The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Halsey knew now that he was hearing too much. But Lincoln seemed intent on talking, as if these words, spoken into the steamer’s headwind and blown off into the Potomac darkness, were part of some presidential soliloquy rather than a conversation with a young man who had left off studying the law in order to fight for the Union.

  Dip and thump. Dip and thump. Dip and thump.

  Lincoln listened to the sound for a time, then said, “I remember a steamboat trip when I was a young man. I was traveling to St. Louis. And riding near the bow were ten or twelve Negroes, shackled in irons, deprived for no reason but their color of the freedom that we so loudly proclaim is the ideal of our nation. That sight tormented me then, and I have to say that it torments me still.”

  “Slavery is a cruel institution, sir.”

  “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. But my job is to preserve the Union.” Lincoln looked Halsey in the eye. “If I can do it and free all of the slaves, I will. If I can do it and free none of the slaves, I will. And if I have to do it by freeing some of the slaves while others remain in bondage, that’ll be my course.”

  Dip and thump. Dip and thump. Dip and thump.

  “But I will do what military necessity requires. I will give those boys back there every chance for victory. I won’t give up the government without playing my last card, and I may yet win the trick.”

  With those words, Halsey Hutchinson felt a burden lift. Lincoln was wrestling with it, but emancipation was coming. Once Lincoln reached the decision, the process by which he came to it would not matter. The daybook that Halsey had lost would no longer hold intelligence to damage the president.

  The question, as a lawyer might say, would be moot.

  * * *

  Whatever Lincoln had said must have unburdened him, too, because by the next morning, he seemed as chipper as Halsey had ever seen him.

  They were almost home, about a mile south of the City Wharves, when the Ariel struck the Kettle Shoals and stopped dead.

  The captain announced that it would be two hours before the tide could lift them off. Groans of frustration echoed through the vessel. The men in Lincoln’s party had expected to be back by noon and at their desks by one. All of them had said they were returning rejuvenated after seeing the enthusiasm of the troops.

  But then Lincoln’s voice cut through the humid air: “Two hours, you say, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A moment later, Lincoln appeared on the lower deck and said, to no one in particular. “Water sure looks good on a hot day.”

  “It sure does, sir,” said one of the military staffers.

  Lincoln sat on an upturned hogshead and pulled off a boot. The white sock came with it, revealing a long bony white foot. “Did I ever tell you boys about my days runnin’ flatboats down to New Orleans?”

  By now, half a dozen men had gathered to watch Lincoln pull off his other boot.

  He said, “At the end of a hot day, we’d take a nice dunk in the river.”

  The boot hit the deck; then Lincoln stood and pulled off his vest and shirt, revealing an undershirt soaked with new sweat and etched with salt stains from the old sweat of a three-day journey. Then he unbuttoned his trousers and dropped them to the deck. “I hereby issue a presidential disposition to every man aboard to go for a dunk.”

  Two sailors immediately began to strip. After a moment, so did the civilians.

  Lincoln looked at Halsey, “Get out of those soldier blues, son. That’s an order.”

  Within minutes, the deck of the Ariel was littered with shoes, shirts, trousers, and smallclothes, and a dozen bare white bodies were slithering through the brown river.

  Halsey dunked and dived and did not taste blood, real or metaphorical.

  Lincoln rolled onto his back and spit a long stream of water into the air, then gave out with a high, cackling laugh.

  A couple of the soldiers had grabbed bars of soap and were standing on the sandy shoal, lathering themselves front and back.

  Lincoln rolled over again and swam. The muscles of his shoulders and bare white buttocks tightened like cables as he stroked and kicked.

  And Halsey knew he would never forget this scene.

  The unfinished Capitol and the stunted Washington Monument shimmered in the heat haze ahead. A steamer filled with yet more wounded was rounding a downstream bend. But for a few moments, Abraham Lincoln seemed to forget it all in that river. He became a boy again, naked and carefree.

  * * *

  There was a note under Halsey’s door in the National:

  Meet near lock keeper’s house, 17th Street at the canal. 3 P.M.

  He balled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. McNealy could wait. He had promised Samantha that he would pay her a visit as soon as he returned from Virginia.

  When he walked up the steps of the Union Hotel Hospital, there were ten soldiers on the stoop. Some were chewing tobacco. Others were sucking on hard candies. They all saluted except for a man who had no arms.

  In the lobby, Miss Dean came up to him. “She’s sleepin’.”

  Halsey glanced at the clock. It was only three.

  “Worked a double shift yesterday.” Then Miss Dean smiled, or at least tried to. Her face never quite lit up. “Let me see if she’s awake.”

  A few minutes later, Samantha came down from her top-floor garret. She was pinching her cheeks and blinking puffy eyes. Her hoopless gingham dress was wrinkled, as if she had not bothered to take it off before she flopped onto her bed.

  Halsey took her hand. “You look—”

  She laughed, “Tired?”

  “You’ve been working hard?”

  Miss Dean said, “She works hard, all right, but she better learn to work better.”

  “I do what I’m asked.” Samantha brushed her hair back from her face.

  “You do, indeed, dearie,” said Miss Dean. “I’m not sayin’ you don’t, because you do. I’ll give you that. And you’re gettin’ better at what you do every day.”

  Halsey realized how much he was growing to admire Samantha. He said to her, “Can you walk with me?”

  Samantha looked at Miss Dean, who nodded.

  Samantha took off her apron and soon they were walking down Wisconsin, toward the stone bridge that crossed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

  Unlike the Washington Canal, the C&O was still a going concern. It ran beside the Potomac from Rock Creek in Georgetown far into the heartland. And the war had been good for business.

  They stood in the middle of the bridge and looked along the stone-walled canal, toward the locks rising from Rock Creek. Trees shaded the tow path and the brick row houses that lined it.

  “It’s cooler here, over the water,” said Samantha.

  “It’s why I thought you’d like it.”

  And she asked of the trip.

  He described the troop review, the meeting with Holmes, and then turned to skinny-dipping with the president, which Samantha found hilarious. And the more she laughed, the more he told: “After his boots, he took off his trousers”—laughter—“stripped naked and leapt into the water”—more laughter—“swam like a big sturgeon with his hair plastered to his head”—louder laughter—“and his white behind sticking out of the water”—laughter through a covering hand—“and then he rolled over and floated on his back.”

  “Oh, Halsey, I cannot imagine what that must have looked like.”

  “Let’s just say I can vouch for his manhood.”

  Suddenly, she stopped laughing and brought both hands to her face.

  “What?” He put a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “I am tending a poor boy whose manhood is … gone.” And she began to cry.

  He threw his arms around her and held her.

  A canal boat was coming upstream, pulled by a mule team on the towpath. As the men went past, they whistled at what appeared to be young lovers stealing an embrace.

  Halsey pulled her back so that they could not see her, and
whispered, “You do not have to stay. There are others to take your place.”

  “What?” She raised her face to him. Those round blue eyes were red with exhaustion and tears. “You want me to go back to Wellesley?”

  “There will be no shame in it.”

  “If I were a man and showed cowardice, there would be shame on me and my children and my children’s children.”

  “Perhaps not—”

  “But I’m a woman, and I’d be a coward if I left that hospital with so much to do.”

  He said, “I’ve seen it on the battlefield and in life, Samantha. One person’s cowardice is another’s good sense.”

  “Oh, Halsey, I don’t believe that and neither—” Suddenly she stopped speaking.

  “What?”

  “That man.”

  Halsey turned but he saw nothing unusual and no one familiar.

  “There was a man by a tree. He just dropped down under the bridge.”

  Halsey looked over the stone parapet but saw nothing on the towpath.

  She said, “I’ve seen him before. He wears a blue suit and a blue kepi and red neckerchief. He looks like a ferret. He’s even come to the hospital.”

  Halsey took the stone staircase and jumped down to the towpath.

  But he saw nothing. Could the man have disappeared that quickly? Or had he ducked into one of the houses along the route?

  He walked under the bridge and came out on the other side. He looked in both directions, then looked up at Samantha and shrugged.

  She appeared tiny and vulnerable up there, with her head and shoulders peeping over the stone parapet. But she had spine. That was for certain.

  He would not let her be drawn into this.

  * * *

  “You ignored my note.” McNealy was sitting on one of the shoeshine chairs.

  Halsey stopped and looked around. “Where’s Noah? He works till eight.”

  “I gave him a dollar and sent him home.” McNealy lit a cigar and gave a jerk of his head. “Climb up here and chat.”

  Halsey took the other chair.

  A new regiment was marching by. Their band was playing “Hail, Columbia,” and the men were moving with a nice, easy step.

  McNealy said, “I hear you met Pinkerton.”

  “Do you work for him or Lafayette Baker?”

  “I ask the questions, Lieutenant. You answer. You follow?”

  Halsey asked again.

  McNealy took his cigar from his mouth. “I’ll tell you my business this once. I came from Chicago with Pinkerton when the war started. I helped him track spies in the city. When he headed for the Peninsula with McClellan, he asked me to stay and transfer to the War Department. I may work for Baker, but I feed Pinkerton. You could say I’m his eyes in the War Department.”

  “And I’m yours?”

  “You wanted the job so much, you shot your way into it.”

  Halsey ignored the joke. “Pinkerton spoke of evidence against me. What is it?”

  “Beyond the gun? What else is there? A daybook, maybe?”

  Instead of answering, Halsey revealed his own suspicion. “Do you have it?”

  “The daybook?” McNealy laughed. “If I had it, I wouldn’t need you. I’d give you back to Baker and be done with you.”

  “And what would you do with the book?”

  “Use it for good.” McNealy kept his eyes on the soldiers tramping past.

  “For good?”

  “I told you I didn’t care about it, but I do. I’d bet it has more than addresses and dates. I’d bet Lincoln was usin’ it to sort things out in his own mind.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He was so bothered to lose it. A man says things to himself he might never say to the world, especially a man in Lincoln’s position.” McNealy puffed on the cigar. “Imagine … Lincoln writin’ down his real opinions about generals or congressmen or niggers. If I had such a thing, I’d have every politician in this town jumpin’ like a circus dog. I could get them to end the war tomorrow.”

  “End it or win it?” asked Halsey.

  “There’ll be no winnin’, Lieutenant. We’ve lost already, all of us. The country’s lost its amity. You’ve lost your voice. I’ve lost a brother.”

  “A brother?” This surprised Halsey.

  “At Shiloh, Second Ohio, under Captain Linus Rawlins. Went off to war when the first bugle blew. Left a wife and two little babies.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Halsey, and for the first time, he felt something other than fear or contempt for Joseph Albert McNealy. He said, “So … what can I tell you?”

  “Lincoln’s gettin’ closer to emancipation. What do you know?”

  Halsey said, “No more than that.”

  McNealy gestured to the troops marching past. “Be a damn shame if all these boys were goin’ to their deaths in a war to free the niggers.”

  “Now you’re sounding like Benjamin Wood.”

  “Or McClellan. He knows his men will throw down their arms rather than fight for the nigger. I hear he told the president as much in a letter. Did Lincoln say anything about it? About the letter, I mean.”

  Halsey described what he’d seen on the Ariel. “Lincoln read the letter and put it in his pocket. McClellan wanted to talk about it. But it seems that Lincoln has decided he’s the commander-in-chief, not McClellan.”

  “Which makes McClellan’s as mad as a nigger with his hand caught in a beehive.”

  After a moment Halsey said, “I have nothing more on the letter.”

  “Nothing on the letter. Nothing on the daybook. And nothing on a that ledger that disappeared from Squeaker’s.” McNealy took another puff of the cigar. “I’ve asked you about the ledger, haven’t I?”

  “You know you’ve asked half a dozen times,” said Halsey, “and you know what I’ve answered.” He had decided to lie about the ledger, which might prove useful some day. “I have nothing for you.”

  “I’m beginning to think you have nothing at all.” McNealy twitched around so that his face was close to Halsey. “Just remember, if I think you’re holding out on me, you’ll be in the Old Cap tomorrow.”

  Halsey said, “I know what I’m up against.”

  “No, you don’t.” McNealy settled back in the chair. “You’re in Washington. You’re in the country’s political bowels, where every man is out for himself first and his party second, even if the country gets the shit. It’s all politics.”

  “It’s war,” said Halsey. “Not politics.”

  “And what’s war but politics with bullets instead of words? Frontstabbin’ instead of backstabbin’. Everyone’s playin’ political games. Lincoln, Wood, Pinkerton, Baker, me … even you. Though I think you’re playin’ games with your prick, too, eh? The pretty nursie-girl from Boston?”

  “Leave her out of this, and tell your people to stop following her.”

  “My people?” McNealy laughed. “If my people are following her, she won’t even know.”

  “Then who was spying on us this afternoon, on the bridge in Georgetown?”

  McNealy thought a moment, as if he might know. Then he said, “I have no idea. But if that Constance finds out about your nursie-girl, she might stop pullin’ your prick in the Smithsonian.”

  “Leave Constance out of it, too.”

  “How can I? She’s a rebel spy.”

  “She’s no spy,” said Halsey.

  McNealy smiled. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “She’s an Abolitionist. She’s gone to New York to hear Frederick Douglass. An Abolitionist with an uncle who hates niggers.” McNealy chuckled, got up, brushed cigar ash off his jacket. “It’s like Pinkerton and me. He’s an Abolitionist who’s loyal to a Union Democrat named McClellan. And I’m just a commonsense white American who wants the bloodshed to end. But remember—”

  “What?”

  “Until it ends, I run you.”

  As Halsey watched McNealy head down the Avenue, he wondered again, what w
as his game? Halsey meant to find out. He would not be run much longer.

  * * *

  The next morning, he stopped for a shoeshine.

  While Noah Bone cleaned the Virginia mud off his boots, Halsey asked about the detective dressed in brown. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Detective Greenback? That’s what I call him since he pay me a greenback to go home last night.”

  “His name’s McNealy,” said Halsey. “And I’ll pay you a lot more to find out where he lives, where he eats, who he talks to…”

  “Why you think I can do that?”

  “I think you know more than you let on, Noah. I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty? That’s a powerful lot of money, sir. This must be dangerous.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I don’t like doin’ dangerous things, and I don’t like my boys doin’ ’em either.”

  “There are men marching into walls of bullets right now,” said Halsey. “They’re fighting and dying for the freedom of your race. That’s dangerous.”

  Noah’s hands stopped. He looked up. He stood up. He stepped back. Then he unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and turned. “I show you this once, Mr. Halsey, since you seem a decent man.” And right there in the sunshine on Pennsylvania Avenue, Noah dropped his shirt, revealing his shoulders and upper back.

  In an instant, Halsey repented of whatever he had just said to offend Noah Bone. The scars layered Noah’s back and ran in long raised ridges of discolored flesh, some black, some purple, and some a sort of greasy white, like tallow.

  Noah quickly pulled the shirt up and buttoned it. “I don’t show them too much. Most folks see them when I sweat through my shirt and don’t know what they’s looking at. But—” Noah gestured to his back. “—that there’s what you call dangerous. That there’s a life of gettin’ caught and runnin’ away.”

  “From where?”

  “A plantation down Fredericksburg way and a massa who whip his slaves worse than he whip his dogs.” Noah spread polish on Halsey’s shoes. “From the time I’se a boy, he whip me. Then one day, I run away. Well, he come and get me and whip me some more. When I can, I run agin, and he catch me agin. I run agin and agin, and he whip me agin and agin till finally, he jess give up. One day, I run and he don’t chase me.”