The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Exactly!” Buchanan said. “And that is why I will not send troops to do as Mr. Black suggests. Nor, I hope, will any future president.”

  Buchanan looked at Hedpeth and could see that he was becoming uncomfortable at witnessing a disagreement between his commander-in-chief and the attorney general. “Thank you for coming, Major,” Buchanan said.

  “It has been an honor to meet you, sir.” He saluted. “And Godspeed.”

  “Mr. Washburn will show you out.”

  After Hedpeth had left, Buchanan turned to Black and said, “I am not using force, Jeremiah, to prevent a state from leaving. The major is right. Your solution inevitably leads to war. It is too clever by half.”

  “It’s nevertheless my view,” Black said. “To which you are entitled.”

  “Well, let Lincoln start a war if he wants to. Then he can endure history’s wrath for the utter foolishness of having done so.”

  The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Buchanan said, “Would you like another, Jeremiah?”

  “No, Mr. President. Thank you, but I need to get home for supper. So I will bid you a pleasant evening.” He raised his glass in salute.

  Buchanan turned to Washburn. “Has Miss Lane returned as yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, please see who else is in the house who might join me. I prefer company tonight.”

  23

  Springfield

  Late September

  Clarence was at his desk in his small room above the store, trying to think what to try next. The articles he’d written for The Radical Abolitionist about the Abby Kelley riot, as it was being called (people seemed often to ignore her married name), had been a sensation. But interest had quickly faded. And subscriptions to the paper had not increased much. He did take notice when William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, came by to subscribe. When he’d tried to feel Herndon out (Herndon was a known abolitionist) as to whether Lincoln himself was reading the paper, the man had been noncommittal. In fact, he had been noncommittal about almost everything having to do with Lincoln, the campaign, abolitionists and everything else Clarence asked him about.

  Even the publication of the boy’s drawing of the overturned coach in Harper’s Weekly, with an attribution to The Radical Abolitionist, had failed to increase interest in his publication. Or at least not in Springfield.

  He had considered that renting a small office for the paper, with its name over the door, might help to raise its profile—if his parents would pay for it and if an office could even be found. With Lincoln now the Republican candidate for president of the United States, every large newspaper in the country had sent someone to report from Springfield, and the national Republican Party apparatus had taken up residence, as well. Not to mention the hangers-on who’d arrived by the dozens, hoping to obtain for themselves one of the hundreds of positions in the federal government that would be changing hands if Lincoln were elected president of the United States, as now seemed ever more likely. As a result, it was hard even to find an empty storeroom to let.

  Even as he uttered the words to himself—president of the United States—it seemed to him astonishing that a hick from nowhere (because that’s what Springfield seemed to him and almost everyone from the East) might soon assume the highest office in the land. On the other hand, Lincoln was clearly an enormously clever hick to have achieved what he had so far. Clarence hankered to talk to him when he wasn’t wearing his nightshirt.

  He had one other thing to ponder, as well. Two weeks ago, he had received a tip as to where the missing slave owner might be hiding—in a small town several miles away. He wanted badly to go there and interview the man. But he didn’t want to go alone. Several people he’d approached about accompanying him had turned him down.

  His reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door. When he opened it, a very short man stood there, decked out in full military uniform, his chest covered with campaign medals.

  “I’m Major Robert Hedpeth,” he said. “Are you Clarence Artemis?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  “I am conducting an investigation.”

  “On whose behalf?”

  “I cannot tell you that, Mr. Artemis, until I receive your pledge of compete confidentiality.”

  Clarence paused to think about it. It was in truth a new request for him. Up until that point, everyone he had talked with had been most anxious to be quoted by name in his newspaper. Or at least they had raised no objection.

  “I suppose I could agree to that,” Clarence said. “So long as I can tell you at some point that I cannot go on. That what you have told me is so important that I must report it. I am a reporter after all.”

  “That is agreeable,” the major said. “I can now tell you that I was sent here by the president of the United States.”

  “President Buchanan?”

  “He is, for the moment, our only president.” He smiled. “So far as I am aware. Do you know of another?”

  “No, of course not. But he will not be in office very much longer.”

  “Mr. Artemis, even when President Buchanan’s successor is elected on November 6—a date still well over a month away—whoever it turns out to be will not be inaugurated as our new president until March 4.”

  “I am quite confident it will be Lincoln taking that oath,” Clarence said.

  “Well, whoever it is, you must be aware that, until March 4, President Buchanan’s powers remain fully intact.” He paused. “Fully.”

  “Yes, of course. And so, Major, what does our President Buchanan, through you, wish to ask of me?”

  “May I sit down while we talk? I have been somewhat diminished by my war experiences.”

  “Yes. Please excuse my not having offered you a seat earlier.”

  “That is of no consequence.”

  “Ah, but it is to me because my mother taught me the importance of being polite to all. As you can see, I have but two chairs. The big stuffed one, and the one with the cane back. Please take whichever one might please you the most.”

  “Thank you. I think I will rest my weary bones in the large one.” And with that, he sat down in it and let out a sigh.

  Clarence took the other chair and said, “You were, I think, about to tell me what you want to know.”

  “I am looking for the escaped slave, Lucy Battelle, and for her missing master, Ezekiel Goshorn.”

  “Why do you think I might know where they are?”

  “Because someone who knows you has told me that you may know at least where the slave owner is.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Hedpeth threw his hands up in the air and laughed. “This may sound odd, but a man on a train told me. And I neglected to ask him his name.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Very thin, almost bald, piercing blue eyes.”

  “Ah, that would be my printer. He apparently cannot keep his mouth closed.”

  “So it’s true.”

  “Yes. I have some supposed information on the slave owner’s whereabouts.”

  “If you could find him before others do, it would make a great story for your paper.”

  Clarence didn’t reply immediately. Here was a man who could accompany him to find the missing man, and was an army officer to boot. And yet.

  “Mr. Artemis,” Major Hedpeth said, “you haven’t responded to my offer to help you.”

  “To be candid, Major, I’m not sure that I want to help out President Buchanan.”

  “Why ever not? He is, until March 4, the president of all of us.”

  “Perhaps so, but he is an apologist for slavery.”

  Hedpeth did not respond. After a long silence that was on the edge of
becoming uncomfortable, he finally said, “He is my commander-in-chief, and I am therefore loath to get into a discussion of his politics, just as I will be about Mr. Lincoln’s politics should he be elected.”

  “So you are asking me to help out a slavery-loving president?”

  “I don’t think it’s fair to call him slavery-loving. Unlike many of his predecessors, he has never owned slaves himself. And he has condemned slavery.”

  “He has also supported the Fugitive Slave Act, praised the Dred Scott decision and attempted to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state.”

  Hedpeth stood up and said, “Mr. Artemis, I think I am wasting both your time and mine. I will have to continue my investigations without your assistance. But I thank you for your willingness to see me.”

  “Wait a moment, please, Major. Are you familiar with what we in the West have recently come to call a newspaper scoop?”

  “No.”

  “It is a term that means for a paper to get an important story no one else has gotten yet, and publish it first.”

  “I see. And?”

  “I will give you a lead as to where you might find Goshorn if, in exchange, you will let me know, before you tell anyone else, what you find out.”

  “Before the president?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But, Mr. Artemis, if I find Goshorn and need to involve the sheriff, for example, then he will know first. And I won’t likely be able to prevent him from telling others.”

  “There is an easy solution to that, Major. I will go with you.”

  “That would be most unusual, Mr. Artemis.”

  “To be blunt, take it or leave it.”

  “Alright, you can come. But what about the slave, Lucy, Mr. Artemis? Do you also know where she might be?”

  “I have no information about her. She is likely dead or already in Canada.”

  “I see. Well, where do you suggest we look for the slave master?”

  “In a small town not too far from here. I have learned from reliable sources that Goshorn has a brother there.”

  “What is the name of the town?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re ready to depart. Tomorrow morning at 7:00?”

  “Do you have a carriage, Mr. Artemis?”

  “No, but I’m sure you can locate one to hire, Major.”

  24

  Berlin, Illinois

  They left for Berlin, which was about fifteen miles west of Springfield, at the crack of dawn the next day, riding in a rented two-horse carriage. Before they climbed aboard, Hedpeth stuffed a large satchel into the storage compartment behind the seats.

  “What’s in there?” Clarence said.

  “A shovel, among other things.”

  “Why do we need a shovel?”

  “All well-equipped soldiers carry a shovel on a mission like this. They’re useful for many things.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone carry one in Boston” was all Clarence could think of to say, and he forgot to ask what else might be in the satchel.

  The road to Berlin was terrible—ruts and bumps everywhere—and it took them all morning and then some to get there. When they finally arrived, they jumped down and spent several minutes rubbing their butts to try to soothe the pain that the constant bucking of the contraption had caused them both.

  Berlin qualified as a town, but only barely. It consisted of perhaps a dozen small houses, laid out on two streets that crossed at right angles. Where the roads met, there was a tiny general store and a weathered sign for a blacksmith, hung high on the side of the building next door. Not a soul was to be seen.

  Fields spread out in all directions from the town’s center. Most had been harvested, leaving only a few tattered cornstalks and, here and there on the ground, some scattered corncobs. There were also two large barns, one in good repair, painted bright red, and the other unpainted and near to falling down.

  “There doesn’t appear to be anyone here,” Major Hedpeth said to no one in particular, but since Clarence was within earshot, he answered. “Perhaps they’re out in the fields.”

  Hedpeth gestured at the empty fields around them. “I don’t see anyone.”

  They walked together into the blacksmith shop, whose doors stood open. Inside there was the usual equipment, as well as a banked fire in the forge, but no blacksmith. A back door led to a small stable, but there were no horses in it.

  They walked back out to the road and had resolved to go house-to-house and knock on doors when a voice from somewhere up above shouted, “Are ye gentlemen looking for the blacksmith?”

  Clarence looked up and saw a woman with blond pigtails leaning out a second-story window above the blacksmith shop.

  “No,” Clarence said, “we’re not looking for the blacksmith, or at least not specifically.”

  “Well, then, what are ye doing here?” the woman said.

  “We are looking for a man whose last name is Goshorn,” Clarence said.

  “Ye don’t know his first name?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s passing odd if ye ask me,” she said.

  “It’s just because we know his brother, Ezekiel Goshorn—” Clarence considered that just a small, inconsequential journalistic lie in aid of getting a story “—and we think Ezekiel may be visiting his brother here in Berlin. But we don’t know the brother’s exact address.”

  “Odder still,” she said. “Why do ye want to find this Ezekiel?”

  “We have urgent news from his family back in Kentucky,” Clarence said. It was true, he figured, in a certain sense.

  “Alright,” she said. “The two of you look harmless enough, even the one in uniform. Clem Goshorn has a farm about two miles that way.” She pointed down the south-facing road. “He calls it Good Luck Farm.”

  “We thank you,” Clarence said, and tipped his cap.

  “Good luck finding Good Luck Farm,” she said, laughing. She withdrew and closed the shutters with a bang.

  They got back in the carriage and headed south. After they’d gone only a short distance, Clarence looked at Hedpeth and said, “It’s lonely out here. Perhaps we should have brought a gun.”

  “The satchel behind us holds a long gun, two pistols and plenty of ammunition.”

  * * *

  The road to Good Luck Farm was even worse than the road from Springfield to Berlin. The ruts were at times so deep that they had to urge the horses off the road and onto the field and then back onto the road again some distance later. After an hour of painful travel, they finally came upon a split-rail fence with a gate. A sign in the shape of a four-leaf clover was attached to the gate with rope. Someone had written Good Luck Farm on it in crude lettering.

  They opened the unlocked gate and drove down the long driveway, at the end of which stood a small white house with a steep roof. There was no answer at the front door when they knocked, and no sign of anyone being inside.

  “I guess we will need to try the barn,” Clarence said, gesturing across a pasture at a large barn that was painted red.

  “We will,” Hedpeth said. “But I’m guessing we’ll have no luck there, either. These fields are clearly pastures, but there are no animals about—no cows, no pigs, no goats. Not even any chickens.”

  “Let’s go take a look,” Clarence said.

  “One moment.”

  Hedpeth went back to their carriage, opened the satchel and extracted two identical pistols, with barrels Clarence judged to be about eight inches long. He took powder and ball from pouches in the satchel and loaded one of the guns, which he held on to. He handed the other to Clarence, who held it awkwardly.

  “You can load your own,” Hedpeth said.

  Clarence just stood there, not sure what to do. He was embarrassed to admit that he’d never held a gun before.

  “Have you ever lo
aded or fired a gun, Clarence?”

  “No.”

  “Seen one up close?”

  “Uh, not really. People in my part of Boston tended not to have them.”

  “Alright. I’ll bring my gun, then, but not give you one. If you have no experience with it, you’re as likely to shoot yourself as anyone else.” He put the second gun back in the satchel and slid his own into a holster on his left side, under his jacket.

  “Let’s go inspect the barns,” Hedpeth said.

  When they reached the barn, they were confronted with a single door in the side. Hedpeth started to reach for the handle when Clarence said, “Aren’t you going to take out your gun?”

  “No. If someone inside means us harm, they’ve no doubt already heard us coming, and will shoot us, likely with a long gun, as soon as we walk through the door. Having my pistol out won’t help much, whereas if they don’t mean us harm and they see the gun, they may take it as a threat and act on it.”

  “That’s a risk.”

  “There are risks in many things in life, Clarence.” He paused for a second, pulled open the door and walked right in. Nothing happened.

  “Come on,” Hedpeth said. “There’s no one here that I can see.”

  When Clarence went inside he saw that the barn was filled with wagons, farm machinery and a variety of tools, including scythes, hoes and rakes. Up above, the loft was full of hay, and it smelled freshly cut.

  At the end of the barn, against a far wall, there were three doors.

  “Let’s check those rooms down there,” Hedpeth said.

  “Do you think we should check out the hay loft first?” Clarence said.

  “No, I would think that if anyone was up there, they would have heard us come in and made themselves known.”

  “Unless they are hiding.”

  “Why would they hide, Clarence?”

  “Um, I don’t know. I’m new at this.”

  They walked over to the wall and Hedpeth opened the first door, but the room was empty. So was the second room.