Love and War

clutched his arm.

'I didn't mean that. I'm eternally sorry for saying something so —'

'Down,' Lije yelled as rebs across the river volleyed. He pushed Billy and dropped on top of him.

Billy's head smacked the bridge. He tried to rise, but too much had worn him down. Too much illness, tiredness, despair. Ashamed though he was, he let himself sink into comforting black.

Later the same day — it was Friday, December eleventh — Billy lay in a field hospital at Falmouth. There he learned that the engineers had worked all morning under constant fire and had finished two of five planned bridges across the Rappahannock by noon.

Too weak to return to duty, he spent the hours of Saturday listening to cannonading. On Sunday, Lije came poking among the cots, found his friend, and sat down on a box beside a pole where a lantern hung. He asked Billy how he felt.

'Ashamed, Lije. Ashamed of what I said and how I said it.'

'Well, sir,' returned the older man a bit formally, 'I do confess I took it hard for some length of time.'

'You saved me from a wound anyway.'

'None of us is a perfect vessel, and the heart of the Master's ministry was forgiveness. You were ill, we were all exhausted, and the situation was perilous. What man can be blamed for a rash word in such circumstances?'

His prophet's face gentled. 'You want the news, no doubt. I am afraid the foreboding expressed by you and many others was justified in full. Even my own faith stretches exceeding thin after events of yesterday.'

Amid the rows of sick, wounded, and dying, Lije told his friend how the federals had crossed the river and what had befallen them.

61

That same Sunday night, three men kept a vigil in Secretary Stanton's office.

Potomac mist drifted outside the windows. The gas hissed, and there were soft clickings from an unseen source. Stanley wished the vigil would end so he could go home. He wanted to examine the latest statements from Lashbrook's, which had doubled its already enormous business thanks to the covert contract arranged by Butler. He tried to conceal his impatience, though unintentionally he shifted farther and farther forward to the edge of the chair. His left foot moved up and down, silently tapping.

Major Albert Johnson, the arrogant young man formerly Stanton's law clerk and now his most trusted aide, strode from the main door to that of the adjoining cipher room, where he about-faced, crossed the office, and began the circuit again.

The President lay on the couch he had occupied most of the day. His unfashionable dark suit had wrinkled. His eyes, focused somewhere far below the carpet, suited a mourner. His color was that of a man poisoned with jaundice.

Lincoln had angrily told them that a Mr. Villard, a correspondent for Greeley's Tribune, had returned from the front on Saturday and had been brought to the Executive Mansion at 10:00 p.m. There he had reported what he knew and protested the refusal of the military censor to clear his dispatches about Burnside's futile assaults on Fredericksburg. 'I offered him my apology and said I hoped the news was not as bad as he perceived.'

None of them knew for certain. The secretary controlled what was published — the military censors reported to him — and he also controlled the telegraph from the front. He had removed the receiving instruments from McClellan's headquarters and installed them in the library upstairs soon after he took office. He had even pirated McClellan's chief telegraph officer, Captain Eckert. Stanley admired the secretary's audacious seizure of the information lines; nothing of substance came into Washington or went out of it without Stanton knowing it first. Stanton used the telegraph like an umbilical cord to tie his department more securely to the Executive Mansion and Lincoln himself. The President continued to profess great trust in Stanton as well as a magnanimous personal admiration for the man who had once snubbed him professionally when both were lawyers. Stanton now termed Lincoln his dear friend, though he had manipulated the relationship so that the President was the dependent, not the dominant, partner.

Stanley, however, continued to regard Abraham Lincoln as a pathetic clod. At the moment, the President was resting on his side on the couch, reminding Stanley of a cadaver or some piece of sculpture by a talentless beginner. Lincoln's secretaries had secret nicknames for various people. Some, such as Hellcat for Mary Lincoln, couldn't be more appropriate. But how could they refer to their chief as the Tycoon unless in mockery? The man would never be reelected, not even if the war reached a swift and successful conclusion, which looked unlikely.

The door of the cipher room opened. Johnson halted. Stanley jumped up. Stanton emerged with several of the flimsy yellow sheets on which decoded dispatches from the front were copied. The secretary smelled of cologne and strong soap, which told Stanley he had been at some large function late in the day. Stanton always scrubbed and anointed himself after contact with the public.

'What is the news?' Lincoln asked.

Reflected gaslight turned the lenses of Stanton's glasses to shimmering mirrors. 'Not good.'

'I asked for the news, not a description of it.' The President's voice rasped with weariness. He shifted higher on his left elbow, his loosened cravat falling over the edge of the couch.

Stanton folded down corners on the first two flimsies. 'I regret that it appears young Villard was right. There were repeated assaults within the town.'

'What was the objective?'

'Marye's Heights. A position all but impregnable.'

Lincoln stared with that bereaved face. 'Are we defeated?'

Stanton did not look away. 'Yes, Mr. President.'

Slowly, as if suffering arthritic pain, Lincoln sat up. Stanley heard a knee joint creak. Stanton gave him the flimsies, continuing quietly, 'A dispatch presently being copied indicates General Burnside wished to assault the rebel positions again this morning, perhaps in hopes of compensating for yesterday. His senior officers dissuaded him from that rash course.'

Momentary doubts about the worth of the telegraph struck Stanley. Certainly the device was changing warfare in a revolutionary way. Orders could be transmitted to commanding officers at a speed never thought possible. On the other hand, bad news could be returned just as fast, and that had all sorts of ramifications in the stock and gold markets, which tended to fluctuate wildly in response to the war news. Of course, if one had a way to get an early look at key dispatches, then telegraphed appropriate buy or sell orders before the news became known, huge killings could be made. He was delighted with himself for having thought of that. The telegraph was a remarkable creation.

Lincoln leafed through the flimsies, then flung them on the couch. 'First I had a general who employed the Army of the Potomac as his bodyguard. Now I have one who celebrates a rout by suggesting another.' Shaking his head, he strode to the window and peered into the mist, as if seeking answers there.

Stanton cleared his throat. After a strained silence, Lincoln swung around. His face was a study in aggrieved fury. 'I presume the steamers will be bringing us more wounded soon.'

'They already are, Mr. President. The first ones from Aquia Creek docked last night. Those flimsies contain the information.'

'I didn't read them closely. I can't bear to — instead of numbers, I see faces. I presume the numbers are large and the casualties heavy?'

'Yes, sir, so the first reports would indicate.'

Looking paler than ever, the President once more turned to confront the night. 'Stanton, I've said it before. If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.'

'We share that feeling, Mr. President. To a man.'

Stanley made sure he maintained an appropriately sorrowful expression.