The Clansman Page 3

  A long line of people already stretched from the entrance under the portico far out across the park, awaiting their turn to see the President.

  Mrs. Cameron placed her hand falteringly on Elsie’s shoulder.

  “Look, my dear, what a crowd already! Must we wait in line?”

  “No, I can get you past the throng with my father’s name.”

  “Will it be very difficult to reach the President?”

  “No, it’s very easy. Guards and sentinels annoy him. He frets until they are removed. An assassin or maniac could kill him almost any hour of the day or night. The doors are open at all hours, very late at night. I have often walked up to the rooms of his secretaries as late as nine o’clock without being challenged by a soul.”

  “What must I call him? Must I say ‘Your Excellency?’”

  “By no means—he hates titles and forms. You should say ‘Mr. President’ in addressing him. But you will please him best if, in your sweet, homelike way, you will just call him by his name. You can rely on his sympathy. Read this letter of his to a widow. I brought it to show you.”

  She handed Mrs. Cameron a newspaper clipping on which was printed Mr. Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, who had lost five sons in the war.

  Over and over she read its sentences until they echoed as solemn music in her soul:

  “I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

  “Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

  “Abraham Lincoln.”

  “And the President paused amid a thousand cares to write that letter to a broken-hearted woman?” the mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then he is good down to the last secret depths of a great heart! Only a Christian father could have written that letter. I shall not be afraid to speak to him. And they told me he was an infidel!”

  Elsie led her by a private way past the crowd and into the office of Major Hay, the President’s private secretary. A word from the Great Commoner’s daughter admitted them at once to the President’s room.

  “Just take a seat on one side, Miss Elsie,” said Major Hay; “watch your first opportunity and introduce your friend.”

  On entering the room, Mrs. Cameron could not see the President, who was seated at his desk surrounded by three men in deep consultation over a mass of official documents.

  She looked about the room nervously and felt reassured by its plain aspect. It was a medium-sized, officelike place, with no signs of elegance or ceremony. Mr. Lincoln was seated in an armchair beside a high writing-desk and table combined. She noticed that his feet were large and that they rested on a piece of simple straw matting. Around the room were sofas and chairs covered with green worsted.

  When the group about the chair parted a moment, she caught the first glimpse of the man who held her life in the hollow of his hand. She studied him with breathless interest. His back was still turned. Even while seated, she saw that he was a man of enormous stature, fully six feet four inches tall, legs and arms abnormally long, and huge broad shoulders slightly stooped. His head was powerful and crowned with a mass of heavy brown hair, tinged with silver.

  He turned his head slightly and she saw his profile set in its short dark beard—the broad intellectual brow, half covered by unmanageable hair, his face marked with deep-cut lines of life and death, with great hollows in the cheeks and under the eyes. In the lines which marked the corners of his mouth she could see firmness, and his beetling brows and unusually heavy eyelids looked stern and formidable. Her heart sank. She looked again and saw goodness, tenderness, sorrow, canny shrewdness, and a strange lurking smile all haunting his mouth and eye.

  Suddenly he threw himself forward in his chair, wheeled and faced one of his tormentors with a curious and comical expression. With one hand patting the other, and a funny look overspreading his face, he said:

  “My friend, let me tell you something——”

  The man again stepped before him, and she could hear nothing. When the story was finished, the man tried to laugh. It died in a feeble effort. But the President laughed heartily, laughed all over, and laughed his visitors out of the room.

  Mrs. Cameron turned toward Elsie with a mute look of appeal to give her this moment of good-humour in which to plead her cause, but before she could move a man of military bearing suddenly stepped before the President.

  He began to speak, but seeing the look of stern decision in Mr. Lincoln’s face, turned abruptly and said:

  “Mr. President, I see you are fully determined not to do me justice!”

  Mr. Lincoln slightly compressed his lips, rose quietly, seized the intruder by the arm, and led him toward the door.

  “This is the third time you have forced your presence on me, sir, asking that I reverse the just sentence of a court-martial, dismissing you from the service. I told you my decision was carefully made and was final. Now I give you fair warning never to show yourself in this room again. I can bear censure, but I will not endure insult!”

  In whining tones the man begged for his papers he had dropped.

  “Begone, sir,” said the President, as he thrust him through the door. “Your papers will be sent to you.”

  The poor mother trembled at this startling act and sank back limp in her seat.

  With quick, swinging stride the President walked back to his desk, accompanied by Major Hay and a young German girl, whose simple dress told that she was from the Western plains.

  He handed the secretary an official paper.

  “Give this pardon to the boy’s mother when she comes this morning,” he said kindly to the secretary, his eyes suddenly full of gentleness.

  “How could I consent to shoot a boy raised on a farm, in the habit of going to bed at dark, for falling asleep at his post when required to watch all night? I’ll never go into eternity with the blood of such a boy on my skirts.”

  Again the mother’s heart rose.

  “You remember the young man I pardoned for a similar offence in ’62, about which Stanton made such a fuss?” he went on in softly reminiscent tones. “Well, here is that pardon.”

  He drew from the lining of his silk hat a photograph, around which was wrapped an executive pardon. Through the lower end of it was a bullet-hole stained with blood.

  “I got this in Richmond. They found him dead on the field. He fell in the front ranks with my photograph in his pocket next to his heart, this pardon wrapped around it, and on the back of it in his boy’s scrawl, ‘God bless Abraham Lincoln.’ I love to invest in bonds like that.”

  The secretary returned to his room, the girl who was waiting stepped forward, and the President rose to receive her.

  The mother’s quick eye noted, with surprise, the simple dignity and chivalry of manner with which he received this humble woman of the people.

  With straightforward eloquence the girl poured out her story, begging for the pardon of her young brother who had been sentenced to death as a deserter. He listened in silence.

  How pathetic the deep melancholy of his sad face! Yes, she was sure, the saddest face that God ever made in all the world! Her own stricken heart for a moment went out to him in sympathy.

  The President took off his spectacles, wiped his forehead with the large red silk handkerchief he carried, and his eyes twinkled kindly down into the good German face.

  “You seem an honest, truthful, sweet girl,” he said, “and”—he smiled—“you don’t wear hoop skirts! I may be whipped for this, but I’ll trust you and your brother, too. He shall be pardoned.” Elsie rose to introduce Mrs. Cameron, when a Congressman from Massa
chusetts suddenly stepped before her and pressed for the pardon of a slave trader whose ship had been confiscated. He had spent five years in prison, but could not pay the heavy fine in money imposed.

  The President had taken his seat again, and read the eloquent appeal for mercy. He looked up over his spectacles, fixed his eyes piercingly on the Congressman and said:

  “This is a moving appeal, sir, expressed with great eloquence. I might pardon a murderer under the spell of such words, but a man who can make a business of going to Africa and robbing her of her helpless children and selling them into bondage—no, sir—he may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine!”

  Again the mother’s heart sank.

  Her hour had come. She must put the issue of life or death to the test, and as Elsie rose and stepped quickly forward, she followed; nerving herself for the ordeal.

  The President took Elsie’s hand familiarly and smiled without rising. Evidently she was well known to him.

  “Will you hear the prayer of a broken-hearted mother of the South, who has lost four sons in General Lee’s army?” she asked.

  Looking quietly past the girl, he caught sight, for the first time, of the faded dress and the sorrow-shadowed face.

  He was on his feet in a moment, extended his hand and led her to a chair.

  “Take this seat, Madam, and then tell me in your own way what I can do for you.” In simple words, mighty with the eloquence of a mother’s heart, she told her story and asked for the pardon of her boy, promising his word of honour and her own that he would never again take up arms against the Union.

  “The war is over now, Mr. Lincoln,” she said, “and we have lost all. Can you conceive the desolation of my heart? My four boys were noble men. They may have been wrong, but they fought for what they believed to be right. You, too, have lost a boy.”

  The President’s eyes grew dim.

  “Yes, a beautiful boy——” he said simply.

  “Well, mine are all gone but this baby. One of them sleeps in an unmarked grave at Gettysburg. One died in a Northern prison. One fell at Chancellorsville, one in the Wilderness, and this, my baby, before Petersburg. Perhaps I’ve loved him too much, this last one—he’s only a child yet——”

  “You shall have your boy, my dear Madam,” the President said simply, seating himself and writing a brief order to the Secretary of War.

  The mother drew near his desk, softly crying. Through her tears she said:

  “My heart is heavy, Mr. Lincoln, when I think of all the hard and bitter things we have heard of you.”

  “Well, give my love to the people of South Carolina when you go home, and tell them that I am their President, and that I have never forgotten this fact in the darkest hours of this awful war; and I am going to do everything in my power to help them.” “You will never regret this generous act,” the mother cried with gratitude.

  “I reckon not,” he answered. “I’ll tell you something, Madam, if you won’t tell anybody. It’s a secret of my administration. I’m only too glad of an excuse to save a life when I can. Every drop of blood shed in this war North and South has been as if it were wrung out of my heart. A strange fate decreed that the bloodiest war in human history should be fought under my direction. And I—to whom the sight of blood is a sickening horror—I have been compelled to look on in silent anguish because I could not stop it! Now that the Union is saved, not another drop of blood shall be spilled if I can prevent it.”

  “May God bless you!” the mother cried, as she received from him the order.

  She held his hand an instant as she took her leave, laughing and sobbing in her great joy.

  “I must tell you, Mr. President,” she said, “how surprised and how pleased I am to find you are a Southern man.”

  “Why, didn’t you know that my parents were Virginians, and that I was born in Kentucky?”

  “Very few people in the South know it. I am ashamed to say I did not.”

  “Then, how did you know I am a Southerner?”

  “By your looks, your manner of speech, your easy, kindly ways, your tenderness and humour, your firmness in the right as you see it, and, above all, the way you rose and bowed to a woman in an old, faded black dress, whom you knew to be an enemy.” “No, Madam, not an enemy now,” he said softly. “That word is out of date.”

  “If we had only known you in time——”

  The President accompanied her to the door with a deference of manner that showed he had been deeply touched.

  “Take this letter to Mr. Stanton at once,” he said. “Some folks complain of my pardons, but it rests me after a hard day’s work if I can save some poor boy’s life. I go to bed happy, thinking of the joy I have given to those who love him.”

  As the last words were spoken, a peculiar dreaminess of expression stole over his careworn face, as if a throng of gracious memories had lifted for a moment the burden of his life.

  * * *

  CHAPTER III

  The Man of War

  Elsie led Mrs. Cameron direct from the White House to the War Department.

  “Well, Mrs. Cameron, what did you think of the President?” she asked.

  “I hardly know,” was the thoughtful answer. “He is the greatest man I ever met. One feels this instinctively.”

  When Mrs. Cameron was ushered into the Secretary’s Office, Mr. Stanton was seated at his desk writing.

  She handed the order of the President to a clerk, who gave it to the Secretary.

  He was a man in the full prime of life, intellectual and physical, low and heavy set, about five feet eight inches in height and inclined to fat. His movements, however, were quick, and as he swung in his chair the keenest vigour marked every movement of body and every change of his countenance.

  His face was swarthy and covered with a long, dark beard touched with gray. He turned a pair of little black piercing eyes on her and without rising said:

  “So you are the woman who has a wounded son under sentence of death as a guerilla?”

  “I am so unfortunate,” she answered.

  “Well, I have nothing to say to you,” he went on in a louder and sterner tone, “and no time to waste on you. If you have raised up men to rebel against the best government under the sun, you can take the consequences——”

  “But, my dear sir,” broke in the mother, “he is a mere boy of nineteen, who ran away three years ago and entered the service——”

  “I don’t want to hear another word from you!” he yelled in rage. “I have no time to waste—go at once. I’ll do nothing for you.”

  “But I bring you an order from the President,” protested the mother.

  “Yes, I know it,” he answered with a sneer, “and I’ll do with it what I’ve done with many others—see that it is not executed—now go.”

  “But the President told me you would give me a pass to the hospital, and that a full pardon would be issued to my boy!”

  “Yes, I see. But let me give you some information. The President is a fool—a d—— fool! Now, will you go?”

  With a sinking sense of horror, Mrs. Cameron withdrew and reported to Elsie the unexpected encounter.

  “The brute!” cried the girl. “We’ll go back immediately and report this insult to the President.”

  “Why are such men intrusted with power?” the mother sighed.

  “It’s a mystery to me, I’m sure. They say he is the greatest Secretary of War in our history. I don’t believe it. Phil hates the sight of him, and so does every army officer I know, from General Grant down. I hope Mr. Lincoln will expel him from the Cabinet for this insult.”

  When, they were again ushered into the President’s office, Elsie hastened to inform him of the outrageous reply the Secretary of War had made to his order.

  “Did Stanton say that I was a fool?” he asked, with a quizzical look out of his kindly eyes.

  “Yes, he did,” snapped Elsie. “And he repeated it with a blankety prefix.”

 
The President looked good-humouredly out of the window toward the War Office and musingly said:

  “Well, if Stanton says that I am a blankety fool, it must be so, for I have found out that he is nearly always right, and generally means what he says. I’ll just step over and see Stanton.”

  As he spoke the last sentence, the humour slowly faded from his face, and the anxious mother saw back of those patient gray eyes the sudden gleam of the courage and conscious power of a lion.

  He dismissed them with instructions to return the next day for his final orders and walked over to the War Department alone.

  The Secretary of War was in one of his ugliest moods, and made no effort to conceal it when asked his reasons for the refusal to execute the order.

  “The grounds for my action are very simple,” he said with bitter emphasis. “The execution of this traitor is part of a carefully considered policy of justice on which the future security of the Nation depends. If I am to administer this office, I will not be hamstrung by constant Executive interference. Besides, in this particular case, I was urged that justice be promptly executed by the most powerful man in Congress. I advise you to avoid a quarrel with old Stoneman at this crisis in our history.”

  The President sat on a sofa with his legs crossed, relapsed into an attitude of resignation, and listened in silence until the last sentence, when suddenly he sat bolt upright, fixed his deep gray eyes intently on Stanton and said:

  “Mr. Secretary, I reckon you will have to execute that order.”

  “I cannot do it,” came the firm answer. “It is an interference with justice, and I will not execute it.”

  Mr. Lincoln held his eyes steadily on Stanton and slowly said:

  “Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done.”

  Stanton wheeled in his chair, seized a pen and wrote very rapidly a few lines to which he fixed his signature. He rose with the paper in his hand, walked to his chief, and with deep emotion said: