The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

The President, meanwhile, was at the door, calling for Noah Brooks. The secretary appeared so swiftly, he might have been listening at the door. “Get Speed down here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No, wait. He’s up at the Capitol. Get him down here first thing tomorrow.” He turned to his guests. “Dan, I want you and Stanton here, too. Say, eight.”

  “In the morning?” Sickles groaned.

  “We have work to do, Dan. We have to get ready for trial.”

  “I suppose we do.”

  “But we’re going to prepare some surprises for our friends on the Hill.”

  Sickles smiled. “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “As for Stanton …” Lincoln paused, seemed to exchange a significant look with Sickles, then laid a strong hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. The good humor had faded again, along with the Western accent that Sickles claimed the President only put on for company. “Young man, what you have heard tonight is more or less a secret of state. You were a soldier. You were decorated at Cold Harbor. You understand how important it is to keep secrets.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jonathan, stomach churning.

  “If you violate this confidence, you could find yourself locked up in one of those terrible secret prisons the newspapers are always going on and on about. The secret prisons don’t exist, but you could wind up there anyway. Do you understand me, Mr. Hilliman?”

  The dingy, cavernous White House, with its vast rooms and leaky walls, was all but impossible to heat. The smoldering coals in the grate offered little real warmth. Even so, the temperature in the room seemed to drop precipitously.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Jonathan.

  “Good. You did well.” Noah was there, showing him out. “Dan, stay a minute,” Lincoln said.

  The door closed. Jonathan settled on the bench to wait.

  III

  For fifteen minutes or so, Jonathan brooded. He tried to reason like Abigail, who had a way of treating the mystery like a hand and the facts like gloves, to see which ones fit.

  What were the facts? Rebecca Deveaux was stealing documents from Stanton. Stanton had gone over to the other side. That meant that the Secret Service was with the Radicals. The files of the War Department were open to the Radicals. But Lincoln remained confident. Too confident. Sitting there in the drafty hallway, Jonathan tried to puzzle out what seemed so incongruous. Not the impeachment. The murder, then. Something about the murder. Maybe, as the President suggested, the murder was just what it looked like; in any case, the killer was still at large. But Inspector Varak still believed that Rebecca Deveaux had been a prostitute. Jonathan and Abigail had both tried to disabuse him of this notion, and failed. Varak was certain of his ground because—

  Abruptly, Jonathan stood.

  “Where are you going?” said Noah. “Facilities are the other way.”

  “Please tell Mr. Sickles I had to run an errand.”

  “I am sure he will be done any minute.”

  “Sorry. Can’t wait.”

  Jonathan hurried down the stairs. He asked the doorkeeper to hail him a cab from the rank out on the street, and told the driver to take him to the Provost General’s headquarters. They bumped along the rutted streets, headed west. The answer would be there. After all, it was the Provost General who had assured Varak that Rebecca Deveaux was a hooker; and it was Jonathan’s classmate Whitford Pesky who had checked the files.

  Jonathan had to make Whit tell who gave him the order to lie.

  At the gate, just as before, Jonathan asked for Major Pesky. This time the wait was a lot longer, and the man who came out was shorter and broader than Whit. His name, he boomed, was Lieutenant Fisch. How might he be of service?

  “I need to see the major,” said Jonathan.

  “May I ask about what?”

  “It’s a confidential matter.”

  Fisch was overweight, and had to hitch up his pants constantly. He did it now, and thrust out his chest, as if to emphasize his own importance.

  “Hilliman,” he said. “You’re one of the lawyers, aren’t you? Representing Mr. Lincoln?”

  “I am a law clerk—”

  “Well, I hope you win. The Radicals are traitors. They should all be arrested.”

  Fisch was grinning. Savagely. As if he would like to hang Butler and Stevens himself. Jonathan had forgotten the almost mystical reverence in which the military held Abraham Lincoln, an emotion, surely, left over from the war itself, the love of an army for its confident and triumphant commander-in-chief. And yet Fisch was a couple of years younger than Jonathan, and had almost certainly missed the war.

  Jonathan said, “Please, Lieutenant. If I could just see Major Pesky.”

  The grin widened. So did the girth. “Anything you would say to him, you can say to me. I’m handling his duties for the moment. I’m a brevet captain now, as a matter of fact.”

  “Why is it necessary for Major Pesky’s duties to be handled, whether by you or anybody else?” A horrible thought: “Has something happened to him?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. It’s just that the major was transferred to the Department of the Cumberland. The orders came through three days ago, and he took the cars the next morning. I’d guess he’s well west of the Mississippi by now.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Theories

  I

  “THREE DAYS AGO,” mused Abigail. “As yesterday was Friday, that would mean Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday is correct,” muttered Jonathan, who had already thought this all through. They were in the corridor outside the offices, and would have to go back in momentarily, because Dennard had summoned everyone for a quick review. It was Saturday morning, and there were final tasks to be parceled out before the trial began on Monday. “Right after I returned from New York.”

  Abigail nodded. “The trouble is, you were supposed to be in Philadelphia.” Because by now Jonathan had told her, in confidence, about the mission to Belmont; as he seemed to tell her everything. “So whoever sent Major Pesky out west both knew where you really were and, for some reason, was worried about it.”

  “There is no point in speculating. It had to be Stanton. He is the Secretary of War. He gives orders to the soldiers.”

  “But that makes no sense. Not if you believe Mr. Lincoln. He denied that Stanton could be involved in Rebecca’s murder. The only role that Major Pesky has played in this tragedy is to help disguise her true background, to send the police looking in the wrong direction. Therefore, if it was Stanton, then he was trying to protect whoever told the major to lie to the police.”

  Jonathan shook his head, striding away from her, trying to give himself space to think. It had to have been Stanton. Yet it could not possibly have been Stanton—not unless Lincoln had lost his fabled ability to judge character at a glance. But of course he had misjudged Stanton once—his most trusted aide—by not noticing that he had thrown in his lot with Benjamin Wade and his friends.

  The answer was close. So close. A clever knot he could not quite undo.

  Abigail, meanwhile, was brimming with suggestions, as always. “Suppose it wasn’t Stanton. You said you encountered Mr. Plum on the train. Perhaps Mr. Plum told Mr. Grafton—” She stopped, struck by another thought. “Of course, Major Pesky was well connected. If he wanted to resist the transfer order, I suppose his family would raise a howl, and even a Stanton would have to back down.”

  “From which you conclude?”

  Inside, they heard Dennard’s roar, demanding to know where everybody might be hiding.

  “From which I conclude,” she said, as they headed for the office once more, “that Major Pesky might have requested the transfer.” She put a hand on his arm. “Oh, and one more thing.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “My sister also told me that Rebecca mentioned a well-connected young woman carrying messages for the conspirators.” A wink. “And, if you recall, I did see your Miss Hale talking to Mr. Grafton at the Eameses’.”

  �
�You don’t mean to suggest—”

  “Why don’t you find out?”

  II

  Dennard told the group that Stanton was, as he delicately put it, no longer with the President, but the expressions around the room made plain that they already knew.

  “Nothing has changed,” the lawyer rumbled. “Our legal strategy remains precisely what it was. Our arguments, our evidence—everything is the same.”

  Speed spoke up. He seemed more shaken than anyone around the table. Outside the window, the crowd seemed thinner than usual. “Surely Stanton has betrayed our entire strategy to the House Managers.”

  Dennard’s eyes were rimmed with exhaustion. “So what? We selected our arguments because they are good arguments, well supported, sensible, et cetera. They aren’t any worse just because the Managers are likely to be ready for them. We shall just have to be readier still.”

  From the sofa, Sickles murmured, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Dennard, clearly annoyed, barely turned his head. “And why is that, sir?”

  “Because we have a few surprises of our own.”

  Speed said, “But that is the point. Our surprises will not surprise them. Stanton will disclose them all.”

  Sickles laughed. “He can only disclose what he knows about.”

  This, at last, got Dennard’s full attention; and the attention of the clerks as well, each of whom, in a different way, had been sitting steeped in despair.

  “I have charge of this defense,” said Dennard.

  Sickles nodded, said nothing, let his head rest on the back of the sofa. For a moment the two men glared at each other. Heat seemed to crackle in the room. Abigail read enmity, rivalry, a dozen other emotions. She wondered what surprises the rogue had in mind.

  It was Speed who dragged them back to the matter at hand. “I advised the President this morning to arrest Mr. Stanton. He declined.”

  “Such measures are impossible,” said Dennard.

  “Why?” asked Rellman—a rare word.

  “Because we have been outplayed,” said Sickles. “If the President were to start arresting conspirators now, the public would think it was a sham to avoid removal from office. He would never survive.”

  “The people love Mr. Lincoln,” Speed insisted.

  “Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But they won’t love him so much if he starts behaving like one of those European monarchs who send out the troops whenever their crowns are threatened.”

  A fresh silence greeted Sickles’s analysis, but Abigail sensed that he was entirely correct. The Managers were charging Lincoln with censoring and locking up his political opponents, and the Radical newspapers were speculating on the possibility of a coup d’état. Were he to arrest Stanton, the President would show himself to be precisely what his enemies wanted people to believe that he was. Sickles was right. The Radicals had gambled and won; Lincoln had indeed been outplayed. Of course, Dennard was also right. They had no choice but to proceed to trial, present their evidence, and offer their arguments. Whatever the shape of the anti-Lincoln cabal, it was unlikely to include any but a tiny number of the Senators. The rest, therefore, would presumably listen, and possibly be persuaded.

  Speed had another thought. “Maybe that list of conspirators will still turn up. The President said the Secret Service has tracked it as far as Virginia. It seems that one conspirator was trying to deliver it to another.”

  Again it was Sickles who had the last word. “The Secret Service,” he said dryly, “is in the hands of General Baker. And I’m willing to bet that he, too”—lightly mocking Dennard—“is no longer with the President.” Sickles sat up straight, swinging his stump out in front. “Besides. The Radicals and Stanton might be conspiring together, but I don’t think they’re the folks who slaughtered poor McShane. That’s somebody else.”

  Dennard waved the matter away. “I will have no more talk of conspiracy, et cetera. We have a trial to win. All that matters now is what happens in the courtroom.”

  As the meeting broke up and final assignments were parceled out, she glanced at the numbers on the blackboard:

  15–33–6

  No change over the past week. Six Senators remained undecided. The President needed nineteen votes for acquittal, meaning that four of the six must break their way. She hoped fervently that Senator Sumner would be among those willing to listen, not among those already conspiring to elevate Benjamin Wade.

  As she stood up and began gathering her papers, Sickles touched her on the shoulder.

  “Get your coat,” he whispered. “We are going to the White House.” He followed her gaze. “No. Just you and I. Mr. Lincoln wants to see you.”

  III

  “I am sure they will not be much longer,” murmured Noah Brooks.

  Abigail thanked him for perhaps the fifth time, perhaps the tenth. She was seated on a hard wooden bench on the second floor of the Executive Mansion, doing her best to conceal her growing anxiety. The corridor was poorly lighted, and poorly maintained. And even though a breath of spring was in the air, here she felt cold, as if winter had taken up permanent residence in the drafty halls. A couple of others waiting for the President sat on equally uncomfortable benches across from hers, sneaking looks her way, trying to figure out what she was doing there.

  Somebody’s servant, they no doubt told themselves.

  She and Sickles had arrived an hour and a half ago. He had introduced her to Noah, who had actually kissed her hand. Sickles had then gone in to see Lincoln, telling her to have a seat, only to emerge ten minutes later and head off down the hall. Abigail had rushed after him, but he had told her to go back and sit, that the President would see her soon, but was busy meeting with the commissioner of revenue, Mr. Wells.

  With that, Sickles was gone, leaving her alone in this awful place.

  Noah Brooks smiled at her. He was a tall, sad-faced man, going bald although not yet thirty, with bushy black burnsides that made him look older still: she could imagine him as a druggist or surgeon.

  “He shouldn’t be much longer,” Brooks had said, for the first of several times. And smiled again, like a man not sure whether he will be believed.

  It was strange that all of her friends seemed to assume that she saw Mr. Lincoln all the time. Just the other day, Agatha Mellison had flat-out accused her of lying when she insisted that she and the President had never met. Like most negroes, the Mellison girls clung to a view of Lincoln as mythic hero, Father Abraham, kindly and beloved savior of the race: or, as Octavius like to call it, the darker nation. Perhaps Abigail might have shared the view if not for the twin influences of her brother and Dr. Finney, each of whom, in different ways, despised the man; and of Jonathan, from whose stories she had constructed a very different Lincoln, a clever and subtle politician who rarely if ever—

  “The President will see you now,” said Noah Brooks, and although the two white men sitting across from her rose hopefully, it was Abigail to whom the private secretary gestured.

  On shaky legs, she followed him around the wooden barrier, past the Bucktail sentry, and into the office of Abraham Lincoln.

  IV

  In later years, what Abigail would always remember was how tall the President was; how, in his long-legged, long-armed skinniness, hair awry, tie askew, he managed to convey awkwardness and vigor at once, like a man who might keel over with the next stiff wind if not for the fact that the wind was under his control. He did not, of course, see her alone. Noah Brooks was in the room, and so was a military aide, a Major Clancy. Lincoln greeted her effusively, if a bit awkwardly, and she recalled a story she had heard from Patsy Quillen, that Sojourner Truth, following her only meeting with the President, had told her friends that the man was uncomfortable around women. The men were all standing, but Lincoln offered her a chair, then sat behind his desk. He thanked her for her hard work, complimented her on the apprenticeship with Dennard, then immediately launched into a story about how the trouble with the world today could be summe
d up in the dilemma of a father who had three sons but only two walnuts, and each wanted a walnut of his own. And what struck her later about the tale, despite the humorous manner of the telling, was how much it taught her about Lincoln. He was the one holding the walnut; he was the one facing the dilemma of how to dole it out.

  That others might seek to share in the decision never seemed to cross Mr. Lincoln’s mind.

  He seemed to sense that his tale had misfired, and as he gave her a measuring glance, she remembered what Jonathan had said about those eyes, the eyes of a sleepy but cunning predator, a man saving his energy yet ready to spring.

  “You have been crucial to our efforts,” he said. “This is not the moment to go into detail, but I want to assure you that when this unpleasantness is all done with, you will have my gratitude, and the gratitude of the nation.”

  The interview was plainly over. Abigail rose, still having no idea why she had been summoned. Lincoln was already in conversation with Major Clancy. Noah showed her out.

  V

  On that same Saturday evening, Jonathan attended the Eameses’ salon—this time alone, intending to track down Bessie Hale. The crowd was the largest he had seen in some time, a tribute no doubt to the fact that the impeachment trial would begin on Monday at noon. Half of Washington’s upper crust seemed to have squeezed into the parlor and drawing room. Jonathan spotted congressmen and Senators galore, and newspapermen were a penny a pound, but he wisely kept his distance. He saw lawyers and judges, a general and a Cabinet secretary. He saw ladies attired in the latest fashions. He was waylaid by a British diplomat who wanted him to explain the range of available penalties in the event that the President was convicted; and by a poet of some esteem who, mistaking him for John Hay, Mr. Lincoln’s former private secretary, now in Paris, said how much he admired his published verses.

  Alas, he saw no sign of Lucy Lambert Hale, and he was wary of asking, lest he seem too eager. Escorting a woman other than his fiancée to the occasional social event was perfectly permissible; inquiring after her, however, would suggest an entirely separate register of relationship.