The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  “If I see him, I’ll tell him you were here.”

  Just then, a car crested the hill, a little blue Ford Fiesta. At the same moment, an engine started somewhere down the street.

  Peter saw the brake lights of the Nissan Versa flash into gear.

  The lawn mower man looked from one car to the other and muttered something like “Shift change … son of a bitches.” He watched the Fiesta rolling slowly past, then he looked at the Versa, which was pulling out to make a U-turn. And he muttered, “Shift change, and a U-turn. I got ’em now … son of a bitches.”

  And he pounded right up the stairs onto the porch, pushed Peter out of the way, and jammed a key into the lock.

  The door banged open, and the lawn mower man banged into the house.

  Before Peter could say more than “What the—?” the man burst out again with a double-barreled shotgun.

  “Whoa!” cried Peter. “Hold on a minute.”

  And the barrels looked right into his eyes. “Out of my way, or you’re first.”

  Peter jumped back.

  “I got ’em now. Stupid Versa makin’ a U-turn right in front of the Fiesta.”

  “That’s not a shooting offense,” said Peter. “It’s just a U-turn.”

  “Two little rent-a-car shitboxes, one or the other always watchin’ me. I’ve had it.”

  The Fiesta had to stop as the Versa swung out.

  The lawn mower man raised the gun.

  Instinctively, Peter swept a hand down, knocking the barrel toward the floor.

  The Versa finished the turn and headed up the hill, past Sorrel’s house. The driver did not even glance at the porch.

  The lawn mower man rammed a shoulder into Peter and knocked him back. He was stronger than Peter had expected. And once Peter was off him, he swung the gun again, first at the Versa, which was disappearing over the crest of the hill, then back at the Fiesta, which was pulling into the vacated parking space. And he muttered, “I’m sick of all this damn surveillance.”

  Then the doors of the Fiesta started popping open, and for a second time, Peter grabbed the gun and drove the barrel down. He was close enough now that he could smell whiskey radiating from the guy, who growled and scowled and tried to pull the gun away, but now that he was ready, Peter was a lot stronger and held the gun.

  Then came the sound of … kids. Boys. Three boys, maybe eight or nine. They tumbled out of the back of the Fiesta. Then the parents got out of the front. Dad shouted for the kids to be careful. Mom shouted for them to slow down.

  And the lawn mower man relaxed the grip on the gun. He watched the kids go scampering across the road, shouting about a fort and real cannon and how cool it all was. Then he dropped into the rocking chair on the porch.

  Still clutching the shotgun, Peter crouched down next to the chair.

  “Thanks.” The man took a couple of deep breaths. His face was covered with sweat. “I could have shot those kids.”

  Peter said, “So, Mr. Jefferson Sorrel—”

  The man looked Peter in the eye, as if trying to decide whether to trust him or not.

  Peter made it easier. He said, “About this Lincoln letter…”

  Sorrel drew his face closer to Peter’s and bathed him in a fine mist of whiskey. “I sold it.”

  “You sold it? Already? Why?”

  “I got my price. And I’m on to something bigger, much bigger.”

  “What?”

  “Lincoln’s diary. That’s why I’m so scared.”

  SIX

  June 1862

  Halsey Hutchinson now understood what Lincoln meant by “gloom and torment.”

  They came in painful stabs of conscience whenever he thought of that daybook.

  They came in the mingling of wounded pride and fear that burned in his belly whenever he received another summons from Detective McNealy.

  They came in a telegram from Samantha Simpson of Wellesley, Massachusetts:

  DEAR HALSEY, I HAVE SECURED A POSITION AT THE UNION HOTEL HOSPITAL IN GEORGETOWN. I SHALL TRAVEL AS SOON AS FATHER PERMITS.

  What would he tell her? That he had spent his afternoons with Constance Wood, but only because she was a rebel spy, and it had all been in the line of duty when he kissed her and caressed her and stroked her most intimate parts while she did the same for him? And what would he tell Constance? He had concluded that she was no spy. And he had already lied to her about his arrest in the Smithsonian: a case of mistaken identity.

  But these were the problems of a young man facing the consequences of his own actions.

  For everyone in Washington, gloom and torment came with the heat that felt like clear, sticky syrup poured into every corner and every crevice of the city.

  And for everyone in the War Department, gloom and torment weighed more heavily with every dispatch from the Peninsula, because after three months of hesitating, slogging, hunkering, and posturing, McClellan was finally in motion. He was retreating.

  Robert E. Lee had taken command of the Confederate forces and seemed determined to drive McClellan back from the outskirts of Richmond, back down the Peninsula, all the way back to Hampton Roads if he could. He had launched his first attack on Thursday the 26th, at a place called Mechanicsville. But Federal forces had held. So he had turned on McClellan’s left at Gaines’s Mill, and after a day of fighting, he had driven the Yankees across the Chickahominy River.

  As night fell on Friday the 27th, Secretary Stanton left to be with his son, who had developed a full-blown case of smallpox after an inoculation. Major Eckert stayed until eleven thirty. President Lincoln, exhausted after two sleepless nights on the sofa in Stanton’s office, went home to a real bed.

  So, at 1:30 A.M. on Saturday the 28th, Halsey was senior telegraph officer. And he was lost in his work, with orders to write, papers to file, forms to fill. It was a good place to be. Even desk work was a good antidote for gloom and torment.

  Bates finished a dispatch and put it on Halsey’s desk. “McClellan’s at it again.”

  And what Halsey read astonished him.

  The general described the day’s action. Then he turned to the reports of Detective Pinkerton, who had been warning for weeks that Lee commanded two hundred thousand men, almost double the size of the Army of the Potomac. And now the rebel hordes were in motion, but the government refused to reinforce McClellan, or so he charged:

  A FEW THOUSAND MEN MORE WOULD HAVE CHANGED THIS BATTLE FROM DEFEAT TO VICTORY. THE GOVERNMENT MUST NOT AND CANNOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE. I HAVE SEEN TOO MANY DEAD AND WOUNDED COMRADES TO FEEL OTHERWISE THAN THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS NOT SUSTAINED THIS ARMY. IF YOU DO NOT DO SO NOW, THE GAME IS LOST.

  Bates was smiling like a boy who had just shown his mate a dirty book and was waiting for him to get to the best pictures.

  So Halsey read to the end:

  IF I SAVE THIS ARMY NOW I TELL YOU PLAINLY THAT I OWE NO THANKS TO YOU OR ANY OTHER PERSONS IN WASHINGTON—YOU HAVE DONE YOUR BEST TO SACRIFICE THIS ARMY.

  Halsey sat back and said, “Good God.”

  “Insubordination,” said Bates.

  “Treason.” Halsey thought a moment. Then he folded the sheet of thin, yellow paper and put it in his pocket.

  “What are you doing?” asked Bates, eyes wide and voice shocked, as if Halsey had touched a match to the telegram.

  “Making a decision.”

  The eastern sky was just brightening when Major Eckert arrived. He said that he couldn’t sleep, so he might as well work.

  Halsey handed over McClellan’s dispatch.

  As Eckert scanned it, his jaw muscles flexed and his fist balled.

  Halsey said, “We kept it out of the pile. We wanted you to see it first.”

  “What do you mean, we?” said Homer Bates.

  Eckert said, “Does anyone else know of this?”

  They both shook their heads, so Eckert swore them to secrecy.…

  An hour later, Lincoln appeared in the telegraph office, hatless but wearing his black frock like dead w
eight in the humidity. He went over to Eckert’s desk and flipped through the pile of overnight telegrams. He read McClellan’s message and said, “That’s one hard raisin. Sounds like the general could use some encouragement.”

  The general, thought Halsey, could use some firing. But sacking an insubordinate general was not something a president should have to consider in the midst of a fighting retreat. Better for president and general both that Lincoln had not seen McClellan’s final cry of anger.

  Major Eckert and his superior, the supervisor of military telegrams, had deleted the last two lines … for the good of the president and the general, too.

  Now Lincoln wrote a measured response and handed it to Bates.

  Halsey went to the cipher desk, put down a few papers, and read over Bates’s shoulder:

  Save your Army at all events. Will send reinforcements as fast as we can. I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the government is to blame.

  Right then, Halsey was glad that he had passed the telegram up the chain of command. But his concerns about McClellan were not allayed.

  What was the general’s game? Why had he been so hard to move? Why had he chosen such a roundabout attack, transporting a hundred thousand men down the Potomac, then up the Peninsula between the York and James rivers, instead of driving overland and hard against Richmond? And why had he seen every opportunity for attack as another opportunity to complain?

  On his walks back to the White House, Lincoln had asked these questions, too.

  But there seemed to be something else on the president’s mind that morning. He said to Eckert, “Major, I’d bother you for a quire of paper and the use of a desk. I’d like to write something special.”

  Eckert fetched him a quarter ream of foolscap-length writing paper and a Gillott barrel pen, standard issue in the telegraph office.

  And as the rising sun brightened the room, a new hierarchy of desks fell into order. The president took the major’s desk between the windows. The major took the lieutenant’s desk in the far corner. The lieutenant was relegated to the all-purpose worktable in the middle of the room.

  From there, he watched Lincoln scratching down words, scratching them out, staring out the window, studying the spiderweb stretched across an upper pane, scratching down more words, scratching them out, and after a half an hour, replacing the elaborate eagle-shaped lid on Eckert’s inkstand, then pushing back from the desk and handing the sheets to Eckert. “Lock these in a drawer, if you please, Major. There’ll be no more losing the notes I make in the telegraph office.”

  Without looking at the papers—he was a good soldier—Eckert did as he was told.

  Then Lincoln asked that Halsey escort him back to the White House.

  * * *

  They walked silently through the still morning. They always walked silently until the president spoke. They walked with heads down, offering the backs of their necks to the voracious morning mosquitoes.

  Halsey did a lot of slapping.

  Lincoln did not seem to notice. Finally, he said, “I saw you reading over Homer’s shoulder.”

  “I read most everything that goes out and comes in,” said Halsey. “And may I say, you’ve been very … judicious … with General McClellan, sir.”

  “I suppose.” Lincoln glanced toward the White House carriage drive.

  The crowd of office seekers was small. It was still early.

  Halsey kept talking. “But Robert E. Lee seems very determined.”

  “The whole South seems very determined,” answered Lincoln, “more determined than some people ever anticipated.”

  “Do you think their determination will grow stronger, now that you’ve signed a bill forbidding slavery in the western territories?”

  “They will do what they do. I determined a long time ago that slavery would not reach beyond the slave states. It’s what brought me back into politics.”

  Their footfalls crunched on the gravel path. The canopy of leaves was thick above them. The shade, even at that early hour, was most welcome.

  Then Lincoln added, “Amazing what you can get done in Congress when the opposition secedes.”

  “But the Peace Democrats like Benjamin Wood are still there. And they fear every step you take toward general emancipation.”

  “Are you thinking ahead of me, Lieutenant?”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “You’re thinking that I’m thinking about a general emancipation.” Lincoln glanced at Halsey. “Or were you reading over my shoulder?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

  “That’s probably best.”

  They walked a bit more. Then Lincoln stopped and turned to Halsey.

  On some days the president looked as if he might just collapse from the weight he carried. A film of perspiration covered his forehead, his skin appeared more yellow than sun-browned, and his eyes seemed to be sinking into circles of bruised purple flesh.

  But his voice was firm: “My hope has always been for emancipation that’s voluntary, gradual, and compensated. Those are my thoughts, until I compose new ones.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But this time I’ll be more careful with the thoughts I compose because Halsey—”

  “Sir?”

  “I sure wish I hadn’t lost that daybook.” Lincoln shook his head. “Hard to believe it never turned up. But … we have work to do, so good day.”

  * * *

  On the walk home, Halsey passed Mr. Shovel and Mr. Mule Harness, as always, and almost forgot to tip his hat he was so deep in thought, wondering how much of the presidential conversation he would report to McNealy. Nothing, if he could help it.

  But when he got to his room, he found a note under the door: Seventh Street wharf. Noon. So he would have to come up with something.

  Every few mornings since the shooting at Squeaker’s, a message had been waiting for him when got home: Meet by first applecart in Center Market, 10 A.M. Or Star Saloon, 7 P.M. Or some other place and time. McNealy said he liked plain-sight meetings because people in a city didn’t see things right in front of them.

  And his questions were always the same:

  What movement on emancipation? Halsey would say none, despite what the president was hinting.

  What opinions about McClellan? Halsey would offer information that was public knowledge: Secretary Stanton thought McClellan was paying too much attention to Pinkerton. Lincoln was growing impatient.

  What about Benjamin Wood? Halsey would answer, “Defiant.” Wood had been accused of using a Daily News reporter to pass secrets to the South. He proclaimed his innocence and welcomed the chance to defend himself before the House Judiciary Committee. He said he only wished that other Americans whose loyalty had been questioned and who had been thrown into jail without trial could have the same opportunity.

  * * *

  If working Washington had a heart, it beat strongest at the City Wharves between Sixth and Seventh. In better times, the wharves landed goods and food, products of the region and the world. A fleet of side- and stern-wheelers still filled the air with smoke and the screech of their whistles, but now they delivered a human cargo.

  Halsey found a spot under a tree and watched a steamer named Anacostia unloading men, bow and stern … men on stretchers and men on crutches, men in pain and men in agony, men groaning with every movement, men suffering in silence, and men crying out when they could bear their silence no longer.

  A hundred ambulance wagons awaited them, bound for a dozen makeshift hospitals. A hundred doctors and assistants shouted orders to a thousand black stretcher-bearers, while a hundred thousand flies filled the air and lit on the horses and their turds and the suffering men, too.

  And as each wagon rumbled off, a cloud of flies followed, a great buzzing cumulus of maggot mothers, finding sustenance in the suppurating flesh of gunshot limbs and gutshot bellies, and …
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br />   God but he hated this war.

  “Some people say this is just the beginning.” McNealy materialized from somewhere behind him.

  “Why are we meeting here?” Halsey had abandoned any pretense of cordiality.

  “What’s the matter? The heat too much for you?” McNealy squinted up at the sunburned sky. “Nobody bother with us here. Folks don’t like to see such sufferin’.”

  Halsey watched two black men carrying a torso on a stretcher, just a torso. Four stumps wrapped in bandages marked the places where its limbs had been. Its head was turned away.

  He said to McNealy, “Ask your questions.”

  McNealy took a cigar stub from his vest pocket, flicked off the gray ash, and jammed it into his mouth. “The usual … emancipation? Hearin’ anything?”

  Halsey said what the president had said: “Voluntary, gradual, compensated.”

  McNealy chewed on the cigar. “No more chance of that than of these darkie stretcher-boys doctorin’ the poor bastards they’re carryin’.”

  “So why do you need me to tell you about it? Go to the War Department and—”

  “I try to avoid the War Department. You know that,” said McNealy. “Eckert doesn’t like me, and Stanton doesn’t like anyone. But a good secret service needs to know the plans of the people they work for, so they can find out the plans of the people they work against. Makes it easier to know what to look for … and where.”

  “Look for spies, traitors, and disloyal newspaper editors.”

  Nearby, a man screamed. Two stretcher bearers were sliding him onto the top tier of a waiting ambulance.

  Halsey saw an emotion cross McNealy’s face that did not fit under the general heading of “suspicion.” It looked almost like … empathy.

  McNealy said, “This Potomac is now a river of blood, Lieutenant. I mean to stop it from reachin’ the sea.”

  “You sure have a strange way of doing it.”

  “You let me worry about the ‘how.’” McNealy lit his cigar. “You just worry about the ‘who’ and the ‘what.’ You follow?”

  Halsey had grown to hate that question. It was always uttered as a threat. But he was trapped. He had to take it. And when McNealy paused, he knew that he was supposed to answer: “I follow.”