The Titans by John Jakes Page B

His coat and his thin string necktie of silk matched the color of his unruly hair and chin whiskers. He looked older than fifty- two. His skin was much more sallow than it had been 668An Oath Registered in Heaven" when Jephtha had seen him last-at a private dinner given by the family for several reporters early in March. The President's gray eyes appeared unusually sunken. They were odd, arresting eyes; eyes that looked at the world with a touch of sorrow even when Lincoln laughed, as he did often. Perhaps the change had come over him during the weekend, after the Government's refusal to yield Sumter had led to the cannonading by Beauregard and the surrender by Anderson. Lincoln gestured his guest to a long oak table covered with green baize. The table dominated the large office. In less than an hour, fat, gouty Winfield Scott would be seated at it with members of the cabinet. "Yes, unfortunate is a good word for it-was Jephtha began. "For many more reasons than one. Not only do we have this insurrection on our hands, but right after Tad's locomotive broke, Willie lost his favorite top. Breakfast was a perfect disorder-was Jephtha took a chair at the table. While Lincoln shambled back to the pigeonhole desk littered with papers and books, he said, "I appreciate that you'll take any time at all to see me, Mr. President." He pulled out the copy of Lincoln's proclamation, then a smaller sheet and a pencil. "Well, after all, Mr. Kent, you helped start this muss with the South." Jephtha blinked. "I, sir?" Lincoln waved. Only then, when the President's lips twitched again, did Jephtha realize Lincoln was teasing him: "Oh, maybe not you personally. But that Boston printing house your family owns-that certainly played a big part. They always say it's the politicians who cause trouble for common folk. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't our authors who set off the firecrackers first." The Titans67 Still baffled, Jephtha kept silent. As always, Lincoln's voice had that high-pitched, almost shrill quality that caused so many of his enemies to say he spoke in a "low Hoosier style." He slurred some of his words, too. But despite his speech and the impression he gave of somehow having been put together by a Deity trying to use a collection of unwanted parts, Lincoln had always impressed Jephtha. The feeling went back to the first time he'd heard the President speak, at the inaugural. The man might appear to be a bumpkin. Or, as his most vicious critics claimed, the descendant of a gorilla. Yet Jephtha found him possessed of an intelligence and gentle strength that lent him an extraordinary magnetism- even if some of his ideas were more hopeful than realistic. Lacing his huge hands together-and still teasing- Lincoln went on: "What I meant is, books helped stir up this war, Mr. Kent. First and foremost, Mrs. Stowe's novel. Then Mr. Douglass" autobiography. Mr. Helper's tract-was Lincoln was referring to The Impending Crisis of the South, a volume even more thoroughly detested in the cotton states than Uncle Tom's Cabin. Hinton Helper, an obscure hack, had put forth the theory that the South should abandon slavery because reliance on it was destroying the potential growth of Southern industry. Helper, a Southerner himself, had strong views about the inferiority of black men and women. But adherence to slavery, he said, would ultimately put the South at the mercy of the industrial North. "comand I count that other slave autobiography from Kent and Son the fourth of the quartet that pushed us toward the current crisis. Is the mulatto who wrote West to Freedom still in your employ?" "Yes, sir," Jephtha nodded. "Israel Hope's in charge of the family mining operations in California." From time to time Jephtha completely forgot that he was heir 688An Oath Registered in Heaven" to his father's considerable fortune. Others in the family comsch as young Louis-found his forgetfulness puzzling. And Fan, who had divorced him after he'd fled Lexington, had