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 anyone of them.”
“There we disagree, sir,” Lee said quietly.
“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, Generaclass="underline" 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?”
“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.”