The Path of the King Part 29

The Secretary of State flushed. "Have you considered the alternative, Mr. President?" he cried. "It is civil war, war between brothers in blood. So soon as the South fires a shot against Sumter the sword is unsheathed. You cannot go back then."

"I am fully aware of it. I haven't been sleeping much lately, and I've been casting up my accounts. It's a pretty weak balance sheet. I would like to tell you the main items, Mr. Secretary, so that you may see that I'm not walking this road blindfold."

The other pushed back his chair from the table with a gesture of despair. But he listened. Lincoln had risen and stood in front of the fire, his shoulders leaning on the mantelpiece, and his head against the lower part of the picture of George Was.h.i.+ngton.

"First," he said, "I'm a minority President, elected by a minority vote of the people of the United States. I wouldn't have got in if the Democrats hadn't been split. I haven't a majority in the Senate. Yet I've got to decide for the nation and make the nation follow me. Have I the people's confidence? I reckon I haven't--yet. I haven't even got the confidence of the Republican party."

Seward made no answer. He clearly a.s.sented.

"Next, I haven't got much in the way of talents. I reckon Jeff Davis a far abler man than me. My friends tell me I haven't the presence and dignity for a President. My shaving-gla.s.s tells me I'm a common-looking fellow." He stopped and smiled. "But perhaps the Lord prefers common-looking people, and that's why He made so many of them.

"Next," he went on, "I've a heap of critics and a lot of enemies. Some good men say I've no experience in Government, and that's about true.

Up in New England the papers are asking who is this political huckster, this county court advocate? Mr. Stanton says I'm an imbecile, and when he's cross calls me the original gorilla, and wonders why fools wander about in Africa when they could find the beast they are looking for in Was.h.i.+ngton. The pious everywhere don't like me, because I don't hold that national policy can be run on the lines of a church meeting. And the Radicals are looking for me with a gun, because I'm not prepared right here and now to abolish slavery. One of them calls me 'the slave hound of Illinois.' I'd like to meet that man, for I guess he must be a humorist."

Mr. Seward leaned forward and spoke earnestly. "Mr. President, no man values your great qualities more than I do or reprobates more heartily such vulgar libels. But it is true that you lack executive experience.

I have been the Governor of the biggest State in the Union, and possess some knowledge of the task. It is all at your service. Will you not allow me to ease your burden?"

Lincoln smiled down kindly upon the other. "I thank you with all my heart. You have touched on that matter in your letter.... But, Mr.

Secretary, in the inscrutable providence of G.o.d it is I who have been made President. I cannot s.h.i.+rk the duty. I look to my Cabinet, and notably to you for advice and loyal a.s.sistance, and I am confident that I shall get it. But in the end I and I only must decide."

Seward looked up at the grave face and said nothing. Lincoln went on:

"I have to make a decision which may bring war--civil war. I don't know anything about war, though I served a month or two in the Black Hawk campaign and yet, if war comes, I am the Commander-in-Chief of the Union. Who among us knows anything of the business? General Scott is an old man, and he doesn't just see eye to eye with me; for I'm told he talks about 'letting the wayward sisters go in peace.' Our army and navy's nothing much to boast of, and the South is far better prepared.

You can't tell how our people will take war, for they're all pulling different ways just now. Blair says the whole North will spring to arms, but I guess they've first got to find the arms to spring to.... I was reviewing some militia the other day, and they looked a deal more like a Fourth of July procession than a battlefield. Yes, Mr. Secretary, if we have to fight, we've first got to make an army.

Remember, too, that it will be civil war--kin against kin, brother against brother."

"I remember. All war is devilish, but ours will be the most devilish that the world has ever known. It isn't only the feeding of fresh young boys to rebel batteries that grieves me, though G.o.d knows that's not a thing that bears thinking about. It's the bitterness and hate within the people. Will it ever die down, Mr. Secretary?"

Lincoln was very grave, and his face was set like a man in anguish.

Seward, deeply moved, rose and stood beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"And for what, Mr. President?" he cried. "That is the question I ask myself. We are faced by such a problem as no man ever before had to meet. If five and a half million white men deeply in earnest are resolved to secede, is there any power on earth that can prevent them?

You may beat them in battle, but can you ever force them again inside the confines of the nation? Remember Chatham's saying: 'Conquer a free population of three million souls--the thing is impossible.' They stand on the rights of democracy, the right of self-government, the right to decide their own future."

Lincoln pa.s.sed a hand over his brow. His face had suddenly became very worn and weary.

"I've been pondering a deal over the position of the South," he said. "I reckon I see their point of view, and I'll not deny there's sense in it.

There's a truth in their doctrine of State rights, but they've got it out of focus. If I had been raised in South Carolina, loving the slave-system because I had grown up with it and thinking more of my State than of the American nation, maybe I'd have followed Jeff Davis.

I'm not saying there's no honesty in the South, I'm not saying there's not truth on their side, but I do say that ours is the bigger truth and the better truth. I hold that a nation is too sacred a thing to tamper with--even for good reasons. Why, man, if you once grant the right of a minority to secede you make popular government foolish. I'm willing to fight to prevent democracy becoming a laughing-stock."

"It's a fine point to make war about," said the other.

"Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right. I admit that the margin is narrow, but if it's made of good rock it's sufficient to give us a foothold. We've got to settle once for all the question whether in a free Government the minority have a right to break up the Government whenever they choose. If we fail, then we must conclude that we've been all wrong from the start, and that the people need a tyrant, being incapable of governing themselves."

Seward wrung his hands. "If you put it that way I cannot confute you.

But, oh, Mr. President, is there not some means of building a bridge?

I cannot think that honest Southerners would force war on such a narrow issue.

"They wouldn't but for this slavery. It is that accursed system that obscures their reason. If they fight, the best of them will fight out of a mistaken loyalty to their State, but most will fight for the right to keep their slaves.... If you are to have bridges, you must have solid ground at both ends. I've heard a tale of some church members that wanted to build a bridge over a dangerous river. Brother Jones suggested one Myers, and Myers answered that, if necessary, he could build one to h.e.l.l. This alarmed the church members, and Jones, to quiet them, said he believed his friend Myers was so good an architect that he could do it if he said he could, though he felt bound himself to express some doubt about the abutment on the infernal side."

A queer quizzical smile had relieved the gravity of the President's face. But Seward was in no mood for tales.

"Is there no other way?" he moaned, and his suave voice sounded cracked and harsh.

"There is no other way but to go forward. I've never been a man for cutting across lots when I could go round by the road, but if the roads are all shut we must take to open country. For it is altogether necessary to go forward."

Seward seemed to pull himself together. He took a turn down the room and then faced Lincoln.

"Mr. President," he said, "you do not know whether you have a majority behind you even in the North. You have no experience of government and none of war. The ablest men in your party are luke-warm or hostile towards you. You have no army to speak of, and will have to make everything from the beginning. You feel as I do about the horror of war, and above all the horrors of civil war. You do not know whether the people will support you. You grant that there is some justice in the contention of the South, and you claim for your own case only a balance of truth. You admit that to coerce the millions of the South back into the Union is a kind of task which has never been performed in the world before and one which the wise of all ages have p.r.o.nounced impossible.

And yet, for the sake of a narrow point, you are ready, if the need arises, to embark on a war which must be b.l.o.o.d.y and long, which must stir the deeps of bitterness, and which in all likelihood will achieve nothing. Are you entirely resolved?"

Lincoln's sad eyes rested on the other. "I am entirely resolved. I have been set here to decide for the people according to the best of my talents, and the Almighty has shown me no other road."

Seward held out his hand.

"Then, by G.o.d, you must be right. You are the bravest man in this land, sir, and I will follow you to the other side of perdition."

III

The time is two years later--a warm evening in early May. There had been no rain for a week in Was.h.i.+ngton, and the President, who had ridden in from his summer quarters in the Soldiers' Home, had his trousers grey with dust from the knees down. He had come round to the War Department, from which in these days he was never long absent, and found the Secretary for War busy as usual at his high desk. There had been the shortest of greetings, and, while Lincoln turned over the last telegrams, Stanton wrote steadily.

Stanton had changed much since the night in the Springfield store. A square beard, streaked with grey, covered his chin, and his face had grown heavier. There were big pouches below the short-sighted eyes, and deep lines on each side of his short shaven upper lip. His skin had an unheathly pallor, like that of one who works late and has little fresh air. The mouth, always obstinate, was now moulded into a settled grimness. The ploughs of war had made deep furrows on his soul.

Lincoln, too, had altered. He had got a stoop in his shoulders as if his back carried a burden. A beard had been suffered to grow in a ragged fringe about his jaw and cheeks, and there were silver threads in it.

His whole face seemed to have been pinched and hammered together, so that it looked like a mask of pale bronze--a death mask, for it was hard to believe that blood ran below that dry tegument. But the chief change was in his eyes. They had lost the alertness they once possessed, and had become pits of brooding shade, infinitely kind, infinitely patient, infinitely melancholy.

Yet there was a sort of weary peace in the face, and there was still humour in the puckered mouth and even in the sad eyes. He looked less hara.s.sed than the Secretary for War. He drew a small book from his pocket, at which the other glanced malevolently.

"I give you fair warning, Mr. President," said Stanton. "If you've come here to read me the work of one of your tom-fool funny men, I'll fling it out of the window."

"This work is the Bible," said Lincoln, with the artlessness of a mischievous child. "I looked in to ask how the draft was progressing."

"It starts in Rhode Island on July 7, and till it starts I can say nothing. We've had warning that there will be fierce opposition in New York. It may mean that we have a second civil war on our hands. And of one thing I am certain--it will cost you your re-election."

The President did not seem perturbed. "In this war we've got to take one step at a time," he said. "Our job is to save the country, and to do that we've got to win battles. But you can't win battles without armies, and if men won't enlist of their own will they've got to be compelled.

What use is a second term to me if I have no country.... You're not weakening on the policy of the draft, Mr. Stanton?"

The War Minister shrugged his shoulders. "No. In March it seemed inevitable. I still think it is essential, but I am forced to admit the possibility that it may be a rank failure. It is the boldest step you have taken, Mr. President. Have you ever regretted it?"

Lincoln shook his head. "It don't do to start regretting. This war is managed by the Almighty, and if it's his purpose that we should win He will show us how. I regard our fallible reasoning and desperate conclusions as part of His way of achieving His purpose. But about that draft. I'll answer you in the words of a young Quaker woman who against the rules had married a military man. The elders asked her if she was sorry, and she replied that she couldn't truly say that she was sorry, but that she could say she wouldn't do it again. I was for the draft, and I was for the war, to prevent democracy making itself foolish."

"You'll never succeed in that," said Stanton gravely.

"If Congress is democracy, there can't be a more foolish gathering outside a monkey-house."

The President grinned broadly. He was humming the air of a n.i.g.g.e.r song, "The Blue-tailed Fly," which Lamon had taught him.