CHAPTER II
THE WAKE OF BULL RUN
Montgomery Blair decided to go ahead with the reception. Although casu-
alties could be expected in the Virginia campaign, and enemies of the Blair
family were ready to criticize any party-giving in the midst of war, he thought
it important to show confidence in the country and unconcern about criti-
cism.
By six o'clock on that sun-drenched, humid Sunday afternoon, he was
delighted that he had gone ahead with the gathering: all the reports from
those returning early from Manassas had hailed the Union victory. Across
the street, at the telegraph office of the War Department, the dispatches from
the front had been more than encouraging. The Postmaster General's home
was no farther from that communications center than was Lincoln's office, on
the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and Monty Blair had checked an
hour before. McDowell, attacking, was confident of success against Beaure-
gard's smaller force; the other Confederate army in the area was well out of
the action, tied down in Winchester. Here in the District of Columbia, Gen-
eral-in-Chief Scott had gone to take his afternoon nap.
Standing on the porch, Blair could see President Lincoln, unmistakable in
his stovepipe hat, long legs hanging down the horse's sides, going out for his
late-afternoon ride. Blair waved; the horseman returned the salute. If Lincoln
was relaxed enough about the word from the front to take his customary
outing, Blair was not about to worry about the outcome of the battle or the
mood at his party.
Lincoln looked odd on a horse, Blair observed. The President rode well,
and must have had plenty of equestrian experience as a lawyer riding circuit,
but he did not sit a horse well. A man of the President's height and angularity
would find it difficult to appear graceful in any position. The Postmaster
General caught himself thinking of Lincoln as the President, and was amused
by that subtle acceptance of the new man in the post. It had been so hard to
push him into acting like a President, into overruling Seward and the others
on Surnter, into drawing the line that separation had to mean war. Father had
worked on Lincoln in private, using the Jackson precedents, and Monty had
himself worked on Lincoln in Cabinet, stressing his duty never to give up
federal authority anywhere, an idea to which the new Chief Executive, hap-
pily for the Union, seemed almost mystically attached.
The Blair house, then, deserved to be the scene of the victory celebration
because this battle was largely the Biairs' doing. General Scott had waffled
and wavered, claiming the army was unready; Seward had been fearful, as
usual, seeking some settlement. Only Lincoln had understood the political
necessity of a sharp, early, decisive blow. Delay was purely military advice;
what the President had needed was political advice urging him to marshal the
war spirit on which military strength depended.
His sister Lizzie came over from the adjoining house to help him greet the
guests. A political enemy, Thurlow Weed, was the first to arrive: Seward's
alter ego, editor of the Albany Union, and a notorious wirepuller known in
New York as "the wizard of the lobby." The white-maned politician was
alone, his usually serene face flushed and worried-looking. "Any news from
Manassas?"
"The signs are good," his host reported. "The President was just out rid-
ing."
Weed shook his head. "I was standing on the corner in front of Willard's
and Colonel Burnside came riding by. You know him, fellow with mutton-
chop whiskers that kind of run under his nose and up his cheeks?"
Blair nodded; Ambrose Burnside was a born failure, an inventor of a
breech-loading rifle whose company went bankrupt a year ago. George Mc-
Clellan, a born winner in military and commercial affairs, had given him a job
at the Illinois Central, ~hen Lincoln called for troops, McClellan was given
command of the DepartSient of the Ohio and his unsuccessful friend found a
regiment of Rhode Island Volunteers to lead.
"Burnside was too mad to talk," Weed said. "Ran inside and had a drink at
the bar, seemed all riled up to me."
As other guests arrived after seven o'clock, the signs grew more ominous.
The guests who had loaded their buggies with champagne and box lunches
and departed for a festive occasion came directly to Biair's house looking
shaken, talking of retreat, some even talking of a rout. Outside, silent crowds
had gathered in front of the Executive Mansion, the War and Treasury de-
partments. Pennsylvania Avenue was becoming a thoroughfare of retreat, as
returning spectators in carriages, officers on horseback, foot soldiers, and
wagons of wounded jostled each other to leave the confusion in Virginia far
behind.
"I think we'd better send our guests home," said Lizzie, soon after sunset.
Brother Frank agreed.
"Go across the street, Frank," Monty told him. "See what news is coming
into the telegraph office. Let's not lose our headsthe first to come back from
a battle are never the fighting troops."
"What if Lincoln's there?"
"Say, 'Hello, Mr. President,' and tell him that most of his Cabinet will be
right here if he needs us." The younger Blair bolted out.
With the exception of Secretary of State Seward, all Cabinet members and
their wives were in the Blair house, nibbling nervously at the Maryland crab
claws, worrying aloud with the assembled editors, Congressmen, and finan-
ciers. A messenger came from the War Department, asking to see Secretary
Cameron alone; Lizzie took the messenger and the Secretary upstairs, and
came down with the sad report that Cameron's brother, a colonel, had been
killed in the action. Monty Blair noticed that nobody from the White House
had yet arrived; he knew how eager the young Hay had been to come, and his
absence was troubling.
"Calamity!" From the hallway leading to the main parlor, Blair heard that
word hissed from the small sitting room near the front door. He stood still
and listened. "This is what comes of Lincoln's running the machine for five
months. Right this moment, Lincoln and Scott are disputing who's to
blame."
"You despair for the Republic, then, Mr. Stanton." Blair recognized the
voice of Adams Hill, the New York Tribune man in Washington.
"No, if our people can bear with this Cabinet, they will prove able to
support a great many disasters."
Stanton was a Democrat, a holdover from Buchanan's administration. Si-
mon Cameron had given him an important job in the War Department, as
general counsel, on the strange-for-Cameron reason that organizational merit
should count over political affiliation. Blair made a mental note to warn
Cameron about Stanton's evident duplicity, but not tonight, in the War Secre-
tary's bereavement.
Kate Chase, on the arm of Lord Lyons, the English ambassador, inter-
rupted his eavesdropping. She was both radiant and intense, and Blair felt his
gloom begin to lift as she brought the two men together.
"The ambassador has heard that the Confederacy has gained a crushing
victory," she said, "and I don't believe him."
Blair asked Lord Lyons the source of his report.
"William Russell of the Times, " was the reply. "He borrowed my carriage
to go to the front, and that's the last I shall see of that buggy. He returned
just now, on a horse I presume he purchased after my carriage was destroyed
in the mad rush. He's off writing his dispatch, but I take it the capital is in
danger of capture by Beauregard. And your General Scott is distraught."
Father Blair joined their circle with the heavily bearded Gideon Welles, the
Navy Secretary. "None of this is Scott's fault," said Welles. "He cautioned us
against putting our green troops in the field, against a possibly superior
force."
"Nonsense." Only the elder Blair could speak to a Cabinet member that
way. "We outnumbered the rebels two to one. Our defeat, if that is what it
was, is inexcusable. Scott may not be up to this war."
"No recriminations," rumbled the Navy Secretary that Lincoln liked to
call "Neptune." Monty Blair caught his father's wry look; that remark meant
that recriminations for the surprise defeat would come thick and fast, and the
Biairswho had pressed for this battlewould be on the receiving end.
"If the rebels are coming tomorrow," asked Kate Chase, Blair thought
quite sensibly, "shouldn't we all be preparing to defend the city? Barricades,
and that sort of thing?"
Thurlow Weed thought not. "It could be that the rebels are as tired and
disorganized as we are. And have you looked out the window in the past few
minutes? It's pouring rain. I doubt whether either army will be ready to fight
again tomorrow."
The front door opened and Senator Ben Wade burst into the room, drip-
ping wet, a black look across his normally ferocious face, followed by a
subdued Senator Henry Wilson. "Goddamn incompetence!" Wade an-
nounced, pulling off his hat and shaking the water on the floor. "Ooddamn
cowardice! I was out there at Long Bridge and I damn near shot the deserters
as they ran across. Should have, treason everywhere, not one general officer
who knows what the hell he's doing. Any telegraph news from Centreville?"
Frank had not returned with fresh news; Monty hoped he was with Lin-
coln. He sensed an opening in what Wade had just said to deflect some of the
blame from the Biairs. "You believe our generalship fell short?"
"Nobody could even find McDowell at the front," Wade growled. "And
Scott can't get up off his duff. We need a real general, and right away."
"You may be right, Ben," said the elder Blair. "If it's a defeat. We don't
know yet, it may just look bad from here."
Frank Blair returned, holding an umbrella for William Seward. The hawk-
faced Secretary of State looked haggard. "The battle is lost," he said quietly, a
telegram in his hand. He looked at some of the newspapermen who closed in
around the Cabinet members. "I speak in total confidence, of course. The
telegraph from McDowell says that he is in full retreatflight, I suppose is
the more accurate wordand he calls on General Scott to rally the troops
here to save the capital."
"What does the telegraph message say?" The voice was Salmon Chase's;
Blair knew that a defeat would make it infinitely harder for the Secretary of
the Treasury to raise the money to finance a war.
" 'The day is lost,' he says. 'The routed troops will not re-form. Save Wash-
ington and the remnants of this army.' I take that message to be definitive,"
Seward said wearily. "The President wishes the Cabinet to meet with him
tonight, immediately, in General Scott's office."
As they drew on coats and shawls, Adams Hill of the Tribune said, "I
thought this was supposed to be a thirty-day war."
"That could still be," replied Thurlow Weed, "but with a different result
than we thought. I can hear your employer, Horace Greeley, changing 'On to
Richmond' to 'Erring sisters, depart in peace.' "
Seward shook his head, put his hand on his friend Weed's arm, and said to
Hill, "We will all have to prevail on Horace to be stalwart."
"That son-of-a-bitch Breckinridge will be crowing in the Senate tomor-
row," muttered Wade. "We ought to clap him in the Old Capitol Prison in the
morning."
The deflated partygoers quickly dispersed into the rain. On the porch, the
three Blair men huddled.
"We were not wrong to press for an early victory," said the father, laying
down the family line. "Scott, the old fool, moved too slowly, and McDowell
was incompetent. Maybe George McClellan is our man. If Seward says
I-told-you-so in the Cabinet tonight, Monty, or if Scott tries to blame us for
pushing himhit them hard for cowardice and incompetence."
Monty Blair nodded agreement. He did not know how Lincoln would react
to this setback, and assumed the President would need strong supporters to
stiffen his backbone. He ran to catch up to Seward, who was wading across
the sea of mud with Cameron and Bates.
The Cabinet members had to stop in the pelting rain to wait for a strange
procession to pass in front of them: Senator Breckinridge on a horse, looking
not in the least triumphant or anything but wet and miserable, followed by a
mule dragging a wagon driven by Mathew Brady, the photographer. The top
and one side of the wagon was knocked out, and three wounded soldiers lay
exposed to the rain, two in blue uniforms, one in gray.