Notes

gonna try and take our niggers away from us now?" It was Billy
Beddingfield; Caudell hadn't realized he'd been promoted again. He was
also certain Bedding-field, like Page 124
most Southern soldiers, had not a single Negro to his name.
Beddingfield brayed laughter at his own wit. A good many men joined him.
Lincoln stood on the White House steps, waiting to see whether the rebels
would quiet down. When they did, he said, "I did not become President
with the intention of interfering with the institutions of any state in the
Union. I said that repeatedly, at every forum available; the great regret of
my life is that you Southerners would not credit it."
"What about the Emancipation Proclamation, then?" half a dozen soldiers
shouted at once. Some of them profanely embellished the question.
Lincoln did not quail. "Everything I have done, I have done for the purpose
of holding the Union together and of restoring it once it was torn asunder.
Had I thought that meant freeing all the slaves, I should have freed them all;
had I thought it meant leaving them in chains, in chains they would have
stayed. As it chanced, I thought the wisest course was to free some and
leave others alone-note that even now I have hesitated to touch the
institution in those states which remained loyal. The proclamation was a
weapon to hand in the war against your rebellion, and I seized it. Make
what you will of that."
"Damn little good it did you," Billy Beddingfield said. Again, some of the
rebels laughed. But Caudell gave his beard a thoughtful tug. He hadn't
known the Emancipation Proclamation was selective; the papers had
painted it as a desperate effort to incite blacks to rise up against their
masters. So it was, to some degree. But if it was a blow against the
Confederate government rather than against slavery per se, that made it
more or less what Lincoln claimed it was-an unpleasant ploy, but a ploy
nonetheless. The Federal President said, "Personally, I hate slavery and all it
stands for." That took courage, in front of the audience he faced. He let the
rebels' boos and hisses wash over him. When they slackened, he went on,
"It is too late now, I think, to rescind the proclamation I issued. Too much
has happened since. But if only the Southern states were to return to the
Union, the Federal government would fully compensate former masters for
their bondsmen's liberty-"
The rebels laughed, loud and long. Lincoln hung his head. Caudell,
strangely, found himself respecting the man. Anyone who clung to his
principles strongly enough to refuse to abandon them even in complete
defeat owned more sincerity than he had credited Lincoln with possessing.
Lincoln drew himself up to his full and impressive height. His black suit
conformed perfectly to the motion; it was far from new and had been worn
so often that it molded itself to its owner's shape. "If my death would
restore the seceded states, I would beg for your bullets," he said. "If the
Union fails, I have no wish to live."
From most politicians, that would have been just talk. Looking at the
sorrow that masked Lincoln's rough-hewn features, Caudell was convinced
he meant every word of it. But if he thought the Federal government had the
right to tell states they had to stay in a Union they no longer desired, then he
might be sincere, but to Caudell's way of thinking he was sincerely wrong.
Some of the Confederates were willing to find him most literally sincere,
too. Billy Beddingfield started to raise his AK-47. Caudell grabbed the
repeater and pushed it back down. "No, Billy, damn it," he said.
"This isn't like shooting a couple of nigger prisoners." Nobody had ever
assassinated a President of the United States. Caudell could imagine
nothing surer to bring on lasting enmity between U.S.A. and C.S.A.
Beddingfield turned on him, scowling. "He don't deserve no better, all the
trouble he brung on us." He started to swing the rifle back toward Lincoln.
Caudell ground his teeth. Benny Lang had handled Page 125
Beddingfield easily enough, but he knew he couldn't match the Rivington
man. And how strange to think of fighting a man from his own regiment to
save the President whose troops he'd been battling these past two and a half
years!
Before Beddingfield could shoot, before the fight could start, a murmur ran
from back to front through the crowd of soldiers in gray: "Marse Robert!
Marse Robert's here!" Caudell looked around. Sure enough, Lee sat aboard
Traveller. The crowd parted before him like the waters of the Red Sea. He
rode up to the base of the White House steps.
Lincoln waited for him, infinitely alone. One of the Federal sentries began
to lift his Springfield. Another man slapped it down, as Caudell had with
Beddingfield.
Lee took off his broad-brimmed gray felt, bowed in the saddle to Lincoln.
"Mr. President," he said, as respectfully as if Lincoln were his own chosen
leader.
"See?" Caudell whispered to Billy Beddingfield. | ;
"Shut up," Beddingfield hissed back.
"General Lee," Lincoln said with a stiff nod. He looked from the
Confederate commander to the men of the Army of Northern Virginia, back
again. His lips quirked in what Caudell first thought a grimace of pain.
Then he saw it was a grin, however wry. Lincoln half-turned, waved toward
the imposing bulk of the White House behind him. "General, do you want
to step into my parlor with me? Seems we have a bit of talking to do."
He'd been eloquent when talking to the soldiers. With Lee, he sounded like
a storekeeper inviting a customer in to haggle over the price of potatoes.
Caudell was instantly suspicious of such a chameleonlike shift of style. But
Lee said, "Of course, Mr. President. I'm sure one of my men will hold
Traveller's head." As he dismounted, three dozen men sprang forward for
the privilege. A colored servant brought in a pot of coffee and two cups on a
silver tray. "Sit down, General, do sit down," Lincoln said.
"Thank you, Mr. President." Robert E. Lee took the chair to which Lincoln
had waved him. Lincoln poured the coffee with his own hands. "Thank you,
sir," Lee said again. Lincoln's chuckle held a bitter edge. "A fair number of
generals have sat in that chair, General Lee, but I'll be switched if you're not
the politest one of the lot." Still standing himself, he peered down at Lee. "I
think this country would be a good deal better off if you'd sat down in it
some years sooner."
"You honored me by offering me that command," Lee said. "Having to
decline it tore my heart in two."
"When you declined it, I think you tore the United States in two," Lincoln
answered. "Set against that, your heart's a small thing."
"I am in the end a Virginian first, Mr. President," Lee said. ' "You come out
with that so coolly, as if it explained everything," Lincoln said. Lee looked
at him in some surprise; he thought it did. Lincoln went on,"I take the view-
I have always taken the view-that the interest of the several states should
count for more than the interest of any one of them."
"There we disagree, sir," Lee said quietly.
Page 126
"So we do." Rather to Lee's relief, Lincoln sat down. A good-sized man
himself, Lee did not care to be towered over, and Lincoln was as tall as any
of Andries Rhoodie's friends. He reached out a long arm to tap Lee on the
knee. "Something I want you to think on, General: You've taken
Washington for the moment, but can you keep it? There are many more
Union soldiers around the city than Confederates in it. Can you stand siege
here?"
Lee smiled, admiring Lincoln's audacity. "I'll take the chance, Mr.
President. The beef depot and slaughterhouse by the Washington Monument
could alone subsist my army for some time, and it is far from the only such
source of supply in the city. To us, sir, having come here, we feel we are
entered into the land flowing with milk and honey. We've made do with
very little in the past."
"Yes, you can find milk and honey here, I expect, though you'd better watch
out that the sutlers and commissary officers don't adulterate 'em before they
ever get to your men." Lincoln studied Lee. "But where will you get more
cartridges for those newfangled repeaters your men carry?"
"We have a sufficiency," Lee said, more calmly than he felt. That one sharp
question was plenty to dispel any lingering doubts about Lincoln's ability.
The man understood what war required. Lee wondered if the Army of
Northern Virginia did have enough ammunition for another big fight. The
men had spent it like a drunken sailor throwing away money after six
months at sea.
Lincoln's eyes bored into him. He remembered that the Federal President
had been a lawyer before he took up politics. He was practiced at sniffing
out falsehood hiding behind a mask of rectitude. Lee said, "Let me ask you
something in turn, Mr. President, if I may: Are you prepared to destroy
Washington City to drive us out of it? That is what you would have to do,
you know; already we are looking to our own defense here. Would your
countrymen support you in such an action, especially at a time when
Confederate arms are gaining successes against other Federal forces besides
the Army of the Potomac?"
"My countrymen elected me to hold the Union together, General Lee, and
that I shall undertake to do by whatever means necessary so long as there is
any hope of this war's success," Lincoln said. Lee felt a slight chill as he
gauged the big man in the velvet-upholstered chair. Here, even more than
with General Grant, he at last encountered a Northern man with strength of
purpose to match his own and President Davis's. Lincoln continued, "If the
only hope of saving the Union is to make this city into a funeral pyre and
then immolate myself upon it, that I shall do, and let the voters judge come
November whether I did right or wrong."
If he was bluffing, Lee was glad never to have met him at a poker table.
And yet the game they were playing now was poker on a grander scale,
with the fate of two nations pushed onto the table for stakes. This time,
though, Lee knew he was holding aces. He turned a new one face up,
drawing a telegram from his pocket and handing it to Lincoln. "Mr.
President, you say you will carry on so long as you feel you can win the
war. Here is a dispatch I received this morning which may shed some light
on your chances of doing so."
To read the telegram, Lincoln slipped on a pair of gold-framed spectacles
much like Lee's own. That was hardly surprising; the two leaders were only
two years apart in age, and a man's sight grew long in the middle years,
regardless of whether he was born in mansion or log cabin.
The Federal president peered over the rims of his glasses at Lee. "This
paper is genuine"-he pronounced it genuwine-"General?"
Page 127
"You have my oath on it, Mr. President." Lee had not thought of offering
Lincoln a false telegram. Had it occurred to him, the stratagem would have
been a good one. But Lincoln was more ready to counter deception than he
was to offer it.
"Your oath I will accept, General, though those of few others-in gray or
blue-under these circumstances," Lincoln said heavily. "So Bedford Forrest
with thirty-five hundred men has beaten our General Sturgis with over eight
thousand north of Corinth, Mississippi, has he?"
"Not only beaten him but wrecked him, Mr. President. His men are in full
flight toward Memphis, with Forrest in pursuit. From his report, he has
captured two hundred fifty wagons and ambulances and five thousand
stands of small arms, not that those latter are of much concern to us. Do you
suppose you can keep his cavalry off General Sherman's supply line much
longer? Do you suppose Sherman can long survive with the railroads
wrecked as Forrest's men are in the habit of wrecking them?" Lincoln bent
his head, covered his face with his large, bony hands. "It is the end," he
said, his voice muffled. "I wish one of your rebels had shot me out there, so
I should never have to live past this black day."
"Don't think of it so, Mr. President. Call it rather a new beginning," Lee
said. "The Confederate States never wanted more than to go their own way
in peace and to live in peace with the United States."
"No right cause impelled you to dissolve the Union, only fear-misguided
fear, I might add-that I would act precipitately against slavery. I was willing
to let it remain in place where it was and slowly to wither there."
"Mr. President, I hold no brief for slavery, as you may know. But I do
believe the rights of a state to be of higher importance than those of the
Federal-or Confederate-government."
"This war has undermined the powers of the separate states, North and
South alike," Lincoln said. "Both Washington and Richmond levy direct
taxes and directly conscript men, no matter how the governors moan and
bellow like branded calves. Can any separate state hope to resist their
power? You know the answer as well as I."
Lee stroked his beard. Lincoln had a point. Even his precious Virginia, by
far the greatest of the Confederate states, followed first the will of the
national government, then its own. He said, "I am but a soldier; let those
wiser in such matters settle them as seems best."
"If you were 'but a soldier,' General Lee, we wouldn't be sitting here talking
with each other right now." Lincoln's mouth twisted in that melancholy grin
of his. "And I wish to thunder that we weren't!" His gaze sharpened again.
"Weren't for those repeaters you've broken out with like a dog's new spring
fleas, I don't think we would be, either. If I knew where you were getting
'em, I'd buy a batch for my own side, I tell you that."
"I believe you, Mr. President." Lee meant it. Lincoln was an inventor of
sorts; he'd once patented a device for getting riverboats across stretches of
low water. Anyone in the North who came up with a new rifle or cartridge
made a beeline for the White House, hoping to impress him with it. Lee
went on carefully, "As for our new rifles, we do not import them from
overseas. They come from within the Confederacy."
"So say the rebels we've captured," Lincoln answered. "I own I find it hard
to credit. The rifles are better Page 128
than any we make, and you Southerners haven't a tithe of our factories. So
how did you turn out so many so fast?"
"The how of it is not important, Mr. President." Lee could not discuss the
Rivington men and their secret with his nation's chiefest enemy-with the
man, indeed, who was his nation's chiefest reason for existing. Oddly,
though, he found he wanted to. Of all the men he'd met, Lincoln seemed
least likely to call him a lunatic; the Federal President had a breadth of
vision chat might be wide enough to take in the notion of men coming back
from 2014. Lee's brows came together. Again, how could the man before
him be capable of the outrages Andries Rhoodie ascribed to him? Lee
shrugged. That how was not important, either. "What is important is that my
men and I are here. As I said before, I believe we can stay here, and that
other Confederate armies are likely to continue to win victories. Your war to
subjugate the South has failed."
"I will not give it up," Lincoln said, stubborn still.
"Then the United States will give up on you," Lee predicted. "But the
choice is not altogether in your hands, sir. When I leave the White House,
my next call will be at the British ministry, to pay my respects to Lord
Lyons. Since I shall be in the position to do that, how can he fail to
recognize the Confederate States as a nation which has succeeded in
winning its independence?"
He did not say-he did not need to say-that if Great Britain recognized the
Confederacy, France and the other European powers would surely follow
her lead... and not even the stubbornest U.S. President could continue war
on the Southern states in the face of that recognition.
Lincoln's long, sad face grew longer and sadder. Even now, though, he
refused to yield, saying, "Lord Lyons hates slavery. So do the British
people."
"Britain recognizes the Empire of Brazil, does she not, despite its being a
slaveholding land? For that matter, Britain recognized the United States
before the start of our unfortunate war, and does still, in spite of your