A look of sadness came across Lincoln’s face. “I wanted you both to meet Ulric; in the two years that I have known his father, the boy had become almost like one of my own sons. It distressed me deeply to see the best this country has maimed.”
Sharpe knew that Ulric’s first visitor had been the President, who sat for hours by his bedside as the young man hovered near death. “Sir, Colonel Dahlgren and I are old friends. The staff of the Army of the Potomac is a small family, and we joined it at the same time last year. He is very much liked and very much missed.”
Pleased, Lincoln said, “He seemed to have taken the operation in stride, but he went quickly into such a decline that we thought we would lose him. When Secretary Stanton had come to present him with his commission to colonel, the boy was too sick to even recognize him. Stanton then closed the street to wheeled traffic so as not to disturb his rest. He posted that guard,” Lincoln pointed to the soldier lounging by the door of a small house, “to refuse admittance to anyone but doctors.” The soldier saw the carriage and grew bug eyed as he recognized the tall man in the stovepipe hat getting out of the carriage. He immediately presented arms.
A maid answered, curtsied, showed them to the parlor, and disappeared. Moments later an elderly gentleman, obviously not in the best of health, came in. Lincoln presented Mr. Lawrence, Ulric’s uncle who had come from Connecticut to supervise his care. “How is our boy today?” Lincoln asked.
“Ever so much better, Mr. President. He will be delighted to have company. He is itching to get out of that bed and try that cork leg you had made for him, but I fear he has many weeks more to go.”
A clear, strong tenor voice called down from the upstairs. “Uncle, do we have visitors?”
Sharpe saw Lincoln’s face brighten as he walked into the hallway and looked up the stairs. Ulric was standing at the top of the landing, teetering on a pair of crutches. His uncle hurried over, clearly distressed. “Ulie, you must stay in bed. The doctors said you are not ready to try the crutches.”
“Let the brave lad be, Mr. Lawrence. It is his nature.” Then glancing at Sharpe, he said, “My boy Willie would have been like him.” A look of grief passed over his face. “Stay there, my boy. We’ll come up to see you.” He took the steps three at a time to throw his long arms around Dahlgren. Sharpe noticed Dahlgren’s look of delight when he recognized Lincoln. This was a mutual affection.
When Sharpe and Lamson reached the top of the stairs, Lincoln had helped Dahlgren to a chair in the small upstairs sitting room and pulled another up close. Dahlgren recognized Sharpe and tried to rise, “Colonel Sharpe, what a surprise!” He reached out his hand, and Sharpe grasped it. Ulric’s handshake was as firm as ever.
“Well, Colonel Dahlgren,” he said emphasizing the rank, “I’m glad to see you doing so well. We were worried about you. I will have to tell everyone that the bold twinkle has not left your eyes.” He was telling the truth. Dahlgren was thinner than he remembered; his brush with death had shrunk some of the flesh from his already thin body. He had been a splendid horseman and reputedly the best dancer in Washington. The girls would miss him on the dance floor. But he had lost none of the spirit Sharpe remembered. His fine fair hair was neatly cut and combed, his face shaved, and his small goatee trimmed.
Lincoln introduced Lamson, and while the two were talking, he said in a low voice to Sharpe, “I like to put my thoroughbreds in the same pasture on occasion. It convinces each to run a bit faster.” Sharpe could see what Lincoln meant. One fair and one dark, the two were deep in conversation. They had instantly recognized the same thing in each other. Lincoln interrupted to say, “I’ll wager you two have no idea what you have in common.” They looked at him. “Why, it’s Gettysburg! Dahlgren covered himself with glory there, and I’ve just named Lamson’s new ship after that battle, at the suggestion, I might add, of Colonel Sharpe.”
Lincoln went on to describe Lamson’s mission to intercept the Laird rams, drawing a parallel between Dahlgren and the dispatches and Lamson and the rams. Both required both boldness and brains. He remarked on the importance of luck, though to him the luckiest men were the best prepared. “That reminds me of story about Napoleon. Whenever a man was recommended for promotion, he would always ask, ‘But is he lucky?’ Seems the little Corsican knew what he was talking about, at least some of the time.”
UNITED STATES BOTANICAL GARDEN, MARYLAND AVENUE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:30 PM, AUGUST 7, 1863
After dropping Lamson back at the Yard, Lincoln and Sharpe went to the Conservatory, a great glass botanical garden at the base of Capitol Hill on Maryland Avenue. As they walked through the gorgeous plant-filled corridors, each with a different grouping of the most exotic plants and flowers, Lincoln found a bench and motioned for Sharpe to sit. “Sometimes a soul just needs to rest, Colonel. Can you think of a better place?”
“No, sir, there’s nothing else like it in this country. Kew Gardens in London is even larger, and the French have wondrous gardens, too, but give us time.”
“Yes, dear God, give us time. That is what I am about. To give this country time. Every day I do my best to make sure that we have time for all that the future has in store for us. This war cannot be our end of times. We are a new start, proof that man’s history is not confined to an endless rut of tyranny and misery.
“And I come here because my boys loved to play here. I’m afraid they were a trial to the conservators, racing around and plucking their choicest flowers. I had not the heart to stop them. Mary always said I was too indulgent. Now my Willie is gone.” His ungainly body slumped in the iron bench as he put his face in his hands and wept.
Sharpe’s heart went out to this man who with all the weight of the world on his shoulders suffered that indescribable grief. Lincoln said, “We have words for those who have lost parents and a husband or wife, but we do not have a word for those who have lost a child. There is just no word capable of such a meaning.”
He paused and looked at Sharpe. “Is there a word for a people who have let their country die or, worse, helped kill it?”
“Copperhead.”
“Yes, Sharpe, that is why I keep you in Washington. I can feel a great underground seething in the North, as if this fanged and perverse serpent is uncoiling itself, feeling its strength, readying itself to strike. At least the South is honest in its rebellion-man to man in the open field-but these Copperheads cover themselves with the Constitution while they seek to destroy it. They are abetted by the radical civil libertarians who insist on making the government too weak to defend itself. Thank God Carrington is doing such a good job keeping a finger on their pulse. His man, Stidger, has been a godsend. I truly fear that we would be in far greater danger without his intimate intelligence of their activities.”
He paused to reach out and run his long fingers gently over the flowers of a clematis vine. “I know how much you contributed to the victory at Gettysburg, Sharpe. It is not your fault that more was not made of it. I have been thinking that we may need your talents in organization for a secret service here. I’m not talking of what Mr. Baker is doing in chasing spies, but something larger and more comprehensive that gathers together all of the strands of what we must know about not just the rebels but about all of our enemies.
“I’m almost as worried about Louis Napoleon and his ambitions in Mexico as I am about the British and their rams. He conducts his foreign policy simply as a means to strengthen his hold on power in France. As a monarch he feels no affection for our experiment in government by the people. As a monarch of the French, he must consider the affection of the French people for the United States and their decided dislike of slavery. Now he’s got himself stuck in Mexico. He thinks that if the South wins, the Monroe Doctrine will be a dead letter, and he will be allowed to keep what he has stolen. He doesn’t know our Southron countrymen,” he said mimicking the Confederate transformation of the word “Southern.” He went on. “It would not take them long to cast covetous eyes on Mexico. But what he thinks is more important than what is. If we win, he knows that we will not let him keep his Mexican Empire. On his own, he will do nothing.