The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

  “A week from now,” said McShane, with satisfaction. Baker looked on in amusement. “He is in California. Until that time, you will work for me. You may start by helping Little with his chores.” Nodding toward the old man. “Is that clear?”

  “But, sir! I am a graduate of Oberlin!”

  “I have told you the way things are. If you wish to work for the firm of Dennard & McShane, you will be a clerk and a copyist. You will not train as a lawyer.”

  Abigail calculated fast. “Perhaps I can do both—”

  “We will keep you busy, I assure you.”

  “I am willing to work as late as necessary.”

  McShane was exasperated. “Fine. You want to read law? There are books everywhere.” His hand swept the room. “Read as many as you like, as long as you do your chores. You can start with Blackstone. Over there—the brown one, see? Commentaries on the Laws of England. Four volumes. Start at page one of volume one, and read all four. When you are through, we can discuss your further ambitions.”

  Jonathan had found his voice. “Sir, that is nearly three thousand pages.”

  “So what? The young lady is a graduate of Oberlin. Presumably, she can read. Little, show her where to sit.”

  Abigail made one final try, even though her voice wavered in a way that she hated. “Sir, if I am to work as a—a secretary—well, then, perhaps I should come to the White House with you. To—to take notes.”

  McShane was aghast. “Under no circumstances. You are Dennard’s clerk, not mine. You will not be working on the impeachment at all.” He nodded toward her hand, where she still clutched her commonplace book. “I see you have a diary. So have I. So has Mr. Hilliman. Every lawyer keeps one. But I doubt you shall be needing yours. Little, I told you to show her where to sit. Hilliman, come.”

  “What about Mr. Baker?” the young man asked.

  “He can talk to Miss Canner.”

  They were out the door.

  As they descended the stair, McShane shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “The man is unbelievable. Hiring that woman without telling me. I am going to strangle him.”

  Jonathan said nothing, and was annoyed with himself for this failure; but a part of him was also amused, because Dennard, although on in years, was a heavy, powerful man, and McShane’s tiny hands could not possibly have reached around his neck.

  They exited onto Fourteenth Street, and the lawyer let out a purr of pleasure at the sight of his waiting horses. McShane could have had a driver but preferred to hold the reins of his own carriage, a very beautiful rig of dark polished wood with gleaming brass highlights. They climbed up for the short ride to the Executive Mansion, and a porter borrowed from the Willard handed the lawyer the reins.

  Jonathan said, suddenly, “Why did we leave Mr. Baker behind?”

  McShane called to the horses and gently rippled the reins. They moved off. “In case she is a spy,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The letter from Dennard might be a forgery. A colored woman. We would never suspect her. Mr. Lincoln’s opponents will stop at nothing.”

  Jonathan could not quite get his mind around such nonsense. The pending impeachment trial, as he had recently written to his fiancée, Meg, seemed to have driven every man in Washington City mad.

  And McShane was not done. “We have received information that a partial record of our deliberations—our strategy, if you will, for the trial—has made its way into unfriendly hands.”

  Jonathan forgot all about Meg. “Do you mean—you mean the Radicals?”

  “Exactly. The Radical Republicans, and some of their associates, seem to have obtained notes of some of our confidential discussions.” The hollowed eyes were grave. “That is why Mr. Baker is here.”

  “And exactly how will Mr. Baker know whether Miss Canner is a spy?”

  “You didn’t recognize him, did you, Hilliman? That was Lafayette Baker, formerly General Lafayette Baker. The chief of the Union Intelligence Services and the federal police. The man who caught Booth, and saw to it that he did not survive for trial.” A curt nod. “He’ll get the truth out of her.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Caution

  I

  “DO YOU THINK he’s going to resign? Mary Henry says he is, and she is not nearly so crazy as they say. And of course Horace Greeley says it would be the best and most patriotic thing for the country. His name would go down in history. Lincoln’s, not Greeley’s, thank God. But Lucretia Garfield says Mr. Lincoln is going to stand for re-election in 1868. A third term! You know the Garfields, don’t you, Mr. Hilliman? They are fabulously pro-Lincoln. And, as I am sure you are aware, Lucretia is given to the most vivid imaginings. But the idea! Even Father Washington only served twice! And Mr. Lincoln could be President for the rest of his life. Lucretia Garfield says—well, she asked me to keep her confidence, but telling you is not the same as telling the world—Lucretia says Mr. Lincoln has not been the same since Mrs. Lincoln passed. He has nothing to go home to. Why not live out his days here in the President’s House? That’s what Lucretia says. I think it is all so fabulously exciting, don’t you? That’s why I left Madrid. I can’t believe that my father left the Senate to be minister to Spain. I had to come back. Spain is hot and wet and boring, and Washington City is so fabulously exciting. And then running into you here, at the Mansion—well, it has to be destiny, don’t you think? Delivering the Minister’s letter on the very day of your visit. Leaving Mr. Lincoln’s office at the very hour of your arrival. Destiny. It can be nothing else. Still. Sometimes life’s griefs arrive for a reason. And life’s pleasures. Such pleasures as encountering each other here, today, in this hallway. Destiny, Mr. Hilliman. Just as it is destiny that you are staying with the Bannermans, on D Street, and I at the National Hotel. Only two blocks away. We should dine. Yes. We must set a date. But before Mr. Lincoln announces his intentions, don’t you think? Because after that, I would imagine, you shall be rather busy.”

  The author of this breathless rumoresque stepped away from him at last, for she had been inching closer with every whispered word. Lucy Lambert Hale, known as Bessie, possessed a trick of dropping her voice toward the end of a sentence, at least when talking to a man, forcing her listener to lean ever nearer her ample chest; or, if he did not lean toward her, she would often lean toward him. As she had been leaning toward Jonathan here in the dank, shadowy corridor outside the President’s office, where, as usual, McShane had ordered Jonathan to wait; sometimes he waited for hours without ever entering the sanctum. As soon as the door closed, Bessie’s plump body had sprung at him, seizing him in an unsought and unladylike hug right before the bemused eyes of Noah Brooks, the President’s private secretary, who sat at a creaky desk behind a hardwood barrier badly in need of varnish.

  “Surely you do not believe any of that nonsense,” said Jonathan when Bessie finally paused. He had learned to affect a certain sternness with her, in order to keep her at a distance. “Mr. Lincoln is a fine man. He will do what is best for the country.”

  Bessie was carrying a small fan. It was the middle of winter, but she had the fan nevertheless, an affectation that had become popular among Washington City’s more fashionable ladies. Now she fluttered it before her face. “And exactly which part of it is nonsense, Mr. Hilliman? The part where Mr. Lincoln stays or the part where Mr. Lincoln goes? Because both can’t be false, you know.”

  Her logic was so absurd that Jonathan had to smile, as no doubt he was meant to. “I believe that Mr. Lincoln will serve out his term and then retire.”

  “Now, that is a fascinating notion, Mr. Hilliman.” She had the fan going again. “Because I thought you said a moment ago that Mr. Lincoln would do what is best for the country.”

  “As I am certain he will.”

  Her smile widened. Bessie Hale was one of the city’s great belles. If wagging tongues were to be believed, her charms had snared, over the past few years alone, such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., son of the gre
at poet; John Hay, Noah Brooks’s predecessor as Lincoln’s private secretary; and even Robert Lincoln, the President’s eldest son. There were other stories, too, some of them more sinister, but nobody dared repeat them, because her father, John Parker Hale, American minister to Spain, remained enormously influential in politics at home. It was said that he had stepped down from the Senate and requested the appointment to Madrid in order to remove his headstrong daughter from the moral swamp that all New Englanders believed Washington City to be; but somehow Bessie had managed to escape Madrid; and it had been Jonathan’s bad luck to encounter her leaving Lincoln’s office just as he and his employer had arrived.

  “Then you see my point, Mr. Hilliman. That is what will be so fabulously exciting. Waiting to hear whether Mr. Lincoln has decided that the best interest of the country requires him to remain in this mansion beyond his term.” Bessie looked supremely satisfied with herself. She touched his arm. “Now I must be off. I have another engagement. But we shall fix a date for dinner, shan’t we?”

  “I believe—”

  “Shall we say Thursday, at eight? At the National?”

  And then she was gone down the hallway, not waiting to hear his response. As usual, Bessie Hale got her way. The commitment was unavoidable, he told himself. He could not risk offending Bessie, whose father still influenced votes in the Senate; votes Mr. Lincoln might need at trial. Yet he shuddered to imagine what his fiancée, Margaret Felix, would say were she to learn that he was to dine with the egregious Miss Hale. When Meg warned him about the wiles of Washington’s women, it was Bessie she had in mind.

  Jonathan glanced nervously at Noah Brooks, who was busily writing away, pretending to have heard nothing. Although not much more than thirty, Brooks was already balding, and his muttonchop whiskers made him appear older still.

  The Executive Mansion, it was said, aged its occupants.

  Mr. Lincoln has not been the same since Mrs. Lincoln passed.

  The door to the President’s office remained firmly shut. Aside from McShane, Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, was inside. So was Attorney General James Speed. Jonathan wondered how long he would be waiting. Some days he had remained in the hallway for three or four hours, against the possibility that he might be summoned to record a letter or other document.

  Why not live out his days here in the President’s House?

  Jonathan sank onto one of the sagging wooden benches provided for petitioners hoping to see the President. The Executive Mansion was falling apart. Many of the great rooms downstairs had been refurbished beautifully by Mrs. Lincoln, at an expense so fabulous that the Congress had opened an investigation. But the second floor—the puny family apartments, and this rabbit warren of offices for the President and his tiny staff—remained as they had been for most of the century: cramped, dingy, ill lighted.

  As recently as a year ago, the shadowed hallway, decrepit or not, would have been full of petitioners, waiting their chance to beg for government jobs, or special exemptions from some law that applied to everyone else, or pardons for nephews who had deserted the army. But those who wanted favors gravitated to power, and nowadays the power was on Capitol Hill. Hardly anyone believed that Lincoln had any favors left to bestow. The newspapers were predicting that Benjamin Wade would be occupying this house in another six weeks. Indeed, rumor had it that even here in the Mansion a goodly number of the staff were already Wade’s men.

  According to Arthur McShane, someone was giving information about their deliberations to the Radicals. Sitting in the dingy corridor with only Noah Brooks for company, Jonathan found himself wondering who was left at the White House that Lincoln could trust.

  II

  “So you want to be a lawyer,” said General Lafayette Baker. “Well, well.”

  “I do,” said Abigail, fighting to keep her voice steady. Baker had seated himself on the edge of the long conference table that dominated the common room. This forced Abigail to stand. She had chosen the corner nearest one of the two windows. The involute leading in the glass was trimmed with dainty snow.

  Baker had his powerful arms folded. His glare had been known to reduce prisoners to babbling incoherence. “Do you know why Mr. McShane left us alone?”

  A tight nod. “He wants you to test my … bona fides.”

  “Correct. Do you have any objection to answering a few questions?”

  “Would it matter if I did?”

  “Not really.” He coughed. “I’d like a cup of water.”

  Abigail never budged. “I am afraid I don’t know where they keep the jug.”

  “Why don’t you look for it?”

  “Because if I begin to open cabinets and so forth, you will no doubt decide that I am here to snoop.”

  Baker smiled. His teeth were yellow and uneven, a sharp contrast with so smoothly handsome a countenance. “I’ve never heard of you,” he said amiably. When Abigail, in an abundance of caution, chose not to answer, he continued: “It’s bloody odd, isn’t it? An alleged law clerk for Dennard shows up while that esteemed gentleman is in California and cannot be reached? And, by coincidence, just as Mr. Lincoln’s lawyers are formulating their strategy for trial?” He gave her no opportunity to interrupt. It was clear that he was the sort of man who wanted to be told only what he had already decided was true. She supposed this might make him a successful detective, if the goal was only to obtain a confession, whether or not it was a true one. “There is no way to check your story, you see. You could be anybody. You could be a spy. You could even be another assassin.”

  Abigail fought a shudder. She could hear Nanny Pork, asking her why she wanted to go off and work with white mens. She could hear her younger sister’s teasing lilt, warning that nobody would want to marry a woman who pursued a profession. And she could hear her brother, Michael, whispering that no white man could ever be trusted.

  “A spy for whom?” Abigail managed.

  “The Radicals. All the colored people love the Radicals, I hear. All of you think the North should keep its boot on the neck of the South. Mr. Lincoln wants to let ’em up easy, as he puts it. The Radicals want to punish them hard. I myself have no position in the matter. But I should imagine that you’d agree with the Radicals.”

  She had trouble meeting his eyes. At the Oberlin Collegiate Institute she had been the equal of any young man. But this was different. If she put a word wrong, Baker had the power to throw her into Old Capitol Prison, where many an inmate was known to vanish into the dank, lice-ridden cells and never again see the light of day; and the fact that she was a protégée of the great Charles Finney, evangelist and abolitionist, would mean nothing.

  “I have no objection to further punishment of the South,” she finally said, gaze on the dusty floor and her tightly laced shoes. “But I also do not see its necessity. In any case, Mr. Dennard did not hire me to work on the impeachment trial. He hired me to be his legal secretary.” Her head came back up. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have chores.”

  Baker had no intention of letting her go so easily. “Do you know what the charges against the President are? Suspending habeas corpus, shutting down newspapers, locking up critics? Are you telling me that none of that bothers you?”

  From somewhere Abigail found just a bit of the sauciness that had characterized her attitude back at Oberlin. “You sound, General Baker, as if it bothers you.”

  This won her another baring of yellow teeth. “What about the charge that he means to overthrow the Congress? That he tried to establish a military district—the Department of the Atlantic—to run the government? How does that one strike you?”

  “As a patent absurdity.”

  “Ever met Mr. Lincoln?”

  “No.”

  “Know any member of his family? Any of his friends?”

  “No.”

  “Then how can you know what is in his head? And whether or not the charge is absurd?” Baker sighed, then hopped nimbly to his feet. Without warning, he stepped very close to her, crowdin
g her back against the bookshelves. For a mad moment she thought he meant to kiss her. “We live in difficult times, Miss Canner. No Congress has dared act in this manner against a President. No one is above suspicion. Do you understand?” Once more he did not wait to hear her response. “If you choose to remain at Dennard & McShane, I shall have no choice but to continue to look into your story, finding all the holes. I shall poke and prod until there are only holes, and no longer any story at all. And at that point”—leaning so close that she could smell this morning’s garlic on his hot breath—“at that point, Miss Canner, you are mine.”

  Alone again, Abigail found herself unable to move. She was still on her feet. Her body began to tremble, then to shudder, until her entire being, physical and mental, jerked in uncontrolled spasms. The fear she felt was sharp and raw and red and deep. The hateful tears were but the smallest manifestation of her terror. She leaned over and put her hands on the table. Her late mother always said that God would get you through, and so she tried her best to pray; but in her fear and humiliation had no idea what she was praying for.

  She was standing in the same position when Little came in from whatever errand he had been running; although it was also possible that he had just been waiting outside for the general to leave. The old man glanced at her, hastily looked away, went to the cupboard. He took down the water jug, poured some into a glass, handed it to her. She drained it, and with movement came fluency. Her thoughts began to run clearly again. She found a smile, if a shaky one; thanked him; truly meant it.

  Little handed her the broom.

  “You gots chores, Miss Canner.”

  III

  McShane dropped his clerk at the carriage block twenty yards from the building entrance. He had a meeting, the lawyer said, and had to hurry. Jonathan was exhausted: worn out, like the man in his uncle Brighton’s favorite story, from doing nothing all day. He and McShane had arrived at the Mansion at eleven in the morning. Now it was past six in the evening, and nearly full dark. In the months since the firm’s retention to represent the President, Jonathan had attended five White House meetings with his employer, and had been invited into Lincoln’s office only twice, both times to write out a document that one of the others in the room dictated. Neither time had he stayed for more than a few minutes.