The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  But this wasn’t Boston in 1854. It was instead Springfield, Illinois, in 1860. It was a small town perhaps, but one with the nation’s attention focused squarely upon it because the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States lived there, not eight blocks from where Clarence was standing.

  Nor was the slave the marshal was seeking to return to her owner an enslaved Negro man in his midtwenties, like Anthony Burns. She was instead a mere girl, rumored to be only twelve years of age.

  Nor was Clarence any longer eighteen. He was now twenty-four and hoping to make a success of his new newspaper and show his parents that they were wrong about it being a foolish venture. If he could write the story of tonight’s mob and get it to his printer before midnight, it would appear in the paper’s inaugural edition. But if he left now to write it, he might miss the real story—any attempt to somehow avoid the mob and move the slave girl to the carriage.

  The marshal saved him the decision with a sudden announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, you can all go home. The slave girl will not be moved tonight.”

  “When then, Red?” someone yelled.

  Instead of responding, the marshal just waved his hand at the waiting carriage, and Clarence watched as the driver snapped his whip at one of the horses and began to drive slowly off the square. The bald-headed man was still inside.

  Clarence watched as the deputy marshals took the Negro girl back into the courthouse, and the crowd began to disperse.

  Clarence pulled out his pocket watch—a gift from his mother—and checked the time. He had at least two hours left to write his report of the event—which would be plenty of time. The hardest part would be rendering for his readers the bone-chilling hiss, using mere words. If only there were some way to record the sound of such things.

  Just then a man standing next to him, a stranger who looked to be about his own age said, “Are you heading to the church?”

  “What church?”

  “Second Presbyterian.” The man pointed to a squat brick tower that could be seen poking up above the surrounding buildings, itself perhaps two blocks away. “Abby Kelley Foster is speaking.”

  “I’ve heard her before,” Clarence said. “In New England. What’s she doing here, so far from home?”

  “Don’t know. This Lucy business perhaps.”

  Clarence hesitated. If she spoke long, he would miss his printer’s deadline, even with his two-hour leeway. But if luck were with him, she would be brief and he could put both the hiss and her speech in the same article, on deadline.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll go. Although I’ll not likely hear anything new. Abby Kelley Foster always says the same damn things, ‘Pity the poor slave’ and ‘I speak for my slave sister.’ And then she passes the collection plate to support all the abolitionist publications that are laid out on the tables, as well as her newspaper in Ohio.”

  “Come with me, then,” the stranger said. “Friends have promised to save seats in the back, from whence we can escape if it turns tedious and should it prove advantageous to do so.”

  Clarence cocked his head at the man’s flowery speech, then said, “What’s your name?”

  “John Hay. And yours?”

  “Clarence Artemis.”

  “Ah,” Hay said. “If I am not mistaken, you are the one who is launching the new radical abolitionist paper.”

  Clarence grinned. “Yes, the very one. Tomorrow if all goes well!”

  “I will sign up for a subscription!” Hay said.

  “Why, thank you.”

  As they walked away from the square, Clarence glanced over his shoulder and noticed that while most of the protestors were dispersing, a knot of twenty or thirty had stayed put. He’d have to check on them on his way back.

  8

  Second Presbyterian was on Fourth Street, only a few blocks away. It was, Clarence had learned several weeks earlier, an avowedly abolitionist church. Indeed, it was rumored about town that several of its parishioners were active in the Underground Railroad. Indeed, some were quite open about it.

  When he’d first arrived in town, Clarence had made the rounds of the various churches to introduce himself. It was in the churches where arguments about abolition were most heated, and where he hoped to find some of his stories. The two stories in particular that he hankered after were that Lincoln, despite his public disavowals, was himself an abolitionist, and that he was an infidel to boot.

  It had taken him many days to pay his respects to the pastors of all of the churches. Even with its relatively small population, Springfield boasted more than a dozen formal congregations. A few had permanent buildings and paid pastors, while others met only in people’s homes and made do with volunteer preachers, some of them itinerant.

  Clarence had first gone to pay his respects to Reverend James Smith, the pastor of First Presbyterian, where the Lincolns themselves worshipped. Smith had been politely welcoming, but quite guarded about the Lincolns.

  He’d gone next to Second Presbyterian, presided over by Reverend Albert Hale, whom most people, Clarence had learned, addressed as Father Hale.

  Hale had greeted him warmly and took him on a whirlwind tour of his church, including the large chapel, which the reverend claimed seated three hundred (perhaps, Clarence thought, if the people were really skinny and sat pressed shoulder to shoulder).

  When they were done, Clarence said, “May I see the church’s bell? I’m told it’s the largest one around.”

  Hale seemed to hesitate. After a long pause, he finally said, “Alright. Follow me.” He led Clarence toward an arched wooden door that was made of vertical planks studded with brass nails. Hale opened it with an iron skeleton key that he extracted from a pocket inside his vest and pulled the door open by the brass ring at its center. Clarence half expected the door to creak, but instead it slid open on well-lubricated hinges.

  Behind the door Clarence saw an empty room with a plank floor. A thick, knotted pull rope hung down into the middle of the room. He had to duck to keep from hitting his head on the door frame as they went in.

  “Let’s go up,” Hale said.

  To Clarence’s distress, “up” meant climbing onto a long, rickety ladder. He steeled himself and followed Hale, trying hard not to reveal his intense fear of heights, made worse by the fact that with two men moving on it, the ladder shook. Worse, the rungs had been worn smooth by the passage across them of so many hands and feet over the years. He regretted asking to see the bell.

  When they reached the top they emerged through an open trap door into a small belfry, perhaps ten feet by ten feet square. It had no windows, but only vertical louvered slots, through which many blocks of Springfield could be seen. The only piece of furniture in the room was a small wooden chair with a broken back, which had been pushed into a corner. Despite the louvers, it was quite hot inside.

  In the middle of the room a very large bronze bell, perhaps two feet across at the lip, hung down from a polished wooden yoke, its clapper protruding slightly. Clarence could see that there were raised letters circling the top of the bell. He walked slowly around it, reading the inscription aloud as he went: “Cast by George H. Holbrook, East Medway Massachusetts 1839.”

  “That was indeed the year it was cast,” Hale said. “But it didn’t arrive here until 1840, then took another year to install. I’m proud to say I was already the pastor here when it pealed for the first time on Easter Sunday, 1842. The bell was a gift to the congregation by Elder Joseph Thayer, and he pulled the rope that day.”

  “It’s quite beautiful.”

  “Yes, it is. Now that you’ve seen it, though, it’s too hot in here for someone my age, and we should head back down.”

  Which was the last thing Clarence wanted to do because his hands were still shaking inside his pockets.

  “It is hot,” Clarence said. “But before we go back down, I h
ave a question. I know the town of East Medway. It’s not far from Boston, where I grew up. But how ever did they manage to move it out here?”

  “By ship down the Atlantic coast, around Florida, up to New Orleans, and then by steamer up the Mississippi to St. Louis,” Hale said. “From there to Springfield by rail. Although at first the railroad didn’t want to haul it. At over seven hundred pounds they worried it might crash through the floor of the rail car.”

  “But in the end it made it here.”

  “Yes. And it’s still, almost twenty years later, the largest bell in Springfield and still used as the town’s fire bell.”

  “Yet the only inscription it bears is the bell maker’s name,” Clarence said, still hoping to delay a trip back down the ladder.

  Hale grinned. “What would you suggest it be, young man? Something religious? Something abolitionist?”

  “Perhaps something philosophical,” Clarence said. “What about a couplet. I think there’s room for this one—‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’”

  Hale raised his eyebrows. “John Donne?”

  “You’re familiar with Donne?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Clarence realized how condescending it had sounded.

  “Mr. Artemis, you seem to think we here in Illinois are somehow less well educated than someone...like yourself.”

  “Well...”

  “This is the capital of Illinois. It is not as if we are in Kentucky or Indiana.”

  “I apologize. I just didn’t realize... You’re clearly a learned man. Where were you educated?”

  “Yale. And you, Mr. Artemis?”

  “Being from Boston, I rather naturally went to Harvard.”

  “Abe Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert, is enrolling there this fall. Or so I have heard.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for showing me the bell.”

  “Ah, but come to think of it, you have not heard it sound yet.”

  “Surely you are not going to have it rung with us standing here?”

  “Of course not! The bell peals only on Sundays before and after church and on special occasions, like weddings.” And with that, he drew from his pocket a small hammer with a ball-shaped wooden head and struck the bell gently. Even with that light tap, the vibration was so intense that Clarence wanted to put his fingers in his ears. But that would have meant taking his still shaking hands out of his pockets.

  “A very beautiful tone, Father Hale,” he said.

  “Indeed. But let us now return to the church proper,” Hale said. “I hope you will find the trip down the ladder a bit less scary than the trip up.” He grinned. “In any case, Mr. Artemis, you’ll need to take your hands out of your pockets.”

  “How did you know?” Clarence said.

  Hale smiled an impish smile. “If you have been the pastor of hundreds of souls for many years—twenty-one years for me in this very church—you learn to read many things about people by just observing them. And recognizing that someone’s hands are shaking inside their pockets is not one of the harder things to spot.”

  “I see.”

  “You perhaps find yourself with the same observational powers as a journalist, Mr. Artemis.”

  “In all candor, I have not been one for very long.” Even as he said it, he thought if he were to be candid he ought to admit that he had been a journalist for only a few weeks, and self-trained for all of that.

  “Well, in any case, down we go,” Hale said. “It will work better if you go first. That way I can hold the ladder at the top to keep it from swaying.”

  “Ah, thank you. Then I shall hold it for you, Father.”

  “If you wish, although there is no real need. I have long ago gotten over my fear of the thing and stopped thinking about having it replaced.”

  With that, they started back down the ladder.

  9

  Clarence went first, his hands shaking even more than they had on the way up. Once or twice, his foot slipped on one of the polished rungs, but he managed to catch himself.

  He stopped halfway down and yelled up at Hale, “Isn’t there any way to make this more stable?”

  “Afraid not, son. I don’t know why it’s always worse on the way down. It just is.” He paused. “I guess I should have mentioned that to you earlier, but I feared if I did you would still be up in the tower.”

  When he finally reached the bottom, Clarence stood there, shaking badly and waiting for Hale, who arrived quickly, seemingly unfazed by his descent.

  Standing next to Hale in the little room, Clarence asked what he imagined to be a crack journalistic question. “What is the real reason you haven’t had this ladder fixed, Father?”

  “Ah, an excellent question. It’s because the bell loft is one of the few places I can go in this church and in this city and not be found. Most of my parishioners are afraid to climb up, even if they suspect I am up there.”

  “I see.”

  “Did you notice the chair in the corner, Mr. Artemis?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is mine. I can sit up there and read the Bible without interruption.”

  “Or John Donne.”

  He smiled. “Yes, that, too.”

  Suddenly, Clarence realized he had yet to inquire about Lincoln. He was about to broach the subject when Hale provided him the opening.

  “So, Mr. Artemis,” Hale said, “What is your view of the political question of the day? Do you favor freeing the slaves?”

  “I think the name of my new newspaper, which will be out with its very first edition soon, should answer your question.”

  “What is it, pray tell?”

  “The Radical Abolitionist.”

  Hale laughed. “Ah, I suppose that does indeed answer my question.”

  “I thought it might.”

  “But there are other questions,” Hale said.

  “Such as?”

  “Do you favor immediate abolition, Mr. Artemis, or are you one of those wishy-washy folks who would see it happen someday, without saying when that day might come?”

  Clarence realized that he was being tested, and tested by someone whose own views he didn’t know. The word abolitionist had come to have a thousand shades of meaning, from those who wanted to go south and personally liberate the slaves, while perhaps garroting their masters, to those who simply hoped against hope that slavery would go away, with nary a clue how to bring that about. He decided to answer honestly.

  “I do not know exactly how or when it should happen, Father Hale. I only know it should be very, very soon, and that it will take a great deal of hard work—and probably state and federal monies—to bring it about.”

  “That hardly seems very radical, Mr. Artemis.”

  “I know. Perhaps a better way to put it is that we are hurtling toward a confrontation between North and South on the issue, and that some radical solution must be found if we are to avoid more violence or even a war. I hope not to spend my youth on a battlefield.”

  Hale shook his head up and down, as if satisfied with Clarence’s answer. Clarence decided to use the opportunity to change the topic and ask directly what he wanted to know.

  “Father, do you know Abraham Lincoln?”

  “Of course. Almost everyone in Springfield knows him. He has lived here almost twenty-five years, and he is quite the friendly fellow—hardly one to keep to himself. And as a lawyer, he has represented many of us.”

  “Do you consider him a friend?”

  “Of course, as do many. But I am not an intimate.”

  “Do you know if he is an abolitionist?”

  “Ha! He contends he is not. His very careful position is that slavery is a sin, and that it should not expand beyond where it now exists. But that the federal government should take no role in abolishing it where it currently exists.”
r />   “Do you believe him?”

  “Walk with me to the pulpit.”

  They walked to the front of the church, mounted the steps to the pulpit and looked out on the rows of empty pews.

  “When I preach here, and we are full, I look out on three hundred souls,” Hale said. “Because they have chosen to join this church instead of First, many are abolitionists.”

  “In favor of immediate abolition?”

  “Well, if you walk up to one of them after the service and ask that question point-blank, most will hem and haw and not give you a firm answer, for fear of offending someone—their husband or wife, their employer, their best friend. So even though I favor outright abolition of slavery and favor it right now, I must speak carefully so I can keep my post.”

  “What does that have to do with Lincoln?”

  “Mr. Lincoln wants to be president of the United States. Like me, he does not want to offend, but unlike me, he has to worry about more than three hundred people. He wants to avoid offending the millions of voters.”

  “Even in the Southern states?”

  “No, of course not. Just the three million or so in the Northern states, where there are as many views about slavery as there are in my congregation, even among those who dislike the peculiar institution, as our Southern friends call it to avoid calling it by its ugly name.”

  “But Father Hale, Lincoln has called slavery evil.”

  “Indeed, he has. But Mr. Lincoln has adopted a tactic to try to get himself elected.”

  “Which is?”

  “To call slavery evil, and say it will eventually fade away, but to avoid saying exactly how—or when—that will come about.”

  “And insist he is not an abolitionist?”

  “That is correct, Mr. Artemis.”

  “But my question to you was not subtle. I asked simply whether you believe him.”

  “I do, and if Lincoln believes differently, he shares it only with God.”

  Clarence decided to save for another day asking Father Hale whether he thought Lincoln even believed in God. With only a little over two months left until the election, and with the increasing belief that Lincoln was likely to win, his opponents had begun insisting with more and more vigor that Lincoln was a nonbeliever—an infidel.