“Yes, a crude one,” agreed Lincoln. “It’s all I have, but I think it will do for our purposes. May I ask my colleague Mr. Speed to come forward, Your Honor, and act as a human chart holder?”
The judge grinned at me and said, “It’s about what he’s good for. You may.”
“Speed,” said Lincoln, cocking his head and gesturing me forward. Reluctantly I complied, and Lincoln directed me to hold the map in front of my body, gripping it from both sides, while he angled me such that both the witness and the jury could see Martha’s drawing. Lincoln proceeded to take Owens though his direct testimony again, asking him to use the map as a reference, showing the path taken by those persons who exited the drawing room through the front door as well as those who exited out the rear.
“Now, did you actually see Mr. Truett point the gun at Mr. Early?” Lincoln asked Owens.
“No.”
“Did you see him pull the trigger?”
“No. As I said to Mr. Douglas, I saw him before and after Early was shot, holding the gun both times.”
“Right. So let’s explore those two times. As I understand it, your testimony is you saw Mr. Truett with his pistol drawn twice. Once before the fireworks began and once after they’d ended—is that right?”
“Correct.”
“Can you please indicate on the map here, where you were located on the first occasion and where Mr. Truett was?” The witness rose from his chair and pointed to two spots on the drawing. “And where the two of you were on the latter occasion?” Again, the witness complied.
“Now, I’m not sure this crude map, as you correctly termed it, is exactly to scale, but based on where you’ve just pointed, I’d estimate you were about fifty yards from Mr. Truett on the first occasion and seventy-five yards from him on the latter. Does that sound right?”
Owens dropped his head and thought. The courtroom was silent with anticipation. For the first time, I understood Lincoln’s request for the almanac. “Sounds about right,” said Owens at last.
Lincoln gave a decisive bob of his head.
“Now—oh, we’re done with you. No more need for my human chart holder.” It took me a moment to realize this comment was directed to me. I folded up the map, handed it to Lincoln, and resumed my place in the gallery next to Martha. When the commotion ended, Lincoln turned back to his witness.
“What time was it when you and everyone else went out into the yard to view the works?”
“After ten o’clock at night, I should think. Perhaps closer to eleven.”
“Do you recall, Mr. Owens, that earlier in the evening there had been whale-oil torches ablaze on the Edwards lawn to illuminate the gathering?”
“That’s right.”
“But when you went out after Edwards’s speech, these were blanketed, presumably to allow for better viewing of the works. Isn’t that right?”
Owens thought, but only for a moment. “I believe that’s correct.”
“And the two times you say you saw Truett, one was before the works had begun, and the other was after they’d ended?”
“Yes.”
“So the works were not up in the sky, providing any illumination on either occasion?”
Owens nodded. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Did you have a candle in your hand?” asked Lincoln.
“No. What would I want a candle for?”
“Now, how could you see Mr. Truett, from a distance of fifty or seventy-five yards, in the dark, without a candle, after ten o’clock at night?”
Owens’s eyes darted from Lincoln to Douglas and back to Lincoln again. “Why, the moon, of course.”
“It was a bright moon that evening, is that what you recall?”
“That’s right.” Owens nodded eagerly.
“A full moon?”
“Full … or close enough to it.”
Lincoln strode back to his chair and pulled out Poor Richard, whom he had hidden at the bottom of a pile of papers. After first showing the cover to the judge and the jury, he opened it to the page he’d marked during lunchtime and handed it to the witness.
“Does not the almanac say that on July the fourth the moon was barely past the first quarter instead of being full?”
Owens stared at the page Lincoln had given him, then began riffling through the adjacent pages. He did not answer. The gallery buzzed excitedly.
“Does not the almanac also say,” continued Lincoln, “that the moon had disappeared by ten o’clock?”
Again, Owens looked back and forth from the page Lincoln had given him to the surrounding ones. He remained mute.
“Is it not a fact that it was too dark to see anything from a distance of fifty to seventy-five yards?”
Owens closed the almanac, handed it back to Lincoln, and folded his hands in his lap. “What do you want me to say?” he asked quietly.
Lincoln rose to his full height. “I want you to say,” he said, his index finger pointed at Owens with accusation, “what business you have coming into this courtroom and making these false claims against my client.”
Owens touched his mourning band. “My sister…” he began, but he did not continue.
“What about your sister?” asked Lincoln in a softer voice.
Owens’s face was drained of all color. He took a deep breath and continued, speaking slowly. “My sister passed recently, as you know all too well, Mr. Lincoln. The cause of her passing, it seems, was the ingesting of an ingredient, strychnine, which I keep on my shelves. In small doses it can be restorative. In large doses it is fatal.” Owens swallowed. The crowd was silent.
“I had nothing to do with it, I swear. I have no idea how the strychnine came to be administered to Margaret. But Mr. Douglas … he told me if I didn’t—”
Douglas had been on his feet, pacing back and forth through the gallery, ever since Lincoln first pulled out the almanac. Now he strode forward toward the judge, shouting, “Objection! Objection, Your Honor! This has nothing to do with the questions presented by this trial.”
“It has everything to do with them,” returned Lincoln.
“Nothing—nothing at all,” insisted Douglas. “Your Honor, I feel confident any national judge would immediately see the folly of the path Mr. Lincoln is trying to lead the witness—indeed, lead all of us—down.”
Judge Thomas pulled on his cigar and studied Douglas with great care. I felt sure I could see in the judge’s gaze a calculation based on Douglas’s suddenly narrow and declining lead in the election returns.
“Overruled!” announced the judge. “You may proceed, Mr. Lincoln.”
CHAPTER 35
Late that evening we were back where it all began, in the gentlemen’s smoking lounge of Colonel Spotswood’s hotel, celebrating Lincoln’s victory. Lincoln, Truett, and I had been there from the start, as had Martha. Truett had insisted she attend as soon as he learned she’d been responsible for creating the map that proved critical for Lincoln’s cross-examination of Henry Owens. The smile on Martha’s face, broad all evening, had been no broader than when Lincoln came up to her and threw a celebratory arm around her shoulders.
Other townspeople had come and gone, or come and stayed, drawn by Truett’s promise to cover the entire bill in honor of his vindication. Much of the jury had been by, shaking Truett’s hand and accepting a drink or two, as had many Democratic and Whig officials. Thomas Lincoln and John Johnston were in the “come and stayed” category, although both men quickly had their fill of drink and dozed off in a corner.
The concluding acts of the trial had been rapid after Lincoln’s decisive cross-examination. Douglas promptly rested the People’s case, having been humiliated by Owens’s testimony that Douglas had threatened to charge him in connection with his sister’s death if he did not testify against Truett. A string of hisses and catcalls from the audience greeted Douglas when he stood to announce he had no further witnesses.
For his part, Lincoln then indicated the defense would rest on its cross-
examination of the People’s case and did not intend to call any witnesses of its own. Counsel proceeded to closing arguments, Lincoln’s first and then Douglas’s, and while the Little Giant argued gamely, he was unable to overcome Lincoln’s demonstration that many other persons could have fired the fatal shot combined with the stain of Owens’s discredited testimony.
After arguments concluded, the judge charged the jury and sent them upstairs to No. 4, Hoffman’s Row, to deliberate, after first checking with Lincoln to make sure he’d removed all of his papers from his law office.
“Did you actually clear out everything?” I asked Lincoln now as I accepted Truett’s offer of another glass of whiskey from Spotswood’s reserve. “It was quite a mess.”
“Everything but one item,” said Lincoln. “I may have left Poor Richard sitting alone in the middle of my worktable, open to the moon chart for the night of July fourth.”
Everyone laughed and toasted Lincoln’s artfulness.
Thirty minutes after they retired upstairs to No. 4, the jury returned down to No. 3 with their verdict.
“What say you, in the matter of the People against Henry Truett?” demanded the clerk when everyone resumed their places inside the courtroom and outside on the clamoring street. In truth, little suspense remained in the game at this point.
“Not guilty!” shouted the jury foreman, and it was all over except for the drinking. Doctor Warren would require a different human subject on which to prove the supposed life-restoring capabilities of his galvanic battery.
Late in the evening, accepting yet another glass of liquor from Truett, I looked over at Lincoln. He was slumped on a couch, his chin resting in his hands and his eyes half-closed. The flush of the decisive courtroom victory had faded. Suddenly, he looked very sad.
“Thinking of Miss Owens?” I asked.
He nodded silently.
“I’m glad you won,” said Martha from my other side, “but we didn’t learn the truth today, did we? About who killed Early? Or Miss Owens? Or who was S.G. and why was he haunting you? I’m pleased Mr. Truett was found innocent, of course, but we haven’t solved anything.”
Lincoln gave a great sigh. “As I’ve told you before, Miss Speed,” he said, “trials are merely meant to determine whether the man in the dock bears legal guilt. They’ve never been intended as mechanisms to seek the truth. Truett was adjudged not guilty under the law. Not ‘innocent’—just ‘not guilty.’ That’s all that happened today.”
“Are you saying you think Mr. Truett could have done it after all?” asked Martha quietly. All of us glanced over at the man, who was dancing a drunken jig with a few confederates on the other side of the room.
“It’s possible,” admitted Lincoln, “but I think it more likely there’s still some unknown killer out there. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to Sheriff Hutchason to see what aid I can lend to his investigations. We’ll figure out who did these terrible things. We’ll get to the truth and soon. The truth just wasn’t in the dock today.”
Martha’s posture, her arms crossed in front of her chest and her chin thrust forward, made clear her dissatisfaction with Lincoln’s answer.
Eventually, the church bells tolled midnight. Only a handful of men remained spread about Spotswood’s with us, most in various states of intoxication. A few minutes later, Stephen Douglas walked into the smoking room.
“Ah, they said I’d find you here, Lincoln,” said Douglas, marching over to my friend and offering an outstretched hand, which Lincoln took. Douglas was still wearing the formal suit of clothes he’d worn to court earlier, his tie still done up smartly. “I wanted to offer my congratulations on the verdict. The better man for today won. May I have better luck in the future.”
Douglas noticed Truett’s presence for the first time. Truett was on his feet, swaying a bit, but circling the Little Giant like a predator sizing up his next meal.
“I’m glad for your sake, too, Truett,” said Douglas in the same jovial tone. “No hard feelings, I hope.” Douglas stuck out his hand. As much as I detested the man, I admired his nerve. It was hard not to.
Truett, however, was focused on more concrete matters. He swatted Douglas’s hand away. “You’ve wronged me, Douglas, in more ways than one,” he growled. “I ought to punch you in the mouth. But I’ll settle for a more palpable measure of satisfaction.”
Douglas faced him squarely and without blinking. “What’s that?”
“The land office position, with a guarantee I’ll have it for life.”
“You know I can’t offer that,” replied Douglas. “Indeed, if Lincoln and his cronies keep ginning new votes from up north, both of us may be out of a job before long.”
Several of the Whigs scattered about the room gave a muffled cheer. Everyone was riveted by the tense confrontation.
“Promise me the land office position for as long as it remains within your gift,” said Truett. There was an unmistakable hunger for retribution in his eyes, and I was reminded at once of Truett’s ravenous look as he had watched the land auction at the market house months earlier.
“I can’t do that either. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I do have the power to recommend an office-holder, I’ll be duty-bound to recommend someone I think worthy of the job. You can hardly expect me to consider you as such, not after what we’ve been through.”
Several men around the room took in their breaths sharply. Truett’s face went red as a beet. “You … you bastard,” sputtered Truett. “You no-good goddamned liar.”
Douglas calmly glanced over at Lincoln, who was already on his feet and grasping at Truett’s arm. “Come now, Truett,” said Lincoln, trying to pull his client away. “Let’s not let old animosities spoil our evening. There’ll be plenty of time in the future to sort out offices among you and Douglas and the rest of the Democrats. There’s no call to worry about all that tonight.”
But Truett would not budge. “I said,” he repeated, his glare still locked on Douglas, “you’re a no-good goddamned liar. If you were a true gentleman, there’s only one way you’d respond to those words, you scoundrel.”
“Go home, Truett,” said Douglas, flicking dismissively with the back of his hand. “You won the trial. You’re a free man. Go home, sleep in your own bed, and enjoy your freedom.”
“Come along, Truett—” tried Lincoln again, but his client shook him off.
“You’re a no-good goddamned liar, Douglas,” repeated Truett for a third time. “I demand satisfaction, on the field of honor.” A gasp ran all the way around the room. These were words that, once spoken, could not easily be retracted.
“A duel?” asked Douglas, looking at Truett with incredulity. “Are you truly going to challenge me to a duel?”
“I just did,” replied Truett. “Now, are you a gentleman, or are you not a gentleman?”
Douglas’s broad face gradually hardened. His eyes narrowed and his lips curled into a sneer. “Very well,” he said, taking a deep, steadying breath. “It’s the only way.”
My sister Martha cried out, “No, Stephen. Don’t!”
But Douglas did not appear to have heard her, and he continued, his hawk-like eyes narrowing in on Truett. “I accept the challenge. Daybreak Sunday. On the island in the river near Sangamon. Pistols. Prickett shall be my second. Have your second contact him. They can agree on the rest of the details. Oh, and I’ll arrange for a minister so there’s someone to read you last rites.”
Douglas thrust his shoulders back, straightened his coat, and walked from the room.
Truett turned to Lincoln, who had gone pale. “You shall be my second, Lincoln,” said Truett. “That bastard has it coming. You know it as well as I. Let’s make sure he gets it right between the eyes.”
CHAPTER 36
“You’re not actually planning to go through with it, are you?” I asked Lincoln the next morning as we lay in bed.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“You cou
ld decline to serve as Truett’s second. Let someone else have the trouble of trying to corral him.”
Lincoln sighed and rolled over to face me. “I can’t do that. I feel responsible for the way it got out of hand last night. I should have steered Douglas outside as soon as he arrived. Intended or not, his presence was always going to provoke Truett.”
“No one but Truett is responsible,” I said. “His pigheadedness caused the original fight with Early, and now this.” I shook my head in wonder. “Although I suppose Douglas bears his fair share for last night as well. Can you imagine Douglas going through with the duel? Surely it would be catastrophic for his future, no matter what happens on the field. Look what it did to Burr.”
Lincoln nodded. The example of Vice President Aaron Burr, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel but forever ended his political career in the process, was well-remembered even several decades after the fact.
Duels remained common in other parts of the Union; one was said to occur nearly every day beneath The Oaks in New Orleans. In Illinois they were outlawed by the state’s constitution. The state criminal code likewise proscribed them, with prison sentences running up to five years for anyone remotely involved in a duel, including mere spectators. The seconds, the position Lincoln now found himself in, faced particularly harsh punishment.
But the code of the duel was far too ingrained in American society—especially here in the West—for the nominal legal prohibition to have full effect. Challenges and near challenges were a regular feature of Springfield’s brawling political culture. The only real surprise of Truett’s challenge was that it hadn’t come sooner. But if threats and feints were relatively commonplace, the actual use of weapons on the dueling field was not. Duels in Illinois were often threatened, occasionally agreed upon, and almost never fought.
Thus, as a practical matter, the key figures in duels became the seconds, tasked with coming up with a compromise of sufficient ambiguity as to allow both principals to claim satisfaction and accordingly desist from the main event. In issuing and accepting the duel challenge, as Truett and Douglas had done last night, the main actors demonstrated their willingness to defend their honor on the field, as so many generations of gentlemen had done before them. They had assuredly not demonstrated their intention—to say nothing of desire—to face the business end of a loaded pistol.
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