29
The president’s first order of the day to his secretary was to arrange a cabinet meeting to be held in the Blue Room that afternoon.
“Is there an emergency I’m not aware of, sir?” Webster asked, rising from his desk to summon messengers to descend on the Capitol offices and nearby apartments where the leadership of the Pierce administration would still be hunched over their breakfasts.
“Don’t phrase it in those terms,” Franklin said, rubbing his stubbled cheeks so hard it left scratch marks on his palms. “Tell them it’s a conversation on policy. One that can’t wait.”
Webster gave him a look. It wasn’t of the kind Franklin was expecting, the brow-raised show of doubt, or the fey curiosity that fell just short of disrespectful. This was concern. For Pierce’s state of mind, yes, but also the state of the household, the nation, and most apparent, Webster himself.
“Are you feeling all right?” Franklin asked him as the man made his way for the door. “You look like you’ve been at sea.”
“Fine, sir. It’s only that I stayed late in my office yesterday and fell asleep in my chair.”
“You slept here last night?”
“Didn’t leave my chair.”
“I see.”
Webster looked down at his shoes, stricken. “It was— There were things that—”
“It can be a noisy place in the nighttime,” Franklin said, sparing his secretary from saying something he clearly preferred not to. If Webster had heard even a fraction of the noises coming from within the mansion’s walls that he and Jane had, Franklin pitied him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Best if you slept in your own bed in future.”
“I believe you’re right, sir. Thank you.”
It would otherwise be the moment for Webster to clip away to carry out his orders, but on this morning the secretary lingered.
“May I ask how you are, sir?” he asked.
“Would you prefer the truth or polite fabrication?”
“The truth, I think. There’s enough of the latter in Washington to last anyone a dozen lifetimes.”
Franklin sighed. A long breath that took longer to resolve than either of them expected.
“I’m not at all certain I’m fit for this position, Webster.”
“None are, sir.”
“No?”
“Polk. Jefferson. Washington himself. The nation has lifted them to the heights of deities, but in rooms like this, they were each of them only men, making decisions as best they could.”
“It’s the decision-making I’m never sure of.”
“How could you be? Your choices won’t be fairly judged until we are both long removed from this house.”
“From this world, you mean.”
“Yes. Possibly only then.”
Franklin rose from his chair.
“I’d like to share something with you that you might find strange, but there’s no other way to phrase it,” he said. “I fear things may grow turbulent in the days to come. Not in the capital but here, in this house. Forgive me for not speaking of the threat directly, but I don’t honestly know what shape it will take. I’m asking for your courage, Webster, but also your discretion. What you will see, what you may be called upon to do—it must stay with us. Do you understand?”
Webster looked shaken. Not by the mystery of Franklin’s request, but his awareness of its meaning.
“I have lived easily and well until now, but also with the guilt of both,” Webster said. “I welcome any test. Perhaps just as you do, sir?”
“How do you mean?”
“We’re both driven by the memories of our fathers. And their fathers. A line of soldiers we wish to join.”
“We’re men in search of a battle. That it?”
“We’re men in search of a chance to show we aren’t afraid.”
For the first time, Franklin saw the precise terms with which Webster cared for him. Prior to this he’d assumed his secretary was the sort of man who responded to authority with the desire to please, or perhaps to be transported on coattails. And there were moments when the thought occurred to Franklin that there was more to it in Webster’s case, an intensity that came from attraction, the invitation to love he’d felt from a couple of friends in college, and later, even some married men in courthouses and Congress. But he saw now that his secretary was motivated by the opportunity to put aside the demons of self-doubt he carried. Webster was no unrequited lover, nor sycophant. He was a brother.
“Then let us be ready when the chance comes,” Franklin said, and shook Webster’s hand with a firmness that steadied them both.
* * *
Franklin arrived last. As he walked into the elliptical Blue Room with what he hoped was a purposeful countenance he saw how the faces of his government, secretary by secretary, fell before correcting themselves. His careful shaving and extra hair tonic hadn’t worked. He looked worse than he already guessed he did.
“Welcome, and thank you for coming,” he said, and the men, every one of them older than he, rose on stiff hips and gouty feet to shake the president’s hand.
Pierce had forged a deliberately blended cabinet, each member selected to offset the baggage brought by the others. His picks included political rivals within the party (notably William Marcy, secretary of state, who ran for the leadership in Baltimore only to lose to an absent Pierce) along with those to be counted on for their faithfulness, all of whom were carefully pieced together according to geography, state by state, North versus South.
The idea was to avoid either side of the slavery question from being able to claim neglect. It had worked so far, up to a point. Aside from the predictable squawking from the extremes, Pierce was largely spared from criticism that he showed favoritism to either the Democratic Party’s abolitionist or proslavery factions, the Know Nothings or doughfaces. But all this compromising was the cause of its own problem. The fundamental question of one’s right to own slaves went undebated, beyond the government’s position that some would have the right and others not, as determined by precedent within particular states and, in the case of new territories like Kansas and Nebraska, their own votes.
The issue, then, wasn’t an issue. Except it was the only issue.
Over and over, in virtually every exchange of business or domestic policy, it hovered over the proceedings like a wraith, one that increased its demands to be seen the longer it was pretended not to exist.
That’s how Franklin thought of it now and would continue to think of it for the rest of his life. A flesh-and-blood ghost. Like the dead child he’d let slip out of his room. The furnace keeper. The men who warmed themselves at the bottommost part of America’s house.
“Well, Mr. President,” Marcy began, assuming the role of chairman as was his habit, “we’re all very curious to hear of the matter that brings us together in such haste.”
“Won’t you sit, gentlemen?” Franklin replied, acknowledging his secretary of state with a nod while ignoring his words. Each of them found the chair they’d risen from, letting Franklin take the one with its back to the windows. “I’ve called you here for an open discussion, one I’ve felt compelled to entertain with increasing urgency these last number of days.”