Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [44]
The bodyguards are paid by the Department of the Interior, and their job description, strangely enough, specifically states that they are to protect the White House from vandals.
Protecting Lincoln is second on their list of priorities.
If he were the sort of man to worry about his personal safety, Lincoln wouldn’t allow such easy public access to the White House. There is no fence or gate blocking people from entering the White House at this time. The doorman is instructed to allow citizens to roam the first floor. Friends and strangers alike can congregate inside the building all day long, seeking political favors, stealing scraps of the curtains as keepsakes, or just peering in at the president while he works. Some petitioners even sleep on the floor in the hallways, hoping to gain a moment of Lincoln’s time.
Lincoln’s bright young secretary John Hay frets constantly about his boss’s safety. “The President is so accessible that any villain can feign business, and, while talking with him, draw a razor and cut his throat,” Hay worries aloud, “and some minutes might elapse after the murderer’s escape before we could discover what had been done.” Lincoln, however, reminds Hay that being president of the United States stipulates that he be a man of the people. “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he were, or were assuming to be an emperor,” he reminds them.
Death is no stranger to Abraham Lincoln, and in that way it is less terrifying. The Lincolns’ three-year-old son Edward died of tuberculosis in 1850. In 1862, the Lincolns lost eleven-year-old Willie to a fever. Willie was a spirited child, fond of wrestling with his father and riding his pony on the White House lawn. Mary, who already suffered from a mental disorder that made her prone to severe mood swings, was emotionally destroyed by the loss of her boys. Even as Lincoln was mired in the war and dealing with his own grief, he devoted hours to tending to Mary and the silent downward spiral that seemed to define her daily existence. He indulged her by allowing her to spend lavishly, to the point of putting him deeply in debt, though he is by nature a very simple and frugal man. Also to please Mary, he accompanied her to a night at the theater or to a party when he would much rather conserve his energies by relaxing with a book at the White House. And while this indulgence has worked to some extent, and Mary Lincoln has gotten stronger over time, Lincoln of all people knows that she is one great tragedy away from losing her mind.
Normally, their history precludes Lincoln from talking about death with Mary present. But now, surrounded by friends and empowered by the confessional tone of that night’s speech, he can’t help himself.
“I had a dream the other night, which has haunted me since,” he admits soulfully.
“You frighten me,” Mary cries.
Lincoln will not be stopped. Ten days ago, he begins, “I went to bed late.”
Ten days ago he was in City Point, each man and woman in the room calculates. It was the night Lincoln stood alone on the top deck of the River Queen, watching Grant’s big guns blow the Confederate defenders of Petersburg to hell. “I had been waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream.”
In addition to being the consummate public speaker, Lincoln is also a master storyteller. No matter how heavy the weight of the world, he invests himself in a story, adjusting the tone and cadence of his voice and curling his lips into a smile as he weaves his tale, until the listener eventually leans in, desperate to hear more.
But now there is pain in his voice and not a hint of a smile. Lincoln isn’t telling a story but reliving an agony. “There seemed