"It seems to me there's nothing indefinite about the future," Stanley observed while the secretary settled himself. "The war's over." That was the consensus, even though General Johnston's army remained in the field somewhere in the Carolinas. "What lies ahead is a period of intensive reconstruction — including, I trust, punishment for the rebels."
"Yes, definitely punishment," Stanton said. Stanley smiled. It would be his pleasure to help mete it out to former slaveowners.
They ran rapidly through the agenda Stanley had prepared. Stanton made notes — these records to be transferred here, those responsibilities assigned there. Stanley was thankful the secretary was overburdened and therefore impatient. It allowed Stanley to finish and leave the office two hours earlier than expected. He knew he should go home, but went instead, despite the traffic, to Jeannie Canary's.
It proved a bad decision. It was the wrong day for a carnal romp. And she was whiny.
"Won't you take me out this evening, loves? Surely we wouldn't be bothered, with so many drunken people everywhere. I'd love to see the play at Ford's." She no longer performed at the Varieties. She much preferred lazing about and spending the allowance Stanley furnished.
"They say the President and his wife are to appear in the state box," she went on. "You know I've never seen Mrs. Lincoln. Is she as squat and beady-eyed as they say?"
"Yes, dreadful," he retorted, made cross himself by her inability to make love just now.
"Couldn't you get tickets''"
"Not this late. Even if I could, we'd spent most of the time squeezed in crowds and wilting in the heat — on top of which, Tom Taylor's play is old and creaky. It would be a very disagreeable evening. A thoroughly dull one, too."
It was as if a perverted Nature had brought forth a black spring. Crepe blossomed everywhere that Easter weekend: on coat sleeves, the President's pew at the York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the marble facades of public buildings. Stores remained open extra hours to sell it by the yard and by the bolt.
Booth had escaped. Stanton proclaimed that the whole South must be prosecuted. Even Grant spoke of retaliatory measures of extreme rigor. In preparation for the state funeral on Wednesday, dry-goods stores quickly fashioned black-wrapped batons, sable sashes, ebony rosettes. Portraits of the slain President appeared in windows. Groups of stunned, grieving Negroes appeared on street corners. Paroled Confederate prisoners turned their coats inside out or threw them away for fear of being lynched.
Early on Tuesday, using a special pass provided by Sam Stout, Virgilia was able to cut into the double line of waiting mourners, as many diplomats and public officials were doing. Only in that way could she be assured of getting into the East Room of the mansion.
The slow-shuffling lines were extremely long. A guard told her an estimated fifteen thousand waited outside. Most would be disappointed when night came. The President was to lie in state this day only.
Carpenters had built a catafalque now covered in black silk.
The silk matched the outside of the white-lined canopy high above the casket, which was embossed with silver stars and shamrocks and bedecked with silver ropes and tassels. A silver plate mounted on a shield read:
Black drapes, windings, covers, concealed nearly every touch of color normally visible in the room. White cloth hid the glass of every black-edged mirror. Waiting her turn on black-painted steps which led up to the right side of the casket, Virgilia tugged at one black mitten, then the other, and smoothed her mourning dress. Finally her turn came. She stepped past the army officer at rigid attention at the end of the coffin — another guarded the opposite end — and gazed down at Abraham Lincoln.
Not even the techniques and cosmetics of the mortician could do much to improve his crude, wasted look. She had come here more out of curiosity than anything else, and she studied the corpse with half-lidded eyes. He had been too lenient and forgiving. Too much of a threat to the high purpose of men such as Sam and Thad Stevens.
The newly sworn President, Andrew Johnson, would pose no similar threat. Sam dismissed him as a dull-witted bumpkin. Along with Ben Wade and Congressman Dawes, Sam had already paid a courtesy call on Johnson. He reported to Virgilia that Wade, through pointed indirection, had left no doubt about what he and legislators of like mind expected of the new man.
"Mr. Johnson, I thank God you're here," Wade had said. "Lincoln had too much of the milk of human kindness to deal with these damned rebels. Now they'll be dealt with according to their deserts."
As the hunt for Wilkes Booth went on, even moderate politicians and newspapers throughout the North were blaming the entire South for the deed. Hinting at a Davis-inspired conspiracy. Demanding vengeance, Sam reported with glee. "By giving his life, Virgilia, our direst philosophical foe has been of infinite aid to our cause."
The conspiracy theory intrigued Virgilia. But she skewed her version slightly. Booth's murder ring had included others; a hulk named Payne or Paine had broken into Secretary Seward's house on the same night Lincoln was shot and would have stabbed Seward to death had not the secretary's son and a male nurse intervened. Others were said to be involved as well. Was Booth the sole motivator of the group? Suppose some radical Republican had inspired and encouraged him, hoping to produce the very result that had now occurred — a renewed cry for Southern blood?
It certainly wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, though she supposed the truth of it would never be known. Still, the truth mattered less than what had happened these past couple of days. Ordinary citizens were demanding the same harsh measures men such as Sam had long advocated.
"Madam? You will have to move on. Many others are waiting."
The usher spoke from the East Room floor, near some chairs hastily painted black and set out for the hacks from the press. The usher's whisper focused attention on Virgilia, embarrassing her. She almost called him a name. But this was no place, to create a scene.
Besides, she felt good. The sight of the dead Chief Executive was not at all depressing. The program of Sam's group could now be carried forward with less obstruction. The great majority, converted overnight by a bullet, wanted that program. Virgilia gave the usher a scathing look and walked decorously to the steps leading down. She glanced back once and fought to suppress a smile.
Sam was right. In death, the ugly prairie lawyer served his country far better than he ever had in life. His murder was a blessing.
133
Huntoon wanted to die. At least once daily, he was positive he would within the hour. He had lost something like twenty-five pounds and all his fervor. Would he never sleep in a regular bed again? Eat food cooked on a stove? Be able to relieve himself in privacy?
Each section of the long road from St. Louis had had its own distinctive frights and travails. On the journey in the overland coach, they had been accompanied and guarded more than half the way by a Union cavalry detachment. The Plains Indians were raiding, they were told.
Huntoon quaked when informed of that. Powell, on the other hand, seemed stimulated to broaden his performance as the loyal, fearless Kentuckian. Huntoon's loathing grew.
Virginia City, with its looming mountains, belching smokestacks, ruffian miners, was as strange and threatening as China or the steppes. He and Powell had to load the bullion at night at the refinery, laying the half-inch-thick tapered ingots in rows, according to a plan Powell had sketched. The ingots measured five by three inches. Each wagon bed carried ninety of them, for a total weight of around four hundred and fifty pounds. The worth at the prevailing price of twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents an ounce was just short of one hundred fifty thousand dollars. The arrangement and value of the gold loaded in the second wagon was identical.