The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  Annabelle was taken aback. Clarence had already been there? But she managed to hide her surprise, and said only, “No, I haven’t read it. When did he come here?”

  “A few days ago. I’ll give you the copy he left behind before you leave, but I fear I have interrupted your story. I gather you changed your views about slavery over time?”

  “Yes, and now I call myself a gradual abolitionist, although I more and more don’t know what I mean by that. Except I still think it will all go more smoothly if slave owners are paid.”

  Mr. Hostetler had come into the room and, clearly having overheard what Annabelle had said, announced, “I will not see a penny of my taxes go to reward people for their sinful ownership of human beings. Not one cent.” He banged his fist on the table.

  One of the things that Pinkerton had taught Annabelle was—contrary to her natural instincts—if you want information from people, it’s best, within limits, to appear to agree with them. “I have come, recently, to see that you are right,” she said.

  “There is hope for your soul, then,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure about the state of her soul, but didn’t want to lose sight of her goal. “Before I leave, I would like to ask again about Lucy,” Annabelle said. “It is what Allan Pinkerton is paying me to investigate.”

  “Ask all you want, although, as I said yesterday, we know nothing about her whereabouts.”

  “Allan Pinkerton has assured me that she has not passed through Chicago and that, therefore, she is not in Canada. You have assured me she is nowhere around here. So where might she be?”

  Mrs. Hostetler answered, “Obviously, my dear, she is still in Springfield, being hidden.”

  “If she is not dead,” Mr. Hostetler added.

  “Ah, then I must look for her there,” Annabelle said.

  “Why do you so want to find her?” Mr. Hostetler said.

  “It is Allan Pinkerton who wants to find her. My assignment is to help him do so.”

  “Why does he want to find her?”

  Annabelle hesitated. Should she tell them? Would it help or hurt? She decided to tell the truth. “I would appreciate your keeping what I am about to tell you to yourselves.”

  Each of the Hostetlers shook their head in the affirmative.

  “It is my understanding that it is Abraham Lincoln who wants to find her.”

  The uttering of Lincoln’s name created a sudden silence in the room.

  “He is a good man,” Mrs. Hostetler finally said. “Even if he is not an abolitionist.”

  “Do you know why he wants to find her?” Mr. Hostetler said.

  “No. But I assume it has something to do with the trial of Abby Kelley Foster for allegedly starting the riot that somehow carried Lucy off.”

  Mr. Hostetler snorted. “Ha! That will do him no good. Lucy is a Negro, and by law would not be allowed to testify.”

  “Perhaps there are other ways,” Annabelle said.

  “Perhaps, Mrs. Carter. Perhaps. But let me say this and say it clearly. If you find Lucy, it may, in some way that is mysterious to me, help out Abby Kelley Foster—and Mrs. Foster is a godly woman who has done much good for the slave. But it will not help Lucy. It will just end up sending her back to Kentucky more quickly.”

  There was again a silence in the room.

  Annabelle broke it by saying, “I have a job to do.”

  “Then consider not doing it,” Hostetler said. “The girl has taken her life into her own hands. Let her take it where she will without you, a white person who cannot possibly help her now and whose help she has in any case not asked for.”

  “But I...”

  Mr. Hostetler interrupted her. “We are all just a lot of white people trying to absolve our national guilt by doing things to, supposedly, help.” He was becoming red in the face. “And you in particular. Stop trying to shed your Southern guilt by trying to help when you’ve not been asked to.”

  “But Mr. Lincoln...”

  “Lincoln be damned!”

  “You will also endanger others,” Mrs. Hostetler said, in a softer tone.

  “Who?” Annabelle said. “Those who run the Underground Railroad?”

  “Yes. Many of those who run the Railroad are free blacks. Who are barely tolerated here in Illinois.”

  “I have heard that.”

  “So if in your zeal to find Lucy, you end up revealing them, they may be tarred and feathered. Or even lynched. But they will find no justice.”

  “Leave this thing alone, Mrs. Carter,” Mrs. Hostetler said.

  Annabelle did not agree to leave it alone, although, following Pinkerton’s tutelage, she may well have given the Hostetlers the impression that she would in fact let it be. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth. She had an assignment, and she intended to carry it out.

  After polite goodbyes, she headed her horse and carriage back toward Springfield thinking, not about slavery, but about whether the apple pie would still be fresh a day later than she had originally hoped to consume it.

  38

  Annabelle’s trip back to Springfield had gone much more quickly than the trip out. It had not rained the day before, and the mud seemed, miraculously, to have solidified.

  She reached the hotel by noon. After changing her clothes and freshening up, she ate a quick midday dinner in the hotel dining room. The chef came out from his kitchen to greet her and assured her that he had diligently guarded her two pieces of pie. Would she perhaps have one piece now, with dinner? She told him she was going to save them for a later occasion. After he left she wrote out a brief note on hotel stationery and dispatched it for delivery by the hotel’s messenger “as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  The upcoming election had attracted hordes of journalists to Springfield, including many from England and Continental Europe, all come to try to lay eyes on what the London papers called “the crude Westerner” hoping to take the White House by storm. The hotel had decided to take advantage of its new, more sophisticated clientele by setting up an afternoon tea, complete with pastries. Annabelle booked a table, took her seat at 3:00 p.m. sharp by the clock on the wall and waited.

  Her table was set with blue-and-white patterned china, with napkins to match. When the waiter came by to take her order, she said she would await her guest.

  At 3:15, just as Annabelle was beginning to give up hope that her plan would work, Clarence strode into the room, spoke briefly to the maître d’ and walked over to her table. She noticed that he had quite clearly dressed up. He was wearing a crisp white shirt with a starched collar, a string tie and boots that had been polished to perfection.

  She was about to stand up to greet him, when her mother’s voice in her head said, A woman never rises to greet a man. Just sittin’ there puts him at a fine disadvantage. And sure enough, it worked. Clarence stood awkwardly in front of her, until she deigned to say, “Thank you, Mr. Artemis, for responding to my invitation. Won’t you please join me?” She gestured at the empty chair across from her.

  Clarence sat down. “I’m delighted to join you. Although I must say I am puzzled at the words on your note, which suggested we have something important to discuss. If I might jump right to the point, what is it?”

  “Oh, Mr. Artemis, that is so like a Yankee and so, well, unchivalrous. Let us do it the Southern way—first we will order tea and cakes, and then we can get to talking business. It’s so much more refined that way, don’t you agree?”

  “Am I to call you, Mrs. Carter, then?”

  “No, like I told you the other evening, you may call me Annabelle if you wish.”

  “It’s not Annie?”

  “If you call me that, I shall fall to calling you—what was it?—ah, yes, Hopper.”

  He glared at her. “Alright. Annabelle it is. In which case, as I also said the other evening, plea
se call me Clarence.”

  After not too long, the waiter came by, and they ordered tea and looked over the cakes on offer, which were laid out on a silver cart that a second waiter had wheeled over.

  “None of them looks very appealing,” Clarence said.

  “Would you prefer apple pie?” Annabelle said.

  “Is there some? I was here for supper rather late last night and they said they had none left.”

  “There are in fact still two pieces left that I had specially put aside.”

  He gave her an odd look, but said, “Let’s have them, then!”

  Annabelle turned to the waiter with the cart and said, “Back in the kitchen, I believe you will find that the chef has laid aside two pieces of apple pie for me. If you could bring them to us, we would be most grateful.”

  When the pie came, together with the tea, Clarence said, “How did you manage to reserve two pieces of pie for yourself? Do you know the chef?”

  Annabelle told him the story of her visit to Hotchkiss. When she had finished, Clarence said, “Do I understand, then, that you intended to reserve the pie for me in particular?”

  She laughed. He was correct, of course, but instead of acknowledging it, she said, “I’d say I wanted to reserve it more for whoever might prove useful to me.”

  “Ah, so I am simply useful. A man likes to be thought of as more than that.”

  “Perhaps so, Clarence, but what I am after right now is the usefulness we could create for one another.”

  Before he could inquire what that might be, a waiter came by again and, without asking, poured more tea into each of their cups. “I hope the pie is satisfactory,” he said.

  “Oh, quite,” Annabelle said.

  After he left Clarence said, “And what is this mutual usefulness that you have in mind?”

  “We are both looking for Lucy, but separately. And although we agreed to keep each other generally informed, we are wasting time by doing the same thing. For example, I just went to see the Hostetlers in Pleasanton, only to learn that you had already been there. And I know you had also been to see Hotchkiss before me, but you didn’t tell me that.”

  Clarence took a sip of tea. “But we were at those places with different purposes,” he said. “You want to find Lucy on behalf of Pinkerton—I still don’t know on behalf of what client he wants to locate her—but I want to know where she is in order to write a great story for my paper.”

  Annabelle raised her teacup toward her lips, eyed him over the top of it and said, “A story that puts you, Clarence, at the thrilling center of finding her yourself—just like you supposedly did with Goshorn.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not embarrassed by that kind of story at all. I’m here trying to make my reputation. Once I do that, I’m not planning to spend the rest of my life in this godforsaken place.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to cooperate or not?”

  “First tell me who Pinkerton’s client is.”

  “Only if you agree to keep it strictly to yourself and not print it.”

  “Agreed.”

  “His client is Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Why does he want to find her?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Clarence.”

  “If we’re to cooperate, we need to have some rules,” he said.

  “I agree. But we need to work them out somewhere else. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the waiters keep passing unusually close to our table. I suspect they want to try to overhear what we’re talking about.”

  They left the hotel and strolled down the street side by side, arguing out the rules they would need to follow if they weren’t to get in each other’s way.

  To Annabelle’s surprise, she saw Lincoln coming toward them. Upon spotting them, he raised his eyebrows in apparent surprise, then tipped his stovepipe hat. “Good evening to you both,” he said, and walked on without stopping.

  “He will think we’re courting!” Annabelle said.

  “Why would he think that?”

  “In a small town like this one, I suspect men and women don’t walk down the street side by side unless they are married or courting.”

  Clarence hesitated a moment, then held out his arm to her. She looked at it for a second, then took it, and they walked on down the street together, continuing their discussion about how to work in tandem to find Lucy without getting in the way of their differing goals. It was not going to be easy.

  39

  Washington, DC

  The weather in Washington, which had been unseasonably cold, had turned at least a little warmer, and Buchanan felt the need to get out of the White House and go for a walk. Of course, if he went out by himself, he would immediately attract a crowd of hangers-on, who would approach him and try to talk to him. Some would inevitably be people looking for low-level jobs in the administration (even though, with only months to go in his term, there weren’t many such jobs to hand out, which you would think they would know).

  Some would be people wanting to give him advice on the nation’s current troubles. Some would be citizens wishing to thank him for a job well-done. Although in truth there had not been many of those of late.

  Today, he wanted to walk undisturbed, so he asked four young officers from the military attaché’s office to walk with him. “And please wear your ceremonial swords,” he said. “I want people to stay away.”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the young men said.

  And so Buchanan, who liked to think of himself as an elegant dresser (although he knew others thought he dressed in clothing that had been stylish twenty years ago), threw on a handsomely tailored dark blue lamb’s wool coat. Just in case, he added a patterned red silk scarf that had been a gift to him from Senator King of Georgia. As he prepared to leave the White House via the north portico, he spied his niece standing in the entrance hall. “Harriet, I am going for a walk. Will you join me?”

  “Oh, thank you, Uncle, but I am getting ready for the dinner we’re having tonight for the leadership of the House and Senate.”

  “Oh, yes.” He sighed. “I fear that since some hail from the North and some from the South we will once again be welcoming into the mansion more yelling and screaming about slavery and secession.”

  “I have arranged for entertainment that I hope will distract them from that. I’ve also arranged the seating so as to reduce discussion of sectional politics.” She paused. “Or so I hope.”

  “Alright, well, I will see you at dinner and, once again, I thank you for the wonderful job you have done these last four years in presiding over my White House.”

  “It has been my pleasure, Uncle.”

  “Have you decided what to do when my term ends on March 4? It is not far away now.”

  “I don’t think there’s ever been any doubt. I’m going back to Wheatland with you to help you write your autobiography.”

  A smile lit up his face. “I am so pleased to hear that.” He would need all the help he could get with his book. The critics were already calling him the worst president in American history, and he would need to explain clearly and succinctly the enormity of the choice he faced—give the South what it wanted, including letting them go in peace, or bring on a fratricidal war.

  As he left the White House with his young officers, he looked down Pennsylvania Avenue to its far end and inspected the progress on the Capitol, whose old dome had been removed. The new one, made of iron, was sitting to the side, on the ground. It would replace the old, copper-clad wooden one, which had not only looked too small for the newly expanded building beneath it, but was considered a major fire hazard. Perhaps his successor would see the job completed.

  There was an unexpected gust of cold wind, and he hunched up against it. His thoughts had turned melancholy. If Lincoln were elected, and the states of the Deep South seceded, and if Virginia and Maryland f
ollowed, wouldn’t Washington be the logical capital if they were to form some kind of confederation? Where would the North relocate its capital? He tried to look on the brighter side. Philadelphia, in his own state of Pennsylvania, would be a good choice for a new Northern capital.

  As he passed the Treasury building, where still more construction was underway—the Treasury was always expanding it seemed—his guards stopped abruptly. Lost in thought, he almost bumped into the officer leading the group.

  “Sir,” the guard said. “There is a gentleman who wishes to approach.”

  Buchanan looked up and saw Jeremiah Black.

  “Mr. Attorney General, how nice to see you. Please join me! I am out for a walk.”

  The guards parted and Black fell in with Buchanan as they walked along.

  “What brings you out today, Jeremiah?” Buchanan said.

  “I have been at the Treasury.”

  “Doing what? That is not a usual place for the attorney general.”

  “I have been consulting with the Solicitor of the Treasury about the trial soon to take place in Springfield. He supervises the United States attorneys around the country.”

  “Ah, yes, in the press of other business I had almost forgotten about the whole thing.”

  “I assume you have heard that Lincoln is going to represent Mrs. Foster in her trial.”

  “No. Why he would agree to do that?”

  “If my reading of the newspapers is correct, it is because our plan is working. The abolitionists are demanding to know whether, if Mrs. Foster is convicted and he is elected, he will pardon her. Even Frederick Douglass has demanded to know what he will do.”

  Buchanan pulled his scarf tight around him against another stronger blast of wind.

  “How, then, does representing Mrs. Foster help him?” Buchanan said.

  “It’s simple, Mr. President. If Lincoln wins the case, he will no longer have to address the pardon issue, pleasing abolitionists, and his great lawyering might also win him votes among other groups.”