The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  There was a more urgent topic, though, that Clarence wanted to raise. “Do you think there is any way I could get an interview with Mr. Lincoln? Could you help?”

  “The answers, sir, are no and no. What efforts have you made yourself?”

  “I understand he has been given a small office at the statehouse in which to answer mail and receive visitors. So I’ve tried to find him going from his home to or from there or from his home to his law office. I’ve not been able to spy him on either route.”

  “Is that all you’ve done?”

  “No. I have also left notes at his home and his law office, and with the guard at the statehouse.”

  “None of this is surprising. As I am sure you know, once they are nominated, by tradition candidates do not campaign. And they certainly don’t give interviews to journalists.”

  “Senator Douglas is out campaigning.”

  “That’s because, as of now, it looks like he is going to lose. So he is desperate. Lincoln is not.”

  “Can you think of anything else I might try?”

  Hale looked thoughtful. “Try talking to the baker.”

  “The baker?”

  “Yes. The one on Fourth Street.”

  “What shall I ask him?”

  “You are a smart young fellow, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  As he was about to leave, Clarence felt emboldened to ask something he had been wondering about. “Father Hale, if I might be so impolite as to ask, why are you called Father? In my perhaps too limited experience, that term is usually used to address Catholic or Episcopal priests.”

  Hale laughed. “At some point I had been here so long that many of my adult congregants had been children when they first met me. So they began to call me Father. I’d like to think it’s intended as a term of affection, but it could just as easily be because I now seem increasingly ancient to them.”

  Clarence thought Hale’s answer had a certain amount of disingenuousness to it. However old Hale was, he had been the leader of a major church for over twenty years and, Clarence had heard, one of Springfield’s most influential men. So rather than respond directly to Hale’s answer, Clarence just said, “Thank you for the tour of your church, Father Hale. It is a beautiful place, and I am most grateful.”

  “I don’t know your religious inclinations, Mr. Artemis, but even if you are not of a Presbyterian frame of mind—or not yet anyway—you are most welcome to come and join us for worship on Sunday. And given your education and your fondness for both the abolition cause and John Donne, I would welcome your comments on my sermons.”

  To avoid offending, Clarence said only, “I was brought up as a Unitarian, but my beliefs are not fixed. I’d be very pleased to attend, but not likely until after I get my new newspaper launched.”

  “I would consider Unitarians to be close to unbelievers, Mr. Artemis, but perhaps if you came here on a regular basis, you could find your way to belief.”

  “I will keep that in mind, Father. As I said, my beliefs are not yet firm in any direction.”

  “Of course,” Hale said. “If I might inquire, Mr. Artemis, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do keep in mind that we have a large congregation. Most of our young women marry at an early age, but in these modern times some do not. With your education and prospects, you would be welcomed into the very best families in Springfield.”

  “I will keep that in mind, too.”

  “Let me add that should you come upon someone you think comely, I’m sure my wife, Abiah, could arrange a proper and chaste meeting.”

  Clarence thought he detected a twinkle in Hale’s eye, and responded in kind. “Father Hale, I would love at some point to be married. But I’m not currently looking for female attachment—again, all of the work involved in starting my paper. But were I to meet and marry someone through your agency, my mother might well be persuaded to donate a second bell!”

  They both laughed together.

  “I must add,” Clarence said, “I didn’t know men of the cloth were also matchmakers.”

  “There are many paths to bring people to God, Mr. Artemis.”

  10

  When Clarence and Hay reached Second Presbyterian, the sanctuary was not full, but very crowded. Perhaps, Clarence thought, it really did seat three hundred. Hay’s friends were, as Hay had said they would be, in the back row, and had saved several seats. He and Hay clambered over the back of the pew and took two of them.

  Hay did quick introductions. Three of the men, Bobby, Tom and Harry, were, like Clarence and Hay, in their early twenties. A man whose name Clarence didn’t catch in full—Billy something or other—seemed quite a bit older and was sitting farther down the row.

  “Why is Abby Kelley coming here to speak?” Hay asked, aiming his question at no one in particular. “I thought she was an abolitionist lecturer in New England and New York.”

  “Pennsylvania and Ohio, too,” Harry said. “I don’t know why she is now here, so far out west.”

  The man called Billy had folded his hands behind his head and propped his boots up on the top of the empty pew in front of him. “I bet she is here to urge disunion,” he said. “For that is her position. If Lincoln is elected, and the hotheads in South Carolina and elsewhere secede, as they have threatened, then ‘good riddance,’ she says. ‘Let us form a new Union without them.’”

  “And one without slavery,” Hay added.

  “Indeed,” Billy said. “Without any vestige of the peculiar institution.”

  Clarence felt he needed a more proper introduction to the man. He leaned across Hay and Harry and said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.” He held out his hand. “I’m Clarence Artemis, editor of The Radical Abolitionist.”

  “Billy Herndon,” the man said, shaking his proffered hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Clarence was transfixed. “Lincoln’s law partner?”

  Herndon laughed. “The very one.”

  “Perhaps I can interview you afterward,” Clarence said.

  “I regret not, sir. I am no fan of slavery, but I am also involved with Mr. Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency. We are in a period of quiet. He is not campaigning, nor I on his behalf. He has other surrogates you might speak with, but not me.”

  Clarence was about to press him further when there was a stir toward the front of the room, and a thin woman in plain clothing, her hair pulled back into a severe bun, started to walk slowly up the stairs to the pulpit where Reverend Hale awaited her.

  As soon as she reached the stage, Hale walked to the lectern and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let us pray for an end to slavery.” He then led the assembled group in a brief prayer, followed by a boisterous amen from the audience.

  During the prayer, Clarence had kept his eyes focused on the woman, whom he knew to be Abby Kelley. Not only had he heard her speak before, but his mother had pointed her out to him in the hotel restaurant, earlier. He had expected her to bow her head during the prayer, but she did not. Instead, she stared out at the audience as if sizing them up. For a brief second, Clarence thought she was staring directly at him.

  After Father Hale introduced her as Abby Kelley Foster, choosing to use her married name, she walked slowly to the lectern, shook his hand, but without great energy, and turned to the audience.

  “Brothers and sisters, thank you for coming this evening. I know some of you wonder why I am here, when most of my life has been spent well to the East.” She paused, as if waiting for someone to shout out the answer. When no one did, she went on. “The reason is pedestrian. One of my close friends, another abolitionist lecturer, came here to visit his ill sister and then fell ill himself. I came by train to take him back to his family in Boston.”

  There was a
murmur in the crowd. Clarence knew it was because women did not normally accompany unrelated men anywhere, whether they be ill or well. But then this audience itself was a mixed one of both men and women, and that, too, was unusual. So unusual that such an audience was referred to by many as promiscuous.

  Having explained her presence in Springfield, Abby continued. “Those of you here who know me can no doubt attest that I do not participate in politics. I do not advise people whom to vote for, and I do not cast ballots myself. For that would be to approve the Constitution, which is pure and simple an evil slave document—written by slaveholders for slaveholders. And yet those slave masters who wrote it did not have the courage even to write the word slave into their holy document. Instead they referred to slaves with words of evasion. Too ashamed to call slavery what it is.

  “Father Hale has kindly asked me to speak today on a topic of my choosing—” she smiled over at him “—and he may well expect that I will break my practice of over twenty years and recommend for whom you should vote in this election of 1860, which so many call crucial.” She smiled again. “But I will not.

  “I will also not, as some have urged me, say at least that Abraham Lincoln is a good man. I will not because he is not. As my friend and fellow abolitionist Wendell Phillips has said, Lincoln is rightly called the slave hound of Illinois.”

  “What do you mean?” someone shouted out.

  “It’s simple,” she said, raising her voice. “He has said that if elected he will enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. And if he does, he might as well run with the slave hounds himself, helping to sniff out the poor souls who have had the undaunted courage to run away from their so-called masters.”

  If she had been listless earlier, she seemed suddenly to find an energy that filled her body.

  “Let us pause for a moment to talk about that revolting Act.”

  “It is an abomination!” someone yelled.

  “Indeed it is!” she said. “It allows a supposed owner of a slave to drag that person bodily into a courtroom of the United States—a courtroom sanctioned by the very Constitution so many claim to hold dear—and present a sworn affidavit that he owns that particular human being. Owns him like you can own a mattress!

  “And is it before a real judge?” She went on to answer her own question. “No, hardly ever. It is instead before a man called a slave commissioner.

  “Can you imagine that in this supposed land of liberty there are government officials called slave commissioners?

  “And does the enslaved person get to contest his status in a trial and prove that he is a free Negro?”

  Some people in the audience shouted, “No!”

  Abby echoed them again. “No, absolutely not!

  “Well, does the slave get to argue that slavery is an abomination that ought not to be recognized by any court of law that pretends to be civilized?”

  Again, the audience answered, with even more voices raised. “No! No!”

  “No, the enslaved man or woman or child certainly does not. Instead, a United States marshal is charged, after this summary proceeding, with assisting the cruel slave master to transport that enslaved man or woman—even a child of tender years—back to slavery.

  “So why not Lincoln anyway, you ask? Perhaps you think Lincoln really is an abolitionist but can’t admit it because then he won’t get elected. You think he’s hiding it out of electoral necessity. If that is so, can he not at least bring himself to oppose the Slave Act? Can’t Honest Abe, as some call him, find in his heart that small amount of human decency needed to oppose that heinous Act?

  “No, he cannot.”

  Clarence looked over at Billy Herndon to see his reaction, but Herndon was completely stone-faced.

  “Now let us now talk about what is happening this very night, mere blocks from here,” Abby said. “A young woman not even thirteen years of age—a girl, really—is about to be returned to bondage in Kentucky. Which is being done, not in hiding, but in the open, not two blocks from Mr. Lincoln’s law office and not many more blocks from his home. Yet Mr. Lincoln has not found it in himself to walk down to the courthouse and protest.”

  She looked out at the audience. “How many of you were there tonight, standing witness?”

  Clarence heard at least a dozen voices shout, “I was.”

  Abby Kelley raised her voice higher. “Was Honest Abe there?”

  “No!” shouted even more people.

  “Raise your hand if you were there!”

  Clarence stood up on the pew for a better look, and saw at least a hundred hands waving in the air. He half expected Abby Kelley to urge her audience to take action, but she did not. She was, he recalled, a pacifist who eschewed violence.

  Instead, Abby said only, “Well, if you are a political abolitionist and you therefore decide to vote in this election, you may think to vote for Mr. Lincoln because you imagine he is the best of the four candidates.”

  A few voices responded, “He is!”

  “I have heard the argument before,” she said. “That two of Lincoln’s opponents—Breckinridge and Bell—have actually owned slaves themselves, and Senator Douglas, who would have men vote on whether to expand slavery, might as well own them.” She paused again, letting the tension build. She was, Clarence realized, a person who had learned to hold an audience in her hands.

  “Do not delude yourself into thinking Lincoln is any better. If he wins, as the newspapers have begun to say he will, he will do nothing at all for the slave. Nothing... Not one set of iron manacles will drop away the night he is elected. Not one pair of fetters will fall from a slave’s ankles. Not one master’s whip will still the day Lincoln takes the oath.”

  She paused for a second. “Four years hence, nothing will have changed.”

  She was breathing heavily. “So go and vote if you must. But do not delude yourself that it will make a difference to the more than three million slaves who toil in this supposed land of liberty.

  “Now let me return to what I truly wish to speak to you about tonight—the actual fate of the poor slave who is held in bondage not two hundred miles south of where we sit tonight. And what we can do about it without the frivolity of elections.”

  Clarence looked at his watch. If he was to make his deadline, he needed to leave. And he already had his story. Abby Kelley’s usual speech would make it into the story only as a brief mention. Most everyone had heard it all before, if not from her, then from one of the other abolitionist lecturers who barnstormed the country.

  He wished his seatmates farewell and said, “It was a pleasure to meet all of you.” He clambered over the back of the pew and headed for the front door.

  11

  On the way back to his office, Clarence passed again through the square. Several armed deputies were still guarding the courthouse entrance. The small knot of people who’d been there half an hour before were still milling about. Despite the fact that it was August, someone had even dug a small hole in the dirt and built a wood fire in it.

  Clarence stopped to talk to them. Perhaps a brief interview could somehow liven up his story about the escaped slave, which by now was seeming of not much interest.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Clarence said, addressing a man he guessed to be of middle years who was, despite the warmth of the evening, bundled inside a large coat, with a scarf that hid much of his face, but left his bald pate exposed to the air. “I’m Clarence Artemis, the owner and editor of The Radical Abolitionist, the first truly abolitionist paper in Springfield.”

  “Ah, yes,” the man said, whipping his scarf back off his face so he could be heard. “Still one more abolitionist paper. Every time you turn around there is another, all reporting the same news. Which is that there has been no progress on ending slavery. None!”

  “I understand your frustration,” Clarence said. “But, as the politicians say, we have surrounded
slavery with a ring of fire, and like a scorpion, it will eventually die in the middle of the fire.”

  The man snorted. “Ha! Have you ever seen a scorpion in Springfield?”

  “Well, I’ve not been here long, but no. It’s just a saying, it’s not...”

  “It’s a worthless saying. Those who use it—they are just politicians trying to gull us abolitionists into inaction. They claim that slaves are escaping in ever larger numbers from the Border states and that those states will eventually have no choice but to abolish slavery because there will be no slaves left in them.”

  “Is that not true?” Clarence said.

  “I know only that slave catchers are thick as fleas hereabouts and most slaves who escape are seized and sent back. It is to prevent that that we are here tonight.”

  Clarence realized that he was arguing with the man instead of interviewing him. He shifted his approach.

  “If they try again to move the enslaved girl, are you prepared to block the attempt?”

  “We are. We succeeded earlier this evening in driving them back inside. We will not let them move her.”

  “Who is we? There are perhaps only a dozen of you left, if even that many.” Clarence gestured at the four or five people around them and a few more in front of the courthouse, talking to the men guarding it.

  “We have people ready to ride out and let people know they must come,” the man said.

  “May I have your name?” Clarence said.

  “I will keep that to myself.”

  “Thank you for the information,” Clarence said. “Perhaps I can work it into my story.”

  “What you should work into your story is that all the politicians in this town, be they Republican or Democrat or Whig—what’s left of the Whigs—are cowards. And that includes Mr. Lincoln.”