THE OCCUPANT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
“They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owner’s fierce disdain,
Lured by ‘Union’ as the bribe.
Destiny sat by and said,
‘Pang for pang your seed shall pay;
Hide in false peace your coward head,—
I bring round the harvest-day.’”
_R. W. Emerson._
In one of the smaller parlors of the White House in Washington sat two
men of rather marked appearance. One of them sat leaning back in his
tipped chair, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and his
right ancle resting on his left knee. His figure, though now flaccid and
relaxed, would evidently be a tall one if pulled out like the sliding
joints of a spy-glass; but gaunt, lean, and ungainly, with harsh angles
and stooping shoulders. He was dressed in a suit of black, with a black
satin vest, and round his neck a black silk kerchief tied carelessly in
a knot, and passing under a shirt-collar turned down and revealing a
neck brawny, sinewy, and tanned.
The face that belonged to this figure was in keeping with it, and yet
attractive from a certain charm of expression. Nose prominent and
assertive; cheek-bones rather obtrusive, and under them the flesh sallow
and browned, though partially covered by thick bristling black whiskers;
eyes dark and deeply set; mouth and lips large; and crowning all these
features a shock of stiff profuse black hair carelessly put aside from
his irregularly developed forehead, as if by no other comb than that
which he could make of his long lank fingers.
This man was not only the foremost citizen of the Republic, officially
considered, but he had a reputation, exaggerated beyond his deserts, for
homeliness. By the Rebel press he was frequently spoken of as “the ape”
or the “gorilla.” From the rowdy George Sanderson to the stiff, if not
stately Jefferson Davis (himself far from being an Adonis), the
pro-slavery champions took a harmless satisfaction, in their public
addresses, in alluding, in some contemptuous epithet, to the man’s
personal shortcomings. So far from being disturbed, the object of all
these revilings would himself sometimes playfully refer to his personal
attractions, unconscious how much there was in that face to redeem it
from being truly characterized either as ugly or commonplace.
As he sat now, with eyes bent on vacancy, and his mind revolving the
arguments or facts which had been presented by his visitor, his
countenance assumed an expression which was pathetic in its indication
of sincere and patient effort to grasp the truth and see clearly the way
before him. The expression redeemed the whole countenance, for it was
almost tender in its anxious yet resigned thoughtfulness; in its
profound sense of the enormous and unparalleled responsibilities resting
on that one brain, perplexing it in the extreme.
The other party to the interview was a man whose personal appearance was
in marked contrast. Although he had numbered in his life nearly as many
years as the President, he looked some ten years younger. His figure was
strikingly handsome, compact, and graceful; and his clothes were nicely
adapted to it, both in color and cut. Every feature of his face was
finely outlined and proportioned; and the whole expression indicated at
once refinement and energy, habits of intellectual culture and of robust
physical exercise and endurance. This man was he who has passed so long
in this story under the adopted name of Vance.
There had been silence between the two for nearly a minute. Suddenly the
President turned his mild dark eyes on his visitor, and said: “Well,
sir, what would you have me do?”
“I would have you lead public opinion, Mr. President, instead of waiting
for public opinion to lead you.”
“Make this allowance for me, Mr. Vance: I have many conflicting
interests to reconcile; many conflicting facts and assertions to sift
and weigh. Remember I am bound to listen, not merely to the men of New
England, but to those of Kentucky, Maryland, and Eastern Tennessee.”
“Mr. President, you are bound to listen to no man who is not ready to
say, Down with slavery if it stands in the way of the Republic! You
should at once infuse into every branch of the public service this
determination to tear up the bitter root of all our woes. Why not give
me the necessary authority to raise a black regiment?”
“Impossible! The public are not ripe for any such extreme measure.”
“There it is! You mean that the public shall be the responsible
President instead of Abraham Lincoln. O, sir, knowing you are on the
side of right, have faith in your own power to mould and quicken public
opinion. When last August in Missouri, Fremont declared the slaves of
Rebels free, one word of approval from you would have won the assent of
every loyal man. But, instead of believing in the inherent force of a
great idea to work its own way, you were biased by the semi-loyal men
who were lobbying for slavery, and you countermanded the righteous
order, thus throwing us back a whole year. Do I give offence?”
“No, sir, speak your mind freely. I love sincerity.”
“We know very well, Mr. President, that you will do what is right
eventually. But O, why not do it at once, and forestall the issue? We
know that you will one of these days remove Buell and other generals,
the singleness of whose devotion to the Union as against slavery is at
least questionable. We know that you will put an end to the atrocious
pro-slavery favoritism of many of our officers. We know you will issue a
proclamation of emancipation.”
“I think not, Mr. Vance.”
“Pardon me, you will do it before next October. You will do it because
the pressure of an advanced public opinion will force you to do it, and
because God Almighty will interpose checks and defeats to our arms in
order that we of the North may, in the fermentation of ideas, throw off
this foul scum, redolent of the bottomless pit, which apathy or sympathy
in regard to slavery engenders. Yes, you will give us an emancipation
proclamation, and then you will give us permission to raise black
regiments, and then, after being pricked, and urged, and pricked again,
by public opinion, you will offset the Rebel threats of massacre by
issuing a war bulletin declaring that the United States will protect her
fighting men of whatever color, and that there must be life for life for
every black soldier killed in violation of the laws of war.”
“But are you a prophet, Mr. Vance?”
“It requires no gift of prophecy, Mr. President, to foretell these
things. It needs but full faith in the operation of Divine laws to
anticipate all that I have prefigured. You refuse now to let me raise a
black regiment. In less than ten months you will give me a _carte
blanche_ to enlist as many negroes as I can for the war.”
“Perhaps,—but I don’t see my way clear to do it yet.”
“A great man,” said Vance, “ought to lead and fashion public opinion in
stupendous emergencies like this,—ought to throw himself boldly on some
great principle having its root in eternal justice,—ought to grapple it,
cling to it, stake everything upon it, and make everything give way to
it.”
“But I am not a great man, Mr. Vance,” said the President, with
unaffected _naïveté_.
“I believe your intentions are good and great, Mr. President,” was the
reply; “for what you supremely desire is, to do your duty.”
“Yes, I claim that much. Thank you.”
“Well, your duty is to take the most energetic measures for conquering a
peace. Under the Constitution, the war power is committed to your hands.
That power is not defined by the Constitution, for it is
imprescriptible; regulated by international usage. That usage authorizes
you to free the slaves of an enemy. Why not do it?”
“Would not a proclamation of emancipation from Abraham Lincoln be much
like the Pope’s bull against the comet?”
“There is this difference: in the latter case, the fulmination is
against what we have no reason to suppose is an evil; in the former
case, you would attack with moral weapons what you know to be a wrong
and an injustice immediately under your eyes and within your reach. If
it could be proved that the comet is an evil, the Pope’s bull would not
seem to me an absurdity; for I have faith in the operation of ideas, and
in the triumph of truth and good _throughout the universe_. But the
emancipation proclamation would not be futile; for it would give body
and impulse to an _idea_, and that idea one friendly to right and to
progress.”
The President rose, and, walking to the window, drummed a moment with
his fingers abstractedly on the glass, then, returning to his chair,
reseated himself and said: “As Chief Magistrate of the Republic, my
first duty is to save it. If I can best do that by tolerating slavery,
slavery shall be tolerated. If I can best do it by abolishing slavery,
you may be sure I will try to abolish it. But I mustn’t be biased by my
feelings or my sentiments.”
“Why not?” asked Vance. “Do not all great moral truths originate in the
feelings and the sentiments? The heart’s policy is often the safest. Is
not cruelty wrong because the heart proclaims it? Is not despotism to be
opposed because the heart detests it?”
“Mr. Vance, you eager philanthropists little know how hard it often is
for less impulsive and more conservative men to withstand the urgency of
those feelings that you give way to at once. But you have read history
to little purpose if you do not know that the best cause may be
jeoparded by the premature and too radical movements of its friends. I
have been blamed for listening to the counsels of Kentucky politicians
and Missouri conservatives; and yet if we had not held back Kentucky
from the secession madness, she might have contributed the straw that
would have broken the camel’s back.”
“O Kentucky!” exclaimed Vance, “I know thy works, that thou art neither
cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth!
Mr. President, the ruling powers in Kentucky would hand her over bound
to Jeff Davis to-morrow, _if they dared_; but they dare not do it. In
the first place, they fear Uncle Sam and his gunboats; in the next
place, they fear Kentuckians, of whom, thank God! there are enough who
do not believe in slavery; and, lastly, they fear the nineteenth century
and the spirit of the age. Better take counsel from the Rhetts and
Spratts of South Carolina than from the selfish politicians of Kentucky!
They will moor you to the platform of a false conservatism till the
golden opportunity slips by, and new thousands must be slaughtered
before it can be recovered.”
“Well, what would be your programme?”
“This, Mr. President: accept it as a foregone conclusion that slavery
_must_ be exterminated; and then bend all your energies on accelerating
its extermination. We sometimes hear it said, ‘What! do you expect such
a vast system—so interwoven with the institutions of the South—to be
uprooted and overthrown all at once?’ To which I reply, ‘Yes! _The price
paid has been already proportionate to the magnitude of the overthrow._’
Before the war is over, upwards of a million of men will have lost their
lives in order that Slavery might try its experiment of establishing an
independent slave empire. A million of men! And there are not four
millions of slaves in the country! We will not take into account the
treasure expended,—the lands desolated,—the taxes heaped upon the
people,—the ruin and anguish inflicted. It strikes me the price we have
paid is big enough to offset the vastness of the social change. And,
after all, it is not such a formidable job when you consider that there
are not forty thousand men in the whole country who severally own as
many as ten slaves. Why, in a single campaign we lose more soldiers than
there are slaveholders having any considerable stake in the institution.
Experience has proved that there could be universal emancipation
to-morrow without bad results to either master or slave,—with advantage,
on the contrary, to both.”[36]
“Well, Mr. Vance, we will suppose the Mississippi opened; New Orleans,
Mobile, Charleston, and Richmond captured,—the Rebellion on its last
legs;—what then?”
“With the capture of New Orleans and Vicksburg, and the opening of the
Mississippi, you have Secessia on the hip, and her utter subjugation is
merely a question of time. When she cries _peccavi_, and offers to give
in, I would say to the people of the Rebel States: ‘_First_, Slavery,
the cause of this war, must be surrendered, to be disposed of at the
discretion of the victors. _Secondly_, you must so modify your
constitutions that Slavery can never be re-established among you.
_Thirdly_, every anti-republican feature in your State governments must
be abandoned. _Fourthly_, every loyal man must be restored to the
property and the rights you may have robbed him of. _Fifthly_, no man
offensively implicated in the Rebellion must represent any State in
Congress. _Sixthly_, no man must be taxed against his will for any debt
incurred through rebellion against the United States. Under these easy
and honorable terms, I would readmit the seceded States to the Union;
and if these terms are refused, I would occupy and hold the States as
conquered territory.”
“And could we reconcile such a course with a due regard to law?”
“Surely yes; for the people in rebellion are at once subjects and
belligerents. They are public enemies, and as such are entitled only to
such privileges as we may choose to concede. They are subjects, and as
such must fulfil their obligations to the Republic.”
“But you say nothing of confiscation, Mr. Vance.”
“I would be as generous as possible in this respect, Mr. President.
Loyal men who have been robbed by the secession fury must of course be
reimbursed, and the families of those who have been hung for their
loyalty must be provided for. I see no fairer way of doing this than by
making the robbers give up their plunder, and by compelling the
murderers to contribute to the wants of those they have orphaned. But
beyond this I would be governed by circumstances as they might develop
themselves. I would practice all the clemency and forbearance consistent
with justice. Those landholders who should lend themselves fairly and
earnestly to the work of substituting a system of paid labor for slavery
should be entitled to the most generous consideration and encouragement,
whatever their antecedents might have been. I would do nothing for
vengeance and humiliation; everything for the benefit of the Southern
people themselves and their posterity. Questions of indemnification
should not stand in the way of a restored Union.”
“Undoubtedly, Mr. Vance, the interests of the masses, North and South,
are identical.”
“That is true, Mr. President, but it is what the Rebel leaders try to
conceal from their dupes. The most damnable effect of slavery has been
the engendering at the South of that large class of mean whites, proud,
ignorant, lazy, squalid, and brutally degraded, who yet feel that they
are a sort of aristocracy because they are not niggers. Having produced
this class, Slavery now sees it must rob them of all political rights.
Hence the avowed plan of the Secession leaders to have either a close
oligarchical or a monarchical government. The thick skulls of these mean
whites (or if not of them, of their children) we must reach by help of
the schoolmaster, and let them see that their interests lie in the
elevation of labor and in opposition to the theories of the shallow
_dilettanti_ of the South, who, claiming to be great political thinkers
and philosophers, maintain that capital ought to own labor, and that
there must be a hereditary servile race, if not black, then white, in
whom all mental aspiration and development shall be discouraged and kept
down, in order that they may be content to be hewers of wood and drawers
of water. As if God’s world-process were kept up in order that a few
Epicurean gentlemen may have a good time of it, and send their sons to
Paris to eat sumptuous dinners and attend model-artist entertainments,
while thousands are toiling to supply the means for their base
pleasures. As if a Frederick Douglas must be brutified into a slave in
order that a Slidell may give Sybarite banquets and drive his neat span
through the Champs Elysées!”
“What should we do with the blacks after we had freed them?”
“Let them alone! Let them do for themselves. The difficulties in the way
are all those of the imagination.”
“I like the moderation of your views as to confiscation.”
“When the mass of the people at the South,” continued Vance, “come to
see, as they will eventually, that we have been fighting the great
battle of humanity and of freedom, for the South even more than for the
North, for the white man even more than for the black, there will be
such a reaction as will obliterate every trace of rancor that
internecine war has begotten. But I have talked too much. I have
occupied too much of your time.”
“O no! I delight to meet with men who come to me, thinking how they may
benefit, not themselves, but their country. The steam-tugs you gave us
off the mouths of the Mississippi we would gladly have paid thirty
thousand dollars for. I wish I could meet your views in regard to the
enlistment of black troops; but—but—that pear isn’t yet ripe. Failing
that, you shall have any place you want in the Butler and Farragut
expedition against New Orleans. As for your young friends,—what did you
say their names are?”
“Robert Onslow and Charles Kenrick.”
“O yes! Onslow, you say, has been a captain in the Rebel service. Both
the young men shall be honorably placed where they can distinguish
themselves. I’ll speak to Stanton about them this very day. Let me make
a note of it.”
The President drew from his pocket a memorandum-book and hastily wrote a
line or two. Vance rose to take his leave.
“Mr. President,” said he, “I thank you for this interview. But there’s
one thing in which you’ve disappointed me.”
“Ah! you think me rather a slow coach, eh?”
“Yes; but that wasn’t what I alluded to.”
“What then?”
“From what I’ve read about you in the newspapers, I expected to have to
hear one of your stories.”
A smile full of sweetness and _bonhommie_ broke over the President’s
care-worn face as he replied: “Really! Is it possible? Have you been
here all this time without my telling you a story? Sit down, Mr. Vance,
and let me make up for my remissness.”
Vance resumed his seat.
The President ran his fingers through his long, carelessly disposed
hair, pushing it aside from his forehead, and said: “Once on a time the
king of beasts, the lion, took it into his head he would travel into
foreign parts. But before leaving his kingdom he installed an old ’coon
as viceroy. The lion was absent just four months to a day; and on his
return he called all the principal beasts to hear their reports as to
the way in which affairs had been managed in his absence. Said the fox,
‘You left an old imbecile to rule us, sire. No sooner were you gone than
a rebellion broke out, and he appointed for our leader a low-born mule,
whose cardinal maxim in military matters was to put off till to-morrow
whatever could be just as well done to-day; whose policy was a masterly
inactivity instead of a straightforward movement on the enemy’s works.’
Said the sheep, ‘The ’coon could have had peace if he had listened to me
and others who wanted to draw it mild and to compromise. Such a
bloodthirsty wretch as the ’coon ought to be expelled from civilized
society.’ Said the horse, ‘He is too slow.’ Said the ox, ‘He is too
fast.’ Said the jackass, ‘He doesn’t know how to bray; he can’t utter an
inspiring note.’ Said the pig, ‘He is too full of his jokes and
stories.’ Said the magpie, ‘He is a liar and a thief.’ Said the owl, ‘He
is no diplomatist.’ Said the tiger, ‘He is too conservative.’ Said the
beaver, ‘He is too radical.’ ‘Stop!’ roared the king,—‘shut up, every
beast of you!’ At once there was silence in the assembly. Then, turning
to his viceroy, the lion said, ‘Old ’coon, I wish no better proof that
you have been faithful than all this abuse from opposite parties. You
have done so well, that you shall be reinstalled for another term of
four months!’”
“And what did the old ’coon say to that?” asked Vance.
“The old ’coon begged to be excused, protesting that he had experienced
quite enough of the charms of office.”
The President held out his hand. Vance pressed it with a respectful
cordiality, and withdrew from the White House.