The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  David Bruce bounced up and began moving about. “The South wanted to secede, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that you can’t. Lincoln knew that. So, when he realized that he was going to lose his war of federal dominance because he was fighting from a dishonest premise—”

  “The Constitutionality of a compulsory Union,” Mrs. Bruce interrupted.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Bruce, and he turned back to Peter and Evangeline. “When he realized he was going to lose, he decided to change the mission and free the slaves, even though slavery was headed for doom in a few decades anyway.”

  Evangeline said, “Did anyone tell the slaves that?”

  Bruce ignored her. “The Emancipation Proclamation was an act of desperation. He didn’t care about blacks or he would have freed them all in 1862.”

  Evangeline whistled softly. “I heard that there were people who believed this stuff. I never thought I’d meet one.”

  “You’ve lived a sheltered life,” said David Bruce.

  “She’s from the Upper West Side,” said Peter, “by way of Cambridge. She may not be sheltered but she’s a bit … insulated.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Evangeline.

  Bruce laughed. “I’m from Pasadena by way of Nebraska.”

  Peter said, “Pasadena or Manhattan, you know you’re putting a lot on Lincoln without any evidence.”

  “Precisely why I buy every Lincoln document I can,” said David Bruce. “If we know what he thought and why he acted, we may learn to hold him in less awe and perhaps hold his greatest accomplishment—the extension of federal power—up to a bit more scrutiny. Then we can chip away at it.”

  Evangeline looked at Peter, as if to say, Aren’t you going to argue with him?

  Peter just smiled. Let the guy keep talking.

  Bruce went over to the window and this time, he stopped bouncing. The sun was setting. The white buildings reflected the glow. Purple night was rising in the east. “Consider the design of that city over there. First, they took a grid and laid it over the landscape. Elegant and beautiful in its simplicity. East-to-west streets lettered, north-to-south streets numbered. Something everyone could understand.”

  “Like a flat tax,” said Mrs. Bruce.

  “Then they complicated it by laying all sorts of diagonals and circles on the grid. What appears simple at first is actually quite complex … needlessly complex.”

  “Like most federal laws,” added Mrs. Bruce.

  Peter agreed. “It’s the perfect metaphor for the opposing visions of national government, and how they have to work together.”

  “But it’s hell to navigate,” said Jan Bruce. “So we never come without a driver—”

  “—or a lobbyist.” David Bruce gestured again to the view. “All those monuments make you feel proud. But when you go back to the Willard, look at the buildings across Pennsylvania. They call it the Federal Triangle. But in the Civil War, they called it Murder Bay. It was crawling with prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards.” He looked at Evangeline. “Which name do you think I prefer?”

  “Wait, wait, don’t tell me,” she said with a flat deadpan.

  “Just a lot of bureaucrats justifying their existence,” Bruce continued. “They exist … to exist, and to murder individual freedom.”

  “So,” said Peter, “why did you want to talk to me?”

  “Because you know that history is not an abstraction.”

  Peter said. “That’s the theme of my whole career.”

  “And the reason I wanted to talk to you, even before you were seen visiting Jefferson Sorrel.”

  “Before?” That caught Peter off guard.

  “As soon as Sorrel put out the word that he had a Lincoln letter, our friends at the Suzanne Hamill Agency picked up on it, and our security people started investigating.”

  Evangeline said to Peter, “He’s admitting that he was the guy who hacked us. So he probably sent that lobbyist onto Amtrak this morning, just to follow me.”

  “Actually, she was there on business,” said Bruce. “So it worked out. And you weren’t the only ones hacked. When Sorrel said he’d shown the letter to the Museum of Emancipation, we hacked all their trustees.”

  “Isn’t that a crime?” asked Evangeline.

  “Well, golly, I don’t know. I should ask my lawyers.”

  Evangeline glanced at Peter. They both thought it: He actually said “golly” without a trace of irony.

  Bruce sat again. “We’ve surrendered too much power to a government that bears no resemblance to what the framers imagined. And it all began with Lincoln.”

  Evangeline sipped her wine. “And you’re not even from the South.”

  “This is not a North-South thing. The South understood that the threat of secession is an important tool in preserving freedom. So did plenty of Northerners called Copperheads. And Lincoln waged an unconstitutional war against all of them.”

  “And to prove that, you want to find the ‘something’ in the Lincoln letter?” asked Peter.

  “It’s why I bought the letter.” David Bruce flipped open a folder on his coffee table and there it was in a Mylar sleeve: the “Executive Mansion” header, the familiar handwriting, and beside it, the envelope, addressed to Corporal Jeremiah Murphy.

  David Bruce held it up. “What a mystery is here. A certain ‘something,’ a lieutenant in need of a presidential pardon, a president on the last day of his life.”

  Peter wiped his hands on a cocktail napkin, took the Mylar, and read the letter again. Then he handed it to Evangeline.

  She said to him, “Now I know why you couldn’t wait to come to Washington.”

  David Bruce sat on the edge of the coffee table so that he was face-to-face with Peter Fallon. “I’ve heard that this ‘something’ is a diary of some sort.”

  Peter nodded. “There’s a scholar who’s written about it. Not sure it’s true.”

  “But if it is, imagine what it might contain. I think Lincoln knew all along that he didn’t have a constitutional leg to stand on when it came to enforcing the federal will on a rebellious Confederacy. And as long as that was his goal, the North was going to lose. Did he talk about that in his diary? Did he talk about shifting gears, about turning it into a war to free the slaves? I’d love to know.”

  “You mean like George Bush,” said Evangeline, “when he couldn’t find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, turning his fight into a war for Iraqi liberation?”

  Bruce jerked a thumb at Evangeline and said to Peter, “She’s tough.”

  Peter said, “You’re thinking, if the father of federal power, the secular god of the republic, reveals his inner struggles with these issues, it would prove that he wasn’t so paternal or godlike?”

  Bruce nodded and whispered, like the disciple of a different god, “Then we could question Lincoln about everything that has flowed from his vision of an all-powerful federal government.”

  Evangeline processed all that, then whispered to Peter, “I think it’s time to get back to the real world.”

  Bruce grinned at Evangeline. “Yes, she’s tough, Mr. Fallon, maybe too tough.”

  And Jan Bruce’s voice cut through the sudden tension. “You should know that my husband has people looking for this ‘something,’ looking hard.”

  “But we don’t need to be rivals,” added David Bruce. “I paid Sorrel a good price for the letter, right in line with the auction price for the ‘Little People’s Petition’ letter. If this ‘something’ is what we think it is, I’ll pay almost anything for it.”

  “And,” said Jan Bruce, “we have almost anything.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Bruce, “we’ve done well.”

  Jan Bruce said, “David took my father’s mail-order business for seed-buying Nebraska farmers and turned it into one of the largest online retailers in America. LibertyTreeSales.com.”

  “That’s where I heard the name,” said Evangeline. “Fifty billion in annual revenues. Stock up steadily every year, four perce
nt dividend.”

  Bruce jerked his thumb at Evangeline again. “Tough and astute.”

  “I bought a thousand shares,” said Evangeline, “with my divorce settlement.”

  “Very, very astute. So she must know that I’m good at what I do,” said David Bruce. “And I’ve been in retailing long enough to know that you get what you pay for. So, Mr. Fallon, I’d like to buy the right of first refusal on whatever you find.” He took a check from the leather folder.

  Peter looked at the check, then at Bruce, then back at the check.

  Evangeline took a sip of wine and almost spit it out when Peter said, “Half a million dollars?”

  “And if my people find it before you, you’ll still get the money.”

  “What if Sorrel finds it?” asked Peter.

  “He won’t,” said Jan Bruce with sudden coldness.

  Peter looked at the check.

  Evangeline looked at Peter. “Take the money and run?”

  Peter said. “I’ll have to report it as income.”

  “Ouch,” said Bruce. “I hate to think how much the Feds will take out of this.”

  “David hates the tax man,” said Jan Bruce. Then she stood, once again all June Cleaver calm. “And as we have theater tickets, we’d like to thank you for coming and look forward to seeing you again soon.”

  * * *

  In the elevator, Evangeline said, “We just met the Warren Buffett of Internet sales and marketing.”

  “Good description.” Peter was tapping the envelope on his fingertips. “He feels Midwestern. You might not agree with him, but you can take him at his word.”

  “His word that he’ll use you? He just tried to buy you off.”

  “He can afford it.” Peter slipped the check into his jacket pocket.

  “But Peter, what if you find this diary and he uses it to—?”

  “What? To shut down the federal government?” Peter laughed.

  “He’s looking for Lincoln’s smoking gun,” she said.

  “Lincoln’s smoking gun is on display at Ford’s Theatre. It belonged to Booth.”

  “I mean a smoking gun to use in the spin wars.”

  They popped out in the lobby.

  Peter gave Andre a little wave. Andre did not move a muscle.

  Evangeline kept talking as they headed for the door. “This town is all about the spin wars, about how you make your own truth out of anybody’s facts. A politician’s finances, his family, his wife, his girlfriends—”

  “—his boyfriends.”

  “Or history itself,” said Evangeline. “It’s all up for grabs. And somehow, Mr. David Bruce sees this lost ‘something’ as a weapon, and he expects you to put it into his hands.”

  “He nearly owns the Internet now. What else does he want? World domination?”

  “I think he’ll settle for America, and—call it my incisive instinctive intelligence—but if my train ride with his lobbyist is any indication, he’s aiming at Capitol Hill, and his first target is a certain congressman from Upstate New York.”

  “Then we’d better get on to the Smithsonian and talk to him.”

  They came out under the portico.

  The shadows were long and deep now. It was still warm but the fading September light warned that the season was changing, even here on the banks of the Potomac.

  As they waited for the limo to roll up, Peter checked e-mails on his iPhone.

  “It’s from Antoine. ‘I read Bates book: many mentions of Hutchinson. He’s there for ‘down to the raisins,’ story, often escorts Lincoln back to the White House at night, passes McClellan’s June 28 telegram up the chain of command, watches Lincoln contemplating spiderwebs as he writes the Emancipation Proclamation, and, get this—’”

  Peter slowed down as he read the rest.

  “‘—was a boon office companion until he got into personal difficulties that brought the Provost Guard to arrest him at the War Department one rainy night in the summer of 1862.…’”

  EIGHT

  July 1862

  Almost every day since returning from the Peninsula, Abraham Lincoln had spent time at Eckert’s desk in the telegraph office. He said it was easier to concentrate there, away from the many distractions of the White House.

  He wrote and scratched, thought and wrote, and gazed sometimes for ten minutes or more at that spiderweb outside the window.

  It was as if he knew that he, too, had been caught in a web woven by Abolitionists, radical Republicans, Union Democrats, and antiwar Peace Democrats, to say nothing of the eleven seceded states, and he meant to break out of it with the words he was writing.

  He sometimes appeared determined, sometimes depressed, occasionally cheerful, but usually as expressionless as the safe under Eckert’s desk.

  On the afternoon of July 11, he stalked angrily into the office and took the sheets away in a folder. That was the day, Eckert explained, that he had met with congressmen from the border states and urged them toward compensated emancipation, “not emancipation at once, but a decision at once to emancipate gradually.”

  From the president’s demeanor, it appeared that compensated emancipation had not gone over. Lincoln would not be buying his way to Negro freedom, even in the four loyal slave states—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. He would have to spend human capital instead.

  A few days later, he brought the sheets back and continued to work on them from time to time until the morning of July 21.

  Overnight, a violent storm had blasted the city with nerve-shattering claps of thunder and lightning strikes as close as Lafayette Park. Behind it had come cool air on a breeze that was now blowing gently in the open windows of the office.

  When Lincoln entered, Halsey was finishing his paperwork, and Major Eckert was starting his day. Eckert unlocked the drawer, removed the sheets, gave them a brief glance, and handed them to the president.

  Lincoln offered that benevolent smile. “Curious, Major?”

  “You said it was something special,” answered Eckert, “so I suppose I am, sir.”

  Lincoln gestured for Halsey to step closer. “This document gives freedom to the slaves in the rebellious states, for the purpose of ending the war.”

  And there it was: the Emancipation Proclamation, just a few paragraphs, written and rewritten across several pages and several weeks, right under Halsey’s nose.

  “I intend to issue it as an executive order, using my war-making powers. We deprive the rebels of field hands and teamsters and all the other supports that four million unpaid laborers give them. We do what’s right and what the Constitution allows.”

  At that moment, Halsey Hutchinson was not sure what he felt. He had seen the war. He had suffered in it. He wanted it to end. And yet, how much more blood would be spilled to make this proclamation a reality?

  In committing to free the slaves, even if he was freeing them only in the states where he had no authority, he was changing the meaning of the war, or to use a metaphor better suited to the son of a Massachusetts textile manufacturer, he was not trying to mend a tear in the fabric. He was ripping it all the way through in order to make of it something entirely new.

  Lincoln swore them both to secrecy “until this is made public.” Then he left. He did not ask for an escort, as if he knew that he was now on his own.

  * * *

  When Halsey saw Mr. Shovel and Mr. Mule Harness that morning, they tipped their hats, as always, and he tipped his.

  Mr. Shovel said, “Glorious mornin’, sir.”

  If you only knew, thought Halsey, how glorious it was for your race.

  He expected the Emancipation Proclamation to shake the world that day or the next. But no news issued forth from the Executive Mansion. So Halsey resolved to carry the president’s secret for as long as necessary, even if McNealy, Pinkerton, and Benjamin Wood together held him down and tried to beat it out of him.

  Besides, he had other things to occupy him …

  … starting with his speculations
on that daybook. It might not hurt the president, once emancipation had become the policy, but it still worried Halsey.

  Had Squeaker managed to sell it?

  A sale to Benjamin Wood or his Copperhead allies would by now have led to some public revelation regarding Lincoln’s ruminations on a general emancipation.

  A sale to Harriet Dunbar—if she really was a Confederate agent—might have led to angry cries from Richmond editorialists, exhortations to fight ever harder against the Yankee aggressor coming to change the Southern way of life.

  And if Squeaker had not sold it, where was it?

  Halsey still suspected McNealy.

  * * *

  All was not gloom and torment, however.

  Samantha had filled the void left by Constance, and she seemed to be growing by the week.

  She worked days and he worked nights. But Miss Dean had given her a day of rest on Tuesdays, so it had become their day together.

  They had gone to Nixon’s Cremorne Garden Circus to see acrobats and tumblers and horse tricks. They had visited Brady’s studio to have their portraits made for cartes de visite, cardboard-backed images suitable as calling cards. Halsey had worn his uniform and held his kepi on his lap. Samantha had worn her hoopless gingham nursing dress and apron, so that her family could see how confident she appeared.

  And on that Tuesday, Halsey took her to lunch at the Gosling on Pennsylvania Avenue, a restaurant that advertised daily in the Washington Republican: “The very best that the market affords of all that the appetite can crave either to eat or drink.” It was, thought Halsey, truthful advertising in a city where lies abounded.

  The girlish roundness was already gone from her cheeks. The happy chatter had given way to calmer tones and quieter talk. Scraping lint and cataloging medicines in Boston were no training for what she had seen at the Union Hotel Hospital. But as she said over a bowl of steaming she-crab soup, how much worse was it for suffering men?

  She was, however, still girlish in some things. That afternoon, Halsey took her to the Smithsonian, to the West Range, to his favorite pillar. When he stopped to kiss her, she responded nervously and chastely, a quick embrace, a quick collision of lips, and even quicker disentanglement at the approach of footfalls in the gallery.