The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  A dozen men looked at him in shock. A hundred groaned. A hundred more cheered.

  In the rest of the reading, Halsey heard little of poetry. Lincoln was issuing this document in his role as the nation’s leading lawyer. And there was enough emotion in it without his eloquence to stir up more. Halsey listened closely, but with his inner ear, he was listening for something else, for the shouts of joy echoing from a shoeshine stand at the National Hotel and from a composting lot on the east side of Washington.

  And he felt tears filling his eyes.

  A few of the other soldiers saw and gestured, but Halsey did not care. He barely knew them. None of them were friends.

  Besides, men in that army sometimes cried for no reason, even the strongest.

  * * *

  Lincoln had crossed a wide river and there would be no turning back, even if he lost the House of Representatives in November, even if a daybook emerged that showed how he had struggled with this decision for a year or more.

  But what did it all mean for Halsey? What should he do now? Return to Washington and try to clear his name? Or seek expiation and personal redemption on the battlefield?

  A few days later, he read the newspaper description of the Washington celebration on the night of September 22.

  A happy crowd of Abolitionists, Unionists, freedmen, and former slaves paraded along Pennsylvania and up the White House carriage drive as they sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  Lincoln, in his shirtsleeves, stepped to the window above the door.

  And in his mind, Halsey traveled from Bolivar Heights to that familiar place and that glorious moment.…

  Cool breezes had driven the humidity away. The gaslights around the White House glowed like footlights in a theater. The crowd was full of joy and liquor that smelled sweet in the air. And once they had finished singing, someone shouted, “Give us a speech, Abe!”

  The light from the lantern directly above him made Lincoln’s face appear even more shadowed and gaunt than usual. And the portico made his voice echo toward an even higher pitch. But his words were hopeful:

  “I can only trust in God that I have made no mistake. It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on this proclamation.”

  “We judge it all right, Abe!” shouted someone at the back of the crowd.

  And everyone roared.

  Lincoln raised his hands. “There’s no doubt, we are environed with difficulties, but they’re scarcely so great as the difficulties of the men on the battlefield, who would purchase with their blood and their lives the future happiness and prosperity of this country.”

  Halsey felt himself filling with tears again, as the crowd began to sing, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham.”

  And Lincoln cried, “Let us never forget them!”

  “We are coming, coming, three hundred thousand more, from the winding Mississippi to New England’s rocky shore!”

  Halsey was standing in the dark outside the White House, the dark through which he had walked so many times with Father Abraham, and he began to hum that marching song, and he found that he could hit a note here and there, and so he began to sing, beside the flickering campfire on Bolivar Heights. “We are coming, coming, three hundred thousand more…” Then he caught himself.

  Then he thought of something that Lincoln had said to him on the Ariel, about not having lived in vain. He thought of the wounded and the dead, from lucky Holmes to the late Revere to the lowliest private. He thought of all those who would be wounded in the battles ahead, all those who would feel the fatal shot in their belly and go tearing at their clothes to see where they had been struck. And he knew that if he and the rest of them saw this thing through, none of them would have lived—or died—in vain.

  And he decided that he would buy the future with his blood. Lincoln’s proclamation had made it the legal tender of the age.

  * * *

  The next day, he cut open the pocket inside his uniform and took out two letters. One he posted to Samantha, telling her that he lived and served anonymously. He signed it “HH.” The other went to Lincoln, warning him about the Copperheads and the Knights of the Golden Circle and the fire in the rear. He did not sign it, but he hoped that the president received it and heeded it.

  And on the brilliant afternoon of October 1, the president came to Bolivar Heights to review the troops.

  By then, word had spread of disaffection with the Emancipation Proclamation.

  While some soldiers had wept with joy, others had wept with anger. Officers had grumbled and threatened. Rumors flew that when a War Department major named Key was asked why McClellan had not destroyed Lee at Antietam, he said, “That is not his game. The object is that neither army shall get much advantage, that both shall be kept in the field until they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery.”

  When Lincoln got wind of Key’s remarks, he court-martialed him right in the White House, discharging him as an example to other disaffected officers … and perhaps to McClellan himself.

  But on October 1, Lincoln and McClellan rode side by side again. It was a somber review, nothing like the raucous evening at Harrison’s Landing. The soldiers presented arms. The drums beat. McClellan looked dour. Lincoln looked, as one soldier said, like he already had a foot in the grave.

  Halsey wanted to break ranks and shout, “Mr. President, don’t trust him!”

  But Lincoln knew what he was about. He knew how much damage his proclamation had done to the party already. He was not about to do more by firing a Democratic favorite before the fall elections.

  The Democrats took thirty-one new seats in November, including one for Fernando Wood, but they did not take Congress. So while the fire in the rear would grow hotter, the fire to the front would become an inferno that would consume the nation or forge it anew.

  And Lincoln understood that McClellan, even after Antietam, was not a man made for the inferno. He relieved the general with the pouter pigeon chest, the massive ego, and the timid soul just a few days after the votes were counted.

  A month later, the Army of the Potomac marched for Fredericksburg … and the expiation of blood.

  ELEVEN

  Sunday Morning

  “Do you know what Lincoln did two days after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation?”

  The voice echoed across the floor of the Rosslyn parking garage.

  Peter was leaning against a pillar at space D32. He straightened, took his hands out of his pockets, and said, “I don’t know. What?”

  A man appeared from behind a black Lexus. He wore khaki trousers, white Lacoste shirt, and blue blazer. He said, “Honest Abe suspended habeas corpus for anyone who encouraged desertion, resisted the draft, or engaged in what he called ‘any disloyal practice.’ In essence, he suspended the Bill of Rights.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Volpicelli,” said Peter.

  “I heard that you wanted to talk to me yesterday. But I left after that last question from Harrison Keeler.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve made a few enemies along the way. He’s one of them. I never expected him to follow me to Washington for my first appearance with my new book.”

  “Is that why we’re meeting here?” asked Peter.

  “I thought you’d appreciate it.” Volpicelli looked toward a green SUV on the other side. “But I told you to come alone.”

  Peter had driven Henry’s Ford Edge. Henry had ridden in the back, under a blanket, and was watching them now through a video tap to his computer. Peter wouldn’t have come alone, but he had to admit that meeting in this garage showed a certain flair on the part of this particular Deep Throat.

  Outside, the day was humid heading toward hot. But it was dark and cool in the garage.

  A motorcycle roared up Wilson Boulevard and idled for a moment. Volpicelli’s eyes shifted. Then the roar receded.

  “Nervous?” Peter said.

  “If Keeler and his Bonnie Blue Flag boys find us,” said Volpi
celli, “I may be glad you brought backup.”

  “Why are you so afraid of Keeler?”

  “An angry man … angry at Democrats, angry at Republicans, angry at independent scholars who beat him to his own family research.”

  “You?”

  “Have you read my book, Lincoln’s Gestapo?”

  “Provocative title.”

  “Unlike you, I can’t count on the wisdom of the ages to sell my books. I have to be provocative. It’s what gets me onto Fox News and LNN.”

  The SUV door swung open and Henry climbed out. “Gettin’ crowded in that backseat, No-Pete. Has he said yet what he means by ‘follow the money’?”

  “He’s getting to it.”

  Henry Baxter ambled over. That’s how he moved, casual and relaxed, as if he weren’t taking in everything around him, noticing details that no one else saw, and preparing to spring, sprint, or spin at the first sign of danger. That, Peter knew, was how Henry wanted it. That was probably how he’d walked point in Vietnam, too.

  Peter introduced him. “Henry helped us out on a big case in New York.”

  “I like big cases.” Henry grinned. “And when I hear that some white guy in a golf shirt is writin’ books dimmin’ the noble glow that falls on the Great Emancipator, without whom my granddaddy might’ve spent his life pickin’ cotton, without whom we might only now be gettin’ round to integratin’ the lunch counters, well … it’s time to inject my opinions into the conversation, along with my street smarts, my heavy weaponry, and my eloquence on issues large and small.”

  Volpicelli just stared, as if he had never seen such a package of a man before. Most people hadn’t.

  Henry folded his arms and leaned against a pillar. “As we think this has something to do with Keeler’s middle name, please continue with your dissertation.”

  “Keeler’s middle name,” said Volpicelli. “You have good researchers.”

  Henry said, “My smart nephew is in Boston right now, combin’ the libraries and floatin’ through the info cloud.”

  “And he’s only been at it for twenty-four hours,” said Peter.

  “Well, let me show you something I bet he hasn’t found.” Volpicelli pulled out two photographs and put them on the hood of the Lexus.

  Peter had seen hundreds of Civil War photos like these: groups of men standing stiffly, hands folded or slipped into coats, eyes staring at the camera or off toward some far horizon. The pictures were usually taken outdoors, with backgrounds of forest, field, or campground, as if the men were off on some boyish adventure. And one of the subjects was invariably blurred because he moved at the wrong moment.

  The first image showed five men in front of a tent. Two wore Union kepis and uniform trousers. Three wore civilian garb. A campfire smoldered in the foreground.

  The second showed eight men in suits or linen dusters in front of a brick building with high windows and Palladian-style fanlights.

  Peter studied the faces frozen in time, the tin cups on the table beside the campfire, the turds on the city street, the fading whitewash on the sides of the brick building, the bars on the windows. He said, “The past can be mysterious and mundane at the same time.”

  “I’ve been looking at pictures like this since I was a kid,” said Volpicelli. “My father came as an Italian POW. He got a job as bricklayer, fell in love, never went back. He always told me to study American history, because it was a tale of men trying to do good, even when they ended up doing bad.”

  “My folks come against their will, too,” said Henry. “They got a more nuanced opinion on the history.”

  “When I decided to write about Lincoln’s secret police,” said Volpicelli, “I went to all the photo databases and searched every image of the various intelligence services.”

  “How many services were there?” asked Peter.

  “You had Pinkerton’s Federal Secret Service, the War Department detective service, then the Bureau of Military Information, the Washington Metropolitan Police—”

  “Like the CIA and FBI and NSA and—”

  “And nobody trustin’ anybody,” said Henry.

  Volpicelli pointed to the man sitting by the campfire in a canvas duster and porkpie hat. “It started with Pinkerton. He kept an office on I Street and spent most of 1861 tracking spies around D.C. But when McClellan headed for the Peninsula, Pinkerton went, too. So Stanton slipped his own man into power in Washington, Lafayette Baker. When Lincoln fired McClellan, Pinkerton went, too, and left the field to Baker and his boys. They arrested over three thousand Northerners during the war, locked them up, answered to no one.”

  “And what’s worse?” said Henry with sudden anger. “Lockin’ up a few newspaper editors for a few months or lockin’ up ten generations of black folks forever? You come with all this Lincoln-the-tyrant bullshit, but there’s only one truth for a black man, then or now. Lincoln did what he had to do, and what he did was right.”

  Peter cleared his throat, as much for Henry as his throat. Let’s dial this back and do the job. Then he said, “What about McNealy?”

  After a nervous look at Henry, Volpicelli pointed to a man standing behind Pinkerton in the first photo. He wore a three-piece suit, a thick beard, a brown porkpie hat. “There he is.”

  “Hard-lookin’ little dude,” said Henry, who calmed down quickly, which was part of his charm and part of his threat. You never knew when he was going to go off again.

  Then Volpicelli pointed to the other picture, to a big man with a bushy black beard. “That’s Lafayette Baker in front of the Old Capitol Prison.” Volpicelli ran his finger to the other side of the picture. “And who do you think that is?”

  Peter and Henry looked from one shot to the other, and Peter said, “Our boy.”

  Volpicelli said, “He’s the only man you’ll find in both pictures, the only man I’ve ever found in pictures with both men … Pinkerton and Baker, that is.”

  “So you decided to write about him?” said Henry.

  “I wanted to build the book around him. But he didn’t leave much of a trail.”

  “Detectives are supposed to find trails,” said Henry, “not leave ’em.”

  “So I wrote mostly about Baker. There’s plenty on him. Not only did he throw suspected traitors in prison and run the manhunt for Booth, he bribed people he was watching, held a few for ransom, and in general was the kind of corrupt SOB who thrives whenever laws are suspended.”

  “Hey, man,” said Henry, “corrupt SOBs thrivin’ every day in every way, no matter what kind of laws we got goin’ on.”

  “Back to McNealy,” said Peter, “and his connection with Keeler.”

  “I was almost done with my book,” Volpicelli explained, “when I saw an item on eBay: ‘Rare Civil War letters from two brothers—George McNealy of the Second Ohio Volunteers and Joseph Albert McNealy of the War Department detective service—all written to the same woman.’”

  “How much did you pay?” asked Henry.

  “Five thousand, and I would have paid a hundred thousand if I had to.”

  “A hundred? You must get big advances,” said Peter.

  “David Bruce supports my research. He agrees with me that Lincoln was the avatar of big government and an enemy of the Constitution.”

  Henry made a noise that sounded like a growl.

  Peter said, “You and Bruce? I’m not surprised. A match made in heaven. So … who was selling these letters?”

  “A guy who found them in the attic of a house he’d bought outside Cincinnati, the house that Keeler sold after he got out of the can for lobbying violations.”

  “So Keeler thinks they’re his?” asked Henry.

  “He didn’t even know about them, but he must Google himself regularly, to see if anyone is saying anything bad about him. And he must have had the name McNealy in his searches, and they mentioned McNealy in the Publishers Weekly review of my book. So Keeler contacted me and asked to buy the letters, but by then, they were the property of David Bruce, and D
avid doesn’t give things up too easily.”

  “What’s in them?” asked Peter.

  Somewhere on the floor above, a door banged. Volpicelli jumped.

  Henry went for his gun. “Say, man, why you so damn nervous?”

  A car was moving now. Volpicelli rolled his eyes to the concrete ceiling, tracked the sound across and down a ramp, then waited until he heard the gate rise.

  “I thought that if you worked for David Bruce,” said Peter, “you had his security to protect you.”

  “David Bruce believes that in business or treasure hunts, rivalries work best. Competition on a large scale and small. He may have given you a retainer. But he’s still betting on me and his boys, and he’s dangled a nice big bonus, so Andre and Jonathan don’t want me giving away information.”

  “So,” said Henry, “that’s why we’re meetin’ here instead of some fancy hotel?”

  Volpicelli nodded. “I’d rather be sitting down to breakfast in the Palomar.”

  “And,” said Henry, “if those Bruce boys came through here now and found out that you were talkin’ to us, there’d be—”

  “Gunplay?” said Volpicelli. “Maybe.”

  “In that case—” Henry pointed to his SUV with the smoked windows.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in front of the Willard, Evangeline was waiting for her seven thirty ride to Antietam. She was standing under the awning, close by the doorman.

  Henry had wanted to call one of his D.C. friends to provide security, but she insisted that she’d be safe.

  When the production van pulled up, it was good mornings all around. No worries. No surprises. No motorcycles or Chrysler 200 drive-bys.

  But then … as the van headed west, Evangeline glanced back at the hotel to see the definition of sleeping with the enemy: Kathi Morganti, lobbyist for David Bruce, and William Dougherty, chief of staff for the sworn enemy of David Bruce, leaving the hotel together.

  Maybe it was a breakfast meeting. In power towns, people took breakfast meetings even on a Sunday. Didn’t they?

  So why was Dougherty’s hair wet, as if he had showered? And why was Kathi still wearing the blue satin dress she’d been wearing the night before? Was Kathi getting pillow talk to feed to her client? Was Dougherty giving it because he expected his boss to lose the election and he liked the idea of a job with Hamill and Associates? Just who was using whom?