Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

“No Sir, I have not decided. The Cabinet is now in session upon that very subject.”

“I thank you Sir for the information that is all I wanted to know,” said T. retiring .

“But Mr T. why do you ask?”

“Because Sir my State has a deep interest in the decision.”

“How your State — what is it to Georgia whether a fort in Charleston harbour is abandoned?”

“Sir the cause of Charleston is the cause of the South.”

“Good God Mr Toombs do you mean that I am in the midst of a revolution?”

“Yes Sir — more than that — you have been there for a year and have not yet found it out” and he retired . [According to Trescot, whom Nevins admires uncritically, calling him the honest Trescot and asserting of this secessionist Alger Hiss that Few men had quicker insight than Trescot ,] When the President returned to the Cabinet he seemed very much excited and said , “ Gentlemen I really begin to believe that this is revolution .”

The Cabinet meeting of the evening of the 28th, a Friday, found Floyd, still ill, stretched out on a sofa between the windows of the Cabinet Room. The spotlight shifts to the other major Southerner, Jacob Thompson, as he argues soothingly, “Mr. President, South Carolina is a tiny state, with a sparse white population. The United States are a powerful nation with a vigorous government. This great nation can well afford to say to South Carolina, ‘See, we will withdraw our garrison as an evidence that we mean you no harm.’ ”

Stanton — that pharaonically bearded pepperpot, that fiery Laertes duelling Buchanan’s white-haired Hamlet! — expostulated, “Mr. President, the proposal to be generous implies that the government is strong, and that we, as the public servants, have the confidence of the people. I think that is a mistake. No administration has ever suffered the loss of public confidence and support as this has done. Only the other day it was announced that a million of dollars has been stolen from Mr. Thompson’s department. The bonds were found to have been taken from the vault where they should have been kept, and the notes of Mr. Floyd were substituted for them. Now it is proposed to give up Sumter. All I have to say is that no administration, much less this one, can afford to lose a million of money and a fort in the same week!” [14] According to Thurlow Weed’s account in the London Observer of February 9, 1862, Stanton’s protest was even more elaborate and allusive: “That course, Mr. President, ought certainly to be regarded as most liberal towards erring brethren, but while one member of your Cabinet has fraudulent acceptances for millions of dollars afloat, and while the confidential clerk of another — himself in South Carolina teaching rebellion [21] Then, in Weed’s spirited reconstruction, Black seconded the offer of resignation, followed by Holt and Dix, who did not join the Cabinet until the middle of the next month — which shows only that these rememberers get carried away, and history is built upon shifting sands.

Stanton’s account, which has become history, claims that Floyd made no reply in his own defense. It seems unlikely — it contravenes all dramatic principles — that Floyd did not arise from his couch of infirmity and protest, with suitable broad gestures, “Mr. President, this attorney has shared our counsels a few brief days and he presumes to sit in judgment upon those of us loyal to you and this administration for four years! The truth of the matter of these acceptances is that, had I not signed them, our troops, through the negligence of Congress, would have been left unequipped in the wilderness of Utah! Not a dollar has been lost to the government through my department; the malfeasances of the Yankee contractor Russell and Mr. Thompson’s appointee Bailey leave my honor untouched. And furthermore, to substantiate my loyalty, let me confide to you that, on Christmas Day, I was approached by a Senator from a state of the same latitude as Mr. Thompson’s, and wherein disunionist views are likewise proclaimed in public daily; this Senator, I swear, invited me to join a conspiracy, sir, to kidnap you , and to place Mr. Breckinridge in the Presidential chair!” Smiling wanly at the sensation his words produced at the Cabinet table, the ailing, impugned, yet persistently aristocratic Virginian made a curt bow in Buchanan’s direction and went on, “Of course, I indignantly refused; and from that same store of righteous indignation I hereby state that I cannot countenance your violation of solemn pledges respecting Fort Sumter!”

And then Black, that emotional and sharp Scotch-Irish son of thunder from Pennsylvania’s mountainous Somerset according to Nichols, must have leaped up, and, with an ironical small bow echoing Floyd’s, asked, “May we hope, Governor Floyd, to construe this lack of countenance, with its imputations of grave disrespect, as the long-delayed fulfillment of our expectations that you resign the post you have administered with such notorious incompetence?”

Stanton, his lipless mouth clamping on his words like a nutcracker, his eye sockets filling, now one and now the other, with blind ovals of reflected gaslight, would very likely have ringingly seconded: “You say incompetence; I say, with half the nation, treachery!”

In the event, on the next day, the 29th, Buchanan received a letter of resignation from Floyd. It read, Our refusal, or even delay, to place affairs back as they stood under our agreement, invites collision, and must inevitably inaugurate civil war in our land. I can not consent to be the agent of such a calamity .

I deeply regret to feel myself under the necessity of tendering to you my resignation as Secretary of War, because I can no longer hold it, under my convictions of patriotism, nor with honor, subjected as I am to the violation of solemn pledges and plighted faith .

With the highest personal regard, I am most truly yours .

When loved ones kiss us off, the question arises, did they ever love us? Or has it all been illusion and cool scheming? That blow job in the hotel. That panicked mating, once, right in her back yard, on the damp grass, ejaculation and absorption, while the girls waited to be tucked into bed with prayers, their docilely glowing windows rectangling the lawn. The voluptuousness of Buchanan’s prayers. The floor of things: the worse things get, God draws closer, a sublime absence we conjure from the void, from beneath the floor. JB’s jouissance, praying. Events, and the Buddhist something that is not-event. Work this in? [Among my working notes as of late 1976.]

That day Buchanan also received, as requested, the written statement of the South Carolina Commissioners — lost, alas, to history — and presented it, with a draft of his proposed reply, at a meeting of the Cabinet that evening.

Stanton brandished the papers in question and declaimed, “These gentlemen claim to be Ambassadors. It is preposterous! They cannot be Ambassadors; they are lawbreakers, traitors. They should be arrested. You cannot negotiate with them; and yet it seems by this paper that you have been led into doing that very thing. With all respect to you, Mr. President, I must say that the Attorney General, under his oath of office, dares not be cognizant of the pending proceedings. Your reply to these so-called Ambassadors must not be transmitted as the reply of the President. It is wholly unlawful and improper; its language is unguarded and to send it as an official document will bring the President to the verge of usurpation!”

Nevins has the grace to footnote this piece of oratory with the sly demur, This quotation has the ring of truth even if not literally accurate .