The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (5 page)

“As a patent absurdity.”

“Ever met Mr. Lincoln?”

“No.”

“Know any member of his family? Any of his friends?”

“No.”

“Then how can you know what is in his head? And whether or not the charge is absurd?” Baker sighed, then hopped nimbly to his feet. Without warning, he stepped very close to her, crowding her back against the bookshelves. For a mad moment she thought he meant to kiss her. “We live in difficult times, Miss Canner. No Congress has dared act in this manner against a President. No one is above suspicion. Do you understand?” Once more he did not wait to hear her response. “If you choose to remain at Dennard & McShane, I shall have no choice but to continue to look into your story, finding all the holes. I shall poke and prod until there are only holes, and no longer any story at all. And at that point”—leaning so close that she could smell this morning’s garlic on his hot breath—“at that point, Miss Canner, you are mine.”

Alone again, Abigail found herself unable to move. She was still on her feet. Her body began to tremble, then to shudder, until her entire being, physical and mental, jerked in uncontrolled spasms. The fear she felt was sharp and raw and red and deep. The hateful tears were but the smallest manifestation of her terror. She leaned over and put her hands on the table. Her late mother always said that God would get you through, and so she tried her best to pray; but in her fear and humiliation had no idea what she was praying for.

She was standing in the same position when Little came in from whatever errand he had been running; although it was also possible that he had just been waiting outside for the general to leave. The old man
glanced at her, hastily looked away, went to the cupboard. He took down the water jug, poured some into a glass, handed it to her. She drained it, and with movement came fluency. Her thoughts began to run clearly again. She found a smile, if a shaky one; thanked him; truly meant it.

Little handed her the broom.

“You gots chores, Miss Canner.”

III

McShane dropped his clerk at the carriage block twenty yards from the building entrance. He had a meeting, the lawyer said, and had to hurry. Jonathan was exhausted: worn out, like the man in his uncle Brighton’s favorite story, from doing nothing all day. He and McShane had arrived at the Mansion at eleven in the morning. Now it was past six in the evening, and nearly full dark. In the months since the firm’s retention to represent the President, Jonathan had attended five White House meetings with his employer, and had been invited into Lincoln’s office only twice, both times to write out a document that one of the others in the room dictated. Neither time had he stayed for more than a few minutes.

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.”

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.