The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Page 4

  Back at Fourteenth and G, peering up at the second-story windows, Jonathan was surprised to see lanterns burning. Old Little was usually more careful when he closed up. Unlocking the lobby door, Jonathan felt watched. He turned and saw, on the other side of the street, a tethered wagon, the horse resting while the negro driver stroked its flanks and glared at Jonathan with a fury that the young man could not fathom.

  Washington City these days.

  Upstairs at last, Jonathan stepped into the office, drawing a startled gasp from Abigail Canner, who sat at the long table, a heavy book open before her, flickery lamplight playing across the pages.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, very surprised.

  “Reading Blackstone, volume one,” she said, calmly. She put down the pencil with which she had been making notes. “I am on page thirty-four.”

  IV

  “Thank you for waiting,” said Abigail to her brother, Michael, as the wagon moved slowly through the snow. “I had extra work. There was no way to let you know.”

  Michael considered this pitiful excuse as he drew the horse around left, turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “So, what do you think? Are they going to impeach Old Abe or not?”

  “They will impeach him next week.”

  “Who’ll be the President then?”

  Abigail shut her eyes, never sure when her brother was baiting her. She spoke as tonelessly as possible, because Michael, when offended, was unpredictable. “To impeach him only means to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors. There is still a trial in the Senate to decide whether to remove him from office.”

  “So who’ll be President? The Vice-President is dead.”

  “If Mr. Lincoln is convicted, his successor will be Senator Wade from Ohio. He is what they call the president pro tempore of the Senate, and under the statutes—”

  “President pro tempore?”

  “He is in charge of the Senate.”

  A cruel laugh. “White folks.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  They rolled past trees and houses and the occasional hotel or bar. Here and there a federal building stood like a lone sentry.

  “Let me understand this,” said Michael. “This Wade gets to vote on whether to kick Old Abe out of the White House, and then he also gets to move in and take his place? Who dreamed that up?”

  “The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution,” she said sleepily.

  “The white gentlemen.”

  An ornate carriage passed, traveling much too fast the other way, spattering them both with the freezing Washington mud. The horse shied, but Michael eased it back on course. The trees thickened as they approached the canal. Dozing, Abigail let her hand drift to the seat cushion. She encountered a lump. Delving, she touched a metal cylinder. It felt like—

  “Michael, why is there a pistol in the wagon?”

  “The city is dangerous at night. Especially for our people.”

  She digested this. “If the police should stop you—”

  “Then I’ll protect myself.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Vote

  I

  “SO I HEAR they’ll be impeaching your man in the morning,” said Fielding Bannerman, swirling his brandy sourly as he lounged before the grate. “Pity, I suppose.” He brightened. “I say. Is that why there are so many soldiers about? On the way back from the club I was all but run over by a troop of cavalry.”

  Jonathan was toying with the cigar that he would never have touched except that as a man he was expected to. The fire, unreasonably hot, reminded him of the spectacular blazes of his Rhode Island youth, when his dying father complained constantly of cold, and his mother discharged on the spot any servant who let the flames die. It was the late evening of Monday, February 18; or, as Jonathan had come to measure the days, two weeks since the arrival of Abigail Canner at Dennard & McShane.

  “Even if the impeachment succeeds,” he said woodenly, “the trial is yet ahead of us.”

  “Where your man is bound to lose.”

  “I would not say that.”

  “Then why are there so many soldiers about? Somebody was saying at the club that your man would arrest the Speaker of the House rather than allow himself to be impeached.” He shut his eyes. “I say. That would be rather thrilling, wouldn’t it?” Fielding chuckled self-importantly. He was grinning and, as usual, drunk. He was a short man, with sloppy black hair and the early paunch of the leisured life. He was, like Jonathan, the heir apparent to his family business; although, to be sure, whereas the Hillimans were decently off, the Bannermans with their banking fortune rivaled the Astors and the Cookes. They were friends because Elise Hilliman expected her children to have wealthy friends; and because Fielding was some sort of distant cousin of Meg Felix, Jonathan’s fiancée. Still, he had agreed to take rooms in the Bannerman mansion on Ninth Street only because he was assured that Fielding would be in Europe with his parents, who were trying to marry off the three dreadfully plain Bannerman sisters to minor princelings. Had Jonathan known that Fielding would be in residence, he might have chosen to live somewhere else.

  “That is the silliest thing I have ever heard,” said Jonathan.

  “Is it? Didn’t I hear somewhere that one of the articles of the impeachment accuses your man of seeking to overthrow the Congress by force?” He laughed, spilling his brandy. He took no notice. Spills were what servants were for. Ellenborough, the mulatto butler, materialized at once with a napkin and a fresh glass. “But it doesn’t matter what Lincoln does,” Fielding continued. “Know why? Because the price of gold rose today. Henry Foreman told me at the club. He’s with Jay Cooke & Co. If the price of gold is rising, that means the dollar is falling, which means that the bankers believe that Mr. Lincoln will be removed. And you know what my father says. Never bet against the bankers.”

  Jonathan stirred, perceiving through the haze of spirits and smoke that he was about to be subjected to another of his friend’s wild theories about what malevolent forces lay behind the impeachment. “Your father is a banker.”

  But Fielding preferred his own arguments. “I say. When am I going to meet this negress of yours?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The Canner woman. We were talking about the impeachment down at the club, and Tubby Longchamps is sharing a few secrets, and he mentions her. Do you know Tubby at all? No? He was in my year at Harvard, you know, and he’s deputy to the sergeant-at-arms now. At the House of Representatives. Good old Tubby. He always did know where there was nice clean graft to be found, didn’t he? Goodness me. Why, once, right in the middle of the Yard, he had this idea that we might put one over on old Connie Felton. This was before Felton was made president of the college. In those days he taught freshman Greek. And Tubby, bless him, suggested that we—”

  Jonathan was all at once apprehensive. Fielding Bannerman might be a snob, but he and his Harvard friends constituted a web of sources General Baker’s Secret Service would envy.

  “Fields. The impeachment. What did Tubby say?”

  “He said he met the Canner woman last week. Your negress. She was on an errand at the Library of Congress, picking up some books for the lawyers.” A frown. “Or was she returning them? Oh dear. I’m not sure Tubby told me which.” He took a long swallow of brandy. “The point is, your Miss Canner dropped the books. Of course none of the Washington gentlemen lifted a finger. Not for a negress. But you know Tubby’s eye for the ladies. He helped her pick up the books. And he says she’s really quite exquisite. Naturally, she thanked him, and you should hear Tubby describe that dulcet voice of hers. How dare you keep her to yourself, Hills. When do I meet her? Say, old man. Why not invite her for dinner? Tell you what. I’ll bring Miss Hale. We can make it a foursome. How’s that?”

  “Fields, please. The impeachment. What secrets did Tubby share?”

  “Ah! Well. He says that if Wade becomes President he will make Mr. Ebon Ward Secretary of the Treasury.”

  “Who on earth is Ebon
Ward?”

  “Secretary of the Steel Board, old man. I’d have thought you’d know all about it, because of your family.”

  “My family is in textiles, not steel.”

  “Yes, well, the textile makers want higher tariffs. So do the steelmakers. High tariffs mean soft money. Wade is a soft-money man, the way most Westerners are. Mr. Lincoln used to be, too, but Tubby says he’s about to do a deal with the bankers. If the bankers will support Lincoln, then he’ll support a lower tariff.”

  “Mr. Lincoln would not alter his policies for political support.”

  “Your man may be President, Hills, but he’s still a politician.” Fielding sank deeper into his armchair. “Besides, it’s just what Tubby says.”

  Jonathan felt a headache coming on, caused by either the cigar or yet another implausible theory from Fielding’s endless supply. “I’m going to bed,” he said.

  Fielding let his friend get halfway across the room before springing his surprise. “Tubby also said that any day now they will admit Nebraska to the Union.”

  “We have an agreement!”

  “That they will not admit Nebraska until after the trial. I know. But Tubby says they will go forward next week. And the state legislature in Omaha, in an agony of gratitude, will immediately send to Washington two anti-Lincoln Senators, who will be seated just in time to vote for your man’s conviction.”

  Jonathan was thinking about the blackboard at the office. This afternoon the numbers had read 15–29–8. If Fielding’s information was accurate—and on such matters he was rarely wrong—then by next week there would be fifty-four Senators, not fifty-two, and the count would be fifteen for acquittal, thirty-one for conviction, and eight undecided. And suddenly, rather than winning half of the undecided votes, Lincoln would need a majority of them in order to survive.

  “Thank you,” said Jonathan, heading for the stairs. “Good night, Fields.”

  “Hills. Just want you to know. I’m serious.”

  “About what?”

  “Miss Canner. I should very much like to meet her. Sooner the better.”

  A perfectly proper request, but it bothered Jonathan quite unreasonably for days thereafter.

  II

  “Well, that was rather exciting,” said Dinah Berryhill, who did not sound the least bit ruffled. “I had no idea that observing the House of Representatives could be quite such fun.”

  “Fun!” cried Abigail. “It was horrible!”

  It was Tuesday, February 19, and the House had just voted to impeach the President and send his case to the Senate for trial. Abigail, under the guise of picking up more books at the Library of Congress, had gone with her friend Dinah to watch history being made. She knew by now, the second day of her third week of employment, that Jonathan would cover for her.

  Jonathan always covered for her.

  With his assistance, at first reluctant but now smilingly conspiratorial, she had been able to slip out of chores to spend more and more time reading. Not often, perhaps, but occasionally. Jonathan treated her with an awkward kindness. The young people of Abigail’s set—Dinah foremost among them—were unanimous in their view that the white race meant them no good; whites were kind only when they wanted something. Abigail largely shared these views. And she was no fool. She had spent enough time in the world of men to know what men generally wanted. Therefore, she was at pains to let Jonathan know that she was engaged. As it turned out, so was he.

  “Of course he is,” said Dinah, the two of them in the midst of the crowd descending the snowy slope from the Capitol following the vote. Her arms were out to her sides for balance, a pose Abigail would not dream of striking in public, even if the cost of her reticence was an occasional fall. Dinah was a stout, saucy woman whose family had arranged for her to be finished—poorly, in Abigail’s secret opinion—at a school near Philadelphia. The Berryhills owned tracts of timber in upstate New York and a large shipbuilding firm on Cape Cod. Dinah had traveled all over Europe. One of Abigail’s constant frustrations, at Oberlin and in Washington City both, was battling the presumption among her classmates that if you were black you must have been a slave until the Emancipation Proclamation; or, if you had been born free, then your parents surely scrubbed kitchens or waited tables. In either event, you were unlikely to have opened a book until the kind people of the American Missionary Association or the Freedmen’s Bureau dragged you off to a dreary one-room schoolhouse in the middle of some benighted Southern swamp. When Abigail told her classmates that her father built houses, they imagined shacks on a plantation; and when she told them that the Berryhills had built frigates for the Royal Navy a century ago, her classmates assumed that they swept out the shipyards after hours.

  Dinah, meanwhile, was still talking about Jonathan. “Rich young men,” she proclaimed, “are always engaged. They rarely marry, but they are always engaged.”

  In Hebrew, Dinah’s name meant “judgment,” and she lived up to it constantly.

  “I must say, Mr. Lincoln’s opponents seem quite passionate,” Dinah continued. “Why, poor Thaddeus Stevens is dying, and he came to the House today to condemn the man.”

  “Mr. Lincoln has broken no laws,” said Abigail, already sounding like the lawyer she hoped to be. Yet she, too, had been saddened by the condition of Stevens, the most senior of the Radicals, and the Abolitionist most beloved by educated negroes. “There is no case.”

  “Of course there is a case,” said Dinah, who, coming from a business family, shied away from abstractions. She laid a saucy hand on her hip. “My father is afraid to commit any important business confidences to either telegram or post for fear that Mr. Lincoln’s Secret Service might seize the message. Some who would otherwise speak out against the President choose not to do so, lest they wind up in one of Mr. Stanton’s secret military prisons. That is not politics, Abigail. That is tyranny.”

  “Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves,” said Abigail, doggedly. She remembered her grueling interview with General Baker, and wondered at her own certainty—and her motives. Although nobody had mentioned that conversation since, and her standing at the office seemed even to have improved, a part of her worried that some dire consequence still lay ahead.

  Dinah’s laugh was hard and mannish, the laugh of one who has seen it all and long forgotten how to be impressed. “Abby, darling, he is being impeached by the Radicals of his own party. They would have freed the slaves, too. That is not what this quarrel is about.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “Goodness, darling. The man tried to put the army over Congress! To establish military government in this city, with himself at the head! He is a petty tyrant, a tyrant running our great Protestant Republic! Really, what else does one expect when we choose an uneducated Westerner to be—Stop! Stop him!”

  A small, dark, slim figure had darted from the throng and snatched Dinah’s fancy handbag. He ran on—

  Only to scream in agony a second later as an absurdly tall man, white and broad and grizzled, stepped out of the crowd and snapped his wrist.

  “Sorry, Miss Dinah,” said the giant, with a sheepish grin. He had a flaming-red beard, and a bright scar along the side of his neck. His ancient jacket of butternut gray, a relic of the war, was evidence that he had been on the losing side. “I tried not to hurt the fool,” he rumbled.

  The fool, as it happened, was a negro boy, no more than ten or twelve, and Abigail ached at the image, the brown boy struggling in the painful grip of the white Goliath as the crowd backed away.

  “You may release him, Corporal,” said Dinah. She bent over, laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and lectured him in a stern whisper, finger waving in his face. All the time, the boy looked at the ground, and cradled his wounded wrist. He nodded. Dinah slapped him lightly on the side of his head, and he scampered off.

  “I imagine,” said Dinah, brushing off her bag, “that he will shortly be stealing another.” She adjusted her hat. “I do wonder how they live.”

  She lin
ked her arm through Abigail’s and they resumed their stroll, Dinah expostulating on Lincoln’s crimes in a voice meant to be overheard, and Abigail barely listening, so sickened was she by the episode with the thief.

  The giant had disappeared, but Abigail knew he was nearby. He was never separated from Dinah by more than a dozen paces. His name was Alexander Waverly, late corporal in the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia under “Stonewall” Jackson. He was one of two former Confederates hired by the Berryhills to keep their headstrong daughter out of harm’s way: Corporal Waverly guarded Dinah during the day, and a Corporal Cutler by night. Dinah insisted that both men were as gentle as could be, but Abigail found them terrifying.

  Why does your father hire only Confederates to protect you? Abigail had once asked her friend.

  Dinah’s answer was succinct: Because we won, dear.

  III

  McShane spent the afternoon at the White House. The city was dark when he returned. The only illumination in the common room came from a noisy gas chandelier. Jonathan was seated at the table, working his way through an evidence treatise. Little was putting one last shovelful of coal into the stove. Abigail was dusting the shelves. McShane stood silently, but gave her a long look that seemed to Jonathan almost hostile. Then he beckoned the young man to join him in his office. Abigail watched them go.

  “Close the door,” the lawyer said.

  He perched on the edge of his desk. He was a pleasant man, with little use for affectation or formality.