The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (39 page)

No doubt, buried in the texts on professional ethics she had yet to read, she would find rules limiting contact between lawyers and the judges presiding over their cases; but Kate was no judge, and Abigail no lawyer, not after her constant exclusion from the heart of things. And, besides, the ambition that beat like a second heart within her chest would not allow her to consider rebuffing an overture from the foremost of
the people who
.

In truth, the moment only seemed to stretch eternally: all of this flashed through Abigail’s mind in no more than a second. And by that time, she was already offering a formal hand to meet the one offered.

“Of course I remember, Mrs. Sprague. You played chess against that Southern gentleman. I fear that I missed the exhibition, but I was impressed by your confidence.”

“Thank you, dear. But it took him all of five minutes to defeat me, so, whatever you thought of my confidence, my performance, I fear, was not terribly impressive.” A broad smile, seemingly genuine. “And, please, call me Kate.”

Abigail smiled back.

As the great ladies of Washington stared in dismayed astonishment, and made lists in their minds of whom to tell first, Kate Sprague, the city’s most prominent hostess, settled into the seat beside the obstreperous negress.

V

Meanwhile, a few feet from the counsel table, Congressman Butler was growing angrier; and louder. He railed against the President for not being present in person to answer the charges. “Mr. Lincoln should be here,” said Butler, more than once, in what seemed a departure from his text. He nodded toward the defense table, although his argument was with his own colleagues. “The prosecution has been weak in the knees. We should have demanded his presence. He should have been required to stand before this body and listen to the charges against him.” As Butler’s anger rose, his voice grew more hoarse and throaty.

“Pardon me,” said Butler. He sipped his water, resumed his assault. “We face a circumstance unique in history. In other times and in other lands it has been found that despotism could only be tempered by assassination”—a sigh went through the gallery, and Butler, seeing that he had misfired, hurried on—“and nations living under constitutional governments even have found no mode by which to rid themselves of a tyrannical ruler, except by overturning the very foundation and framework of the government itself.”

Butler continued in that vein, fulminating about Lincoln’s supposed tyranny in the high-sounding language that was the fashion of the day among public men; and it occurred to Jonathan, sitting stoically beside Sickles at the brightly polished counsel table, that Lincoln never talked that way. The President’s language was clear and straightforward, without pretension or pomposity. Lincoln’s homespun humility provided another reason for his opponents to despise him. Most of the Radicals had matriculated at the finest schools in the land; Lincoln had nary a degree to his name.

When the Radicals looked at the President, they saw not just a moral but an intellectual inferior.

Certainly Ben Butler considered Lincoln a lesser man than himself. One might never know, as his peroration wound down, that just three years ago Butler had seriously considered Lincoln’s invitation to join him as vice-presidential candidate.

“You are a law among yourselves,” Butler concluded, meaning that it was entirely up to the Senators to decide what constituted an impeachable offense. No crime was necessary, said Butler, having cast his notes aside. “You may remove the President for any act that is either subversive
of some fundamental principle of government or highly prejudicial to the public interest.” The censorious eyes roamed along the senatorial ranks. “Mr. Lincoln’s entire tenure in office easily meets these tests.”

Butler sat. He had spoken for an hour and a half.

The Chief Justice declared a thirty-minute recess, after which Thaddeus Stevens would complete the opening statement on the part of the Managers.

As the Senate rose, Jonathan turned to Sickles. “Butler as much as said that they can remove the President because they disagree with him politically!”

Sickles grinned. “This is Washington, son. Down here, no matter what they say, politics is the only reason anybody does anything.”

VI

“Have the police made any progress?”

The question took Abigail by surprise. She felt the hollow guilt of one who is caught at sin, for she had been studying the fine dresses and hats of the great Washington ladies, wondering whether they looked down on her simpler costume. She noticed that the ladies, Kate included, had all brought little fans, and were fluttering them furiously. Odd choice in winter: she wondered why.

“My understanding,” she admitted, “is that they have very few clues.”

“That is very strange,” mused Mrs. Sprague, fan working. “Mr. McShane was a man of some prominence in this city.” Down below, the Senate was coming back. “And a close friend of Father as well. I wonder that more pressure has not been brought to bear.”

Abigail, as it happened, wondered the same thing. In time she would grow accustomed to Kate Sprague’s eerie ability to guess what she was thinking, but just now she felt a little frightened; and, in consequence, let slip more than she probably should have.

“It seems to me,” Abigail said, “that if there has been pressure, it has been the other way around.”

Kate’s fan did not quite mask her tiny smile of triumph.

VII

The other House Managers were Representatives Bingham and Stevens. They were, along with Butler, among the purest of the Radicals.
Actually, Butler was in only his first term in the Congress, and the assignment as Manager should by rights have gone to a more senior man. But Butler was popular with the voters; when he demanded a place for himself, the leadership dared not refuse.

Now Thaddeus Stevens rose. He was shaky, and it seemed unlikely that he would be able to remain on his feet, as protocol required, for the hour or so that his remarks were expected to require. Indeed, given his poor health, Abigail wondered if he would even survive the trial. But when he spoke, his voice was almost biblical in its rolling and thunderous power. There was no quaver. There was no doubt. He was speaking what his conscience told him was rock-bottom truth; and he would admit no differences of opinion.

“Mr. Lincoln,” he began, “is the greatest tyrant this nation has ever known. And given that he now commands the most formidable army on the face of the planet, and uses it for his own purposes without regard for law or morality, he may be, at this instant, the greatest tyrant in the world.”

No quarter, then; no compromise.

“Mr. Stevens is a true hero of the nation,” Kate whispered.

“Indeed,” said Abigail. She coughed. She had discovered the point of the fluttering fans. Despite the wintry weather outside, here in the upper reaches of the Senate Chamber cigar smoke from below gathered thickly. After two hours, it was like being on a battlefield.

“He may not last the trial,” said Kate.

“His voice is as powerful as ever,” said Abigail. But she, like all the nation, knew that Stevens was dying. He had been born, she reminded herself, marveling, while George Washington was President. At Oberlin, she had been spellbound by Professor Finney’s encomiums to the great orator.

Down in the well, the old man’s body began to sag, but he grabbed the edge of the table and pressed on, carried by his own righteous fury. He described the President’s offenses in great detail, and with magnificent plumage, his eloquence easily outdoing the practical Butler. He announced, with evident glee, that the chamber would be provided with evidence of a letter “of unchallengeable provenance” that set forth clearly his intention to continue and even expand his tyranny.

A flurry in the chamber.

Stevens never paused. It was not enough, he said, that Lincoln had violated the Constitution and the liberties of the American people. It
was not enough that he had shown himself timid and unreliable in protecting the colored race so recently rescued from the most vicious bondage. He was a conspirator, sneered Stevens—a deceiver who made plans in the darkness for that which he would not dare to defend in the bright light of the day. Abigail tensed, guessing what would come next. Stevens looked around the chamber. A deceiver, he said, must be cast out—he was borrowing from Revelation—and his whole wicked Administration with him, as the deceiver’s angels were cast out of the Heavenly Firmament.

This brought a gasp, and more catcalls.

Stevens continued to outline the evidence the Managers would present, none of it surprising, except for one detail.

Stanton.

He announced that the Secretary of War would be called—involuntarily, said Stevens—to testify to the President’s constant interference with the conducting of military campaigns, the demoralizing effect of his repeated removals of general officers for following the will of Congress, and his insistence on ignoring the pleas of his own martial governors across the South, who warned of the harms suffered by the freedmen, and the growing political power of the former slaveholders.

“How is that possible?” Jonathan whispered.

Sickles told him to hush.

“I thought there was an arrangement,” the young man persisted. “Stanton keeps his office but will not testify.”

“Never act surprised in a courtroom,” said Sickles, his eyes not leaving Stevens’s smug face. “As far as anybody knows, everything that happens is exactly what you expected to happen.”

The gavel came down. “Silence in the chamber,” hissed Chase, his eyes on Sickles, whom the entire Congress seemed unanimously, if mysteriously, to despise.

Stevens resumed. Stanton, he said, would testify with enormous reluctance and under the compulsion of subpoena. He would tell of the President’s hostility to the Reconstruction Acts, and to the Congress itself; and how, on more than one occasion, he heard the President propose closing the Congress down, if necessary by force.

“None of that is true,” Jonathan murmured.

This time Sickles ignored him.

Stevens was describing Stanton now as a man of rare probity, admired by all sides, a true leader who would never allow mere politics …

Jonathan was hardly listening. Once again, Lincoln and his men had been outplayed. Matters were as simple as that. The Secretary of War had broken his solemn word that he would not testify. Perhaps the Managers were exaggerating. Nevertheless, if Stanton endorsed under oath half of what Thaddeus Stevens had just assured the chamber that he would, there was no way for the President’s lawyers to meet his proof.

VIII

Chase gaveled the session to a close. The defense would present its opening argument tomorrow. Standing in the grand foyer, Daniel Grafton watched the great of Washington come sweeping down the staircase, tittering madly. He suspected that they were whispering not of the trial they were witnessing but of what they would wear to tonight’s parties. He knew that men like Congressman Blaine thought him decadent, but he was nothing compared to the city’s true rich, for whom even the war had played out as a sideshow to their otherwise unbothered lives, occasionally forcing them to grab their heirlooms and flee to the battlements of the capital from their mansions in the surrounding countryside, but, for the most part, affecting neither their social season nor their wealth. It occurred to him that it was possible to be rich enough that it actually made no difference who sat in the White House or ruled the Congress. His clients were men like that, and did not even realize it. Their hoards of gold shielded them from everyday concerns, and yet they responded to every change in the price of iron ore as if the barbarians were massing outside the gate. He supposed that there must be people like that in every age, people wielding more power than mere governments but not truly understanding their own capabilities. That was why men like Grafton himself had to exist: to wield the power his clients possessed but did not comprehend.

That was also why men like Benjamin Butler had to exist: men who were, in their own minds, beacons of goodness and light, but whose ambitions were easily twisted in the direction of political mayhem. Grafton liked the men of grand reputation and perfect integrity best: men so beloved that their constituents happily overlooked the destruction they wreaked in the climb toward the top. And they were willing to serve, with perfectly self-interested integrity, the interests of those who stood in the background, twisting democracy to their advantage. Daniel Grafton was among the best of the manipulators.

Based on events so far, he had every reason to be proud of his work.

I

“
NOT A BAD
first day,” said Dan Sickles. “Not bad at all.”

“We had to sit there and let them say those terrible things—”

“I know, Miss Canner, I know.” He was back on the settee, fingers working hard on the thigh muscles, heedless of what others might think. Sitting motionless on the chair for the better part of five hours must have been a considerable chore. “But nothing they said was any worse than we expected.”