The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (50 page)

Down below, Butler had finished. Dennard, speaking even more ponderously than usual, reminded the body that the credibility of Mr. Yardley had been called severely into question. He suggested to the Senators that they rely on no part of his testimony. He added that the chamber was well rid of so unreliable a witness, and a man who had admitted to accepting a bribe.

Again Abigail cringed.

Kate Sprague, as usual, missed nothing. “If you are still feeling guilty,” she said gently, “perhaps you are on the wrong side.”

II

The Managers had moved back to the second count of the impeachment, and were trying to prove by documents alone, without any accompanying testimony, that the President had closed several opposition newspapers
during the war, and in a few cases tossed the editors into prison. Because the charge was true, and everyone in the room knew it was true, the objections were mainly for show.

As the ladies fenced above, so did the lawyers down below.

“There is no more reason,” said Benjamin Butler, “to challenge these documents than there was to challenge the documents admitted last week.” He toyed with his golden locks. “The second count of the bill of impeachment alleges that the said Abraham Lincoln has violated the liberties of the people of the United States. To wit, he has thrown political opponents in prison and shut down their newspapers.” A tiny smile, as if in acknowledgment of his own complicity: for Ben Butler, while running New Orleans, had also done a thing or two. “He has declared martial law even in cities of the North, and ordered the seizure of every telegram sent in the United States.” Butler turned toward the ranked members. “Without exception.”

Dennard rose to speak. Chase shook his head. “You will have your turn. Sit.”

“There were no exceptions,” Butler repeated. “Consider. Mr. Lincoln ordered the seizure of copies of every telegram sent in the United States. He said he was searching for spies, but he made no exceptions, say, for the correspondence of a member of this august body. Or the Chief Justice. Or anyone sitting today in the gallery.” A nod toward the defense table. “Every person sitting in this room, if he had sent a telegram within the six months prior to the President’s order, would have had his telegram seized.”

Dennard objected. “I believe that copies of telegrams were seized. No messages were delayed in delivery.”

A chuckle from the gallery. Chase was not amused. “Sit down, Mr. Dennard. I have told you to wait your turn.”

A few minutes later, Butler was done. The Chief Justice decreed a fifteen-minute recess.

“I hope they admit all the documents,” said Meg as they waited.

“Why?” asked Abigail.

“Because it will be fascinating to see the proof of Mr. Lincoln’s misdeeds laid out for the country.”

“Surely that is the question before this House,” Abigail said. She had mastered, these past days, the playful conversational style of the finer Washington ladies. “Whether Mr. Lincoln’s many good deeds are indeed also misdeeds.”

“Oh, they are misdeeds,” said Margaret, working hard to keep up. “They may have been meant as
good
deeds, but they missed their targets, and therefore are
mis
deeds.”

“If they are misdeeds, it is because they
struck
their targets,” said Kate, the clever smile stretching her small, prim mouth.

“Mainly rebel soldiers,” said Abigail.

III

Dennard’s turn arrived. He promised to be brief. The country was at war, he said. There were spies everywhere, the spies were sending messages by telegraph. If there was another way to get the messages without seizing the telegrams, the President and his advisers had not been able to come up with it in the heat of the moment. Nor had one been suggested since.

“And besides,” he said, “telegraph messages aren’t private.”

The audience’s attention tautened.

“Of course they are,” said Butler, in his surprise speaking quite out of turn.

“A message sent by telegraph is read by the man who transcribes it at the telegraph office, the man who sends the code, the man who receives the code at the other end, and the man who writes out the words. The man who delivers the message might read it, too. So might the man to whom we give the assignment of carrying our message to the telegraph office in the first place.” An elaborate shrug, as if to say that there were too many more potential readers to bother mentioning. “So the President’s order did not violate anybody’s privacy. Besides, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution. A right to property, surely. But the message forms—the actual papers seized—well, if they constitute the property of anybody at all, I suppose they would be the property of the telegraph company. Let the Western Union Company, if it chooses, come to the Capitol to seek damages. Let the company go into court. The company will lose. In wartime, the government has a call upon the property of the people if that property is necessary to the war effort. The President and his advisers judged that seizing the telegraph forms was necessary. I should think that would be the end of the debate.” Dennard put his hands on his hips, no small matter for a man of his girth. “Now, you might disagree with the President’s judgment of necessity. You might have made a different decision, sitting in his office.
But unless you are able to show the clear violation of a criminal statute, the proper forum for the expression of a disagreement over policy is the ballot box, not the court of impeachment.”

Dennard’s argument left a vast silence in the chamber. Once more he had aimed his delicate thrust at the heart of the prosecution’s case. Maybe the President did everything alleged, he was saying. Maybe you think everything he has done is outrageously wrong. But so what? he was asking. These are at best political disagreements. This is why there are elections. True, the proposition would make no impact on the most adamant members of the anti-Lincoln faction; nor on those who, like Sumner, believed to a moral certainty in the principle of parliamentary supremacy. And the newspapers would miss the nuances entirely, and thus continue performing to perfection their task of misinforming the public. But a few wavering moderates might be swayed by the suggestion that there was nothing to this case but a political disagreement dressed in the language of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Or they might not.

Chase finally said, “It is nearly five o’clock. Unless there is objection, we shall adjourn for the day.”

Customarily, a member of the Senate made the motion to end the day’s proceedings. But the Chief Justice had more and more made the trial his own. Today nobody seemed to mind.

IV

Jonathan waited with Margaret in the carriage line. “It is a pity that you must return to the office,” she said. “So many meetings.”

“I have no—”

“No choice. I know. The pressure of work. You are much like Father.” Her grip tightened on his arm. “No doubt that explains my affection.”

“The trial will be over soon,” he said loyally. “Then we will have more time for each other.”

“A lifetime, my love.” But Meg’s words sounded as desperately stilted as his. Her rig drew up, and she pressed her head against his shoulder, then presented her cool cheek to be kissed. He handed her up into the carriage. About to signal the negro driver to depart, she had another thought, and leaned down, beckoning Jonathan close. “Father has to go up to Philadelphia for a few days. He leaves tomorrow.” A pert nod, as if in agreement with herself. “He asked me to join him, but I told him
I would like to stay and watch the trial. Father says he is proud of you for trying, but Mr. Lincoln is bound to be removed in the end, and the country will never be the same.”

Smarting from this casual statement of his own deepest fears, Jonathan felt honor-bound to protest. “I hardly think that is the likely conclusion,” he said. “The prosecution has yet to adduce the slightest true evidence of—”

Margaret waved this away. “With Father away, it’s just me and the servants and of course Aunt Clara.” The green eyes held his. Something was shining there: decision, and perhaps invitation. Certainly the glow of competition. “The servants are very discreet, and Aunt Clara, after an evening glass of her favorite, is likely to sleep early.” A suitable pause. “And soundly.”

“I … I see,” said Jonathan, warmth and confusion suffusing him once more. This was a very different Margaret from the one he had courted; her time in Washington City had changed her. Or perhaps it was he who had changed, and what he sensed in Meg was only a reflection. He could, of course, neither accept nor decline the implied invitation; indeed, as a matter of etiquette, although he could be as flirtatious as he liked, he dared not acknowledge the invitation at all. And so he said, “I trust that you will sleep soundly as well.”

“I hope I shall be able.” Meg had not released his hand. “That old house can be so drafty and creaky. Nothing like our house in Philadelphia. It is scary sometimes, down in that first-floor bedroom all alone.”

V

Back at the office, Sickles once more met Abigail and Jonathan to give them orders.

“You will not be at trial tomorrow,” he said. “Speed’s clerk will sit at the table.”

“Why?” asked Jonathan, his voice stricken. Plainly, he feared he had committed some error, and was being replaced by Rellman as punishment.

But Abigail had by now spent enough time with Sickles to understand the subtlety with which his mind worked. “Very well,” she said. “Where will we be?”

“In Richmond.”

She could not help herself. “Richmond,
Virginia
?” Because, to the
colored race, everything across the Potomac River and southward remained enemy territory, where one did not, willingly, go. And Nanny’s grotesquely embroidered tales of her own terrifying trek through Sheol scarcely made matters better.

Sickles yawned. He was sprawled, as usual, on the settee beside the coal stove. His eyes were in their accustomed position: all but completely shut. When he spoke, he seemed to have missed her point, perhaps intentionally. “Don’t worry. You two won’t miss much. We’ll have a couple of aggrieved newspaper editors to cross-examine tomorrow, and the next day they’ll find some widow who lost her house when Seward locked up her husband for sedition. Doesn’t mean a thing legally, but it’ll play to the masses of men, who don’t exactly want to be reminded of what Lincoln had to do to win the war, mainly because they all went along with it.” Another yawn. “Remind them that what he did, he had to do, or Mr. Jefferson Davis would now be in the White House, arguing with
his
Congress.”

Abigail spoke gently. “About Richmond.”

“Mmmm? Oh, right. Right. Remember your idea about the Chanticleer letters?”

“Yes,” said Abigail, quite surprised.

“What idea?” asked Jonathan.

But Sickles preferred to take the long route around. “The package from Chanticleer arrived two weeks before the trial. With the mail at the South being what it is, he must have sent it at least a week or two before that. And God alone knows how long it took him to gather the information, including all the way from Atlanta. He might have been running around for months. Now do you see?”

“Not quite,” Jonathan admitted.

Sickles shifted his gaze. “Miss Canner?”

She saw; and was furious at herself for not having seen sooner. “We did not know that Mr. Yardley was on the witness list until a few days before trial. But this Chanticleer knew a month or two earlier.” Her excitement grew. “Chanticleer has connections to the Radicals, connections strong enough that he knows their trial strategy.” A frown. “But why Richmond?”

“This is the interesting part.” Sickles addressed himself to Jonathan. “Yesterday afternoon, Miss Canner had an excellent idea. She said she thought Chanticleer might have been a Union spy, because the code
names of Union spies were mostly bird names, and ‘chanticleer’ is just another word for rooster.”

Abigail could not restrain herself. “You mean I was right?”

“Yes, Miss Canner. You were right. Chanticleer was a Union spy.” Sickles grinned. “Now, Stanton doesn’t know about the Chanticleer letters, and I mean to keep it that way. But I have a source at the War Department. A source who’s loyal to the President, not to Stanton. My source has access to the files, and, well, we’re ahead of the Radicals for once. That is why the two of you are going to take the cars to Richmond tomorrow morning. By now, Chanticleer must know that McShane is dead. We need to find out what else he knows, and what else he is willing to tell.”

“Are you saying you know who he is?” said Abigail.

“I do. The Reverend Dr. Hollis Chastain. Pastor of a big Presbyterian church down there. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding him.”

“Why us?” asked Abigail.

“Because I trust you.”

“There must be others you trust,” she said, a bit desperate now.

“Not at the moment. Too many folks we thought were on our side have gone over to Mr. Wade.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Sickles, but I must confess that the idea of going down to southern Virginia—”

The roguish grin. “Don’t worry, Miss Canner. We won the war.” He sat up, eyelids at half-mast. “Mr. Dennard and I sort of came up with this ourselves. Mr. Lincoln is busy. We have not bothered him with any of this. Neither should you.”

They could hardly mistake his meaning: If anything went wrong, the President would deny knowledge of what they were up to. The price would be on their heads, not Lincoln’s.

VI

Nanny Pork was against the trip. Nanny was against everything these days. She sat Abigail down in the kitchen and told her stories, some of which Abigail had heard before, some of which she hadn’t, and some of which she was certain Nanny was making up on the spot: stories of slavery, and of how black folk were treated at the South. And Virginia,
said Nanny Pork, was the worst. Abigail objected that she had always heard that the slaves were treated better in Virginia than elsewhere, but Nanny was making a different point. All over the South, said Nanny, there was slaves to pick the cotton and slaves to do the laundry and slaves to raise the chilluns. The slaves did the work; the white folks counted the money. In Virginia, said Nanny, it was different. In Virginia, people made they’s slaves have chilluns, and more chilluns, but not to do any work. To sell them. The rest of the South, said Nanny, bought slaves and made them work. In Virginia, they raised slaves like cattle, and sold them to the rest of the South.