Lincoln: A Novel Read online

  Look for these other wonderful novels by

  Gore Vidal!

  BURR

  THE CITY AND THE PILLAR

  CREATION

  DARK GREEN, BRIGHT RED

  DULUTH

  1876

  EMPIRE

  HOLLYWOOD

  JUDGMENT OF PARIS

  JULIAN

  KALKI

  MESSIAH

  SEARCH FOR THE KING

  TWO SISTERS

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  WILLIWAW

  “LINCOLN WAS AN ASTONISHING

  ACHIEVEMENT, THE GREATEST

  HISTORICAL NOVEL OF OUR TIME.”

  Allan Massie

  The Scotsman

  “Lincoln reaches for sublimity, as in the moving account of the president’s visit to the Confederate wounded, or the telling of Willie’s death and Mary Todd’s encroaching madness. There are passages that make one weep. This novel will, I suspect, maintain a permanent place in American letters. There has been no better prose in the last 50 years than that with which Vidal narrates the streaming of the panicked people down Pennsylvania Avenue to the ‘soft thud of cannons’ from the debacle of the first Bull Run. The portrait of Winfield Scott, in whose face the ‘worms [were] at work’ as he absorbs the meaning of the disaster, is one of many small masterpieces within the masterful whole.”

  Andrew Delbanco

  The New Republic

  “The portrait is reasoned, judicious, straightforward and utterly convincing ... even more compelling than Burr. In his ongoing chronicle of American history ... Mr. Vidal is concerned with dissecting, obsessively and often brilliantly, the roots of personal ambition as they give rise to history itself. ... There are dramatic ironies which Mr. Vidal handles with exquisite tact and skill. His Lincoln is not a debunked portrait by any means ... and, as the novel runs its course, he emerges as a truly outstanding man.”

  Joyce Carol Gates

  The New York Times Book Review

  “The most vivid personage in the book is Mary Todd Lincoln. The author has taken her rages, her erratic behavior, her extravagance, her pretensions, and out of these, he has made her a startling counterpart to Lincoln himself. His Mary Lincoln is another citizen consumed by the Civil War: loathing slavery—her denunciation of it is a brilliantly moving passage—loving her Southern connections, understanding her husband more profoundly than anyone else, all the while tormenting him more wretchedly than anyone else.”

  Richard Eder

  Los Angeles Times

  “There are some wonderful things in Lincoln ... by far the most important is the presented character of Lincoln himself. ... He is in Vidal’s version at once more complex, mysterious and enigmatic, more implacably courageous and, finally, more tragic than the conventional public images, the marble man of the memorial. He is honored in his book.

  George Carrett

  Chicago Tribune

  “Richly entertaining ... In his skeptical panorama of Civil War Washington, awash with fear, greed, ambition, and even nobility, Vidal obviously means to redress Sandburg’s several-million-word saint’s life. As he did in Burr and 1876, Vidal has used the newspapers, diaries and letters of the time to make a solid historical base; then, maintaining the third-person viewpoint, he lets us pry into the peculiar minds of his true-life characters. The result works like a talisman. ... For the general reader the elegant explication of the issues of the day gives hearty satisfaction: history lessons with the blood still hot.”

  Shelby Coffey III

  The Washington Post

  “Vidal is the best all-round American man of letters since Edmund Wilson. ... This is his most moving book.”

  Walter demons

  Newsweek

  “We come back to the man, again and again, wondering whether this deified figure in American history will reveal himself. He does, but his revelation is as indirect as the man himself, and therein lies Gore Vidal’s literary triumph. There is no handy and cheap psychoanalysis here, but rather a careful scrutiny of the actions that spring from the core of Lincoln himself. ... We are left to figure out the man as if he were a real person in our lives.”

  Rita Mae Brown

  Chicago Sun-Times

  “Vidal ... has found his truest subject, which is our national political history during precisely those years when our political and military histories were as one. ... Vidal’s imagination of American politics, then and now, is so powerful as to compel awe. ... No biographer, and until now no novelist, has had the precision of imagination to show us a plausible and human Lincoln, of us and yet beyond us.”

  Harold Bloom

  New York Review of Books

  “Vidal’s Lincoln is a brilliant marriage of fact and imagination. It’s just about everything a novel should be—pleasure, information, moral insight. Vidal ... gives us a man and time so alive and real that we see and feel them. And their imprint is so forcefully made that it’s unlikely we will ever envision Lincoln and Civil War Washington again in the same way. ... A superb book.”

  Webster Schott

  The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “The best American historical novel I’ve read in recent years.”

  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  Vanity Fair

  Novels by Gore Vidal

  WILLIWAW

  THE CITY AND THE PILLAR

  A SEARCH FOR THE KING

  DARK GREEN, BRIGHT RED

  THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

  MESSIAH

  MYRA BRECKINRIDGE

  TWO SISTERS

  MYRON

  KALKI

  DULUTH

  The Classical Novels:

  JULIAN

  CREATION

  The American Chronicle Novels:

  BURR

  LINCOLN

  1876

  EMPIRE

  HOLLYWOOD

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  Copyright © 1984 by Gore Vidal

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-43185

  ISBN 0-345-31221-X

  This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

  A signed first edition of this book has been privately printed by The Franklin Library

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Ballantine Books Edition: June 1985

  30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23

  Contents

  Contents

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Part Two

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Part Three

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Afterword

  About The Author

  Part One

  1

  ELIHU B. WASHBURNE OPENED his gold watch. The spidery hands showed five minutes to six.

  “Wait here,” he said to the driver, who said, “How do I know you’re coming back, sir?”

  At the best of times Congressman Washburne’s temper was a most unstable affair, and his sudden outbursts of rage—he could roar like a preacher anticipating hell—were much admired in his adopted state of Illinois, where constituents proudly claimed that he was the only militant teetotaller who behaved exactly like a normal person at five minutes to six, say, in the early morning of an icy winter day—of the twenty-third of February, 1861, to be exact.

  “Why, you black—!” As the cry in Washburne’s throat began to go to its terrible maximum, caution, the politician’s ever-present angel, cut short the statesman’s breath. A puff of unresonated cold steam filled the space between the congressman and the Negro driver on his high seat.

  Heart beating rapidly with unslaked fury, Washburne gave the driver some coins. “You are to stay here until I return, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, sir.” White teeth were quickly bared and unbared in the black, cold-puckered face.

  Washburne buttoned up his overcoat and stepped carefully onto the frozen mud that was supposed to be the pavement of a stately avenue leading to the squalid train depot of Washington City, capital of thirty-four United States that were now in the process of disuniting. He fluffed u
p his beard, hoping to better warm his face.

  Washburne entered the depot as the cars from Baltimore were rattling to a halt. Negro porters were slouched along the sidings. Huge carts stood ready to be filled with Northern merchandise to be exchanged for Southern tobacco, raw cotton, food. Currently, the Southerners were saying that Washington City was the natural capital of the South. But they did not say it, if they were wise, in Washburne’s irritable Western presence.

  Just past the locomotive, the representative of Illinois’s first district stationed himself in front of an empty gilded wagon whose sides were emblazoned with the name of Gautier, the town’s leading caterer, a Frenchman who was, some claimed but never he, the lost Dauphin of France.

  As Washburne watched the sleepy travellers disembark, he wished that he had brought with him at least a half-dozen Federal guards. Since the guards were just coming off night duty, no one would think it odd if they should converge, in a casual sort of way, upon the depot. But the other half of the semi-official Joint Congressional Committee of Two, Senator William H. Seward of New York, had said, “No, we don’t want to draw any attention to our visitor. You and I will be enough.” Since the always-mysterious Seward had then chosen not to come to the depot, only the House of Representatives was represented in the stout person of Elihu B. Washburne, who was, suddenly, attracted to a plainly criminal threesome. To the left, a small sharp-eyed man with one hand plunged deep in his overcoat pocket where the outline of a derringer was visible. To the right, a large thickset young man with both hands in his pockets—two pistols? In the center, a tall thin man, wearing a soft slouch hat pulled over his eyes like a burglar, and a short overcoat whose collar was turned up, so that nothing was visible between cap and collar but a prominent nose and high cheekbones covered with yellow skin, taut as a drum. In his left hand he clutched a leather grip-sack containing, no doubt, the tools of his sinister trade.

  As the three men came abreast of Washburne, the congressman said, “Well, you can’t fool me, Abe.”

  The small man turned fiercely on Washburne, hand half out of his overcoat pocket, revealing the derringer’s barrel. But the tall man said, “It’s all right, Mr. Pinkerton. This is Congressman Washburne. He’s our welcoming committee.”

  Warmly, Washburne shook the hand of his old friend the President-elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, a fellow politician from Illinois, who was supposed to be murdered later on in the day at Baltimore.

  “This is Ward Hill Lamon.” Lincoln indicated the thickset man, who withdrew his right hand from his pocket to shake the hand of Washburne, who stared dumbly at Lamon’s hand, ablaze with what looked to be barbarous jewellery.

  Lincoln laughed. “Hill, when you’re in the big city you take your brass knuckles off.”

  “It’s in this city that I better keep them on.” And Washburne noticed that Lamon—who spoke with a Southern accent—did exactly that. Meanwhile, Pinkerton had moved on ahead, studying the passers-by with such suspicion that he himself began to attract attention. Lincoln said what Washburne was thinking. “Mr. Pinkerton is what they call a detective, and detectives always make quite a fuss, trying not to be noticed.”

  To Washburne’s relief, no one recognized Lincoln. But then he himself had been in a moment’s doubt when Lincoln had pushed down his collar, to reveal a short, glossy black beard that entirely changed the shape—and expression—of his face.

  “Is it false?” Washburne stared hard. They were now standing beneath a huge poster of “Abraham Lincoln, the President-elect. Welcome to Washington City.” The cleanshaven face of the poster was hard, even harsh-looking, while the bearded face looked weary, but amiable. To Washburne, the President-elect resembled a prosperous, down-state Illinois farmer come to market.

  “No, it’s real. What you might call an adornment. I had to do something useful on the train from Springfield.” Lincoln leapt to one side as two huge black women carrying a tub of pork sausage meat hurried toward the cars. Then Pinkerton motioned that they were to follow him outside.

  As they moved toward the door of the depot, Washburne said, “I’ve hired a carriage. Governor Seward was supposed to meet us here. But he must’ve overslept. We’ve put you up at Willard’s Hotel. General Scott thinks you’ll be safer there than in that house we found for you.”

  Lincoln did not answer. Washburne wondered if he was listening. Outside the depot, the shrunken wintry sun resembled a small, pale, yellow seal affixed to the parchment-gray sky to the left of where the Capitol’s dome should be but was not. Instead, from the round marble base, reminiscent of one of Gautier’s white wedding cakes, a large crane was silhouetted against the sky like a gallows.

  “They took the old lid off, I see.” Lincoln ignored Pinkerton’s efforts to get him into the waiting barouche.

  “God knows when they’ll get the new one on,” said Washburne. “There’s talk in Congress that we should just leave it the way it is.”

  “No.” Lincoln shivered suddenly. “I always forget,” he said, “how cold the South gets in winter.”

  The four men climbed into the carriage. Pinkerton sat next to the driver. Lamon sat with his back to the driver’s seat while Lincoln and Washburne shared the back seat. Washburne noticed that Lincoln never let go of the grip-sack. Even while seated, he clutched it so hard that the huge knuckles of his hand were white.

  “The crown jewels?” Washburne indicated the case. Lincoln laughed, but did not release his hold on the handle. “My certificate of good character. It’s the inaugural address. I gave it to my son Bob to look after and he mislaid it in Harrisburg. The only copy there is!” Lincoln visibly winced at the memory. “We had to go through two tons of luggage to find it. I could’ve killed that boy. Anyway, I’ve carried it ever since.”

  “We’re all sort of curious to hear what you’ll say ...” began Washburne.

  But Lincoln was not to be drawn out. “I see there’s been some new building going on.” He looked out the window at the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue where the great hotels were lined up, like so many brick barracks interspersed with saloons and shops. Near the corner of Sixth Street was Brown’s Hotel.

  “Brown’s was here when you were here in the forties.”

  Lincoln nodded. “Mrs. Lincoln and I spent our first night in Washington there. Then we moved to a boardinghouse with the two boys, who were not as popular as they ought to have been. The Widow Spriggs, our landlady was called.”

  On Twelfth Street there was the Kirkwood House and, finally, on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue stood the center of the city’s political and social life, Willard’s Hotel, nicely situated opposite the Treasury Building, which was placed, most symbolically everyone thought, in a line with the hotel and the President’s House.

  At six-thirty in the morning the city was not yet properly awake. The hacks that were usually lined up in front of each hotel were not to be seen. Only Negroes—slave and free—were on the move, bringing food to the hotels, cleaning the stairs of the houses and taverns, moving briskly in the cold.

  “I see they’ve made a stab at paving the avenue,” said Lincoln, as the carriage skittered over cobbles so ill-set that they made the avenue look even more like a vast, wild field than plain frozen mud might have done. “Not a very serious stab,” he added.

  At the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the original city planners had intended that the President’s House should face, in constitutional harmony, the Capitol. But the Treasury building now blocked most of the view of the Executive Mansion, while the rest was hidden by a large windowless red-brick building, which intrigued Lincoln. “That’s new. What is it? A prison?”

  “No. That’s President Buchanan’s barn. He’s very proud of it. In fact, it’s about the only thing he’s done in four years.”

  A horsecar rattled into view, only half full at this early hour; the stove at the back of the car smoked badly.

  “The trolleys are since your time,” said Washburne. “They now go all the way from the Navy Yard to Georgetown. That’s six miles,” Washburne added, aware that he had once again lost his old friend’s attention. The curiously lidded left eye—like a frog’s—was half shut, always a sign that its owner was either deep in thought or mortally tired.