"Justice for the working man, and freeing him from oppression at the hands of the capitalist who owns the factory in which he labours," Lincoln said. "We have lost sight of the fact that capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed."
"You intend to convene a meeting of Republican leaders and convince them of this doctrine?" Robert said.
"I do," Lincoln answered simply.
"They will eat you up, Father, the way savages in the South Sea Islands eat up missionaries who are sent to convert them to a new faith they do not want."
"Perhaps they will," Lincoln said. "I aim to make the effort regardless. For I tell you this, son: if the Republican Party will not build on this plank, some other party will, and will make a go of it."
General Orlando Willcox held out his hand. "Good-bye, Colonel. I have enjoyed your presence here, and I shall miss you."
"I thank you," Alfred von Schlieffen said.
"And I shall miss you as well," Frederick Douglass said, his voice as deep and pure as a tone from the lower register of an organ. "You always treat me as a man first, and as a black man after that if at all."
"You are a man: so I have seen," Schlieffen said, as he might have to a soldier who had fought well. Captain Oliver Richardson scowled at him. He took no notice of Willcox's adjutant, but climbed up behind the private who would take him to the train on which he'd return to Philadelphia.
South of the Ohio, cannon still bellowed and rifles still rattled. Schlieffen's driver let out a wistful sigh. "Colonel, you reckon the president's going to take the Rebs up on that call for peace this time?"
"I am not the man to ask," Schlieffen told him. "Your own officers will a better idea have of what your president wills- wants -to do." Had he worn Blaine 's shoes, he would have made peace on the instant, and then got down on his knees to thank the Lord for letting him off on such easy terms. But that was not the question the soldier had asked him.
After spitting a brown stream of what the Americans called tobacco juice into the road, the driver said, "My officers won't give me the time of day. Hellfire, they won't tell me whether it's day or night. I was hopin' you might be different."
A German officer would not give one of his common soldiers the time of day, either. A German common soldier would not expect to get the time of day from one of his officers. The American private sounded aggrieved that he was not made privy to all his superiors' opinions and secrets. Americans, Schlieffen thought, sometimes let the notion of equality run away with them.
He and a couple of U.S. officers-one with his arm in a sling, the other walking with the aid of a crutch-had a first-class car to themselves. One of the Americans produced a bottle. They were both drunk by the time the train left Indiana for Ohio.
They offered to share the whiskey with Schlieffen, and seemed surprised when he said no. Once they'd passed it back and forth a few times, they forgot he was there. That suited him fine till they started to sing. From them on, work got much harder.
He persevered. Minister von Schlozer would need a full report on the Battle of Louisville to send to Bismarck. Schlieffen himself would need an even fuller one to send to the General Staff.
The report did not go so well as he would have liked, and the music-for lack of a suitably malodorous word-was not the only reason. Parts flowed smoothly; as long as he was talking about matters tactical-the effects of breech-loading rifles and breech-loading artillery on the battlefield-he wrote with confidence. That was part of what the Chancellery and the General Staff had to have. But it was only part.
He sighed. He wished the strategic implications of the Louisville campaign were as easy to grasp as those pertaining to tactics. That breechloaders and improved artillery gave the defensive a great advantage was obvious. So strategists had been sure before the outbreak of the war, and so it proved, perhaps to a degree even greater than they had envisioned.
What remained unclear, while at the same time remaining vitally important, was what, if anything, an army taking the offensive could do to reduce the defenders' advantages. Unfortunately, he wrote, the U.S. forces did not conduct the campaign in such a way as to make such analysis easy, as they took little notice of the principles of surprise and misdirection. Based on what I observed, I can state with authority that headlong assaults against previously readied positions, even with artillery preparation by no means to be despised, is foredoomed to failure, regardless of the quality of the attacking troops, which was also high.
He sighed again. Every U.S. campaign he had studied, both here and in the War of Secession, had a ponderous obviousness to it. Like McClellan before him, Willcox seemed to have taken the elephant as his model. If he smashed to pieces everything between him and his goal, he could knock down the tree, reach out with his trunk, and pluck off the sweet fruit.
No U.S. general seemed to have figured out that, if he went around the tree instead of straight at it, the terrain might be easier than that right in front of it, and the fruit might fall of its own accord. The Confederates understood as much, even if their opponents didn't. Robert E. Lee hadn't gone straight for Washington, D.C., in 1862. No, he'd moved up into Pennsylvania and forced the USA to respond to his moves in a fluid situation. Lee seemed to have been blessed with an imagination. The only hint of such a feature U.S. commanders displayed was in their fond belief that they could batter their way through anything, and that had proved more nearly a madman's delusion than healthy imagination.
Schlieffen wrestled with his reports till evening, and then after dark by gaslight. By that time, the American officers had stopped singing. Having drunk themselves into a stupor, they were snoring instead. That racket was, if anything, even worse than the other had been, which Schlieffen hadn't reckoned possible.
They were monstrously hung over the next morning, an indication to Schlieffen that God did indeed mete out justice in the world. In short order, they put his faith to the test. One of them pulled a new bottle of whiskey from his carpetbag, and they got drunk all over again. This time, Schlieffen was tempted to get drunk with them, if for no other reason than to blot out their raucous voices. Satan sent temptations to be mastered. He mastered this one.
He sent up a hearty prayer of thanksgiving when, late that second night, the train pulled into Philadelphia. Gloating at the sad state of the two U.S. officers was something less than perfectly Christian. No man, he told himself, was perfect. Gloat he did.
A driver waited to take him back to the sausage manufacturer's establishment. When the fellow greeted him in German, he automatically replied in English. Then, feeling foolish, he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Please excuse me," he said in his native tongue. "Not only have I used nothing but English lately, I am so tired I can hardly put one foot in front of the other."
"lch verstehe, Hen Oberst," the driver answered reassuringly. "Bitte, kommen Sie mit mir."
Schlieffen did come with the driver. He fell asleep in the carriage, and then, once back in a proper bed for the first time since his departure, did as good an imitation of a dead man as was likely to be found this side of the grave. When he awoke, a glance at his pocket watch sent him leaping from that soft, inviting bed in something close to horror: it was nearly eleven.
Kurd von Schlozer waved aside his mortified apologies. "Think nothing of it. Colonel," the German minister to the United States said. "I understand that a man returning from arduous service on his country's behalf is entitled to a night in which to recover himself."
Reminding Schlieffen he had done his duty was the best way to restore him to good humor. "Thank you for your patience with me, Your Excellency," he said. "Now I have been away from newspapers and the telegraph for two days. Has President Blaine yet answered the new Confederate call for peace?"