Abraham Lincoln: A Play Part 4

_Lincoln_: When you came, you did not know me, Mr. Tucker. You may have something to say now not for my ears.

_Tucker_: Nothing in the world, I a.s.sure--

_Lincoln_: I will prepare Mrs. Lincoln. You will excuse me for no more than a minute.

_He goes out_.

_Tucker_: Well, we might have chosen a handsomer article, but I doubt whether we could have chosen a better.

_Hind_: He would make a great judge--if you weren't prosecuting.

_Price_: I'd tell most people, but I'd ask that man.

_Tucker_: He hasn't given us yes or no yet. Why should he leave us like that, as though plain wasn't plain?

_Hind_: Perhaps he wanted a thought by himself first.

_Macintosh_: It wasn't that. But he was right. Abraham Lincoln sees deeper into men's hearts than most. He knows this day will be a memory to us all our lives. Under his eye, which of you could have given play to any untoward thought that had started in you against him since you came into this room? But, leaving you, he knew you could test yourselves to your own ease, and speak the more confident for it, and, if you found yourselves clean of doubt, carry it all the happier in your minds after. Is there a doubt among us?

_Tucker_:} _Hind_: } No, none.

_Price_: }

_Macintosh_: Then, Mr. Tucker, ask him again when he comes back.

_Tucker_: I will.

_They sit in silence for a moment, and_ Lincoln _comes in again, back to his place at the table_.

_Lincoln_: I wouldn't have you think it graceless of me to be slow in my answer. But once given, it's for the deep good or the deep ill of all this country. In the face of that a man may well ask himself twenty times, when he's twenty times sure. You make no qualification, any one among you?

_Tucker_: None. The invitation is as I put it when we sat down. And I would add that we are, all of us, proud to bear it to a man as to whom we feel there is none so fitted to receive it.

_Lincoln_: I thank you. I accept.

_He rises, the others with him. He goes to the door and calls_.

Susan.

_There is silence_. SUSAN _comes in.

Susan:_ Yes, Mr. Lincoln.

_Lincoln_: Take these gentlemen to Mrs. Lincoln. I will follow at once.

_The four men go with_ SUSAN. LINCOLN _stands silently for a moment.

He goes again to the map and looks at it. He then turns to the table again, and kneels beside it, possessed and deliberate, burying his face in his hands._

THE CURTAIN FALLS.

_The two Chroniclers_: Lonely is the man who understands.

Lonely is vision that leads a man away From the pasture-lands, From the furrows of corn and the brown loads of hay, To the mountain-side, To the high places where contemplation brings All his adventurings Among the sowers and the tillers in the wide Valleys to one fused experience, That shall control The courses of his soul, And give his hand Courage and continence.

_The First Chronicler_: Shall a man understand, He shall know bitterness because his kind, Being perplexed of mind, Hold issues even that are nothing mated.

And he shall give Counsel out of his wisdom that none shall hear; And steadfast in vain persuasion must he live, And unabated Shall his temptation be.

_Second Chronicler_: Coveting the little, the instant gain, The brief security, And easy-tongued renown, Many will mock the vision that his brain Builds to a far, unmeasured monument, And many bid his resolutions down To the wages of content.

_First Chronicler_: A year goes by.

_The two together_: Here contemplate A heart, undaunted to possess Itself among the glooms of fate, In vision and in loneliness.

SCENE II.

_Ten months later. Seward's room at Was.h.i.+ngton_. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State, is seated at his table with_ JOHNSON WHITE _and_ CALEB JENNINGS, _representing the Commissioners of the Confederate States_.

_White_: It's the common feeling in the South, Mr. Seward, that you're the one man at Was.h.i.+ngton to see this thing with large imagination. I say this with no disrespect to the President.

_Seward_: I appreciate your kindness, Mr. White. But the Union is the Union--you can't get over that. We are faced with a plain fact. Seven of the Southern States have already declared for secession. The President feels--and I may say that I and my colleagues are with him--that to break up the country like that means the decline of America.

_Jennings_: But everything might be done by compromise, Mr. Seward.

Withdraw your garrison from Fort Sumter, Beauregard will be instructed to take no further action, South Carolina will be satisfied with the recognition of her authority, and, as likely as not, be willing to give the lead to the other states in reconsidering secession.

_Seward_: It is certainly a very attractive and, I conceive, a humane proposal.

_White_: By furthering it you might be the saviour of the country from civil war, Mr. Seward.

_Seward_: The President dwelt on his resolution to hold Fort Sumter in his inaugural address. It will be difficult to persuade him to go back on that. He's firm in his decisions.

_White_: There are people who would call him stubborn. Surely if it were put to him tactfully that so simple a course might avert incalculable disaster, no man would nurse his dignity to the point of not yielding. I speak plainly, but it's a time for plain speaking.

Mr. Lincoln is doubtless a man of remarkable qualities: on the two occasions when I have spoken to him I have not been unimpressed. That is so, Mr. Jennings?

_Jennings_: Certainly.

_White_: But what does his experience of great affairs of state amount to beside yours, Mr. Seward? He must know how much he depends on certain members of his Cabinet, I might say upon a certain member, for advice.

_Seward_: We have to move warily.

_Jennings_: Naturally. A man is sensitive, doubtless, in his first taste of office.

_Seward_: My support of the President is, of course, unquestionable.

_White_: Oh, entirely. But how can your support be more valuable than in lending him your unequalled understanding?

_Seward_: The whole thing is coloured in his mind by the question of slavery.

_Jennings_: Disabuse his mind. Slavery is nothing. Persuade him to withdraw from Fort Sumter, and slavery can be settled round a table.

You know there's a considerable support even for abolition in the South itself. If the trade has to be allowed in some districts, what is that compared to the disaster of civil war?