The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (38 page)

And yet she could not deny the chamber’s breathtaking beauty.

Around her, the ladies of Washington leaned toward each other, whispering. Nobody leaned toward Abigail. Nobody whispered to her. Nobody was sure what she was doing there. The struggle to get a colored woman admitted had been protracted. Down the hall from the chamber was a suite of rooms set aside for the President’s use whenever he might come up to Capitol Hill. During the course of the trial, Lincoln’s lawyers would use the suite as an office, but they had learned early that Abigail would not be allowed inside. The exclusion was not because of her color but because of her sex: the rules of the men’s club. So they obtained for Abigail a ticket entitling her to a seat in the reserved gallery. The ticket had her name on it, but when she presented it at the Capitol this morning, the usher had seemed to lose the ability to read; or else he thought she had stolen it from some whiter Abigail Canner. He told her to leave. She stood her ground. She might have sent a note to the conference room, but just now she did not want some white man straightening out the question of her rights. The great of Washington City flowed by, giving the contretemps a wide berth. Perplexed by her persistence, the usher called over a guard. The guard spoke in the slow, measured tones appropriate to instructing an imbecile. His brass buttons sparkled. His moustache was damp with this morning’s bracer. The colored, he said, were not allowed in the reserved gallery. That was how he put it,
the colored
, as if naming a clan. The colored had to sit with the rest of the public in the place set aside for them, he said. The stair was around the back. And I would hurry, he added: the seats are pretty much taken. Abigail had learned long ago that most of life’s barriers were surmountable through a combination of intelligence, charm, and obstinacy. She tried the first, asking if the guard had a rule book handy, and whether he could perhaps point to the relevant rule. She
tried the second, offering a cute smile and an all-but-giggling assurance that she would behave herself. And she tried the third, informing him that she planned to enter the gallery in any event. If he stopped her, or sought to place her under arrest, he could explain his action to Senator Sumner, who was a personal friend. This was not entirely true, but neither, Abigail told herself, was the guard’s fantasy of the rule barring her entrance. She had never caviled at the occasional exaggeration for the sake of navigating the system of injustice under which she lived. Nanny Pork said men lied all the time but a lady never should, unless she was a trollop, or a wife, or both. Yet Nanny would lie to every farmer at the Center Market to save half a penny on a chicken.

Sumner’s was a magical name in the city; evidently, neither the guard nor the usher could imagine anybody, least of all a negress, taking it in vain. Marveling at the state of the world, they stepped aside and allowed her to pass.

When she reached the sweeping marble stair to the gallery, the ladies of Washington stepped aside, too. This obstreperous colored woman, well spoken yet devious in the manner they had thought peculiarly their own, was an entirely new species to most of them, but they knew already that they didn’t care for her.

II

Abigail was in a better mood than she would have expected. Upon arriving at the office early this morning, she had told Dennard about Judith’s disappearance. The lawyer listened impassively, but was unimpressed. If she hoped to be a lawyer, he said, shaking his jowly head, she would have to learn how to honor her commitments notwithstanding whatever private griefs might occur. He told her how, on the eve of a major trial four years ago, he had received word that his brother-in-law, a dear friend, had been killed in action. The body was on its way back to Kentucky for burial.

“I sought no postponement. I let my sister stand at the funeral without my support. And do you know why?” His glare dared Abigail to attempt an answer, but she was remembering how Grafton had told her that Dennard family members died fighting on the Confederate side. “Because life is rich with tragedy. If you are willing to be delayed by the inevitable pains and horrors that will befall, you have no business pursuing a profession.”

Chastened, she returned to her work. Sickles had letters for her to deliver to the post office. She drove herself across town in the wagon. A light snow was falling. Gentle flakes fluttered like insects across her eyes. Or maybe it was her own tears that made it hard to see. Either way, she ran the wagon into a ditch, just in front of a quartet of stout mansions on Ninth Street, but although pale faces appeared at the windows, no one emerged to help.

One of the mansions belonged to the Bannermans.

Abigail hesitated, then marched up the walk and pulled the bell. Ellenborough, the mulatto butler, somehow contrived to look down on her, although in actual fact they were the same height. She explained what had happened. Ellenborough explained that she should run along. He closed the door. It opened again an instant later, and Fielding Bannerman invited her in.

She had not laid eyes on Fielding since the night they had walked in to find Jonathan drunk in the library, but he was all smiles. A footman was sent to hitch horses to Abigail’s wagon and pull it out of the ditch. Fielding apologized for the “smallness” of the staff: two maids, a cook, two footmen, and Ellenborough. The rest were on furlough until the bulk of the family returned.

“Of course, we have a lot more at the lake house,” he added, perhaps worried about what she would think. They were in the front parlor, sipping lemonade.

“Of course,” she said.

“Hills will be sorry he missed you.”

“He is at the office. I shall see him shortly.”

“Repairs could take some time. Let me drive you.”

On the way, Abigail found herself telling Fielding about her sister’s disappearance. She had his sympathy, he said, and if there was any way in which his humble talents or resources might be of service, she had only to ask—

“You are very kind,” she said, and squeezed his hand briefly.

She arrived at Dennard & McShane just as the group was leaving for Capitol Hill. She could tell from his face that Jonathan had been worrying. Probably he knew by now about Judith: Dennard would have told Sickles, and Sickles was too mischievous to restrain himself. Had Jonathan made a consoling remark, or even an overly friendly one, she would have turned on him. But he seemed to sense that, and contented himself with handing her a sealed brown envelope.

“This came for you while you were away.” An awkward look. “A messenger brought it.”

“From where?” she asked, very surprised, because she recognized the handwriting. “From whom?”

“I fear he didn’t say.”

The flaps were still sealed—Abigail checked. She tore them open. Judith’s note was short, and simple. She was safe, but she had to go away for a while. She warned Abigail not to ask after her or come looking for her. “And please take care of Nanny.”

For the first time in hours, Abigail smiled.

III

The gallery quieted. The occasion had begun with great dignity: the Senators had entered, then the Chief Justice. One of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court had sworn in the Chief Justice as presiding officer, and he in turn swore in the Senators. Representative Bingham, on behalf of the Managers, read aloud the four Articles of Impeachment. The Sergeant-at-Arms then shouted for the President of the United States to come forward, although everybody knew he was nowhere in the vicinity. The body formally took notice of the fact that the President would instead be represented by counsel, who were then summoned. The members of the House marched in, and were assigned seats in the back and along the wings. The counsel for the President presented their credentials. It was all done with splendid pomp and decorum.

And then the shouting started, the battle over the tricky matter of Wade’s status. Lincoln’s supporters hoped to make him an issue. Their argument was carried on by Senators, not by counsel, who sat with their eyes to the front and their mouths shut, for the vote was expected to be close, and neither side could afford new enemies. Wade, as president pro tempore of the Senate, would of course succeed to the Presidency should Lincoln be removed. Some of the very few pro-Lincoln newspapers considered Wade’s not-quite-secret ambition the driving force behind the impeachment. The Radicals answered that Wade was in fading health, and taking on the office would be a burden, a sacrifice on behalf of a shattered nation, no more. On the floor of the Senate, the Lincoln faction contended that Wade, as the potential beneficiary of Senate action, should not be entitled to a vote. The Radicals argued that depriving Wade of a vote would deprive his Ohio constituents
of their suffrage, adding that no one had ever challenged Wade’s integrity.…

In the end, the Senate went into closed conference, and emerged with the conclusion that Wade would be entitled to the same vote as anyone else. But Abigail suspected that the senior Senator from Ohio, who hated Lincoln with the same passion he had once brought to hating slavery, would have little if anything to say.

IV

The preliminaries at last concluded. The Chief Justice adjusted his spectacles and let his heavy gaze move across the chamber. He was a fleshy, fussy man, said to be vain about the dignity due his position. He was vain on other subjects, too, and tended to see himself as surrounded by intellectual and moral pygmies. That, at least, was how Dan Sickles described him, and although Abigail had never warmed to Sickles, she had met no one wiser in the ways, and weaknesses, of Washington’s worthies.

“Gentlemen, Managers of the House of Representatives,” Chase rumbled, “you will now proceed in support of the articles of impeachment.” Another tap of the gavel, for the members proved harder to quell than the spectators. “Senators will please give their attention.”

This was it, then. The formal presentation of the case against the President of the United States: in effect, the opening statement of the trial.

Benjamin Butler arose: the same Butler whom Lincoln had tried to recruit as vice-presidential candidate in 1864, and who had rebuffed the overture so rudely. Butler was a rotund, jowly man, now balding; a few years ago, while serving as a general during the war, he had been trim and tall and handsome. He had in common with Lincoln that both had been hated by the Southerners.

To Abigail Canner, men like Benjamin Butler and Thaddeus Stevens were heroes, far larger than this poor mortal life, the great figures of the battle to eradicate slavery. Each was a fierce Radical. Butler, while serving as military governor of New Orleans, had hanged a man for tearing down the Union flag, and ordered that any woman who was impolite to the Union troops should be treated as a prostitute. He had also armed the slaves. As for Stevens, the Pennsylvania congressman had been one of the earliest and most vehement supporters not only of
emancipation but of full equality of the races. He shared his house with a colored woman, whom most people considered to be his common-law wife. Unlike Butler, Stevens was small and fierce-eyed, with a full head of hair. As everyone knew, he was dying, and had already picked out a burial plot in one of the rare cemeteries that interred whites and blacks in the same section; but he was determined to live long enough to see Lincoln, whom he hated, overthrown.

“Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate,” Butler began. “The onerous duty has fallen to my fortune to present to you, imperfectly as I must, the several propositions of fact and law upon which the House of Representatives will endeavor to sustain the cause of the people against the President of the United States, now pending at your bar.”

The people
. Abigail had not thought about the charges that way. Mr. Lincoln and his lawyers talked about the Radicals; as a formal matter, the charges were brought by the House of Representatives; it had not occurred to her that the Managers would proceed as in a criminal trial, asserting that they acted in the name of
the people
. And she wondered whether the late Arthur McShane, who so revered the Constitution in its perfection, would agree.

Butler meanwhile was explaining why, due to “the novelty of the proceeding,” he would likely speak for some while. Dennard had estimated ninety minutes. Abigail listened closely as the balding Butler laid out the same charges, in very much the same language, as in the bill of impeachment itself. There were four counts: the first related to the suspension of habeas corpus, the second to the censorship of newspapers and the seizure of private telegrams, the third to the supposed inattention to the protection of the freedmen, and the fourth to his desire to overthrow the authority of the Congress. She had brought her commonplace book and was making notes. The trial would meet four days each week, Monday through Thursday, from noon until five in the afternoon, with Friday sessions as needed. Abigail expected to spend most of those days right here, although she and Rellman were available for other assignments as well. Jonathan would sit at the counsel table with Dennard, Speed, and Sickles. Abigail felt the yearning. To be a lawyer in so important a litigation. Her pencil flew across the page. She would, she knew, grow accustomed in time to the surroundings, to the occasion, even to the fluttering determination of the great ladies of the city to ignore her.

“Excuse me.”

A whisper at her ear, breathy and confident at once. Abigail looked up. There stood a slim, pale woman whom Abigail recognized from sketches in the newspapers before she opened her delicate mouth.

“I’m Katherine Sprague,” said the newcomer, extending a gloved hand. Beneath her fancy hat, unfashionably blond hair was piled high on her head. “We have not been formally introduced, but we attended the same reception at the Eameses’ two weeks ago. Is this seat available?”

Abigail was not often struck wordless, but just now, for a moment, she could conjure nothing to say. Katherine Sprague. The daughter of the Chief Justice, who even now was fussily presiding over the trial. Katherine Sprague, just a few years older than Abigail herself, married to the wealthiest man in the Senate; the same Katherine Sprague who was
said to be puzzling constantly over how to manipulate her ambitious father into the White House. When Michael spoke of
the people who
, Kate Sprague would be foremost among them.