“A list,” Abigail echoed, an idea forming.
“Yes. I think that is the most likely, because books on a shelf can be moved around by accident. The order can change. So I think it is probably a list. Of course”—tone suddenly bashful—“I could be wrong.”
“Do you think you’re wrong?”
An embarrassed smile, but at least he met her eyes. “No, Miss Abigail. I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“You know what? Neither do I.”
Book number thirteen.
II
Abigail decided to begin at once, scandalizing Nanny Pork.
“On the Sabbath?”
“I’m sorry, Nanny.”
“Goin out ridin with a young man is one thing. But you’re goin to work. This is wrong, child.”
“I have no choice.”
“Child, there is always a choice. I hopes I raised you to make the right ones.”
Along the way, Octavius continued trying to impress her with his knowledge of the city. He pointed out the house of the late Mrs. Rose Greenhow, a notorious Confederate spy, and told her how the South did little to disguise the identities of their secret agents, so that Mrs. Greenhow was simply “Mrs. G”; whereas the North named their agents for birds—“Sparrow,” “Eagle,” and the like—making them harder for the enemy to track down. But Abigail, distracted, was hardly paying attention, and at last Octavius fell silent. Book number thirteen, she was thinking. A list of books. A pre-existing set of numbers.
A perfect cipher for a lawyer.
And a perfect distraction from the secret aching worry that somehow she had contributed to the death of Congressman Blaine.
At Fourteenth and G, she asked Octavius to drop her outside.
Now it was the turn of Octavius to be scandalized. “I can’t leave you to enter the building alone, Miss Abigail. It is not gentlemanly.”
She smiled. “Mr. Addison, it is sweet of you to be concerned, but I have been alone in this office at many different hours of the day, and I have yet to come to any harm.”
He considered this. “But how will you get home?”
“Nanny will have Michael fetch me.”
“Perhaps I should wait, just in case.”
Abigail put a hand on his arm. “Any young lady would count herself lucky to have so fine a gentleman waiting on and protecting her. If ever I need protection, I shall call upon you. But, this afternoon, I shall be perfectly fine. I promise you.”
III
Upstairs, she took a moment to orient herself. Don’t think. Act. The cipher, not Blaine. Book number thirteen. The common room, of course, was lined with hundreds of books, and there were more in the partners’ offices. But during the weeks of preparing for trial, volumes had been pulled free and shoved back, not always in the original order. Surely this volatility was a natural characteristic of any serious library. Books were shelved for the sole purpose of making them easy to store, locate, remove, and reshelve. It was the removing, not the shelving, that made them useful.
Not the thirteenth book on the shelf, then, or the book on the thirteenth shelf; these positional understandings would have no lasting meaning. A book could be thirteenth from the end of one shelf at breakfast, and second from the end of another by luncheon. Therefore, book number thirteen must refer to a book whose numbering was not dependent on its position.
She turned to the office’s set of the reports of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Not every law office owned a full set, but Dennard & McShane possessed all the volumes.
She ran her fingers across their spines. The first four years of the Court were reported by Dallas; the next nine by Cranch; then twelve volumes of Wheaton, sixteen volumes of Peters, and twenty-four volumes of Howard. Black had produced only two volumes. Wallace, the current reporter, was somewhere in the vicinity of volume six. So two of the reporters, Peters and Howard, had each produced a thirteenth volume; or, if one counted from the beginning of the Court’s existence, the thirteenth volume would be the ninth volume of Cranch.
She got to work.
13 / 163 / 222 / 232 / 121 / 244
She started with the ninth volume of Cranch, the thirteenth volume of the work of the Supreme Court. The first suggestion Octavius had made was that in the set “163,” the first digit was a page, the second a line, the third a word. But there was nothing printed on page 1, so the numbers must mean something else. She tried page sixteen, which turned out to be the second page of a case called Meigs v. McClung’s Lessee. The name meant nothing to her. She cared about the page. The third word was “Marshall.” Then page twenty-two. No words. So already the idea was wrong.
What about page 163? No, that didn’t work, because …
After two hours, Abigail had tried every permutation she could think of, in the Cranch volume and in the thirteenth volumes of both Peters and Howard. None returned a message that made any sense. Despairing, she slid the books back into place and searched for something else—anything else—that had a thirteenth volume. She found nothing. She pulled down a couple of the treatises—Chitty, Blackstone—but could not correlate to the cipher anybody’s section thirteen or chapter thirteen or page thirteen. She tried such volumes as the office possessed of the Statutes at Large, and the reports of local courts in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Nothing worked.
And, suddenly, it was dark. She had been at the office for five hours, pursuing the absurd theory that Octavius had concocted.
She curbed her irritation. The idea was not absurd. Every instinct Abigail possessed told her that Octavius was right; not only that, but that between Rebecca Deveaux and Arthur McShane there had existed an understanding that would enable him to decipher the message: she would have hidden the treasure where McShane could find it.
The message told him where.
The thirteenth something. If not the thirteenth in a series of books, then what?
As she slipped into her coat and snuffed the gas lamp she did not remember lighting, Abigail Canner told herself that the answer, sooner or later, would suggest itself. Patience and determination had so far won every battle she had fought in her young life.
This one would, she told herself, be no different.
IV
Stepping out onto the landing, confident that Michael would be waiting, Abigail heard a familiar uneven clomping from below. Dan Sickles was making his painful way up.
Emerging from the stairwell, he mopped his brow with a handkerchief. She could read the agony on his face. Their eyes met, and she felt a flush of embarrassment at having caught so proud a man in a moment of weakness. Then he straightened, and flashed the familiar roguish grin. “Miss Canner. An unexpected pleasure.”
“Mr. Sickles,” she murmured.
He winked. “I would never have guessed that you were the sort to labor on the Sabbath.”
She ignored his mockery, for she understood him better now: the world had taken his leg and left him in constant pain, and he responded by refusing to take anything seriously.
“I was looking for a book,” she said.
“I see.” He glanced at her empty hands, then back up at her face. Both waited. “You did well with the Chanticleer letters,” he finally said, moving toward the offices. “Sometimes a lawyer’s work is grubby.”
Telling her he knew how her role in destroying poor Corbin Yardley had wounded her. She nodded, turned to go; turned back, remembering Octavius’s lecture this afternoon in his carriage. Chanticleer—didn’t the word—
“It is well that I ran into you, Mr. Sickles,” she said. “I have an idea.”
CHAPTER 37
Assignment
I
MONDAY BEGAN WITH a moment of prayer for “our fallen brother” James Blaine; but Sickles was right: the prosecution had momentum now, and the Managers were not about to postpone over so mundane a matter as the death of a congressman. After the prayer, the Senate adopted a resolution of condolence, and then the Chief Justice
took the chair, and the trial resumed. After the clerk read the record of Friday’s proceedings came a further tussle over documents.
“Mr. Chief Justice and Senators,” said Benjamin Butler, “before we proceed with today’s evidence, I would ask consent to say a word about Mr. Yardley’s testimony of last week.” He stood resplendent in an obviously new suit that did not completely disguise his not-quite-military physique. “Mr. Yardley gave us examples of the depredations suffered by his race at the hands of the white Southerners, who are attempting to build on the backs of the freedmen a version of the dominance that they exercised as slave owners. The Southern states, only two years after being defeated, have all enacted Black Codes, which, despite the legislation passed by this Congress, they have been loath to abandon. If you will indulge me a moment more, sirs, I should like to read aloud a short portion of the Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867, to review for this august body the life led at this time by the freedmen.”
Dennard was on the verge of objecting, but Sickles tugged at his sleeve, and he subsided. The document might be formally objectionable, but it was also innocuous, and there was no point in angering either Chase or the Senators.
Butler shoved his pince-nez up his narrow nose and commenced reading: “ ‘The idea of admitting the freedmen to an equal participation in civil and political rights was not entertained in any part of the South,’ ” he began.
“Or any part of the North,” Abigail whispered, and both Kate and Meg gave her odd looks; they were well-bred Northern ladies, and understood the mistreatment of negroes as a purely Southern phenomenon.
“ ‘In most of the States,’ ” Butler continued, “ ‘they were not allowed to sit on juries, or even to testify in any case in which white men were parties. They were forbidden to own or bear fire-arms, and thus were rendered defenceless against assaults.’ ” He shut the book and resumed his proud stance. “Here, then, Senators, we see Mr. Yardley’s dilemma. Even had he known the identities of the marauders who burned his barn, and even had he found a lawyer to press his suit, he would not have been able to give testimony, so his case would have been thrown out of court. If, on the other hand, he chose to defend himself against the criminals, his mere possession of the means of defense would have rendered him liable for arrest. And yet Mr. Lincoln would prefer, rather than protecting a man like Mr. Yardley, to treat with the very white Southerners—”
Dennard was bellowing, but only to be heard over the tumult. Senators were shouting. Chase slammed his gavel repeatedly onto its stand until the room calmed down. “The gentlemen will be in order,” he commanded. He turned to Dennard. “Mr. Dennard, do you have an objection?”
“We do, Your Honor. Mr. Yardley’s testimony was admitted only subject to the limitation that the purpose was to establish the state of mind of certain federal officials in the South. It was not admitted to show the truth of the claim of what Mr. Lincoln supposedly said, and therefore it is improper for the distinguished Manager to refer to Mr. Lincoln’s supposed words as though they were established fact.”
Butler half turned, so that his response was addressed less to the Chief Justice than to the Senators, his intended audience. “Your Honor, the Managers have adduced a superfluity of evidence of Mr. Lincoln’s gentle dealings with the very white Southerners who previously so oppressed the black man.”
Chase shook his head. “Counsel for the respondent is correct. The Manager will restrict his commentary to facts in evidence.”
This time Abigail could not restrain herself. She leaned toward her companion. “His order applies only to the lawyers. He places no limits on what the Senators may say.”
At this implied criticism of her father, Kate stiffened. “The Chief Justice is not empowered to do so. He has not the authority to limit the debate by the Senators.”
Margaret Felix, once more sitting across Abigail from her rival, smirked. “I have noticed the Chief Justice gaveling Senators to order from time to time.”
“Only when they are speaking out of order. The chair places no limit on what they are entitled to say.”
“Suppose he were to try,” said Meg.
“A meaningless supposition,” answered Kate, and, fanning, leaned away.
Kate and Meg kept talking across Abigail, and their sniping distracted her from following the sharper sniping below. She had not realized until now that these two women, the former belle of Washington society and the current belle of Philadelphia society, detested each other. At the same time, their ability to remain warmly affectionate despite their inner seething was sufficiently impressive that Abigail almost wished she hated somebody enough to give it a try.
Down below, Butler had finished. Dennard, speaking even more ponderously than usual, reminded the body that the credibility of Mr. Yardley had been called severely into question. He suggested to the Senators that they rely on no part of his testimony. He added that the chamber was well rid of so unreliable a witness, and a man who had admitted to accepting a bribe.
Again Abigail cringed.
Kate Sprague, as usual, missed nothing. “If you are still feeling guilty,” she said gently, “perhaps you are on the wrong side.”
II
The Managers had moved back to the second count of the impeachment, and were trying to prove by documents alone, without any accompanying testimony, that the President had closed several opposition newspapers during the war, and in a few cases tossed the editors into prison. Because the charge was true, and everyone in the room knew it was true, the objections were mainly for show.
As the ladies fenced above, so did the lawyers down below.
“There is no more reason,” said Benjamin Butler, “to challenge these documents than there was to challenge the documents admitted last week.” He toyed with his golden locks. “The second count of the bill of impeachment alleges that the said Abraham Lincoln has violated the liberties of the people of the United States. To wit, he has thrown political opponents in prison and shut down their newspapers.” A tiny smile, as if in acknowledgment of his own complicity: for Ben Butler, while running New Orleans, had also done a thing or two. “He has declared martial law even in cities of the North, and ordered the seizure of every telegram sent in the United States.” Butler turned toward the ranked members. “Without exception.”
Dennard rose to speak. Chase shook his head. “You will have your turn. Sit.”
“There were no exceptions,” Butler repeated. “Consider. Mr. Lincoln ordered the seizure of copies of every telegram sent in the United States. He said he was searching for spies, but he made no exceptions, say, for the correspondence of a member of this august body. Or the Chief Justice. Or anyone sitting today in the gallery.” A nod toward the defense table. “Every person sitting in this room, if he had sent a telegram within the six months prior to the President’s order, would have had his telegram seized.”
Dennard objected. “I believe that copies of telegrams were seized. No messages were delayed in delivery.”
A chuckle from the gallery. Chase was not amused. “Sit down, Mr. Dennard. I have told you to wait your turn.”
A few minutes later, Butler was done. The Chief Justice decreed a fifteen-minute recess.
“I hope they admit all the documents,” said Meg as they waited.
“Why?” asked Abigail.
“Because it will be fascinating to see the proof of Mr. Lincoln’s misdeeds laid out for the country.”
“Surely that is the question before this House,” Abigail said. She had mastered, these past days, the playful conversational style of the finer Washington ladies. “Whether Mr. Lincoln’s many good deeds are indeed also misdeeds.”
“Oh, they are misdeeds,” said Margaret, working hard to keep up. “They may have been meant as good deeds, but they missed their targets, and therefore are misdeeds.”
“If they are misdeeds, it is because they struck their targets,” said Kate, the clever smile stretching her small, prim mouth.
&
nbsp; “Mainly rebel soldiers,” said Abigail.
III
Dennard’s turn arrived. He promised to be brief. The country was at war, he said. There were spies everywhere, the spies were sending messages by telegraph. If there was another way to get the messages without seizing the telegrams, the President and his advisers had not been able to come up with it in the heat of the moment. Nor had one been suggested since.
“And besides,” he said, “telegraph messages aren’t private.”
The audience’s attention tautened.
“Of course they are,” said Butler, in his surprise speaking quite out of turn.
“A message sent by telegraph is read by the man who transcribes it at the telegraph office, the man who sends the code, the man who receives the code at the other end, and the man who writes out the words. The man who delivers the message might read it, too. So might the man to whom we give the assignment of carrying our message to the telegraph office in the first place.” An elaborate shrug, as if to say that there were too many more potential readers to bother mentioning. “So the President’s order did not violate anybody’s privacy. Besides, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution. A right to property, surely. But the message forms—the actual papers seized—well, if they constitute the property of anybody at all, I suppose they would be the property of the telegraph company. Let the Western Union Company, if it chooses, come to the Capitol to seek damages. Let the company go into court. The company will lose. In wartime, the government has a call upon the property of the people if that property is necessary to the war effort. The President and his advisers judged that seizing the telegraph forms was necessary. I should think that would be the end of the debate.” Dennard put his hands on his hips, no small matter for a man of his girth. “Now, you might disagree with the President’s judgment of necessity. You might have made a different decision, sitting in his office. But unless you are able to show the clear violation of a criminal statute, the proper forum for the expression of a disagreement over policy is the ballot box, not the court of impeachment.”
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Page 37
