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“Then it is done! The order will be issued and I wish you every success.”
Nicolay, with true secretarial precision appeared at that moment, opened the door and ushered them out. Only when the door was closed did he speak.
“Mrs. Lincoln has asked that you see her in Willie’s room.”
Lincoln’s face was gray under his dark skin. “Any change?”
“I don’t know. That was all she said.”
Lincoln hurried out. Mary was standing by the door looking at the bed. She turned when he touched her arm.
“He is so cold,” she said.
One of Willie’s playmates was sitting by the great bed, solemnly upright. Willie’s eyes were shut.
“Has he spoken?” Lincoln asked the boy.
“No, sir, not today. But I am sure he knows that I am here, for he squeezes my hand.”
They pulled up chairs next to the boy and sat in silence. There was nothing that they could say, nothing that they could do. The doctor came and looked at the silent child, touched his forehead — then shook his head. This was more expressive than words could ever be.
It was a good hour before Lincoln returned to his desk. He dropped wearily into his armchair, turned at the sound of a voice.
“He has done it, Mr. Lincoln, Grant has done it again!”
The Secretary of War hurried into the room waving the dispatch like a battle flag. So excited was he that he did not notice the President’s drawn face, his expression of blank despair. Cameron turned to the map of the United States on the wall and tapped his finger on the state of Tennessee.
“Fort Donelson has fallen and it is indeed a mighty victory.” He read from the paper in his hand. “ ‘February 16th… the Confederate army has surrendered… fifteen thousand of them captured.’ And here is the best — proof that we have a mighty fighting general in Grant. When General Buckner asked Grant for terms, you know what Grant said?” He found the quote on the paper, raised his finger dramatically as he spoke.
“ ‘No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works’.” He was jubilant. “I do believe, if I have your permission, that we should promote Grant to Major General.”
Lincoln nodded slowly. Cameron turned back to the map.
“First the fall of Fort Henry, now Fort Donelson in turn, a catastrophe for the enemy. The Cumberland and the Tennessee, the two most important rivers in the southwest are in our hands. The state of Tennessee is now ours while Kentucky is wide open before us. The South can only despair. They are surrounded and under attack.” He addressed the map again, stabbing at it.
“Our armies are here in Virginia, near Washington, and here at Harper’s Ferry. On the Peninsula at Fort Monroe as well — ready to strike at Richmond and Norfolk. A ring of steel, that is what it is! Our men are at Port Royal aiming at Savannah and Charleston. Down on the Gulf Coast we are poised at the gates of Mobile and New Orleans. And here on the Mississippi, on the Cumberland and the Tennessee.”
Exhausted and elated he dropped into a chair. “And all along the rebel coast the blockade is now no longer just a nuisance to Johnny Reb but a fully developed danger. I will be surprised if the war lasts until the end of this year. Eighteen sixty-two will be our annus mimbilis, our year of victory.”
“I pray it will be so, Cameron. I pray that all the death and destruction will finally come to an end and that this beleaguered country will be one again. But a wounded beast will turn and rend — and the South has been well wounded. We must keep ever-watchful guard. And most important of all is the blockade. It must be maintained and strengthened. We must cut off all source of outside supplies. Without supplies and the military wherewithal the South cannot succeed in the field. In the end their armies will be defeated.”
Although the words were optimistic they were spoken in tones of leaden gloom. So sorrowing were they that Cameron for the first time noticed the President’s obvious distress.
“Sir — you are not ill?”
“No, I am not. But the one I love is. My son, little Willie, just twelve years old. Mortally ill the doctors say. The typhoid. They doubt he will live out the day.”
Stricken by the President’s pain and suffering, Cameron could not speak. He rose, head shaking with remorse, and slowly left the room.
The James River cuts through Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy. After leaving Richmond, the Confederate capital, it rolls slowly through the rich countryside toward the sea. It is joined by the Elizabeth River just before it flows into the wide estuary known as Hampton Roads.
A chill mist rose from the surface of the Elizabeth River this March morning, the first light of dawn barely penetrating. Gaunt trees lined the riverbanks; a bluejay sat on a limb overhanging the water, singing coarsely — then was suddenly silent. Disturbed by the dark form that had appeared out of the mist below he took fright and flew off. Birdsong was replaced by a gasping sound, like the breath of some water monster. The monster itself slid slowly into sight, its breath the puffing of a steam engine, dark smoke roiling up from a single, tall funnel.
It was steel-plated, slant-sided, slow and ungainly, its forward motion barely able to stir ripples from the river’s glassy surface. As it slipped by it could be seen that its gray armored flanks were pierced with gun ports, now shut and sealed; an immense ram was fixed to the ship’s bow. An armored pilot house was on the foredeck just above the four-foot iron beak. Inside the pilot house the ship’s commanding officer, Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, stood behind the helmsman at the wheel.
He was not a happy man. His ship was a clobbered together collection of compromises. Her wooden hull was the burnt shell of the USS Merrimack, fired by the Yankees when they had retreated from Norfolk and the great naval yard there. That sodden hull was supposed to be the salvation of the Confederacy. The burnt strakes and hull had been cut away until sound wood was reached. Onto this hull had been constructed an armored superstructure of pine and oak, covered with iron cladding, to shield the ten large guns that she carried. Now the Merrimack, renamed the CSS Virginia, was going into battle for the first time. And painfully slowly. The single-cylinder engine, always feeble and under-powered, had been under water for a long time before the hull was raised and it was salvaged. The engine was old and badly maintained to begin with, it had suffered no good during its immersion. Nor was the engine equal to the task of moving the heavy craft at more than the feeble speed of five knots.