第79章 THE END OF THE ROAD(4)

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."Amighty 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.Iam 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.