The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  During dinner, they spoke mostly about the abolition movement in Springfield.

  “It is like a contagion here,” Hale said. “Ten years ago, it was still hard to find ten true abolitionists in a crowd of fifty. Now, it might well be a majority if people felt free to state their beliefs openly.”

  “Why do they not feel free?” she said.

  “There is such bitterness in our politics now that people want to avoid arguments with their neighbors, their families and the people they work with. Or, if they are merchants, with the people they sell goods to.”

  “Does Lincoln living here make the bitterness worse?”

  “I think not. Most people here, whether they agree with his politics or not, are proud that someone from the West—and from our very city—has been nominated for such a high position.”

  “He is popular, then?”

  “Politically, perhaps not. I do not know if he will even carry Sangamon County—that’s our county name—in the election. But he is personally popular because he is such a nice man.” He paused. “But so much more than that, as I hope everyone in this country will see when he becomes president.”

  She had on the tip of her tongue to tell Hale what her opinion was of Lincoln, but then thought better of it. She had long ago learned to deliver her strong opinions while standing at a lectern, where they tended not to be taken quite so personally as when delivered face-to-face.

  While they were talking, a young man, clearly in his early twenties, accompanied by an older, well-dressed woman, walked in and were seated at a table not far from them. Hale looked over at them and said, “Ah, that is young Clarence Artemis and his mother. They’re from Boston, and he has relocated here.”

  “Why?” Abby said, and as soon as she said it realized that her tone was such as to suggest that no one in their right mind would want to relocate from Boston to this place from which the frontier had only recently departed.

  Hale laughed. “There is a lot of opportunity here if you know how to seize it. Especially for a young man with money, which his parents apparently have in abundance.”

  “Do you know what he’s planning to do here?”

  “He’s starting a new abolitionist newspaper called The Radical Abolitionist. In fact, its inaugural edition is coming out tomorrow I believe.”

  Abby raised her eyebrows. “I suppose there cannot be too many such papers if we are to liberate the slave. Having started two myself, I might be able to give him some advice.” She paused. “If he wants it.”

  “Oh, I suspect he would love to have it. So far, he has only gotten advice from his mother, who is here in person the better to provide it directly. Although I believe Clarence would be happy to see her depart sooner rather than later.” He laughed. “Or even yesterday.”

  “So you have met him?”

  “Yes.”

  The rest of their dinner conversation moved away from politics to more mundane topics. When they had finished coffee (which she declined) and dessert (she took a small bite out of a giant piece of cherry pie), Abby said, “I would like now to retreat to my room for an hour or so of rest before my lecture. It is at eight, correct?”

  “Yes, and you need not be there far in advance. Everything is ready, and please let me thank you again for agreeing to do it.”

  “It is my pleasure.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I almost forgot. There is another event, so to speak, taking place right before yours, but I don’t think it will interfere.”

  “In the church?”

  “No, in the square in front of the courthouse. You see, a runaway slave has been captured, and the so-called master is planning to go to a federal court sometime today to prove his ownership under the Fugitive Slave Act. If he wins, which he most certainly will, he will take his human property, as people like him vilely call their enslaved Negroes, back south.”

  “What is the event, then?”

  “The enslaved girl is being held in the county jail in the courthouse because the federal government doesn’t have its own jail. The rumor is that she will be moved tonight from there to the train station.”

  “There will be a protest?”

  “Yes, there always is when this happens, which it does perhaps twice a year. But other than a lot of shouting, not much ever comes of it.”

  “Perhaps I should go myself and protest.”

  “If it turned violent, you could end up being in harm’s way.”

  She laughed. “In harm’s way? I think I have been there before. Have you ever had stones thrown at you while you were giving a sermon?”

  “No, can’t say as I have.”

  “How about manure?”

  “Not that either.”

  “Well, I have had both thrown at me, and worse, while I lectured about the evils of slavery.”

  “I doubt anyone will throw anything tonight. These demonstrations are almost never violent.”

  “Good, I argue with all my might against this horrible Fugitive Slave Act, but as a pacifist I am opposed to violence to liberate the slaves. Violence will beget violence and the people who will suffer the most will be the enslaved.”

  “I am not a pacifist, really,” he said, “although I would not countenance violence to free this slave.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, until finally Abby said, “I hate it when people so remove slaves from their humanity that they talk of them only as ‘the slave.’ Does this enslaved woman have a name?”

  “Yes, Lucy Battelle. She is but a girl. Only twelve years old.”

  “Twelve. Good gracious. Do you know her story?”

  “Only that she escaped from somewhere in Kentucky weeks ago, and somehow made it this far before being captured.”

  “That is a sad story,” Abby said. “But I am far too weary from the trip to go to the demonstration. Much as I would like to. I will instead retreat to my room for a while.”

  “I’m pleased you could join me, Abby.”

  “It has been a great pleasure. Thank you for dinner, Albert.”

  6

  As Reverend Hale and Abby Kelley Foster were finishing their meal, a federal legal hearing was concluding inside a room on the first floor of the Sangamon County Courthouse. The room was small, windowless and bare of furniture except for a battered wooden desk and five equally decrepit wooden chairs gathered in front of it.

  Lucy Battelle was sitting in one of the chairs, manacled, fettered at her ankles and tied to the chair by a thick rope around her waist. The other chairs were occupied by Ezekiel Goshorn, by United States Marshal Thaddeus O’Connor (a beefy man with a full head of red hair, known around town as Red) and by Thomas Stromberg, the sheriff of Sangamon County. The final chair was occupied by a white man who had earlier identified himself but asked not to have his name written down in the record of the proceeding.

  The hearing was being presided over by Nathaniel Harper, a United States Slave Commissioner for the Southern District of Illinois. The only indications that Harper was a judge of some sort was the small name plaque placed on the desk in front of him and the fact that he was wearing a black robe, albeit darned in several places.

  The only hint that the room was a courtroom was the thirty-three star United States flag that someone had stuck into what had once served as a tall brass candleholder. It was an ill fit, and the flag was tilting at a precarious angle. As the hearing droned on, Lucy had been watching it and willing it to fall. She had seen that flag before, inside Ezekiel Goshorn’s private room in the big house—a place he called his study.

  Goshorn was addressing Commissioner Harper. “You already have my written Property Claim, Your Honor. And here is my duly executed affidavit, certified by a court in my home county in Kentucky, affirming that the slave girl is my property. I had it prepared as soon as I got the telegram telling me she had been captured.” He handed th
e affidavit to Harper.

  “Thank you, Mr. Goshorn. Do you see your slave property in this courtroom?”

  Goshorn pointed to Lucy. “That is her, sitting in the chair right there. Name of Lucy Battelle, as the affidavit affirms.”

  “Do you swear under penalty of perjury that she is the one?”

  “Yes.”

  Goshorn wasn’t worried in the least about the outcome. Everyone understood that, under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act, Commissioner Harper would be paid ten dollars if he ruled in Goshorn’s favor, but only five if he ruled against him.

  Harper puffed himself up and said, “After considering the material presented, it has been duly proven by substantial and persuasive evidence that one Lucy Battelle, present before me in this courtroom—” he pointed at her “—is a fugitive slave duly owned by Claimant Ezekiel Goshorn, also present, and that no evidence has been presented that she has been manumitted or otherwise given her freedom. She is hereby returned to him.”

  Lucy didn’t understand the meaning of every fancy word the man had uttered, but she did understand this was about sending her back. She also knew that, according to something her mother had called the law, she did belong to Goshorn. Still, she thought she should not belong to anybody, and she wanted to say so, even if she’d be beaten for it later, assuming she survived the beating for running away.

  “I want to say something.”

  “Girl, you can’t talk here,” Harper said.

  “Why not?”

  “The Fugitive Slave Act doesn’t permit the slave in question—that would be you—to give evidence. In fact, you’re just a piece of property, and property doesn’t talk. You should read the Dred Scott case. It clearly says that there is no difference between you, as slave property, and property like a wagon.” Then he said, “Oh, but I forgot, in your stupidity and ignorance, you can’t read.” He laughed uproariously, joined by everyone else in the courtroom.

  “I can too read,” Lucy said. “Some.”

  The room fell briefly silent.

  “That is certainly not true,” Goshorn said. “I don’t permit my slaves to learn to read, not even the house slaves.”

  Lucy said again, “I can too read. That-there thing on the table says, excuse me... I gotta work it out.” Then she read it aloud slowly, “Nat-han-i-el har-per. That next word says, com-mis...” She stopped and said, “I don’t get that word.”

  “This is some kind of joke,” Goshorn said. “She just heard your name said and mimicked it.”

  “My yaya taught me,” Lucy said.

  It had been a secret between them. But now that her grandmother was dead, she could tell it. The old woman had used a stick and a patch of dirt in her small garden behind her cabin for the lessons. They had always pretended to be planting or weeding or picking. It was the most thrilling part of Lucy’s growing up.

  “What is a yaya?” Harper said.

  “It’s slave talk for grandmother,” Goshorn said. “And I don’t believe this. It’s a trick.”

  “Well, it is neither here nor there as far as my ruling goes,” Harper said.

  He puffed himself up again and said, “The slave catcher, who has asked not to be named—” he glanced at the white man “—shall turn over the slave Lucy Battelle to Petitioner Goshorn forthwith.”

  He looked at Goshorn. “Sir, if you have made some monetary arrangement with the gentleman, I leave it to the two of you to settle that matter outside the hearing of the court.”

  “Of course,” Goshorn said. He was holding several gold coins in his hand, rubbing them together.

  “Finally,” the commissioner said, “all federal and local officials in the State of Illinois and the County of Sangamon and whosoever else may come upon Claimant Goshorn and his slave property are hereby ordered to render all reasonable assistance to claimant in returning the slave to Riverview Plantation in Kentucky, on pain of severe penalties for failing to assist. Claimant to cover costs.”

  With that, he signed a stack of papers on his desk and passed them over to Goshorn.

  Watching this, Lucy thought that her life of late seemed to be taken up with Goshorn and other white men signing papers that treated her like she was a pair of shoes. Mostly, though, her hatred was aimed at Bobby Hacker, the unidentified-in-the-record white man who was sitting two seats down from her and grinning.

  The secret station on the Underground Railroad he had promised her had turned out to be the Sangamon County jail. But if Goshorn wanted to keep her from running away again, he would have to cut off her feet.

  “What is your pleasure, Mr. Goshorn?” Harper said. “Do you want the slave jailed overnight again and then leave in the morning with her?”

  “No, I’ve arranged for a carriage to take us from here to the railroad station for the eight o’clock train south tonight. The carriage is waiting in back of the jail.”

  “Do you want her left manacled and in fetters?”

  “Yes. No point in risking her getting away again.”

  The sheriff spoke up. “Let me see what is happening outside.” He got up and left the room.

  When he came back he said, “Somehow, the fact that we were going to have this hearing here this evening was found out, and there is a crowd gathering outside. It might be best to wait until the crowd disperses some.”

  “I’d really like to get started now,” Goshorn said. “Assuming y’all think you can protect us.”

  The sheriff looked at the marshal. “This is really a federal matter. We can assist, but...”

  “We can handle it,” the marshal said. “The crowds here, for things like this, have been loud, but they’ve never turned violent.” He paused. “I’ll have to line up my deputies. Give us an hour to get ready, and then you can bring her out.”

  “I would not go out the back way,” the sheriff said. “The rear door leads to a narrow alley, and the crowd there is already unruly. We can protect you better if you go out the front door into the square, where we can form a phalanx if we need it.”

  “I agree with the sheriff,” the marshal said. “Can you arrange for the carriage to be waiting out front instead, Mr. Goshorn?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wonder who found out about this,” the marshal said. “This is a public hearing, but we tried very hard not to publicize it.”

  7

  The person who had found out about it was in fact Clarence Artemis, who had heard a stray remark made to the sheriff by one of his deputies as he and his mother walked across the courthouse square earlier in the day. Clarence had promptly told everyone he could, and his mother had told still others.

  Upon his return to the square later in the day, Clarence was both astonished and delighted at the size of the crowd that he beheld. Hundreds of people were milling about, some shaking their fists at the courthouse while others shouted at a carriage that was parked off to the side of the front door. He could see a bald man sitting inside it.

  Suddenly, the courthouse door flew open, and Marshal O’Connor, kitted out in full uniform, walked out and planted himself in front of the crowd, arms folded, legs apart, a gun belt draped prominently around his waist.

  Seconds later, five of his deputies, each cradling a long gun, also emerged and formed a human wall behind him, their silver badges glinting in the flickering light cast by torches being passed hand to hand in the crowd.

  Then the courthouse door opened again and three more people walked out—two additional deputies and a chained-up young Negro girl, who was being dragged along. When she was finally allowed to stand up, she was trembling.

  The crowd, which had already blocked the path between the front door and the carriage, began to curse and shout.

  Clarence had an excellent view of the whole thing because he had earlier found a wooden riser that someone had left at the very back of the courthouse square
. He had climbed up to the top and started to try to count heads. His best guess was that there were already close to a thousand people pressed into the square—amazing in itself when you considered that the city had a population of under ten thousand. And people were still streaming in.

  Clarence watched Marshal O’Connor, his voice rising, attempting to calm the crowd. “My friends,” he said, “my only job tonight is to move this young woman to that carriage over there—safely—so that she can be returned to her proper owner. As officially ordered by an official of a court of the United States of America.”

  He’s afraid, Clarence thought, to use the term slave commissioner.

  The marshal waved a document in the air. “So I ask you kindly to move aside and give way.”

  “Slavery is a sin!” someone screamed. “The slave commissioner be damned! You, too, Red!” The cry was picked up by others, growing louder with each repetition. “The commissioner be damned! Red be damned! The commissioner be damned!”

  The crowd pressed ever closer.

  Marshal O’Connor tried again, shouting to try to be heard above the din. “I am, my fellow citizens, just trying to do my job. Enforcing the law and the Constitution.” He paused and added, “A Constitution that we all love and support.” There was a split-second pause in the crowd noise, and then it hissed at him, hundreds of protestors pulling their lips back, baring their teeth and hissing as one, like a giant snake.

  The sound sent a chill down Clarence’s spine. It took him back to Boston six years earlier, when an even larger crowd of abolitionists—some said it had been ten-thousand strong—tried to block the return south from Boston of the escaped slave Anthony Burns. The crowd had fixed itself in front of the Boston Federal Courthouse and hissed loudly at the police guarding the prisoner. Clarence had only just turned eighteen then, standing next to his father and shaking off his attempt to hold his hand amid the mob, but feeling then, as he did now, a revulsion that the law permitted human beings to be held in bondage.