And so the inevitable happened. The suggestions of the President and his War Department were early resented as meddling with affairs which did not concern them.
The President saw with keen sorrow that there were brewing schemes behind the compelling blue eyes of the "Napoleon" he had created. The talk of McClellan"s aspirations to a military dictatorship, which would include the authority of the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government, had been current for more than two months. His recent manner and bearing had given color to these reports.
The splendor and ceremony of his headquarters could not have been surpa.s.sed by Alexander or Napoleon. His growing staff already included a Prince of the Royal Blood, the distinguished son of the Emperor of France, and the Comte de Paris his attendant. His baggage train was drawn by one hundred magnificent horses perfectly matched, hitched in teams of four to twenty-five glittering new vans. His Grand Army spread over mile after mile of territory far back into the hills of Virginia.
The autumnal days were brilliant with fresh uniforms, stars, sabres, swords, spurs, plate, dinners, wines, cigars, the pomp and pride and glory of war.
Men stood in little groups and discussed in whispers the significance of his continued stay in the Capital.
"If the President has any friends, the hour has come when they"ve got to stand by him!" The speaker was a man of fifty, a foreigner who had made Washington his home and liked Lincoln.
"Nonsense, my dear fellow," a tall Westerner replied, "we may have to get a few rifles and guard the White House from somebody"s attempt to occupy it, but we"ll not need any big guns."
"If you"d heard the talk last night," the foreigner replied, with a shrug of his shoulder, "you"d change your mind----"
The Westerner shook his head:
"No! The General"s not that big a fool and the men around him have better sense. And if they haven"t--if they all should go crazy--it couldn"t be done. They couldn"t control the army."
"Did you ever hear the army cheer as "Little Mac" rides along the line?"
"Yes, but it don"t mean an Emperor for all that----"
"I"m not so sure!"
And there were men of National reputation who considered the chances of the man on horseback good at this moment. Such a man had openly attached himself to the General as his attorney--no less a personage than the distinguished Attorney General of the late Cabinet, Edwin M. Stanton.
During the closing days of Buchanan"s crumbling administration Stanton had become the dominating force of the Capital. His daring and his skill had defeated the best laid schemes of the Southern party and broken its grip on the administration. He had remained in Washington as a lawyer practicing before the Supreme Court and had become the most aggressive observer and critic of Lincoln and his Cabinet. His scorn for the President knew no bounds.
"No one," he wrote to General John A. Dix, "can imagine the deplorable condition of this city and the hazard of the Government, who did not witness the weakness and the panic of the administration and the painful imbecility of Lincoln."
To Buchanan, his ex-Chief, he wrote:
"A strong feeling of distrust in the candor and sincerity of Lincoln"s personality and of his Cabinet has sprung up. It was the imbecility of this administration which culminated in the catastrophe of Bull Run.
Irretrievable misfortune and National disgrace never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and National bankruptcy as the result of Lincoln"s running the machine for five months.
Jefferson Davis will soon be in possession of Washington."
Not only in letters to the leaders of public opinion in the Nation did the aggressive and powerful lawyer seek to destroy the Government, but in his conversation in Washington he was equally daring, venomous and personal in his abuse of the President. "A low, cunning clown" and "the original gorilla" were his choice epithets.
Stanton"s influence over McClellan was decided and vital from the moment of their introduction. It was known among the General"s intimate friends that he had advised again and again that he use his power as Commander of the Army to declare a Dictatorship, depose the President and dissolve the sittings of Congress until the war should be ended.
How far McClellan had dallied with this dangerous and alluring scheme was a matter of conjecture. It is little wonder that the wildest rumors of intrigues, of uprisings, of mutiny, filled the air.
McClellan had doggedly refused either to move his army or to formally go into winter quarters until the middle of December, when he took to his bed and announced that he was suffering from an attack of typhoid fever.
The President was further embarra.s.sed by the course of his Secretary of War, Cameron, who, while laboring under the censure of Congress for the conduct of his office, had allowed Senator Winter to stab his chief in the back by recommending in his report that the slaves be armed by the Government and put into the ranks of the armies. Senator Winter, as the Radical leader, knew that to meet such an issue once raised the President must rebuke his Secretary and apologize to the Border Slave States. He would thus alienate from his support all Cameron"s friends, and all friends of the negro. The Senator did not believe the President would dare to fight on such an issue.
He had misjudged his man. The President not only rebuked his Secretary by suppressing his report and revising its language, he demanded and received his resignation, notwithstanding the fact that Cameron was the most powerful politician in the most powerful State of the North.
He at once sought a new Secretary of War, free from all party entanglements, who could not be influenced by contractors or jobbers or scheming politicians, who was absolutely honest and who had a boundless capacity for work.
Strangely enough, his eye rested on Edward M. Stanton, his arch enemy, the man who had become McClellan"s confidential attorney.
As an aggressive patriotic Democrat, Stanton had won the confidence of the public in the last administration. His capacity for work had proved limitless. He was under no obligations to a living soul who could ask aught of Lincoln"s administration. He was savagely honest. At the moment the discovery of gigantic frauds practiced on the War Department by thieving contractors, coupled with fabulous expenditures in daily expenses, had destroyed the confidence of the money lenders in the integrity of the Government. The Treasury was facing a serious crisis.
And then the astounding thing happened. Without consulting a soul inside his Cabinet or out, Abraham Lincoln appointed his bitterest foe from the party of his enemies his Secretary of War. He offered the place to Edwin M. Stanton.
Perhaps the most astonished man in America was Stanton himself. To the amazement of his friends, as well as his critics, he promptly accepted the position.
Senator Winter, whose radical temperament had found in Stanton a congenial spirit, though as wide as the poles apart in politics, met him in the lobby of the Senate Chamber on the day his appointment was confirmed.
He broke into a cynical laugh and asked:
"And what will you do?"
Stanton"s keen spectacled eyes bored him through in silence as he snapped:
"I may make Abe Lincoln President of the United States."
Evidently another man was entering the Cabinet under the impression that the hands of an impotent Chief Magistrate needed strengthening. The merest glance at this man"s burly thick set body, his big leonine head with its shock of heavy black hair, long and curling, his huge grizzly beard and full resolute lips, was enough to convince the most casual observer that he could be a dangerous enemy or a powerful ally.
The President was warned of this appointment, but his confidence was unshaken. His reply was a revelation of personality:
"I have faith in affirmative men like Stanton. They stand between a nation and perdition. He has shown a loyalty to the Union that rose above his own partisan creed of a lifetime. I like that kind of a man."
"He"ll run away with the whole concern," was his friend"s laconic reply.
The President"s big generous mouth moved with a smile:
"Well, we may have to treat him as they sometimes did a Methodist minister I knew out West. He was a mighty man in prayer and exhortation.
At times his excitement rose to such threatening heights the elders put brick bats in his pockets to hold him down. We may be obliged to serve Stanton the same way----"
He paused and laughed.
"But I guess we"ll let him jump awhile first!"
The men who knew the inner secrets of Stanton"s relations to McClellan watched this drama with keen interest. Had he gone into the Cabinet to place the General in supreme power in a moment of crisis? Or had he at heart deserted the Commander with the intention of using the enormous power of the War Department to further a scheme of equal daring for himself? They could only watch the swiftly moving scenes of the war pageant for their answer.
One fact was standing out each day with sharp and clean cut distinctness, a struggle of giants was on beneath the surface. Startling surprise had followed startling surprise during the past months. Men everywhere were asking one another, what next? The air of Washington was foul with the breath of pa.s.sion and intrigue. Purposes and methods were everywhere a.s.sailed. Men high in civil life were believed to be plotting with military conspirators to advance their personal fortunes on the ruins of the Republic.
Around two men were gathering the forces whose clash would decide the destiny of the Nation--the struggle between the supremacy of civil authority in the President, and the war-created strength of the Military Commander represented by McClellan. Could the Republic survive this war within a war?
CHAPTER XII
LOVE AND PRIDE
Betty Winter had found her fierce resolution to blot John Vaughan from her life a difficult one to keep. The first two weeks were not so hard.