Freedom
By William Safire
Doubleday, 1,125 pages, $24.95
William Safire, the eloquent columnist and former presidential speech writer, now issues a monumental, architectonic novel of the first 21 months of the Civil War. Loving, cogent, bottomlessly researched, passionately argued,
”Freedom” is a mountain to dazzle and assault.
Those who regard the war as arcane are not only wrong-headed but are also depriving themselves of the ceaseless drama that is this republic. Safire`s book roars with the paradoxical energy written into the Constitution. Presidential powers, congressional purse-strings, judicial pettifoggery, Cabinet duplicity, military blunders, media manipulations, secret missions, revolutionary gangs, European chicanery, strong-arm solicitation, hostage-taking, blockade, theft, forgery, adultery, suicide, burst-brains, fire-breathing rascals, accidental heroes, renegade officers and enchained victims. Familiar? Weirdly familiar? And this is just the opening act for the War Between the States, the War of the Southern Rebellion, the War Against Northern Aggression, the war that will not end.
Indeed, ”Freedom`s” subject is so broad and controversial that Safire`s ambition wins this reader`s tribute instantly. He has scrupulously consumed the documents and histories (he includes a 200-page commentary) and fashioned a story like a manse, from excavation to roof raising, not missing a hammer blow. It is guaranteed to exhaust the reader like no other intellectual endeavor, yet in the end it delivers a miracle that, if not deus ex machina, is mightily suggestive of the return from Babylonian captivity.
One must be blunt; this is the Union`s ordeal. Safire has no patience for Confederate glory, Jeff Davis` brain, Lee`s honor or the 19th Century`s dystopian race theory.
It will not surprise that the master builder of this tale is Abraham Lincoln. The ape, the Tycoon, the backwoods money-changer, the Kentucky Dictator is everywhere with pick and saw and beam. Safire paints him in the manner of a pointillist, every hue and dot imaginable, in order to allow the reader to stand back and wonder.
If any citizen can read this book and not marvel at Lincoln as tragedy`s Everyman–rude, inept, prideful, forgiving, inspired, brutal, tireless, compassionate, corn-aching, sharp-tongued and as put-upon as Noah, Moses and Jonah combined–then he or she deserves the door. Crucially, for Safire, Lincoln is a lie; auto-didactic, desperate Mr. Lincoln is a gospel of mankind`s gifts.
What is the plot of ”Freedom”? Because this is not the story of the whole war–the war had no plot, it was a monster that devoured everything
–Safire`s plot is not obvious. The novel begins in April, 1861, with the city of Washington praying to be reinforced by troops from the North. It ends New Year`s Day, 1863, with Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. In between, the plot is neither battles nor personalities but rather a profound intellectual debate. Is the war Constitutional? And if it is, is it being waged to preserve the Union or rather to abolish slavery?
It might surprise some modern readers that Lincoln was caught in the middle of this debate like a man of rope being yanked about by a bizarre tug- of-war.
Pulling one way were the Southern radicals, called Fire-eaters, who maneuvered 11 states out of the Union by charging Lincoln with tyranny and claiming the Constitution did not forbid secession. Their true agenda was slavery in the South, the West and even into a Caribbean-rim American empire. At Fort Sumter, they dropped the rope for the cannon.
Lincoln was then torn by two parties of muscular Unionists. The first were what Safire calls the conservatives, who charged Lincoln with panicky usurpation, who wanted to prosecute the war in such a way that the South was brought back into the Union by sleight-of-hand: armistice, intimidation, deceit. Their true agenda was the status quo of half-slave, half-free.
The other loyalists were the Northern radicals, called Black Republicans for the abolitionism, who charged Lincoln with incompetence and who proclaimed that the Constitution knew what to do with traitors. Their true agenda was both to free the slaves and to hang the rebels.
Lincoln`s stand for hard war, pragmatic government and border-state-romanci ng maddened everyone. The Southern and Northern radicals lusted for an apocalyptic one-on-one. The Northern conservatives wanted Lincoln bypassed. At war`s beginning Lincoln argued that the fighting must not become a
”remorseless revolutionary struggle,” that is, a bloodbath over slavery. He declared that the ”central idea pervading this struggle” was the
”necessity to prove that popular government is not an absurdity”–in other words, Lincoln aimed solely to preserve the Union at any cost.
And so how did Lincoln, with his utopian idea of the Union in the mist of mass-murder, come to issue a document as radical as the Emancipation Proclamation–abolition by presidential fiat? Why did Lincoln do the very thing he started out avoiding?
Safire`s answer is his assembly of the strange details of 21 months of lies, defeats, tricks, jealousy, betrayal and ghosts. It is a mysterious, unresolved record that Safire aims to solve by writing fictionally rather than historically. Every character is historical; many scenes are invented; all conclusions are speculative. ”Freedom” is a novel and not a dissertation because fiction is best understood as a pack of lies in pursuit of the truth. And Safire`s answer is also that King Lincoln, as his enemies on all sides called him, preached willfulness and compromise, haste and reluctance, idealism and pugilism, even as he endured the mind-bending ruin of muddling through day by day. The ”King Lear” quote Lincoln favored in his dark moments was, ”I have no way, and therefore want no eyes.”
But what a stupendous muddle and fierce blindness! To demonstrate, Safire organizes ”Freedom” into nine books featuring Lincoln`s construction company –the helpmates and the lay-abouts.
There is hambone George McClellan, Poindexter-Stanton, those boody boys Grant and Sherman, topsy-turvy John C. Breckenridge, hysterical Salmon Chase, the Ewinglike Blairs and those carpenters of disingenuousness such as John Hay, Billy ”Bow-legs” Seward, John Fremont, Mary Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton, Horace Greeley and Goldfinger himself, Thurlow Weed.
Safire`s most exhilarating contribution to this amazing cast is his portrait of three beautiful, seductive salon-keepers: Anna Ella Carroll for the Union, Rose O`Neal Greenhow for the Confederacy, and Kate Chase for her father. They scheme, bed, rant, plot, sacrifice and dominate.
For those who know the war, ”Freedom” is a treat like an August lake;
for those who do not yet, it is gift. William Safire has managed the strength to synthesize a library into make-believe. To truly appreciate his dare, one need only to stand before the 130 volumes of the Official War Records and to touch them and to weep.
