The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

  Judith had her arms over her face, but her shoulders were shaking, and Abigail supposed she was crying.

  “The master was a good man. But there had been some sort of tragedy in the house. She never told me what it was. I had the idea that someone had died. And now the master was … well, he was distant. No. Not distant. Obsessed. Rebecca wasn’t sure about what, but she said she knew an obsession when she saw one. He was an important man, he had a lot of meetings with powerful people, but he also had meetings at his house. Some of those meetings were strange. Rebecca overheard.… You know how it is, Abby. Or maybe you don’t. I’ve worked in service; you haven’t. Nobody guards his tongue around the servants, especially the colored servants. You hear a great deal. And Rebecca told me … she told me that this man … the man she was working for … she said he hated Mr. Lincoln. I said a lot of people hated him. Rebecca said yes, but the master was plotting against him. There were others who came to the house, and she heard them together. Mostly men, but one of them was a young woman. Well bred. A woman who seemed on easy terms with many of the great figures of the city. Still, Rebecca was surprised. Men of her master’s station did not see young women alone. Not at their homes. But this young woman came by a lot. She was giving the master messages. Some of the messages the young woman told him, and some of the messages she handed to him in envelopes. Now and then he gave the young woman messages to take back. Rebecca didn’t know who the messages were coming from. They never called him anything but the crooked man.”

  “The crooked man?” Abigail echoed, speaking for the first time in a while.

  A brisk nod. “Just like in the fairy tale.”

  “What about the young woman who came by? What was her name?”

  “Rebecca never said. I didn’t … I tried not to press her. She told me this toward … toward the end. She was frightened. She said her mistress had caught her in the master’s study, going through his things. She wanted to see what was in the messages, you see. She wanted to find out who was trying to hurt Mr. Lincoln, and why. The mistress had caught her and thought she was stealing. She said she was just cleaning, but the mistress didn’t believe her. She thought she was going to be discharged yet again. That was when she came to me. She turned out to have taken a few of the documents.”

  “The documents outlining the plot,” said Abigail excitedly.

  Judith looked away. “I didn’t ask her what exactly the documents showed. She said she wasn’t sure what to do with them, and I … I sent her to Mr. McShane.”

  “Why?”

  Judith’s smooth face split in a surprisingly gentle smile. Her eyes were half closed in reminiscence. “He was the President’s lawyer. That was perhaps the most obvious reason. And, of course, I had heard good things about him.” A pause. “Once my sister began her employ.”

  Michael again, Abigail realized. Judith might have given Nanny Pork a wide berth, and avoided Abigail and Louisa, too, but she had evidently stayed in close touch with Michael. Michael made a point of staying in touch with everyone.

  “What happened then?”

  “I am not sure. Rebecca did not confide the details to me.” Again that hesitation, as a look very near guilt passed over Judith’s countenance. “But I formed the impression that she met Mr. McShane a number of times.”

  “And gave him documents.”

  “Yes.”

  “Documents she … removed … from the house where she was in service.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  Judith had an awesome way with sarcasm. “They do love our people so, don’t they?”

  Abigail considered. It all seemed to fit, and yet she sensed an omission. She could not quite work out where it was. Her sister’s presentation was too fluent. She was too eager to divulge confidences, the eagerness suggesting that there was more, withheld. At the same time, Abigail knew from the set of her sister’s mouth that this was all she was going to get for now, that Judith already worried that she had said too much. And so, just to wind the conversation down, she asked: “And you have no idea what family she was working for? Who her master was?”

  Judith shook her head.

  “I told you. I don’t know who the family was. Rebecca never stayed with one family too long. She was studying in littles, saving what she could, going to school between jobs.”

  “She must have given you a clue.”

  “Must she?” For a moment Judith wore her old mocking smile, and her eyes were bright and young and flirtatious. Then she sagged, and the light went out of her face. She shook her head. The baby had awakened and was screaming again. “I think she might have called the lady of the house ‘Mrs. Ellen.’ But I’m not sure about that.”

  They were standing now. Judith, robe flapping loosely, was moving her sister toward the door. The baby was on her shoulder.

  “Mrs. Ellen,” Abigail repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t remember anything else?”

  “Not about Rebecca. But …”

  “Please tell me.”

  Judith caressed her cheek. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, Abby.”

  “I am not in trouble.”

  “Aren’t you? Because it is my understanding that a number of powerful men are worried about you. The fear seems to be that, unchecked, you will be the cause of considerable mischief.” The hand was on Abigail’s shoulder now. Lydia’s squeal had subsided to a whimper. “There is no need to give me that look, Abby. I am only telling you what I have heard. And I heard it, let us say, under circumstances in which a man is unlikely to lie.” A tired laugh. “Even a gentleman.”

  Somehow the door was open. Jonathan was in the hallway, alert, but at a respectful distance.

  “I don’t think you should come back,” said Judith.

  “Of course I will.”

  “No, dear. You have your career to think about. And … well, there are other reasons. Shush. I have told you as much as I can. For us to meet again would be dangerous.” She leaned forward suddenly, took Abigail’s head between her palms, kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, dear. God go with you.”

  “And with you,” said Abigail, very shaken.

  They never spoke again.

  CHAPTER 26

  Betrayal

  I

  “I SUPPOSE WE have to believe it,” said Dan Sickles, toying with his moustache. The usual glimmer in his eye seemed dull in the gray morning light. They stood alone in the common room. It was Friday, March 15, and the trial would begin in three days, but Dennard and Speed were up at the Capitol, still negotiating the rules of procedure. Rellman was along to take notes. Little was at Woodward’s Hardware, buying supplies; Abigail, to the surprise of everyone but Jonathan, had decided to join him.

  You should talk to Sickles alone, she had said the night before. He doesn’t like me, and he isn’t the sort of man who wants to hear bad news from a woman.

  “We have to believe it,” said Sickles a second time. “It makes sense.” He paused. “And because I don’t think Judith Canner would lie about something like this.”

  Jonathan’s eyes widened. “You know Judith?”

  “Never met. But I know of her.”

  “How?”

  “By reputation.” That roguish smile. “But a gentleman can say no more.”

  Jonathan wondered, briefly, what sort of reputation Judith Canner must have, given her circumstances, but he walled off further speculation. What mattered was that Sickles had not, as Jonathan had worried he would, dismissed the entire conversation as fantasy. It was Abigail who had insisted that Sickles, and only Sickles, be told. Once more, her judgment had been vindicated.

  “You do see the larger significance, don’t you?” mused Sickles. “A wheel in the middle of a wheel. Isn’t that what Ezekiel says? A wheel in the middle of a wheel, getting ready to lift us up to the sky. We don’t know how many wheels are out there spinning, but at last we get to take a good look at one of
them and see where it leads.” Dragging himself to his feet. “Speed, Dennard, men like that. They don’t see the wheel of conspiracy when it’s spinning right in front of their noses. To them the world is clear rules, amenable to sweet reason. Whereas Stanton—McShane, even—well, they see the conspiracy everywhere.”

  “And Mr. Lincoln?”

  Sickles chuckled. “I have never known a man more perceptive. He will see a conspiracy only where one actually exists. And he will never fail to detect one if it is there.”

  “Then he has known all along!”

  “Presumably.” A wink. “But don’t worry. Mr. Lincoln also conspires better than any man I have ever known. If he has known about the conspiracy and done so little to smash it to bits, we should assume that he has his reasons.”

  Or that he no longer had the necessary power, because the conspirators had already triumphed: but Jonathan chose not to mention this possibility.

  “You said we have a good look at the conspiracy,” he said.

  “Indeed.”

  “We only know that it exists. We still do not know the names of a single conspirator.”

  “But we do. There is only one senior Administration official whose wife is named Ellen, and whose family not long ago suffered a major loss.” He went to the desk, began to write.

  “What’s that?”

  “A note. You’re to take it to the White House. Give it to Noah Brooks personally. Nobody else. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give the note to Brooks, and wait for an answer.” He sealed the paper in an envelope. “We’re going to see the President, Jonathan. Just the two of us.”

  II

  “The Russians want to sell us their little corner of America,” Lincoln said. He was standing beside his desk, holding a sheaf of telegrams. “They have that big empty colony up there next to Canada, and it seems they’re running out of money because of all those wars they’re fighting with the British.” He smiled as if he had put one over on the world. He was in a remarkably good mood for a man generally thought to have no more than a couple of weeks before he was turned out of office. “As it happens,” the President went on, “we’re running out of money, too, but I reckon Baron Stoeckl doesn’t know that. Russia wants seven millions, which I am told works out to about two cents an acre. That sounds like a pretty fair price, as the blind man said to the farmer. Unfortunately, we don’t happen to have that kind of money lying around. And even if we did, Congress isn’t in a particularly generous mood just now. So it looks like Alaska will have to remain Russian for a while. Maybe they’ll strike a better deal with Mr. Wade.”

  The President made a note on the page, and handed it to Noah Brooks, who left the room. Jonathan stood with Sickles, waiting to be acknowledged. He had come to understand during these past weeks that this slow-burning recitation of the events of the day was Lincoln’s way of giving himself time to think. Outside an ashen sun was sinking, but this was the soonest Lincoln could clear his schedule to receive them. It occurred to Jonathan that it would be a very easy thing for a country enthralled by the coming impeachment trial to assume that the President had no other work to do. “Mr. Seward thinks we should buy the place. If we do, I have a hunch that future generations will call it ‘Lincoln’s Folly.’ At least, that’s what Mr. Stanton says.” He took off his glasses. “Now, why don’t you fellows sit down and tell me what I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Sickles amiably, as he adjusted his wooden leg, “it’s about Mr. Stanton.”

  Lincoln seemed not to hear. “I have another dispatch that tells me they’re having trouble selling shares in that new canal they’re digging in Egypt. From what I’ve seen, if the big investors don’t want a piece of it, we should start buying.”

  Sickles, catching his friend’s mood, said, “I understand they’re digging the canal with slave labor.”

  “The British are upset, as usual,” said the President, laying aside another paper. “They’re against slavery everywhere on the face of the earth except when they need it, like when they built their railroad in North Africa. I have been trying to remember, as a matter of fact, the last time a British soldier—or a soldier from anywhere in Europe—gave his life to end slavery rather than to protect it.”

  “I can’t seem to think of one,” said Sickles, smiling.

  “Neither can I,” Lincoln said, chuckling as he shook his head. “The powers of Old Europe are great hypocrites, denouncing as evil the world they made. Are you here to tell me that Stanton is conspiring against me?”

  Jonathan was too surprised to speak. Sickles said calmly, “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Lincoln turned away, bent his long body to peer out the window. The heavy gray clouds blanketed the grand buildings in a kind of sadness. “There is a kind of fish,” he said, “that swims with the sharks, and feeds on what they leave behind. A pilot fish, I believe it is called. And what is interesting about the pilot fish, so I am told, is that the sharks don’t eat them.” He sighed, and straightened. “I suppose politics attracts that kind of man, doesn’t it? A man who only chooses sides once he knows who the sharks are.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President,” said Sickles after a moment.

  Lincoln’s sleepy eyes shifted to Jonathan. “And I reckon you are the one who uncovered Stanton’s role?”

  “Um, yes, sir.” Jonathan felt like the tongue-tied Yale freshman he had once been, pronounced by his professors a dunderhead. “I mean, no, sir. It was actually Miss Canner.” He hesitated. “She has a … a source.”

  The President glanced at Sickles. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “I just heard this morning.”

  The hunter’s eyes swung back toward Jonathan, who knew what was expected of him.

  “The source is her sister,” said Jonathan, seeing no reason to hide from Lincoln what he had already told Sickles.

  “Does this sister of hers know Stanton?”

  “No, sir. And I don’t believe that her sister is even aware that Stanton was the source.” He summarized Rebecca Deveaux’s story.

  “So McShane was aware of all this and said nothing.”

  This set Jonathan back. “I suppose not, sir.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “I am willing to believe that Stanton has gone over to the Radicals. Ever since his son died, Stanton has been growing closer and closer to Chase. They pray together, go to church together. Close to Chase means close to the Radicals.” A silence. Jonathan knew that the President was thinking of his own lost sons; and of his wife. “But I refuse to accept that Stanton would be a part of the larger conspiracy you describe. He is not a bad man. I can’t see him allied with people who would do murder. Especially because he and McShane were friends of long standing. Stanton may have switched sides, but your murderer is still on the loose.” He perched on the edge of his desk. “The police could still be right. The murder doesn’t have to be related to this thing.”

  Jonathan was about to argue, but Sickles gave him a look: the President was not finished.

  “Still. Stanton.” Lincoln sighed. “I can think of no man we can less afford to lose.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sickles, while Jonathan looked at the carpet.

  “The trial is three days away.” Thinking aloud now. “Three days. I wonder how long Stanton has been passing along information.” One of his long legs was swinging as he mused. “I reckon this is why the Radicals seem to know so much about our meetings. And I suppose they have full access to the files of the War Department.” The second seemed to distress him more than the first. “But that is not even the worst of it. When Seward was active, he controlled the Secret Service. During his … convalescence … the reins have sort of slipped into Stanton’s hands.”

  Jonathan blanched. Sickles was quicker. “So General Lafayette Baker has been working pretty much full-time for the Radicals.”

  Lincoln’s smile was rueful. “Looks like it.”

  “Sir,” said Jonathan, sur
prising himself, “you must dismiss Mr. Stanton from your Cabinet.”

  The bushy eyebrows went up. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because he has betrayed you. Because he is no better than a spy.”

  “Well, a spy can be useful, as long as the side he’s spying on knows that he’s a spy and the side he’s spying for doesn’t know they know.” Just like that, his good humor returned. He turned to Sickles. “Maybe it’s poetic justice, Dan. Stanton defended you when you shot Mr. Barton Key in front of the White House. He took the side everybody thought was going to lose, and he won. Now he’s taking the side everybody thinks is going to win, so maybe he’ll lose, just to balance things out. Fate will take care of everything, so I reckon I should just leave Stanton where he is.” Smiling now. Amazing how he could switch moods so suddenly. “Actually, it reminds me of the story about the farmer who built himself a shed where he raised chickens. Trouble was, the skunks got in after the chickens. So, every night, the farmer sat outside with his shotgun. He’d see a skunk and fire off a round, and he’d see another skunk and fire off another round, but he always missed. Finally, one night, he saw a dozen skunks at once over by the shed. He fired one round after another, but when he went over to see, he’d only killed a single skunk. After that, he hung up his gun. His friends asked why he didn’t sit out at night any more, shooting at the skunks. The farmer said it took him weeks just to kill the first one, and he was too busy to waste his time trying to kill a second.” Lincoln was laughing now, and his visitors with him. “I reckon sometimes you’re better off letting the skunk get at the hens a little bit instead of firing off all your ammunition hoping to hit him.”

  Jonathan’s head was spinning. He did not understand how Stanton could possibly stay in the Administration—sitting at meetings, running the military. Yet Sickles seemed to be going along.