How Few Remain (57 page)

    As soon as Abraham Lincoln saw the crowd that had come to hear him in Great Falls, he knew he would not have such an appreciative audience as he had enjoyed in Helena. By the standards of Montana Territory, Helena was an old town, having been founded just after the end of the War of Secession. Great Falls, by contrast, was so new the unpainted lumber of the storefronts and houses hardly looked weathered.

More to the point, though, Helena was a mining town, a town built up from nothing by the laborers who worked their claims—and who, most of them, worked luckier men’s claims these days—in the surrounding hills. Great Falls, by contrast, was a foundation of capital, a town that had sprung to life when the railroad out to the Pacific went through. If it hadn’t been for fear of the British up in Canada, the railroad would probably still remain unbuilt. But it was here, and so were the people it had brought. Storekeepers and merchants and brokers predominated: the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat.

Lincoln sighed. In Helena, he’d got exactly the response he’d wanted. He’d told the miners some home truths about the way the country treated them. Without more than a handful of Negroes to exploit, it battened off the sweat of the poor and the ignorant and the newly arrived and the unlucky. Capitalists didn’t want their victims to know that.

Capitalists had reasons for not wanting their victims to know
that, too. After he’d told the miners some things of which their bosses would have preferred them to remain ignorant, they’d torn up Helena pretty well. He smiled at the thought of it. He hadn’t touched off that kind of donnybrook in years.

He’d won the supreme accolade from one of the local capitalists, a tough, white-bearded fellow named Thomas Cruse: “If I ever set eyes on you again, you son of a bitch,” Cruse had growled, “I’ll blow your stinking brains out.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lincoln had answered, which only served to make Cruse madder. Lincoln wasn’t about to lose sleep over that. From what he’d heard, Cruse had once been a miner, one of the handful lucky enough to strike it rich. Having made his pile, he’d promptly forgotten his class origins, in much the same way as an Irish washerwoman who’d married well would come back from a European tour spelling her name Brigitte, not Brigid.

Another sigh came from his lips. No, no sparks tonight, not from these comfortable, well-dressed people. A couple of Army officers sat in the second row, no doubt to listen for any seditious utterances he might make. One of them looked preposterously young to be wearing a cavalry colonel’s uniform. Lincoln wondered what sort of strings the fellow had pulled to get his command, and why he’d tied a red bandanna around his left upper arm.

Rather nervously, a local labor organizer (not that there was much local labor to organize) named Lancaster Stubbins introduced Lincoln to the crowd: “Friends, let’s give a warm Montana welcome to the man who makes it hot for capital, the fiery champion of the working man, the former president of the United States, Mr. Abraham Lincoln!”

Despite Stubbins’ images of heat, the most enthusiastic word Lincoln could in justice apply to the round of applause he got was
tepid
. That did not surprise him. Here in Great Falls, he would have been surprised had it proved otherwise. When he took his place behind the podium, he stood exposed to the crowd from the middle of his belly up. That didn’t surprise him, either; almost every podium behind which he’d ever stood—and he’d stood behind a great forest of them—had been made for a smaller race of men.

He sipped at the glass of water thoughtfully placed there, then began: “My friends, they ran me out of Helena because they said
I made a riot there. As God is my witness, I tell you I made no riot there.”

No applause came from the crowd. Shouts of “Liar!” rang out. So did other shouts: “We have the telegraph!” and “We know what happened!”

Lincoln held up a hand. “I made no riot there,” he repeated. “That riot made itself.” More outcry rose from the audience. The young colonel in the second row wearing a red bandanna seemed ready to bounce out of his chair, if not out of his uniform. Lincoln waited for quiet. When he finally got something close to it, he went on, “Do you think, my friends, the honest laborers who heard me in Helena would have turned the town on its ear had they been happy with their lot? I did not make them unhappy with it. How could I have done so, having only just arrived? All I did was remind them of what they
had
, and what in law and justice they were
entitled to
, and invite them to compare the one to the other. If that should be inciting to riot, then Adams and Franklin and Washington and Jefferson deserved the hangings they did not get.”

Sudden silence slammed down. He had hoped for as much. The people still remembered freedom, no matter how the plutocrats tried to make them forget. Heartened, Lincoln continued, “So many in Helena, like so many elsewhere in the United States—so many even here, in Great Falls—labor so that a few who are
rich
can become
richer
. Ignorant old man that I am, I have a moderately hard time seeing the fairness there.

“A capitalist will tell you that
his
wealth benefits everyone. Maybe he is even telling you the truth, although my experience is that these capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people. Or do you not think his wealth would benefit
you
more, were some part of it in
your
pocket rather than his?”

That got a laugh—not a large one, but a laugh. “Tell ’em, Abe!” somebody called. Somebody else hissed.

Lincoln held up his hand again. Quiet, this time, came quicker. He said, “Even before the War of Secession, I made my views on the matter clear. As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. Democracy has no place for slaves
or
masters. To whatever extent it makes such a place, it is no longer democracy. A man with silk drawers, a gold stickpin, and a diamond on his pinky may disagree. What of the miner in his tattered overalls or
the shopkeeper in his apron? Does not the capitalist trample them down, by his own rising up?

“And does he not sow the seeds of his own destruction in the trampling? For when, through this means, he has succeeded in dehumanizing the laboring proletariat by whose sweat he eats soft bread, when he has again and again put the working man down and made him as nearly one with the beasts of the field as he can, when he has placed him where any ray of hope is extinguished and his soul sits in darkness like the souls of the damned … When the capitalist has done all this, does he not fear, while he sips his champagne, that the demon he has made
will one day turn and rend him?”

That was the sentence upon which his speech in Helena had ended. He had not intended it to end there. He had planned to go on for some time. But the ragged miners there construed his words literally, and acted on what he had taken for (or part of him had taken for) a mere figure of speech.

Here in Great Falls, he got no riot. He did get an audience perhaps more attentive than it had planned on being. When he saw men leaning forward to hear him better, he knew he’d succeeded. “My friends, the defense of our nation lies not in our strength of arms, though I wish our arms every success in this war upon which we are engaged. Our reliance is in the
love of liberty
which God has planted in us. If we let it perish, we grow the seeds of tyranny on our own soil. If we suffer our laborers to wear the chains of wage slavery, we look forward to the day when the nation is enchained.

“To our north, in Canada, we find a people with a different government from ours, being ruled by a Queen. Turning south to the Confederate States, we see a people who, while they boast of being free, continue to hold their fellow men in bondage. At present, we are at war with both these peoples, not least because we do not wish to permit their unfree power to be extended. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should struggle, if struggle we must, for such a cause.

“Yet will we fight for the cause of freedom
abroad
, while allowing the same cause to perish
at home?
We all declare for liberty; but in using the same
word
we do not all mean the same
thing
. With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labor. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please
with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America shall yet lead the way in the proving.”

In Great Falls, he got applause, warmer than when he was introduced. In Helena, that passage might have touched off the riot had the previous one not done it. In a way, he appreciated the polite hearing. In another way, he would sooner have been booed off the platform. People who listened politely and forgot an hour later what they’d heard were no great asset to the cause of liberty.

“We
shall
have change in this country, my friends,” he said. “I leave you tonight with this thought to take to your homes: if we cannot find a
peaceable
way to bring about this change, we shall find
another
way, as our forefathers did in 1776. We have now, as we had then, the revolutionary right to overthrow a government become a tyranny to benefit only to the rich. I pray we shall have no need to exercise this right. But it is there, and, if the need be there as well, we
shall
take it up, and the foundations of the nation
shall
tremble. Good night.”

As he stepped down, he got about what he’d expected: cheers and catcalls mixed together. One fight started in the back of the hall. Instead of joining in, the men around the fighters pulled them apart and hustled them outside. Lincoln smiled, ever so slightly: no, it hadn’t been like that in Helena.

Lancaster Stubbins came up to Lincoln and shook his hand. “That was very fine, sir, very fine indeed,” he said. “You’ll stay the night with my family and me?”

“I should be honored,” Lincoln said. Stubbins was earnest and sincere, and, when and if the new revolution came, would undoubtedly be swept away. Still—”It will prove a better bed, I am sure, than the one I enjoyed—though that is scarcely the proper word—in Fort Douglas.”

Getting to the promised bed would take a while. Some people came forward to congratulate him. Some people came forward to argue with him. Half an hour after the speech was done, he was still alternately shaking hands and arguing. That brash young cavalry colonel stuck a finger in his chest and growled, “You, sir, are a Marxian Socialist.”

His tone was anything but approving. Lincoln found himself surprised; men who so emphatically disagreed with his positions
seldom came so close to identifying their true nature. “That is near the mark—near, but not quite on it, Colonel …?” he said.

“Roosevelt,” the cavalry officer answered impatiently. “Theodore Roosevelt.” He scowled up at Lincoln through his gold-framed spectacles. “How do you mean, sir, not quite on the mark? In what way am I in error?” The challenge in his voice declared that, like George Custer, he saw disagreement as affront.

Still, Lincoln judged the question seriously meant, and so answered seriously: “A Marxian Socialist, Colonel Roosevelt, believes the revolution
will
come, no matter what measures be taken to prevent it. My view is, the revolution will come
unless
strong measures be taken to prevent it.”

“Ah.” Roosevelt gave a slow, thoughtful nod. “That is a distinction.” Unlike Custer, he evidently could feel the intellectual force of a counterargument. That index finger stabbed out again. “But you do believe the pernicious Marxian doctrine of the class struggle.”

“I do believe it, yes,” Lincoln said. “I do not believe it pernicious, not after spending my time since the War of Secession observing what has been afoot in the United States, in the Confederate States, and, as best I can at a distance, in Britain and Europe as well.”

“Class struggle is balderdash! Poppycock!” Roosevelt declared. “We can attain a harmonious society by adjusting our laws and their interpretation so as to secure to all members of the community social and industrial justice.”

“We
can
, surely. I said as much,” Lincoln replied. “But
shall
we? Or will those in whose hands most capital now rests seek only to gain more? That looks to be the way the wind is blowing, and it blows a fire ahead of it.”

Roosevelt surprised him again, this time by nodding. “The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change.”

“You had best be careful, Colonel Roosevelt, or people will be calling
you
a Marxian Socialist,” Lincoln said.

“By no means, sir. By no means,” the brash young officer said. “You believe the damage to our body politic is … I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and say,
all but irreparable
. My view, on the contrary, is that the political system of the United States remains perfectible, and that resolute action on the part of the citizens as voters and the government as their agent can secure the
blessings of both liberty and prosperity for capital and labor alike.”

“I have heard many men with your views, but few who express them so forcefully,” Lincoln said. “Most, if you will forgive me, have their heads in the clouds.”

“Not I, by jingo!” Theodore Roosevelt said.

“I wish I could believe you likely to be correct,” Lincoln carried out. “For reform to be carried out in the manner you describe, though, a man of truly titantic energy would have to lead the way, and I see none such on the horizon. I do see workers by the millions growing hungrier and more desperate day by day. Now if you will excuse me, Colonel, this other gentleman wished to speak with me.”

Roosevelt turned away. Lincoln heard him mutter “Poppycock!” under his breath once more. Then the former president, being greeted by a supporter, forgot about the young cavalry colonel.