The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (18 page)

Never met her? You’re quite certain?

She never had.

No meetings in out-of-the-way places? Say, the Metzerott Hotel?

All at once, she decided to tell Jonathan. But just as she leaned toward him, he was grabbed by the always grave Senator Fessenden of Maine, the former Treasury secretary, who was among Lincoln’s biggest supporters on Capitol Hill. Before anybody could so much as attempt an introduction of Abigail, Fessenden had dragged his captive over to a corner, where he began haranguing him, gesticulating wildly, as if Jonathan were personally to blame for the events of the past few days.

Left alone, Abigail hesitated, not sure what etiquette commanded. Was she to seek out her hostess? Attach herself to a conversation? Should she perhaps search for Senator Sumner, as Dan Sickles had advised? Or enjoy the buffet, which was piled high with more varieties of meat and fish than Abigail had ever seen on a single table? A moment later, the choice was snatched from her as Fanny Eames bustled over and welcomed Abigail enthusiastically, as if she were a long-awaited arrival from distant shores. Mrs. Eames locked an arm in hers and, as several prominent Washingtonians looked askance, led her toward the main group of guests. Mrs. Eames asked her how she liked working as a clerk, and told her, before she could answer, what a brave and impressive inspiration she was. It was so unjust, Mrs. Eames proclaimed, that women were barred from so many professions. And, as neatly as that, the hostess introduced Abigail to the guest of honor, a small, girlishly handsome man named Morphy, who was said to be the strongest chess player in the world. Morphy looked unimpressed. Their hands barely touched. He turned his back on her. An instant later, Mrs. Eames had deposited a breathless Abigail into the midst of a clutch of large, fluttery
women, augmented by a man or two. They greeted her uncertainly. One of the women was Mary Henry, who was said to be writing a book about growing up inside the Smithsonian Castle, where her father was curator. Another was Lucretia Garfield, known as Crete, a stern-eyed woman whose husband was James Garfield, yet another Civil War officer turned congressman, also said to be interested in higher office. The women treated her with a suspicious amiability, kindly because they were ladies, even if they doubted that Abigail was. A moment later, she was all but smothered by a thickset woman with tight, inky hair and a joyously half-mad half-smile—obviously important, given the way the others deferred. She was two or three years older than Abigail. Her odd silver eyes were bright with excitement as she took Abigail by the forearm and drew her toward the center of the group. “You must tell us the whole story,” the newcomer commanded, in a tone that did not admit of contradiction. “Tell us your adventures.”

“My adventures?” said Abigail, mystified.

“It’s a wonder she doesn’t write a book about it,” murmured one of the other women, “those books being so popular these days.” She turned to her friend. The pianist had switched to “Saint Clare to Little Eva in Heaven,” a choice Abigail found ridiculous. “Tell her, Bessie, darling. Tell her she simply
must
write a book.”

“If your husband will endorse it,” said the silver-eyed woman. Her heavy grin widened. “Are you writing one, dear?”

Abigail realized that the largish woman who still had her by the arm must be Lucy Lambert Hale, known as Bessie, with whom Jonathan was now and then seen around town: he claimed unwillingly.

“I’m not writing a book,” said Abigail, bewildered. “I have nothing to write about.”

“Nonsense,” said Bessie Hale, eyes moist and shining. “Your escape.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Your escape,” she repeated, slowly this time. “How did you come north? The Underground Railroad? Were you a child still? Or did you leave your plantation and attach yourself to the Union Army during the war?”

“Look at her,” said Mrs. Garfield. “So thin. She’s been starving. Starved by her master. They used to do that, you know,” she confided to Abigail. “Not as a
punishment
. As a
policy
.”

“I wonder that the government hasn’t fed her better,” said someone else.

“When are you going south again?” resumed Miss Hale. “I assume your family will be taking over your forty acres soon?”

Abigail blinked. “My family has been free for three generations,” she said, somewhat desperately. “We’ve been in Washington City all that time.”

The women tittered and elbowed each other, as though she had made the funniest joke of the night so far.

“You must forgive them, Miss Canner,” said a smooth male voice, very near her ear. Turning, she found herself staring into the brilliant blue eyes of Senator Charles Sumner.

II

Next to the President, General Grant, and perhaps the Secretary of State, Charles Sumner was the most famous man in Washington. He was described, by the newspapers but also himself, as the conscience of the Senate. Tall and straight, powerful through the shoulders, he had smoothly shining blond-gray hair and the confident good looks that marked the hereditary upper classes of a nation that still denied it had any. He was charming and elegant and cultured, a favorite among both the crowned heads and intelligentsia of Europe. Any book of his speeches would become a best seller around the world. He had been perhaps the leading Abolitionist in the country, and was said to despise Lincoln with all the passion of moral superiority.

“You must forgive them,” said Sumner again, contriving, without actually touching Abigail, to guide her into a private corner of the drawing room, where two walls of books met. “They know nothing of free black people. They are committed Abolitionists because they hate slavery and because they want to do good, but they have no particular interest in people of your race.” A confident smile. “Like so many people of liberal persuasion, they value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.” He tilted his head slightly back and away, as if examining a precious but inferior work of art. “I am Charles Sumner.”

“Abigail Canner.” She lifted her hand. He took it, kissed the air near her fingers in the proper continental manner of the day, returned it dry.

“It is a great pleasure,” he declared, “to meet you at last.”

Abigail was, for a moment, speechless. “At last?” she managed.

Sumner nodded comfortably. “Professor Finney has naturally corresponded
with me. He considers you his finest student. Perhaps you were not aware of his opinion?”

“You know Professor Finney?” she said, feeling a bit stupid. “He said that about me?”

“Of course. And yet I imagine he is somewhat disappointed,” Sumner continued, with no change in tone, “to find you laboring on behalf of Mr. Lincoln.” Before she could reply, he added, “Finney has never been an admirer of Mr. Lincoln, as I am sure you are aware.”

“He taught us to think for ourselves,” she managed, as the air in the crowded, noisy room began to feel constricted. Being criticized by the great Charles Sumner was nearly more than she was able to bear. Over near the piano, Jonathan was listening carefully to Fessenden, as Bessie Hale hovered.

“So defending Mr. Lincoln is your own choice?”

“I—yes, Mr. Sumner. It is.”

“Why? Doesn’t it matter to you that he suspended habeas corpus and jailed political opponents? Or that he doesn’t seem to care what happens to the freedmen? Or that the Congress has twice adopted legislation concerning the manner in which the defeated South is to be reconstituted, and Mr. Lincoln has twice thanked us for our advice and told us that the question is military, and therefore none of our business?”

Abigail composed her answer carefully. Sickles had told her only to try to feel Sumner out; he had never for an instant suggested that she try to persuade the great orator. And a side of her, faced with Sumner’s browbeating, understood that the greater part of valor would be laughing his question off. But at this moment the other side of her was dominant, the side that would not back down in the face of any white man’s presumption of intellectual superiority.

“Whatever wrongs Mr. Lincoln may or may not have committed,” she said, “he has also committed the two greatest and most important acts any President has done, or is likely to do. He won the war to restore the Union. In the process, he forced an end to slavery.”

Sumner was unimpressed. “Lincoln freed the slaves as a military necessity. He has said that over and over. It was not a moral crusade for him, any more than the war was. All was forced upon him.”

Abigail noticed the guests moving toward the drawing room, where the great chess champion was about to give some sort of exhibition. Sumner did not budge. He seemed genuinely interested in her answer.

“Senator,” she said, eyes glittering, “I cannot deny any of what you
say. But why should the one whose yoke is broken care whether it was broken out of the proper motive? It would be far worse to wait another generation for a President whose motives are pure.”

She spotted David Grafton across the room, in animated conversation with a young woman she did not recognize. For the briefest of instants she wondered again about the whispers of conspiracy:
You do know David Grafton, do you not
?

“I would think,” said Sumner, “that the answer would depend on what happened to the man after the yoke was broken. A committed Abolitionist would take measures to ensure that the yoke would not, in some other guise, be restored. I am not persuaded that the President has done that. Indeed, I know that he has not.” She was about to respond, but he had tired of repartee. “Three times now, the Congress has presented a bill that would keep from ever holding office again all those who rebelled against the Union, or fought for the rebel side, or worked for the rebel government. Three times, Mr. Lincoln has refused to sign it. He is perfectly content to allow the same Southerners who rebelled to be mayors and governors and even Senators, so long as they swear they will not do it again, and that they are against slavery. Well, of course they will swear they are against slavery, since the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it a year and a half ago!”

Grafton had noticed her. He flashed a friendly smile, and began to wend his way through the throng. Not wanting to speak to him, she tried to excuse herself. But Charles Sumner, by common consent the most eloquent man in the nation, had turned upon her the full force of his eloquence, and was not about to allow her to escape.

“And there is another reason, Miss Canner, a problem of which Mr. Lincoln himself is aware. Never in the history of our Protestant Republic has one man gathered to himself as much power as the current occupant of the Executive Mansion. He has nearly sunk the other branches into irrelevance. In a parliamentary system, which I would prefer, such a thing would never happen. His own party would turn a prime minister out of office before allowing him to usurp the legislative function—”

He stopped, and bowed. “I apologize, Miss Canner. At times I forget that I am not on the floor of the Senate.”

She nodded, nervously. Grafton was nearly upon them. “I was under the impression that you had not made up your mind how to vote.”

“And I have not. I have a great deal of thinking to do. I shall weigh the case with enormous care. Certainly the argument you have just offered
will weigh heavily upon my judgment. Good evening, Mr. Grafton. As you well know, I have nothing to say to you.” Perfectly calm, Sumner turned his back: Abigail was impressed by the aggressive smoothness of this grave insult, and wished for a silly instant that she were a gentleman, so that she might try it.

For the moment, however, having talked to the one man she had been ordered to talk to, Abigail faced the challenge of avoiding the one man she had been ordered to avoid.

III

David Grafton appeared not in the least offended by Sumner’s rudeness. The smile on the pale, crooked face projected the same feral air she remembered from their first meeting. “A pleasure to see you again, Miss Canner. I trust that you are enjoying yourself.”

“I am indeed,” she said, backing away.

Like a hunting cat, the crooked man followed her. He crowded her into a corner, where a bookshelf ended and a small corridor began. She smelled the cloying sweetness of breath freshened with the latest European import.

“A pleasure,” he repeated, and then, to her surprise, he slipped past her, and into the hallway. She turned to see his crooked form wobbling its way along until, without breaking stride, he sidestepped through a door. The water closet, she told herself, except that she was fairly certain that while she was talking to Sumner, a young woman had slipped into that very room; and not emerged. Abigail had caught only a glimpse of the young woman and had not seen her face; but wanted very badly to know who she was.

Later, Abigail would not be able to say quite what drove her forward. Curiosity, yes, certainly, but she was not one for great risk. The need to prove herself, perhaps by unraveling the great hidden conspiracy of which others whispered. The simple desire to get to the heart of the mystery that was David Grafton. And the conviction, perhaps fanciful, that even if Grafton was indeed the corrupt schemer others supposed, it was odd that he would risk, in the middle of a crowded reception, sneaking off to meet a woman half his age: for much of her understanding of the interaction between the sexes was still colored by lessons drawn from the pages of
Peterson’s
and
McClure’s
and the other magazines aimed at women of the rising middle classes.

The drawing room was now nearly deserted, because the guests had moved into the parlor to watch the chess exhibition. Abigail gathered from the cheers that the great champion was winning. Satisfied that she was not observed, she crept into the short corridor. Two doors on the right, one on the left. Grafton, and the young woman before him, had entered the farther door on the right.

Abigail crept down the hall until she was outside the room. The door was tightly shut. After a glance over her shoulder, she leaned in and pressed her ear to the dark polished wood. She could hear only a low murmur: no clear words.