"I know the institution has been of no use to the country. If there had been no West Point Military Academy, there would have been no rebellion. It was the hotbed from which rebellion was hatched. From thence emanated your principal traitors and conspirators."
The debate was joined. It grew sharp, then intemperate, as the minutes lengthened into an hour and the statements to paragraphs, then to orations.
Senator Wilson, the military affairs chairman George had cultivated, took the floor to acknowledge the existence of weaknesses in the Academy but then cited evidence contradicting Wade — the very same figures George had included in his letter to the Times.
Wilson thought West Point no "nursery of treason," though he did fault it for "an exclusiveness — a sort of assumption of superiority among its graduates in the army that is sometimes very offensive."
Senator Nesmith tried to blunt the attack by naming graduates who had given their lives for the Union — Mansfield and Reno were two of the best known — and concluded by trying to rouse the emotion of his colleagues by reciting twelve lines of a poem on heroism.
Immediately, Wade charged from the flank. The institution was worthless because it trained engineers, not leaders of a fighting army. Skillfully, he wove a repetitive phrase into his diatribe: "Traitors to the country — traitors to the country — traitors to the country."
George's head started to ache. To twist and color the truth as Wade did was abominable. Lee was an engineer but brilliant as a tactician. Why such distortions? Was it the nature of the political beast or just something peculiar to this war, this hour, this special nexus of interests and passions? Did radicals like Wade truly feel the hatreds they expressed? The possibility, by no means new, still had power to terrify him.
There might be a more cynical explanation, of course. If Wade and his crowd railed against the South until it was destroyed, they could step in as a political party and rule it.
On and on Wade went, merciless. "I am for abolishing this institution." Scattered applause. "We do not want any government interposition for military education any more than for any other education."
John Sherman left his desk, began to scurry among his colleagues, sensing a tide flowing the wrong way. Foster of Connecticut spoke in rebuttal. Had not Yale and Harvard educated as many Southerners as West Point?
Wade sneered. "Yale College is not upheld by the government of the United States."
Then there was renewed argument over whether the Academy had or had not produced quality leaders for the Union. This line of debate was interrupted by the cadaverous, mean-visaged Lane of Kansas, whose curt remarks — scarcely a sentence or two — ended with a triumphant repetition of the Academy epitaph he had been jobbing around the city for days: "Died of West Point pro-slaveryism!"
Wade stamped his feet and expressed his approval vocally. Sherman scurried faster.
On it went. Arguments that West Point was a "monopoly." More arguments that it trained men improperly. Here, the powerful Lyman Trumbull spoke for the first time.
"Because they understood the erection of fortifications, they were therefore supposed to be Napoleons? There is the mistake! What we want is generals to command our armies who will rely upon the strength of our armies! Let loose the citizen soldiery of this country upon the rebels! Dismiss from the army every man who knows how to build a fortification and let the men of the North, with their strong arms and indomitable spirit, move down upon the rebels, and I tell you they will grind them to powder!"
The applause, from a good number of gallery spectators as well as from the floor, resounded loudly this time. George's palms were cold and damp, his heart beating too fast. The arguments grew in ferocity.
Lane flashed a whole new set of verbal knives. "This institution for more than thirty years has been under the absolute dominion of your Southern aristocrats. A young man who enrolls at West Point is taught there to admire above all things that two-penny, miserable slave aristocracy of the South — he is taught Southern secession doctrine as a science!"
To George's left, someone clapped. He knew who it was and didn't trust himself to look. Senator Sherman and several of his allies raised their heads; the applause stopped.
Debate continued. Wade put forth his proposal — that West Point be abandoned so a system of separate institutions within the individual states would have room to grow in its place. By this point George felt faint — a lingering effect of the influenza, maybe — and his hands were clenched. The question was called.
"All in favor?"
The yeas were loud, fervent.
"All opposed?"
The nays were even louder but — was it hope playing tricks with his hearing? — fewer.
"I make the count," Vice President Hamlin said, "yeas twenty-nine, nays ten."
Groans in the gallery and from the aisles and desks below. But there was a mingling of hearty applause. John Sherman gave George an exhausted glance, with no sign of pleasure save a spasmodic jerk of his lips. Only then did George dare turn and gaze along the row to pale, fuming Stanley.
George got up, intending to speak some conciliatory word to his brother. Stanley rose, turned his back, and left the gallery while George was still six feet away.
From the Capitol, George rode the street railway to Willard's, where he went to the saloon bar to celebrate. Mentally cursing the trivial work waiting at the Winder Building, he kept buying rounds for other officers at the bar. Presently, all companions gone, he wandered to a table, sat, and began to recite some advertising doggerel which had caught his fancy in a newspaper.
"I think you should go home, Major Hazard," said the waiter in charge of the table.
"I very definitely think you should go home," the waiter said, removing George's not yet empty glass. He went home.
When he had paid the driver and reeled into the house, he said to Constance: "We won."
"But you look so grim. Not to say unsteady. Do sit down before you fall down." She slid the parlor doors shut so the children wouldn't catch sight of him.
"Today I saw the real face of this town, Constance." Holding his head, he watched a marble-topped table separate into two. "I really saw it. Ignorance, prejudice, disregard for the truth — that's the real Washington. Some of those damned rascals in the Senate spouted lies as if they were quoting the Ten Commandments. I can't stand this place any longer. I must get out somehow, some —"
His head lolled back against the chair doily, then fell toward his shoulder. Constance stepped behind him, loving him for an honorable but imperfect man. She reached down to stroke his forehead. His mouth sagged open and he snored.
In contrast, Stanley seemed to thrive in the Byzantine atmosphere of the city. He no longer felt himself a newcomer — quite the opposite — and he relished his growing responsibilities as a trusted aide of Mr. Stanton. Further, he was making vast sums of money on his own for the first time.
Of course, passage of the West Point appropriation bill was a setback, and it left him peevish for several days. The peevishness was enhanced by that of the secretary, which had prevailed ever since General Burnside had begun a movement against Lee on January 20, only to be balked two days later by pouring rains that changed the Virginia roads to bogs.
Burnside's apologists blamed an act of God for the failure of what was sneeringly termed "the Mud March." Those in charge blamed the general and replaced him with Joe Hooker. Fighting Joe announced his determination to reorganize the army, improve every aspect from sanitation to morale — he immediately started granting furloughs — and, above all, annihilate the rebels in the spring.