The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  Lincoln got up from his chair but did not go behind the bar to mingle with the reporters waiting there. They were the last people he wanted to chitchat with. Instead he watched as Lizar went back to talk with them, seeming with all his bonhomie like someone who was running for office. And who knew? Perhaps he was.

  Herndon was suddenly beside him. “Well, Lincoln, it looks as if you have yourself a judge you don’t play chess with.” He grinned.

  “Billy, have you ever heard of either this judge or this substitute United States attorney?”

  “I’ve heard of the judge before. He was a Democratic member of Congress from Pennsylvania who was defeated for reelection in ’58, and Buchanan made him a district judge. Why in Chicago, I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps it’s where they had an opening.”

  “Perhaps. As for this United States attorney fellow, I have no idea where he came from.”

  Just then Lizar crossed back over the bar and came up to them to talk.

  “Good morning,” Lincoln said, putting out his hand. “It’s good to make your acquaintance, sir.”

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” Lizar said, pumping his hand vigorously. “And it’s an honor to meet a candidate for our country’s highest office, even if we find ourselves on opposite sides of a case today.”

  “I never let politics get in the way of friendly relations,” Lincoln said. “And permit me to introduce my law partner, Billy Herndon.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Herndon.”

  “Please call me Billy. Everyone else does.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “Say, how did you end up here today?” Herndon said. “If you don’t mind my asking. Our regular United States attorney seems to have disappeared without a trace.”

  “Oh, my understanding is that he was called back to Washington on an urgent matter.”

  “Do you know what it was?” Lincoln said.

  “I don’t think it’s a secret. They have an expected opening for a district judgeship in Pennsylvania—the Western District in Pittsburgh, I think—and he’s being considered. So it’s a job interview.”

  “Why would they consider a man from Illinois for that?” Lincoln said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you from?” Lincoln said.

  “By happenstance, I’m also from Pennsylvania, but the Eastern side. I’m an assistant United States attorney in Philadelphia. I agreed to come out here when they needed someone urgently.”

  “So you’re from the City of Brotherly Love, as they call it,” Herndon said.

  “No, I was born and bred in a small Pennsylvania town called Cove Gap. Moved to Philadelphia to read law there and then stayed on.”

  Now, Lincoln thought, the sudden change of personnel in the courtroom all made sense. One way or the other, Buchanan had managed to replace Lincoln’s friends with his own loyalists. Indeed, Lizar hailed from the president’s birthplace.

  They continued to chat until Red’s voice boomed out in the courtroom. “Your Honor, I have the first sixteen jurymen.”

  “Very good,” the judge said. “Please seat them in the box and we will get started with voir dire.”

  A shout came from the very back of the courtroom. A short, thin woman dressed in gray homespun was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said Free the Slaves and screaming, “Where is Lucy Battelle? Where is Lucy?”

  The judge, as startled as everyone else, said, “Marshal, please remove that woman from my courtroom.”

  Red attempted to escort her out by pulling on her arm, but she resisted. He motioned to one of his deputies, and the two of them lifted her up under her arms and carried her, still yelling, out of the room.

  A few minutes later, Red reappeared and said, “Your Honor, I have spoken to her and she has promised not to return to this courtroom.”

  “If she does, arrest her and jail her for contempt,” the judge said. “And now, Marshal, let’s resume getting the potential jurors in here.”

  “They are out in the hallway now, so it will only be a moment.”

  Lincoln turned to Herndon and said, “Do you know that woman?”

  “Never seen her before in my life.”

  Shortly after that, the potential jurors filed in and took their seats.

  After the judge had briefly described the case to the jurors, he said to them, “We’ll begin now with what we call voir dire. The government will question each juror, then the defense, and then I might have a question or two myself, but not likely.

  “Mr. Lizar and Mr. Lincoln, since this is a petty criminal matter, I will give each of you only three peremptory challenges.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lincoln noticed Annabelle Carter leaving the courtroom just as Reverend Hale came in and took a seat. Lincoln didn’t have much time to think about why Annabelle had left or why Hale had come in because the judge had begun to address the jurors.

  “Gentlemen, the gentleman sitting at the table nearest to you is Mr. G.W. Lizar. He is the United States attorney representing the United States in this case. At the farther table is Mr. Abraham Lincoln, who is representing the defendant, Mrs. Abby Kelley Foster.”

  After that, Lincoln only half listened as the judge explained the case to the jurors and admonished them to await the evidence before making a decision.

  Finally, the judge said, “Now the lawyers will question you to help them determine if they are agreeable to your serving on this jury. If they decide you are not, you should take no offense from it. Lawyers excuse people for—” he cracked a smile “—the strangest reasons. Most of those reasons are without merit, but they have to do something to earn their money.”

  The judge waited for the laughter to roll in, looked pleased with himself and said, “Alright, let’s begin the voir dire. Mr. Lizar, we’ll start with you.”

  44

  Annabelle had left the courtroom because she had learned from Pinkerton that, if you were pursuing criminals and had no good leads, it sometimes made sense just to follow your intuition. Her intuition told her that the woman screaming “Where is Lucy?” must have some connection to Lucy. Else why would she be asking where she was? On the other hand the woman could just be plumb crazy. Annabelle invited Clarence to go with her, but he chose to stay.

  When Annabelle exited the courtroom she feared that the woman might already have left the building. As luck would have it, she was standing at the end of the hallway, peering out a small window.

  Annabelle approached her, trying to make as much noise as she could. Early in her career, she had come up quietly behind a man she was seeking and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The man had spun around, grabbed her by the neck and put a knife to her throat. He had not taken it away until she apologized and explained that she just wanted to talk to him, not turn him in to the police.

  Annabelle was not about to make the same mistake again even though the woman didn’t look physically threatening. On the other hand, even a child could stick a knife in your belly.

  When Annabelle was still a couple of yards behind the woman, who had not turned around, she stopped and said, “Excuse me, miss, could I talk with you?”

  The woman turned, gave her a wild-eyed look and fled.

  Rather than follow her immediately, Annabelle watched through the window, which gave her a view of the street below, until she saw the woman emerge from the building and head slowly down the road. She went quickly down the stairs herself, out the door and looked around to find the woman again.

  She spotted her not too far down the street, walking slowly. Annabelle had learned from Pinkerton himself how to follow people without being detected. She employed those skills now, which involved going briefly into stores, stopping to look at things along the way, digging into her bag as if looking for something and saying “Good day!” to people she came
upon.

  After a while, she saw the woman go up to the front door of the First Presbyterian Church and pound on it, yelling, “Where is Lucy? Where is Lucy?”

  In not too long, the door was opened and the woman went in. Annabelle considered going right in herself but as that might scare the woman off, she decided to wait. After perhaps ten minutes, the woman came back out the same door. Annabelle noticed that someone—she could see only the person’s outline—had closed the door behind her. Had she been welcomed inside by someone who knew her?

  The woman set off down the street again, and Annabelle was torn. Should she follow her or go into the church to try to find who she’d talked with. She could always come back to the church, though, so Annabelle followed the woman, who, in a period of less than an hour, banged on the doors of three more churches plus a cobbler’s shop and a millinery store, shouting out the same thing before being admitted. In each case she was ushered back out of the place not many minutes later.

  Finally, the woman strolled five or six blocks—and strolled was the right word since she seemed in no hurry at all—until she was on the edge of town and headed down a path that led into the woods. Annabelle decide not to follow her. Instead she went back to First Presbyterian and tried to open the door. It was locked, and she knocked, whereupon a tall man in a clerical collar opened it and said, “May I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m Annabelle Carter. A little while ago I saw a woman standing in front of this church yelling, ‘Where is Lucy?’ And then someone let her in through this door.”

  “That is true.” The man said it in a flat voice, not exactly unfriendly, but certainly not with a tone that suggested he was likely to volunteer any additional information. He stood there, and when Annabelle said nothing more, started to close the door on her.

  “Wait!” Annabelle said.

  The man stopped shutting the door, which left it open by only a crack, through which he now peered at her.

  “May I come in?” she said.

  “To what end, ma’am?”

  “I am seeking information about the woman who was here.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking for Lucy Battelle, and I think the woman who was here a little while ago may know where she is.”

  “That would be right odd, ma’am, since if we’re talking about the same woman, she came in asking the same question—where is Lucy Battelle? I would think that if she knows, she wouldn’t be asking, now would she?”

  He had not opened the door any farther.

  “Sometimes people who are...”

  He finished her thought for her. “Mad?”

  “Yes, mad. Sometimes such people know things without knowing they know.”

  “Why do you want to know where Lucy Battelle is?”

  “I’m working for someone who wants to know.”

  “Who?”

  Now she had a problem. Would Lincoln want just anyone to know he was looking for the girl? He had never said he wanted it kept secret. And she had already told Hotchkiss and Clarence. On the other hand...

  The man made her decision a lot easier.

  “It’s rumored about town that Lincoln has hired detectives to find her. Are you one of them?”

  Pinkerton had taught her that in detection business, unless you were a spy, honesty usually got better results than subterfuge.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m working for Mr. Lincoln.”

  He opened the door. “Come in, then. Mrs. Lincoln is a member of this church. Mr. Lincoln is not, but he does attend.” He smiled. “Whether he truly worships while here is a matter on which there is apparently a variety of opinion. But in any case we are happy to assist that family.”

  Once she was inside, the man introduced himself as Jed Bottoms, an assistant minister, and invited her into his tiny office. It had only one chair, which he offered her while he leaned against the wall. Annabelle told him what she knew, including about the other places the woman had visited.

  “I’m only recently arrived in Springfield,” he said. “All I can tell you is that the woman is named Sally VanDerlip and that she comes here perhaps once a week with odd requests for information—whether we’ve seen her mother’s missing necklace, whether we have a cure for gout and so forth. We always let her in for a few minutes, but so far as I can recall, at least in my time here, we have never had any of the information she sought.”

  “Would you say she is mad?”

  “Quite possibly. But more likely the poor woman is simply without the mental capacity that you and I possess.”

  “How old is she?”

  “I’m thinking in her midtwenties. She lives with her parents on the edge of town.”

  “What did she say about Lucy Battelle?” Annabelle said.

  “Nothing. She asked me if I knew the girl was missing. I said I did, and then she asked, very politely, if I knew where she was. I said no.”

  “Did she accept that?”

  “In a way, but she also asked if she could look for her here.”

  “Did you let her?”

  “I did. She looked around for a few minutes, including in the basement and the choir loft, then politely thanked me and left.”

  “Perhaps she thinks Lucy is being hidden in a church,” Annabelle said.

  “But how would that explain her also visiting the courthouse, a cobbler’s shop and a millinery?”

  “Four churches in total is a lot, though,” Annabelle said.

  Bottoms reached under his desk and pulled out a roll of paper, which he unrolled on his desk. “This is a map of Springfield,” he said. “On it, I have marked all the churches I know of that have buildings.”

  Annabelle looked it over. “There are indeed a lot of them,” she said.

  “More than a dozen. And every month it seems, a new one goes up. But the thing is, some support slavery, some are abolitionist in sentiment, but not strongly so, and some have stepped away from the issue entirely. I doubt very many of them would actually harbor an escaped slave. Too much risk.”

  “Some might.”

  “Yes, but I doubt we would. And one of the others Sally visited was her parents’ church, and I know they wouldn’t. They’re more likely to turn the slave in and collect the reward.”

  “What about the last one she visited?”

  “When I arrived here a few months ago, I made the rounds of the other churches to meet their pastors. The pastor of that particular church told me that the right to hold slaves is clearly established in Holy Scriptures.”

  “Alright, I suppose Sally VanDerlip visiting churches to find Lucy doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Annabelle said. “Or at least not those particular churches.”

  Then she thought, If I tell Allan that I got in here and didn’t look around, he will think all of his training was for naught.

  “Reverend Bottoms, may I look around, too?”

  He laughed. “Of course. We have so few secrets here I don’t even need to accompany you. Please just let me know, if you would, when you will be leaving.”

  She looked everywhere, including the basement, but found no one, nor anything of interest. She thanked Bottoms for his courtesy and let herself out.

  Now what? She could, she supposed, if people would permit her to go in, look inside the other three churches, too, plus the cobbler’s shop and the milliner’s place. But it seemed pointless. If Lucy were being hidden in one of those places the word would by now have gone out that a woman was looking for Lucy. And they could just move her from one place to another, like a pea in a shell game.

  She was out of ideas.

  45

  The trial, in the meantime, had been going forward, and the first potential juror to be questioned had identified himself. “I’m Alexander Humphreys,” he said.

  “Where are you from, Mr. Humphreys?” Lizar said.r />
  “Taylorsville. That’s down in Christian County.”

  “How far away is that?”

  “The part of the county I live in, perhaps fifteen miles.”

  “That’s a pretty far piece to come just to respond to a jury summons, isn’t it?”

  “No, I always do my duty as a citizen and come, although it’s certainly farther to come here than when a case is in the state court in our county seat, which is Taylorsville.”

  “So you must have really wanted to be a juror on this case.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that, sir. Like I said, just wanted to do my duty.”

  “What do you do for a living, sir?”

  “I’m a blacksmith. I’m also a part-time miller at a local gristmill, and I farm a little.”

  “Do you know Mr. Lincoln?”

  “Of course. Almost everyone does.”

  “Since you’ve been a juror before, have you been a juror in a case in which Mr. Lincoln was one of the lawyers?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he do?”

  “He lost.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the audience.

  Lincoln laughed with them, but mostly he was looking at Humphreys. He had no recollection of the man. But then again, Christian County had been removed from the Eighth Circuit, the counties where Lincoln practiced, seven or eight years before. So if Humphreys was a juror on one of his state cases way back then, it had been dozens of juries ago.

  “Have you ever heard of the defendant in this case, Mrs. Abby Kelley Foster?” Lizar said.

  “No, sir.” Humphrey paused. “Well, that’s not quite right. I read about her in the Sangamon Times.”

  “About the case against her?”

  “Yes, and about the speech she gave in church.”

  “Were you at that speech?”

  “No.”

  “Was anyone you know at that speech?”

  “No.”

  “Sir, if you live in Christian County, why do you read the Sangamon Times?”

  “Because our own paper in Taylorsville is such a wretched excuse for a newspaper.”