“Oh, bravo, Mr. Benjamin,” Stephens said softly. Edwin Stanton coughed and spluttered and looked away from Ben Butler. Even Seward’s craggy features found room for a small smile.
As for Butler, his countenance changed not a jot. It was as if he’d tried to anger Benjamin not out of hatred for his race, but solely to gain an edge in these talks. Studying him, Lee concluded that was exactly why he’d done it. No, not a buffoon, he decided. A dangerous man, the more so for being in complete control of himself
“Shall we continue?” Seward said after a moment. “Perhaps the simplest way would be to set forth the points remaining at issue between us, and then to seek to settle them one by one, not letting failure over anyone deter us from reaching agreement on such others as lend themselves to it.”
“A reasonable plan,” Alexander Stephens said. Where Butler had been personally inflammatory, the Confederate Vice President was politically so;, ‘There is, to begin with, the matter of Maryland—”
Edwin Stanton jerked as if stuck by a pin. His face turned red. “No, by God!” he shouted, pounding the table with his fist. “Maryland belongs to the Union, and we will fight again sooner than yield it. For one thing, with it goes Washington City.”
“We had Washington, sir,” Judah Benjamin interjected.
Stanton ignored him. “For another, despite any troubles we may have had there at the outset of the war, the people of Maryland stand foursquare behind the United States. They shall not willingly submit to your rule.”
Lee suspected that was true. “Maryland, My Maryland” notwithstanding, the Army of Northern Virginia had received scant aid or comfort from that state’s inhabitants in either the Sharpsburg campaign or the more recent invasion that had led to the capture of Washington. Despite some thousands of slaveowners, Maryland was in essence a Northern state. He said, “Let us set Maryland aside for the time being, merely noting now that its status has been questioned. Perhaps it may be included in some larger agreement solving the status of all disputed border states.”
“Very well, General. I did but raise the question,” Stephens said. “As Secretary Seward so wisely stated, we should proceed to settle what we can. There are, for example, the thirty-eight northwestern counties of Virginia which have been illegally included among the United States under the name West Virginia.”
“Illegally?” Seward raised a tufted eyebrow. “How can a nation founded on the principle of secession fail to acknowledge the applicability of the principle when employed against it? Surely you would not be branded hypocrites before the world?”
“Successful hypocrites seem to bear up under the opprobrium remarkably well,” Benjamin said, his habitual smile perhaps a hairsbreadth broader. “But let us continue to layout the territories whose possession remains at issue, or rather the states: we have not yet mentioned Kentucky or Missouri.”
Both sets of commissioners leaned forward. Both nations had strong claims to both states, though Federal forces were currently in possession of them. Ben Butler said, “Given the pleasant time your armies are having farther south in the valley of the Mississippi, it will be a long time before you see Missouri, Mr. Benjamin.” Now he addressed the Confederate Secretary of State as if completely indifferent to his religion.
He managed to be unpleasant nonetheless. Not all the Negro regiments the Federals had raised while occupying Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee had gone north with their white comrades upon the armistice. Some stayed to carry on the fight. Lincoln predicted as much, Lee remembered; he said it would take a war to return slavery to those parts.
“Bedford Forrest bas beaten the niggers at Sardis and Grenada,” Stephens said. “He is advancing on Grand Gulf now. I expect he will manage to hit ‘em again, as people say.” His laugh sounded like the wind ruffling dry grass.
But he did not ruffle Butler. “He may well defeat them in the field, orphaned as they be,” the fat political general admitted. “What then? Did you not recently call the territory north of the Rapidan ‘Mosby’s Confederacy’? You shall presently face the prospect of subduing a ‘Nigger Union’ down there, and may you have the same joy of putting it down as we did with Mosby.”
Obnoxious as Butler was, Lee began to see why, aside from his political connections, Lincoln had chosen him as a peace commissioner. Born with an eye toward his own advantage, he sought advantage for his country with a like single-mindedness.
Lee said, “Thus far, we appear to have more problems than solutions for them. Shall we continue to set them forth, so they all lay on the table at once?”
“We may as well,” Seward said, “though I hope we shan’t provoke ourselves into a new round of fighting because our difficulties appear insuperable.”
“The state of Texas borders both the Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory,” Alexander Stephens said significantly.
“Good luck sending another expedition to New Mexico,” Stanton replied. “We can bring men down from Colorado faster than you can get them across the West Texas desert. We showed you that two years ago.”
“You are likely to be right there, sir,” Lee said. Stanton, he noted, made no such claim for the Indian Territory north of Texas. The war there had not ended with the armistice, for the Indian tribes roused to battle by the Union and Confederacy could not be checked so easily by the Great White Fathers, commands. Only chaos ruled the Territory now.
“Are there any other territorial questions at issue between us?” Judah Benjamin asked.
Stanton said, “There had better not be, for we’ve gone from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande. Wherever we touch, we disagree.”
“So it would appear.” The Confederate Secretary of State’s smile never wavered. “That leaves the question of the amount of indemnity owed to us for the destruction U.S. forces wreaked upon our land. I would say”—which meant, as everyone at the table knew, that Jefferson Davis would say—”two hundred million dollars seems an equitable sum.”
“You may say it if you like,” Seward replied. “I gather that your constitution, derived as it is from our own, guarantees freedom of speech. Collecting what you claim is another matter altogether.”
“Hell will freeze over before you rebs see two hundred million dollars,” Stanton agreed.” A quarter of that sum would be extravagant.”
“We may not have to wait for the devil to get chilblains, nor anywhere near so long,” Benjamin said silkily. “Today is September 5, after all. In two months, you Northerners will hold your Presidential election. Would Mr. Lincoln not like to have a treaty of peace to present to the people before November 8?”
The three Federal commissioners looked glumly across the table at him. Defeat had turned Northern politics even more chaotic than they had been in the then-United States during the four-cornered Presidential race of 1860. Lee’s seizure of Washington had delayed the Republican convention in Baltimore, but when it finally convened, it renominated Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin…whereupon the radical Republicans seceded—both Northern papers and the Richmond Dispatch used the word, with perhaps different flavors of irony attached to it—from the party and put forward as their candidate John c. Fremont, who as general in Missouri had tried to emancipate that state’s slaves in 1861, only to see his order overruled by Lincoln. They chose Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to run with him; Johnson still stubbornly refused to admit that his state no longer acknowledged the authority of Washington, D.C.
The Democrats were in no better condition. Meeting in Chicago, they had just finished choosing Governor Horatio Seymour of New York as their Presidential candidate, with Clement Vallandigham of Ohio for a running mate. And General McClellan, disappointed at failing to gain the nomination, was vowing that he, like Fremont, would mount an independent campaign. That second split gave Lincoln a ray of hope, but only a faint one.