The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Halsey walked onto the bridge as if he owned it, tipped his hat to the guards, and kept going. And suddenly, he felt a sense of freedom. He was out from the trees, away from the buildings of the city, out under the broad darkening sky. And he was taking action.

  He moved quickly, but the carriage was picking up speed.

  The Negro driver was shouting ahead of him at the white people on the bridge. “Gangway! Doctor comin’! Doctor comin’ to help the troops. Gangway! Gangway!”

  And the hooves of the horse set up a staccato clip-clop, clip-clop, like a melody above the baseline scuffling and stomping of all the feet crossing the wooden bridge.

  Halsey knew that if he did not move quickly, his chance would pass. So he broke into a trot, then came up on the side of the carriage and leaped aboard.

  “What is this?” said Dr. Wiggins.

  The driver turned. “Hey, there!”

  Halsey rammed the pistol into the doctor’s side. “Tell him to keep driving.”

  “Whoever you are, you’re a dead man,” said the doctor.

  “Tell him.”

  Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

  “Keep goin’,” said the doctor to his driver. “Now, what do you want?”

  “You need a talking-to, Doctor.”

  “A talking-to?”

  “Isn’t that what you said about Congressman Wood’s niece?”

  Wiggins eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

  “You know right well.”

  The doctor looked over his shoulder.

  Halsey said, “Don’t be looking for help. Just open your bag.”

  “My bag?”

  “Open it!”

  Doc Wiggins looked over his shoulder again.

  Now Halsey saw why.

  Instead of trapping the doctor, Halsey had trapped himself.

  Hunter and Skeeter were following the carriage on foot. Somehow, Halsey had gotten between them. Or McNealy had set him up after all.

  Clip-clop, clip clop, clip-clop.

  The doctor told the driver, “Stop! Stop right now!”

  Hunter came up on the left, Skeeter on the right, and Hunter said, “Like I told you before, Lieutenant, you are fucked. Your nigger friends, too.”

  Halsey decided not fight this personal war by half measures. If he did, he would never escape, Samantha would never be safe, and the Freedoms would suffer, too.

  So he stood in the carriage, raised the pistol, and shot Hunter once in the forehead. Hunter’s eye opened wide, almost in shock, as if to ask, How dare you? He staggered for a second. Then his legs collapsed under him.

  Now the Provost Guards were coming from both ends. The pounding vibration of their feet made the bridge shake.

  Halsey grabbed the doctor’s bag and kicked the doctor away, but Skeeter grabbed his leg. Halsey turned and put two shots into Skeeter, chest first, then forehead, and did not feel an instant’s remorse.

  All around, people were turning, ducking, crouching out of the line of fire.

  Doc Wiggins grabbed his collar

  He pulled free, pointed the pistol, and the doctor dived away as fast as a fat man could.

  Halsey did not shoot the doctor. Instead, he jumped off the carriage, stumbled on Hunter’s body, and as he tried to catch his balance, dropped the doctor’s bag. It flopped open and spilled out bottles and pills and a few sharp instruments, but the daybook? Where was the daybook? Buried deeper, down at the bottom?

  Halsey pointed his pistol at a do-gooding bystander who came up behind the carriage. Then he whirled and pointed at another coming from the front. Then he half-whirled and pointed at the Negro driver, who ducked away.

  The Provost Guards were almost on him. So he shoved the pistol back into his holster, snatched the half-open bag, stepped over the railing, and dropped straight down, like a sashweight dropped from a roof. He hit the water feetfirst and felt the current suck him deeper and turn him over and pull him along.

  That was good, because it protected him from the musket fire that followed him downstream. In a short time, he was a quarter mile away, riding the current toward Mason’s Island in the middle of the river. And he had nothing in his hands. The bag was gone.

  He fetched up on the mudflat at the upstream end, crawled up to the trees, and collapsed. It was nearly dark. He could barely see the figures on the bridge. He suspected that they could barely see him. But the mosquitoes found him quickly. And the police or the provosts would find him, too. They would post a guard at the footbridge that led from the Virginia side, and they would come for him as soon as the sky grew light.

  So Hunter was right. Halsey was … fucked. But Hunter would not be right about anything else, and Squeaker had liquidated his debt, as well.

  Like Lafayette Baker, Halsey Hutchinson had become a vigilante. He might have been a fool to trust McNealy or to start shooting on the bridge. But he would be a bigger fool to stay on that island.

  So he could wait, or he could swim.

  If he was lucky, he could fight the current across to Rock Creek, then move up the shallow stream on foot, hiding his trail and himself in the sliver of a ravine that separated Georgetown from Washington. If he was unlucky, he would be dragged downstream by the current and wash up on Kettle Shoals … dead.

  He decided to swim.

  III.

  Three weeks later, a man who called himself Private Jeremiah Murphy crossed Antietam Creek and moved with his regiment into a grove of trees. To the west, up a gentle slope, spread a huge cornfield. At dawn, it had been covered with green stalks. Now it was soaked in blood and layered with bodies.

  Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes came among the men, saying, “Cheer up, boys. It’s folly to pull a long mug every time you face enemy fire. When we go in, we go in like soldiers. We hold our place in the line. And we lick ’em.”

  He did not inspire any wild cheering. Most men were too frightened.

  But Jeremiah Murphy was at peace. Though he was as cotton-mouth scared as any man there, the enemy before him would be far easier to confront than whatever he had left behind in Washington.

  He had sewn a pocket inside his private’s jacket. It contained remnants of a carte de visite of Samantha Simpson of Wellesley, Massachusetts, a fresh letter to her, and a letter to Abraham Lincoln, too. He hoped that someday he would mail them, or that someone who was burying him would do it for him.

  And if he died that day, he would die knowing what few other men on the field could: that victory would lead to the proclamation of emancipation.

  Robert E. Lee had stopped to offer battle on the long, low ridge that ran north from Sharpsburg, Maryland. There was no doubt of his intention or of his opinion about the opposing commander, because he had put Antietam Creek before him and the snaky twists of the Potomac River less than a mile to his rear. He meant to fight, and he expected to win. After all, he had not lost a battle yet.…

  * * *

  On that last Saturday in August, early reports suggested a great Federal victory at Second Bull Run. But early reports had proved inaccurate. The Confederates had smashed General Pope and sent a torrent of beaten men and frightened civilians pouring back across the Washington bridges.

  By Sunday morning, the Provost Guard and Metropolitan Police were too busy to be bothered searching Mason’s Island for a black-bearded man in a brown suit.

  It would not have mattered anyway, because Halsey Hutchinson by then was hiding in a hollow near Rock Creek. He had fresh water from the stream, firewood from the deadfall, and plenty of neighbors. Some were vagrants, some were deserters, and all lived in fear of sweeps by the Metropolitans.

  For two days, he hid out, dried out, and tried to figure out what to do next. On Monday, he ventured out.

  Hunger forced him, and the resolve to get clear of his troubles. He still had his pistol. He still needed a friend.

  But the first familiar face he saw belonged to General McClellan, who came galloping along M Street with an entourage of officers, raising clouds o
f dust and cheers. The Young Napoléon was a great galloper, thought Halsey, especially when his fortunes were on the rise.

  Lincoln had determined that General Pope was not the man to defend the city. So he had turned back to McClellan. The troops were happy. The people of Washington were happy. Halsey suspected that Lincoln and his cabinet felt differently.

  Halsey learned of all this from a copy of the Daily Republican posted on the message board in front of the State Department. The paper also contained an article on the Aqueduct Bridge shooting, and it quoted Detective Joseph Albert McNealy, who linked Halsey Hutchinson to two more murders. Yes, he thought, McNealy had set him up again.

  So that night, Halsey slipped down to the Washington Canal and fished a canvas bag out of the water, right at the spot where he had dropped it four months before. It contained a floppy felt hat, rough linsey-woolsey shirt, and long leather apron. He brought them back to his hideout, rinsed them in Rock Creek, and dried them by his campfire. The next day, he took to the streets in the guise of a butcher’s helper.

  He went first by the Union Hotel Hospital, hoping to glimpse Samantha. He lingered on the corner for half an hour or more, and then he saw her, and his heart leaped up again. Then she called the men to lunch, and the sound of her voice caused his heart to sink. In the noonday sunshine, he realized that it had never been Samantha but another young woman in a hoopless gingham dress, another who might once have been girlish but now had been toughened by hard work and war.

  So he turned and headed for the National. He might have hoped to see Samantha, but he had to see McNealy. After four days of reliving the events on the bridge, he believed that the daybook had not been in the doctor’s bag. Maybe McNealy had it. Maybe he’d had it all along. Maybe they could still work a deal. Or maybe he would kill McNealy on sight. He was getting good at killing.

  In any event, Noah could play the go-between because Noah shined McNealy’s shoes.

  So Halsey watched the hotel all afternoon. But Noah was busy the whole time. Never once was there an empty chair or a chance for Halsey to approach.

  Then, about four o’clock, a young man with a long, boyish face and a sprouting mustache stepped out of the hotel and climbed into one of the shining chairs. He wore the dress frock and insignia of a Union captain: Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  What was he doing in the city? And where was the Twentieth?

  Halsey realized that not only was he looking at one of his oldest friends but also at his best chance for a different kind of freedom.

  After his shine, Holmes jumped down and started west along Pennsylvania.

  Halsey came up behind him and with an Irish accent in his graveled voice, he said, “Excuse me, sir.”

  Holmes glanced at him. “Not interested.”

  “Oh, I ain’t sellin’ nothin’. My name’s Murphy. I’m … I’m Irish.”

  “So you are.” Holmes did not break stride. “And a long way from home.”

  “From the symbol on your hat, I’m thinkin’ you’re a long way yourself, sir, a long way from Massachusetts.”

  Holmes picked up his pace, as if he had better places to be.

  Halsey was pleased that Holmes had not yet recognized him. If his closest friend in the regiment could not see past the beard and the brogue, who else would? He said, “I’m also thinkin’ you’d be knowin’ a friend of mine who’s no longer with us.”

  “I know a friend of yours?” said Holmes. “Can’t imagine how, but—”

  “His name was Sergeant Thomas Moran.”

  Holmes stopped and studied the man beneath the brim of the filthy felt hat. But no glimmer of recognition lit his face. He said, “You knew Tom Moran?”

  “We was from the same town, sir, a place called Spiddal in County Galway, a fine fishin’ town it is, filled with fine men, fine men.”

  “As he often said.” Holmes went back to walking.

  Halsey followed. “I’m told he even rescued one of your best friends at Ball’s Bluff, a man who’s forever indebted to him. A fine, brave man by the name of—”

  Holmes stopped again and looked into Halsey’s eyes … and looked … and looked some more. “Halsey Hutchinson.”

  “The very one,” said Halsey. “Moran always told me that he never thought you Harvard boys’d fight, till he saw ye’s go into action at Ball’s Bluff.”

  Holmes’s eyes lit. Then they darkened. Then he turned and started walking again, as if he had just looked upon a friend suffering some dreadful disease and wanted to get away before he caught it.

  Halsey followed, dropped the accent, and said, “I did not kill Constance Wood.”

  “Did you kill the others? In the gambling hell? On the bridge?”

  “You could say that I’ve been forced to fight this war in the shadows.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “You sound like a lawyer.”

  “Not yet,” said Holmes.

  “But you’ve heard of attorney-client privilege.”

  “I can’t represent you in a court-martial, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m asking you to sign me up.”

  “As what?”

  “A private. I’d rather shoulder a musket than fight in the shadows.” And across the next four blocks, Halsey Hutchinson told his story, including the part about the president’s daybook. “I thought I had it in my grasp on the bridge. I was … misled.”

  “It would be a remarkable document,” mused Holmes.

  “But it has eluded me. The opportunity to serve has not.”

  “So you want to hide out in the regiment?”

  “I’ll be an Irishman from the same village as Sergeant Moran. I know everything about Spiddal, because he never shut up about the place. And when I was a boy, my nursemaid was from the village of Dunslea. My father had to fire her when I started speaking with a brogue.”

  Holmes nodded. He almost smiled, which Halsey took as a good sign.

  “What’s more,” said Halsey, “I have a black beard, a croaking voice that no one in the regiment has heard, and a personality so blackened that I’m grim, sour, and not much at all for campfire small talk. But I can fight. And if I die, I die.”

  A soap salesman at a little stand in front of the Willard called out to Holmes, “Hey, soldier-boy, maybe you should buy a little lather for your dirty friend, there.”

  Holmes ignored him and kept walking up Fifteenth and turned onto the Pennsylvania straightaway.

  As they passed the White House, Holmes looked ahead and said, “They’re here.”

  A dozen men in blue uniforms were waiting on the corner of Seventeenth, in front of the art museum that had become a supply depot.

  Holmes explained that he had gotten a twelve-hour pass to give himself a few of “the necessities of life” at the National. Then he was to collect a dozen recruits sent from Boston and march them on to the camp at Tennallytown.

  “You’ve had a lot of replacements, then?” asked Halsey.

  “We weren’t at full strength to begin with. Five hundred thirty-some to start … never more than eight hundred. Back now to less than five hundred effectives.”

  “So you’ve sustained terrible losses. You need reliable men.”

  “We do, and there are some companies that have been completely reconstituted since Ball’s Bluff. So there’s a chance that if we put you in the right spot, no one would recognize you.” And in front of the White House, Holmes stopped and looked Halsey in the eye. “If I do this, no man can ever know.”

  “I’ll sign on as Jeremiah Murphy, from Spiddal, County Galway, recruited straight off the boat in East Boston. I got separated from my unit but found my way here.”

  They both knew that such military white lies were told every day.

  A new recruit might decide, after signing or training, that soldiering was not for him. He might desert. Later, he might think better of his decision, and if he presented himself to the right officer at the right moment, the result might be reinstat
ement rather than a firing squad. It was a brutal fact, growing more brutal by the month, that every regiment needed men, however they came.

  At the supply depot, Holmes drew a private’s uniform for Jeremiah Murphy, explaining with a wink to the quartermaster that Murphy had joined the regiment late. Halsey put the uniform on right in the depot. He shouldered a musket and marched through the Washington streets to freedom … and expiation.

  A few days later, he was marching north with the Twentieth.

  The great pursuit had begun …

  * * *

  … because Robert E. Lee had not chosen to sit in Manassas consolidating his power. He saw his main chance in Maryland. A victory there might bring a border state to the side of the South and convince the European powers to recognize the Confederacy. With the Union Army in disarray and McClellan in charge, anything was possible.

  So Lee had smashed into Maryland.

  And McClellan had chased him to this gentle landscape of hills and valleys, of pretty stone bridges and green pastures and fertile cornfields, a place that two days before had been slumbering as peacefully in sun as it had since the birth of the republic.

  McClellan had begun the battle by ordering First and Twelfth Corps to attack at dawn, north to south, against the Confederate left. For two ferocious hours, men had fought in the cornfield and around the whitewashed Dunker Church.

  Meanwhile, the Twentieth, in Sedgwick’s Division, Sumner’s Second Corps, had awaited orders. And a few may have wondered with Halsey: Why hadn’t they attacked in coordination with First and Twelfth? If they had struck from the east when the Confederates were turned north, the day might already have been theirs. And emancipation might be a forthcoming reality.

  But the cornfield had fallen silent. That first ferocious clash had petered out. Confederates and Federals had fallen back. McClellan was doing what he always did: overestimating his enemy, holding too much in reserve, and coordinating his attacks with the precision of a casual picnic.

  Then the bugles began to blow and the drums to beat.