The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (6 page)

He hoped the military telegraph line into the Treasury building was truly secure, for today’s dispatches portended far worse than usual—perhaps upward of ten thousand men lost in one futile charge, no more than twenty minutes in duration. At Fredericksburg it had taken eight hours to pile up such a casualty list; now it could be done in a matter of minutes.

He did not need to ask what the nation would say to this. Grant had ordered censorship from the front lines, arguing that revealing the casualty rate would provide useful intelligence to the enemy.

The argument was, of course, as hollow as a dried-out gourd. The enemy could count the bodies easily enough. And so could the reporters who were slipping back to their publishers with the truth. It was devastating news that could not be contained much longer.

At the cabinet meeting this morning, with rumors already swirling in the streets outside this very building, he could sense the mood. Stanton was melancholy. There was animosity between Stanton and Grant, the man who now commanded all Union armies in the field. The asthmatic lawyer was biding his time, waiting for the public outcry to reach a thunderous roar. Then he would make his move against Grant. If by some miracle Grant did take Richmond, Edwin would, of course, be the first to lay claim to that victory.

And then there was the little Napoleon, George McClellan. Even while leading the army to defeat—on nearly the identical battlefield two years ago—the press had hailed him, blaming the administration. McClellan’s agents and supporters launched a whisper campaign that a sure victory had been thrown away by the President, an amateur at war, who had interfered with the carefully laid out battle plans and thus triggered a disaster—a disaster that was now bleeding the nation to death two years later.

In two months McClellan would, without a doubt, clinch his party’s nomination. Though McClellan claimed he would support the war’s continuation after winning the election, the party platform—which was being written at that moment by Copperhead Clement Vallandigham of Ohio—demanded an end to the conflict; a conflict led, the Peace Democrats claimed, by the abolitionists and “King Lincoln, the Butcher.”

His personal secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, tried to conceal the worst of it from him; however, all he needed to do was walk down Pennsylvania Ave., to the corner by the Willard Hotel, and chat with “Ole Moses,” a black man who ran the corner newsstand. There he could get the latest papers from New York and Chicago and learn the truth about public opinion. As he opened the papers, Moses would stand silent, head lowered, perhaps whispering, “Never you mind that, Mr. President, it ain’t nothing to fret about, we are with you.”

What would Moses’ papers say tomorrow? Surely this news could not be kept hidden forever.

He looked back out to the river. Steam tugs were busy marshalling ships in and out of the docks at Alexandria.

Stanton had mentioned at the meeting this morning that a convoy of troop ships, actually empty hospital ships, would leave this evening. More troops were being stripped out of the garrison of Washington, over his personal objection, to be sent up as replacements, to feed the voracious appetite of war. In this case, however, Stanton was not very upset, because it was nine regiments of USCT who had filed into the city over the previous month.

“Mr. President?”

He turned. It was his secretary, John Nicolay, the door half open.

“Your guest is here, sir.”

Lincoln nodded, returning to his desk, dropping the dispatches.

“Show our friend in, John.”

Even Nicolay, trusted as he was, did not know the reason this visitor had appeared at a side entrance to the White House, presenting a note in the President’s hand stating:
ADMIT THIS BEARER WHENEVER HE SHOULD CALL AND BRING HIM TO ME AT ONCE REGARDLESS OF THE HOUR.

Nicolay opened the door wider and stood curious for a moment. The man entering wore a battered officer’s jacket. It had been brushed clean, but it bore the well-worn look of a man who had been up on the front lines for some time.

“Thank you, John, and please close the door,” Lincoln said with a smile.

Nicolay, obviously filled with curiosity at this strange visit, hesitated for a second, but a sharp look from his President caused him to lower his head with a nod and carefully close the door, which latched shut.

“James,” Lincoln announced, coming around from behind his desk, right hand extended. “I am so glad you could finally come. Please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss.”

Despite their being old friends, James Reilly stiffened slightly, almost coming to attention, and took Lincoln’s hand. The President’s grasp was warm and firm as Lincoln let his left hand go to James’s shoulder, squeezing him tightly.

“I am sorry I did not report at once, sir. I hope you understand.”

“James, sit down, I received your note. There is no need for apology.”

He could detect the faint scent of whiskey on the man’s breath. The curse of the Irish, some called it, but under these circumstances he could forgive it. He guided his friend over to a chair by the window, where they could sit and catch a hint of the cooling breeze wafting in after a hot day of humid rain and mists.

James settled into the chair with a sigh; Lincoln motioned to an ashtray by the side of the chair, and said, “It’s fine with me if you smoke.”

James nodded his thanks, pulled out a half-smoked cigar from his breast pocket, and struck a match on the side of his boot. Lincoln could see the man had made an attempt to clean up, albeit with little result, and waited patiently as James puffed the cigar to life.

He had known James for over fifteen years. A half-starved lad of eighteen or so, he had appeared at his office one day, looking for work, willing to trade a day of labor cleaning the dusty clutter of his office in exchange for a meal, a place to sleep on the floor, and after tough negotiations, twenty cents for his pocket. Illinois had been flooded with such men at that time. Bedraggled Irish by the thousands had come, streaming westward, looking for any kind of work. It had saddened him to turn so many of them away, but on that particular day the building’s regular janitor had disappeared yet again, and he had just won a case with a handsome retainer. But despite that, there was something about the lad that caught his attention.

James had ensconced himself in the office, as if it had become his territory to defend with life and limb, rendering it spotless during the day. At night Lincoln would find him buried in a book from his library. He encouraged him to consider the law, but James showed another talent. One day he found the young man asleep on the floor and scattered around him were half-a-dozen sketches that made him sit down and burst out laughing, awaking James with a frightened start. They were the most remarkable, entertaining caricatures of himself, long limbed, sitting in his chair, leaning back, hugely oversized feet plopped on his desk, pantlegs halfway up to his knees revealing socks that had snapped their garters and were sagging into his shoes. Another sketch showed him laughing, oversized head thrown back, and another—one he still had in his possession—was a serious study of him, looking out a window, as if gazing off to some distant land.

“Forget the law, my young friend,” he had proclaimed. “Besides, there are too many of us lawyers already. You must be an artist!”

For the next six months James cleaned during the day, and at night studied art books that somehow, mysteriously, appeared in the prairie lawyer’s office. He had no bent toward the classical art of the day and showed little interest in the works of Church, Cole, and Turner. His was more of a satirical wit, mixed at times with personal studies of folks sitting in a tavern or courtroom, or clients of Lincoln’s who took delight in James’s skill and sharp wit. One client gave James the unheard of sum of five dollars to do a serious pencil-and-charcoal portrait of himself, his wife, and daughter.

With the advent of the steam-powered printing presses, and with the public’s insatiable demand for steel engraving illustrations, James at last found his calling, and an anonymous donor appeared. Lincoln smiled at the memory, for James would never be told the name of his benefactor. James spent a year of study in Chicago and never returned to Springfield, landing a job with a paper in the growing metropolis along Lake Michigan.

They had lost touch, as often happened, and Lincoln suspected that James, guessing who the “anonymous donor” had been, felt shame for so readily accepting the gift.

They did not cross paths again until 1858, when, during the first debate with Douglas, Lincoln had spotted the young man, now in his late twenties, sitting in the press section, sketchpad in hand.

It had been a warm reunion, rekindling a deep friendship, and it was, he had to admit, an investment well paid for; it was beneficial to have such a supporter with a national weekly. While some artists took to wicked, and at times enraging caricatures, Lincoln could always find the warmth in James’s work. There was a certain homey touch that captured the spirit of a plainspoken prairie lawyer, carrying the burden of a nation sliding into the “inevitable crisis.” Thomas Nast, though supportive of the cause, could be wickedly vile, especially in his portrayals of Irish, Catholics, and Negroes. Ward and Homer—although their work was superb—lacked something that James always seemed to capture: a very personal, and at times disturbing, vision of the war.

Shortly after the debates and their reestablished contact, James sent the defeated candidate a check for $120, the cost of his year’s tuition at the art school. Lincoln had replied to him that he had no idea why such a check would be sent to him, but he would cash it and donate the money to a school for freed colored children.

They temporarily lost touch again until the week following the collapse of McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. James had shown up at the White House, unbidden, standing in line for hours to finally have a word with his President. He asked for five minutes of time to show him some sketches—not the sketches that would appear next week in
Harper’s,
of perfectly aligned ranks of soldiers going forth to victory, but rather, drawings that would never be published.

For the first time, he had seen a glimmer of the true face of this war through James’s eye and pencil, and it had left him shaken. Five minutes turned into four hours, and later that evening a plan was hatched.

“James, I’d like to ask a favor of you,” he said slowly.

“Anything at all, sir.”

“Whenever you are returning from the front would you visit with me?”

“A pleasure,” and he then hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on your time, sir.”

There was a long pause.

“Actually, I take delight in seeing you as an old friend from Illinois, but this is about something else.”

“And that is, sir?”

“I’d like you to bring your sketchpad along, share it with me, especially those drawings, which you say will never be published. It gives me a sense of things, things no official report, no newspaper account, can carry.”

“Of course.”

“But there is more, James.”

“And that is?”

“I’d like you to talk to me as you just have. Tell me your impressions. What you see. What you hear the men saying. Unlike a lot of the newspaper writers the soldiers dislike, I can see from the drawings that the men trust you. They fancy when you sketch them, and you’ve told me what they talk about while you sketch them. I want to hear that.”

“And?” he asked tentatively.

“And what you hear in headquarters as well. What the staff talks about. Find a way to sketch some of the generals now and then. Heaven knows they will sit all day doing nothing except posing like Napoleon himself while a battle is raging outside their tent if they think they’ll wind up on the cover of
Harper’s
.”

He had forced a smile.

“Share a drink, let them chat, hear what they say about themselves, about each other, about how they really feel the war is going. That is what I really want to hear from you, James.”

His young friend had taken that in and remained silent for several minutes, looking down at his sketchpad, slowly thumbing through the drawings, stopping at a drawing of the field at Malvern Hill after the fighting ended.

“In other words, you want me to spy.”

“That, my friend, is such an ugly word when so many talk about an honorable war, all glory and such.”

He sighed.

“I want to hear the truth, James, not the whispers of a spy, as you put it. I want to hear from a man I trust, understand what he sees with the eyes of an artist, but also, what he hears. I do not think there is dishonor in that. It would be of tremendous help. Think of yourself as the President’s eyes and ears in places I can’t go.”

His friend had finally nodded, pointing to the carnage drawn out on his pad.

“If it shortens that by one day, I’ll do it.”

It was James, returning to Washington the day after Antietam, who brought Lincoln the bitter news that two entire corps had remained idle throughout the fight, the men raging that if they had been sent in at the end of the day, they would have swept Lee and his army into the Potomac and ended the conflict then and there. The privates, sergeants, even some of the generals, had seen it—but not McClellan. He had reported the same about Chancellorsville and again after Gettysburg … lost victories and distant generals who had failed to see the possibilities.