The Day Lincoln Lost

by Charles Rosenberg

  “That is certainly true!” one of the members said.

  Lincoln nodded his head in agreement and went on. “But whatever your position back in May in Chicago, you are stuck with me now, here in October.”

  “But we shouldn’t be stuck with your foolish decisions,” one of the members said.

  “I’m the candidate,” Lincoln said. “For better or for worse, I get to decide. And I have decided to do this, not only because I think it is right—it is about justice—but also because my intuition tells me that it will also work to our advantage. Especially if Mrs. Foster is acquitted.”

  “It will lose us votes,” one of them said again. “And that just when we’re on the cusp of winning. After all, in August—just months ago—we won Congressional seats in Indiana and Pennsylvania that we had lost to Democrats two years before. That means a Republican wave is coming everywhere in the North that will sweep us to victory in the electoral college. But with this decision, Mr. Lincoln, you are about to throw it all away.”

  “No, Lincoln is right,” still another said. “Defending Mrs. Foster may well gain us votes.”

  “Not anymore due to this nonsensical decision!” someone shouted. It was a man who had until then remained silent.

  “And that is just the problem,” Lincoln said. “We have no way to be sure.”

  The argument among the Committee members continued until Lincoln ended it by rising slowly from his chair to his full six feet four—he had long ago learned that suddenly towering over seated people had a tendency to bring arguments to an end—and said, “Voters can change their opinion like the wind on a fall day. We need more information.”

  “Why?” one of them asked. “Of what use will it be at this late date?”

  “Here is my thinking,” Lincoln said. “The fact that I’m representing Mrs. Foster will be known all over the country by two days from now. If we can better learn what voters are thinking about that, you can all know what to talk about in newspaper columns, speeches and the like between the end of the trial and Election Day on November 6.”

  “How do you propose to find out what voters are thinking?” one of the members said. “We have no way to poll them except by counting the votes on Election Day.”

  “Two ways,” Lincoln said. “First, I want each of you, whether by letter, telegraph or in person, to talk to people in your states—including those who disagree with you—and report back to me what you hear.

  “And there is a second thing,” Lincoln said. “I am going to send young John Hay here out to talk to voters, particularly in Indiana and Pennsylvania.”

  “How can he possibly find out anything of use?” one of them said.

  “Oh, John is a convivial young man, and I think he can make the rounds of the taverns and there sip some ale with the patrons. And perhaps also attend a few town meetings. How old are you, Johnny?”

  “Twenty-one, sir, although I’ll be twenty-two in a few days.”

  “Is there nothing more we can do now?” one of the Committee members said.

  “Yes,” Lincoln said. “If you know any of the mayors of towns in Indiana and Pennsylvania, be they Democrats or Republicans, you can introduce John to them.”

  “What good will that do?” one of them said.

  Lincoln laughed. “They can tell him where the best taverns are.”

  34

  Before boarding the train in Chicago, Annabelle had slipped a gold wedding band onto the ring finger of her left hand. Later on, that had helped her fend off the advances of the man sitting next to her on the train, who seemed quite intent on pursuing a conversation with her, and probably much more if his leer was any indication.

  Finally, she had said, “Sir, I am married and I think my husband would feel most uncomfortable with my pursuing a conversation with you.”

  “Well, he isn’t here, is he?” the man said.

  “No, but I must again request that you permit me to return to my reading.” She had brought with her a copy of the relatively new magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and began to read it again.

  “That magazine is an abolitionist tract, you know.”

  “I know,” she said, not bothering to look up. “That is why I read it.” Without another word, she got up and relocated to another compartment.

  When she disembarked at Springfield’s Fourth Street Station, the platform was surrounded by one-horse cabs, jockeying for passengers. She hailed one and asked to be taken to the Chenery House Hotel, where she had telegraphed ahead for a reservation.

  The hotel was the nicest one in town. She didn’t mind because she was spending Allan’s money (or was it Lincoln’s?) and so saw no reason to scrimp. Especially because it seemed more and more likely to her that looking further for Lucy was going to be a wild-goose chase.

  She checked in under a false name—Mrs. Everett Grant—and explained to the desk clerk that she was awaiting the arrival of her husband, who was expected from New York in two or three days. If anyone should ask (the desk clerk did not), she planned to say that her first name was Jane, which seemed to her to be about as far from Annabelle as she could get.

  The problem with operating under a pseudonym was, of course, that she would not be able to use her Pinkerton’s calling card. But she had the feeling that calling cards were not going to be important on this particular mission.

  She ate alone in the hotel dining room, using her Atlantic as a shield against having to talk with anyone. She noticed that the annoying gentleman from the train—he had introduced himself but she had already forgotten his name—was also dining there, but he did not approach her.

  Across the room, she also noticed the newspaper reporter, Mr. Artemis, whom she hadn’t seen since their encounter in Berlin. He was sitting at a table with an older woman, but was facing away from Annabelle. She spent part of her meal discreetly observing the two of them.

  When Annabelle had finished and was about to leave to return to her room, she changed her mind. There was no time like the present to carry out Allan’s instructions to try to get to know the reporter better. She realized that she would need to use her real name, since Clarence already knew it. She took a deep breath, got up and went over to their table.

  “Good evening, Mr. Artemis,” she said. “I’m Annabelle Carter. You may recall that we made each other’s acquaintance at that unfortunate event in Berlin several days ago. I wanted to offer my apologies if I was perhaps a bit brusque on that occasion.”

  Clarence rose from his seat, nodded his head in greeting and said, “There is no need for an apology,” He glanced at Annabelle’s fake wedding ring, clearly trying to discern what matrimonial title to use for her, and said, “Mrs. Carter. Please allow me to introduce you to my mother, Mrs. Artemis, who is visiting from Boston.”

  “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Artemis,” Annabelle said.

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” Mrs. Artemis said. “We have just called for our coffee, Mrs. Carter. Would you care to join us? I’m sure a third cup can be added to our order with no difficulty.”

  Annabelle looked back to Clarence, who had an expression on his face that she read as lacking in enthusiasm for his mother’s invitation. Which made her all the more interested in accepting it. “I’d be delighted,” she said.

  Annabelle had not been seated long when Mrs. Artemis said, “If I am not mistaken, I detect a Southern accent in your speech. Do you hail from somewhere to the south of where we sit tonight, Mrs. Carter?”

  “I live in Chicago,” Annabelle said. “And have for many years.” She knew, of course, that Mrs. Artemis, given her son’s outlook, was likely an abolitionist, but she saw no reason to hide her origins. She was not ashamed of them. “I grew up in Kentucky, though.” She paused a second and added, “On a plantation.”

  The word fell like a thud into the conversation and engendered an awkward silence, fro
m which they were rescued by the arrival of the waiter with the coffee.

  After it had been served, Mrs. Artemis said, looking back and forth between Clarence and Annabelle, “If it is not too intrusive a question, where did the two of you meet?”

  Clarence, who had up until that point remained silent, said, “I wouldn’t call it ‘meet’ so much as we both happened to be present at the same place at the same time. Very briefly.”

  “That’s accurate,” Annabelle said.

  Mrs. Artemis added cream to her coffee, took a sip and said, “I’m unsure why the two of you are being so evasive about it.”

  “I’m not,” Clarence said. “I was visiting the small town of Berlin, outside Springfield, looking for the enslaved girl, Lucy, and her owner. You’ll recall, Mother, that my finding the owner there right before he died yielded a great edition for my paper.”

  “Our paper, Clarence.”

  Clarence ignored her comment and said, “I’m not really sure why Mrs. Carter was in Berlin that day. Something about the dead man being a neighbor in Kentucky.”

  “I can be more specific,” Annabelle said. “I must first ask you, though, to maintain what I tell you in confidence.”

  She stared at Clarence until, after what seemed to her too long a time, he nodded in the affirmative.

  “So long as you’re not about to admit to a murder or other horrible crime,” Mrs. Artemis said.

  “I assure you it’s not that,” Annabelle said, while wondering if Mrs. Artemis would be alright with keeping secret a minor crime Annabelle might have committed.

  “I will also keep your secret, then,” Mrs. Artemis said. “Pray tell what is it?”

  “I’m a detective, working for Allan Pinkerton on a mission to find Lucy if I can. I’m not anxious however, to have it generally known here in Springfield that Mr. Pinkerton is my employer and that finding Lucy is my mission. As a result, I’m registered here under an assumed name.” She glanced at her left hand. “And the ring is intended to aid that deception. In fact I’m unmarried—divorced actually.” As she said it, she wondered why she had felt the need to clarify that.

  “I’m intrigued,” Mrs. Artemis said. “How did you come to work as a detective for such a famous man? I didn’t even realize he hired women as detectives.”

  “He has several women detectives on his staff. And once I got divorced, I needed a job, and this one paid better and was more exciting than working as a clerk in a countinghouse.”

  “A countinghouse,” Clarence said. “I haven’t heard that phrase since I was a child learning Mother Goose. I think it comes from ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence.’” He recited it in a singsongy voice, moving his head back and forth to the rhythm. “The king was in the countinghouse, counting out his money.”

  Mrs. Artemis laughed, and said, “Do you recall the next line, Hopper?”

  “I don’t, Mother, and please don’t call me that.”

  She ignored his protest and said, “The next line is, ‘While the queen was in the parlor, eating bread and honey.’”

  Mrs. Artemis looked directly at Annabelle and said, “I don’t suppose they teach children Mother Goose down South.”

  “Of course they do,” Annabelle said. “The rest of the rhyme goes, ‘The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes. Along came a blackbird and snipped off her nose.’”

  The three of them burst into laughter so loud that other guests in the room stared at them.

  Finally, Mrs. Artemis said, “Well, I am going to turn in for the evening. I will leave you two young people to continue the conversation. And since you have already been married and divorced, Mrs. Carter, I think you hardly need a chaperone.”

  Annabelle watched Mrs. Artemis leave and noticed that the rude man from the train had also, at some point, left the dining room.

  Clarence, who seemed to Annabelle to relax after his mother left, took a sip from his coffee and said, “Is Mr. Pinkerton looking for Lucy on his own account, or does he have a client who wants her found?”

  “He has a client.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you...Hopper.” She grinned.

  “That was a childhood nickname given to me, my mother says, when I was around two years of age and tended to hop around. I’ll thank you not to use it.”

  “Alright, I won’t...very often.”

  “Returning to the topic at hand,” Clarence said, “how do I know you’re not looking for Lucy on behalf of one of the dead man’s sons?”

  “I’m not. I’m an abolitionist, even if a gradual one, and I wouldn’t work on a case in which one of them was the client.”

  “I wonder if you’re telling the truth, Mrs. Carter.”

  “If you’re going to accuse me of lying, you might as well make it personal and call me Annabelle...Clarence.”

  At that moment, the waiter came by to ask if they wanted another pot of coffee.

  “Bring us a bottle of wine,” Annabelle said. “Something good.”

  “We have a very nice pink Catawba from Ohio,” the waiter said. “Sparkling.”

  Clarence wrinkled his nose. “Something not of this region, please. Something French, preferably. Charge it to my mother’s room.”

  The waiter departed.

  “You also know about wine, Clarence?”

  “I know what I like.”

  The waiter returned with what Clarence called “a fine Bordeaux,” and they spent the next hour finishing it.

  By the end, although they had become friends of a sort, they had made no progress on how to find Lucy. Or whether she was even findable. Annabelle had continued to refuse to reveal who Pinkerton’s client was, and she had the feeling that Clarence was not telling her everything he knew, either. All they could finally agree to in terms of cooperation was to try to keep each other generally informed as to their progress. And Clarence had put a strong emphasis on the word generally.

  When they had finally finished talking, they looked around and saw that they were the last people left in the dining room. Five waiters were standing against the wall, each with a towel draped over his arm, staring at them.

  “I think, Hopper, we need to go,” she said.

  “If you continue to call me that, Mrs. Carter, we might be able to work together toward our mutual goal, but we are not going to be friends.”

  35

  When the next day dawned, Annabelle shook off the furry feeling in her head, ate a breakfast of biscuits and eggs and then walked over to the bakery. One of the things that Pinkerton had taught her, though, was to explore things before rushing in. This mission didn’t strike her as dangerous, but she wanted to follow Pinkerton Agency procedure.

  So instead of going directly into the bakery, she simply walked by and glanced inside, where she saw a man she assumed to be Hotchkiss standing behind a counter serving customers. There seemed nothing unusual about the place, so she walked on.

  When she got farther down the street, she lingered for a few moments, pretending to examine items in a shop window, but actually watching people going in and out of the bakery. The only thing she noticed was that some of the customers were Negroes. Since there seemed to be quite a few Negroes in Springfield, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.

  She spent most of the rest of the day doing what she imagined others would expect a married woman awaiting her husband to do—she went shopping. One of the things she bought was a broad-brimmed straw hat with a red bow in the middle. Broad-brimmed hats had recently become popular again, starting to replace bonnets—which she loathed. In the ’40s and ’50s, she had found it difficult to find anything but dratted bonnets in store windows.

  Toward late afternoon, she returned to the bakery. As she approached the front door, a customer was just leaving, carrying a loaf of bread and heading the other way. It was the man from the tr
ain, although he didn’t appear to recognize her. Probably, it was just a coincidence.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” the proprietor said. “It is close to closing, and I’m afraid we have no bread left. We do have a few pies.”

  “I’m not looking for bread. I am here about something else.” She reached into the bodice of her dress, extracted Pinkerton’s letter and silently handed it to him.

  He seemed to evince no surprise at where the letter had been hidden, but simply read it and handed it back. “You may need it again at some point,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “We need to talk in back.” He went to the front window and hung up a Closed sign, locked the front door and led her into a back room. The room featured three tall brick ovens arrayed against one wall, with long butcher-block counters against another. Large wooden spatulas and rolling pins hung from pegs. The room held the yeasty aroma of baking.

  “What do you want, Mrs. Carter?” Hotchkiss said.

  “I am looking for Lucy Battelle.”

  He blinked rapidly several times then paused, seeming to think over her request. “You are the third person in as many days who purports to be looking for her.”

  “Who were the others?”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t say, but, if the letter you just showed me is to be believed, you are, if not one of us, at least allied with us.”

  “I am.”

  “Very well, then, one of those seeking Lucy was Lincoln’s partner, Billy Herndon. The other was Clarence Artemis, the young, nosy proprietor of our new weekly newspaper, The Radical Abolitionist.”

  Annabelle felt more than a little annoyed at learning that Clarence had been there first and had not even mentioned it to her the night before. Then she reminded herself that her goal was to find Lucy, not to triumph over Clarence as if they were engaged in a game of whist. But perhaps entering into a more formal alliance with him—something beyond keeping each other generally informed of their progress—would make sense.

  “Mrs. Carter?” the baker said, and Annabelle realized she had become so lost in her own thoughts that she had fallen silent. “Oh. I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you tell Herndon and Artemis?”