been friends to the Confederate States since before the War of Secession. The United States should have had ready a plan to fight at the same time all three countries.'
'I remember you saying that,' Rosecrans replied. 'I have to tell you, I didn't take it seriously then. Do you really mean to tell me that back in Berlin you've got a plan for war against France and one for war against France and England and one for war against France and England and Russia and one for-'
'Aber natiirlich,' Schlieffen broke in. 'And we think of also Austria-Hungary and Italy, though they are now our friend. And we remember Holland and Belgium and Denmark and Sweden and Turkey and-'
The gcncral-in-chief of the United States stared at him. 'Jesus Christ, you do mean it,' Rosecrans said slowly. 'What do they do in that General Staff of yours, Colonel, sit around all day studying maps and timetables and lists of regiments and I don't know what all else?'
'Yes,' Schlieffen answered, surprised yet again that Rosecrans should be surprised at the idea of military planning. 'We believe that, if war comes, we should as little to chance leave as we can.'
'A lot of chance in war,' Rosecrans insisted. 'Can't help it.' Yes, he was an American, looking for nothing more than the chance to go out in the field of uncertainty and snatch what he could from it.
'Yes, this is so,' Schlieffen said. 'A lot, there is. As little as there can be, there should be.' What the United States had snatched from the field of uncertainty was a thumping defeat.
'Maybe,' Rosecrans said, like a man admitting Limburger cheese might possibly taste good in spite of the way it smelled. 'Maybe.' He brushed a pale speck from the dark blue wool of his tunic. 'The more you talk about it, Colonel, the more I do think the United States should send some of our officers to your country after this blamed war is finally over-if it's ever over-so we can take a long look at how you go about things.'
'They would be welcome,' Schlieffen said. 'Your neighbors who do not love you are allied to the French, who do not love us. Since we have one enemy who is the same, it might for us be good to be with each other friends.' He held up a hasty hand. 'You must understand, I speak here only for myself, not for Chancellor Bismarck.'
'Yes, yes.' General Rosecrans nodded impatiently. 'I can't speak for the secretary of state, either. Speaking for nobody but William S. Rosecrans, though, Colonel, I'll tell you I like the idea pretty god damn well.'
Alfred von Schlieffen sat very still, contemplating what he had just said. The enemy of my enemy is a friend was an ancient truth. France, so far as he could see, would never be anything but Germany 's enemy. France was the Confederate States' friend; the Confederate States were an enemy to the United States, also unlikely to be anything else.
So far as he could see, real, close friendship between Germany and the United States made good strategic sense. He wondered what Minister von Schlozer would think of the idea. Up till now, German relations with both the USA and the CSA had been polite, even cordial, but not particularly close. Would Chancellor Bismarck want to continue what had been working well enough, or would he be interested in changing things? If he was, a U.S. military mission to Berlin might be one tooth of the key in the lock.
Schlozer will have a better idea of the chancellor's mind than I do, Schlieffen thought. Then he realized Rosecrans had just spoken, and he had no idea what the general had said. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'You must please excuse me. I was thinking of something else.'
'1 guess you were,' Rosecrans said with a chuckle. 'The Judgment Trump could have sounded right then, and you never would have noticed. What I said was, I'll take the notion of sending officers to Berlin over to the secretary of state to see what he thinks of it.'
'That is good. I am glad to hear it,' Schlieffen said.
'Damned if I know what will come of it, though.' Rosecrans' good humor vanished. 'Ever since Washington warned us against entangling alliances, we've held apart from 'em. Of course, in Washington 's day we didn't have nasty neighbors tangled up with foreigners themselves. But he's like the Good Book to a lot of people here, even if he was from Virginia.'
That Rosecrans was himself talking with a foreigner never seemed to enter his mind. Schlieffen had seen in other Americans the same interesting inability to judge the effects of their own words. It did not offend him, not here; he would not let it offend him. 'You will do what you can do, General, with the officials of your country, and I will do what I can with the officials of mine, and we will see what from this comes.'
Before Rosecrans could answer, the box on the wall clanged to let him know someone wished to speak with him. He grimaced and swore fiercely under his breath. But then, like a hound summoned to the dinner bowl by the ring of a bell, he got up and went to the telephone. 'Rosecrans here,' he shouted into it. 'Yes, Mr. President, I hear you pretty well right now. What were you saying before, Your Excellency?' A pause. 'But, Mr. President…'
Schlieffen quickly realized the conversation with President Blaine was liable to go on for some time. He half rose. General Rosecrans nodded permission for him to go. He respectfully dipped his head to the American general- in-chief, then left the inner office.
'Auf wiedersehen, Hen Oberst,' Captain Berryman said when he emerged; Rosecrans' adjutant had regained enough spirit to try German again. 'Ich hoffe alles is mit, uh, bei Ihnen gut?'
'Yes, everything is well with me, thank you,' Schlieffen answered. 'How is everything with you?'
Before Berryman could answer, Rosecrans' bellow of frustrated fury did the job for him: 'God damn it to hell, Mr. President, I can't give you a victory when the sons of bitches are coming at us five ways at once… Yes, well, maybe you should have thought about that more before you dragged us into this miserable war… Maybe you should think about making peace, too, while you've still got the chance.' The sharp click that followed was, again, the earpiece slamming down onto its rest.
Schlieffen and Berryman looked at each other. Neither found anything to say. After a polite, sympathetic nod, Schlieffen let himself out of the antechamber.
Abraham Lincoln appreciated-indeed, savored-the irony of meeting in the Florence Hotel to do battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Here he was, doing his best to make the party remember the labourers who had helped bring it to power, and doing it in a hotel erected by the Pullman Company on part of the city within a city they owned: factories, houses, blocks of flats, all in the holy name of Pullman.
Robert had arranged it, of course. His Chicago connections were far better than his father's, these days. The room, Lincoln could not deny, was splendid: magnificent walnut paneling, table with legs even more elaborately carved than that paneling, chairs upholstered in maroon velvet and soft enough to swallow a man, gaslights overhead so ornate, they resembled a forest frozen in beaten bronze.
'I think we are all here,' Lincoln said, looking around the room. Fewer were here than he had hoped. Some of his telegrams had gone unanswered; some men he had hoped would accept had declined. He wondered whether he had enough strength at hand, even if everything went as he wanted, to turn the party into the path he had in mind. The only way to find out would be the event.
Around the table, heads nodded. There sat Frederick Douglass, with his big frame and white mane and beard as solid and impressive as a snow-topped mountain. There was John Hay, a lighter presence, once Lincoln's secretary, then minister to the CSA in Blaine 's administration till war broke out. There sat Benjamin Butler, a clever mind concealed within a bald, bloated, sagging walrus of a body: before the War of Secession a Democrat who thought Jefferson Davis might make a good president of the United States, at its end a U.S. general who'd had to flee New Orleans in a Navy frigate to keep the returning Confederates from hanging him without trial.
Next to Butler, rotund Hannibal Hamlin fiddled with his spectacles. He had been Lincoln 's vice president, and had gone down to defeat with him in 1864. But he was a Maine man, and secretary of state to boot, and as such more likely than others to gain the ear of President Blaine. Senator James Garfield of Ohio sat farthest from Lincoln. An officer during the War of Secession, he had risen to prominence as a member of the military courts that purged the Army of defeatists after the fighting ended. But for Hay, he was the youngest man in the room.
'I think two questions stand before the house today,' Lincoln said, as if he were addressing the Illinois Assembly. 'The first is, where does our party stand now? The second, and more urgent, is, where do we go from here?'
'Where we are, is in trouble,' Ben Butler declared in his flat Massachusetts accent. 'How do we get out of it?' He shook his big, round head; the gray hair that fringed his bald pate flew this way and that. 'Damned if I know. Hanging Blaine from the Washington Monument might be one place to start.'
'He did what he was elected to do.' Hannibal Hamlin spoke up in defense of the president.
'So he did, and did it damned badly, too,' Butler sneered.
'Fighting the Confederate States, opposing their tyranny, is not and cannot be a sin,' Frederick Douglass
