"Words have no power to express my loathing for such twaddle!" cried Stoneman, snapping his great jaws together and pursing his lips with contempt.
"If the negro were not here would we allow him to land?" the President went on, as if talking to himself. "The duty to exclude carries the right to expel. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro in the tropics, and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. It was the fear of the black tragedy behind emanc.i.p.ation that led the South into the insanity of secession. We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose a.s.similation is neither possible nor desirable. The Nation cannot now exist half white and half black, any more than it could exist half slave and half free."
"Yet "G.o.d hath made of one blood all races,"" quoted the cynic with a sneer.
"Yes--but finish the sentence--"and fixed the bounds of their habitation."
G.o.d never meant that the negro should leave his habitat or the white man invade his home. Our violation of this law is written in two centuries of shame and blood. And the tragedy will not be closed until the black man is restored to his home."
"I marvel that the minions of slavery elected Jeff Davis their chief with so much better material at hand!"
"His election was a tragic and superfluous blunder. I am the President of the United States, North and South," was the firm reply.
"Particularly the South!" hissed Stoneman. "During all this hideous war they have been your pets--these rebel savages who have been murdering our sons. You have been the ever-ready champion of traitors. And you now dare to bend this high office to their defence----"
"My G.o.d, Stoneman, are you a man or a savage!" cried the President. "Is not the North equally responsible for slavery? Has not the South lost all?
Have not the Southern people paid the full penalty of all the crimes of war? Are our skirts free? Was Sherman"s march a picnic? This war has been a giant conflict of principles to decide whether we are a bundle of petty sovereignties held by a rope of sand or a mighty nation of freemen. But for the loyalty of four border Southern States--but for Farragut and Thomas and their two hundred thousand heroic Southern brethren who fought for the Union against their own flesh and blood, we should have lost. You cannot indict a people----"
"I do indict them!" muttered the old man.
"Surely," went on the even, throbbing voice, "surely, the vastness of this war, its t.i.tanic battles, its heroism, its sublime earnestness, should sink into oblivion all low schemes of vengeance! Before the sheer grandeur of its history our children will walk with silent lips and uncovered heads."
"And forget the prison pen at Andersonville!"
"Yes. We refused, as a policy of war, to exchange those prisoners, blockaded their ports, made medicine contraband, and brought the Southern Army itself to starvation. The prison records, when made at last for history, will show as many deaths on our side as on theirs."
"The murderer on the gallows always wins more sympathy than his forgotten victim," interrupted the cynic.
"The sin of vengeance is an easy one under the subtle plea of justice,"
said the sorrowful voice. "Have we not had enough bloodshed? Is not G.o.d"s vengeance enough? When Sherman"s army swept to the sea, before him lay the Garden of Eden, behind him stretched a desert! A hundred years cannot give back to the wasted South her wealth, or two hundred years restore to her the lost seed treasures of her young manhood----"
"The imbecility of a policy of mercy in this crisis can only mean the reign of treason and violence," persisted the old man, ignoring the President"s words.
"I leave my policy before the judgment bar of time, content with its verdict. In my place, radicalism would have driven the border States into the Confederacy, every Southern man back to his kinsmen, and divided the North itself into civil conflict. I have sought to guide and control public opinion into the ways on which depended our life. This rational flexibility of policy you and your fellow radicals have been pleased to call my vacillating imbecility."
"And what is your message for the South?"
"Simply this: "Abolish slavery, come back home, and behave yourself." Lee surrendered to our offers of peace and amnesty. In my last message to Congress I told the Southern people they could have peace at any moment by simply laying down their arms and submitting to National authority. Now that they have taken me at my word, shall I betray them by an ign.o.ble revenge? Vengeance cannot heal and purify: it can only brutalize and destroy."
Stoneman shuffled to his feet with impatience.
"I see it is useless to argue with you. I"ll not waste my breath. I give you an ultimatum. The South is conquered soil. I mean to blot it from the map. Rather than admit one traitor to the halls of Congress from these so-called States I will shatter the Union itself into ten thousand fragments! I will not sit beside men whose clothes smell of the blood of my kindred. At least dry them before they come in. Four years ago, with yells and curses, these traitors left the halls of Congress to join the armies of Catiline. Shall they return to rule?"
"I repeat," said the President, "you cannot indict a people. Treason is an easy word to speak. A traitor is one who fights and loses. Washington was a traitor to George III. Treason won, and Washington is immortal. Treason is a word that victors hurl at those who fail."
"Listen to me," Stoneman interrupted with vehemence. "The life of our party demands that the negro be given the ballot and made the ruler of the South. This can be done only by the extermination of its landed aristocracy, that their mothers shall not breed another race of traitors.
This is not vengeance. It is justice, it is patriotism, it is the highest wisdom and humanity. Nature, at times, blots out whole communities and races that obstruct progress. Such is the political genius of these people that, unless you make the negro the ruler, the South will yet reconquer the North and undo the work of this war."
"If the South in poverty and ruin can do this, we deserve to be ruled! The North is rich and powerful--the South a land of wreck and tomb. I greet with wonder, shame, and scorn such ign.o.ble fear! The Nation cannot be healed until the South is healed. Let the gulf be closed in which we bury slavery, sectional animosity, and all strifes and hatreds. The good sense of our people will never consent to your scheme of insane vengeance."
"The people have no sense. A new fool is born every second. They are ruled by impulse and pa.s.sion."
"I have trusted them before, and they have not failed me. The day I left for Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield, you were so sure of my defeat in the approaching convention that you shouted across the street to a friend as I pa.s.sed: "Let the dead bury the dead!" It was a brilliant sally of wit. I laughed at it myself. And yet the people unanimously called me again to lead them to victory."
"Yes, in the past," said Stoneman bitterly, "you have triumphed, but mark my word: from this hour your star grows dim. The slumbering fires of pa.s.sion will be kindled. In the fight we join to-day I"ll break your back and wring the neck of every dastard and time-server who fawns at your feet."
The President broke into a laugh that only increased the old man"s wrath.
"I protest against the insult of your buffoonery!"
"Excuse me, Stoneman; I have to laugh or die beneath the burdens I bear, surrounded by such supporters!"
"Mark my word," growled the old leader, "from the moment you publish that North Carolina proclamation, your name will be a by-word in Congress."
"There are higher powers."
"You will need them."
"I"ll have help," was the calm reply, as the dreaminess of the poet and mystic stole over the rugged face. "I would be a presumptuous fool, indeed, if I thought that for a day I could discharge the duties of this great office without the aid of One who is wiser and stronger than all others."
"You"ll need the help of Almighty G.o.d in the course you"ve mapped out!"
"Some ships come into port that are not steered," went on the dreamy voice. "Suppose Pickett had charged one hour earlier at Gettysburg?
Suppose the _Monitor_ had arrived one hour later at Hampton Roads? I had a dream last night that always presages great events. I saw a white ship pa.s.sing swiftly under full sail. I have often seen her before. I have never known her port of entry, or her destination, but I have always known her Pilot!"
The cynic"s lips curled with scorn. He leaned heavily on his cane, and took a shambling step toward the door.
"You refuse to heed the wishes of Congress?"
"If your words voice them, yes. Force your scheme of revenge on the South, and you sow the wind to reap the whirlwind."
"Indeed! and from what secret cave will this whirlwind come?"
"The despair of a mighty race of world-conquering men, even in defeat, is still a force that statesmen reckon with."
"I defy them," growled the old Commoner.
Again the dreamy look returned to Lincoln"s face, and he spoke as if repeating a message of the soul caught in the clouds in an hour of transfiguration:
"And I"ll trust the honour of Lee and his people. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when touched again, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature."
"You"ll be lucky to live to hear that chorus."
"To dream it is enough. If I fall by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin now, he will not come from the South. I was safer in Richmond, this week, than I am in Washington, to-day."
The cynic grunted and shuffled another step toward the door.
The President came closer.
"Look here, Stoneman; have you some deep personal motive in this vengeance on the South? Come, now, I"ve never in my life known you to tell a lie."