The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

  Jonathan looked up at the gallery. Abigail was back in her seat.

  III

  Jonathan adjourned to the conference room with the lawyers, aching inside at the thought that Abigail, as fully as he a member of the team, was trapped outside by the interlocking rules and traditions of the Capitol, and of the nation its solons governed. He marveled at the distance between the men who presided in this building, and the larger America beyond the boundaries of Washington City, and wondered whether, with the passage of time, that distance would grow greater or smaller. Then, with the discipline familiar to him, he forced these thoughts away and focused on the more practical problem of making sure that the cards marked with the various precedents Mr. Dennard might require were properly sorted and properly marked, so that Jonathan could put the needed card into the lawyer’s plump hand without any need for him to ask.

  Rellman was holding a package for Sickles, and Jonathan knew at once that it was what Abigail had been sent to obtain.

  Then he looked again. It was the parcel sent by the mysterious Chanticleer, the one containing scraps of newspaper and the records of some investigation into the doings of South Carolina’s railroads.

  Jonathan was about to ask why on earth the papers were suddenly so important when a voice spoke beside him: “Excuse me.”

  Jonathan looked up to see one of the Senate pages, bending low to whisper. He was an Irishman of some years, prim and disapproving. “There is a young lady who wishes to see you. She is in the foyer.” A judgmental pause. “I told her you were not to be interrupted, but she was quite adamant.”

  Jonathan rose, glancing around, but the other members of the team were busy at their notes. It was typical that Abigail would choose this moment to make her stand, to demand entrance precisely when embarrassment to the President and his counsel was likely to be highest: not because she wished Mr. Lincoln ill, but because her sense of justice possesed no patience. Now Jonathan would no doubt have to go and calm matters, and do it in such a way that the incident, whatever it was, would not redound to the detriment of the case.

  The corridor, as usual, was busy. Jonathan turned right and approached the barrier, where a sleepy Capitol guard stood theoretical watch. He searched the throng in the foyer beyond but picked out no brown faces. Then he saw, standing near the chicane, Kate Sprague, talking to a stout woman whose hat hid her face. Even before the stranger looked up, Jonathan knew from the set of long neck and strong shoulders that this was a soldier’s daughter; and he even knew which soldier.

  “What are you doing here?” he cried, inevitably, hurrying forward.

  Margaret Felix held both his hands in hers in a great show of gaiety. Even through the gloves he could feel the animal warmth that always so enticed him. She was winter-pale, the green eyes appraising, her prim face oddly distant, despite the intimacy of her touch. She was directly in front of him and yet out of reach, as though they stood on separate floes, passing close in icy waters even as the current carried them in opposite directions.

  “I told Father I wanted to see the trial. He was unable to make the trip, but I came anyway. I am staying with Aunt Clara for at least a fortnight, possibly more.” Touching his cheek. “Isn’t it wonderful, darling? We can spend more time together.”

  “Wonderful,” he echoed, smiling more weakly than either of them expected.

  Margaret winked rather prettily and re-joined her rival. The two of them strolled across the foyer and into the crowd of the great and near-great of Washington, all gathered to watch the most powerful President in the history of the young nation deposed from office by a wholly constitutional coup d’état.

  IV

  “So Meg is here,” said Fielding, the two of them sitting before the fire with their usual brandies. “That makes things nice for you, doesn’t it?”

  It makes things even nicer for you, Jonathan almost said, thinking of Abigail, but he steered his thoughts away from those paths, reminding himself that he loved Margaret Felix, and would be marrying her in the fall.

  “Very nice,” said Jonathan, touching the glass to his lips.

  “Tubby Longchamps tells me I should start attending the trial. He says the next few days are going to be rather good fun.” Fielding freshened both glasses. “He says the Managers will be putting on some rather nice witnesses.”

  “Did he say who they are?”

  “Only that their testimony will devastate your man. That was Tubby’s very word. ‘Devastate.’ ”

  “We’re ready for them.” But he could not muster the confidence he needed.

  “Glad to hear it, Hills. Oh, say. You’ll never guess who dropped by today.”

  “Who?”

  “That police fellow. The inspector. What’s his name?”

  “Varak.”

  “Right.” Fielding stood up, walked across the Persian rug, prodded the fire with the poker. “Quite a clamorous little man, I must say.”

  “It was my understanding that the investigation is closed.”

  “He wasn’t asking about McShane, old man. He was asking about you. If you’re the trustworthy sort, tell the truth, keep confidences, all that.” He straightened up, slashing the poker through the air like an épée. “I suppose he was asking if you are a gentleman.”

  Jonathan roused himself. “Did he say why he wanted to know?”

  “I rather had the impression that he thought he had misjudged you. Owed you an apology and so forth.” Fielding sounded more bored than ever. “He did mention some hogwash about matters being other than as they appeared.”

  “An apology,” Jonathan repeated. “Did you ask why?”

  “Goodness no, old man. No business of mine. I promised to convey the man’s message, and he went on his way.”

  Later, Jonathan stood in the window of his bedroom on the fourth story. Streetlamps glowed softly in the gray night fog. So Varak wanted to apologize. For dismissing the conspiracy theories Jonathan and Abigail had presented? Or for closing his investigation, and leaving them to press on alone?

  CHAPTER 34

  Entrepreneur

  I

  “THE HOUSE MANAGERS will proceed with their evidence,” said the Chief Justice, after the reading of the previous day’s proceedings. It was Friday, the fifth official day of the trial, and the first witness was about to be called.

  “The view is very fine from here,” said Meg. Addressing Kate, she said, “I see that you can see your husband.”

  “And you your husband-to-be,” said Mrs. Sprague.

  There were three of them now, in the front row of the gallery—Abigail seated in the center with Kate Sprague on her left and Margaret Felix on her right. The Lion’s daughter could hardly allow the Chief Justice’s daughter to win this minor battle for the public perception: after all, the two fathers might well be rivals next year, or four years after, for the presidency. Today Abigail had remembered her fan, and found herself waving it in time to the movements of the other women, an entire row of feminine hands ticking like metronomes, even if hers was the only dark one.

  Fielding Bannerman sat a couple of rows behind. Abigail had been astonished to see him, and he had greeted her with a little bow and explained that he was here to watch the fun.

  The Managers, as expected, called Corbin Yardley. As far as the defense knew, he would be the sole colored witness at the trial. They also knew, in general terms, that he would support the claim of the prosecution that Lincoln was not protecting the freedmen as he should. Abigail’s interview with him had obtained no more.

  Butler led Yardley gently through his story. After freedom, Yardley had founded a feed business, he said. The business had grown, but the white folks were jealous. Eventually, the Ku Klux had burned his barn, and all his feed with it.

  A chill passed through the room.

  “What happened as a result of the fire?” asked Butler.

  Yardley was a wiry man, too long in the arms and legs for his shiny black suit. His unhappy brown face was chipped and
pitted, as if he had battled his way through a series of illnesses, to emerge wounded but whole. Abigail felt a warm surge of camaraderie, as if they had fought a war together, and she cringed at the thought of what was going to happen.

  “Well, sir,” he said, “my stocks of feed was pretty much destroyed.”

  “And your business?”

  “Yes, sir. That was pretty much destroyed, too.”

  After the fire, said Yardley, he had visited the local sheriff, who had laughed him out of the room, and then the Freedmen’s Bureau, which offered a few token supplies but no more. The bureau suggested he get himself a lawyer, but that would have done no good, because Yardley had no idea who the men were who had burned his barn, and the Klan, he told the Senators, don’t exist. Not officially. And a jury, Abigail was thinking as her guilt and fury grew, would not in any case have made him whole, even in the unlikely event that a South Carolina court would allow his suit. She harbored no illusions about the strictures of the man’s predicament. Corbin Yardley had placed his faith in the government, and for all that he knew, the sheriff, or the judge, or the foreman of the jury might have been one of the Kluxers who burned the barn.

  “What did you do next?” asked Butler.

  Yardley’s voice dropped. He had been speaking softly from the beginning, perhaps out of awe at his surroundings, and now practically whispered. First Butler, then the Chief Justice had to tell him to speak up.

  Well, finally—said Yardley—finally, he had gone to see the military governor of South Carolina. Like all the military governors, the man was a Lincoln appointee, confirmed by the Senate.

  “When did you see the governor?” asked Butler.

  “Sir, it was early September. I remember because it was the day we had that terrible hurricane. People said it was the judgment of God on the South.”

  He told the governor his story, said Yardley, and waited for some word of hope or encouragement. Instead, said Yardley, the governor had spent a lot of time beating around the bush, and had finally said that he would have somebody look into it, but that Yardley should not expect too much.

  Why not? the freedman had asked.

  Because—said Yardley—Mr. Lincoln had ordered—

  Dennard was on his feet, objecting. “This is hearsay. This is in fact hearsay twice over. The witness is testifying to what another individual said that respondent said.”

  Chase looked at Butler.

  “Your Honor, it is the theory of the Managers that respondent created within the military governments a general sense that the complaints of the freedmen were less important than good relations with white Southerners. We are not introducing this testimony to show what orders Mr. Lincoln may actually have given but to show the general sentiment that he created.”

  Abigail had not yet studied the hearsay rule, but she could spot an absurdity when she heard one. To her astonishment, Chase announced that the testimony would be admissible. Beside her, Kate put a hand over her face and whispered what sounded like “Oh, Father.” Abigail hesitated, then touched her new friend’s hand. Kate stiffened, looked at her, then smiled slowly; and sadly. And because the only things that ever saddened Kate Sprague were those that made her father’s ascension to the presidency less likely, Abigail assumed that Chase had made not a legal blunder but a political one.

  Meg, watching the byplay, did not want to be left out. “I am sure the Chief Justice will not be overruled,” she murmured, missing the point.

  The fans kept fluttering.

  Down below, meanwhile, a Lincoln supporter in the Senate had asked that the chamber be polled on the admissibility of the testimony. A recess was demanded in order that the members might retire to their conference room.

  “You are very sweet,” said Kate, giving the black woman’s fingers a brief squeeze. “I can understand why”—a sly glance at Meg—“so many men adore you.”

  “Oh?” said Meg, pretending nonchalance. “Which men are those?”

  Kate was having fun. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Young Mr. Bannerman, for one,” she said, to Abigail’s chagrin. The three women turned as one, but Fielding was in the aisle, chatting amiably with a sour-looking fellow whom he addressed as Tubby.

  “Are there others?” asked Meg.

  “Her fiancé is at the South,” said Kate, answering, as was her habit, a slightly different question. “And our Abigail, in the midst of so many admirers, remains true to him. I find that terribly romantic. Don’t you?”

  Abigail had not told Mrs. Sprague anything about Aaron.

  “Terribly,” said Meg.

  “He must be a remarkable man,” said Kate.

  Abigail said nothing. At this very moment, if he was alive, her remarkable Aaron was suffering in some dank Southern prison, if he had not actually been returned to slavery, a fate that the rebels had decreed randomly, not even according to their own laws but according instead to the need for labor. There were moments when she was nearly able to let go of the image, to accept what everyone told her. Whether sternly, like Nanny, or gently, like Dinah, everyone told Abigail that her husband-to-be was dead. She shivered. The temptation was strong. But then she would imagine him fully, the confidence of his smile, the warmth of his strong arms and thick body, the delight she felt in being near him, in stretching and squirming against him in ways most unladylike, the aching physical need for him to hold her once more, even if it was the final clasp before death. Judith used to tease her relentlessly—He is going to war, you need to let him do what men do!—but Abigail, although it frustrated both her and her beau, had remained true to her mother’s teachings. Another time, Judith, smiling maliciously, had told Abigail that their mother, had she lived, would have advised her to yield, in order to ensure the marriage, but that was not true. Hortense Canner had craved not marriage as such but the family’s upward progress. She would have counseled Abigail to give in only to a man of a higher class, and lighter hue, and Aaron was neither.

  Her mother, Abigail realized with a start, would even have preferred a white man to Aaron; and a rich white man would have been better still.

  “She had better remain true to her fiancé,” Margaret was saying. “Because rather horrible things can happen to people who don’t.”

  II

  The Senators decided to hear the testimony, and Corbin Yardley finished his story. He had visited the military governor, and been turned away empty-handed. The governor had told him that there was nothing to be done. The President—according to the governor—wanted the Union troops to interfere as little as possible. He thought it was time that the South took charge of its own destiny.

  “Repeat that, please,” said Butler.

  Yardley’s voice grew reedier than ever. “Sir, he said the President thought it was time the South took charge of its own destiny.”

  “And by the President, you took him to mean Mr. Lincoln?”

  Dennard objected, but Yardley had already answered—“Yes, sir”—and Chase merely shook his head.

  “Did the governor say anything else about Mr. Lincoln?”

  “Sir, he said that Mr. Lincoln wanted South Carolina to send folks to Congress as soon as possible.”

  Angry mutters throughout the Senate Chamber. Hearsay or not, the testimony suggested that the President proposed to trespass on the Congress’s own sacred right to decide whether to seat new members.

  “How would that be possible,” asked Butler, “given that South Carolina remains under martial law?”

  Chase sustained Dennard’s objection: the matter was outside the competence of the witness.

  Butler, having made his point, moved on. “Did you ever get full recompense for your feed business?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Were any of the men who burned your barn ever identified?”

  “No, sir.”

  Butler put a hand on the rail. “Mr. Yardley, you served in the Union Army, did you not?”

  “Yes, sir. Second Colored Light Artillery.”
/>   “Did you see action?”

  “Sir, I was at Fort Pillow.”

  Butler let the dread name hang in the air: the infamous massacre of colored troops by Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who later led the Ku Klux.

  “On behalf of the Congress of the United States,” Butler said at last, “may I offer you the apologies of this nation, and the assurance that those who did these terrible things will receive their just punishment, whether now or in the world to come.”

  With that, he tendered the witness.

  “Another difficult day for Mr. Lincoln,” murmured Margaret Felix, scarcely able to conceal her delight.

  “I think not,” said Kate, before Abigail could speak.

  “Oh?”

  “They have something. I can see it in her face.”

  Both women were staring at Abigail, who knew that she should feel a sense of triumph: what was about to happen to Corbin Yardley was largely her doing.

  Instead, she felt only the empty, painful throb of guilt.

  III

  “Cross-examination,” said Chase.

  Dennard was a moment rising. He seemed to struggle. From behind the effect was comic, as though his bulk was too weighty for his legs. But his face, Abigail knew, would be thundery, and from the point of view of the witness, Dennard would appear a broad and powerful avenger. She understood this effect in part because her late father had used a version of the same trick when scolding his children, but mostly because Dennard, at his most pedantic, had explained his methods to her, proposing that she file the knowledge away until, in his words, she grew fat enough to use it.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Yardley,” said Dennard.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said the witness, warily.

  “I want to thank you for coming all this way to share your testimony with us today.” Yet his tone was anything but kindly. “And I would like to congratulate you on your freedom.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “That my country admitted and sustained the wicked institution of slavery is a blot on our history, and always will be. The bloody war we fought to extinguish the institution was our just punishment for our sin.” He hitched up his pants, as if to say that the trial, sadly, nevertheless had to proceed. “Now, sir. You live where?”