CHAPTER 5
Family Man


The old man arose before any of his family. He shuddered; the morning was
surprisingly cool for the Fourth of July in Washington, Francis P. Blair
dressed hurriedly in his usual black outfitsilently, to avoid awakening his
wifewrapped a black sash around his neck in lieu of a tie, and trotted down
the narrow stairs to the sitting room. He ordered a black manservant to light
the parlor fireplace.
"Use the New York Tribune," he told the servant, pointing to a stack of
newspapers, "not the Globe." The Globe was his paper, a specialized sheet
that reported the official proceedings in both houses of Congress. Old Man
Blair knew how to get his hands on an institution of supreme importance to
Washington's politicians. The Globe was only one of his publications; the
others were in Maryland and Missouri, the states in which he had a political
interest.
The servant had forgotten to open the flue and the fire belched black smoke
into the room. Blair muttered a low curse, pushed the man aside, and reached
up into the chimney to snatch at the lever that controlled the opening. The
day was not starting well for him. He reminded himself that he was in the
Pennsylvania Avenue home he had given to his son Montgomery, and not out
at his own estate in Silver Spring. The old man drew a deep breath and
briskly apologized to the servant, reminded him to expect a visitor before
7 A.M., and called for a large pot of tea in the formal silver service. Waiting,
he exposed his back to the heat of the fire, coughing angrily at the smell of
smoke remaining in the room. When the tray came, he blew on his cup of tea
and brooded over the state of the nation and his family until the fluid and the
fire warmed his bones.
Francis Preston Blair, at seventy, considered himself the last remaining link
of the government in Washington to the days of Andrew Jackson, with the
possible exception of Roger Taney. He had a right to that claim: nobody else
was alive and active on the scene in the capital who had been a member of
President Jackson's "kitchen Cabinet," the tight circle of advisers who
shaped the direction of the country while lesser men ran the departments.
The rambunctious Andy Jackson, the general from common people's Western
stock who had snatched the presidency from the aristocrats of the Adams
dynasty in Massachusetts, had burned into Blair an idea that was heldthen
and nowby only a minority of Americans: that the Union was more than
the sum of the states. The Jackson men, Blair among the fiercest of them, had
refused to go along with the prevailing Jeffersonian notion that the nation was
like a gentlemen's club, some unbound association of sovereignties that states
could be resigned from at will. That looseness of confederation guaranteed
only weakness, invited disunity, and was the reason the founders had
scrapped the Articles of Confederation for a tightly binding Constitution. No;
Blair was certain that once you were in, you were in. No second thoughts
allowed.
That was why Blair felt that he and his sons could claim a good share of
the credit for the unrelenting refusal to bow to the disunionism that had
brought on this war. Without the urgent persuasion and political support of
the Blair family, Lincoln would never have defended Fort Surnter.
The Old Man sipped his tea loudly and nodded agreement with his conclu-
sion. Only the Biairs had counseled armed resistance to secession. Seward,
that double-dealing sneak, had sent word South that the seizure of the Fed-
eral fort would not be a casus belli, and that secession would be met with
acquiescence; the Secretary of State had been airily certain that the Southern
states would come back after the ardor for independence had cooled. Same
with General Winfield Scott, who had offered the President his judgment that
the forts were not defendable, and urged him to permit peaceable secession.
Same with all the Cabinet, including the slippery Chase, who managed to
come down on both sides of that choice. Only Montgomery Blair, after a
family council of war, had risen to urge Lincoln to hold and possess all
Federal property. Lincoln had listened, and Old Man Blair had taken him
aside afterward to tell him what Jackson would have done. No secession
without war. And the war had come, if war is what you could call the silly
horn-tooting and fist-shaking that was going on this summer.
Come the first substantial spilling of blood, and the sudden realization that
the war might drag on for months, perhaps even a year, would the war spirit
of Northern workingmen remain in support of some vague political theory
called "union"? Not in the border states, where it counted, Blair concluded.
Not in Maryland, his home state, whose politics he sometimes dominated.
Not out in Missouri, where he had emplanted a son and bought a newspaper.
Not in Kentucky, the pivotal state, the native state of Abraham Lincoln and
Jefferson Davis; it was Biair's view that if Kentucky went South, the war
would be over before it was fairly started, with the Union sundered.
Kentucky made him think of the Breckinridges, especially cousin John.
The Biairs and Breckinridges were not close kin, but a distant blood connec-
tion was strengthened by the ties of family affection. Eliza Blair, still sleeping
upstairs, had assumed the job of nursing John Breckinridge's father in the last
week of his life when he was afRicted by the fever ravaging Washington. John
was only two years old at the time, and Biair's daughter Lizzie, only a few
years older, had taken charge of the child; that affection lasted to this day. All
the Breckinridge men seemed to die young, Blair recalled, thinking of John's
father and his grandfather, Jefferson's Attorney General. Great careers cut off
in their thirties. Not one of them had the robust health or political potential
of the young man coming to breakfast on his way to the opening of the
Senate. The old man had his heart set on the presidency for Frank, his
younger son, but if that boisterous Blair was forced to bide his time, then the
Old Man's second choice was cousin John.
"Merry Christmas, Father Blair." The tall form of Breckinridge filled the
doorway to the small sitting room, his eyes looking quizzically at the fire.
The damned fire that morning was not one of his best ideas, the Old Man
conceded to himself, but he would brazen it out. "Had to burn some papers,"
he said mysteriously, "and besides, it was a little chilly before sunup."
His visitor shrugged amiably and took a seat on the far side of the room. "I
had breakfast already, across the street with my cousin Mary, but these muf-
fins look good." Breckinridge plunged into a plate of them, washing the cakes
down with a glass of milk he poured from the silver pitcher. "Cousin Mary,"
Blair knew, was Mary Todd Lincoln, across the street in the Mansion; all
these Kentucky people were related, it seemed. It was good, however, that
Senator Breckinridge was spending some time with the Lincolns. The new
President, Blair had learned, could be persuasive and was almost Jacksonian
when he made up his mind.
"John Cabell Breckinridge," he called out ominously, "do you trust me?"
"Father Blair," said the former Vice President without hesitation, "I trust
you almost as much as I trust your wife, whom every Breckinridge knows to
be a saint." Good political answer, the old man noted; it said nothing. Any
protestation of complete trust would have been a lie. Nobody wholly trusted a
Blair except another Blair.
"Why did you let Jeff Davis talk you into running for President last year?"
Blair asked, testing the young man further. "You must have known it would
split the Democrats, make it impossible for Judge Douglas to beat Lincoln."
The senator nodded, pointing to his cheek full of muffin as an excuse for
saying nothing.
"You knew that you were guaranteeing the election of the Republican,"
Blair went on. "And you knew, as we all did, that the election of Lincoln
would be the excuse for the fire-eaters in the South to secede. Yet you ran and
split the party and got Lincoln elected. Why?"
The senator swallowed and said, "I made one speech in that campaign and
it was for the Union. Against secession."
"Yet the effect of your candidacy was anti-Union," Blair pressed, knowing
the answer. "You received 900,000 Democratic votes, Douglas 1,200,000
Democratic votes, and Lincoln about 1,900,000 Republicans. Your candidacy
practically guaranteed the election of the man you knew would bring about
disunion. Why?"
"I have never answered that," Breckinridge said, "because it would cast
doubt on the honor of men I respect."
Blair was not having any of that evasion. "Tell me what happened when
Jeff Davis and Robert Toombscame to you before the Baltimore convention
with a certain proposal," Blair said, tipping his hand a little. Surely the young
man wanted t@ tell someone the real story; it would help if Breck knew that
the Biairs suspected the truth that made him look like less of an unpatriotic
ass.
"They told me I was the only one who could unite the Northern and
Southern factions of the Democratic Party," he said, as if glad to spill what
had been dammed inside. "Douglas was unacceptable to the Southerners. I
was against secession, and acceptable to Northern Democrats, but not against
slavery's extension west, and therefore acceptable to the Southerners. Espe-
cially the pro-Union South, the Southern people without slaves. There are a
lot of them, you know. They voted for me."
"What did Davis and Toombs offer you?"
"They said if I accepted the nomination of their faction, they would go to
Senator Douglas and use that to get him to withdraw. With me in the race,
Douglas would know he could not win. Then I, too, would withdraw and we
would pick a compromise candidate that would hold the Democratic Party
together."
Blair could picture Davis and Toombs, the two high-minded Southerners,
probably filled with a desire to establish an independent state, dangling this
proposal before the young Vice President. They had persuaded him that only
with his public acceptance, with the fait accompli of a Breckinridge candi-
dacy, could they force Douglas to withdraw and bring about a party reconcil-
iation.
"But the 'Little Giant' wouldn't go for that, would he?" Blair asked. Of
course not; it had all been a ruse to split the party.
Breckinridge shook his head. "Jeff Davis came back to tell me that the
man's ambition was greater than his patriotism. Douglas was determined to
run, with or without the Southern Democrats. It was Douglas who split the
party, with his unreasonable refusal to compromise. That's what they re-
ported to me."
Blair shook his head in grudging admiration of the political skill with
which Jeff Davis had entrapped the innocent Breckinridge. "And when
Douglas refused to compromise, why did you hang in to the bitter end? Why
didn't you face reality and graciously withdraw?"
"You know the answer to that, Father Blair," the senator said, misery in
his eyes. "I had publicly announced. I was a formal candidate, the choice of
the states that had been unfairly driven out of the regular Democratic con-
vention. I would have looked the fool to knuckle under to the ambition of
Stephen Douglas. It would have been the end of me, which is not so impor-
tant, but it would have let down all those who had nominated me." The
moment was evidently painful for him. "Men are sometimes placed in a
position," he said finally, "where they are reluctant to act and expose them-
selves to censure they do not merit."
Blair waited a moment for the young man to listen to the echo of his
defensive words. "You understand, of course, that you were ill-used. You
were tricked by a cabal that wanted only to see elected the man who was
anathema to their region, and then divide the Union."
Breckinridge looked into the fire, apparently still unwilling to accept as fact
his own suspicions of the motives of the men who had induced him to declare
as a candidate. "It could be that they were sincere, and thought truly that my
candidacy would drive Douglas out. I want to believe that. I have no good
cause to believe otherwise, except"
"Except that the internal logic of the situation suggests that you were
cruelly manipulated," Blair snapped, "and tricked into doing a terrible disser-
vice to your country. The trouble with you, my dear young distant kinsman,
is that you're so goddamned honorable yourself that you fail to see dishonor
and deceit in others."
"Maybe you're right," Breckinridge said, suddenly brightening at the ap-
pearance of Lizzie Blair, the Old Man's daughter, in the sitting room. "And
maybe not. Lizzie, do you think I have been cruelly manipulated?"
"If Father says you have been, you have been," she affirmed, "because he
knows more about that than anybody."
The Old Man glared a warning at her; this was no time for her to hint at
his objection to her marrying that swashbuckling sailor. At least her hus-
band's seafaring ways made it possible for her to live at home with the Biairs.
Because Lizzie and Breckinridge had always been close, the elder Blair had
arranged for her to drop in at the end of the breakfast to lend her support to
his plea. She was more of an independent-minded woman than he had
planned, howeverhad less judgment than her brother Monty, far more
good sense than her younger brother Frank. He hoped she remembered she
had been invited to breakfast for a reason. In hammering home the lesson of
last year's candidacy, with all its troublesome consequences, Blair was telling
Breckinridge not to let his concern for constitutional rights get in the way of
the overriding need to hold the country together. But the young man was
obstinate; Blair had to be subtle. He hoped he had not been too subtle, which
was where his daughter could help.
"The Congress convenes this morning," she said dutifully. "John, whose
side are you going to be on?"
"The Constitution's."
"I knew there was going to be trouble," the old man growled. Anna Ella
Carroll, a Maryland ally, had told him of the Kentuckian's fervent belief in
the rightness of Judge Taney's ridiculous defense of the plug-uglies in Balti-
more. "What Lizzie means isare you going to make a lot of unnecessary
enemies in this session of the Senate, or are you going to think about your
future?"
"What Lizzie means," interrupted Lizzie, "is that we expect that you'll do
whatever your conscience tells you to do. It's just that you're inclined to be a
man of moderation, John, and these days there isn't too much sentiment for
moderation."
"I commend to you Henry the Fifth," the elder Blair added. " In peace
there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility, but when
the blast of war blows in our ears' "
"There is no war. Just a lot of parading around, getting ready." Breckin-
ridge was respectful, still affectionate, but unyielding. "There need be no
war."
"Now we're to the point of why I asked you to stop by," Blair said. "You
have to realize that secession means war. Jackson said it, Lincoln is saying it,
and that's the way it is, no matter how silent the Constitution may be. If you
stay on the right side of that, you can criticize the government all you like for
arbitrary arrests. But just cross over, try to argue that the South can secede
without war, and you'll throw away your future. Worse, even."
Breckinridge nodded his understanding and rose to go. Did he really grasp
the import of opposing the prevailing sentiment? Blair wondered if he knew
how easy it would be for men who felt strongly about the secession to impute
treason to oppositionno matter how principled or right-minded or loyal
that oppositionthat abetted treason.
Lizzie embraced him, saying, "What Father means is that whatever you do,
you can count on the Biairs to stick up for you, right up to the point where it
begins to hurt Frank's chances. Then we don't know you. Nobody will know
you, except the same people who trapped you before. Don't let it come to
that, John."
After he left, she turned to her father and said, "How are you going to
persuade anybody to do the sensible thing when you light the fireplace on the
Fourth of July? That smell of smoke will be with us all summer."
Blair didn't care. He thought he made his point, and his politically sage
daughter had helped him make it. She was a Blair, all right, as practical as
she was loyal. "You manipulated your cousin cruelly," he said, pleased with
her and himself, almost certain the young man would take the right path.
Blair picked up a poker and jabbed at the fire, breaking up the logs so the
damn thing would flame up and burn itself out before his wife came down-
stairs.
"I worry about that man," Lizzie said, and revealed more about her cousin
than her father had known. "Last year's campaign tore him aparthe wasn't
running for office, he was enduring an ordeal, and for the first time in his life
he knows what it is like to be hated. He lives here in the capital and his wife
and sons live down in Lexington. He's seeing too much of Anna Carroll, I
think, and they say he sees Rose Greenhow too." She sighed profoundly.
"And they say he's drinking."
Blair thought of Andrew Jackson and how all the scandals never banned
him politically. He allowed himself to wonder what Rose O'Neal Greenhow,
the "Wild Rose," would be like in bed. "Breck shouldn't drink," was all he
said to his daughter.