Sam blew cigar smoke at him. "Go on, get out of here. His Honor might have got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and if he did he'll say he's all for the war but calculates we'll take a licking. God forbid we should misquote him. He wouldn't notice, since he can't remember on Tuesday what he said the Friday before-figures that's the papers' job-but some of his friends-well, cronies; a creature like that's not likely to have friends-just might."
Snickering, Herndon grabbed his hat, slung his jacket over his shoulder-it was another of those seasonless San Francisco days, not quite warm, not quite cool-and departed. Clemens drew on the cigar again, absentmindedly tapped its ash into a brass tray, and set it back in the corner of his mouth. He knew he was liable to forget about it once he started writing.
Pen scraped across paper.
President Blaine has told the nation and the world that, if the Confederate States do not withdraw their soldiers-soldiers they deployed without the consent of the United States, and against the express wishes of the same-from the provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora within ten days, he will ask Congress to declare a state of war in existence between the United States and the Confederate States.
He fails to include the Empire of Mexico in his ultimatum, which is no doubt only an oversight on his part. After all, leaving the disputed provinces out of the bargain, the United States do still abut Maximilian's dominions where our Upper California touches his Lower, whose cactuses arc every bit as dire a threat to the United States as any now sprouted in Sonora.
As noted before in this space, acquiring Sonora and Chihuahua represents-or, at least, may represent in the future-a new access of strength for the Confederate Sates, as did their purchase of Cuba a few years ago, a purchase to which the United States consented without a murmur. But we were then under a Democratic administration, and a Congress likewise Democratic: a party whose attitude toward the Confederacy has always been that the blamed thing would not be there if anybody had listened to them in the beginning and patted the then-Southern states on the head and told them what good boys they were until they eventually believed it and went to sleep in place of seceding, and has dealt with them since the War of Secession as if they were so many percussion caps filled with fulminate, and liable to explode if stepped on or dropped.
By contrast, the Confederate States are to the Republican Party-the phrase "a nigger in the woodpile" is tempting, but no; we shall refrain-an illegitimate child in the family of nations, and so to be deprived of plum pudding every Christmas Eve. Well, the illegitimate child is now above eighteen years of age, and a d-d big b-d, now suddenly the bigger by two provinces gulped down in lieu of the plums once denied it. No wonder, then, that President Blaine is in the way of seeing things red.
The question before the house, however, is-or rather, ought to be, the failure to understand the difference between the two being one of the chief causes of boiler explosions, marital discord, and drawing in the hope of filling an inside straight-not whether the United States have the right to be displeased at the transaction just concluded between the Confederacy and Mexico, but whether the transaction presents them with a legitimate ca-sus belli. This we beg leave to doubt. The suspicion lingers that, had the United States offered a brass spittoon and a couple of candles' value above the price the Confederacy agreed to pay him, the Stars and Stripes would now be flying above Chihuahua and Sonora-and maybe even above the dangerous cacti of Lower California as well-and there would be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from Richmond, with every politician in Washington sitting back as sleek and contented as the dog that stole the leg of lamb out of the roasting pan.
For better or worse-more like, for better and worse-Maximilian's sale of Sonora and Chihuahua strikes us as having been peaceful and voluntary enough to keep anyone sniffing around the deal from gagging at the smell, which in today's diplomacy marks it as something of a prodigy. We find it dashed uncomfortable to share a continent with a people who did not care to share a country with us, but we had best get used to it, because the Confederate States show no signs of packing up and moving to the mountains of Thibet. While we may regret the sale, we have not the right to seek to reverse it by force of arms. We may have been outsmarted, but we were not insulted, and being outsmarted is not reason enough to go to war-if it were, the poor suffering world should never have known its few brief-too brief! — moments when the bullets were not flying somewhere.
He had hardly laid down his pen before Clay Herndon came back into the office, slamming the door behind him. "Sam, have you got whatever you're going to say ready to set in type?" he demanded. "News of the ultimatum is already on the street. If we don't get into print in a hurry, it'll outstrip us. The Ba ha Califomian is beating the war drum, loud as it can." He threw himself into his chair and began to write furiously.
"Yes, I'm ready." Clemens exhibited the sheets he'd just finished. "What did the mayor say?"
"Sutro?" Herndon didn't look up from his scribbles. "The way he talks, we'll be in Richmond tomorrow, Atlanta the day after, and New Orleans the day after that. Huzzah for our side!" He sounded imperfectly delighted with the mayor's view of the world.
"You were a Blaine man last November, Clay," Sam reminded him. "Why aren't you over at the Californian, banging the war drum yourself?"
"Me? I'd love to take the Rebs down a peg," Herndon said, "but Blaine's going at it like a bull in a china shop, trying to make up for eighteen years in a couple of months. There." He threw down the pen and thrust paper at Clemens. "Here's mine. Let's see what you wrote."
Sam scrawled a few changes on Herndon's copy; Herndon used adverbs the way a bad cook used spices-on the theory that, if a few were good, more were better. In spite of that, he said, "Good story."
It convicted Sutro of being a pompous fool with his own words, the best way to do it.
"Thanks. You could have said 'a plague on both your houses' and let it go at that," Herndon said. "I'm glad you didn't, though. This is more fun."
The door flew open. Edgar Leary rushed in. Somebody had knocked a big dent in his hat, which he hadn't noticed yet. "They're hanging Longstreet in effigy at the corner of Market and Geary," the youngster said breathlessly. Then he took off the derby, and exclaimed in dismay. "The whole town's going crazy." He held out the hat as if it were evidence.
"Write the piece. Write it fast," Sam said. He took the pages of his editorial back from Herndon. "Sounds like they're not going to listen to me again." He sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"
Outside, somebody emptied a six-shooter, the cartridges going off in quick succession. Sam hoped whoever it was, was shooting in the air.
Newsboys on Richmond street corners waved copies of the Whig and the Examiner, the Dispatch and the Enquirer and the Sentinel, in the air. They were doing a roaring trade; lawyers and mechanics, ministers and farmers, drummers and teamsters and even the occasional colored man who had his letters crowded round them and shoved pennies at them.
Whichever paper the boy on any one corner touted, the main headline was the same: "Ultimatum runs out today!" After that, imagination ran riot: "P resident Longstreet to answer latest Yankee outrage! " " Navy said ready to put to sea! " " Navy said to be already at sea! " " Troop movements in Kentucky! " " Yankees said to be concentrating in Missouri! " And one word, like a drumbeat: " War!" "War!" "War! "
General Thomas Jackson, whose business was war, rode through the clamor as if through rain or snow or shellfire or any other minor distraction. "We'll whip 'em, won't we, Stonewall?" a fat man in a butcher's bloodstained apron shouted to him.