The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Lincoln glanced toward the sound, then back. “You’ll forgive me for not inviting you to breakfast, Lieutenant, but—”

  Halsey said, “Sir, I think it’s my duty to tell you that I dined last night with the Wood brothers of New York, the Copperheads.”

  Lincoln took a sip of coffee and smiled. “I forgive you.”

  “Thank you, sir, but—”

  “Strange name, Fernando. I hear that his mother gave it to him because she liked a character with that name in a novel. I wonder if the fictional Fernando is a conniver, too.”

  “Hard to say, sir. But … do you know where he’s just been?”

  “Harrison’s Landing,” said Lincoln.

  Halsey was not surprised. The War Department detective service knew which connivers to watch. He said, “Do you know why they went?”

  “I imagine they went to congratulate McClellan on his conduct of the war.” Lincoln picked up his spoon and dipped it into the soft-boiled egg on its little stand.

  Halsey watched the long fingers work around the shell. “‘Congratulate,’ sir?”

  “McClellan says that with more men, he can take Richmond. But if I give him a hundred thousand, he’ll send a telegram of thanks, then tell me that Pinkerton determines the enemy has been reinforced by a hundred and one thousand, and therefore, he cannot attack. This is the kind of war-making that Peace Democrats congratulate.” The eggshell cracked beneath Lincoln’s fingers.

  “I think, sir, that these two Peace Democrats went to do more than congratulate him,” said Halsey. “I think they went to persuade him.”

  “To do what?”

  “To run against you in the next election.”

  Lincoln sat back, looked out toward the city, and said, “Well … if McClellan wants the job that badly, he can have it.”

  “I thought you should know, sir.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.” Lincoln went back to the egg.

  “And I thought you should know that in fighting as he does, sir—”

  “Or doesn’t,” said Lincoln.

  “—General McClellan may not be working in your best interests.”

  “His hopes for a limited war will be dashed when we announce emancipation.” Lincoln took his napkin and wiped the egg from the corners of his mouth.

  “If you’re waiting for a victory before you announce it, sir, you should know that McClellan sees a Godly purpose in defeat.”

  “In defeat?”

  “In his defeat before Richmond. He thinks his loss on the Peninsula means the Lord doesn’t want the Radicals and Abolitionists to gain the political upper hand and drive through to emancipation.”

  If a man’s face could suddenly go gray, as brown leather goes gray when splashed with water, it was Lincoln’s. His voice went gray, too. “Where did you hear this?”

  “From Wood’s niece. She made notes from the notes that her uncle made of conversations with McClellan.” As he said it, Halsey knew how convoluted it sounded.

  Lincoln said, “I’ll need something more concrete than that before—”

  Halsey was already putting the June 28 telegram on the table.

  Lincoln looked at the yellow sheet, picked it up, and read it all, even the words at the end that accused him and Secretary Stanton of treason.

  Out on the lawn, little Tad had begun an imaginary battle with a Confederate regiment. He was wielding a carved wooden musket and making the sounds of gunfire.

  Lincoln asked Halsey, “Where did this come from?”

  Halsey told the story of deleting the last lines the night the message came in.

  Lincoln said, “I’m most appreciative, Lieutenant, but in the future, I need every bit of information. However—” And as usual when he chided someone, Lincoln softened. “—it’s the role of a man’s friends to protect him now and then.”

  “McClellan’s not my friend, sir.”

  “No, but I am. You were protecting me from bad news … or from my own anger at words that this general shouldn’t have said.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Men sometimes say things in writing that they shouldn’t … sometimes in a telegram to their superiors, sometimes in a daybook to themselves.”

  And there it was again. That daybook was still on Lincoln’s mind, even after he had come to his conclusions about emancipation. What else was in it? What else kept him thinking about it?

  But the conversation was over. A young man was appearing in shirtsleeves on the back porch: Lincoln’s son Robert, on his summer break from Harvard. His below-average height and round face, thought Halsey, favored his mother’s side of the family. His friendly but phlegmatic personality favored his father’s.

  As they exchanged pleasantries, a tiny woman in a prim black dress now joined them. She seemed to have calmed her anger. She smiled and said to her husband, “Father, have you not even invited this young man for a cup of coffee?”

  “I was just leaving, ma’am,” said Halsey.

  Lincoln picked up the yellow telegram and put it into his pocket.

  * * *

  “You’ve been to see the president?” McNealy was leaning against a tree at the corner of Fifteenth and Pennsylvania, in front of the State Department.

  Halsey had left the horse at the War Department stable and was walking home. “I went on an errand for Stanton, if it’s any business of yours.”

  “It’s all my business. What else?”

  Halsey decided to test him with another jolt of truth. “I went to warn the president.”

  “Warn him?” McNealy fell in beside Halsey. “Of what?”

  “The Wood brothers asked McClellan directly to run for president.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “You keep forgetting,” said McNealy, “I ask. You answer. You follow?”

  “No. You follow.” Halsey picked up his pace and legged around the corner onto Pennsylvania, forcing McNealy to quick-step behind him.

  “Don’t be smart with me. Who told you that the Woods went to see McClellan?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” answered Halsey. “The president already knew.”

  McNealy said, “It was the girl, wasn’t it?”

  Halsey kept walking, past the Willard and across Fourteenth.

  “You told me three weeks ago, Lieutenant. And your silence tells me now. It was the girl. Did she tell you while she was pullin’ your prick?”

  “Whoever told me,” said Halsey, “it has nothing to do with my prick. It’s treason. Tell Lafayette Baker to arrest the Woods.”

  “We don’t arrest congressmen. It makes the president look bad.”

  “Then tell Pinkerton to arrest McClellan.”

  “Maybe I’ll tell one of them to arrest you.”

  “You can’t arrest me.” Halsey stopped at the corner of Thirteenth. “I’m your eyes in the War Department. You said it. You need me. Now, I have a telegram to send. Then I’m going to bed. It’s been a long night.”

  He left McNealy standing there and hurried on to the National. He never looked over his shoulder to see if McNealy was following. He went into the hotel telegraph office and wrote out the message for his sister, Mrs. Karen Hemmick of Boston.

  PLEASE GO TO WELLESLEY AND VISIT REVEREND SIMPSON. HE IS GRAVELY ILL. BRING MY BEST WISHES TO HIM AND EXPRESSLY TO SAMANTHA.

  When Halsey came out, McNealy was sitting in the shoeshine chair.

  Noah was buffing his boots and sweating like a field hand. He said to Halsey, “Shine, sir? I really think you need a shine.”

  McNealy puffed up his cigar and said, “Forget him. You just finish my boots, boy. And tell me again what your sons do here at the hotel.”

  * * *

  Halsey did not sleep well.

  And when he awoke, there was a note under the door, in Constance’s handwriting:

  Do not visit today. My uncles remain angry with me. I shall calm them. Meet me in the ladies’ parlor tomorrow at noon.

&n
bsp; Outside, Noah Bone did not offer his usual greeting. He just gestured to the chair, and Halsey sat. The rays of the sun, long and low, were slanting now from the west.

  Noah began to brush. “That McNealy feller done his damnedest to scare me.”

  “And did he?”

  “Scared the piss right out of me, sir. And give me a colic in the belly, too, sayin’ he could throw anyone in the Old Cap, includin’ me and my boys if we knew somethin’ bad was happenin’ and didn’t tell.”

  “He can’t do that.” Halsey lied to offer a bit of assurance.

  Noah looked up. “I’m a hardworkin’, God fearin’ man. I have a good wife. We have good boys. We live right by the Baptist church. We go every Sunday and sing and pray and praise the Lord. And I want to keep doin’ it. So you got to tell me … are we really helpin’ Mr. Lincoln, like you say?”

  “I can tell you with certainty that Lincoln’s helping your race. And I’m helping Lincoln. So…” Somehow, Halsey thought that if he phrased it with the logic of a syllogism, it would all sound more believable.

  Noah looked down again and began to brush.

  Halsey watched the black hands working. He could feel the tension radiating like the sweat from Noah’s whip-scarred shoulders. He was sorry that he had dragged Noah and his sons into this. But they had all been dragged into it, a whole nation had been dragged into it, from Lincoln to this Negro who shined shoes and watched his place in the world. And there was no telling where it would end.

  Finally, Noah looked up. “My son says for you to see the maid at 1910 Pennsylvania, named Miz Stetson. Go there tonight. He wrote some stuff down to tell you. And he needs one of them cartes, if you got one, so’s she can know what you look like.”

  Halsey climbed down, pulled a carte from his breast pocket, and gave it to Noah, who gripped his hand with fingers that felt like steel cables. “You better be doin’ right by my boys … and Mr. Lincoln.”

  Halsey did not know if he was doing right by anyone anymore.

  * * *

  But he had to see Constance again, no matter her note, so he stopped at the Willard before walking on to the War Department.

  He did not see her or her uncles in the dining room, but he could feel eyes turning toward him, as always. And he sensed that the new hotel detective, hired after the murder of John Charles Robey, was watching.

  So he crossed the lobby as if he owned it. His father had always said that was the way to go into any room. Those who bid you well would respect you, those who did not would grow wary, and those who suspected you would drop their suspicions.

  As he climbed the stairs, a man passed on the way down. He wore a Union kepi, a red tie, a blue suit, a neat Vandyke. Halsey stopped and turned. Familiar?

  Then he hurried on and knocked on Constance’s door. No answer. He put his hand on the doorknob to test it.

  “You lookin’ for someone, mister?” The house detective, a burly man in a bowler hat and stained cravat, jammed his face close to Halsey’s. His breath smelled of onions.

  “I’m looking for Miss Constance Wood,” said Halsey. “We had an appointment.”

  The detective raised bushy caterpillar brows. “I’ve heard it called a lot of things. That’s the genteelest yet. Appointment. But she’s not home, is she?”

  “Apparently not.”

  The detective stepped aside and made a sweep of his arm toward the top of the staircase, politely telling Halsey to get the hell out.

  Halsey brushed past him and bounded down to the ladies’ parlor.

  He stopped in the doorway and scanned the room. A woman was sitting in a chair, her back to the door. She was reading at the library table beside an oil lamp. She seemed to be about the size of Constance, and her hair was … he could not quite tell the color.

  So he removed his hat, stepped into the room, and approached. “Excuse me.”

  The woman looked up. Her hair was not strawberry blond but brown going gray. And her face was tight, severe.… Harriet Dunbar.

  She smiled. “Yes, young man.”

  “Forgive me, ma’am. I’ve—”

  Her eyes shifted to the house detective, who was standing in the doorway.

  “Is this feller botherin’ you, Miss Dunbar?”

  She stood. “Lieutenant Hutchinson has mistaken me for a much younger woman.”

  “You remember me?” said Halsey.

  Harriet Dunbar batted her eyes, as if she were flirting in some Tidewater parlor. “Why, Lieutenant, I remember all the young men who visit my salon.”

  “Well,” said the house detective, “maybe it’s time for this young man to be movin’ on. I don’t like fellers wanderin’ about my hotel, botherin’ the ladies.”

  Halsey had questions for Harriet Dunbar, but not with another detective listening. So he gave her a bow and left. As he passed the detective, he put on his bowler, touched the brim, and said, “If you’re plannin’ to stay, I’d take off the hat. It’s the ladies’ parlor.”

  * * *

  Around nine o’clock, Halsey told David Homer Bates that there was a lovely young woman at the Willard, the niece of a congressman, and he just had to see her once more before they sent her back to New York. It seemed a good excuse for leaving the office in the middle of his shift.

  Bates agreed to cover for a few hours.

  Halsey told the sergeant at the duty desk on the landing that he was going to the privy. The sergeant logged him out. Logging back in would be difficult, but Halsey would find a way.

  Though the night was sultry hot, the western sky was flickering with light, and the low rumble of thunder rode the east-running clouds.

  Halsey pulled his hat down and headed northwest on Pennsylvania.

  Carriages clattered by. A man and his wife pushed a baby pram with two crying children. A pair of Metropolitan Police came toward him in their square hats, navy blue coats, and copper badges. They gave him the eye, so he tipped his hat.

  Private dwellings lined the south side of the street, brick row houses with high stoops and tall windows, interrupted here and there by an empty lot that looked like a missing tooth in a row. At Twentieth Street, the Western Market occupied the odd-shaped block on the north side. And freestanding houses broke the pattern, too, relics from an earlier time, with fences and barns in the backyards and fruit trees on the little front lawns.

  Number 1912 was a separate house on the south side, just a few hundred yards from the circle named for the Father of His Country. Number 1910, where Halsey was to find help, was the last house in a joined row of six, all brick fronts with handsome wrought iron balusters and tall windows.

  Following the instructions of the Bone brothers, he cut through to an alley that ran behind the row houses to number 1910 and knocked twice on the back door.

  A black woman peered out, then looked down at a carte de visite in her hand, then at him again, then opened the door.

  He smiled and said, “Mrs. Stetson?”

  She was small and wizened but well preserved and well dressed in a maid’s gray dress and apron. Wire-rimmed spectacles gave her an air of erudition, as did her diction: “Step inside, and wipe your feet. You have until ten-oh-five exactly. That’s when Master Bigsby and his wife come home from the theater.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I wouldn’t help you at all, but Jacob Bone says you’re helping Mr. Lincoln. And if helping the president means you need to see what goes on in Doc Wiggins’s house, well, you’ll see all his guests from the bay window.”

  “So that’s their name? Wiggins?”

  “It’s the house of Dr. Joshua Wiggins.” Mrs. Stetson took an oil lamp and led him up the back stairs to the main hallway, then into the darkened parlor, with its pianoforte and fancy furniture. She pointed to the bay window. “Watch from there.”

  Halsey promised that he would be quiet and invisible.

  She appeared nervous, eyes shifting, ears cocking to every neighborhood noise. She said, “Don’t light any lanterns. And i
f you see a carriage pull up and a lady get out in a yellow dress, you run for the back door, because that’s Mistress Bigsby. She gets the vapors if a play is too frightening and leaves early.”

  So he crouched down beside a marble-topped table. And he watched.

  * * *

  A short time later, two men walked along Pennsylvania Avenue, turned at the tall fence that separated 1910 from 1912, and went down the alley between them.

  In the next half hour, Halsey counted at least a dozen men going in. He tried to collect details—features, faces, sizes—and record them in his little red diary. One man stopped under the streetlamp and lit a cigar. He was wearing a gray suit and an eye patch. He seemed familiar, but men with eye patches were a common sight in Washington.

  Around nine forty-five, a woman scurried along the sidewalk and went down the alley. The mysterious “strong-voiced woman,” thought Halsey.

  Ten minutes later, he recognized the slope-shouldered lope of Joseph Albert McNealy, who came from across the street and went straight down the alley.

  The distant thunder now rumbled like a running battle moving toward Washington.

  A horseman trotted along. A produce wagon rolled in from somewhere. The Metropolitan Police came back and walked on toward Washington Circle. The young parents rolled by with the baby pram and two children peacefully asleep.

  Then Halsey heard a voice in his ear. He almost jumped.

  Mrs. Stetson said, “Time to go, mister. Time to light the lamp.”

  As he stood, a carriage clip-clopped up to number 1912. And Haley saw what he could not believe: the Wood brothers climbing out and going into the house. He had to see more.

  At the back door, he took the maid’s hand, “The president appreciates what you’ve done.”

  “I don’t believe you, sonny. I don’t believe you ever laid eyes on the president. I let you in here because of the Bone boys. Now, you just run along.”

  He stepped out into the yard, heard the door close and lock behind him. He went down the alley, as if he were leaving, then doubled back.

  He knew that if he had to, he could easily lose himself in the maze of fences, grass patches, barns, privies, and sheds back there. As he passed one hedgerow, he heard a dog growl, but he kept moving until he reached the six-foot board fence that separated the Wiggins property from Bigsby’s. He slinked along until he was close to the Wiggins barn, so close that he could smell the hay.