[describing a dream]
It's nighttime. The ship's moved by some terrible power, at a terrific speed. Though it's imperceptible in the darkness, I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be aboard the vessel. I'm very keenly aware of my aloneness. I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. I reckon it's the speed that's strange to me. I'm used to going a deliberate pace. I should spare you, Molly. I shouldn't tell you my dreams.
I don't want to be spared if you aren't. And you spare me nothing. Perhaps it's the assault on Wilmington Port. You dream about the ship before a battle, usually.
[rapping lightly on his forehead]
How's the coconut?
Beyond description. Almost two years, nothing mends. Another casualty of the war. Who wants to listen to a useless woman grouse about her carriage accident?
Stuff! You tell me dreams, that's all, I'm your soothsayer, that's all I am anymore, I'm not to be trusted with — Even if it was not a carriage accident, even if it was an attempted assassination.
It was most probably an accident—
It was an assassin. Whose intended target was you.
How are the plans coming along for the big shindy?
I don't want to talk about parties. You don't care about parties.
Not much, but they're a necessary hindrance.
I know... I know what it's about. The ship, it's not Wilmington Port, it's not a military campaign! It's the amendment to abolish slavery! Why else would you force me to invite demented radicals into my home? You're going to try to get the amendment passed in the House of Representatives before the term ends? Before the inauguration?
[standing]
Don't spend too much money on the flubdubs.
No one's loved as much as you, no one's ever been loved so much, by the people. You might do anything now. Don't, don't waste that power on an amendment bill that's sure of defeat. [she turns away, walking to an open window.] Did you remember Robert's coming home for the reception? [Lincoln nods] I knew you'd forget. That's the ship you're sailing on. The Thirteenth Amendment. You needn't tell me I'm right. I know I am.
[discussing the terms of Lee's surrender with Grant]
Once he surrenders, send his boys back to their homes and their farms, their shops.
Ulysses S. Grant Yes, sir, as we discussed.
Liberality all around. Not punishment, I don't want that. And their leaders, Jeff and the rest of them, they escape, leave the country while my back's turned, that wouldn't upset me none. When peace comes, it mustn't just be hangings.
Ulysses S. Grant [silently observing Lincoln for a moment]
By outward appearance, you're ten years older than you were a year ago.
Hm. [nods] Some weariness has bit at my bones. I never seen the like of it before, what I seen today. [almost to himself] Never seen the like of it before.
Ulysses S. Grant You always knew that - what this was going to be: Intimate, and ugly. You must've needed to see it close when you decided to come down here.
Hm. [stands, grasps Grant's outstretched hand with both of his own] We've made it possible for one another to do terrible things.
Ulysses S. Grant We've won the war. Now you have to lead us out of it.
He'll be fine, Molly. City Point's away back from the front lines, and fighting, he'll be an adjutant running messages for General Grant.
The war will take our son! A sniper, or a shrapnel shell. Or typhus, same as took Willie, it takes hundreds of boys a day! He'll die, uselessly, and how will I ever forgive you? Most men, their firstborn is their favorite. You...you've always blamed Robert for being born, for trapping you in a marriage that's only ever given you grief and caused you regret!
And if the slaughter of Cold Harbor is on your hands same as Grant, God help us! We'll pay for the oceans of spilled blood you've sanctioned, the uncountable corpses we'll be made to pay with our son's dear blood.
Just...just this once, Mrs. Lincoln, I demand of you to try and take the liberal and not the selfish point of view! Robert will never forgive himself, can you imagine he'll forgive us if we continue to stifle this very natural ambition?!
[smiles mockingly]
And if I refuse to take the high road, if I won't take up the rough old cross, will you threaten me again with the madhouse, as you did when I couldn't stop crying over Willie, when I showed you what heartbreak, real heartbreak looked like, and you hadn't the courage to countenance it, to help me...
That's right. That's right. When you refused so much as to comfort Tad...
I was in the room with Willie, I was holding him in my arms as he died!
...a child who was not only sick, dangerously sick, but beside himself with grief! Oh, but your grief! Your grief! Your inexhaustible grief!
How dare you throw that up at me?!
And his mother wouldn't let him near her...
I couldn't let Tad in! I couldn't risk him seeing how angry I was! [Mary starts crying]
...'cause she's screaming from morning to night pacing the corridors, howling at shadows and furniture and ghosts! I ought to have done it, I ought have done for Tad's sake, for everybody's Goddamned sake, I should have clapped you in the madhouse!
Then do it!! Do it! Don't you threaten me, you do it this time! Lock me away! You'll have to, I swear, if Robert is killed.
[pauses]
I couldn't tolerate you grieving so for Willie because I couldn't permit it in myself, though I wanted to, Mary. I wanted to crawl under the earth, into the vault with his coffin. I still do. Every day I do. Don't... speak to me about grief. [he pauses again] I must make my decisions, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must, hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me, you must allow me to do it, alone as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten this burden, or render it intolerable. As you choose.
I did say some colored men, the intelligent, the educated, and veterans, I qualified it.
Mr. Stevens is furious, he wants to know why you qualified it.
Schuyler Colfax No one heard the intelligent or the educated part. All they heard was the first time any president has ever made mention of Negro voting.
Still, I wish I'd mentioned it in a better speech.
Mr. Stevens also wants to know why you didn't make a better speech.
John Nicolay [There's a knock on the door; John Nicolay enters.]
Mrs. Lincoln's waiting in the carriage. She wants me to remind you of the hour, and that you'll have to pick up Miss Harris and Major Rathbone.
[Slade hands Lincoln his gloves as Colfax and Ashley drain their drinks and rise.]
I suppose it's time to go though I would rather stay.
[On the way out, Lincoln tosses the gloves on a side table. Slade grabs them, considers chasing after Lincoln, then walks back towards the office. Slade turns and watches till Lincoln turns the corner and is gone.]
Since we have the floor next in the debate, I thought I'd suggest you might... temper your contributions so as not to frighten our conservative friends?
Ashley insists you're ensuring approval by dispensing patronage to otherwise undeserving Democrats.
I can't ensure a single damn thing if you scare the whole House with talk of land appropriations and revolutionary tribunals and punitive thisses and that's—
When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of rebel land and every dollar of their property. We'll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers, and at their side soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.
That's the untempered version of reconstruction. It's not... It's not exactly what I intend, but we shall oppose one another in the course of time. Now we're working together, and I'm asking you—
When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow till they're ready to make up—
Ah, shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for! I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want! This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And I look a lot worse without the wig. The people elected me! To represent them! To lead them! And I lead! You ought to try it.
I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter; then the border states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.
Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them—but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.
A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll point you True North from where you are standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing True North?
Thunder forth, God of War.
We'll commence our assault on Wilmington from the sea... Why is is this burned? Was the boy playing with it?
It got took by a breeze several nights back.
This is an official War Department map!
And the enire cabinet's waiting to hear what it portends.
Gideon Welles A bombardment. From the largest fleet the Navy's ever assembled.
Old Neptune, shake thy hoary locks.
Gideon Welles Fifty-eight ships are underway, of every tonnage and firing range.
We'll keep up a steady barrage. Our first target is Fort Fisher. It defends Wilmington port.
A hundred shells a minute. Till they surrender.
WF William Fessenden
Dear God.
Wilmington's their last open seaport. Therefore...
Wilmington falls, Richmond falls after.
John Usher Then why, if I may ask are we not concentrating the nation's attention on Wilmington? Why, instead, are we reading in the Herald that the anti-slavery amendment is being precipitated on the House floor for debate—because your eagerness, in what seems an unwarranted intrusion of the Executive into Legislative prerogatives, is compelling it to its... to what's likely to be it's premature demise? You signed the Emancipation Proclamation, you've done all that can be expected—
The Emancipation Proclamation's merely a war measure. After the war the courts will make a meal out of it.
John Usher When Edward Bates was Attorney General, he felt confident in it enough to allow you to sign—
Different lawyers, different opinions. It frees slaves as a military exigent, not in any other—
I don't recall Bates being any too certain about the legality of my Proclamation, just it wasn't downright criminal. Somewhere's in in between. Back when I rode the legal circuit in Illinois, I defended a woman from Metamora named Melissa Goings, 77 years-old. They said she murdered her husband, he was 83. He was choking her and she grabbed a-hold of a stick of firewood and fractured his skull and he died. In his will he wrote: 'I suspect she has killed me. If I get over it, I will have revenge.' No one was keen to see her convicted, he was that kind of husband. I asked the prosecuting attorney if I might have a short conference with my client. And she and I went into a room in the courthouse, but I alone emerged. The window in the room was found to be wide open. It was believed the old lady may have climbed out of it. I told the bailiff right before. I left her in the room she asked me where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her Tennessee. Mrs. Goings was seen no more in Metamora. Enough justice had been done; they even forgave the bondsman her bail.
John Usher I'm afraid I don't see—
I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebel's slaves from them as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the Rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity. Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with'em. If in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country? And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate'em as such. So I confiscated 'em. But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free 'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still. Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, hence forward and forever free." But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done. As the preacher once said, I could write shorter sermons but once I start I get too lazy to stop.
John Usher It seems to me, sir, you're describing precisely the sort of dictator the Democrats have been howling about.
Dictators aren't susceptible to law.
John Usher Neither is he! He just said as much! Ignoring the courts? Twisting meanings? What reins him in from, from...
Well, the people do that, I suppose. I signed the Emancipation Proclamation a year and a half before my second election. I felt I was within my power to do it; however I felt that I might be wrong to do it; I knew the people would tell me. I gave 'em a year and a half to think about it. And they re-elected me. And come February the first, I intend to sign the Thirteenth Amendment.
Well, Mr. Representative Ashley! Tell us the news from the Hill.
Why for instance is this thus, and what is the reason for this thusness?
James, we want you to bring the anti-slavery amendment to the floor for debate...
...immediately, and... you are the amendment's manager, are you not?
I am, of course, but... immediately?
And we're counting on robust radical support, so tell Mr. Stevens we expect him to put his back into it, it's not going to be easy, but we trust...
It's impossible. No, I am sorry, no, we can't organize anything immediately in the House. I have been canvassing the Democrats since the election, in case any of them softened after they got walloped. But they have stiffened if anything, Mr. Secretary. There aren't nearly enough votes—
We're whalers, Mr. Ashley!
Whalers? As in, uh, whales?
We've been chasing this whale for a long time. We've finally placed a harpoon in the monster's back. It's in, James, it's in! We finish the deed now, we can't wait! Or with one flop of his tail, [slaps Ashley's shoulder] he'll smash the boat and send us all to eternity!
On the 31st of this month, of this year, put the amendment up for a vote.
AS Alexander Stephens
Let me be blunt. Will the Southern states resume their former position in the Union speedily enough to enable us to to enable us to block ratification of this here Thirteenth Amendment?
I'd like peace immediately.
AS Alexander Stephens
Yes, and...?
I'd like your states restored to their practical relations immediately.
AS Alexander Stephens
If this could be given me in writing, as Vice President of the Confederacy, I'd bring that document with celerity to Jefferson Davis.
Surrender and we can discuss reconstruction.
AS Alexander Stephens
Surrender won't be thought of unless you've assured us, in writing, that we'll be readmitted in time to block this amendment.
RH Robert Hunter
This is the arrogant demand of a conqueror for a humiliating, abject—
You'll not be conquered people, Mr. Hunter. You will be citizens, returned to the laws and the guarantees of rights of the Constitution.
AS Alexander Stephens
Which now extinguishes slavery. And with it our economy. All our laws will be determined by a Congress of vengeful Yankees, all our rights will be subject to a Supreme Court benched by bloody Republican radicals. All our traditions will be obliterated. We won't know ourselves anymore.
We ain't here to discuss reconstruction, we have no legal basis for that discussion. But I don't want to deal falsely. The Northern states will ratify, most of 'em. As I figure, it remains for two of the Southern states to do the same, even after all are readmitted. And I've been working on that.
AS Alexander Stephens
[grudgingly nodding]
Tennessee and Louisiana.
Arkansas, too, most likely. It'll be ratified. Slavery, sir, it's done. [Hunter silently stands and leaves the room] If we submit ourselves to law, Alex, even submit to losing freedoms—the freedom to oppress, for instance—we may discover other freedoms previously unknown to us. Had you kept faith with democratic process, as frustrating as that can be—
John Campbell Come, sir, spare us at least these pieties. Did you defeat us with ballots?
AS Alexander Stephens
How have you held your union together? Through democracy? How many hundreds of thousands have died during your administration? Your Union, sir, is bonded in cannon fire and death.
It may be you're right. But say all we done is show the world that democracy isn't chaos, that there is a great, invisible strength in a people's union? Say we've shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere? Mightn't that save at least the idea of democracy, to aspire to? Eventually to become worthy of? At all rates, whatever may be proven by blood and sacrifice must've been proved by now! Shall we stop this bleeding?
EM Edward McPherson
Roll call concludes. Voting is completed. Now—
Schuyler Colfax Mr. Clerk? Please call my name. I want to cast a vote.
George Pendleton I object! The Speaker doesn't vote.
Schuyler Colfax The Speaker may vote if he so chooses.
George Pendleton It is highly unusual, sir.
Schuyler Colfax This isn't usual, Mr. Pendleton. This is history.
EM Edward McPherson
How does Mr. Schuyler Colfax vote?
Schuyler Colfax Aye, of course.
They cannot possibly maintain under this kind of an assault! Terry's got ten thousand men surrounding the Goddamned fort! Why doesn't he answer my cables?
Gideon Welles Fort Fisher is a mountain of a building, Edwin.
TT Thomas Thompson Eckert
It's the largest fort they have, sir.
Gideon Welles Twenty-two big seacoast guns on each rampart...
TT Thomas Thompson Eckert
They've been reinforcing it for the last two years...
They've taken 17,000 shells since yesterday!
TT Thomas Thompson Eckert
They said...
Gideon Welles The commander is an old goat.
I want to hear that Fort Fisher is ours and Wilmington has fallen! Send another damn cable! The problem's their commander, Whiting. He engineered the fortress himself. The damned thing's his child; he'll defend it till his every last man is gone. He is not thinking rationally...
Come on out, you old rat! [the room goes silent] That's what...that's what Ethan Allen called out to the commander of Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. 'Come on out, you old rat!' Ah, 'course there were only forty odd redcoats at Ticonderoga. But...but there is one Ethan Allen story that I'm very partial to...
No! No, you're, you're going to tell a story! I don't believe that I can bear to listen to another one of your stories right now! [Stanton storms out, shouting to himself] I need the B&O sideyard schedules for Alexandria! I asked for them this morning! I don't care how long it takes!
It was right after the Revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went, till one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed to this. [pours himself another cup of coffee] Relieved, you might say. [slight laughter] Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn't mention Washington's portrait. And finally his lordship couldn't resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it. The picture of Washington. He had. Well what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded. [mocking British accent] "Appropriate? George Washington's likeness in a water closet?" "Yes," said Mr. Allen, "where it will do good service. The whole world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington." [louder laughter] I love that story.
Elizabeth Keckley I know the vote is only four days away; I know you're concerned. Thank you for your concern over this, and I want you to know: They'll approve it. God will see to it.
I don't envy Him His task. He may wish He'd chosen an instrument for His purpose more wieldy than the House of Representatives.
Elizabeth Keckley Then you'll see to it.
Are you afraid of what lies ahead? For your people? If we succeed?
Elizabeth Keckley White people don't want us here.
Elizabeth Keckley What about you?
I... I don't know you, Mrs. Keckley. Any of you. You're... familiar to me, as all people are. Un-accommodated, poor, bare, forked creatures such as we all are. You have a right to expect what I expect, and likely our expectations are not incomprehensible to each other. I assume I'll get used to you. But what you are to the nation, what'll become of you once slavery's day is done, I don't know.
Elizabeth Keckley What my people are to be, I can't say. Negroes have been fighting and dying for freedom since the first of us was a slave. I never heard any ask what freedom will bring. Freedom's first. As for me: My son died, fighting for the Union, wearing the Union blue. For freedom he died. I'm his mother. That's what I am to the nation, Mr. Lincoln. What else must I be?
Fernando Wood I've asked you a question, Mr. Stevens, and you must answer me. Do you or do you not hold that the precept that "all men are created equal" is meant literally? Is that the true purpose of the amendment? To promote your ultimate and ardent dream to elevate—
The true purpose of the amendment, Mr. Wood, you perfectly named, brainless, obstructive object?
Fernando Wood You have always insisted, Mr. Stevens, that Negroes are the same as white men are.
The true purpose of the amendment... I don't hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
Fernando Wood That's not true! You believe that Negroes are entirely equal to white men. You've said it a thousand times—
George Pendleton For shame! For shame! Stop prevaricating and answer Representative Wood!
I don't hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
George Pendleton After the decades fervent advocacy on behalf of the colored race—
He's answered your questions! This amendment has naught to do with race equality!
George Pendleton You have long insisted, have you not that the dusk-colored race is no different from the white one?
I don't hold with equality before in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
George Pendleton Your frantic attempt to delude us now is unworthy of a representative. It is, in fact, unworthy of a white man!
How can I hold that all men are created equal, when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio? Proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their Maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood! You are more reptile than man, George! So low and flat, that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you!
George Pendleton How dare you!
Yet even you, Pendleton, who should have been gibbeted for treason long before today, even worthless unworthy you ought to be treated equally before the law! And so again, sir, and again and again and again I say: I do not hold with equality in all things. Only with equality before the law.
George Yeaman I can't vote for the amendment, Mr. Lincoln.
I saw a barge once, Mr. Yeaman, filled with colored men in chains, heading down the Mississippi to the New Orleans slave markets. It sickened me, 'n more than that, it brought a shadow down, a pall around my eyes. Slavery troubled me, as long as I can remember, in a way it never troubled my father, though he hated it. In his own fashion. He knew no smallholding dirt farmer could compete with slave plantations. He took us out from Kentucky to get away from 'em. He wanted Indiana kept free. He wasn't a kind man, but there was a rough moral urge for fairness, for freedom in him. I learnt that from him, I suppose, if little else from him. We didn't care for one another, Mr. Yeaman.
George Yeaman I... well, I'm sorry to hear that...
Loving kindness, that most ordinary thing, came to me from other sources. I'm grateful for that.
George Yeaman I hate it, too, sir, slavery, but - but we’re entirely unready for emancipation. There's too many questions-
[laughs]
We're unready for peace too, ain't we? When it comes, it'll present us with conundrums and dangers greater than any we've faced during the war, bloody as it's been. We'll have to extemporize and experiment with what it is when it is. I read your speech, George. Negroes and the vote, that's a puzzle.
George Yeaman No, no, but, but, but... But Negroes can't, um, vote, Mr. Lincoln. You're not suggesting that we enfranchise colored people.
I'm asking only that you disenthrall yourself from the slave powers. I'll let you know when there's an offer on my desk for surrender. There's none before us now. What's before us now, that's the vote on the Thirteenth Amendment. It's going to be so very close. You see what you can do.
You've an itch to travel?
I'd like that. To the West by rail.
[laughs]
Awfully pious for a man who takes his wife out buggy-riding on Good Friday.
Jerusalem. Where David and Solomon walked. I dream of walking in that ancient city.
All anyone will remember of me is I was crazy and I ruined your happiness.
Anyone thinks that doesn't understand, Molly.
When they look at you, at what it cost to live at the heart of this, they'll wonder at it. They'll wonder at you. They should. But they should also look at the wretched woman by your side, of they want to understand what this was truly like. For an ordinary person. For anyone other than you.
We must try to be happier. We must. Both of us. We've been miserable for so long.
