Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  And so it went. Agnes grew increasingly cross, relegated to the role of observer. And what she observed disturbed her: emotion ruled among these men who led Missouri’s government and society. Sober judgment fled as the evening droned on and the wine flowed, and even Jabez allowed his temper to flash, as he debated Jo Shelby on point after point. The future loomed dark indeed.

  

  “Do all those men at dinner yesterday own slaves?” she asked.

  They huddled in the lee of the ferry boat cabin, crossing the Missouri into Kansas. Sleet whipped over the riverbed with needlelike intensity, lowering grey skies met foaming waves in fierce opposition to the needs of her tender digestive system. Agnes yanked her cloak more tightly about her neck and huddled against Jabez. He seemed immune to the elements.

  “A couple of them have substantial farming operations. Jo Shelby is the largest slaveholder in the state. The others probably have a few house servants, at the least.”

  “But you’ve never supported extending slavery. Why do you associate with them?”

  “I wouldn’t associate with Jo Shelby if he didn’t turn up everywhere. The others I find to be intelligent, thoughtful men. I don’t happen to agree with their views on that subject. These are some of the men who will determine which way Missouri goes when war breaks out. I’d like to be a part of that.”

  “Mr. Hall didn’t appear to agree with that Shelby man. I was quite disgusted with him. Shelby, I mean.” The boat dropped into a deep trough, and Agnes gasped, burying her face in the rough cloth of Jabez’s greatcoat.

  “Hall’s a Union man. I think he invites Shelby to keep a finger on the pulse of the radicals who’re always looking for a reason to kill and maim their neighbors. That’s what Jo Shelby wants, by the way, which is why I detest him.” He tugged her hood more closely about her face and wiped a drop of rain off her nose. “I much prefer free labor, but I worry less about slavery than about the federals sticking their noses in the state’s concerns. If I have any impact at all on prevailing opinion, it’ll be to raise the threat of invasion from the north.”

  Her head jerked up. “Invasion? What makes you think they’d invade?”

  “Haven’t they already? You know what John Brown did, he butchered and murdered. And now he’s a hero up there.” His voice hoarsened. “What Emerson said, and Thoreau and those soft headed … for the love of God, they call that man moral and humane? And there’ll be more like him, it’s a holy war to them.” The boat bumped against the western shore, and Jabez pulled her to her feet, muttering. “They think they’re Michael and his angels fighting the dragon.” He shook his head and said no more.

  They hurried down the ramp and joined a line of people waiting for a hack. After a mile’s drive, they reached the town of Elwood, which fought a continuous battle with St. Joe for the overland trade. It boasted a dozen stores, sawmills, printers’ and land agents’ offices, and a hotel, the Great Western, three stories high. Its dining room, the largest space available in town, served as the scene of this lecture. Tables stood stacked in the lobby and the hallways, chairs and benches lined the room without consideration for the width of the ladies’ crinolines, and a narrow corridor of standing room accommodated the overflow. Jabez wedged Agnes through the chattering crowd to a seat on a bench half the length of the room from the speaker’s stand, while he stepped against the wall to stand for the duration.

  Early dusk seeped through the few windows, and the crowded hall soaked up the gloom from outside. Coal oil lamps strained to pierce the heavy shadows. At the front of the room a platform stood, lined along the front edge with lanterns and along the rear with a dozen upholstered chairs and their occupants, none of whom Agnes recognized. The crowd grew quiet as a bewhiskered fellow with exaggerated collar points moved to center stage and began to speak. Agnes paid little attention to him but studied the men on the platform. None showed the slightest evidence of being a renowned orator, much less the possible next president. Perhaps he’d been delayed? If he’d cancelled, their miserable journey through the sleet would have been for naught.

  But the speaker with the whiskers introduced Mr. Abraham Lincoln, and a clean-shaven man seated on the far right rose and moved to the forefront. In his chair, he appeared no taller than average. On his feet, he towered over every other man on the stage, probably anyone in the room. His ill-fitting black suit complemented his mussed black hair, and his arms and legs seemed to move without reference to each other. A very broad forehead over deep-sunk eyes and high cheek bones framed a magnificent hooked nose, and his ears roosted on his head like wings.

  He started with a story, his voice a high-pitched twang, something about having been labeled two-faced by a political opponent, and said, “If I had another face, would I be wearing this one?” The crowd laughed and Agnes joined in, a clever beginning.

  He gazed about the room, sharp eyes lighting on first one then another of the audience. “I should not wonder,” he said “that there are some Missourians about this audience, or if not, that by speaking distinctly, some of the Missourians may hear me on the other side of the river.” More laughter, and from the back of the room a nasal voice shouted, “We’re here!”

  “For that reason,” Mr. Lincoln continued, “I propose to address a portion of what I have to say to the Missourians.” He drew himself up. “The issue between you and me, understand, is that I think slavery is wrong, and ought not to be outspread, and you think it is right and ought to be extended and perpetuated.”

  The same voice called out, “Amen!” and Mr. Lincoln flapped his big hand. “That is my Missourian I am talking to now.” The crowd hooted.

  “My friend Senator Douglas never says your institution of slavery is wrong. He never says it is right, to be sure, but he never says it is wrong. At the same time, he molds the sentiment of the north, by never saying it is right.”

  As he began to speak of slavery, his face commenced to light up, as if from within, his eyes sparked, his inelegant limbs became almost graceful. “He said upon the floor of the Senate, and he has repeated it a great many times, that he does not care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, that it is simply a question of dollars and cents, that there is a line drawn by the Almighty on one side of which slavery must always exist.” He strode to the far edge of the platform and pointed a long forefinger at a paunchy gentleman in the front row. “I ask you, if this is true, that a man may rightfully hold another man as property on one side of the line, you must then admit he has the same right to hold his property on the other side.” The crowd roared.

  Agnes found his countenance captivating, astoundingly ugly in repose but transformed by zeal and candlelight into something resplendent and powerful.

  “Douglas’s great principle, popular sovereignty, gives you, by natural consequence, the revival of the slave trade whenever you want it. He says that it is the sacred right of the man who goes into the territories to have slavery if he wants it. Is it not then the sacred right of the man that don’t go there equally to buy slaves in Africa, if he wants them? Can you point out the difference?”

  Heads nodded, several people applauded.

  “I often hear it intimated that the people of the south mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican or anything like it, is elected president.”

  A new voice, from among the crowd at the door: “That’s so.”

  “That is so, one of them says. I wonder if he is a Missourian?”

  Another voice: “He’s a Douglas man.”

  “Well, then, I want to know what you’re going to do with your half of it? Are you going to split the Missouri and Ohio Rivers down through, and push your half off a piece?” Applause and laughter. “Or are you going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous fellows? Or are you going to build up a wall some way between your country and ours, by which that moveable property of yours can’t come over here anymore? Will you make war upon us and kill
us all?” He bent his knees, then straightened them forcefully, at the same time throwing out his arms. “Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave as any men alive, you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living, that you have shown yourselves capable of that upon various occasions, but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us.” Loud cheering to a background of yips and rude shouts. “You will never make much of a hand at whipping us!”

  Agnes glanced over her shoulder at Jabez. He slouched against the wall, one booted ankle crossed over another, restless hands turning an unlit cigar end over end. His expression remained bland.

  Mr. Lincoln threw down a challenge, an invitation to bloodshed, to these southerners so consumed by the poison of affronted honor. He next repeated a phrase Agnes had read several times about a house divided against itself not standing, that a government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. Then he said something that took her by surprise, as his whole speech until that moment seemed so opposed.

  “I will say—” he stuck his bony hands in his pockets as if to keep them out of mischief—”that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into the idea of a declaration of war is a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse.” And he drew a laugh from the crowd again, to soften the import of his words.

  Mr. Lincoln slipped a watch from its fob and a kerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “Allow me to close with an observation,” he said, his voice quiet now and sad. “John Brown will on the morrow be executed for treason against the state. He has shown great courage, rare unselfishness, but we cannot object to his execution even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right.” He replaced the watch and the kerchief and lifted his arms, and the shadow cast by the footlights resembled a monstrous hovering bat. “Treason,” he said. “And if the south attempts to destroy the Union, that too shall be treason, and that treason will be dealt as old John Brown has been dealt.”

  For a moment the crowd held its breath, and then the room erupted in cheers, shouts, whistles, stomping feet, jeers and hisses. Jabez slipped his arm around Agnes’s waist, elbowing his way through the crowd and out the wide double doors, and onto the street, where icy rain drove like shards of glass, and the hacks waited. They procured one all to themselves, and as they made their way to the ferry slip, the spell of that candlelit room and the stunning orator began to wear away.

  “Well?” Agnes said. “What did you think?” And without waiting: “Amazing man— astonishing speaker! Everything so simply put, so well construed. He has a wisdom that we so seldom see in our great men.”

  “He is exceptional, I grant you that,” Jabez said, adjusting the carriage robe over her lap.

  “Don’t say you didn’t like him. Do you take issue with him?” Jabez seemed to Agnes to be unduly obstinate.

  “No, I liked what he said, for the most part. I believe he has an uncommon grasp of the problems we face. Few men I’ve heard or read express themselves so clearly.”

  “Then what didn’t you like?”

  “I believe he’d do whatever is necessary to keep the Union in one piece, and that means attacking the south. Douglas will be the Democratic candidate, and if Lincoln is the Republican candidate, then a vote for Douglas would be a vote for peace. A vote for Lincoln would be a vote for war.”

  “And why would a vote for Douglas be a vote for peace?”

  “He’d negotiate, try to compromise. The south will trust him, at least more than it will trust any Republican.”

  “A compromise similar to the one he made that started the Kansas war?”

  “Well, you surely have a point there.” He sat back in the hard seat and grinned at her. His teeth flashed in the light of the buggy’s lanterns. “He’s a manipulator, it’s true, and will say what his audience wants to hear, but if he stretches out the negotiations long enough, slavery will collapse of its own weight, and the South’s society will change in the natural course of things.”

  “And that’s the solution? Continuing procrastination until something changes?” Now she was thoroughly irritated with him.

  “Agnes, anything is better than all-out war.”

  She said nothing, listened to the beat of water against the canvas roof and pulled the lap robe closer about her. He turned away, his shoulders sagging. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen. Bodies torn to bits, infection, dirt and pain.” His voice cracked. “Young lives ended miserably, boys left to die in muddy gore, alone and in agony. Nothing can be worth that. Nothing.”

  They rode to the ferry in silence, boarded in silence, crossed in silence. Back in St. Joseph, the rain settled into heavy, steady drops, and the slimy clay path into town sucked at their boots. Agnes ducked her head against the weather and tucked in behind Jabez, her hand in the crook of his elbow, and so when he stopped abruptly at the steps of the hotel veranda, she crashed into the sodden wool of his greatcoat. The veranda was empty but for a single figure leaning against the clapboard wall, hands in pockets, a thin cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth. A subtle aroma rose from him, and Agnes drew back slightly, turning away.

  “Miz Robinson.” The man stepped forward and dropped his hand on her arm. A swollen purple scar slashed his left cheek, but she recognized his silver eyes.

  “Willard Bigelow,” she said. “How came you here?”

  Willard’s eyes narrowed. “I can be wherever I please, ma’am.”

  Jabez moved toward him, glowering. “Bigelow, step back from my wife,” he snapped and shoved the man’s hand from Agnes’s arm.

  Willard backed up a step, a derisive smile on his bristled face, hands held out in front of him. “Now, Doc, I just thought I’d say hello to your lady, seeing as we’re friends and neighbors.”

  “We’re not friends, and I’ll thank you to move along,” Jabez said.

  “Hey, this here’s a public walk, and I got a right to be on it,” Willard said. He turned to Agnes and bowed from the waist. “Ma’am, happy to see you again after all this time. My brother Jake speaks highly of you.” He turned to Jabez. “Your husband might’ve told you we ran into each other in Kansas City some years ago. He loaned me his knife. Right thoughtful of him.”

  Agnes shivered and stepped back against her husband. Jabez took her arm, keeping his eyes on Willard. “Agnes, if ever you see this man in our vicinity, get out the shotgun.”

  “Don’t be giving her bad ideas about me, Doc.” He flicked the end of his cigar into the street. “I still got that knife. I aim to return the favor some day.”

  “You do that, Bigelow.” Jabez steered her toward the hotel door. Willard pushed in front of them. She smelled whiskey on him and wrinkled her nose. He laughed in her face and leaned in.

  “I mean it, Doc, you come down on the right side in this thing and you and the missus’ll be left alone. You come down on the wrong side and you’ll see more of me than you ever bargained for.” Willard held his ground another moment, eyes fixed on Jabez, then stepped back. Jabez, without another look, handed Agnes through the door and closed it in Willard’s face.

  26

  August 1860

  It was mid-afternoon, the heavy air simmering and pressing down like sweet sorghum, when Sarah Belle arrived, squalling and punching tiny fists. Doctor Norman attended Agnes’s la
bor as Jabez was away from home, and it took a full three weeks for her to forgive him that dereliction. While Agnes labored, Jabez spent that day, as well as the preceding week, in Kansas City, conferring with a group of men—Governor Stewart, Mr. Hall, Sterling Price—in an attempt to save Missouri from being crushed between the sectors. Not a valid excuse, in Agnes’s mind. True, Sarah presented herself ten days earlier than anticipated, but her temper rose with each day he absented himself.

  When he did appear, he trailed along with him a farm wagon loaded with bedding, rough furnishings and two Negroes.

  “You did what?” she said, once she’d snapped her jaw back in place. The man and woman stood just inside the kitchen door, expressions identically impassive.

  “I bought them,” Jabez said, a silly grin aimed at his daughter, who stared up at him, or wherever a two-day-old stares, from her nest in his arms. Sarah Belle slowly turned red, puckered up her brow and howled.

  “You bought them.” Agnes caught the woman’s eye. The Negro held the gaze two ticks, than lowered her eyes toward the floor. “Jabez Robinson, you are no slave master.”

  Jabez held Sarah away from his body and wrinkled his nose. “Whew, never could understand how so much smell can come from such a tiny body.” He laughed and turned. “Here, Rosie, we’ll break you in right.” And he handed Agnes’s daughter to a total stranger.

  “Oh, no,” she said and snatched her away. Agnes lowered the baby to the stand in the corner where she kept a basin and a stack of linen triangles.

  Jabez rubbed a hand over his beard. “Aren’t you pleased? I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased that we now own two people?”