Part 33

How vividly I summon up the hundreds of exhausted soldiers in the streets of Washington.

I watched them from the White House, a stream of muddy, rain-soaked men, walking through a downpour, going nowhere. Men without guns, without knapsacks; some men covered with blankets. Some staggered. Some fell, lay on the street. Women brought coffee. There were Michigan men, New York men, Minnesota men—defeated, defeated at Bull Run. The broken regiments struggled all along Pennsylvania Avenue. Victims of panic—defeat. Not a drum sounded. All took place in rain-washed silence. Men without shoes, men leaning on one another.

I ordered the White House staff and military guard to provide coffee, food, blankets, shelter.

Hundreds passed...all day long.

For a long while after this there were conferences, men realizing that Washington could be attacked. A long time before the city was protected.

Defeat, I am told, is a particular kind of crucifixion. I know. I have thought—

October 24, ’64

I wish I could go bowling, swap yarns.

When I bowl I really never care whether I win. When I make a good score it is luck. It is talk I enjoy. It gives me an uplift. It’s an exchange, maybe, if I relate one of my circuit stories.

I can not go bowling when men are dying. There is no escape. I should not look for an escape. I want cessation of conflict. Enduring peace. I wish to command a strong nation, a great nation that can stand before the world as an example of what men can achieve.

A sadness pervades our White House gardens, a more than autumn sadness.

Mary and I tried to make a haven of our garden whenever possible. Sunsets have been Potomac sunsets, wilderness and prairie sunsets. Nevertheless, that great stillness intrudes as we walk and talk about our family and obligations. Flowers lie in Mary’s lap, as we sit on a bench. She smiles.

Now four years have come and gone.

We measure those years, wanting to understand. We no longer speculate about the future, our future. Life, for the moment, is held in balance like an upraised oar.

Was it yesterday, after the rain, with a faint rainbow, that the sentries paced along the far side of the gardens, and a white duck waddled toward us?

The White House

November 3rd, 1864

“We have seen our courthouse in chains, two battalions of dragoons, eight companies of artillery, twelve companies of infantry, the whole constabulary force of the city police, the entire disposable marine of the United States, with its artillery loaded for action, all marching in support of a Praetorian band, consisting of 120 friends and associates of the United States Marshall, with loaded pistols and drawn swords, and in military costume and array—for what purpose? To escort and conduct a poor trembling slave from a Boston courthouse to the fetters and lash of his master! This display of military force the mayor of this city officially declared to be necessary,” so wrote our Harvard University friend, old Josiah Quincy. He also added, that summer in ’54, “Slaveholders have multiplied their black cattle by the million; and are every day increasing their numbers, and extending their cattle field into the wilderness...”

I respond to those impressive words with mine, since the slave issue dies hard.

The ant who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest will furiously defend the fruit of his labor against whatever robber assails him. So plain that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master does constantly know that he is wronged. So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume after volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself.

Certainly, though a man may escape death and injury in the front lines, changes brought about by the war may alienate him at home, after he leaves the army, if he still has a home. The black who has fought for the North may find his Southern neighbors have become enemies. The black who has found a measure of recognition while serving will find a lack of recognition after the war.

We have made little or no provision for the wounded. Our hospitals are inadequate. Southerners will return to their farms with little more than the horse that saw combat. Custom dictates that he reject the negro.

As a nation, we are in a maelstrom of change. It is my hope that the church may help democratize. As I study the Washington archive I learn essential facts, but these facts are not disseminated. How are we to coordinate these state laws? Missouri hardly comprehends the laws of Massachusetts.

Justice—many strive for justice. Efforts must be doubled. I hope it may be said that I was just.

There are nights when I can not sleep. I get up and pace the floor of my bedroom or go into my office.

Many continue to threaten my life; so I do not walk the streets of Washington. If I were home again I could walk freely. In Springfield, it is pleasant to imagine, I would shake off the war trauma. I think old skies would reassure me. But days in Springfield will not return. I have lost more than half my life here—but it was not the ax that cut me down. What was it, in all truth? Craving for glory? For power? I accept those weaknesses but above them is my desire to help my country, to balance the welfare of our people.

The White House

—cold, rainy—

Very often my commanding officers prove to be inadequate and I have to substitute one for another. Most officers, I find, shun advice or suggestions. Grant and Sherman are the best listeners. Ours is a mutual respect. Grant has the essential military skill to control the entire armed force. He also has ample courage for his job (it takes courage to fling men into battle; I also send men to death).

Sleep continues to be difficult to come by...peace is difficult to come by we know by now...hope is hard to come by.

It is curious and amusing to look at life across time: man knows his detours: it is incredible how he has fumbled his way through the centuries. In spite of the fumbling, I believe in mankind.

Executive Mansion

Christmas

CHRISTMAS—1864.

Mary and Robert and I have exchanged gifts.

We have given many presents to Tad.

Late in the afternoon, we placed a wreath on Willie’s grave.

This evening I received this telegram from General Sherman:

“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah.

– William T. Sherman”

Wintry

Rain beats on the White House, rain mixed with snow.

Old newspaper clippings remind me that six thousand soldiers died in an hour at the battle of Cold Harbor.

Another clipping reminds me of Gettysburg.

Another...

I have been reading the fifth chapter of Isaiah. It does not help. It seems there are days when nothing helps.

If re-elected, how shall I live through a second term? But I must; there is work to be done; I am the best to carry out honesty for all. I want no recriminations.

Perhaps I can find peace, someday, in Europe. My son, Robert, is ill-disposed toward me. There is Tad, poor little wounded Tad.

Mary is ill, seriously ill.

Now, I shall open the Bible once more.

3

Late

S

ince many of our soldiers are fifteen or sixteen years old, I am aware that discipline is wanting, both discipline and stamina. Yet they fight furiously, build bridges, lay rails. They fight with their muzzle-loaders, cannon, mortar, bayonet. Most of them had never heard a gun fired except while out hunting. In a grim sense we are witnessing a youth crusade against injustice. For $13.00 a month they are fighting a man’s war. And dying is a man’s job. Poor children, crawling out of some entrenchment, they fraternize during a lull—swap tobacco for coffee. They soon learn that our hospitals are dangerous places. Tents. Barns. Churches. Sheds.

We accepted this war for a worthy objective, and the war will end when that goal has been attained. We must succeed. This war has taken four years! It was begun or accepted to restore national authority over the whole national domain. Yes, we must succeed.

The White House

Office

The pigeonholes of my desk contain reports of disgraced militiamen, unfortunate prisoners of war, civilian and military spies, reports that demand that ultimate yes or no. I study these reports, I weigh each one carefully; some two thousand reach me every month. Across the Potomac River, as I write, I hear gunfire, Virginia gunfire. Perhaps this is Butcher Day—our men are facing a Confederate firing squad.

I am reprimanded. Officers protest I weaken army morale when I commute a death sentence. Yesterday I pardoned William Scott, Vermonter, Company L, who fell asleep while on sentinel duty at a Potomac bridge. Nineteen years old, a farm boy, he was undoubtedly accustomed to going to bed at dusk. I rode to the Potomac River Camp and found Scott handcuffed in his tent.

“Boy,” I said, “I’m going to send you back to Company L.”

Boys can do us more good above ground. If a man had more than one life to live, I believe a little hanging would not hurt him too much...but he has one life.

Nothing exhausts me more than death sentences, death warrants, death. Young life is priceless. There are thirty million people involved in this war. Youth must be considered, if we are to survive.

I want to write something about my old friend, the Virginian, Ward Hill Lamon, of Danville days. Hill is my volunteer guardian, spy, Rabelaisian crony, scribe. Time and again he bundles up and sleeps all night in the hall outside my bedroom door, a derringer at hand. He is constantly alarmed I may be assassinated. He upbraids me when I ride alone in the White House carriage.

“That stupid coachman can’t look after you... I want a dozen or half-dozen cavalrymen to attend you.”

Evenings, Hill may appear and size me up, and sing a sad little song or a bobtail-nag melody, thrumming his banjo. Husky, courageous, he befriends me every day. Breakfasting together, he has a kernel of advice for me, I’m sure.

I have borrowed his hat, borrowed his cloak, but not his boots.

“As President, it is incumbent on you to look after your own boots and your own umbrellas,” he says.

As warden he has problems with both North and South; it aggravates him when he has to confer with me; he wants to be the little eagle. On our frequent visits to the hospitals he is always sympathetic. “Somebody’s Wallace,” he says, remembering one of my stories. Playing his banjo he will sing “Picayune Butler,” his southern accent warm and beautiful, delighting the sick and wounded.

Often, late at night, we talk of Danville, circuit friends, horses; he is adept at driving off my melancholia.

“The war is going to end soon,” he prophesizes. “It has to end soon...it’s hard to get hold of new banjo strings.”

The White House

January 5, 1865

So, another year has come into being.

“Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, waiting for the war to cease...”

For days I have been remembering that song. Yesterday, as I rode in the barouche, the melody kept time to the trotting of the horses.

Wind and sun helped, as we rode.

Alone, I was able to commune with nature, able to consider the Potomac, the trees along its banks, the finished dome of the capitol, the monument to George Washington. For a while I was able to survey the property, measure it, plan a city layout.

The barouche horses are bays, a young pair, well- trained, handsomely harnessed. My driver is a stalwart from Rhode Island; he says he used to work in a cotton mill; now, he looks forward to a job in a warmer climate.

We talk about the chestnuts and the oaks; for a mill worker he is well-informed about trees; suddenly, our drive is over.

Late

Nightmares occur.

I sit up in bed and recall in vivid detail scenes I have never witnessed, men dying under artillery and rifle fire, tent amputations, men struggling across a muddy, swollen river, a firing squad where men are shot down as I sit in a rocking chair.

I say nothing to anyone about these dreams but they are a weight to my world.

Lately, it is difficult to eat; I forget or refuse my lunch on its tray; coffee helps. I long to get away for a week or ten days.

Sunday

—windy and cool—

A heavy hog to hold, this war.

Sometimes people in Kentucky are loyal to the Union; sometimes not; it depends on whether General Lee has lost or won a battle.

Men find me lacking as the nation’s attorney. Some demand that I plot the future. I remember that the pilots on our western rivers steer from point to point—as they call it—setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see. That is how I propose to handle some of the problems set before me.

I seldom forget that it is a momentous thing to be the instrument for the liberation of a race.

I look out of the window, at the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the lawn; it puts me in mind of that lonely bronze figure atop the White House dome, a woman, symbol of liberty, visible for miles—cast by slave labor.

Was Jefferson’s statue cast by slaves?

Monday

—windy and cool—

There are something like a thousand deserters every month, Northern men and Southern men. I see them being marched through the city, all kinds, bareheaded, with caps, hats, with bandaged heads, with bandanas, handsome fellows, sickly fellows, wounded men, dirty, most of them in worn-out uniforms—miles of men mixed with leather, steel, horses, guns, wagons, riders, guards.

450,000 widows and mothers have lost their men.

White House

January 10, 1865

How well some officers understand one another, with a hem and a haw, with a nod or lifted hand. They are masters of military deception, just as politicians are masters of ambiguity. The colonels have their lingo; the majors have theirs.

I confront them with a plan of action. They bow over a map. Immediately, I sense that their secret codes are in operation. They guess that I am suspicious; I see that when a lieutenant touches the general’s knee. I decline the general’s offer of a cigar; he has forgotten I do not smoke. The men light up. Smoke hovers over the map. Brady appears. He wants to take some photographs. Some men sit, some stand. All the time the subtle deceptions continue. It is my job, as Commander-in-Chief, to ferret out honesty and promote it.

Troops are marching by.

Drums.

There is no room for humor.

The White House

January 12, 1865

Behind a hospital, the other day, I saw a wheelbarrow filled with amputated hands, arms, and legs.

I walked up close to the barrow, uncertain what I saw there. A hand reached out for my hand.

I held that hand. The stiff fingers were those of a farmer—a man from Tennessee or Illinois, a corn-husker’s hand.

I saw a boy’s hand next to the farmer’s.

I wanted to put those amputated pieces back in their proper world. All those pieces, the hands, legs, feet, wanted to return to the woods, the prairie, the barns, the canoes, the plantations.

As I write down these words my hands are not steady.

The White House

January 20, 1865

A month or so ago, I wrote General Grant on behalf of Robert. Now that Robert has graduated from Harvard, he insists on joining the army. I agree. Grant has replied and has given him a captain’s commission, and he is to become a member of Grant’s personal staff. Robert has not written me; perhaps he had learned of his mother’s parental concern and has included me as an obstruc- tionist. Now he is less likely to be bayoneted or blown to shreds while on the General’s staff.

Another of Mary’s brothers has been killed in action. Her fears for Robert are understandable.

I must impress her that fewer White House levees are in order. I realize it was proper to honor Prince Napoleon but there are few such obligations. I shun ostentation. We have no right to ostentation these war times. That money that goes into ostentation can go into blankets for the soldiers.

A calm evening

Late

“Devoutly to be wished”...to have a woman, enjoy her physically; yet preserve essential private values.

A helpmeet, yes, but it has been my misfortune to never encounter such a woman who was also a woman.

Early in life, at East Salem, I learned about the unhappiness of others.

Misguided lives are powerful guideposts.

In the wilderness I found something mystic, something out of self for self. It taught me to be legally self.

In Springfield, I studied its citizens, its girls and women; I found that being an outsider was wise.

My wisdom is indeed my misfortune.

The White House

2/15/65

Yesterday a woman came to me, crying, sobbing, pleading for the release of one of her sons from service, since her husband and three sons were in the army.

I wrote a discharge for one of her sons and gave her instructions where to go and what to say, to get her lad released.

She found the military camp, regiment, company; she found her son wounded, dying in a nearby hospital. After his death she begged:

“Mr. President, will you give me the next one of my boys?” Again she produced official papers.

“I have just lost a son... I have another,” I managed to say. As she stood beside my chair I wrote a release; as I wrote she placed her hand on my head and smoothed my hair with a mother’s touch.

When I gave her the document she ran sobbing, crying her thanks.

The White House

2/18/65

Again I admit that dreams have perplexed me. I also think them significant if we can interpret them properly.

Last week I had a dream that has haunted me ever since. After it occurred I opened the Bible. Strange as it may seem, it was at the 28th chapter of Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream of Jacob. I turned to other passages... I seemed to encounter a vision wherever I looked.

I should not have related the dream to Mary but the thing got possession of me, and, like Banquo’s ghost, it would not down.

As I told her I felt something grabbing at my throat.

About ten days ago I went to bed late. I had been waiting for important dispatches from the front. I was very weary and fell asleep as soon as I lay down. Then I began to dream.

There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me; then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same sobbing, but any mourners were invisible. I walked from room to room; every object was familiar. I was puzzled, alarmed. I kept on until I arrived at the East Room. There I met a sickening surprise.

Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse, in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers acting as guards. Beyond the soldiers was a crowd.

“Who is dead in the White House?” I asked one of the soldiers.

“The President,” he replied. “He was killed by an assassin.”

An outburst of grief came from the crowd.

I woke...

Mary was very disturbed by my dream; I gained nothing by telling her; in tears she threw herself on her bed.

“Don’t repeat your dream to anyone,” she said.

2/21/65

How blustery, more like December or January; it will be raining soon.

This morning, when it was more pleasant, I visited the Potomac Book Shop where Willie and I used to buy books. Here and there were a few soldiers. I was pleased, especially when one of them asked me if I would recommend a book of poetry.

On my last visit I bought Pope’s Essay on Man. I noticed a British copy bound in morocco. At the Potomac I have acquired some Emerson, Wordsworth, Longfellow. I picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass, but it did not appeal to me. The shop reminds me of one in Boston; I told the owner; he laughed: “The shop you mention belongs to my brother... I furnished this one with Boston pieces.”

I hope I can get Tad to take an interest in learning to read. Willie’s enthusiasm did not rub off on him.

Returning to the White House, one of our horses threw a shoe.

February 27, ’65

Hill tells me we have imprisoned a Confederate citizen who was delivering a £40,000 draft to the Southern forces. He also jailed a M. Louis de Bedian, who had letters of credit ($39,000), for the Confederate army. He has apprehended Charles Kopperl, Washington resident, who boasts that he killed Union soldiers. Obviously, Washington has strange, determined men.

Some countrymen objected to Hill’s political imprisonments, and I am criticized, in turn. Again nepotism ghosts.

Billy Herndon has walked into my office. Our get- together seemed as though we were in Springfield, in the old office. I threw out questions about friends; he had the answers. The weather favored us as we rambled around Washington, in the presidential coach. Together we explored the White House—Billy’s highpoint. We had dinner, with Tad at our table.

Billy gave Tad a hand-carved pony express rider, in walnut. My books interested Billy. He thought my walnut bed a world’s wonder. “Is it really nine feet long!” The carvings on the headboard amused him, and the wooden nest with its walnut eggs, under my side table. We parted reluctantly.

I wish I had ten men of his caliber to work with here. He went away quite shaken by the cost of the war. “How could it be...$2,000,000 every single day... Can our country recover such an outlay?”

March 9th

The Library

We can not escape history. We, of this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation.

The great books in this room confirm this. The sun in the windows has promise.

Spring is with us along the Potomac. Through my open windows I hear it.

I wish I could place a sprig of lilacs on my mother’s grave.

Tomorrow we will visit Willie’s grave, but we will leave Tad with friends. His new pony is coming in a day or two; that will make him happy. I bought a Shetland, brown and white.

Mallards mix with small craft. There’s not a breath of air moving; life is making a turn.

Wednesday

After reviewing troops on Monday I had that dream. I was staring at myself in a mirror, a full length mirror. I was seeing myself double—double vision. This time I seemed to perceive myself as traitor. Traitor to what?

Reviewing troops is an experience that shatters satis- faction. How can a man, a thoughtful man, watch men on parade and minimize the fact that some or all of those men will soon be dead or wounded? Or will maim or kill other men?

Last Monday the troops slogged past in heavy rain.

White House

Monday morning

The signs look better. Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case to pay the cost.

And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it.

The White House

Saturday

Again I have visited the Patent Office, this time in the evening, after a tedious meeting. I was accompanied by my escort, cavalrymen with rattling sabers, spirited horses. At the Office I was struck by a vivid recollection of how it used to be, before the war, the rows of cabinets and cases, each containing models of inventions.

Now cases and cabinets have been pushed aside or removed. Flush along the walls are row after row of wounded, as many as four rows deep, the wounded and their beds and cots reflected in dull glass doors.

Lamps and candles gleamed and smoked among the soldiers. I shook hands, passing from row to row. I talked, sat down. Here were signs of resignation, flashes of courage and hope.