Grant: A Novel (25 page)

“Which is, of course,” he said through a mouthful of chicken—they moved away from the crowd, to the side of the stall—“a
Pennsylvania
idea. Idea is, when they reach a deadlock Wisconsin will suddenly swing all its votes to Garfield, as a compromise candidate. Next ballot, Indiana acts like it’s inspired, does the same thing, and presumably everybody else that’s still awake and sick of voting jumps on the bandwagon. Pennsylvania man named Wharton Baker thought it up, made Cameron go through the roof this morning at breakfast.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked up between the buildings at a hot sky the color of hammered pewter. “Mrs. Cameron left town already, you hear that? Late Sunday night, took a train. Damned odd.”

Trist put his uneaten chicken on the wooden counter next to the stall and rubbed his face.

“Which makes this correspondent wonder.” Cadwallader picked up Trist’s discarded chicken and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “What the hell they think constitutes a deadlock?”

“Is thirty-three ballots the record?”

“In 1801,” Cadwallader said, with the air of a man remembering a bad taste, “the House of Representatives went through thirty-six ballots for President. Finally elected Jefferson over Burr.”

“You were there.”

Cadwallader grinned. “I would have voted for Burr. Better copy.”

On the thirty-fourth ballot, the governor of Wisconsin stood to announce that sixteen of its twenty votes were now to be cast for Garfield. The Hall went silent. Garfield himself instantly stood and waved his rolled-up tally sheet at the podium. “I challenge that vote! The announcement contains votes for me. No man has a right, without the consent of the person named, to vote for someone in this convention. Such consent I have not given!”

Yet even before the last sentence the chairman was hammering his gavel, drowning out Garfield’s voice. The speaker was out of order, not recognized by the chair. Garfield sat down abruptly.

Trist made his way across the floor toward the Ohio delegation. Garfield was sitting rigidly, hands on knees, but behind him the governor was passing a telegram from delegate to delegate. Sherman had wired new instructions from Washington—if defeat of Grant were possible, he released Ohio from himself and appealed for Garfield as a compromise. Trist knelt beside Garfield while the Hall grew noisier and noisier and the thirty-fifth ballot began.

“Senator,” he said, “there’s been at least one vote for you on every ballot—why suddenly object?” Garfield’s reply might have been Greek or Latin, because not a word was audible over the sudden roar from Indiana, which announced through a megaphone that all twenty-seven of its votes went for him.

At the center of the Hall, Roscoe Conkling could be seen standing, surrounded by clamoring delegates. Trist recognized a senator from Nevada, somebody from Illinois, Virginia. Anybody would guess what they were asking: Would Conkling throw New York behind Blaine just to stop Garfield? But Conkling’s cold, defiant profile made the question pointless.

“New York casts its votes
exactly
as before,” Conkling informed the chairman.

Now Garfield pushed his way to the governor. “Cast
my
vote for Sherman,” he said, and looked around to be sure Trist was listening. “Do
not
desert Sherman.” The governor shoved the telegram into Garfield’s hands and clambered up on a chair. “Ohio casts all forty-three votes,” he cried, “for
James A. Garfield
!”

Even in the uproar that followed, Garfield kept an expressionless face. He motioned Trist closer. “I wish you would say this is no act of mine,” he said. “I wish you would say I’ve done everything possible for Sherman.”

On the thirty-sixth and final ballot Garfield received 399 votes and the nomination. Grant received 306. At the reporters’ table Cadwallader leaned toward Trist. “You know the headline now?”

“ ‘Garfield Wins.’ ”

Cadwallader shook his head, and for an instant all that Trist could see was a strange, disconnected look on his face, weary as Don Cameron’s, impossible to read. “ ‘Grant Loses,’ ” Cadwallader said.

EXTRACTS FROM A REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK 1883–1884

You have asked me to write you confidentially. I will now say what I have never breathed.
Grant is a drunkard
. His wife has been with him for months only to use her influence in keeping him sober. He tries to let liquor alone but he cannot resist the temptation always. When he came to Memphis he left his wife at La Grange & for several days after getting here was beastly drunk, utterly incapable of doing anything. Quimby and I took him in charge, watching him day & night & keeping liquor away from him & we telegraphed to his wife and brought her on to take care of him.

—BRIG. GEN. C. S. HAMILTON
Feb. 11, 1863

The soldiers observe him coming and rising to their feet gather on each side of the way to see him pass—they do not salute him, they only watch him with a certain sort of familiar reverence. His abstract air is not so great while he thus moves along as to prevent his seeing everything without apparently looking at it. A plain blue suit, without scarf, sword or trappings of any sort, save the double-starred shoulder straps … a square-cut face whose lines and contour indicate extreme endurance and determination, complete the
external appearance of this small man, as one sees him passing along, turning and chewing restlessly the end of his unlighted cigar.

NEW YORK TIMES
,
June 21, 1863

General Grant seemed the most bashful man I ever encountered. When I came in, the room was wreathed in heavy cigar smoke and the table where he was writing was stacked high with military papers. He got up in a hurry, tried to shove half a dozen chairs at once forward for me, took his cigar out of his mouth and his hat off his head and then replaced them both without knowing that he was doing it and asked what he could do for me, ma’am.

—MRS. MARY LIVERMORE
nurse, Vicksburg, July 4, 1863

Grant made what looked like a snap judgment one day on some supply orders. The quartermaster pointed out that this would cost a good deal of money and asked whether Grant was sure he was right.

“No, I am not,” Grant replied, “but in war anything is better than indecision.
We must decide
. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out and can do the other thing. But
not to decide
wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.”

—COLONEL JAMES F. RUSLING
Nashville

I met Grant in Willard’s Hotel. Obviously the man was no gentleman; he had no gait, no station, no manner. He was smoking a cigar and he had rather the look of a man who did, or once did, take a little too much to drink. He was an ordinary, scrubby looking man with a slightly seedy look as if he was out of office on half pay. Later in the week I saw Lincoln in his office and found him no better. Such a shapeless mass of writhing ugliness as slouched about the President’s chair you never saw or imagined. Grant and Lincoln get on very well.

—RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR
.

Once he sat on the ground writing a dispatch in a fort just captured from the enemy. A shell burst immediately over him, but his hand
never shook and he kept on writing. “Ulysses don’t scare worth a damn,” said a soldier nearby.

—ADAM BADEAU
military aide

While he was passing a spot near the roadside where there were a number of wounded, one of them who was lying close to the roadside, seemed to attract his special attention. The man’s face was beardless; he was evidently young; his countenance was strikingly handsome. The blood was flowing from a wound in his breast, the froth about his mouth was tinged with red, and his wandering, staring eyes gave unmistakable evidence of approaching death. Just then a young staff-officer dashed by at full gallop, and as his horse’s hoofs struck a puddle in the road, a mass of black mud was splashed in the wounded man’s face. The general, whose eyes were at that moment turned upon the youth, was visibly affected. He reined in his horse, and seeing from a motion he made that he was intending to dismount to bestow some care upon the young man, I sprang from my horse, ran to the side of the soldier, wiped his face with my handkerchief, spoke to him, and examined his wound; but in a few minutes the unmistakable death-rattle was heard, and I found that he had breathed his last. I said to the general, who was watching the scene intently, “The poor fellow is dead,” remounted my horse, and the party rode on. The chief had turned round twice to look after the officer who had splashed the mud and who had passed rapidly on, as if he wished to take him to task for his carelessness. There was a painfully sad look upon the general’s face, and he did not speak for some time.

—COLONEL HORACE PORTER
Wilderness campaign

Grant is certainly a very extraordinary man. He does not look it and might well pass for a dumpy and slouchy little subaltern, very fond of smoking. They say his mouth shows character. It may be, but it is so covered with beard that no one can vouch for it. He sits a horse well, but in walking he leans forward and toddles. Such being his appearance, however, I do not think that any intelligent person could watch him, even from such a distance as mine, without concluding that he is a remarkable man. He handles those around him
so quietly and well, he is cool and quiet, he is a man of the most exquisite judgment and tact.

—CAPTAIN CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
to his brother Henry Adams

On the subject of assassination, Bismarck expressed indignation at those who had caused Lincoln’s death. “All you can do with such people,” said the General quietly, “is kill them.” “Precisely so,” answered the prince.

—JOHN RUSSELL YOUNG
Around the World with Grant

THE SECRET LIFE OF U. S. GRANT

B
ACK IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE WAR, FEBRUARY 1862 IN
fact, when Grant was laying siege to Fort Donelson, Tennessee, it happened by an odd coincidence that the commander of the Confederate troops inside the fort was an old, old friend, Simon Bolivar Buckner. Buckner had been at West Point with Grant, one year behind, and fought with him in Mexico at the battle of Churubusco. He was an unflamboyant but practical-minded general, competent enough to see that at Donelson he was completely surrounded and cut off from help. So on February 16, after three days of miserable, go-nowhere fighting, Buckner sent over a reasonably cordial letter, considering the circumstances, full of fine Southern rhetorical flourishes and asking what might be his old comrade’s terms for armistice.