The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen L Carter

  Not Brighton after all. His mother, not his uncle.

  There was nothing to say, but she slipped an arm around his shoulders, and drew him by instinct against her own: a gesture she had never performed for any man but Aaron.

  “I should have known,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Oh, Mother.”

  “You had no way to know.”

  “I had many ways to know.” Turning the page. “We have to finish.”

  So they did, sitting very straight now, finishing the page—a reporter here, a lawyer there, the owner of a steel mill—and then, page four—

  “Oh, Jonathan,” she said again.

  “Abigail, I—I don’t know what to say.”

  Not possible.

  “Potential conspirators,” she breathed, as they stared together at the name. “Some of them must have said no.”

  “We have to find out.”

  III

  They headed north, then watched the houses thin and the forests gather as the borrowed rig proceeded northwest along Massachusetts Avenue. There were boulders in the road, and the going was slow. There were fewer lamps the farther one moved from the center of things. Night shadows crowded the road. No other carriages were in evidence; no horses.

  They were not being followed.

  “Maybe your mother turned them down,” said Abigail. The shotgun was under the seat. The derringer was lying between them. “The list is potential conspirators. Your mother might never have been contacted. Or she might have said no.”

  “Never. She hated Lincoln after my brother died.”

  “But the risk—”

  “Mother has never been one to worry about risk. She worries about revenge.” He was silent for a moment, watching the trees. Here and there, a wavery brightness was the lighted window of a distant house. The coach lamps along both sides of the carriage provided a choking, sooty illumination. “Let me tell you a story. You know that my older brother died in the war. I also have a younger brother. Calloway. Mother calls him her miracle child, because he was born when she forty-three. What nobody in the family ever mentions is that my father died when Mother was forty. About eight years ago, a Providence newspaper published a tiny item in the gossip column—two sentences, no more—about the ‘miraculous birth’ of the youngest son of a prominent but unnamed Newport widow. Mother bought the paper, fired the staff, and flattened the building. She left the lot empty. She still owns the lot, and it’s still empty.” His eyes were very red. “Turn them down? Mother would join them because her toast was buttered wrong way up the day they asked.”

  Abigail squeezed his hand; said nothing; reminded herself that, just as there were people in the world who had grown up loved, there were people who had grown up the other way around. Jonathan, despite his insistence that his family was merely “decently off,” had grown up with everything money could buy. But Abigail would not trade an hour of her childhood for a year of his.

  “We are very near my school,” she said when she could no longer bear the silence.

  “The Quaker school?”

  She nodded, nervous excitement making the color rise girlishly in her cheeks. “On the original plan of the city, that bluff up ahead is supposed to hold the national cathedral. But nobody expects it to be built. Look how long it took them to put the new dome on the Capitol, and of course poor General Washington’s monument looks as if it will never be finished.” She laughed, lightly. “Anyway, my school is right down there, a little bit south of here. My sister attends now.”

  They were turning right. The road flattened, and the land opened out. Tennally Town was farm country, with the occasional factory or warehouse sprinkled in.

  “Why don’t you want to look in Stanton’s envelope?” he asked suddenly.

  Abigail stiffened. “The pages are from a private diary, Jonathan. Surely you as a fellow gentleman—”

  “You’re afraid of what you’ll find there, aren’t you? You’re afraid that the pages Rebecca stole may prove that Mr. Lincoln did indeed give serious consideration to establishing the Department of the Atlantic.” She looked away; said nothing. “Or is it the other fear? Are you worried that Stanton might have been a conspirator after all? Perhaps the rumors are even true, and Baker was poisoned. For investigating Stanton!”

  “You are being very silly,” Abigail said.

  “And you are being very secretive. Most of the time you’re bursting to tell me what you suspect.” Jonathan’s hands trembled as he drew in the rein. He nodded toward the frozen lane. “We have arrived,” he said.

  The house was small and sedate, set back from the road, screened by trees. Another carriage stood in the driveway.

  Jonathan slipped the derringer into his coat.

  “Is that really necessary?” said Abigail.

  “He may have a visitor.” Jonathan was scrutinizing windows and trees with an intensity she had not seen in him before: soldier’s eyes, she realized. “You should wait here.”

  “No.”

  “Abigail—”

  “I am not staying out here by myself.”

  “Very well.” He helped her down. They walked slowly up the path. Lights were burning in two lower windows. Jonathan pulled the bell rope, but kept his right hand near his jacket pocket.

  The door opened.

  “I heard about what happened,” said Rufus Dennard. “I am so glad to see that you are both well.”

  IV

  Two hours later.

  They sat in the carriage up on the bluff, waiting for the sun. Down below, the nation’s capital city was swaddled in gray predawn mist. Behind them was the low wooden Quaker school where Abigail’s long road had begun. At this moment, Jonathan wanted more than anything to feel her head on his shoulder. But they sat straight, close together yet worlds apart, each hoping the other might produce a suggestion.

  “We have to stop the trial,” said Jonathan for perhaps the fifth time. “They are proceeding under taint. It cannot be allowed to go forward.”

  “Events have their own momentum,” said Abigail. “I am not at all sure that we can deflect them.”

  “We have to try.”

  “There is no one left to tell,” she said.

  A thin red glisten on Washington’s monument hinted that morning was very near. Abigail could not remember the last time she had stayed up all night.

  The meeting with Dennard had been painful. The old man, usually so dignified, had been almost in tears.

  No, he insisted, he was not a conspirator, and never had been. Yes, they had approached him, as he assumed they had approached everyone on that blasted list—a list that should never have been set down in writing, and the loss of which had caused so much trouble. Yes, that was what had led to the split from Grafton—Grafton had been one of the prime movers, and Dennard had refused to join.

  Wasn’t that the time to alert General Baker? Abigail had asked.

  He could not, he said. He owed Grafton for favors he would not discuss, in much the same way that he owed Dr. Finney. Grafton had saved his life in the Mexican War and, later, had helped Dennard and his wife through a terrible time. He would not turn on them. But he refused to help.

  Jonathan suggested that was the reason Dennard wanted the firm to stay out of the impeachment battle.

  Dennard nodded. He tried to keep the firm out, and then, when McShane died, and Grafton organized the telegrams from clients, he tried again. But then Lincoln asked him personally, and a true patriot did not refuse his President. Still, Dennard had tried his best to steer Abigail and Jonathan away from the investigation, not from a desire for self-protection, but to keep them out of harm’s way.…

  Eventually, they had to leave. The séance of self-justification had become too eerie.

  “Do you think Dennard was giving information to Grafton?” said Abigail—too exhausted to maintain the formalities. The sun was peeking over the horizon. She answered her own question. “No. I cannot believe that Dennard’s representation of the President w
as at any time other than energetic and honorable. He did his best.” Another thought struck her. “But why would Grafton tell me all those terrible things about Dennard? Why would he try to draw me away?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want Chanticleer’s sister so close to the impeachment.”

  “But how could he have known about Judith?”

  Jonathan shook his head. If Abigail could not get her capacious mind around the whole story, he knew that there was little point in his trying.

  “I suppose we might consider Mr. Grafton the spider,” she mused. “The others were in his web. The men of wealth who wanted Mr. Lincoln out of the way. The Radicals. Grafton saw to it that their interests coincided.”

  “And Waverly?”

  “The corporal as much as told us. What remains of the Confederacy would obviously be interested in blackmailing the powerful of the North. Grafton played on that, using their people to do what violence might have been necessary to protect the conspiracy. No doubt the rebels thought they were using him, too. But I very much doubt that most of the conspirators were aware of the Confederate role. Or of the violence.”

  “And Baker? He knew that there were two envelopes.”

  “Surely General Baker’s motive is simplest of all. Mr. Stanton knew what Rebecca had stolen. He wanted his papers back, before harm could be done to the President’s cause.”

  Jonathan wondered at Abigail’s smooth assurance, and her determination to absolve their client; but chose to mention neither. “I just wish I knew whom we could tell,” he said. “I think we’ve been over everyone. Baker was too excited at the thought of getting his hands on the material. No Baker means no Stanton, even now. You don’t trust Noah Brooks. I don’t trust Fielding. Varak is gone. Chase is obviously impossible. So, again, I ask you: who’s left?”

  “Sickles?” she said. “When he says his only cause is Abraham Lincoln, I believe him.”

  “But that ‘only cause’ is the reason he has been visiting generals and stirring up the army. In a way, telling Sickles is as bad as telling Stanton. He would not be particularly sorry to see everyone on that list hang.” He paused, remembering Abigail’s words at Tenth Street. “Whether or not they rejected the approach.”

  Abigail touched his arm. “We have one consolation. Fielding’s name is not on the list. No Fielding. No Bannerman.”

  “Then why did he leave town so suddenly?”

  But they both knew the answer to that: he was a gentleman to the end. There was only one Abigail, and Fields and Hills were … two.

  “There’s something else you should know,” Jonathan said as they waited. He was trembling. “The handwriting. The list.” He had trouble forming the words. “The handwriting is Margaret’s.”

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan,” she said. “I suppose we know who the young lady who ran messages is, don’t we?” She laughed. “I hope you will not be offended if I say that, in this case, you are definitely better off without her.” When Jonathan said nothing, she added, “At least poor Bessie is off the hook.”

  They sat for a while, watching the sun, out of ideas.

  “I just don’t understand,” said Jonathan after a bit. “How can so many of those elected to office abuse that trust so badly? They don’t care about truth. They don’t care about argument. They only care about winning elections and holding on to their power.”

  Abigail smiled wistfully. “Professor Finney always says that the right to govern belongs to those whose moral attributes best qualify them.”

  “Moral attributes. We live in a world of … of moral pygmies. Not like the days of the Founders. They could see beyond the needs of party. Beyond the needs of interest. Beyond the needs of the next election. There are few men like that today.”

  “I doubt,” she said dryly, “that the generation that wrote the Constitution was so much wiser than ours.” Then: “Jonathan. I have an idea.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Moralist

  I

  “THIS IS QUITE manifestly irregular,” said Charles Sumner. A servant poured lemonade. “Rather ex parte, don’t you think?” He toyed with his gray-blond locks. “The Democratic newspapers would make quite a meal of this meeting. I suppose the Republican papers would, too, if they thought they might earn a few more pennies.”

  Yet, for all his complaint, Sumner seemed curiously at ease. He was in no hurry to be rid of them. They were all seated in his long study, its high shelves piled with thousands of books. His admirers claimed that he had memorized every word; certainly he could recite, accurately, long passages of history from Pliny the Elder, or Descartes, or the Bible.

  It was Thursday morning; Jonathan should have been at the firm. Instead, he had gone home to change before rejoining Abigail, who had concluded that the only option was the one they were now pursuing. To see Sumner, the man who, as he proclaimed repeatedly to all the world, was in the business not of politics, but of morals; Sumner, who had met all the crowned heads of Europe, and who corresponded with half the prime ministers on the planet; Sumner, who spoke as many languages and knew as many capitals as anyone could ask; Sumner, who had forced Lincoln to take on Abigail, and who still controlled the three votes the President would need to prevail.

  “We would not be here,” said Abigail now, “were the matter anything less than the most urgent.” She smiled, as best she could after the depredations of the night before; it was her name and not Jonathan’s that had opened the most private door in the city.

  “I did hear, of course, of your eventful evening.” He sounded less sympathetic than amused. “I am pleased to see that you emerged unscathed.” He glanced at Jonathan. “Both of you, naturally.”

  Dinah, who had dined with Sumner at her father’s table, insisted that he was the only white man in Washington who seemed genuinely to believe in equality of the races: a legacy of his education in France, where the young Sumner had sat in lecture halls alongside students from Africa and the West Indies.

  Abigail, conscious of her role, continued to hold the stage. “We have something we should like to show you,” she said. “And then we have something we should like to tell you.”

  “If it involves the impeachment, I fear I may not properly listen. The Senate, as you know, will vote this afternoon on the Articles.”

  “Not directly,” said Jonathan.

  Sumner shook his heavy head. “I will not compromise,” he said. “I am interested in no deals. There is nothing the President may offer that I would take. My vote shall be based, entirely, on what I think right. It is for my moral judgment, and that alone, that the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sent me to the Senate.” He made to rise. “I am sorry if you have wasted your time; or mine.”

  “I assure you,” said Jonathan hastily, “that we are not proposing a deal of any sort—”

  Abigail interrupted. “All we ask is that you hear us out. You may decide for yourself what to do about what we tell you.”

  And so they told him.

  Abigail did most of the talking, because they both sensed that Senator Sumner preferred it that way. She started with the murders, went over their own investigations, explained how Stanton played both sides at once. Finally, she reached the events of last night, and could not go on. And so Jonathan, his own voice a bit clotted, told him what had happened with Waverly.

  “We did not know whom we could trust,” said Abigail, in conclusion. “And so we came to you.”

  Jonathan expected that the great moralist would next ask to see the list of conspirators; but he did not.

  Sumner sipped his sherry. “You have omitted two details.” He waited, but neither contradicted him. “You have not told me who had custody of the list for the past year or so. And you have not told me how you persuaded this individual to give it to you.”

  “We gave our word,” said Abigail.

  Plainly, Sumner liked that answer; he even smiled. “And Dennard? Why have you not brought your tale to your employer?” He saw their faces. “Ah. I
see. Like that, is it?”

  “I am afraid so,” said Jonathan.

  “Here is your difficulty,” said the great moralist. “You are adhering to the classic argument ad hominem. You are suggesting that a proposition should be rejected not on its own merits but due to the merits of those who happen to be in favor of it. The Greeks disproved this nonsense long ago.” Sumner tilted his head toward one of the shelves. “You’re a Yale man, Hilliman. So—tell me. Have you ever read the Characteristics, by the Right Honorable Anthony Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury? No? Well, perhaps you know the volume by its formal title? Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times? No? Sad. And you, Miss Canner? Are you familiar with the volume?”

  “I fear not, Mr. Sumner.”

  “Pity.” He stretched out a long arm, pulled the volume free, flipped through the pages. “Cooper, in his excellent discussion of goodness, demonstrates that men act out of a multiplicity of motives. Thus, in the process of achieving that which morality dictates, one must invariably accept as allies some who lack the same moral sense. There will always be those who will seek the right result for the wrong reason. If the moral man dismisses all allies because he disdains their motives, then he will never be able to move toward a more moral world. Thus, in the struggle against slavery, the moral man accepted as allies those who wanted war for selfish reasons of commercial or political success. And in the struggle against the tyranny of Lincoln, one might accept as allies those who are, again, motivated by dreams of commercial or political success.”

  Abigail blanched. “But we are speaking of a great conspiracy—”

  “Indeed. And if the conspirators are caught, and found guilty, then they should be sent to the scaffold. I shall applaud their executions, even if they prove to be my closest friends. But, as we await that event, it cannot be the case that their improper motivation discredits the end toward which they are working. The evidence you have brought me is disturbing indeed. Nevertheless, the question of impeachment must be judged on its own merits.”