CHAPTER I
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
Sam Grant, hatless, blue uniform blouse unbuttoned despite the unexpected
cold, sat on a keg on the snow-covered bank of the Cumberland River to
watch the navy's gunboats attack Fort Donelson.
He answered to the name "Sam" because that was what they had called
him"Uncle Sam"at the military academy, thanks to his initials, U. S.
Some clerk had mixed up his name on his West Point application, changing
Hiram Ulysses to Ulysses Simpson, and he never bothered to correct it:
U.S.G. got him called "Sam," and H.U.G. would have earned him "Hug" so
he let it alone.
If he failed in this expedition, Grant knew, he would be a failure for the
rest of his life, just as he had been a failure in everything up to now. Only a
remote political connectionhis Galena, Illinois, Congressman, Elihu Wash-
bumehad given him this second chance; there would be no third. Grant
was sorry he had not been able to get to see George McClellan when the
"Young Napoleon" had a command in the West. He was acquainted with
Mac from the Military AcademyGrant had been in his fourth year at the
Point when McClellan was in his firstand Grant still thought he would
make a fine cavalry brigade commander in Mac's Army of the Potomac.
No gunboats yet in sight. He took out a knife and began to whittle a stick.
Attacking Forts Henry and Donelson this way was sensible, because it
seemed plain enough to him that the way to break the back of the rebellion in
the West was to take men on gunboats down toward Corinth via the Tennes-
see River, outflanking the forts on the Mississippi. But last month, when he
went to General Halleck with the plan, "Old Brains" just stared at him as if
Grant were drunk or crazy. Wouldn't respond at all, just treated the idea with
contempt.
Was Grant's plan so preposterous? He didn't think so, but Halleck had
written the book on strategy, and Grant had to wonder about his own mili-
tary judgment. All he had ever done was to fight in Mexicocreditably; that
was the high point of his life, in retrospectbut he took no real satisfaction in
that either, because it was an unjust war: a strong nation had fought a weak
one just to grab some territory. Grant thought the nation was paying now in
blood and treasure for the sin of that conquest of Mexico.
No matter; this was a good war and he felt comfortable in it. He disagreed
with all the harangues in the public press about this being a war against
slavery. His inclination was to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving
all property rights, and if the South could not be beaten in any other way
than a war against slavery, only then let it come to that legitimately. If
slavery had to go in order to keep the Union in existence, then let slavery go;
that was his position. But Grant thought that Greeleyand the rest of the
press trying to whip up an anti-slavery warwere as great enemies to their
country as if they were open and avowed secessionists.
Grant thought Lincoln had the war goals about right: defeat the rebs, save
the Union, let slavery take care of itself. Grant himself had not been eligible
to vote in the last election, having just moved to Galena, Illinois, which was
just as well because he had pledged his support to the Democrat Douglas.
That election was essentially Breckinridge versus Lincoln, minority rights
against majority rule; he was glad Lincoln had won. Lincoln's War Order No.
I was aimed mainly at McClellan in the East, where the war would be de-
cided, but Grant took that as his license to go hunting, and without really
asking permission from Halleck, had plotted with Admiral Foote to grab Fort
Henry.
That ill-situated fort had been easy pickings. Strange bird, Footean old
salt sailing little ironclad gunboats on fresh water, fulminating all the time
about the two worst evils in the world, slavery and whiskey. Grant was not
fighting this war for the slaveshis wife, Julia, used to own some when she
lived in style, before she became the wife of a born failureand he was
certainly not fighting this war to exorcise Demon Rum. Old Foote was a
hellfire preacher, though, and even got the navy to cancel the traditional rum
ration, which cost him more than a few sailors.
The river navy didn't need a full complement to take Fort Henry; at high
tide, the Tennessee flooded half the fort's batteries and the place was practi-
cally defenseless. With the advantage of the river's freak northward current,
the river fleet leveled the fort. After two hours of shelling from the gunboats
enough time for most of the fort's defenders to slip out and head for Donel-
son twelve miles awaythe rebel commander climbed into a boat, was rowed
out to Foote's Carondelet, and asked for terms. Foote framed a pretty ringing
response, Grant thoughtno terms at all, just "unconditional surrender."
Grant squinted into the mist and made out four gunboats steaming around
the point, and heard the guns of Donelson roar. Fort Donelson was not Fort
Henry: 128-pounders had been placed high atop its bluffs, and were now
firing down at the sloping iron sides of Foote's fleet. The sides of the boats
were angled to make shots aimed at the same level carom off, but the cannons
high on the bluff fired down, the balls slamming into the gunships head-on,
shuddering them on impact, the clang of iron ball on iron armor echoing in
the frozen hills around.
Foote kept coming, blazing back at the fort, his boats supported far behind,
by long-range artillery from wooden ships too fragile to risk the batteries on
the bluff. On the bluff, one rebel 128-pounder fell silent, hit by naval fire or
spiked by its own crew, but at 500 yards the fire from the fort's short-range,
32-pound carronades was devastating to the Union fleet. Grant watched the
fort's cannonballs rip the armor off the ships like shucking corn, and the
admiral's flagship took a solid shot that tore away the pilothouse.
Grant wondered whether that last shot had killed Foote. The Carondelet
took advantage of the river's northward flow and drifted back to safety. The
other three ships in the ironclad fleet limped after her. As Fort Henry had
shown what ironclad gunboats could do, Fort Donelson had shown what they
could not do.
"Siege," Grant said aloud. He had 24,000 men, not enough to storm a
garrison of 18,000. He needed a three-to-one advantage to storm a fort suc-
cessfully, according to the book, even if he was willing to take heavy casual-
ties. He took out a pencil and began writing a message to Halleck: "I fear the
result of an attempt to carry the place by storm with raw troops." Halleck
would like that; Old Brains always wanted to be careful. Still, Grant's supe-
rior officer had to be pleased with last week's capture of Henry, and was
probably claiming great credit for himself in telegrams to Stanton and Mc-
Clellan. Grant would have to write a lette-i- to Congressman Washburne, in
hopes he could show it to Lincoln.
"I feel great confidence in ultimately reducing the place," Grant wrote in
the pad on his knee. No bravado; it was true. Grant had been informed that
his opposition at Donelson was badly led. The fort commander, General
Floyd, had been Secretary of War in Buchanan's Cabinet and was run out of
Washington for stealing Union stores. Floyd was all politician, no soldier, and
he would rely for guidance on his deputy, Gideon Pillow. General Pillow was
a walking military disaster, Grant recalledflamboyant, foolishly eager for
combat, a braggart who had been censured for laying claim to exploits not his
own in Mexico. With Pillow running the rebel show, and notorious for failing
to reconnoiter, Grant was certain that any Union force, no matter how small,
could march up to within gunshot range of any entrenchments Pillow was
given to hold.
Grant tried to figure out why rebel General Sidney Johnston had not come
to take personal command; that seemed a mistake. Against a first-class mili-
tary mind like Johnston's, this would be a tough campaign, perhaps impossi-
ble, but he was certain Floyd and Pillow would panic under siege. The
weather was on the rebel side, Grant acknowledged, mounting his horse to
see whether Foote was alive. Ten-degree cold was harder on the attacker than
on the dug-in defender, especially when the Union men had discarded their
overcoats two days before, when the weather appeared summery. Grant was
aware that he and his men were exposed, and Halleck was warning that a
swift move by the rebels in Bowling Green could cut them off. Too much
depended on Foote's gunboats.
Private J. Cabell Breckinridge, a proud member of the Second Kentucky
Brigade just assigned to join in the defense of Donelson, considered himself
lucky. Sweeping out tents and boiling the lice out of clothes, his major activi-
ties in Bowling Green headquarters, was not the sort of war he had in mind.
He had joined the only rebel unit from a state still in the Union last year,
when he was sixteen, but he was big, and had lied about his age and used his
middle name for his last. Cabell had seen action at Mill Creek and escaped
with his life from that disaster, having shown his comrades that he would not
run under fire. His gun didn't go off during a charge but that wasn't his fault,
and he was almost shot by a Mississippi outfit that mistook his Kentucky
jeans for a blue Yankee uniform.
He knew his mother and father had been upset with him for running away
to fight, especially when his father was still engaged in a hopeless effort to
hold the Union together in the Senate. Now that his father was a general in
the Confederate Army, Cabell was determined not to serve too close to him.
Being the son of top brass troubled him: in school, he had always been
"Senator Breckinridge's son," and then "Vice President Breckinridge's son."
He was better off fighting this war without that burden.
Nor did his father, for all his political experience, seem to understand what
this fight was really about. Throughout his early teens, Cabell had listened to
tedious lectures from his father about the danger of disunion. Compromise
was sheer foolishness, and the Vice President should have known it; Cabell
could have told him he would lose the election for President, but it was not a
son's place to say that to his father.
Cabell's way of thinking, supponed by all his young friends in Lexington,
was that the Northern abolitionists were out to strike at the power and the
way of life of the South. They were not content to limit the territorial expan-
sion of slavery, as Lincoln and other moderates pretended, but were deter-
mined to disrupt Southern life. Toward that selfish end, the abolitionists in-
tended to incite servile insurrectionswith all the rape and murder of whites
that entailedwith offers of "freedom" to chattel property who were far
better off under the paternal hand of their masters than they would be in the
grip of Northern factory owners. The real intent of the abolitionists, Cabell
was certain, was not to save the Little Eva of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel,
but to enslave the whites of the South.
Cabell felt lucky, too, because he was sent north to fight at Donelson rather
than south to get all fixed to retreat from Kentucky. What was wrong with
General Johnston, anyway? The greatest general of the Confederacy was for-
ever falling back. The sergeants said these retreats were a trap for the Yan-
kees, to be followed by some glorious battle that would decide the war. He
hoped so; the soldier life had been exciting these past few months, except for
those scary moments at Mill Creek, but he'd just as soon go back to school
soon. He imagined the envious faces of the boys when he would tell of his
personal experiences in the War for Southern Independence.
His best luck had been to be chosen as General Buckner's orderly. It
happened back in Bowling Green when the corporal sent a detail to the
general's tent to pack up headquarters equipment. Buckner looked at Private
Cabell, looked closer, and asked, "Your unit coming with me to Donelson?"
Cabell said yes, and he sure would like to get out of sweep-up duty to a
fighting job. "You look like a Breckinridge," Buckner said. Cabell could not
deny it, because Buckner had been a frequent guest at family gatherings. The
general then assigned him on the spot to be his orderly, working with a
Kentucky corporal, which was not quite the front-line duty he had in mind
but was better than his current condition. They had marched into Donelson a
few hours ago and heard the booming of the guns on the river.
"We whupped 'em," the corporal said gleefully, chucking a handful of
coals into the stove. "Same damn Yankee ships that pounded Fort Henry
down last week. This place be a tougher nut to crack, you bet. You see those
entrenchments? How'd you like to be a Yankee on the other side of them,
comin' up the hill?"
"Rather be this side," Cabell replied, "if our guns work."
In the morning the corporal was less cheerful, reporting to the general that
Yankee troops had invested the area close to the fortifications during the
night. Buckner was coldly furious; Cabell followed the general over to the
command bunker where he confronted Generals Floyd and Pillow.
"Where were your pickets?" Buckner demanded, as if he were not the
junior officer present. "The Federals should have paid for every yard outside
the lines. We had a clear field of fire. Now they're on top of us and you
haven't fired a shot."
"It was ten degrees last night," Pillow said glumly, "and the pickets were
inside celebrating the victory."
When Buckner cursed, Floyd said, "I don't like your attitude, General. I
am in command here and you are insubordinate." Cabell, standing at atten-
tion back in the corner, wondered if this was how general officers usually ran
their councils of war.
"Begging your pardon, General Floyd," Buckner said through tight lips,
"but what is your plan?"
The politician turned to his companion. "Pillow?"
"Our plan is to hold this place for three days," said the swarthy general,
"protecting Johnston's general withdrawal from Kentucky. Then we'll cut
our way out and join him in Tennessee."
"During the siege, we can inflict heavy casualties on the assaulting troops,"
Floyd added, not too sure of himself, "and then really smash them when we
cut our way out. Grant will be in no shape to pursue."
Buckner shook his head but said nothing. Cabell hoped the other generals
knew what they were talking about; this "council of war" didn't seem like
much of a meeting to him.
Grant's wounded were freezing to death. The general surveyed his three-
mile line around the fort and was less confident than his telegram to Halleck
had suggested. For three days his assaults had been inconclusive; the heavy
snow covered each day's casualties, giving him the feeling that he was fighting
a new battle every day.
From his command post in Mrs. Crisp's boardinghouse, where only the
kitchen was heated, the general waited for the pressure to cause one side or
another to crack. Flag-officer Foote was alive, although injured, and kept a
steady bombardment on the fort from a distance. Halleck had sent in several
thousand reinforcements, all he said he could spare.
A messenger appeared with a rebel knapsack in his hand. "The enemy is
attacking McClemand's position, sir, and in force. We took some prisoners
and they were all wearing these. Seems the rebs expect their offensive to last."
Grant opened the rebel knapsack to find provisions for three days. More
food than ammunition. That meant this attack was no foray; these rebels
were trying to escape, to break the siege. It could be that the whole army at
Donelson was trying to cut its way out.
"The one who attacks now will be victorious," Grant told the other officers
in the kitchen, "and the enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of
me."
He hurried outside, climbed on his horse and rode hard on the icy road to
McClemand's division, finding men standing in groups, leaderless and con-
fused. "Fill your cartridge boxes, quick, and get into line," he called, "the
enemy is trying to escape."
General McClernand came up and began a long-winded explanation of his
ideas about withdrawing out of the range of Confederate fire. Grant knew
that McClernand had strong political connections in Illinois that reached into
Lincoln's White House, but he could not permit the man's dawdling to cost
him the garrison at Donelson.
"That road must be recovered before night," he told McClernand, control-
ling his anger. "I will go to see Baldy Smith now. At the sound of your fire, he
will support you with an attack on his side."
Grant sent a courier to Admiral Foote asking the gunboats to make a lot of
noise. He rode to Baldy Smith, an old regular army man who had been his
teacher at West Point, to tell him to counterattack immediately. He watched
Smith lead his men to breach the rebel entrenchments and lodge themselves
on a ridge where artillery could fire into the fort. In that way the defenses
could soon be broken. No escape; Grant had the rebels where he wanted
them. The trick, he knew almost instinctively, was to hit hard when everyone
was exhausted, when nobody wanted to hit or be hit. Your enemy never had
to know how weak or demoralized your men were; you had to be the one less
disgusted and disheartened by war.
Cabell stood guard, at General Buckner's order, at the door of the Confed-
erate generals' council. It was two in the morning. A white-faced Floyd
asked, "What is best now to be done?"
"We'll fight 'em to the death," vowed General Pillow dramatically. Cabell
frowned as he overheard that. In the heat of the attempt to break out a few
hours before, when Buckner wanted to press the attack, it had been Pillow,
now talking so tough, who had folded at the first sign of Union resistance and
insisted they return to the fort. Victory had been so closethe soldiers knew
it; for no reason, it seemed, the officers had given back the field so hard won.
"No, not now, not anymore," said Buckner wearily. "Their troops are
fresh, our men are exhausted. Grant will attack at daylight and I will not be
able to hold my position half an hour."
"Yes, you can!" Pillow shouted.
"The Second Kentucky is as good a regiment as we have in the service,"
said Buckner in a tired voice, and Cabell silently agreed. "An hour ago,
before I could rally and form them, I had to take at least twenty men by the
shoulders and pull them into line."
"We can still cut our way out," insisted Pillow; "fight the Yankees to their
death."
"Where the hell were you a couple of hours ago?" Buckner said bitterly.
"Another attempt would cost us three quarters of our men. No commander
has that right."
"I will never surrender. I will die first." It struck Cabell that Pillow seemed
eager to show a fierceness in council that he had not shown in the field.
"I cannot and will not surrender," said Floyd. "But I confess personal
reasons control me." Cabell and everybody in the fort knew what Floyd's
personal fears were: the Federals would probably try him for treason and
hang him. Why wasn't Sidney Johnston here, in command where and when it
counted? Cabell had heard from the corporal that Johnston would never have
folded yesterday.
"If the command of the army is turned over to me," Buckner said, "I will
surrender the army and share its fate."
"If I place you in command," asked Floyd, "will you allow me to get out?"
"I will," said Buckner.
"Then, sir, I turn over the command to General Pillow."
General Pillow immediately blurted, "I pass it."
"I assume it," said Buckner dutifully. "Give me pen and ink and paper and
send for a bugler. I will ask for terms."
The cavalry colonel in the corner, Nathan Bedford Forrest, spoke out.
"There's more fight in my men than you suppose. I will take out my com-
mand, no matter what the cost."
"You don't have the right to sacrifice five hundred men," said Buckner.
"I'll ask for volunteers," growled Colonel Forrest. Cabell had heard of
Forrest, a slave trader and all-around fearsome fellow.
"Let him cut his way out if he wants," said Pillow to Buckner. "Floyd and
I will go with him, unless the steamer is safer."
"There's no need to surrender," Forrest insisted. "I just sent two men up
the bank of the river and they didn't run into any Federal forces."
"The Federals' campfires are all lit," said Buckner.
"Those are old campfires. There's a high wind," reported Forrest, "so
they're blazing. You could walk two thirds of this garrison out to fight again,
and they'd never run into a Federal soldier."
Buckner was weary. "Colonel Forrest, take the cavalry out with you, those
who choose to go. And take Floyd and Pillow. I assure you, Colonel, I do not
look forward to spending the rest of the war in a prison camp, but I am in
command here."
"You know Grant; he's an old friend of yours," said Forrest. "Do you
suppose he would surrender, in your shoes?"
"Maybe Grant would sacrifice his army if he were in my shoes right now,"
Buckner replied evenly, "but I am a soldier, not a butcher. I will not give up
the lives of fifteen thousand men so that one or two thousand can escape."
"I came to fight, not to surrender," Forrest said. Cabell liked that attitude.
He assessed Floyd as a coward, Pillow as someone notio be trusted, Buckner
as honorableat least he would go to prison camp with his menbut as an
officer and a gentleman, too much the gentleman and not enough the officer.
Forrest, however, knew what this war was about. Cabell could claim no
knowledge of military tactics, but it occurred to him that neither could the
trio of generals here. Common sense suggested that the South did not have
enough men in uniform to be able to surrender a whole army. Besides, you
could never tell in a battlestrange things happened; maybe the defenders
could cut their way out without huge casualties, or even drive off the attack-
ers.
Cabell, standing rigidly at the door, wondered what his father would do in
these circumstances? He liked to think that General Breckinridge would
fight; but Father had a habit of trying the peaceful way. Cabell would fight, if
he had his way. Now, for the first time, the prospect of surrender's personal
effect occurred to him: the rest of Private Cabell's war would be spent in a
Yankee prison.
Grant showed Buckner's letter asking for terms to Baldy Smith. "It's not
Floyd or Pillow in command, it's Simon Bolivar Buckner," Grant said. Could
Buckner have been in charge all along? If so, Grant would never have taken
the chances he had; he'd thought he was fighting a couple of amateurs.
Maybe Floyd and Pillow were just sticking Buckner with the humiliation.
Grant remembered when Buckner had lent him the two hundred dollars
when he was down and out. "What should I say?"
"No terms to armed rebels," barked old soldier Smith. "Tell them what
Foote told them: immediate and unconditional surrender."
That was a good way of putting it. Ben Butler had demanded "full capitu-
lation" when he took Fort Hatteras in North Carolina last summer, but
Foote's phrase sounded more final. Laboriously, with papers spread out on
the kitchen table, Grant wrote the note to his old acquaintance from West
Point: "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be ac-
cepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Two "im-
mediates" sounded awkward, but no mind, it was written. He added a closing
which he hoped Buckner would realize was meant for him: "I am, sir, very
respectfully, your obedient servant, U. S. Grant, Brigadier General, Com-
manding."
In the telegraph office at the War Department, Homer Bates looked up to
see the President come in. The telegrapher was handed a message to send
from Lincoln to General Halleck: "You have Fort Donelson safe, unless
Grant shall be overwhelmed from outside. Our success or failure at Fort
Donelson is vastly important, and I beg you to put your soul into the effort."
"How is your boy, sir?" Everyone in government knew of the President's
worry about his son Willie.
"I fear for him, Bates. I had another boy, Eddie, who had that same raspy
sound in his throat the last night. You'll send this right away?"
"The bastard," said Buckner: Grant, a failure in civilian life, was a failure
in military honor. No great or inspired generalship had earned Grant this
victory, Buckner was certain; it had been plain perseverance and luck in the
face of floundering and cowardice by the two politicians skulking aboard a
steamer leaving the dock at that very moment.
Reluctantly, Buckner wrote his reply: "The distribution of the forces under
my command, incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and the
overwhelming force under your command, compel me, notwithstanding the
brilliant success of the Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous
and unchivalrous terms which you propose." He believed that duty and
honor required this first surrender of a Confederate army; the alternative,
with Grant, was prolonged butchery.
Buckner looked at the Breckinridge boy. "Orderly, take this to the messen-
ger for General Grant."
"Yes, sir. After that, can I make a break with Colonel Forrest? He's letting
every cavalryman take a foot soldier on the same horse."
Buckner was torn. He had told General Breckinridge he would look out for
his boy and not let him do anything foolish. Surrender, prison, perhaps ulti-
mate exchangenone of that was foolish, dreary though it would surely be
and, with the disease in the Federal camps, not devoid of danger. On the
other hand, perhaps Forrest was right and the campfires were misleading; it
would be foolish to give up. Buckner had already made his choice, protecting
the lives entrusted to him; he could not make it for Breck's boy, who knew
what he wanted to do.
"Take my horse, Breckinridge," he told the boy; "I won't be needing it.
You ride, don't you? All right, take my horse to Colonel Forrest and tell him
I ordered you to follow him out of here with as many as he can safely
manage."
"I'm grateful to you, sir."
"You're sure that's what you want? A lot of men will be killed trying to
break out. It is in no way dishonorable to remain for the surrender."
"I'll make a run for it with the cavalry."
"Report to General Breckinridge when you can," nodded Buckner. He was
childless, but hoped one day to have a son as courageous. "Tell him I tried to
keep my word."

CHAPTER 2
ENFORCED ANONYMITY
Anna Carroll wished Thurlow Weed would get back from Europe. She
needed writing assignments from railroad or banking interests that would pay
her enough to dine at Willard's once in a while. The government payment for
the war powers pamphlet was shamefully low$1,200, including printing
and the attack on Breckinridge had brought even less, although she had
supplemented the meager fee with a kickback from the printer. The interest
on the loan she had taken to help pay for the slaves she had bought and freed
last year was a constant worry.
When so much of importance cried out to be done, it was exasperating to
have to think about subsistence. She started to admit to herself there might be
something to be said for getting married, but then remembered Fillmore and
his complaints about a lack of pension to ex-presidents. She was better off
poor and free than half-poor and compromised.
Chase, a widower and obviously wealthy, would be something elsea man
to discuss great issues with, to share the play of power. She remembered Kate
and put it out of her mind. She was not about to compete with a child.
A crowd had gathered around the newsstand in front of Willard's. She
waited until the jostling let upno small woman could compete in a crowd
and then bought a paper. The Intelligencer headline made her catch her
breath: "REBEL ARMY CAPTURED!" She gulped down the details of the Union
victory in the West: nearly twenty thousand rebels taken, the first crushing
defeat of Confederate arms, the heroism of the gunboats under Admiral
Foote, and especially the emergence of a victorious general, U. S.for "Un-
conditional Surrender"Grant. The strategic significance of the capture of
the mouth of the Tennessee and Cumberland was beyond the ken of the
correspondents in the field, but columns of praise appeared for Grant, extol-
ling the ease with which he had routed the rebels. Scorn was heaped on the
traitors Floyd and Pillow, slinking away from their command to avoid jus-
tice.
Anna felt a surge of triumph, vindication of all she had been through to
persuade obstinate men of the wisdom of her strategy. Her Tennessee plan
was in operation. The success of her river strategy's first stage, even to the
inundation of Fort Henry's guns at high tide, was evidence of what imagina-
tion and daring could do to transform the war. Let the commanders in the
East issue their ridiculous bulletins of "All Quiet on the Potomac"; now the
Army of the West was on the march, or on the boats, cutting into the heart of
the South.
Who would share this moment with her? The Wades, who had helped her
press the plan with Lincoln, were all involved with what seemed to Anna
inconsequential domestic affairs: the Homestead Act, selling up to 160 acres
of Western land to settlers for $2.50 an acre, and the bill that Wade and Justin
Morrill of Vermont had been pushing to give away public land to agricultural
and vocational colleges. It irritated her that Ben Wade would take time away
from the prosecution of the war to provide for federal aid to hardscrabble
farmers and visionary educators.
Tom Scott was the one who had placed her memo of November 30 before
Lincoln, and again before Stanton after that scary man had taken over the
War Department. Scott was the friend for her to see and savor this moment
with; Anna guessed he would be at the office now, after supper. He was near
the telegraph office as well; Lincoln or Stanton might be there.
She hurried the three blocks across Washington's frozen mud past the
President's house to the War Department. Discipline had broken down at the
telegraph office; the mood in that usually somber place was frenzied delight.
Someone had broken out champagne; Grant's name, along with that of Hal-
leck's, was toasted time and again. Messengers on their way to the President,
clutching telegrams from Halleck, were stopping to read them in the halls to
everyone who came by. Stanton was not on the scene.
Curiously, Tom Scott was not especially excited. He sat alone in his office,
tossing the contents of his desk into a packing crate.
"Tom, it workedmy plan, it worked!"
"You have a right to be very proud, Anna."
"What's all this?" She pointed to the crates. "You're being sent out West
again? Another report?"
"No, I'm going home. War's over for me." He seemed relieved. "Glad to
leave on a note of victory."
"Stanton?"
Scott nodded. "He's a wild man. I can't work for him."
Anna's heart sank. Tom Scott was one of the few who knew her part in
conceiving and detailing the Tennessee plan, and one of the few men close to
the President that she trusted. It occurred to her that Scott, as a railroader,
would be a source of consultant fees again, but that was not as important as
ensuring that her plan was carried out clear down to the rail junction at
Corinth, as well as getting her fair recognition as its author.
"You can't go. Lincoln knows you. You brought him down here past the
assassins in Baltimore"
"Stanton, the 'organizer of victory,' wants his own man."
"Who?"
"His brother-in-law for the time being, but I suspect the one he has in mind
is the newspaperman Dana, Horace Greeley's right arm. Stanton and Dana
have been exchanging secret messages for months."
That was why Stanton was so quickly welcomed by the radicals, despite the
initial belief that he was a Seward man; the Tribune in New York always took
Stanton's side. The switch of assistants made political sense, Anna quickly
figured; she kicked herself for not having cultivated Dana at the recent White
House reception.
She knew Scott well enough to put her own concerns to him directly.
"Look, Tom, you're my best friend here. Who else knows how hard I worked
to get this campaign in the West under way?"
"Stanton," Scott said mildly, "and the kid in the telegraph room. Maybe
Halleck, maybe not. Maybe Grant."
"What do you mean, 'Maybe Grant'? He has to have the plan, and my
name is on the memorandum to Lincoln about it. I spoke at length with
Grant's river pilot in Cairo"
Scott shook his head slowly. "You're no stranger to politics, Anna. Every-
body's fighting for credit for this win at Donelson. Last month, Old Brains
Halleck brushed me offwhen I went over it with him, pretended I was stupid.
Then when Grant came up with the same idea1 mean, basically, it jumps
out at you when you look at the map1 hear Halleck threw him out of his
office."
Anna gave him an icy look. "It didn't jump out at anybody until Novem-
ber, when I wrote it all down."
"It was your plan, Anna, but I'm telling you not to count on credit." He
stopped packing and looked directly at her. "Halleck despises Grant, thinks
he's a drunk. He only grudgingly gave Grant permission to help the navy
move on the forts when Lincoln sent the general order. Now Old Brains is
out to grab all the credit for Donelsonwants Lincoln and McClellan to
name him commander in the West over Buell's army too."
She concluded that Scott did not grasp the pressure of public sentiment.
"All the papers are making Grant the hero. Halleck wasn't near the action.
He never gets off hisout of his chair."
"McClellan may agree with Halleck. Little Mac doesn't want any big he-
roes making him look like number two. He knows Halleck is no threat."
"Ah, Miss Carroll." The rasping voice was Stanton's. "It's fitting that you
are here. Colonel Scott, would you try to bring some order to this chaos in the
halls? Must I be present at every moment? Come with me, dear lady." He led
the way to his office and motioned her to a chair beside his desk.
"Congratulations, Mr. Secretary," she took the lead, "on a great victory.
We would never have turned the tide in the West were it not for your leader-
ship. I believe this is the turning point of the war."
"It was your plan, Miss Carroll," he said. She relaxed a bit; that was
gratifying. When Stanton went on to say, "You will see how the Tennessee
River strategy develops exactly as you worked it out," she sighed in relief.
She should have known better than to panic at the suggestion of a man, even
an old friend like Scott, who was bitter about being replaced. With Stanton's
acknowledgment, as well as that of Chairman Wade of the Committee on the
Conduct of the War, proper credit to the woman who had put forward the
plan to invade the South down the Tennessee River was assured. A place in
history was hers, as well as financial security, and beyond that, greater respect
for women generally. Not to mention a quicker end to the war. She smiled at
Stanton, she hoped modestly.
"I want to ask you for a further contribution to your country," Stanton
said, pulling at the white part of his beard. Another assignment? "I want you
to keep secret the planning of the Tennessee and Cumberland action. Com-
pletely secret."
She said nothing.
"For the time being," the Secretary of War continued, "we must give the
credit where it is not quite dueeither to Halleck or Grant, depending on
which one best suits the President's and the nation's interests. Say nothing,
my dear lady."
"Why?"
"First, because the plan is hardly begun, and it should remain a secret until
we take control in Corinth and cut the Memphis to Charleston railroad. And
secondly"he walked to the window"how shall I put this? The nation
needs military heroes. It would hardly do if any of the conception of this
strategy were attributed to a civilian."
By "a civilian," he meant "a woman." She swallowed and remained silent.
"Let the military men be seen as the great geniuses. We all know that the
character and strategy of this war will come from here, in the War Depart-
ment, and not from the officers in the field. Certainly not from our spit-and-
polish General-in-Chief. I have great difficulties with McClellan, my dear
lady. I need your help with him."
She decided quickly she had no alternative but to go along; when it suited
Stanton to diminish Halleck or Grant, she might get recognition. "I know
how to keep a secret, Secretary Stanton. Trust me, as I trust you." She added,
for insurance, "And Senator Wade."
"Create your own writing assignments," Stanton said grandly, "for which
there will be proper recompense, of course. I'll arrange that with Scott."
He pulled the cord that summoned an aide and sent for the departing
Assistant Secretary of War. "Miss Carroll will continue to submit military
studies," he snapped, "and you will arrange for approval of expenses for time
and travel. Do that before you go, will you, Scott? And where is my amnesty
order?"
"It's the President's executive order," Scott corrected him. "I sent it across
the street."
Stanton's irritation showed. "All political prisoners will be released," he
told Anna, "when they subscribe to a parole that they will give no further aid
and comfort to the enemy. What sort of a reaction to this act of conciliation
do you suppose we can expect in the press?"
"The Peace Democrats will see it as an act of mercy long overdue," she
said, "but the black Republicans will think Lincoln is going soft."
"If I tap that bell over there," Stanton said mildly, "I can send anybody in
the country to a place where they will never hear the dogs bark. We are not
going soft on traitors, Miss Carroll, and I would be grateful if you would get
that word to your many influential friends."
"What about the captain of the slave ship, sentenced to be hanged?" The
abolitionists in New York were eager to hang their first slave-ship captain.
"Nathaniel Gordon hangs tomorrow," Stanton said, relishing the words.
"No clemency from here."
"Rose Greenhow?"
Stanton frowned. "I would like to get rid of her presence one way or the
other. In jail, she made an ass of Seward, and she is driving Pinkerton crazy.
Devilish woman. Will she sign a parole?"
"She'd die first," Anna told him. Rose O'Neal Greenhow was not the type
of person to promise to spend the war doing nothing for the Confederacy.
"We'll put her on trial, then." Stanton looked uncomfortable at that pros-
pect. "I just wish I had a spy like her working for us in Richmond."
On their way out of the War Department, Scott and Carroll met a dis-
traught John Hay hurrying in to see Stanton.
"Isn't it exciting," Anna began, setting aside Stanton's request for her
silence, "just as we hoped in that plan I wrote back in November"
"Is Stanton upstairs?"
Scott said yes.
"Get him to disperse the crowds outside, making all that noise," ordered
Hay, "and for God's sake, shut up that band on Pennsylvania Avenue."
"Come on, now, Hay, this is their first real victory."
"Willie just died."
Anna winced. "How is the President taking it?"
"He came staggering into our office," said Hay, "and said, 'He's gone, my
boy is actually gone,' and burst into tears. Never saw him so upset."
"And the boy's mother?"
"She let out a long wail," said the secretary, "that was as terrifying a sound
as I've ever heard. And there's no stopping her hysterics. Scott, for God's
sake, get some soldiers and make them stop that noise outside, will you?"
CHAPTER 2

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
FEBRUARY 28, 1862

A passage in the opening of the new Dickens novel describes the mood of the
Mansion this week. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .
the spring of hope . . . the winter of despair."
We barely had time to savor the great news of the capture of the rebel army
at Donelson when a blanket of gloom descended with the death of Willie. At
one point, all I could hear was the sound of revelry outside and the screams of
the Hellcat down the hall.
Thank God for Lizzie Keckley. If it weren't for her calming effect on the
Prsdt's wife, Madame's hysteria would never let up. Maybe it's because of
Lizzie's recent loss of her own son, or the fact that she suffered through
slavery, or some inner source of strength that makes itself felt in a mystic way
whatever it is, the Hellcat clings to Lizzie and sobs and cries for hours on
end until she passes out.
Willie's body lay in state in the Green Room downstairs, and thousands of
people trooped through. Mrs. Lincoln could not leave her bed even for the
funeral. That was just as well, because too many of the visitors made snide
comments about the way she threw a splendid ball when her boy lay dying.
Unfair; why do they hate her so, even now? I've never been her champion,
and fear that her state of mind is becoming another great burden for the
Prsdt, but she's not evil.
They buried Willie in the Carroll family vault at Oak Hill cemetery. Sena-
tor Orville Browning, the Lincoln family's closest friend now that Ned Baker
is gone, made the funeral arrangements. Browning spoke to Anna Carroll
about the proper place to bury the boy and she put him in touch with her
remote Washington kin, and that solved the interment problem.
Then we all had another scare when Tad came down with a fever, and the
Prsdt sat in his room one terrible night, but it wasn't the typhoid that struck
Willie, and Tad is better now. He has taken to sleeping regularly in his
father's bed.
This paralysis cannot go on. Too much is pressing in. I have urgent re-
quests for appointments with Senator Wade, who wants to reprimand Gener-
als Halleck and McClellan for allowing slaveholders to search for fugitive
slaves on army posts, and with Senator Sumner, who wants to know if Lin-
coln will oppose a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. The
radical Republicans are going too fast, and forgetting the plan Lincoln and
old Blair worked out for paying states to gradually buy slaves their freedom.
I think I'll try to get Lizzie to get the Prsdt to focus on this. He cannot
grieve for his boy or fret about his wife's temporary derangement for long.
This is not the only house in the nation draped in mourning.
CHAPTER 4
SOURCE OF STRENGTH
"Madam Elizabeth," Mr. Lincoln said, "I want to bring Mother here by the
window."
Lizzie Keckley did not think that was such a good idea. She put her arm
behind Mary Lincoln's back, supporting her weight as she helped the Presi-
dent's wife out of bed. The modiste could feel her uncontrollable trembling.
After one of her hysterical fits, screams piercing the Mansion walls, the poor
woman would lie shaking for about a half hour.
"Mother, do you see that large white building on the hill yonder?"
Mary Lincoln looked and her trembling increased.
"Try and control your grief," the President said sternly. He pointed to a
white building that Keckley knew to be the lunatic asylum. "Control your
grief, or it will drive you mad, and we may have to send you there."
That was a terrifying threat. The modiste thought Mr. Lincoln was cruelly
wrong to remind his wife of the insanity in her family and where that distrac-
tion was likely to put her. At the same time, Mrs. Lincoln's black friend
could see how badly the President wanted to force a limit to his wife's un-
healthy reaction to the loss of their beloved Willie.
Mrs. Lincoln had to pull herself together. The Mansion could not long
continue to be draped in black. Nor could the President's wife be permitted to
reach out to spiritualists, because they could not bring the boy back. Mrs.
Keckley, a religious woman, would have no truck with the conjurers. Last
night, Mrs. Lincoln had arranged a seance with a spiritualist and had all but
physically dragged her husband along. That troubled the modiste: the Presi-
dent of the United States should not be sitting at a seance, listening to thuds
and whispers in the darkness, even to humor his wife who refused to accept
God's will in the reality of her loss.
After that strange session, and after Mrs. Lincoln had sobbed for an hour
before collapsing in exhaustion, Mrs. Keckley made ready to leave the bed-
room. The President motioned for her to sit in one of the chairs near the bed.
"It's a wonder you're not exhausted, Madam Elizabeth. I don't see how you
do it."
She did not mention that she would spend much of the remainder of the
night sewing in her room. The dress orders had to be filled, the needed money
to be earned. She was now supporting six jobless black freedmen who were
wondering if freedom meant the freedom to starve. Mr. Lincoln did not want
to be alone, obviously, and people at sad times like this had a way of unbur-
dening their souls to her. She never knew why; she rarely asked a question.
She assumed that because she did not seek confidences, peopleimportant
white people, especiallyconfided in her.
The President started to speak of his dead boy. When he came to the words
"Willie was too good for this world," the tall man hunched forward and
broke into sobs. She let him cry silently for a while, then rose and stroked his
head. The hair was stiff, uncombed, unwashed. He leaned his forehead
against her hip, took some deep breaths, and tried to compose himself. She
saw him fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief that was not there. She
went to the bureau and brought back the piece of white cloth and he wiped
his eyes and blew his nose. She also handed him her Bible.
When he could talk again, he told her that he did not read the Bible often,
but when he did, he found the most interest in the Book of Job. She found
that curious: in all of Scripture, she found the story of Job, with his defiant
questioning of God, to be almost blasphemous. Job kept demanding to know
why the wicked could triumph and the good die young if God was just, until
God finally had to tell Job to stop bothering Him.
The melancholy man wondered aloud if he had been unkind to point out
the asylum to his wife. The modiste was glad he felt bad about that. He
admitted to his own lifelong experience with "the hypo," those moods of deep
melancholy that gripped him for days on end, when he could not think
straight, hardly work at all. The first time the hypo struck, he told her, was
after the death of a young girl he knew in New Salem. Brain fever. He had
been a boarder at Rutledge's Tavern, and the girl was engaged to another
man in Salem, but she was nineteen and dear to him. The inexplicable cutting
short of her life recalled to his mind the death of his mother, Nancy Hanks
Lincolnhe remembered her withered features and want of teethand his
sister Sarah's death in childbirth at twenty-one, she who had mothered him as
well.
Ever since, he told the black freedwoman, obviously taking some comfort
in the telling, he had suffered periods in which a dark cloud overtook him and
all he could think of was death and loss and emptiness, and, of late, rivers of
the blood of war. That was why he had to force himself and his wife to shake
off the corrosive sadness surrounding the loss of their favorite child.
He said all this with his head in his huge hands, looking down at the floor
in the darkness, alternating stretches of revelation with periods of silence. She
struck a match and lit a lamp.
He looked up. "There is a poem that expresses my feelings," he said. He
proceeded to recite verses that ended with the line, "Why Should the Spirit of
Mortal Be Proud?" It took five minutes, and he recited with an actor's ex-
pression. She liked the poem. It spoke of humility in a proud way.
He changed the subject, seeming a bit perkier after the recitation. "I'm not
the only one around here who gets this way."
One night in the telegraph office, he related, Secretary of War Stanton had
told him that he had been inconsolable after the death of a baby daughter,
and could not leave his dead wife's grave for a month. Further, Stanton had
told Lincoln about his brother's committing suicide, and his own morbid
desire to do the same when he heard the news. Yet Stanton was a strong man
and a successful lawyer, Lincoln told her, the best in the country. The hypo
grabs a person sometimes for days, even weeks, but it goes away by itself, or is
driven away in time by a force of will. He insisted it was not a sign of
weakness, citing Stanton as his evidence.
She did not see the similarity but said nothing. She had heard that Stanton
flew off the handle, even went into the most terrible rages, and then could cry
like a child, but his despair was not like Lincoln's. The President, she had
observed, could be seized by gloom, remembering how death was so much a
part of his life, and it was a weakness, all right, but never a cause for panic.
Stanton, she had observed, was brilliant and all, but he lived at the edge of
panic, as if he were never sure he would remain in control. She judged that
there was great sadness in Lincoln, but real fear and rage in Stanton, who
reminded her a bit of her late husband.
"I saw a slave in chains once," the President said, "when I was sailing
down the Ohio with Josh Speed. There were twelve slaves on the river
steamer, all chained together like so many fish upon a trotline. I asked about
them. They were from Kentucky, my home state, torn from family and
friends on their way to the Deep South."
"The life is different there," said Elizabeth Keckley. "In Virginia I had a
kind master, never beat me except when I was bad. Then times got bad and
he sold me South."
"How old were you?"
"Eighteen. Were there any girls on the chain you saw?"
"No," Lincoln said, looking into the past, closing his eyes, "all young men.
One had a fiddle, and he played while the others sang and danced, as well as
they could in the chains, and joked and played card games. I suppose God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."
"That means?"
"He renders the worst of the human condition tolerable, while He permits
the best to be no better than tolerable." He looked over at the sleeping form
of his troubled wife. "I still think of that spectacle," he said; "it's a torment to
me. Slavery has the power of making me miserable."
"No, God does not always temper the wind," said the black woman. That
one look at the men in chains was this man's only exposure to the reality of
slavery. How could he have any idea what it was like? He had seen the blacks
on the river joke and dance, and assumed they were happy. Why did he
believe that blacks had some special protection from God that numbed their
misery?
She had never spoken of her youth to any man, black or white, but here
and now, in the midst of his anguish, she felt it had a place and was the time.
And maybe she had been called upon to help him feel the way it was.
"The wife of my new master in Carolina thought I was uppity. I did my
work and more, but I wouldn't cringe and scrape, and she complained about
my stubborn pride. So one day he called me in and told me to take down my
dress and said he was going to flog me."
She could see that man's face as clearly as Lincoln's. "I said no, not with-
out a reason. He got a rope and tied my hands behind me. I fought as hard as
I could and he tore the dress from my back." She could not stop telling it now
if she wanted to. "Then he picked up a rawhide and began to beat me. He'd
nerve himself for a blow and then smash down on my flesh, cut my skin1
could feel the blood running down into my skirt. I didn't scream. I stood like
a statue."
She drew herself tall. "When he finished, I asked him what I had done
wrong, and he picked up a chair and hit me over the head with that.
"Next day he sent for me again, and I saw he was prepared with a new rope
and a new cowhide. I told him I was ready to die but he could not conquer
me. In the fight with him, I bit his finger, and he hit me with a heavy stick
until I was dizzy. A couple days later Mr. Bingham again tried to conquer
me, and we struggled and I caught it in the head again, but when I woke up
he was crying. As I lay there bleeding, I saw that my suffering had subdued
his hard heart. He asked my forgiveness. He said he would never hit me
again, and he kept his word."
"Thank God," said Lincoln.
"That was not the worst," she continued. "I was young and considered
fair, and I was sold to a man who had evil designs on me. One day he bid me
take down my clothes, and I refused. He tied me, too, but this time tried to
have his way with my body, and I fought and scratched him. Then he beat
the backs of my legs with a horsewhip until I couldn't move for a week. I still
have those marks, and I have walked slowly ever since." She had heard her
customers say that her walk gave her dignity; if she walked any faster, she
would be in pain.
"The next time he came at me, I did not have the strength left to defend
myself. He took me that way whenever he wanted for four years. That was
the real suffering, worse than the beatings, knowing I was a toy he could play
with whenever he wanted. Mr. Lincoln, it's like not being a person. That's
what a slave isnot a human being anymore. Just an animal that's used to
give a mean mistress satisfaction or to give a master pleasure."
She was breathing heavily and put her hand on her chest to catch her
breath. Once it started to come out there was no stopping. "Finally he
stopped having me when he saw I was to become a mother. I brought a boy
into the world, and if he suffered humiliation because he was the son of a
slave, it was not my fault. My boy looked white. He got his freedom when I
bought mine. And then, passing for white, he joined the Union Army."
"Where is he now?" asked the President.
"Safe in his grave," she replied. "Miss Carroll found out all about the
battle that killed him, and wrote me he died a hero." She patted the letter in
her bosom but did not take it out. "That's why I can feel for Mrs. Lincoln.
When your boy dies, it makes you feel like there is nothing to stand on,
nothing comes after you, all your life's been a waste."
"No, no, never a waste," said Lincoln. They sat in silence for a long time.
Had she struck the right note? Had she made him see that the political
subject he had debated about all his life was more than a mere matter of right
and wrong? She was vaguely dissatisfied; the pride that burned inside her, so
harshly beaten down for so long, was important for him to understand. The
moment would not come again, and nobody who was black might ever have
the chance to make him know the living hell of slavery.
"It is not just the cruelty," she added. "It's the no hope. Do you know
Senator Davis?"
"I never met Jeff Davis."
"I made all Mrs. Davis's dresses. I lived in their home for a while. He is a
fine man, kind, in many ways like you." Not quite trueMr. Davis was
distant; she could never have had a talk like this with him. "Not so easy to
talk to, maybe, but a good man. He'd never raise his hand to a black man, not
cruel in any way. But he doesn't know what it is like to have no hope, to
never be yourself." She felt inadequate, disappointed because of her inability
to show that slavery was infinitely more cruel to the mind than to the body.
Maybe it was better to appeal on the basis of the pain of the lash; anybody
could testify to that. The need for dignity was hard to explain to anyone who
had always been free.
"You're a good judge of people, Madam Elizabeth," Lincoln's voice was
stronger now. "What sort is Jeff Davis? If you lived in their house"
"A gentleman," she said. "Honorable. God-fearing." She thought about it.
"Strong," she added. "He sticks with the people he trusts. It don't matter
what people say or what the papers write, he'll do what he thinks is right.
Even if it's wrong." She thought of the Davises' many kindnesses, and wanted
to end on a note of special truth. "He's not a man who hates anybody. I can't
hate him."
They sat for a long time in silence. Mrs. Lincoln's breathing was labored,
but she was not crying out as on other nights. The President seemed to fall
asleep in his chair, and she moved quietly to the door.
As she left, she heard him say, partly to her, more to himself, "I'll see
Wade and Sumner tomorrow, but I cannot do what they want about abolition
in the District. Too soon. It's too soon."

CHAPTER5
EDGE OF THE CROWBAR
George Nicolay let his assistant, Hay, have the day off to see his secret
ladylove. Nicolay, at thirty, was six years Hay's senior, and had for years
been in awe of the young man's talent, joie de vivre, and self-confidence.
They had met in Pittsfield, an Illinois prairie village where the fatherless
Nicolay had been eking out a living as a printer's devil on the Pike County
Free Press and the well-to-do Hay had been preparing to go to Brown College
back East. Nicolay had hoped to join his younger friend at the college, but
had neither the money for the expensive school nor the physical stamina for
the trip. Instead, the newspaper and the local political headquarters became
the Bavarian-born Nicolay's college, and his introduction to the lawyer and
politician Abraham Lincoln.
As Nicolay studied law at night, he ran Lincoln's political errands, pro-
vided him with election tabulations, and made himself useful: when Lincoln
needed to make his peace with the Know-Nothings in 1860, it was Nicolay he
sent to their leader in Terre Haute with the written instructions, explicit in
their vagueness, "tell him my motto is 'Fairness to all' but commit me to
nothing." By that time Hay was back from college and found a job on the
Biairs' newspaper, and then, through his Uncle Milton, to Lincoln's inner
circle in Springfield, where Nicolay welcomed his only real friend's high
spirits and his help.
On occasion, Nicolay felt about Hay the way Robert Lincoln probably used
to feel about Willie: envy at his natural charm and his easy intimacy with
Lincoln, tempered by affection engendered by the irresistible youngster. Hay
never challenged Nicolay's preeminence in the officepartly, Nicolay sus-
pected, because he did not want the heavy responsibility. Hay had a mischie-
vous streak and a sense of fun which put him in special tune with Lincoln in
an area where Nicolay could never hope to compete: it was Hay, not the first
assistant, that Lincoln sought out at night, carpet slippers flapping, to swap
funny stories.
If there was anything that worried Nicolay about his junior partner, it was
Hay's ease at manipulation: he had a genius for jollying people along, and an
immature way of shaping the facts to fit his positions. They had agreed to join
in the writing of a history of the Lincoln administration; Nicolay felt the
responsibility of writing history with accuracy, and worried that Hay would
use the chance to get even with those who had stood in Lincoln's way. He
hoped his assistant was keeping his diary with fidelity, but doubted it.
Nicolay, who had always been sickly, worried about the way Hay, who had
always been robust, abused his health. How could anyone, he asked himself,
stagger home at 3 A.M. and be ready for a day's work at nine? In addition to
the usual carousing, Hay had been putting in eighteen-hour days in the two
weeks since the tumultuous period of the grande lev6e, the victory at Fort
Donelson, and the death of Willie. He also showed the mooning signs of
falling in love. Nicolay, faithful to his Therena at home in Illinois, took
vicarious pleasure in Hay's romantic escapades, as did Lincoln, but Nicolay
noted that he seemed flushed this morning, and ordered him to bed; the
young man accepted and gratefully collapsed.
Nicolay sent his second assistant, the studious Stoddard, to fetch Ben
Wade, whose chairmanship of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the
War was rapidly making him the most important man in Congress. Nicolay
considered that to be a remarkable achievement for a leader of what was,
after all, only a minority faction of abolitionists.
"What in hell do you mean, 'too soon'?" roared the senator as soon as he
and the President squared off.
Nicolay knew that Lincoln would take no offense at the bluster, because
that was the way the fellow addressed everybody.
"The time is not yet ripe," said Lincoln, on his feet, walking around the
office as usual.
"You've been saying 'too soon, too soon,' since the day after Bull Run."
Wade mocked. "Remember? Chandler and Sumner and I were in here telling
you that you should proclaim emancipation or, at the very least, announce
that the end of slavery was the supreme object of this war. But all you
pleaded then was 'Kentucky, Kentucky.' Now we have Kentucky. After
Donelson surrendered, Sidney Johnston skedaddled out of Kentucky, and
Nashville, Tennessee, is about to fall in our lap. You don't have your old
border-state excuse anymore."
"Abolition is too big a lick," said Lincoln. "We're recruiting soldiers in
Kentucky, and in Maryland and Missouri, and while they'll fight for the
Union, they won't join up to fight for abolition. Most people are for 'the
Union as it was'with slavery where it is, but no extension into the territo-
ries. Ben, slavery cannot exist for long if all the new states are free states, you
know that."
"What you lack, Lincoln, is backbone." Nicolay, in the back of the room,
wondered if Lincoln's temper would flare at that. It did not; evidently the
President was aware of that charge and preferred to have it buried directly at
him than spoken behind his back. "You know this war is about slavery.
You're afraid to admit it."
"I'm going to name Senator Andrew Johnson to be military governor of
Tennessee," the President said coolly, showing some backbone by deliberately
offending the radical Republicans: Johnson was a War Democrat and a native
Tennessean who would attract support in that newly liberated state. Wade
and his crowdwhich, Nicolay noted, now had two Cabinet members in its
ranks, with Stanton joining Chasehad demanded an abolitionist in that
post.
"We'll fight him in the Senate," said Wade. "And to show we mean busi-
ness, we'll pass a confiscation bill. Not symbolic, like last year, but one with
teeth in it."
"That's not needed," said Lincoln quickly.
"Every rebel is an outlaw," boomed Wade, rising and sinking on his toes as
he did on the Senate floor. "I am for inflicting all the consequences of defeat
on a fallen foe that started an unjust war. I am for confiscating the property
of rebelstaking every slave from every damn rebel, thereby making the
slave owners pay the cost of this rebellion."
"What good will that do? A confiscation bill would only hurt us in the
border states and make the South fight all the harder."
"God! You must be listening to Seward again, and the Biairs. Not even a
galvanic battery could inspire any action in your Cabinet."
"We didn't go into the war to put down slavery," Lincoln said, giving not
an inch, "but to put the flag back."
"Times have changed."
Lincoln did not agree. "To act differently at this moment would, I have no
doubt, not only weaken our cause but smack of bad faith. Your thunderbolt
will keep."
Wade seated himself, which Nicolay took as the prelude to dickering. A
confiscation act was too extreme to have any hope of passage; Wade had just
thrown that out to open the negotiation.
"You can expect to see a fugitive-slave bill on your desk soon," Wade
predicted, putting forward a step toward abolition that had wider appeal, "to
keep your damned pro-slavery Democratic generals like McClellan and Hal-
leck from turning over slaves that are running away from rebel owners. Try to
veto that."
Nicolay knew that Lincoln did not want to face the need to veto that, and
the President's attitude became more conciliatory.
"Just last night," he said, a shadow of sadness crossing his face, "I began to
think that this terrible war was a great movement by God to end slavery. And
that the man would be a fool who should stand in the way." Wade waited for
more. "The other day I was telling Sumner that the only difference between
him and me on this subject is a difference of a month or six weeks in time."
"He told me you said that," Wade shot back. "Only it wasn't the other day,
it was a month or six weeks ago." A telling point, Nicolay conceded.
"Too big a lick right now. But how's this" Lincoln reached in his drawer
and came up with a few lines in his handwriting scrawled on a piece of paper.
He handed it to Senator Wade.
The Ohioan squinted at it and read aloud: "I recommend the adoption of a
Joint Resolution by your honorable bodies: 'Resolved that the United States
ought to cooperate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of
slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its
discretion to compensate for the evils public and private, produced by such a
change of system.' " Wade read it again silently, lips moving.
"It's the initiation of emancipation," Nicolay dared to put in.
"Thin milk-and-water gruel," snorted Wade, shooting the young man a
withering glance, but holding on to the paper. "It would take a hundred years
your way."
"In my judgment," said the President carefully, "gradual and not sudden
emancipation is better for all. Not all the slave states will undertake it, but as
the loyal slave states doKentucky, for exampleit will become apparent to
the Deep South that no hope exists for border states to join the Confederacy
when peace comes."
"This is the best you can do?" asked Wade, dissatisfied but apparently
unwilling to let this first, tentative move by the President toward abolition go
unsupported.
"It is a start," said Lincoln.
The senator passed the paper back, motioning to Lincoln to make a
change. "I don't know why you say 'abolishment' when you mean 'aboli-
tion.' " Nicolay was surprised that Wade caught that; Lincoln deliberately
had sought to avoid the more incendiary word. "And you don't mean 'evils,'
you mean 'inconveniences.' No move toward freedom can be evil."
Lincoln acknowledged that the latter was true and made the change. Wade
was not one to be taken into camp by minor adjustments, however, and made
to leave with a firm, "It's not enough. You cannot buy your way out of
slavery, and you know it. This is just a palliative."
When Lincoln did not contradict him, but just looked quizzical, Wade
made a suggestion: "Abolish slavery just in the District of Columbia. No
states-rights argument works here, Lincolnthis is a federal city. Now, that
would be a start."
"I once introduced a bill to that effect when I was a Congressman in the
forties," the President said mildly, in what Nicolay knew to be his horse-
trading voice. "It hasn't been expedient to put it forward recently, but my
opinion hasn't changed."
"I'll go for your waste-of-time resolution to pay off the border-state slave
owners," offered Wade, "if you'll send us a bill rooting out the evil in the
District."
"I won't send it to you," Lincoln countered, "but if you pass one and send
it to me, I'll sign it. Provided it includes compensation to the owners."
"That's a bargain," snapped Wade, going up to Lincoln and pumping his
hand once to put a seal on it. "We'll pass your thin gruel, and mark my
words, the loyal slave states will laugh at you. The border states people won't
sell their slavesthey like the damnable institution. But we'll put the fear of
God in those bastards by freeing the slaves in the District."
"You initiate abolishment in the District, I'll sign it," said Lincoln, "but it
has to include compensation. And my resolution about gradual emancipation
comes first."
"Done." He went to the door. "Remember, Lincoln"a Parthian shot
"the word is abolition!"
A week later, with Lincoln's proposed joint resolution sent to Congress,
followed by a March 6 message on gradual emancipation issued by the Presi-
dentbut with the second step of abolishing slavery in the District not yet
takenNicolay ushered in Henry Raymond, editor of the New York Times,
whose closeness to William Seward and Thurlow Weed was well known after
their falling-out with Horace Greeley. Raymond had been summoned by
Lincoln; the Times was not as influential as Greeley's Tribune, and neither
had the circulation of Bennett's Herald, but it was one of the only three eight-
page dailies in the United States and had been a loyal supporter of Lincoln.
"I'm just reading some of the New York journals, Henry," Lincoln began.
Actually, Nicolay had been reading those newspapers to him that morning,
starting out with the praise, as Lincoln liked, but including later some of the
criticism. Nicolay had noted the surprise defection of the Times and the
President would have none of that.
"Here's the Tribune, the World, the Evening Post"Lincoln pushed them
all forward"all have written excellent editorials about my message on grad-
ual, compensated emancipation."
"I've seen those, sir, yes," said Raymond. "I think I know what you're
getting at."
"And here's the New York Times, the one paper I thought I could count
on, saying that my proposal is 'well intentioned, but must fail on the score of
expense.' Did you write this?"
"Actually, it was done by one of my editors." The editor squirmed. "If you
figure slaves at four hundred dollars a head, and that there must be at least
three or four million slaves, you get into astronomical numbers."
"Have you stopped to figure," said Lincoln severely, "that less than one
half-day's cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware, at four
hundred dollars a head? That eighty-seven days' cost of this war would pay
for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri
at the same price?"
"I hadn't looked at it that way, Mr. President."
"Were those states to take the step I suggest, do you doubt that it would
shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and thus be an actual saving of
expense?"
"You're absolutely right, Mr. Lincoln."
"Think about it, then, and let there be another article in the Times. "
"I will telegraph my office to sustain your message without qualifications or
cavil, sir." Nicolay was glad that Lincoln had not had to put on greater
pressure, which he had readily available. Stanton had just issued an order
putting military censorship into effect, forbidding publication of intelligence
about military operations on pain of losing all access to the telegraph.
Lincoln put his arm around the editor, who had state political ambitions of
his own, and walked him to the door. "It is important that the Times be on
the right side of this."
"I regard your message as a masterpiece of practical wisdom," said Ray-
mond as he disappeared down the hall, "and of sound policy."
Nicolay smiled; the editor had felt the heat and seen the light.
"Nicolay," Lincoln said, "what's the commotion out there?"
Running toward him was one of Stanton's new assistants.
Nicolay took the message, a dispatch from General Wool in Fort Monroe
in Hampton Roads. That was the port where the Union fleet was massing to
help McClellan begin his Peninsula campaign to take Richmond by the water
route. Nicolay saw its urgency and hurried to Lincoln, who read the telegram
aloud:
" The Merrimack is loose. It has sunk the Cumberland, compelled the
Congress to surrender, and forced the Minnesota aground. No wooden ship
can stop the iron monster.' "

CHAPTER 6
TIN CAN ON A SHINGLE
"Father Neptune" (Navy Secretary Gideon Welles knew that was what Lin-
coln called him behind his back) arrived at the Cabinet room in time to watch
a panic stricken "Mars" (the Secretary of War, whom Welles was quickly
coming to despise) make a spectacle of himself.
"Calamitous!" cried Stanton, refusing to sit at the table with Lincoln,
Seward, General-in-Chief McClellan, and Welles, choosing instead to pace
like a caged lion. No, "caged lion" implied a creature of courage; in this case,
not even "cornered rat" was apt. The Secretary of War, in Welles's judgment,
was a man seized by fear, and his loss of nerve was rattling the President.
Welles had never been more certain that his own resistance to Stanton's reach
for control of the entire war was wise; the navy was the equal of the army in
every traditional respect, and Stanton was dangerously wrong to try to treat
the United States Navy as some sort of appendage to the War Department's
power. The only victory the Union could claim in the war was the naval
victory at Forts Henry and Donelson by Admiral Foote, despite the attempt
by Stanton to grab the credit for Halleck and Grant.
"Do you realize what the rebel navy has done?" Stanton was hollering at
him. "They've broken the blockade!"
Taking his seat solemnly, the Navy Secretary said, "Such a judgment is
premature."
Stanton rolled his eyes heavenward. "What good is your precious navy
with this iron crocodile swallowing up its ships? Look at these telegraphic
messages from your own man down there in Hampton Roads, for God's sake
any ship that comes near the Memmack is doomed! The Cumberland,
sunk. The Congress, the Minnesota and the St. Lawrence, run aground and
helpless."
"I am as aware as you of our losses."
"That floating battery will destroy, seriatim, every naval vessel we have,"
Stanton went on, to Welles's mounting disgust. "The blockade of the South is
finished; guns and munitions will start flowing in from Englandwho knows,
this may mean Britain will recognize the Confederacy. How do you like
that?"
"There is no cause for panic," Welles said slowly. He was resolved to
maintain his calm, if only to offset Stanton's flailing of arms and corrosive
despair, but he could not set aside the possibility that there was genuine cause
for alarm. Perhaps the mauling of the Union fleet by the rebel ironclad meant
that every great wooden ship of the line in all the world's navies was obsolete.
Certainly there had been tragic losses down in Hampton Roads. When
Welles learned of the sinking of the Cumberland an hour before, he stopped
on his way to the Mansion at Saint John's Church, where he knew Commo-
dore Joseph Smith would be attending services. Smith's son was captain of
the ship rammed and sunk by "the monster." When Welles told him of the
way the battle had gone, the wooden ship helplessly bouncing shot off the
impervious hull of the Merrimach the commodore had said, "Then Joe is
dead." Welles suspected that was true. It made him especially angry at the
shrill Stanton's contempt for his service.
Obviously the President needed the steadying of someone, because
Stanton's outburst evidently shook him; Lincoln was looking out the window
down the Potomac, cracking his knuckles nervously, as if expecting to see the
Memmack appear any moment.
"What do we know of the Memmack?" the worried Lincoln asked the
Navy Secretary.
"She was one of our ships that was sunk in Hampton Roads, near Norfolk,
last year," Welles replied. "The Confederates refloated her, pumped out the
mud, renamed her the Virginia, and cut her hull down to the water's edge.
Then they covered her over, down to two feet below the waterline, with two-
inch overlapping armor plate. Ten guns, mostly nine-inch smoothbores. An
iron ram-beak on her prow."
"If you knew so much about her, why didn't you tell me?" Stanton de-
manded. "Maybe General McClellan here would have sent some soldiers into
their base to do something about it. Something! Anything!"
"Pinkerton tells me," said McClellan, "that you had a spy in their naval
yard, Mr. Welles."
"Yes, we've known about this," said the Navy Secretary, "and we have sent
an ironclad of our own to engage her. Ours is a much smaller vessel, and it
must be slowly towed in heavy seas or it will capsize, but"
"Oh, God," wailed Stanton, "you mean that little boat they call the 'tin can
on a shingle'or the 'cheesebox on a raff? How many guns?"
"The Monitor has only two guns in its turret," Welles admitted, "and we
are not certain she is seaworthy. But the President encouraged us to press on
with her construction. The contractors have disappointed us with their de-
lays."
"Pipe dreams," said Stanton, pacing again. "That monster can come
steaming up the Potomac any time it likesdo you realize that while you're
sitting there, this very mansion could be under fire from the Memmack? A
cannonball or a shell could be crashing through this Cabinet room before
night falls!"
There was silence. Lincoln asked, "Is there danger of that, Welles?"
"The Memmack has a 22-foot draft because the armor makes it so heavy. I
do not think she would be able to pass the shallow portion of the Potomac at
Kettle Bottom Shoals."
"You don't think," Stanton derided, "that's not enough. What do you
know?"
"In a sense, I would welcome her appearance in the Potomac," Welles
replied, "because that would give the navy an opportunity to destroy her. I
believe General McClellan also has some shore batteries in position."
"He doesn't understand," Stanton said to Lincoln, as if Welles were a
backward child who had just failed his lesson, "that shells just bounce off the
sides of the Merrimack. "
"Every shot that hits is felt," Welles countered, not certain about how
many direct hits could be taken by the first ironclad ship of the line in
America.
"That's nice, so we sit here and do nothing," Stanton taunted. "McClellan,
get somebody over to the Navy Yard and commandeer every canal barge you
can lay your hands on. Load them with rocks, gravel, whatever is heavy, and
get the navy to take them down to those shoals and sink them there. Maybe
we can block the monster before it gets here."
That was a naval operation, and General McClellan had the decency, in
Welles's eyes, to say, "That's a naval matter, isn't it?"
"If that unsinkable battery of guns is allowed the run of Norfolk-Newport
News-Hampton Roads area," Stanton rasped, "then it's good-bye to your
beloved movement down the Potomac to the Peninsula and then to Rich-
mond. That rebel monster will sink every troop transport you have, and there
is nothing we can do to stop her. You'll have to change your plans in a hurry
and go overland, through Manassas."
"No, that's the bloodiest way," said McClellan quickly. More directly con-
cerned with his own operation in jeopardy, he looked at Welles. "With your
permission, I'd be happy to confer with your commander at the Navy
Yard"
"I'm going down to the Navy Yard," said Lincoln, rising. "I want to see
what Admiral Dahigren says. Is there any danger to New York and Philadel-
phia, Welles?"
"The Merrimack is capable of reaching New York and shelling the city,"
the Navy Secretary admitted dutifully, "but in that case she would hardly be
on duty to sink our troop transports in Chesapeake Bay. There can only be
one danger at a time."
"You're blind, blind," Stanton said savagely. Still pacing, he proceeded to
cross-examine Welles as he would a hostile witness, using sarcasm and deri-
sion to discredit the witness just as he had done as a famous litigator. Welles
stood his ground, giving factual answers as far as he knew them, refusing to
be stampeded.
Apparently exasperated at the iciness of his witness, Stanton resorted to
shouting. "Do you have any idea what would happen if the Merrimack stood
in New York Harbor and demanded that the city surrender and pay millions
of dollars to save itself? New York would give up in one minute! Every New
York regiment would be pulled out of the war, and every New York bank
would stop lending us money, and we couldn't pay anybody and the whole
damned army would desert!"
He slumped in a chair, exhausted, until another apprehension took over.
"What if she goes out to sea and attacks Annapolis and destroys all our
stores? There go all our supplies!"
Senator Orville Browning walked in the room at that point, paying a social
Sunday morning call, and Welles was glad the President seized that opportu-
nity to get out of the roomful of acrimonious advisers. Lincoln reached for his
hat, told Browning to come along, and left for the Navy Yard without asking
any of his Cabinet to accompany him.
Secretary of State Seward, who had been silent through all Stanton's ti-
rades, put in after the President left: "This really could be quite serious,
Welles. If the Memmack comes upriver and reduces the public buildings in
the nation's capital, or forces New York to pay tributeor even makes possi-
ble an end to the blockade, which it seems to have done alreadythen we
may see foreign intervention on the side of the South."
"Let's see what the Monitor can do," Welles maintained. He was confident
that Commander Dahigren at the Navy Yard, an ordnance expert highly
regarded by Lincoln, would not do anything to put the service in a role
subservient to the army. Lincoln often entrusted the details of army plans to
Dahigren, who would pass them on to the Navy Secretary, which was the
only way Welles could find out what the War Department was doing. In
return, Welles had planned an expedition to take the port of New Orleans
with a naval force without informing Stanton. Let him find out about that
operation from Lincoln.
Welles was not as confident as he made himself appear. Perhaps the small,
untried craft could do little or nothing to stop the carnage in Hampton
Roads; perhaps it would be rammed and sunk as soon as it tried to give battle;
worse, perhaps the Monitor would sink before it even reached the scene.
Aware of these dire possibilities, the Navy Secretary could only hope for the
best, but he was certain that hair-tearing would do no good. Stanton, the
Navy Secretary was certain, was a tyrant to those beneath him and obsequi-
ous to those above him, and Welles was his equal in rank. He would not serve
the country or his President by permitting Stanton to bullyrag him.
Welles had assumed the rebels would take the Memmack on a trial run,
enabling Union spies to calculate its seaworthiness and speed, but the trial
run turned out to be a surprise attack. The ship, he knew, was under the
command of Commodore Franklin Buchanan, an excellent sailor, the founder
and first superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the fact
that the Confederacy entrusted this command to him demonstrated the seri-
ousness of their endeavor. Several newspapers, especially Frank Leslie's Illus-
trated Weekly, had reported the rebel work on the raised ship and wondered
why the Union had no similar iron-cladding going on. Welles had sent a
message only the other day to the Brooklyn yard, where the Monitor was
being rushed to complete its trials, countermanding the order to hurry down
to Hampton Bays and ordering her instead to the Potomac for the defense of
Washington, which the President always considered paramount. Evidently
Welles's message had arrived too late, and the "tin can on a shingle" of
designer Ericsson was on its way to the battle scene.
"Ram," said Stanton, lurching out of his chair to resume his pacing. "If
our shells bounce off her armor, the Merrimack could still be rammed and
sunk, the way she rammed the Cumberland. "
"We have no ship with an iron prow and rammer," Welles began, but
Stanton interrupted with "Then build an iron rammer on the front of the
biggest, heaviest ship you have! Do it today!"
When Welles looked disdainful, Seward put in, "Maybe there's merit in
that suggestion, Mr. Secretary. We have to try."
"I have already ordered the Vanderbilt be fitted with such equipment," said
Welles.
"Where is it?" A flicker of hope showed in Stanton's face.
"It will be ready in two weeks."
"Two weeks!" Stanton repeated, with the same sarcasm he had used for
"two guns" on the Monitor. He went to the door. "I have to warn the gover-
nors. I've imposed tight military censorship on everything coming out of Fort
Monroe, and we're the only outsiders who know of the Memmack's ram-
page. Now the damned telegraph lines are down and we can't find out any-
thing ourselves. But I'm going to tell our coastal cities to get ready to defend
themselves. Maybe they can place obstructions at the mouth of their harbors.
We cannot just sit here and do nothing!"
He ran out to the telegraph office, to send, Welles was sure, terrified and
terrifying messages to the governors of coastal states and to the mayors of
Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
Two tense hours later, Lincoln returned from the Navy Yard looking
dispirited. "I have frightful news," he said, relating some more details he had
picked up of the Memmack's rampage. "Dahigren doesn't know any more
about what to do than we do," he reported. "While I was there, the com-
mander received an order from Stanton to load sixty barges and sink them at
Kettle Bottom Shoals, to block the passage up the Potomac."
"I know," Welles said. "Dahigren has since sent me a message asking if
Stanton's order was by my authority. I told him no."
General McClellan nodded agreement. "Blocking the river would isolate us
from Hampton Roads," he said sensibly, "but it would also isolate our opera-
tions in and around Richmond from support from here."
"First let's see what the Monitor can do," repeated Welles, gambling on an
unproved vessel in an unknown type of war. He hoped that his animosity
toward Stanton had not affected his naval judgment. He was a Connecticut
newspaper editor, and had never claimed to be an expert in naval warfare.
But if the age of the wooden warships was ended, there were no experts in
naval warfare.
Lincoln, caught in the crossfire of conflicting military advice, temporized.
"I'll tell Dahigren to get the barges and load them up," said the President,
"but not to sink them on the shoals unless he sees the Merrimack approach-
ing."
"I trust that will come out of the army's budget," said Welles.
Lincoln opened his mouth to say something, then shut it, closed his eyes
and nodded.
Jack Worden felt sick. He had joined the United States Navy at sixteen,
served twenty-eight years waiting for action, but when the war started he had
been captured on land trying to run secret dispatches. He had spent seven
months in a rebel prison, was exchanged, and on his return to duty as a
lieutenant was given a ship to command that no senior officer wanted: the
small experimental ironclad Monitor.
One week after it was commissioned at Brooklyn, a tug started dragging it
down to Chesapeake Bay. Sitting low in the water, the low-slung craft did not
hold up well in rough seas. Water cascaded down the blower pipes into the
engine room; for forty-eight hours the sixty-man crew was hand-pumping
water and trying to keep the vessel afloat.
Nobody had slept during the two days and nights of that ordeal, but that
was a fight with the elements that sailors had to expect. What sickened
Worden now was the sight at Hampton Roads as the Monitor was dragged
around Cape Henry.
Carnage had overtaken the Union Navy. He could see the remains of the
ruined Cumberland, the Congress and the crippled Minnesota run aground
and sitting prey for the marauding Memmack in the morning. Hundreds of
sailors were dead and dying, burning in the hulks or drowned trying to swim
away. Worden climbed out the top of the turret down to the iron deck, nearly
at sea level, and looked for the largest ship afloat. That was the frigate Roa-
noke. It had sent out a boat to bring him aboard.
The captain of the Roanoke, John Marston, tried to express the horror of
the day and could not. "We couldn't run," he said a few times. "The Cumber-
land gave her a broadside, and we could see the shots bouncing off the ar-
mor."
"Damage her at all?" Even an ironclad, Worden had been warned, could
feel the impact of a shell.
"Maybe a little. When the Memmack rammed the Cumberland and sank
her, the iron rammer broke off, so she can't do that again."
"Captain Smith?" Worden knew him.
"Dead; shell blew his head off. They never had a chance. And then when
she ran the Congress aground and started raking her," Marston reported,
"the Congress gunners may have knocked out a couple of guns through the
Merrimack's portholes. But she's a deadly machine. The navy will never be
the same. It's not fair this way."
"The Memmack can't hurt the Monitor, " Worden told him with more
confidence than he felt. He might be David facing Goliath, but this time
Goliath had an advantage in the number of slingshots. Luckily, the Mer-
rimack's ram was broken; that meant the Monitor could move in close and
slug it out.
The captain of the wooden frigate looked over the rail toward Worden's
little ship and did not seem impressed. "You the only ironclad coming? Don't
we have a ship the size of theirs?"
Worden ignored that. "Where will the Memmack attack tomorrow morn-
ing?"
"At the Minnesota, ready for the kill," the pilot said with certainty. "She's
stuck aground and can't move. She can't fight the monster off, and the Min-
nesota won't strike her flag."
Worden decided to slip alongside the Minnesota to await the attack. He had
no concern about running aground; the Monitor drew only ten feet of water
and could maneuver anywhere. A large wave might sink her, but she was
undeniably maneuverable, and Ericsson's invention of a revolving turret
made it possible to fire its 11-inch guns in any direction at any time. Lying
alongside the crippled Minnesota, he would surprise the Merrimack.
Marston then surprised him by saying he had a packet of orders to deliver
to the captain of the Monitor from the Secretary of the Navy. Worden took
the packet, started to read, and could not believe his eyes. Gideon Welles was
ordering him up the Potomac to defend Washington.
According to the orders, the commander of naval forces in Hampton
Roadsthat was now Captain Marstonhad been directed by the Secretary
of the Navy not to let the experimental ship engage the Merrimack "except
for some pressing emergency." Worden shook his head: Here, with the United
States Navy half destroyed, on the verge of total destruction, the only ship
that might save the day was being ordered away from the scene of battle
why? Worden knew the answer: because the politicians in Washington were
fearful of an attack on the capital.
"The Secretary could not have given this order," said Worden, "knowing
what's going on down here." One of the messages had been sent to Brooklyn
to stop the tug from taking the Monitor down to Hampton Roads, and appar-
ently arrived hours after Worden had left. He was thankful for that.
"You might want to decide that a 'pressing emergency' may exist," said
Marston. "The Minnesota is about to be destroyed with all its sailors aboard.
So you might feel your duty is to ignore the secretary's orders and fight it out
here. But it's up to you."
Twenty-eight years in the navy. These were the first orders Worden had
ever received, or was ever likely to receive, from the secretary himself. What
was the course of duty? Maybe Gideon Welles had learned something about
the weakness of the Monitor, or some hidden strength of the Merrimack, that
Worden did not know; maybe grand strategic purpose lay behind the order,
unbeknownst to the men on the firing line. On the other hand, maybe some
people at headquarters were panicked at the prospect of the "monster" mov-
ing north; if so, the place to stop the Merrimack was here and now. If it could
not stop the slaughter of the men on the Minnesota here at Hampton Roads,
the Monitor would not be able to stop the capture of Washington by the
Merrimack steaming up the Potomac.
He felt the need to write a brief farewell to his wife. Marston took him into
his cabin and waited. Worden sealed it, handed it to Marston to deliver if
Worden were killed and Marston were not. "A pressing emergency causes me
to disregard the secretary's orders," he said, in case of a court-martial.
"I agree," said the commander of what was left of the Union fleet.
At 7:30 A.M First Officer Greene took his eye from the sighting hole in the
Monitor turret to announce, "It's coming. And Jesus, it does look like an iron
crocodile."
Worden looked and swallowed: the U.S.S. Merrimack, renamed the C.S.S.
Virginia, was an immensely ugly ship, black, smokestacks billowing, stubby
guns poking out of holes in the sides, moving like a turtle on land with none
of a turtle's grace in the water. Before the black ship could draw within range
of the Minnesota, Worden took the Monitor out to make his challenge.
The Monitor fired first, slamming its ISO-pound solid cannonballs into the
railroad iron on the side of the Merrimack. Worden looked for signs of dam-
age; he could see none, and wished that Commander Dahigren and his
damned Bureau of Ordnance had allowed designer Ericsson to use a powder
charge twice as strong. But if ever a ship could look surprised, that was the
appearance of the Confederate ironclad, slowing, turning, trying to lower the
level of its guns to point at the small annoyance in its way.
A blast from ten guns roared at Worden, who stepped back from the peep-
hole to receive damage. The Merrimack, expecting to meet the wooden Min-
nesota, had brought explosive shells, which banged harmlessly against the
round armored turret and low deck of the Monitor; Worden was glad his
enemy had not loaded up with solid cannonballs, which his ship could proba-
bly have taken but which might have caused more damage.
"Return fire," he commanded; "fire at will."
The two ships poured shot at each other, neither appearing to do damage.
The Merrimack captain, frustrated at the ineffectiveness of his shells, and
despite the absence of an iron ram, attempted a ramming maneuver. But the
big ship was ponderous; Worden easily turned aside his hull and let the giant
slip by, blazing at the rear as it passed, trying for a lucky hit in its steering
mechanism. He circled his opponent, pounding away like a cooper with a
hammer going round a cask. Worden did not know if any ship, even an
ironclad, could take so many direct hits from solid shot without being pro-
foundly damaged; even the few explosive shells that hit the Monitor caused
screw heads to fly off and spin about the inside of his ship.
A new danger: Worden saw the Merrimack come alongside with intent to
board. If an enemy force could land on top of his ship, they could stop up the
chimney and, armed with crowbars, pry open the hatch. Or they could set
rags afire and drop them down the air vents, or pour water in. Here, in a new
era of naval war, the rebels were trying a technique as old as any fighting at
sea. Worden gave them encouragement: he let them come temptingly close,
then he slipped quickly away.
The fight went on for four hours, neither adversary gaining an advantage,
with the obsolete wooden warships far in the distance, looking on, daring no
intervention in a battle of ironclads. The Monitor's sailors, stripped to the
waist, were blackened by powder.
"Aim near the waterline," Worden told First Officer Greene, "if we can get
two shots on top of each other, we can break through the armor and sink
her." The Monitor was delivering two shots every six minutes, but never two
near the same spot on the Merrimack.
"She's closing in again," said his first officer, at the peephole, "slower this
time. Having engine trouble."
"Let me see." Worden stepped up to the sighting tube and was surprised to
see the black armor of the Merrimack not ten yards away. He started to draw
back from the viewer but not quickly enough: a 9-inch shell fired point-blank
exploded against his turret, and it was as if fire were pouring through the
peephole. Blinded, his beard afire, Worden screamed in agony, rubbing his
hands against his beard, smearing his blood against the burning gunpowder.
"Sheer offi" he yelled.
When he could feel a wet towel being applied to his seared facehe hoped
he had not been unconscious longWorden croaked out the word, "Dam-
age?"
"That last shot lifted our turret a few inches," said Greene's voice, "and we
made it to the shallows. The Merrimack crew is cheering as if their ship won
the battle, but we're seaworthy. Shall I take her out again?"
"No," said Worden, hoping he would see again, "not unless she's moving
on the Minnesota. Did we save the Minnesota?"
"Yes. The Merrimack is out of range, and the ebb tide is running. The
Minnesota is safe," said his exec.
The three hundred sailors aboard the Minnesota were saved from execu-
tion. Worden counted that a fair day's work, even if not a victory. With the
Merrimack parading up and down, Southerners might claim triumph over the
smaller craft, which had retreated out of range to shallow water, but the
Monitor's job had been to stop the Merrimack, not sink her. The Minnesota
was saved. The blockade of the Southern ports was still on.
"She's pulling away," reported Greene. "I think she's headed back toward
Norfolk. Should I follow her out? Make it look more like we were chasing her
home? I hate to think the rebs will claim a victory."
"Let her be; she might turn on us and we're not in such good shape,"
Worden said before he passed out.
The surface under Worden was solid and soft, not pitching; he was on land.
His face was in bandages, a wet cloth across his eyes. A woman's voice said,
"President Lincoln is here to visit you," and removed the cloth. Worden's
vision was clouded, but he was not blind. He thanked God for that. He could
see the outline of the bearded face at his bedside, and he struggled up to lean
on an elbow in a kind of attention.
"You do me great honor," he whispered to the commander in chief.
"Not so," said the voice, higher-pitched than he would have imagined. "It
is you who honor me and your country."
"Where is my ship?"
"Where you left it, at Newport News," said President Lincoln. "I told the
Secretary of the Navy there was too much danger to your vessel to send it
after the Merrimack. "
"Good," said Worden. "Don't let them go skylarking up to Norfolk, un-
less"he reached for the phrase"there's a pressing emergency."
"I'll tell him that. You should know that the Merrimack caused us great
anxiety in Washington. Even now, we have a fleet of barges at Kettle Bottom
Shoals, just in case she makes a run north."
"She couldn't do it with those engines," Worden told him. "Underneath
the iron, it's just an old, raised, wooden ship." He wondered if Lincoln had
known of the order to bring the Monitor up to Washington rather than engage
the Merrimack, but it was not for him to ask.
"Then 'Stanton's navy'that's what they're calling it," said Lincoln, "and
Mars doesn't think it is very funnywill have little to do. Welles was opposed
to the scheme of sinking the barges in the shallows, and it seems Neptune was
right."
Lincoln sat on the edge of the bed. "Stanton's navy will be as useless as the
paps of a man to a suckling child. There may be some show to amuse th
child, but they are good for nothing for service."
Worden's bandages kept him from smiling, so he said "Heh-heh."
He felt his hand taken in a pair of big hands. "I'm recommending that yoi
be promoted to captain. You're a brave man."
"I wish I'd given you a real victory."
"When we don't lose, we win," said the President. "When they don't win
they lose. So you could call this a victory."

CHAPTER 7
COST OF LIVTNC

At the request of the cook, Kate Chase went to the tradesman's entrance of
the imposing brick house on Sixth and E to have a chat with the greengrocer.
She knew what was on his mind. The ten thousand dollars her father had
borrowed from Hiram Bamey for personal expenses had run out. The Secre-
tary of the Treasury did not want to borrow further from his own appointee,
the Collector of the Port of New York, but the real estate slump made it
impossible to sell the Chase house in Columbus, Ohio. That left the Chases
short on cash, with barely enough to pay the staff of six needed to maintain
the Washington mansion in the style demanded by a Treasury Secretary, and
Kate had to contend with irate tradesmen. She was becoming good at it; a
natural bent toward imperiousness helped.
"What seems to be the matter?" she asked.
"It's my bill, ma'am." The greengrocer was nervous. "It's past due for
three months now, and I would never trouble you"
"I should hope not. I put your bills aside because I noticed your prices
have become outrageous." She went on the attack. "The lettuce that cost five
cents a head when we came here last year is now eight cents. You're charging
nearly twice as much for potatoes. Explain that, if you please."
"It costs me more, ma'am. I don't grow it myself, the farmers who sell it to
me can get more selling it to the army, so they raised their prices to me."
"Profiteering," she said sternly.
"Not me!" The tradesman obviously knew who Chase was, and Kate knew
he must be worried about what an angry government official could do to his
business. When she reminded him that her father was personally occupied
with keeping the Memmack from shelling the food stores near the docks, he
hastily apologized for bothering her; backing away, he hoped she would get
around to his bill when it suited her.
She told the cook that Secretary Chase would be going to New York today,
and that she wanted a dinner for only four: Colonel James Garfield, a dark-
eyed Ohio legislator who now commanded a regiment here, and his homely
wife, and John Hay. Colonel Garfield, her father judged, had a good future in
Ohio politics and could be helpful against the Wade Ohio forces at the 1864
presidential convention; Kate agreed, enjoyed a flirtation with him, and had
made him her confidant. She had already arranged for the colonel to send the
Garfields' regrets at the last minute, to leave her alone with Hay. It was time,
she decided after the ball at the Executive Mansion, where the young man
had cut quite a figure, for them to be alone together.
In the breakfast room, her father was staring glumly at the two-day-old
New York Tribune. The Treasury Secretary looked up at her, smiled bravely,
kissed her extended cheek, and announced, "I fear we cannot pay our bills."
She concealed her alarm; had any of the tradesmen reached him directly?
The keeping of the Chase household books was her responsibility, which she
took seriously. The servants had been admonished never to let a complaining
supplier of any kind see Secretary Chase. If he saw how deeply in the red they
were, he would either sell his property in Ohio at distress prices, a prospect
intolerable to Kate, or would cut back on their style of living in Washington,
which would be unseemly for a potential President.
"Has anyone complained, Father?"
"Horace Greeley, for one," he replied.
That puzzled her. They did not subscribe to the New York Tribune; her
father brought it home from the office.
"Here is what he says," he said, shaking the paper: " 'The Treasury has
been virtually empty for a month; at least one hundred millions of dollars are
this moment due to people who need their pay and ought to have it; among
them are thousands of volunteers who have suffered and dared for thirteen
dollars a month'that's how much a private soldier receives in pay, my dear
'and whose families are suffering for the two, three, four, and even five
months' pay which the country promised them and of which they have not
yet received one cent.' "
"What a terrible thing to publish." She sighed in relief. It was the Treasury
of the United States that could not pay the bills.
"The terrible part is, Greeley's right," Chase said. "The Treasury is empty.
It's bad enough that I cannot pay the soldiers in the field, which is terrible for
morale. But I cannot pay the government's suppliers and contractors."
"Pay them with your new paper money."
"Yes, the infamous Legal Tender Act enables me to do that. But the new
green paper won't be ready until April. Payment in gold and silver coin was
suspended at the beginning of the year, and my demand notes were not
declared legal tender until last week." He leaned back in his chair, awed at
the financial crisis over which he was presiding. "That means for three
months no lawful money has been circulating."
She sat down and spooned some honey onto a piece of toast. "What do
people do? How do people manage without money?"
"That's the amazing thing," her father said. "Bank checks and notes are
being accepted by people, despite the fact the notes and checks are not good
for gold, and no paper money yet exists. By all rights there should be a panic,
but there's not. Everybody seems to think I'll straighten it all out in a little
while."
"They have faith in you," she said, meaning it, "and so do 1."
"So does Lincolntoo much at times. He doesn't want to bother his head
with any of these monumental problems and leaves it entirely to me. For
example, he doesn't know the first thing about gold."
"Gold doesn't seem to be so important now, does it?"
"True," he said. "We don't need gold because people know we don't need
gold. We're mining plenty in California. And because of the war and the
tariff, we're not buying from overseas, while we're still selling to Europe. That
means no gold is going overseas, and there's no panic. You only need gold
when you need golddoes that make sense?"
"Confidence is everything," she replied. Garfield had explained that to her.
"But what's worrying you?"
"First, I cannot pay the current bills. Second, the printing of paper money,
untied to gold, will surely lead to the inflation of the currency."
She remembered his reference to thousand-dollar breakfasts in his talk with
Jay Cooke. "Wouldn't the war bring the inflation even with gold coins in
use?"
He looked at her in surprise turning to admiration. "I do not know the
answer to that, my dear. And the fact that I do not is another reason to
worry. However, yours is a profound question. I will put it to the bankers in
New York."
She changed the subject. "Father, whose picture will appear on the paper
money?"
"I'm being given the honor of appearing on the thousand-dollar-bill. The
President will appear on the lower-denomination notes." He paused at her
frown. "Do you think that will cause criticism?"
"I think it's a mistake," she decided. "Let Lincoln have the honor of being
on the big bills, the ones the banks use. Your face should be on the ones and
fives and tens, the money people will use every day. Think of 1864."
"I try not to think about the next presidential election," he said immedi-
ately, and then caught her skeptical look. "Of course you're right, Kate. We'll
give the President the honor of being on the big notes. I'll be in the people's
pockets."
"No President since Jackson has been reelected," she said, warming to her
favorite subject, "and Lincoln will not even be renominated."
"Don't be so sure," he said. "We underestimated him last time, Seward and
1. If Lincoln and McClellan go along this way, taking their time on fighting
the war, avoiding the abolition of slavery, then there is a good chance we'll
have peace next yearthe Union preserved, slavery intact in the South. And
then Lincoln would be unbeatable."
"That would be a disaster."
"Stanton's my only ally in the Cabinet," he said, examining political assets
and liabilities with her, as they often did, "and he's a War Democrat. Among
the Republicans, the Biairs despise me as I do them. Seward is now com-
pletely in Lincoln's pocketan amazing transformation of that man. If Lin-
coln cannot win the Republican nomination, he and Thurlow Weed will con-
nive to deliver the nomination to Seward."
Kate went to the window, arms crossed, thinking. She stared at the half-
built monument to Washington. Why was Lincoln protecting McClellan, who
was so notoriously pro-slavery? Why did Lincoln not side with Wade and the
Republican radicals in the abolition cause?
Because, she concluded, Lincoln wanted to occupy the middle ground and
stay where majority opinion was likely to be: "the Union as it was," reunited,
with slavery allowed to continue in the South but prohibited extension into
new states, combined with a freedom-purchase scheme buying freedom for
negroes in the South over the next thirty or forty years. Smart reelection
politics, staying in the midstream of the majority.
What would be an effective way to head that off? She had discussed that
with both Garfield and Roscoe Conkling, a New York Congressman and
would-be beau. First, it would be necessary to break off Lincoln's support
from War Democrats; that meant a wedge had to be driven between Lincoln
and McClellan. General McClellan had to go; Stanton, a War Democrat
himself, would be the man to bring McClellan down, which would cost Lin-
coln the support of conservatives and soldiers, who adored the Young Napo-
leon. It was also important to crush McClellan before he won the war, which
would catapult him into the presidency.
Next, her father would have to be sure that he, and not Lincoln, received
the credit for the smashing of slavery. Slavery was not the issue in the whole
North, but slavery was the central issue in the Republican Party, and that
was the group that was to deliver the nomination. Alongside Wade in the
Senate and Stevens in the House, Chaseand not Lincolncould be identi-
fied as the leader of the anti-slavery cause in the Executive Branch.
The political course became obvious: to use pro-slavery McClellan to dis-
credit Lincoln in Republican eyes. Stanton was an ally in this, along with
Republican radicals Wade and Greeley; conservatives Seward and the Biairs
were the enemy.
Despite the niggling money worries, despite the dangers of the untested
legal tender, she was more than ever convinced that Salmon Portland Chase's
day as President would not be denied. Kate Chase would be a worthy "first
Lady of the land," in the phrase Russell of the London Times was applying to
Mary Lincoln. Kate knew she could be the best first Lady yet, bringing style
and elegance, intellect and youth, to a place that had been occupied by a
series of frumpy old wives or simpering presidential daughters. The nation
deserved more.
And it would be fun. The war would be over, the gaiety returned, no more
dreary restraints on great levees and sparkling balls. She would give the
nation a presidential house it needed after the tragic years, helping to lift the
spirit of her countrymen. When the moment came for her to wed, she would
have the grandest wedding Washington had ever seen, turning the East Room
into a bower of white flowers. Not least of all, there would be no more money
worries; presidents, Kate assumed, had great secret sources of funds, and first
Ladies did not have to deal with bill collectors.
FHAPT R R

JOHN HAY'S DIAR~
MARCH 15. 1862

Everybody except Father Neptune looks a little sheepish this week. Nobody
wants to talk about the way Stanton treated the attack of the Merrimack as
the end of the world, and frankly, the way the Tycoon kept getting up to look
out the window for the oncoming iron monster was nothing he can be proud
about, either. In retrospect, our reaction was alarmiste, but at the time,
frankly, the situation was pretty scary.
One result of the success of the Monitor is the new respect everyone is
paying what seemed up to now to be crackbrained schemes. Pinkerton has a
woman spy down in Richmond who reports that the rebels are working on a
sub-marine, a ship that goes under water and shoots projectiles they call
torpedoes. That seemed a pipe dream, but after the Merrimack, who knows
what the rebels have up their sleeves? Our ordnance is working on a gun
wheel proposed by Mr. Gatling that fires God knows how many rounds a
minute and would give a two-man crew the firing power of a company. Then
there is a plan for the use of hot-air balloons for reconnaissance, but since
General Fitz-John Porter, McClellan's favorite, almost got blown into the
enemy camp trying one out, there's been a go-slow on balloon ascensions.
The other result of the scare is that the Ancient of Days is personally going
to make damn well certain that the nation's capital is not left undefended.
Just as the Monitor was told not to go skylarking after the Merrimack in
Norfolk, the troops needed to defend Washington are not going to be sent
skylarking down to Richmond. No matter what McClellan wants or says he
needs.
The Prsdt has split his difference with Little Napoleon. He has grudgingly
approved McC's plan to sail down the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay to the
Peninsula between the James and York rivers and to attack Richmond from
the east. At the same time, he has removed McClellan's title as General-in-
Chief and set up a board of Republican generals, in four army corps nomi-
nally under him, to watch what Little Mac does.
The fig leaf offered Little Mac for his removal as overall commander of the
war is that he will now be too busy in the field, as head of the Army of the
Potomac, taking Richmond, to direct the war in the West. Actually, it's a
trade: McClellan gets his way and can invade the South the easy way, by
water, and Lincoln punishes him for dawdling throughout the winter by
taking away his cherished title.
What makes the Prsdt uncomfortable about the Peninsula expedition is
that it leaves Washington relatively naked of defenders. On the overland route
to Richmond, via Bull Run, we would at all times have our army between the
rebels and our capital. Let all the generals talk about the wisdom of this river
maneuver, Lincoln still remembers how it was here in Washington only a year
ago, cut off from the North"There is no North"and even how it was
right after the debacle at Bull Run. No more of that.
So, instead of giving McClellan all the men he wants for a swing down the
river, the Prsdt will send General McDowell, no fan of McClellan's, by the
direct route overland toward Richmond with another armythat way, there
will be a defending army between the rebels and Washington at all times. If
this leaves Little Mac believing he is being pushed into battle with one hand
tied behind his back, so be it. He wasn't here when a cavalry foray could have
captured the President and Cabinet.
Some funny business is going on between Halleck and Grant out West.
Courtesy of Mars, who monitors all the messages between generals, I have a
telegram from Halleck to McClellan that reads: "A rumor has reached me
that since the taking of Fort Donelson General Grant has resumed his former
bad habits." That means drunkenness. "If so, it will account for his neglect of
my oft-repeated orders. I do not deem it advisable to arrest him at present,
but have placed General Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennes-
see." Mac then replied to the effect that if Grant is drunk, arrest him.
Jealous military backstabbing is what Grant's patron saint, Congressman
Washbume, has been insisting is at the root of the rumors, and he has been in
with his assurances that all the stuff about drinking is slander. Hence Halleck
was given overall command in the West, but Grant was singled out for pro-
motion to major general. Lincoln likes Grant because "he fights," which is his
tacit way of goading the Young Napoleon, who takes his time preparing to
execute some grand maneuver. But hell would be to pay if Grant goes into
battle with a sword in one hand and a bottle in another.
Old Man Blair, who backs McClellan, told me that Lincoln is learning how
to use certain unpopular people as criticism-absorbersthat's why he has
Stanton, to be the hated disciplinarian while Lincoln signs the pardons. Is the
Tycoon really that devious? A year ago, I would not have thought so; now, I
don't know.
I have a rendezvous tonight. I shall not reveal the identity of my compan-
ion lest this diary fall into enemy hands. But how can a man be simultane-
ously smitten and distrustful? All my life, through all my conquests, tri-
umphs, glories, spoils, I have assumed that love and trust, like liberty and
union, were one and inseparable. Now the one I love most is the one I trust
least. Strange. Is she like McClellan, or will she fight?

CHAPTER 9
HAYLOFT

"The Garfields could not come," she told him at the door. "We're dining
alone."
John Hay professed a look of alarm.
"The house is full of servants," she added. "Your honor will not be endan-
gered."
"Send them all home," he said bravely.