Lincoln Read Online Free PDF Page B

sir, the smell from that canal is absolutely unbearable,” said Buchanan. “Drain the canal, I tell them. Or fill it in. Naturally, Congress does nothing. But they do let me use a little stone cottage out at the Soldiers’ Home. I spend the summers there and I suggest that you use it, too, if you don’t want the fever.”
    Lincoln was staring at a pile of white marble blocks, at whose center the base of an obelisk rose. “They’ve still not finished that monument to Washington?”
    “No, sir. In fact, nothing is ever finished here! No dome on the Capitol. No street pavings. No street lamps. Nothing’s ever done to completion here except, sir, one thing.” The old man’s head now rested on his shoulder and the bad eye was entirely shut as, with a quiet joy, he pointed out the window. “There,” he said. “Look!”
    Lincoln stared at a huge red-brick wall. “The one thing that the Executive Mansion has dearly needed since Mr. Jefferson’s time was a proper barn. But not a
wooden
barn, sir. No, sir. Not a barn that will catch fire or get the rot. No, sir. But a
brick
barn, sir. A barn built to outlast time itself. You don’t know the pleasure it has given me these last four years to see this beautiful barn slowly rise from that swamp they call the President’s Park.”
    “And watch the Union fall apart,” said Lincoln to Seward as the two men crossed the President’s Park on the way to the War Department.
    “He’s well-meaning, Old Buck,” said Seward, pronouncing the ultimate political epitaph. “What was that between you and Stanton?”
    Lincoln chuckled. “Well, Mr. Stanton was this big important lawyer on a patent case … sort of
your
territory, come to think of it. And I was the backwoods lawyer that was called in to help him out because I had political connections in Chicago, where the trial was supposed to be. Anyway, when the trial got moved to Cincinnati, I wasn’t really needed, as he made absolutely clear. Fact, he cut me dead.”
    “He’s a disagreeable man,” said Seward. “But he’s the best lawyer in the country. And he’s one of us.”
    Lincoln gave Seward a sidelong glance. “In what sense? He’s a Democrat. He was for Douglas, or so people say. He never says, I’m told.”
    “Last week he told the President that if he lets Fort Sumter go without a fight, he would deserve impeachment.”
    “Well, well,” said Lincoln; and no more. The small brick War Department was surrounded by thirty loud geese which a farmer was doing his best to make move on, to the delight of the two soldiers more or less on guard.
    “I shall make no references to Rome and the Capitoline geese.” Seward was fond of classical allusions. He knew his Tacitus; loved his Cicero.
    “Please don’t.” Lincoln stared with some distaste at the unexpectedly rustic scene.
    “Actually, General Scott has got himself a brand-new War Department across the way there, on Seventeenth Street. This building will only be for the army, just as that one over there”—Seward pointed to a second small brick building—“is for the navy. But the whole thing will be run from Seventeenth Street.” Together the two men crossed the frozen mud field that was Seventeenth Street, where stood a large building with no guards at all, not even geese. This was the War Department. As they approached the main door, Seward asked Lincoln who ought to be Secretary of War.
    Lincoln’s response was sharp. “Certainly,
not
the man best qualified. I think that is already understood, isn’t it?” For all Lincoln’s serene amiability, Seward detected a sudden edge of true bitterness. As a minority president, Lincoln could only reign by placating certain great powers and dominations. As for ruling … It was Seward’s view, on the morning of Saturday, February 23, 1861, that Lincoln would be fortunate if he could last out his term as the figurehead president of a mere rump of the dis-United States. Since the wealth and talent of this