I'll thank you not to compare me to him," Dougla.s.s said, but he was smiling now, too. "You lost that election, but those debates made you a force to be reckoned with."

"And all that reckoning with me got the country was a lost war and a new, unfriendly neighbor on our southern border," Lincoln answered. "All that electing me got the party was the a.s.surance it would not elect another Republican president for the next generation."

Yes, Dougla.s.s thought, Lincoln was letting his bitterness show tonight, more than he normally did. The Negro said, "Cheer up, old friend. You yourself spoke of the king who charged his wise men to come up with a saying that would be true and fitting in all times and situations. They gave him the words, 'And this, too, shall pa.s.s away.' "

"Yes, and do you know what those wise men were talking about?" Lincoln asked. Dougla.s.s shook his head. "The Republican Party," Abraham Lincoln said.

Captain Saul Berryman looked neither so bright nor so young as he had before the war against the many foes of the United States. "Good morning, Colonel Schlieffen," he said wearily. He did not bother speaking German, as he had before, but waved Schlieffen to a seat in the outer office. "General Rosecrans will be with you shortly."

"Thank you," Alfred von Schlieffen told Rosecrans' adjutant. Captain Berryman only grunted by way of reply. He had already immersed himself once more in the paperwork that had engrossed him when Schlieffen walked into the office.

The closed door to Rosecrans' inner sanctum did little to m.u.f.fle the phrases he was, presumably, bellowing into the telephone: "Yes, Mr. President ... No, Mr. President ... No, no, no ... I'm sorry, Your Excellency, but I don't think we can manage that... . What? What? I'm sorry, I can't hear you." That last was followed a moment later by a sharp little crash, as of the newfangled machine's earpiece being slammed back into the bracket on which it rested when not in use.

Major General William Rosecrans opened the door to the inner office and peered out, a hunted look in his deep-set eyes. "Ah, Schlieffen," the general-in-chief of the United States said, suddenly genial. "I'd sure as h.e.l.l sooner talk with you than with James G."-his beard swallowed a word or two-"Blaine."

"Thank you, General," Schlieffen said, rising and going into Rosecrans' office. What he thought of an officer who would curse his commander-in-chief he kept to himself. Instead, pointing to the box on the wall, he said, "I am sorry it did not let you hear well."

"What?" Rosecrans stared. Then he laughed. "I could hear just fine, Colonel. What happened was, I got sick of listening. Any time a man asks you to do what isn't possible, you're a d.a.m.ned sight better off pretending you can't make him out."

Schlieffen thought of the British admiral, Nelson, deliberately raising a telescope to his blind eye so he could keep from officially seeing an order he did not like. With as much sympathy as he could put in his voice, the German military attache asked, "What does the president ask of you that you cannot do?"

He wondered if Rosecrans would answer him. He wouldn't have answered a question like that from a foreign attache, were he back in Berlin. But the American soldier did not hesitate. "What does he ask?" Rosecrans echoed. "What does he ask? He asks me to win the G.o.dd.a.m.n war for him, that's what. Not so much at this stage of things, is it?"

His breath stank of whiskey. Even a sober man, though, would have been hard pressed to be optimistic at the moment. "How does he want you do do this?" Schlieffen inquired.

"How?" Rosecrans howled, stretching the word out into a cry of pain. "He hasn't the faintest idea how. I'm the soldier, so that's supposed to be my affair. Have you got a won war concealed anywhere about your person, Colonel Schlieffen? I haven't, sure as the devil."

"If President Blaine still wants you this war to win, I do not know how to tell you to do this," Schlieffen said. "The only question I have is why he does not take the peace the Confederates say they will give him and thank G.o.d for it. When we France beat, we from them took two provinces and made them pay five milliards of francs."

"What's a milliard?" Rosecrans asked. Schlieffen took a pen from its inkwell and wrote the number on a sc.r.a.p of paper: 5,000,000,000. Rosecrans looked at it. "Oh. Five billion francs, you mean." He whistled softly. "That's a lot of money."

"Ja," Schlieffen answered laconically. Schlieffen answered laconically.

"That's a h.e.l.l of a lot of money," Rosecrans said, as if the German had not spoken.

"Ja," Schlieffen said again, and then, "and Longstreet wants to take no provinces-no, no states, you would say-from the United States. He wants to take no money from the United States. He wants to take only the two provinces he bought from the Empire of Mexico, and to have the United States say they are his. With what he could do, these are good terms, Schlieffen said again, and then, "and Longstreet wants to take no provinces-no, no states, you would say-from the United States. He wants to take no money from the United States. He wants to take only the two provinces he bought from the Empire of Mexico, and to have the United States say they are his. With what he could do, these are good terms, nicht wahr?" nicht wahr?"

"Oh, they're good terms, all right," Rosecrans said. "You ask me, they're too too d.a.m.n good. It's as though Longstreet is saying, 'We can lick you any old time we please, and we don't have to take anything away from you to make that so.' It's-humiliating, that's what it is." d.a.m.n good. It's as though Longstreet is saying, 'We can lick you any old time we please, and we don't have to take anything away from you to make that so.' It's-humiliating, that's what it is."

Schlieffen essayed a rare joke: "If President Blaine does not for these terms care, President Longstreet will them harder make. Of this I am sure. Do you not think that I ... am right?" He nodded to himself, pleased he'd again remembered the English idiom.

"In a red-hot minute," Rosecrans said, which the German military attache, judging by the tone, took for agreement. Sighing, scowling, Rosecrans went on, "But he can't do that now, because that would be humiliating, too. Do you understand what I'm saying, Colonel?"

"Oh, yes, I understand," Schlieffen said. "But in war, the way not to be humiliated is to win. If you lose a war, how can you keep this from happening to you? The enemy to be stronger himself has shown."

"Hasn't he, though?" But then Rosecrans violently shook his head. "No, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, the Confederates haven't shown that they're stronger than we are. As strong as we are, maybe, but not stronger. It's only after England and France jumped on our back that everything went into the privy."

"But we of this spoke down in Was.h.i.+ngton before the war began," Schlieffen said. "Britain and France have been friends to the Confederate States since before the War of Secession. The United States should have had ready a plan to fight at the same time all three countries."

"I remember you saying that," Rosecrans replied. "I have to tell you, I didn't take it seriously then. Do you really mean to tell me that back in Berlin you've got a plan for war against France and one for war against France and England and one for war against France and England and Russia and one for-"

"Aber naturlich," Schlieffen broke in. "And we think of also Austria-Hungary and Italy, though they are now our friend. And we remember Holland and Belgium and Denmark and Sweden and Turkey and-" Schlieffen broke in. "And we think of also Austria-Hungary and Italy, though they are now our friend. And we remember Holland and Belgium and Denmark and Sweden and Turkey and-"

The general-in-chief of the United States stared at him. "Jesus Christ, you do mean it," Rosecrans said slowly. "What do they do in that General Staff of yours, Colonel, sit around all day studying maps and timetables and lists of regiments and I don't know what all else?"

"Yes," Schlieffen answered, surprised yet again that Rosecrans should be surprised at the idea of military planning. "We believe that, if war comes, we should as little to chance leave as we can."

"A lot of chance in war," Rosecrans insisted. "Can't help it." Yes, he was an American, looking for nothing more than the chance to go out in the field of uncertainty and s.n.a.t.c.h what he could from it.

"Yes, this is so," Schlieffen said. "A lot, there is. As little as there can be, there should be." What the United States had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the field of uncertainty was a thumping defeat.

"Maybe," Rosecrans said, like a man admitting Limburger cheese might possibly taste good in spite of the way it smelled. "Maybe." He brushed a pale speck from the dark blue wool of his tunic. "The more you talk about it, Colonel, the more I do think the United States should send some of our officers to your country after this blamed war is finally over-if it's ever over-so we can take a long look at how you go about things."

"They would be welcome," Schlieffen said. "Your neighbors who do not love you are allied to the French, who do not love us. Since we have one enemy who is the same, it might for us be good to be with each other friends." He held up a hasty hand. "You must understand, I speak here only for myself, not for Chancellor Bismarck."

"Yes, yes." General Rosecrans nodded impatiently. "I can't speak for the secretary of state, either. Speaking for n.o.body but William S. Rosecrans, though, Colonel, I'll tell you I like the idea pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n well."

Alfred von Schlieffen sat very still, contemplating what he had just said. The enemy of my enemy is a friend The enemy of my enemy is a friend was an ancient truth. France, so far as he could see, would never be anything but Germany's enemy. France was the Confederate States' friend; the Confederate States were an enemy to the United States, also unlikely to be anything else. was an ancient truth. France, so far as he could see, would never be anything but Germany's enemy. France was the Confederate States' friend; the Confederate States were an enemy to the United States, also unlikely to be anything else.

So far as he could see, real, close friends.h.i.+p between Germany and the United States made good strategic sense. He wondered what Minister von Schlozer would think of the idea. Up till now, German relations with both the USA and the CSA had been polite, even cordial, but not particularly close. Would Chancellor Bismarck want to continue what had been working well enough, or would he be interested in changing things? If he was, a U.S. military mission to Berlin might be one tooth of the key in the lock.

Schlozer will have a better idea of the chancellor's mind than I do, Schlieffen thought. Then he realized Rosecrans had just spoken, and he had no idea what the general had said. "I am sorry," he said. "You must please excuse me. I was thinking of something else."

"I guess you were," Rosecrans said with a chuckle. "The Judgment Trump could have sounded right then, and you never would have noticed. What I said was, I'll take the notion of sending officers to Berlin over to the secretary of state to see what he thinks of it."

"That is good. I am glad to hear it," Schlieffen said.

"d.a.m.ned if I know what will come of it, though." Rosecrans' good humor vanished. "Ever since Was.h.i.+ngton warned us against entangling alliances, we've held apart from 'em. Of course, in Was.h.i.+ngton's day we didn't have nasty neighbors tangled up with foreigners themselves. But he's like the Good Book to a lot of people here, even if he was from Virginia."

That Rosecrans was himself talking with a foreigner never seemed to enter his mind. Schlieffen had seen in other Americans the same interesting inability to judge the effects of their own words. It did not offend him, not here; he would not let it offend him. "You will do what you can do, General, with the officials of your country, and I will do what I can with the officials of mine, and we will see what from this comes."

Before Rosecrans could answer, the box on the wall clanged to let him know someone wished to speak with him. He grimaced and swore fiercely under his breath. But then, like a hound summoned to the dinner bowl by the ring of a bell, he got up and went to the telephone. "Rosecrans here," he shouted into it. "Yes, Mr. President, I hear you pretty well right now. What were you saying before, Your Excellency?" A pause. "But, Mr. President ..."

Schlieffen quickly realized the conversation with President Blaine was liable to go on for some time. He half rose. General Rosecrans nodded permission for him to go. He respectfully dipped his head to the American general-in-chief, then left the inner office.

"Auf wiedersehen, Herr Oberst," Captain Berryman said when he emerged; Rosecrans' adjutant had regained enough spirit to try German again. Captain Berryman said when he emerged; Rosecrans' adjutant had regained enough spirit to try German again. "Ich hoffe alles is mit "Ich hoffe alles is mit, uh, bei Ihnen gut?" bei Ihnen gut?"

"Yes, everything is well with me, thank you," Schlieffen answered. "How is everything with you?"

Before Berryman could answer, Rosecrans' bellow of frustrated fury did the job for him: "G.o.d d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l, Mr. President, I can't give you a victory when the sons of b.i.t.c.hes are coming at us five ways at once... . Yes, well, maybe you should have thought about that more before you dragged us into this miserable war... . Maybe you should think about making peace, too, while you've still got the chance." The sharp click that followed was, again, the earpiece slamming down onto its rest.

Schlieffen and Berryman looked at each other. Neither found anything to say. After a polite, sympathetic nod, Schlieffen let himself out of the antechamber.

Abraham Lincoln appreciated-indeed, savored-the irony of meeting in the Florence Hotel to do battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Here he was, doing his best to make the party remember the laborers who had helped bring it to power, and doing it in a hotel erected by the Pullman Company on part of the city within a city they owned: factories, houses, blocks of flats, all in the holy name of Pullman.

Robert had arranged it, of course. His Chicago connections were far better than his father's, these days. The room, Lincoln could not deny, was splendid: magnificent walnut paneling, table with legs even more elaborately carved than that paneling, chairs upholstered in maroon velvet and soft enough to swallow a man, gaslights overhead so ornate, they resembled a forest frozen in beaten bronze.

"I think we are all here," Lincoln said, looking around the room. Fewer were here than he had hoped. Some of his telegrams had gone unanswered; some men he had hoped would accept had declined. He wondered whether he had enough strength at hand, even if everything went as he wanted, to turn the party into the path he had in mind. The only way to find out would be the event.

Around the table, heads nodded. There sat Frederick Dougla.s.s, with his big frame and white mane and beard as solid and impressive as a snow-topped mountain. There was John Hay, a lighter presence, once Lincoln's secretary, then minister to the CSA in Blaine's administration till war broke out. There sat Benjamin Butler, a clever mind concealed within a bald, bloated, sagging walrus of a body: before the War of Secession a Democrat who thought Jefferson Davis might make a good president of the United States, at its end a U.S. general who'd had to flee New Orleans in a Navy frigate to keep the returning Confederates from hanging him without trial.

Next to Butler, rotund Hannibal Hamlin fiddled with his spectacles. He had been Lincoln's vice president, and had gone down to defeat with him in 1864. But he was a Maine man, and secretary of state to boot, and as such more likely than others to gain the ear of President Blaine. Senator James Garfield of Ohio sat farthest from Lincoln. An officer during the War of Secession, he had risen to prominence as a member of the military courts that purged the Army of defeatists after the fighting ended. But for Hay, he was the youngest man in the room.

"I think two questions stand before the house today," Lincoln said, as if he were addressing the Illinois a.s.sembly. "The first is, where does our party stand now? The second, and more urgent, is, where do we go from here?"

"Where we are, is in trouble," Ben Butler declared in his flat Ma.s.sachusetts accent. "How do we get out of it?" He shook his big, round head; the gray hair that fringed his bald pate flew this way and that. "d.a.m.ned if I know. Hanging Blaine from the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument might be one place to start."

"He did what he was elected to do." Hannibal Hamlin spoke up in defense of the president.

"So he did, and did it d.a.m.ned badly, too," Butler sneered.

"Fighting the Confederate States, opposing their tyranny, is not and cannot be a sin," Frederick Dougla.s.s declared.

But Butler had an answer for him, too: "Fighting them and losing is."

"As you will know from the invitations I sent you, I was speaking in more general terms," Lincoln said. "The question I wish to address is, a.s.suming the war lost, as it seems to be, how is the Republican Party once more to recover its status with the American people?"

"By doing as it was meant to do from the outset: by championing freedom over all this continent," Dougla.s.s said.

"In aid of that," John Hay said, his voice light and thin after the Negro's, "I have heard that Longstreet will formally free the Negroes in the CSA once this war ends. His allies are said to have extracted such a promise from him as the price of their aid against us."

"One more reason for Blaine to come to terms, then," Dougla.s.s exclaimed, his leonine features lighting with hope. A moment later, though, he spoke more cautiously: "If it be true, of course. You, John, will be the best judge of us all as to that."

"With my few months in Richmond before the fighting started?" Hay said with a laugh full of self-mockery. "I believe it to be true, having heard it from sources I reckon trustworthy, but I can offer no guarantee. Nor, even if it is true, can I guess how much de facto de facto, as opposed to de jure de jure, freedom the Negroes in the Confederate States are to have."

"Giving them any at all goes dead against the Confederate Const.i.tution," Garfield pointed out.

"That doesn't always stop us," Butler said. "I don't see any reason the Rebs will lose a whole lot of sleep over it."

"Your cynicism, Mr. Butler, has truly astonis.h.i.+ng breadth and scope," John Hay murmured. Butler gave him an oleaginous smile, as at a compliment. Maybe he thought it was one.

Lincoln said, "When a man has no no freedom, freedom, any any increase looms large. I hope you are indeed correct, John. The Negro unchained will grow in ways the men now his masters do not expect." Frederick Dougla.s.s nodded vigorous agreement to that. Lincoln continued, "Even as the chains may fall from the limbs of the slave in the Confederate States, so they are being fitted to those of the laborer in the United States. Standing firm against this, we can and shall become the party of the majority once more, after the misfortune of the war sinks below the surface of public recollection." increase looms large. I hope you are indeed correct, John. The Negro unchained will grow in ways the men now his masters do not expect." Frederick Dougla.s.s nodded vigorous agreement to that. Lincoln continued, "Even as the chains may fall from the limbs of the slave in the Confederate States, so they are being fitted to those of the laborer in the United States. Standing firm against this, we can and shall become the party of the majority once more, after the misfortune of the war sinks below the surface of public recollection."

James Garfield frowned. "I don't see how sounding like radicals will take us anywhere we want to go."

"Justice for the working man is not a radical notion," Lincoln said, "or, if it is, that stands as a judgment against the United States."

"But what do you mean by justice, Lincoln?" Garfield demanded. "If you call raising a Red rebellion, the way you tried to do in Montana Territory-if you call that justice, I want no part of it."

"I make two points in response to that, sir," Lincoln said. "The first is that I raised no rebellion, Red or otherwise. I made a speech, similar to many other speeches I have made over the years. If the miners in Helena were forcefully of the opinion that it fit the circ.u.mstances under which they lived, I cannot help it. Second and more basic is the fact that the people do retain the right of revolution against a government they find tyrannical."

"Now you do sound like a Red," Ben Butler rumbled. His jowls shook with the weight of his disapproval.

"Without the right of revolution, we should to this day be British subjects, revering Queen Victoria," Lincoln said. "We might make discontented British subjects, but British subjects we should be. If we were still British colonies, we would retain the right of revolution against the Crown. How can we not retain it, then, against the government in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"In Philadelphia, you mean," Butler said. "On this theory, you should have let the Confederate States go without firing a shot."

"By no means," Lincoln said. "They sought to break, and, sadly, succeeded in breaking, a union; they did not aim to establish a more perfect one for the nation as a whole."

"A subtle distinction," said Butler, an admirer of subtle distinctions.

"My view," Frederick Dougla.s.s said, "is that, while Mr. Lincoln exaggerates the likenesses between the position of the Confederate slave and that of the U.S. laborer, we may, if we so desire, use such exaggerations to good effect on the stump."

"That is what I meant to say, yes," Lincoln said, "save that I purpose making this principle the rock on which our platform stands, not just a net with which to sweep up votes when the next election comes."

Hannibal Hamlin said, "If we take this line, the Democrats will call us a pack of Communards, and that alongside all the other low things they are in the habit of calling us."

"The Democrats lined up in support of property when that included property in Negro slaves. They have not changed since." Lincoln did not try to hide his scorn. "If they start flinging brickbats, they'll have to duck a good many, too."

"How much good will any of this do, gentlemen, when we are tarred with the brush of two losing wars in the s.p.a.ce of twenty years?" John Hay asked.