Chapter 14. The End of the Road

The Path of the King

by John Buchan

When Edward M. Stanton was associated at Cincinnati in 1857 with
Abraham Lincoln in the great McCormick Reaper patent suit, it was
commonly assumed that this was the first time the two men had met.
Such was Lincoln's view, for his memory was apt to have blind patches
in it. But in fact there had been a meeting fifteen years before, the
recollection of which in Stanton's mind had been so overlaid by the
accumulations of a busy life that it did not awake till after the
President's death.

In the early fall of 1842 Stanton had occasion to visit
Illinois. He was then twenty-five years of age, and had already
attained the position of leading lawyer in his native town of
Steubenville in Ohio and acted as reporter of the Supreme Court of
that State. He was a solemn reserved young man, with a square fleshy
face and a strong ill-tempered jaw. His tight lips curved downwards
at the corners and, combined with his bold eyes, gave him an air of
peculiar shrewdness and purpose. He did not forget that he came of
good professional stock--New England on one side and Virginia on the
other--and that he was college-bred, unlike the common backwoods
attorney. Also he was resolved on a great career, with the White
House at the end of it, and was ready to compel all whom he met to
admit the justice of his ambition The conscious of uncommon talent
and a shining future gave him a self-possession rare in a young man,
and a complacence not unlike arrogance. His dress suited his
pretensions--the soft rich broadcloth which tailors called doeskin,
and linen of a fineness rare outside the eastern cities. He was not
popular in Ohio, but he was respected for his sharp tongue, subtle
brain, and intractable honesty.

His business finished, he had the task of filling up the
evening, for he could not leave for home till the morrow. His host,
Mr. George Curtin, was a little shy of his guest and longed
profoundly to see the last of him. It was obvious that this alert
lawyer regarded the Springfield folk as mossbacks--which might be
well enough for St. Louis and Chicago, but was scarcely becoming in a
man from Steubenville. Another kind of visitor he might have taken to
a chickenfight, but one glance at Stanton barred that solution. So he
compromised on Speed's store.

"There's one or two prominent citizens gathered there most
nights," he explained. "Like as not we'll find Mr. Lincoln. I reckon
you've heard of Abe Lincoln?"

Mr. Stanton had not. He denied the imputation as if he were
annoyed.

"Well, we think a mighty lot of him round here. He's Judge
Logan's law partner and considered one of the brightest in Illinois.
He's been returned to the State Legislature two or three times, and
he's a dandy on the stump. A hot Whig and none the worse of that,
though I reckon them's not your politics. . . . We're kind of proud
of him in Sangamon county. No, not a native. Rode into the town one
day five years back from New Salem with all his belongings in a
saddle-bag, and started business next morning in Joe Speed's back
room. . . . He's good company, Abe, for you never heard a better man
to tell a story. You'd die of laughing. Though I did hear he was a
sad man just now along of being crossed in love, so I can't promise
you he'll be up to his usual, if he's at Speed's to-night."

"I suppose the requirements for a western lawyer," said Mr.
Stanton acidly, "are a gift of buffoonery and a reputation for
gallantry." He was intensely bored, and had small desire to make the
acquaintance of provincial celebrities.

Mr. Curtin was offended, but could think of no suitable retort,
and as they were close on Speed's store he swallowed his wrath and
led the way through alleys of piled merchandise to the big room where
the stove was lighted.

It was a chilly fall night and the fire was welcome. Half a
dozen men sat smoking round it, with rummers of reeking toddy at
their elbows. They were ordinary citizens of the place, and they
talked of the last horseraces. As the new-comers entered they were
appealing to a figure perched on a high barrel to decide some point
in dispute.

This figure climbed down from its perch, as they entered, with a
sort of awkward courtesy. It was a very tall man, thin almost to
emaciation, with long arms and big hands and feet. He had a lean,
powerful-looking head, marred by ugly projecting ears and made
shapeless by a mass of untidy black hair. The brow was broad and
fine, and the dark eyes set deep under it; the nose, too, was good,
but the chin and mouth were too small for the proportions of the
face. The mouth, indeed, was so curiously puckered, and the lower lip
so thick and prominent, as to give something of a comic effect. The
skin was yellow, but stretched so firm and hard on the cheek bones
that the sallowness did not look unhealthy. The man wore an old suit
of blue jeans and his pantaloons did not meet his coarse unblacked
shoes by six inches. His scraggy throat was adorned with a black
neckerchief like a boot-lace.

"Abe," said Mr. Curtin, "I would like to make you known to my
friend Mr. Stanton of Ohio."

The queer face broke into a pleasant smile, and the long man
held out his hand.

"Glad to know you, Mr. Stanton," he said, and then seemed to be
stricken with shyness. His wandering eye caught sight of a new patent
churn which had just been added to Mr. Speed's stock. He took two
steps to it and was presently deep in its mechanism. He turned it all
ways, knelt beside it on the floor, took off the handle and examined
it, while the rest of the company pressed Mr. Stanton to a seat by
the fire.

"I heard Abe was out at Rochester helping entertain Ex-
President Van Buren," said Mr. Curtin to the store-keeper.

"I reckon he was," said Speed. "He kept them roaring till
morning. Judge Peck told me he allowed Mr. Van Buren would be stiff
for a month with laughing at Abe's tales. It's curious that a man who
don't use tobacco or whisky should be such mighty good company."

"I wish Abe'd keep it up," said another. "Most of the time now
he goes about like a sick dog. What's come to him, Joe?"

Mr. Speed hushed his voice. "He's got his own troubles. . . .
He's a deep-feeling man, and can't forget easily like you and me. . .
. But things is better with him, and I kind of hope to see him wed
by Thanks. giving Day. . . . Look at him with that churn. He's that
inquisitive he can't keep his hands off no new thing."

But the long man had finished his inquiry and rejoined the group
by the stove.

"I thought you were a lawyer, Mr. Lincoln," said Stanton, "but
you seem to have the tastes of a mechanic."

The other grinned. "I've a fancy for any kind of instrument, for
I was a surveyor in this county before I took to law."

"George Washington also was a surveyor."

"Also, but not likewise. I don't consider I was much of a hand
with the compass and chains."

"It is the fashion in Illinois, I gather, for the law to be the
last in a series of many pursuits--the pool where the driftwood from
many streams comes to rest." Mr. Stanton spoke with the superior air
of one who took his profession seriously and had been trained for it
in the orthodox fashion.

"It was so in my case. I've kept a post-office, and I've had a
store, and I've had a tavern, and I kept them so darned bad that I'm
still paying off the debts I made in them." The long man made the
confession with a comic simplicity.

"There's a deal to be said for the habit,'t said Speed. "Having
followed other trades teaches a lawyer something about human nature.
I reckon Abe wouldn't be the man he is if he had studied his books
all his days."

"There is another side to that," said Mr. Stanton and his
precise accents and well-modulated voice seemed foreign in that
homely place. "You are also a politician, Mr. Lincoln?"

The other nodded. "Of a kind. I'm a strong Henry Clay man."

"Well, there I oppose you. I'm no Whig or lover of Whigs. But
I'm a lover of the Constitution and the law of the country, and that
Constitution and that country are approaching perilous times. There's
explosive stuff about which is going to endanger the stability of the
noble heritage we have received from our fathers, and if that
heritage is to be saved it can only be by those who hold fast to its
eternal principles. This land can only be saved by its lawyers, sir.
But they must be lawyers profoundly read in the history and
philosophy of their profession, and no catchpennny advocates with a
glib tongue and an elastic conscience. The true lawyer must approach
his task with reverence and high preparation; for as his calling is
the noblest of human activities, so it is the most exacting."

The Point-Device young man spoke with a touch of the
schoolmaster, but his audience, who had an inborn passion for fine
words, were impressed. Lincoln sat squatted on his heels on a bit of
sacking, staring into the open door of the stove.

"There's truth in that," he said slowly. His voice had not the
mellow tones of the other's, being inclined to shrillness, but it
gave the impression of great power waiting on release somewhere in
his massive chest. "But I reckon it's only half the truth, for
truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted
to make it good currency. The law and the constitution are like a
child's pants. They've got to be made wider and longer as the child
grows so as to fit him. If they're kept too tight, he'll burst them;
and if you're in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they'll
trip him up."

"Agreed," said Stanton, "but the fashion and the fabric should
be kept of the same good American pattern."

The long man ran a hand through his thatch of hair.

"There's only one fashion in pants--to make them comfortable.
And some day that boy is going to grow so big you won't be able to
make the old ones do and he'll have to get a new pair. If he's living
on a farm he'll want the same kind of good working pants, but for all
that they'll have to be new made."

Stanton laughed with some irritation

"I hate arguing in parables, for in the nature of things they
can't be exact. That's a mistake you westerners make. The law must
change in detail with changing conditions, but its principles cannot
alter, and the respect for these principles is our only safeguard
against relapse into savagery. Take slavery. There are fools in the
east who would abolish it by act of Congress. For myself I do not
love the system, but I love anarchy and injustice less, and if you
abolish slavery you abolish also every-right of legal property, and
that means chaos and barbarism. A free people such as ours cannot
thus put the knife to their throat. If we were the serfs of a
monarchy, accustomed to bow before the bidding of a king, it might be
different, but a republic cannot do injustice to one section of its
citizens without destroying itself."

Lincoln had not taken his eyes from the stove. He seemed to be
seeing things in the fire, for he smiled to himself.

"Well," he drawled, "I reckon that some day we may have to find
some sort of a king. The new pants have got to be made."

Mr. Stanton shrugged his shoulders, and the other, quick to
detect annoyance, scrambled to his feet and stood looking down from
his great height at his dapper antagonist. A kindly quizzical smile
lit his homely face. "We'll quit arguing, Mr. Stanton, for I admit
I'm afraid of you. You're some years younger than me, but I expect
you would have me convinced on your side if we went on. And maybe I'd
convince you too, and then we'd be like old Jim Fletcher at New
Salem. You'll have heard about Jim. He had a mighty quarrel with his
neighbour about a hog, Jim alleging it was one of his lot and the
neighbour claiming it for his. Well, they argued and argued, and the
upshot was that Jim convinced the neighbour that the hog was Jim's,
and the neighbour convinced Jim that the hog was the neighbour's, and
neither of them would touch that hog, and they were worse friends
than ever."

Mr. Curtin rose and apologised to his companion. He had to see a
man about a buggy and must leave Mr. Stanton to find his way back
alone.

"Don't worry, George," said the long man. "I'm going round your
way and I'll see your friend home." As Mr. Stanton professed himself
ready for bed, the little party by the stove broke up. Lincoln
fetched from a corner a dilapidated carpet-bag full of papers, and an
old green umbrella, handle-less, tied with string about the middle,
and having his name sewn inside in straggling letters cut out of
white muslin. He and Stanton went out-of-doors into the raw autumn
night.

The town lay very quiet in a thin fog made luminous by a full
moon. The long man walked with his feet turned a little inwards,
accommodating his gait to the shorter stride of his companion. Mr.
Stanton, having recovered from his momentary annoyance, was curious
about this odd member of his own profession. Was it possible that in
the whirligig of time a future could lie before one so uncouth and
rustical? A democracy was an unaccountable thing, and these rude
westerners might have to be reckoned with.

"You are ambitious of a political career, Mr. Lincoln?" he
asked.

The other looked down with his shy crooked smile, and the Ohio
lawyer suddenly realised that the man had his own attractiveness.

"Why, no, sir. I shouldn't like to say I was ambitious. I've no
call to be, for the Almighty hasn't blessed me with any special
gifts. You're different. It would be a shame to you if you didn't
look high, for you're a young man with all the world before you. I'm
getting middle-aged and I haven't done anything to be proud of yet,
and I reckon I won't get the chance, and if I did I couldn't take
advantage of it. I'm pretty fond of the old country, and if she wants
me, why, she's only got to say so and I'll do what she tells me. But
I don't see any clear road I want to travel. . . ."

He broke off suddenly, and Stanton, looking up at him, saw that
his face had changed utterly. The patient humorous look had gone and
it was like a tragic mask, drawn and strained with suffering. They
were passing by a little town cemetery and, as if by some instinct,
had halted.

The place looked strange and pitiful in the hazy moonlight. It
was badly tended, and most of the headstones were only of painted
wood, warped and buckled by the weather. But in the dimness the rows
of crosses and slabs seemed to extend into the far distance, and the
moon gave them a cold, eerie whiteness as if they lay in the light of
another world. A great sign came from Lincoln, and Stanton thought
that he had never seen on mortal countenance such infinite
sadness.

"Ambition!" he said. "How dare we talk of ambition, when this is
the end of it? All these people--decent people, kind people, once
full of joy and purpose, and now all forgotten! It is not the buried
bodies I mind, it is the buried hearts. . . .I wonder if it means
peace. . . ."

He stood there with head bowed and he seemed to be speaking to
himself. Stanton caught a phrase or two and found it was verse--banal
verses, which were there and then fixed in his fly-paper memory.
"Tell me, my secret soul," it ran:

"Oh, tell me, Hope and Faith, Is there no
resting-place From sorrow, sin, and death? Is there no
happy spot Where mortals may be blessed, Where grief may
find a balm And weariness a rest?" The figure murmuring these
lines seemed to be oblivious of his companion. He stood gazing under
the moon, like a gaunt statue of melancholy. Stanton spoke to him but
got no answer, and presently took his own road home. He had no taste
for histrionic scenes. And as he went his way he meditated. Mad,
beyond doubt. Not without power in him, but unbalanced, hysterical,
alternating between buffoonery and these schoolgirl emotions. He
reflected that if the American nation contained much stuff of this
kind it might prove a difficult team to drive. He was thankful that
he was going home next day to his orderly life.

II

Eighteen years have gone, and the lanky figure of Speed's store
is revealed in new surroundings. In a big square room two men sat
beside a table littered with the debris of pens, foolscap, and torn
fragments of paper which marked the end of a Council. It was an
evening at the beginning of April, and a fire burned in the big
grate. One of the two sat at the table with his elbows on the
mahogany, and his head supported by a hand. He was a man well on in
middle life with a fine clean-cut face and the shapely mobile lips of
the publicist and orator. It was the face of one habituated to
platforms and assemblies, full of a certain selfconscious authority.
But to-night its possessor seemed ill at ease. His cheeks were
flushed and his eye distracted.

The other had drawn his chair to the fire, so that one side of
him was lit by the late spring sun and one by the glow from the
hearth. That figure we first saw in the Springfield store had altered
little in the eighteen years. There was no grey in the coarse black
hair, but the lines in the sallow face were deeper, and there were
dark rings under the hollow. eyes. The old suit of blue jeans had
gone; and he wore now a frock-coat, obviously new, which was a little
too full for his gaunt frame. His tie, as of old, was like a
boot-lace. A new silk hat, with the nap badly ruffled, stood near on
the top of a cabinet.

He smiled rather wearily. "We're pretty near through the
appointments now, Mr. Secretary. It's a mean business, but I'm a
minority President and I've got to move in zig-zags so long as I
don't get off the pike. I reckon that honest statesmanship is just
the employment of individual meannesses for the public good. Mr.
Sumner wouldn't agree. He calls himself the slave of principles and
says he owns no other master. Mr. Sumner's my notion of a bishop."

The other did not seem to be listening. "Are you still set on
re-enforcing Fort Sumter?" he asked, his bent brows making a straight
line above his eyes.

Lincoln nodded. He was searching in the inside pocket of his
frock-coat, from which he extracted a bundle of papers. Seward saw
what he was after, and his self-consciousness increased.

"You have read my letter?" he asked.

"I have," said Lincoln, fixing a pair of cheap spectacles on his
nose. He had paid thirty-seven cents for them in Bloomington five
years before. "A mighty fine letter. Full of horse sense."

"You agree with it?" asked the other eagerly.

"Why, no. I don't agree with it, but I admire it a lot and I
admire its writer."

"Mr. President," said Seward solemnly, "on one point I am
adamant. We cannot suffer the dispute to be about slavery. If we
fight on that issue we shall have the Border States against us."

"I'm thinking all the time about the Border States. We've got to
keep them. If there's going to be trouble I'd like to have the
Almighty on my side, but I must have Kentucky."

"And yet you will go forward about Sumter, which is regarded by
everyone as a slavery issue."

"The issue is as God has made it. You can't go past the bed-rock
facts. I am the trustee for the whole property of the nation, of
which Sumter is a piece, and if I give up one stick or stone to a
rebellious demand I am an unfaithful steward. Surely, Mr. Secretary,
if you want to make the issue union or disunion you can't give up
Sumter without fatally prejudicing your case."

"It means war."

Lincoln looked again at the document in his hand. "It appears
that you are thinking of war in any event. You want to pick a quarrel
with France over Mexico and with Spain over St. Domingo, and unite
the nation in a war against foreigners. I tell you honestly I don't
like the proposal. It seems to me downright wicked.

If the Lord sends us war, we have got to face it like men, but
God forbid we should manufacture war, and use it as an escape from
our domestic difficulties. You can t expect a blessing on that."

The Secretary of State flushed. "Have you considered the
alternative, Mr. President?" he cried. "It is civil war, war between
brothers in blood. So soon as the South fires a shot against Sumter
the sword is unsheathed. You cannot go back then."

"I am fully aware of it. I haven't been sleeping much lately,
and I've been casting up my accounts. It s a pretty weak balance
sheet. I would like to tell you the main items, Mr. Secretary, so
that you may see that I'm not walking this road blindfold."

The other pushed back his chair from the table with a gesture of
despair. But he listened. Lincoln had risen and stood in front of the
fire, his shoulders leaning on the mantelpiece, and his head against
the lower part of the picture of George Washington.

"First," he said, "I'm a minority President, elected by a
minority vote of the people of the United States. I wouldn't have got
in if the Democrats hadn't been split. I haven't a majority in the
Senate. Yet I've got to decide for the nation and make the nation
follow me. Have I the people's confidence? I reckon I haven't--yet. I
haven't even got the confidence of the Republican party."

Seward made no answer. He clearly assented.

"Next, I haven't got much in the way of talents. I reckon Jeff
Davis a far abler man than me. My friends tell me I haven't the
presence and dignity for a President. My shaving-glass tells me I'm a
common-looking fellow." He stopped and smiled. "But perhaps the Lord
prefers common-looking people, and that's why He made so many of
them.

"Next," he went on, "I've a heap of critics and a lot of
enemies. Some good men say I've no experience in Government, and
that's about true. Up in New England the papers are asking who is
this political huckster, this county court advocate? Mr. Stanton says
I'm an imbecile, and when he's cross calls me the original gorilla,
and wonders why fools wander about in Africa when they could find the
beast they are looking for in Washington. The pious everywhere don't
like me, because I don't hold that national policy can be run on the
lines of a church meeting. And the Radicals are looking for me with a
gun, because I'm not prepared right here and now to abolish slavery.
One of them calls me 'the slave hound of Illinois.' I'd like to meet
that man, for I guess he must be a humorist."

Mr. Seward leaned forward and spoke earnestly. "Mr. President,
no man values your great qualities more than I do or reprobates more
heartily such vulgar libels. But it is true that you lack executive
experience. I have been the Governor of the biggest State in the
Union, and possess some knowledge of the task. It is all at your
service. Will you not allow me to ease your burden?"

Lincoln smiled down kindly upon the other. "I thank you with all
my heart. You have touched on that matter in your letter. . . . But,
Mr. Secretary, in the inscrutable providence of God it is I who have
been made President. I cannot shirk the duty. I look to my Cabinet,
and notably to you for advice and loyal assistance, and I am
confident that I shall get it. But in the end I and I only must
decide."

Seward looked up at the grave face and said nothing. Lincoln
went on:

"I have to make a decision which may bring war--civil war. I
don't know anything about war, though I served a month or two in the
Black Hawk campaign and yet, if war comes, I am the
Commander-in-Chief of the Union. Who among us knows anything of the
business. General Scott is an old man, and he doesn't just see eye to
eye with me; for I'm told he talks about 'letting the wayward sisters
go in peace.' Our army and navy's nothing much to boast of, and the
South is far better prepared. You can't tell how our people will take
war, for they're all pulling different ways just now. Blair says the
whole North will spring to arms, but I guess they've first got to
find the arms to spring to. . . . I was reviewing some militia the
other day, and they looked a deal more like a Fourth of July
procession than a battlefield. Yes, Mr. Secretary, if we have to
fight, we've first got to make an army."

Remember, too, that it will he civil war--kin against kin,
brother against brother."

"I remember. All war is devilish, but ours will be the most
devilish that the world has ever known. It isn't only the feeding of
fresh young boys to rebel batteries that grieves me, though God knows
that's not a thing that bears thinking about. It's the bitterness and
hate within the people. Will it ever die down, Mr. Secretary?"

Lincoln was very grave, and his face was set like a man in
anguish. Seward, deeply moved, rose and stood beside him, laying a
hand on his shoulder

"And for what, Mr. President?" he cried. "That is the question I
ask myself. We are faced by such a problem as no man ever before had
to meet. If five and a half million white men deeply in earnest are
resolved to secede, is there any power on earth that can prevent
them? You may beat them in battle, but can you ever force them again
inside the confines of the nation? Remember Chatham's saying:
'Conquer a free population of three million souls--the thing is
impossible.' They stand on the rights of democracy, the right of
self-government, the right to decide their own future."

Lincoln passed a hand over his brow. His face had suddenly
became very worn and weary.

"I've been pondering a deal over the position of the South," he
said. "I reckon I see their point of view, and I'll not deny there's
sense in it. There's a truth in their doctrine of State rights, but
they've got it out of focus. If I had been raised in South Carolina,
loving the slave-system because I had grown up with it and thinking
more of my State than of the American nation, maybe I'd have followed
Jeff Davis. I'm not saying there's no honesty in the South, I'm not
saying there's not truth on their side, but I do say that ours is the
bigger truth and the better truth. I hold that a nation is too sacred
a thing to tamper with--even for good reasons. Why, man, if you once
grant the right of a minority to secede you make popular government
foolish. I'm willing to fight to prevent democracy becoming a
laughing-stock."

"It's a fine point to make war about," said the other.

"Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute
between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right. I admit that
the margin is narrow, but if it's made of good rock it's sufficient
to give us a foothold. We've got to settle once for all the question
whether in a free Government the minority have a right to break up
the Government whenever they choose. If we fail, then we must
conclude that we've been all wrong from the start, and that the
people need a tyrant, being incapable of governing themselves."

Seward wrung his hands. "If you put it that way I cannot confute
you. But, oh, Mr. President, is there not some means of building a
bridge? I cannot think that honest Southerners would force war on
such a narrow issue.

"They wouldn't but for this slavery. It is that accursed system
that obscures their reason. If they fight, the best of them will
fight out of a mistaken loyalty to their State, but most will fight
for the right to keep their slaves. . . . If you are to have
bridges, you must have solid ground at both ends. I've heard a tale
of some church members that wanted to build a bridge over a dangerous
river. Brother Jones suggested one Myers, and Myers answered that, if
necessary, he could build one to hell. This alarmed the church
members, and Jones, to quiet them, said he believed his friend Myers
was so good an architect that he could do it if he said he could,
though he felt bound himself to express some doubt about the abutment
on the infernal side."

A queer quizzical smile had relieved the gravity of the
President's face. But Seward was in no mood for tales.

"Is there no other way?" he moaned, and his suave voice sounded
cracked and harsh.

"There is no other way but to go forward. I've never been a man
for cutting across lots when I could go round by the road, but if the
roads are all shut we must take to open country. For it is altogether
necessary to go forward."

Seward seemed to pull himself together. He took a turn down the
room and then faced Lincoln.

"Mr. President," he said, "you do not know whether you have a
majority behind you even in the North." You have no experience of
government and none of war. The ablest men in your party are
luke-warm or hostile towards you. You have no army to speak of, and
will have to make everything from the beginning. You feel as I do
about the horror of war, and above all the horrors of civil war. You
do not know whether the people will support you. You grant that there
is some justice in the contention of the South, and you claim for
your own case only a balance of truth. You admit that to coerce the
millions of the South back into the Union is a kind of task which has
never been performed in the world before and one which the wise of
all ages have pronounced impossible. And yet, for the sake of a
narrow point, you are ready, if the need arises, to embark on a war
which must be bloody and long, which must stir the deeps of
bitterness, and which in all likelihood will achieve nothing. Are you
entirely resolved?"

Lincoln's sad eyes rested on the other. "I am entirely resolved.
I have been set here to decide for the people according to the best
of my talents, and the Almighty has shown me no other road."

Seward held out his hand.

"Then, by God, you must be right. You are the bravest man in
this land, sir, and I will follow you to the other side of
perdition."

III

The time is two years later--a warm evening in early May. There
had been no rain for a week in Washington, and the President, who had
ridden in from his summer quarters in the Soldiers' Home, had his
trousers grey with dust from the knees down. He had come round to the
War Department, from which in these days he was never long absent,
and found the Secretary for War busy as usual at his high desk. There
had been the shortest of greetings, and, while Lincoln turned over
the last telegrams, Stanton wrote steadily.

Stanton had changed much since the night in the Springfield
store. A square beard, streaked with grey, covered his chin, and his
face had grown heavier. There were big pouches below the
short-sighted eyes, and deep lines on each side of his short shaven
upper lip. His skin had an unheathly pallor, like that of one who
works late and has little fresh air. The mouth, always obstinate, was
now moulded into a settled grimness. The ploughs of war had made deep
furrows on his soul.

Lincoln, too, had altered. He had got a stoop in his shoulders
as if his back carried a burden. A beard had been suffered to grow in
a ragged fringe about his jaw and cheeks, and there were silver
threads in it. His whole face seemed to have been pinched and
hammered together, so that it looked like a mask of pale bronze--a
death mask, for it was hard to believe that blood ran below that dry
tegument. But the chief change was in his eyes. They had lost the
alertness they once possessed, and had become pits of brooding shade,
infinitely kind, infinitely patient, infinitely melancholy.

Yet there was a sort of weary peace in the face, and there was
still humour in the puckered mouth and even in the sad eyes. He
looked less harassed than the Secretary for War. He drew a small book
from his pocket, at which the other glanced malevolently.

I give you fair warning, Mr. President," said Stanton. "If
you've come here to read me the work of one of your tom-fool funny
men, I'll fling it out of the window.

"This work is the Bible," said Lincoln, with the artlessness of
a mischievous child. I looked in to ask how the draft was
progressing."

"It starts in Rhode Island on July 7, and till it starts I can
say nothing. We've had warning that there will be fierce opposition
in New York. It may mean that we have a second civil war on our
hands. And of one thing I am certain--it will cost you your
re-election."

The President did not seem perturbed. "In this war we've got to
take one step at a time," he said. "Our job is to save the country,
and to do that we've got to win battles. But you can't win battles
without armies, and if men won't enlist of their own will they've got
to be compelled. What use is a second term to me if I have no
country. . . . You're not weakening on the policy of the draft, Mr.
Stanton?"

The War Minister shrugged his shoulders. "No. In March it seemed
inevitable. I still think it is essential, but I am forced to admit
the possibility that it may be a rank failure. It is the boldest step
you have taken, Mr. President. Have you ever regretted it?"

Lincoln shook his head. "It don't do to start regretting. This
war is managed by the Almighty, and if it's his purpose that we
should win He will show us how. I regard our fallible reasoning and
desperate conclusions as part of His way of achieving His purpose.
But about that draft. I'll answer you in the words of a young Quaker
woman who against the rules had married a military man. The elders
asked her if she was sorry, and she replied that she couldn't truly
say that she was sorry, but that she could say she wouldn't do it
again. I was for the draft, and I was for the war, to prevent
democracy making itself foolish."

"You'll never succeed in that," said Stanton gravely.

"If Congress is democracy, there can't be a more foolish
gathering outside a monkey-house."

The President grinned broadly. He was humming the air of a
nigger song, "The Blue-tailed Fly," which Lamon had taught him.

"That reminds me of Artemus Ward. He observes that at the last
election he voted for Henry Clay. It's true, he says, that Henry was
dead, but Since all the politicians that he knew were fifteenth-rate
he preferred to vote for a first-class corpse."

Stanton moved impatiently. He hated the President's pocket
humorists and had small patience with his tales. "Was ever a great
war fought," he cried, with such a camp-following as our
Congressmen?"

Lincoln looked comically surprised.

"You're too harsh, Mr. Stanton. I admit there are one or two
rascals who'd be better hanged. But the trouble is that most of them
are too high-principled. They are that set on liberty that they won't
take the trouble to safeguard it. They would rather lose the war than
give up their little notions. I've a great regard for principles, but
I have no use for them when they get so high that they become
foolishness."

"Every idle pedant thinks he knows better how to fight a war
than the men who are labouring sixteen hours a day at it," said
Stanton bitterly.

They want to hurry things quicker than the Almighty means them
to go. I don't altogether blame them either, for I'm mortally
impatient myself. But it s no good thinking that saying a thing
should be so will make it so. We're not the Creator of this universe.
You've got to judge results according to your instruments. Horace
Greeley is always telling me what I should do, but Horace omits to
explain how I am to find the means. You can't properly manure a
fifty-acre patch with only a bad smell."

Lincoln ran his finger over the leaves of the small Bible he had
taken from his pocket "Seems to me Moses had the same difficulties to
contend with. Read the sixteenth chapter of the book of Numbers at
your leisure, Mr. Secretary. It's mighty pertinent to our situation.
The people have been a deal kinder to me than I deserve and I've got
more cause for thankfulness than complaint. But sometimes I get just
a little out of patience with our critics. I want to say to them as
Moses said to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram--'Ye take too much upon you,
ye sons of Levi!'"

Lincoln's speech had broadened into something like the dialect
of his boyhood. Stanton finished the paper on which he had been
engaged and stepped aside from his desk. His face was heavily
preoccupied and he kept an eye always on the door leading to his
private secretary's room.

"At this moment," he said, "Hooker is engaged with Lee." He put
a finger on a map which was stretched on a frame behind him. "There!
On the Rappahannock, where it is joined by the Rapidan. . . . Near
the hamlet of Chancellorsville. . . . Battle was joined two days
ago, and so far it has been indecisive. Tonight we should know the
result. That was the news you came here to-night about, Mr.
President?"

Lincoln nodded. "I am desperately anxious. I needn't conceal
that from you, Mr. Stanton."

"So am I. I wish to God I had more confidence in General Hooker.
I never liked that appointment, Mr. President. I should have
preferred Meade or Reynolds. Hooker is a blustering thick-headed
fellow, good enough, maybe, for a division or even a corps, but not
for an army."

"I visited him three weeks back," said Lincoln, "and I'm bound
to say he has marvellously pulled round the Army of the Potomac.
There's a new spirit in their ranks. You're unjust to Joe Hooker, Mr.
Stanton. He's a fine organiser, and he'll fight--he's eager to fight,
which McClellan and Burnside never were."

"But what on earth is the good of being willing to fight if
you're going to lose? He hasn't the brains to command. And he's
opposed by Lee and Jackson. Do you realise the surpassing ability of
those two men? We have no generals fit to hold a candle to them."

"We've a bigger and a better army. I'm not going to be
depressed, Mr. Stanton. Joe has two men to every one of Lee's, he's
safe over the Rappahannock, and I reckon he will make a road to
Richmond. I've seen his troops, and they are fairly bursting to get
at the enemy. I insist on being hopeful. What's the last news from
the Mississippi?"

"Nothing new. Grant has got to Port Gibson and has his base at
Grand Gulf. He now proposes to cut loose and make for Vicksburg. So
far he has done well, but the risk is terrific. Still, I am inclined
to think you were right about that man. He has capacity."

"Grant stops still and saws wood," said Lincoln "He don't talk a
great deal, but he fights. I can't help feeling hopeful to-night, for
it seems to me we have the enemy in a fix. You've heard me talk of
the shrinking quadrilateral, which is the rebel States, as I see the
proposition."

"Often," said the other drily.

"I never could get McClellan rightly to understand it. I look on
the Confederacy as a quadrilateral of which at present we hold two
sides--the east and the south--the salt-water sides. The north side
is Virginia, the west side the line of the Mississippi. If Grant and
Farragut between them can win the control of the Father of Waters,
we've got the west side. Then it's the business of the Armies on the
Mississippi to press east and the Army of the Potomac to press south.
It may take a time, but if we keep a stiff upper lip we're bound to
have the rebels whipped. I reckon they're whipped already in spite of
Lee. I've heard of a turtle that an old nigger man decapitated. Next
day he was amusing himself poking sticks at it and the turtle was
snapping back. His master comes along and says to him, 'Why, Pomp, I
thought that turtle was dead.' 'Well, he am dead, massa,' says
Pompey, 'but the critter don't know enough ter be sensible ob it.' I
reckon the Confederacy's dead, but Jeff Davis don't know enough to be
sensible of it."

A young man in uniform came hurriedly through the private
secretary's door and handed the Secretary for War a telegram. He
stood at attention, and the President observed that his face was
pale. Stanton read the message, but gave no sign of its contents. He
turned to the map behind him and traced a line on it with his
forefinger.

"Any more news?" he asked the messenger.

"Nothing official, sir," was the answer. "But there is a report
that General Jackson has been killed in the moment of victory."

The officer withdrew and Stanton turned to the President.
Lincoln's face was terrible in its strain, for the words "in the
moment of victory" had rung the knell of his hopes.

When Stanton spoke his voice was controlled and level. "Unlike
your turtle," he said, "the Confederacy is suddenly and terribly
alive. Lee has whipped Hooker to blazes. We have lost more than
fifteen thousand men. To-day we are back on the north side of the
Rappahannock."

Lincoln was on his feet and for a moment the bronze mask of his
face was distorted by suffering.

"My God!" he cried. "What will the country say? What will the
country say?"

"It matters little what the country says. The point is what will
the country suffer. In a fortnight Lee will be in Maryland and
Pennsylvania. Your quadrilateral will not shrink, it will extend. In
a month we shall be fighting to hold Washington and Baltimore, aye,
and Philadelphia."

The bitterness of the words seemed to calm Lincoln. He was
walking up and down the floor, with his hands clasped behind his
back, and his expression was once again one of patient humility

"I take all the blame," he said. "You have done nobly, Mr.
Stanton, and all the mistakes are mine. I reckon I am about the
poorest effigy of a War President that ever cursed an unhappy
country."

The other did not reply. He was an honest man who did not deal
in smooth phrases.

"I'd resign to-morrow," Lincoln went on. "No railsplitter ever
laid down his axe at the end of a hard day so gladly as I would lay
down my office. But I've got to be sure first that my successor will
keep faith with this nation. I've got to find a man who will keep the
right course."

"Which is?" Stanton asked.

"To fight it out to the very end. To the last drop of blood and
the last cent. There can be no going back. If I surrendered my post
to any successor, though he were an archangel from heaven, who would
weaken on that great purpose, I should deserve to be execrated as the
betrayer of my country."

Into Stanton's sour face there came a sudden gleam which made it
almost beautiful.

"Mr. President," he said, "I have often differed from you. I
have used great freedom in criticism of your acts, and I take leave
to think that I have been generally in the right. You know that I am
no flatterer. But I tell you, sir, from my inmost heart that you are
the only man to lead the people, because you are the only man whose
courage never fails. God knows how you manage it. I am of the
bull-dog type and hold on because I do not know how to let go. Most
of my work I do in utter hopelessness. But you, sir, you never come
within a mile of despair. The blacker the clouds get the more
confident you are that there is sunlight behind them. I carp and
cavil at you, but I also take off my hat to you, for you are by far
the greatest of us."

Lincoln's face broke into a slow smile, which made the eyes seem
curiously child-like.

"I thank you, my old friend," he said. "I don't admit I have
your courage, for I haven't half of it. But if a man feels that he is
only a pipe for Omnipotence to sound through, he is not so apt to
worry. Besides, these last weeks God has been very good to me and
I've been given a kind of assurance. I know the country will grumble
a bit about my ways of doing things, but will follow me in the end. I
know that we shall win a clean victory. Jordan has been a hard road
to travel, but I feel that in spite of all our frailties we'll be
dumped on the right side of that stream. After that . . ."

"After that," said Stanton, with something like enthusiasm in
his voice, "you'll be the first President of a truly united America,
with a power and prestige the greatest since Washington."

Lincoln's gaze had left the other's face and was fixed on the
blue dusk now gathering in the window.

"I don't know about that," he said. "When the war's over, I
think I'll go home."

IV

Two years passed and once again it was spring in
Washington--about half-past ten of the evening of the 14th of
April--Good Friday--the first Eastertide of peace. The streets had
been illuminated for victory, and the gas jets were still blazing,
while a young moon, climbing the sky, was dimming their murky yellow
with its cold pure light. Tenth Street was packed from end to end by
a silent mob. As a sponge cleans a slate, so exhilaration had been
wiped off their souls. On the porch of Ford's Theatre some gaudy
posters advertised Tom Taylor's comedy, Our American Cousin, and the
steps were littered with paper and orange peel and torn fragments of
women's clothes, for the exit of the audience had been hasty. Lights
still blazed in the building, for there was nobody to put them out.
In front on the side-walk was a cordon of soldiers.

Stanton elbowed his way through the throng to the little house,
Mr. Peterson's, across the street. The messenger from the War
Department had poured wild news into his ear,--wholesale murder,
everybody--the President--Seward--Grant. Incredulous he had hurried
forth and the sight of that huge still crowd woke fear in him. The
guards at Mr. Peterson's door recognised him and he was admitted. As
he crossed the threshold he saw ominous dark stains.

A kitchen candle burned below the hat-rack in the narrow hall,
and showed further stains on the oilcloth. From a room on the left
hand came the sound of women weeping.

The door at the end of the passage was ajar. It opened on a bare
little place, once perhaps the surgery of some doctor in small
practice, but now a bedroom. A door gave at the farther side on a
tiny verandah, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil
lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A
man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A
sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been
bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, propped on an outjutting
bolster.

A man was leaving whom Stanton recognised as Dr. Stone, the
Lincoln family physician. The doctor answered his unspoken question.
"Dying," he said. "Through the brain. The bullet is now below the
left eye. He may live for a few hours--scarcely the night."

Stanton moved to the foot of the bed like one in a dream. He saw
that Barnes, the Surgeon-General, sat on a deal chair on the left
side, holding the dying man's hand. Dr. Gurley, the minister, sat
beside the bed. He noted Sumner and Welles and General Halleck and
Governor Dennison, and back in the gloom the young Robert Lincoln.
But he observed them only as he would have observed figures in a
picture. They were but shadows; the living man was he who was
struggling on the bed with death.

Lincoln's great arms and chest were naked, and Stanton, who had
thought of him as meagre and shrunken, was amazed at their sinewy
strength. He remembered that he had once heard of him as a village
Hercules. The President was unconscious, but some tortured nerve made
him moan like an animal in pain. It was a strange sound to hear from
one who had been wont to suffer with tight lips. To Stanton it
heightened the spectral unreality of the scene. He seemed to be
looking at a death in a stage tragedy.

The trivial voice of Welles broke the silence. He had to give
voice to the emotion which choked him.

"His dream has come true," he said--"the dream he told us about
at the Cabinet this morning. His ship is nearing the dark shore. He
thought it signified good news from Sherman."

Stanton did not reply. To save his life he could not have
uttered a word.

Then Gurley, the minister, spoke, very gently, for he was a
simple man sorely moved.

"He has looked so tired for so long. He will have rest now, the
deep rest of the people of God. . . . He has died for us all. . . .
To-day nineteen hundred years ago the Son of Man gave His life for
the world. . . . The President has followed in his Master's
steps."

Sumner was repeating softly to himself, like a litany, that
sentence from the second Inaugural--"With malice toward none, with
charity for all."

But Stanton was in no mood for words. He was looking at the
figure on the bed, the great chest heaving with the laboured but
regular breath, and living again the years of colleagueship and
conflict. He had been Loyal to him: yes, thank God he had been
loyal. He had quarrelled, thwarted, criticised, but he had never
failed him in a crisis. He had held up his hands as Aaron and Hur
held up the hands of Moses. . .

The Secretary for War was not in the habit of underrating his
own talents and achievements. But in that moment they seemed less
than nothing. Humility shook him like a passion. Till his dying day
his one boast must be that he had served that figure on the camp-bed.
It had been his high fortune to have his lot cast in the vicinity of
supreme genius. With awe he realised that he was looking upon the
passing of the very great. . . . There had never been such a man.
There could never be such an one again. So patient and enduring, so
wise in all great matters, so potent to inspire a multitude, so
secure in his own soul. . . . Fools would chatter about his being a
son of the people and his career a triumph of the average man.
Average! Great God, he was a ruler of princes, a master, a compeller
of men. . . . He could imagine what noble nonsense Sumner would talk.
. . . He looked with disfavor at the classic face of the
Bostonian.

But Sumner for once seemed to share his feelings. He, too, was
looking with reverent eyes towards the bed, and as he caught
Stanton's gaze he whispered words which the Secretary for War did not
condemn: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places."

The night hours crawled on with an intolerable slowness. Some of
the watchers sat, but Stanton remained rigid at the bed-foot. He had
not been well of late and had been ordered a long rest by his doctor,
but he was not conscious of fatigue. He would not have left his post
for a king's ransom, for he felt himself communing with the dying,
sharing the last stage in his journey as he had shared all the rough
marches. His proud spirit found a certain solace in the abasement of
its humbleness.

A little before six the morning light began to pale the lamps.
The window showed a square of grey cloudy sky, and outside on the
porch there was a drip of rain. The faces revealed by the cold dawn
were as haggard and yellow as that of the dying man. Wafts of the
outer air began to freshen the stuffiness of the little room.

The city was waking up. There came the sound of far-away carts
and horses, and a boy in the lane behind the house began to whistle,
and then to sing. "When I was young," he sang--

"When I was young I used to wait At Magea'n table 'n'
hand de plate An' pais de bottie when he was dry, An' brush
away de blue-tailed fly." "It's his song," Stanton said to himself,
and with the air came a rush of strange feelings. He remembered a
thousand things, which before had been only a background of which he
had been scarcely conscious. The constant kindliness, the gentle
healing sympathy, the homely humour which he once thought had
irritated but which he now knew had soothed him. . . . This man had
been twined round the roots of every heart. All night he had been in
an ecstasy of admiration, but now that was forgotten in a yearning
love. The President had been part of his being, closer to him than
wife or child. The boy sang--

"But I can't forget, until I die Ole Massa an' de
blue-tailed fly." Stanton's eyes filled with hot tears. He had not
wept since his daughter died.

The breathing from the bed was growing faint. Suddenly the
Surgeon-General held up his hand. He felt the heart and shook his
head. "Fetch your mother," he said to Robert Lincoln. The minister
had dropped on his knees by the bedside and was praying.

"The President is dead," said the Surgeon-General, and at the
words it seemed that every head in the room was bowed on the
breast.

Stanton took a step forward with a strange appealing motion of
the arms. It was noted by more than one that his pale face was
transfigured.

"Yesterday he was America's," he cried. "Our very own. Now he is
all the world's. . . . Now he belongs to the ages."