In one of the smaller parlors of the White House in Washington sat two men of rather marked appearance. One of them sat leaning back in his tipped chair, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and his right ancle resting on his left knee. His figure, though now flaccid and relaxed, would evidently be a tall one if pulled out like the sliding joints of a spy-glass; but gaunt, lean, and ungainly, with harsh angles and stooping shoulders. He was dressed in a suit of black, with a black satin vest, and round his neck a black silk kerchief tied carelessly in a knot, and passing under a shirt-collar turned down and revealing a neck brawny, sinewy, and tanned.

The face that belonged to this figure was in keeping with it, and yet attractive from a certain charm of expression. Nose prominent and assertive; cheek-bones rather obtrusive, and under them the flesh sallow and browned, though partially covered by thick bristling black whiskers; eyes dark and deeply set; mouth and lips large; and crowning all these features a shock of stiff profuse black hair carelessly put aside from his irregularly developed forehead, as if by no other comb than that which he could make of his long lank fingers.

This man was not only the foremost citizen of the Republic, officially considered, but he had a reputation, exaggerated beyond his deserts, for homeliness. By the Rebel press he was frequently spoken of as “the ape” or the “gorilla.” From the rowdy George Sanderson to the stiff, if not stately Jefferson Davis (himself far from being an Adonis), the pro-slavery champions took a harmless satisfaction, in their public addresses, in alluding, in some contemptuous epithet, to the man’s personal shortcomings. So far from being disturbed, the object of all these revilings would himself sometimes playfully refer to his personal attractions, unconscious how much there was in that face to redeem it from being truly characterized either as ugly or commonplace.

As he sat now, with eyes bent on vacancy, and his mind revolving the arguments or facts which had been presented by his visitor, his countenance assumed an expression which was pathetic in its indication of sincere and patient effort to grasp the truth and see clearly the way before him. The expression redeemed the whole countenance, for it was almost tender in its anxious yet resigned thoughtfulness; in its profound sense of the enormous and unparalleled responsibilities resting on that one brain, perplexing it in the extreme.

The other party to the interview was a man whose personal appearance was in marked contrast. Although he had numbered in his life nearly as many years as the President, he looked some ten years younger. His figure was strikingly handsome, compact, and graceful; and his clothes were nicely adapted to it, both in color and cut. Every feature of his face was finely outlined and proportioned; and the whole expression indicated at once refinement and energy, habits of intellectual culture and of robust physical exercise and endurance. This man was he who has passed so long in this story under the adopted name of Vance.

There had been silence between the two for nearly a minute. Suddenly the President turned his mild dark eyes on his visitor, and said: “Well, sir, what would you have me do?”

“I would have you lead public opinion, Mr. President, instead of waiting for public opinion to lead you.”

“Make this allowance for me, Mr. Vance: I have many conflicting interests to reconcile; many conflicting facts and assertions to sift and weigh. Remember I am bound to listen, not merely to the men of New England, but to those of Kentucky, Maryland, and Eastern Tennessee.”

“Mr. President, you are bound to listen to no man who is not ready to say, Down with slavery if it stands in the way of the Republic! You should at once infuse into every branch of the public service this determination to tear up the bitter root of all our woes. Why not give me the necessary authority to raise a black regiment?”

“Impossible! The public are not ripe for any such extreme measure.”

“There it is! You mean that the public shall be the responsible President instead of Abraham Lincoln. O, sir, knowing you are on the side of right, have faith in your own power to mould and quicken public opinion. When last August in Missouri, Fremont declared the slaves of Rebels free, one word of approval from you would have won the assent of every loyal man. But, instead of believing in the inherent force of a great idea to work its own way, you were biased by the semi-loyal men who were lobbying for slavery, and you countermanded the righteous order, thus throwing us back a whole year. Do I give offence?”

“No, sir, speak your mind freely. I love sincerity.”

“We know very well, Mr. President, that you will do what is right eventually. But O, why not do it at once, and forestall the issue? We know that you will one of these days remove Buell and other generals, the singleness of whose devotion to the Union as against slavery is at least questionable. We know that you will put an end to the atrocious pro-slavery favoritism of many of our officers. We know you will issue a proclamation of emancipation.”

“I think not, Mr. Vance.”

“Pardon me, you will do it before next October. You will do it because the pressure of an advanced public opinion will force you to do it, and because God Almighty will interpose checks and defeats to our arms in order that we of the North may, in the fermentation of ideas, throw off this foul scum, redolent of the bottomless pit, which apathy or sympathy in regard to slavery engenders. Yes, you will give us an emancipation proclamation, and then you will give us permission to raise black regiments, and then, after being pricked, and urged, and pricked again, by public opinion, you will offset the Rebel threats of massacre by issuing a war bulletin declaring that the United States will protect her fighting men of whatever color, and that there must be life for life for every black soldier killed in violation of the laws of war.”

“But are you a prophet, Mr. Vance?”

“It requires no gift of prophecy, Mr. President, to foretell these things. It needs but full faith in the operation of Divine laws to anticipate all that I have prefigured. You refuse now to let me raise a black regiment. In less than ten months you will give me a carte blanche to enlist as many negroes as I can for the war.”

“Perhaps,—but I don’t see my way clear to do it yet.”

“A great man,” said Vance, “ought to lead and fashion public opinion in stupendous emergencies like this,—ought to throw himself boldly on some great principle having its root in eternal justice,—ought to grapple it, cling to it, stake everything upon it, and make everything give way to it.”

“But I am not a great man, Mr. Vance,” said the President, with unaffected naïveté.

“I believe your intentions are good and great, Mr. President,” was the reply; “for what you supremely desire is, to do your duty.”

“Yes, I claim that much. Thank you.”

“Well, your duty is to take the most energetic measures for conquering a peace. Under the Constitution, the war power is committed to your hands. That power is not defined by the Constitution, for it is imprescriptible; regulated by international usage. That usage authorizes you to free the slaves of an enemy. Why not do it?”

“Would not a proclamation of emancipation from Abraham Lincoln be much like the Pope’s bull against the comet?”

“There is this difference: in the latter case, the fulmination is against what we have no reason to suppose is an evil; in the former case, you would attack with moral weapons what you know to be a wrong and an injustice immediately under your eyes and within your reach. If it could be proved that the comet is an evil, the Pope’s bull would not seem to me an absurdity; for I have faith in the operation of ideas, and in the triumph of truth and good throughout the universe. But the emancipation proclamation would not be futile; for it would give body and impulse to an idea, and that idea one friendly to right and to progress.”

The President rose, and, walking to the window, drummed a moment with his fingers abstractedly on the glass, then, returning to his chair, reseated himself and said: “As Chief Magistrate of the Republic, my first duty is to save it. If I can best do that by tolerating slavery, slavery shall be tolerated. If I can best do it by abolishing slavery, you may be sure I will try to abolish it. But I mustn’t be biased by my feelings or my sentiments.”

“Why not?” asked Vance. “Do not all great moral truths originate in the feelings and the sentiments? The heart’s policy is often the safest. Is not cruelty wrong because the heart proclaims it? Is not despotism to be opposed because the heart detests it?”

“Mr. Vance, you eager philanthropists little know how hard it often is for less impulsive and more conservative men to withstand the urgency of those feelings that you give way to at once. But you have read history to little purpose if you do not know that the best cause may be jeoparded by the premature and too radical movements of its friends. I have been blamed for listening to the counsels of Kentucky politicians and Missouri conservatives; and yet if we had not held back Kentucky from the secession madness, she might have contributed the straw that would have broken the camel’s back.”

“O Kentucky!” exclaimed Vance, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth! Mr. President, the ruling powers in Kentucky would hand her over bound to Jeff Davis to-morrow, if they dared; but they dare not do it. In the first place, they fear Uncle Sam and his gunboats; in the next place, they fear Kentuckians, of whom, thank God! there are enough who do not believe in slavery; and, lastly, they fear the nineteenth century and the spirit of the age. Better take counsel from the Rhetts and Spratts of South Carolina than from the selfish politicians of Kentucky! They will moor you to the platform of a false conservatism till the golden opportunity slips by, and new thousands must be slaughtered before it can be recovered.”

“Well, what would be your programme?”

“This, Mr. President: accept it as a foregone conclusion that slavery must be exterminated; and then bend all your energies on accelerating its extermination. We sometimes hear it said, ‘What! do you expect such a vast system—so interwoven with the institutions of the South—to be uprooted and overthrown all at once?’ To which I reply, ‘Yes! The price paid has been already proportionate to the magnitude of the overthrow.’ Before the war is over, upwards of a million of men will have lost their lives in order that Slavery might try its experiment of establishing an independent slave empire. A million of men! And there are not four millions of slaves in the country! We will not take into account the treasure expended,—the lands desolated,—the taxes heaped upon the people,—the ruin and anguish inflicted. It strikes me the price we have paid is big enough to offset the vastness of the social change. And, after all, it is not such a formidable job when you consider that there are not forty thousand men in the whole country who severally own as many as ten slaves. Why, in a single campaign we lose more soldiers than there are slaveholders having any considerable stake in the institution. Experience has proved that there could be universal emancipation to-morrow without bad results to either master or slave,—with advantage, on the contrary, to both.”^[36]

“Well, Mr. Vance, we will suppose the Mississippi opened; New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and Richmond captured,—the Rebellion on its last legs;—what then?”

“With the capture of New Orleans and Vicksburg, and the opening of the Mississippi, you have Secessia on the hip, and her utter subjugation is merely a question of time. When she cries peccavi, and offers to give in, I would say to the people of the Rebel States: ‘First, Slavery, the cause of this war, must be surrendered, to be disposed of at the discretion of the victors. Secondly, you must so modify your constitutions that Slavery can never be re-established among you. Thirdly, every anti-republican feature in your State governments must be abandoned. Fourthly, every loyal man must be restored to the property and the rights you may have robbed him of. Fifthly, no man offensively implicated in the Rebellion must represent any State in Congress. Sixthly, no man must be taxed against his will for any debt incurred through rebellion against the United States. Under these easy and honorable terms, I would readmit the seceded States to the Union; and if these terms are refused, I would occupy and hold the States as conquered territory.”

“And could we reconcile such a course with a due regard to law?”

“Surely yes; for the people in rebellion are at once subjects and belligerents. They are public enemies, and as such are entitled only to such privileges as we may choose to concede. They are subjects, and as such must fulfil their obligations to the Republic.”

“But you say nothing of confiscation, Mr. Vance.”confiscation, Mr. Vance.”

“I would be as generous as possible in this respect, Mr. President. Loyal men who have been robbed by the secession fury must of course be reimbursed, and the families of those who have been hung for their loyalty must be provided for. I see no fairer way of doing this than by making the robbers give up their plunder, and by compelling the murderers to contribute to the wants of those they have orphaned. But beyond this I would be governed by circumstances as they might develop themselves. I would practice all the clemency and forbearance consistent with justice. Those landholders who should lend themselves fairly and earnestly to the work of substituting a system of paid labor for slavery should be entitled to the most generous consideration and encouragement, whatever their antecedents might have been. I would do nothing for vengeance and humiliation; everything for the benefit of the Southern people themselves and their posterity. Questions of indemnification should not stand in the way of a restored Union.”

“Undoubtedly, Mr. Vance, the interests of the masses, North and South, are identical.”

“That is true, Mr. President, but it is what the Rebel leaders try to conceal from their dupes. The most damnable effect of slavery has been the engendering at the South of that large class of mean whites, proud, ignorant, lazy, squalid, and brutally degraded, who yet feel that they are a sort of aristocracy because they are not niggers. Having produced this class, Slavery now sees it must rob them of all political rights. Hence the avowed plan of the Secession leaders to have either a close oligarchical or a monarchical government. The thick skulls of these mean whites (or if not of them, of their children) we must reach by help of the schoolmaster, and let them see that their interests lie in the elevation of labor and in opposition to the theories of the shallow dilettanti of the South, who, claiming to be great political thinkers and philosophers, maintain that capital ought to own labor, and that there must be a hereditary servile race, if not black, then white, in whom all mental aspiration and development shall be discouraged and kept down, in order that they may be content to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. As if God’s world-process were kept up in order that a few Epicurean gentlemen may have a good time of it, and send their sons to Paris to eat sumptuous dinners and attend model-artist entertainments, while thousands are toiling to supply the means for their base pleasures. As if a Frederick Douglas must be brutified into a slave in order that a Slidell may give Sybarite banquets and drive his neat span through the Champs Elysées!”

“What should we do with the blacks after we had freed them?”

“Let them alone! Let them do for themselves. The difficulties in the way are all those of the imagination.”

“I like the moderation of your views as to confiscation.”

“When the mass of the people at the South,” continued Vance, “come to see, as they will eventually, that we have been fighting the great battle of humanity and of freedom, for the South even more than for the North, for the white man even more than for the black, there will be such a reaction as will obliterate every trace of rancor that internecine war has begotten. But I have talked too much. I have occupied too much of your time.”

“O no! I delight to meet with men who come to me, thinking how they may benefit, not themselves, but their country. The steam-tugs you gave us off the mouths of the Mississippi we would gladly have paid thirty thousand dollars for. I wish I could meet your views in regard to the enlistment of black troops; but—but—that pear isn’t yet ripe. Failing that, you shall have any place you want in the Butler and Farragut expedition against New Orleans. As for your young friends,—what did you say their names are?”

“Robert Onslow and Charles Kenrick.”

“O yes! Onslow, you say, has been a captain in the Rebel service. Both the young men shall be honorably placed where they can distinguish themselves. I’ll speak to Stanton about them this very day. Let me make a note of it.”

The President drew from his pocket a memorandum-book and hastily wrote a line or two. Vance rose to take his leave.

“Mr. President,” said he, “I thank you for this interview. But there’s one thing in which you’ve disappointed me.”

“Ah! you think me rather a slow coach, eh?”

“Yes; but that wasn’t what I alluded to.”

“What then?”

“From what I’ve read about you in the newspapers, I expected to have to hear one of your stories.”

A smile full of sweetness and bonhommie broke over the President’s care-worn face as he replied: “Really! Is it possible? Have you been here all this time without my telling you a story? Sit down, Mr. Vance, and let me make up for my remissness.”

Vance resumed his seat.

The President ran his fingers through his long, carelessly disposed hair, pushing it aside from his forehead, and said: “Once on a time the king of beasts, the lion, took it into his head he would travel into foreign parts. But before leaving his kingdom he installed an old ’coon as viceroy. The lion was absent just four months to a day; and on his return he called all the principal beasts to hear their reports as to the way in which affairs had been managed in his absence. Said the fox, ‘You left an old imbecile to rule us, sire. No sooner were you gone than a rebellion broke out, and he appointed for our leader a low-born mule, whose cardinal maxim in military matters was to put off till to-morrow whatever could be just as well done to-day; whose policy was a masterly inactivity instead of a straightforward movement on the enemy’s works.’ Said the sheep, ‘The ’coon could have had peace if he had listened to me and others who wanted to draw it mild and to compromise. Such a bloodthirsty wretch as the ’coon ought to be expelled from civilized society.’ Said the horse, ‘He is too slow.’ Said the ox, ‘He is too fast.’ Said the jackass, ‘He doesn’t know how to bray; he can’t utter an inspiring note.’ Said the pig, ‘He is too full of his jokes and stories.’ Said the magpie, ‘He is a liar and a thief.’ Said the owl, ‘He is no diplomatist.’ Said the tiger, ‘He is too conservative.’ Said the beaver, ‘He is too radical.’ ‘Stop!’ roared the king,—‘shut up, every beast of you!’ At once there was silence in the assembly. Then, turning to his viceroy, the lion said, ‘Old ’coon, I wish no better proof that you have been faithful than all this abuse from opposite parties. You have done so well, that you shall be reinstalled for another term of four months!’”

“And what did the old ’coon say to that?” asked Vance.

“The old ’coon begged to be excused, protesting that he had experienced quite enough of the charms of office.”

The President held out his hand. Vance pressed it with a respectful cordiality, and withdrew from the White House.