The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (51 page)

“And Richmond was the worst. Richmond was where they sold us south. You didn’t even get to say goodbye to your family. They took you down to the market in a cart. The market was right next to the train station. Once you was sold, they put you right on the train and took you to your new owner. The whole South was Hell, but Richmond was the capital of Hell.”

Abigail believed every word. Yet she remained undeterred. After her initial reluctance, she had made up her mind. She had not found her sister only to lose her again. Judith had told her about Rebecca Deveaux, and then had promptly disappeared. Yes, it was possible that Judith had run away for her own protection. But the events of the past month cast a dire shadow. Whatever the truth of her sister’s situation, Abigail had to know.

And she would walk into Hell itself to learn the truth.

I

RICHMOND WAS RUBBLE
.

Two years after the end of the war, the city was a long way from repairing the damage from Union shelling, and the even greater damage from the fires that had consumed half the city on the day the Confederate government loaded its treasury onto a train and fled before Grant’s advancing army. Although residents blamed the North for the disaster, the truth was that Jefferson Davis, before abandoning his capital, had ordered the stores of food and tobacco and ammunition put to the torch, and the blaze had quickly roared out of control.

Jonathan took lodging for the night at the Lexington House. Abigail found a colored matron near the river who let rooms. Nor was this distinction their only reminder of the state of things. They had made the ride down in the third-class compartment, changing trains in Warrenton, all the while the objects of part-conjecturing, part-hostile scrutiny from fellow passengers. Actually, Jonathan had assumed that they would travel second class—the first-class car was full—but the clerk at the Baltimore and Potomac depot in Washington City had refused to sell Abigail a second-class ticket. It would be different, he said, if she were taking the cars for Philadelphia and parts north, although maybe not—he was unprepared to say for sure. Jonathan had tried to argue, on the ground that the railroads were common carriers, legally bound to sell space to all who were willing to pay. The clerk had shrugged. Railroad policy, he said. Jonathan was prepared to be angry, and a Hilliman
in high dudgeon could be very angry indeed, but Abigail hissed that he must pick his battles, and must not embarrass Mr. Lincoln.

“He is the President,” Abigail had reminded him as they dodged the beggars on the way to the platform. “And our client.”

They sat side by side, Abigail in the window. The car was half empty. The other passengers were poor whites and a scattering of quiet negroes, who kept their eyes down. As Abigail watched the passing landscape, Jonathan told her how several Southern states were considering laws that would require separation of the races on the trains and other conveyances.

“And what will Mr. Lincoln do in that event?” she asked.

“He supports the Civil Rights Acts, which would hold such discrimination to be a violation of federal law.”

“You say that he supports the Acts.” They stopped somewhere, and the car began to fill. “Would he enforce them?”

Jonathan was uneasy. “You are beginning to sound like the Radicals.”

The rest of the trip passed mostly in silence. Her eyes closed, and Jonathan wondered whether she was feigning, to avoid further argument. He wondered, too, how that peculiar head would feel on his shoulder. But Abigail, even in sleep, faced the window, the entirety of her self locked against his affection. Jonathan opened his newspaper and read for a bit. A report said Lincoln was going to call for repeal of the Morrill Tariff, but named no sources. Maybe. Maybe not. Jonathan turned the page, conscious of the stares all around. Maybe the other passengers thought him a carpetbagger, heading south to make his fortune. What, then, must they think of Abigail? His partner in corruption? His concubine? His wife? With speculations, not all of them proper, sloshing about his mind, Jonathan, too, very suddenly, escaped into sleep.

As for Abigail, she was wide awake. She regretted having spoken harshly. Alas, she could not control her growing tension as they progressed southward. Perhaps she was simply experiencing the understandable revulsion of her people at their treatment in the land of Dixie. But it was also possible that with every mile traveled toward Richmond, where her Aaron had been captured, she found herself closer to a simple reality: he was never coming home.

II

The coachman they hailed was black, and liveried, and polite in a silky way suggesting a shared experience of life. Jonathan supposed it was because Abigail was with him, although it was always possible that this projection of intimacy was simply one of the driver’s gifts, for it would likely lead to frequent hires, and excellent gratuities. Although he was very skinny and very dark, he asked them to call him Big Red, and promised to wait on them exclusively, and take them anywhere they might choose to go, at any time of day or night, for what he called the “duritation” of their stay. As they rode in from the depot, he pointed to the few public buildings that had survived the devastation: the post office, the patent office, a handful of others. There were great piles of masonry everywhere, and sullen, defeated people who watched, empty-eyed, as mounted Union patrols passed by.

“In case we gets out of hand again,” Big Red explained helpfully.

We:
meaning,
the Confederacy
.

Big Red dropped Abigail first, then Jonathan, promising to be back in the morning to collect them, after they’d had the chance to “fresher” themselves. Jonathan gave him a couple of coins to be sure.

Inside the Lexington House, Jonathan wrote out a wire to inform Sickles that they had arrived, then went into the dining room, where nothing was left but overdone lamb. He slept poorly, haunted by memories of the terrible battles his regiment had fought on the outskirts of this city. In the morning, at the appointed time, Jonathan stepped outside the hotel, and, sure enough, there was Big Red. They drove over to the colored part of town to get Abigail, then headed for the hills on the outskirts of the city.

“Do you know Dr. Chastain?” asked Abigail.

“Everybody knows Dr. Chastain.”

“What can you tell us about him?”

“Everybody likes Dr. Chastain.”

Abigail frowned. “He was a supporter of slavery.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

The coachman thought this over. “Ma’am, all the white folks was supporters of slavery. Am I spose to hate all the white folks?”

Abigail nibbled at her lip. She had no answer, and so she changed the subject. “It is just that Dr. Chastain was rather … ardent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Big Red.

After that, Abigail fell silent. She marveled that so fanatical a defender of slavery could have been a Union spy, but she had learned over these past weeks that few people were precisely as they appeared.

The carriage rolled through the streets of the shattered city. Twice they were stopped by soldiers, and twice the pass Sickles had obtained, signed by General Grant’s adjutant, got them through without trouble. Abigail wondered what it would be like to live under occupation this way, no matter how great your crimes, and whether there might not be wisdom in Lincoln’s rush to lift the Northern boot from the Southern neck. Memories lingered.

The carriage slowed, then stopped.

“Don’t antagonize him, Abigail,” Jonathan whispered. “Please. Don’t argue with him.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you do not suffer fools.” He said it warmly. “We need his trust. We need to charm him.”

“I can be charming,” she huffed.

They alighted. The clapboard house was modest but somehow defiant: freshly painted, gleaming bright white in the early-spring sun. The flowers were tended, and the sense one had, mounting the steps, was of a prosperity that had miraculously survived the forces that had led to the dilapidated circumstances of the homes on either side.

The man who opened the door was tall—freakishly so, with a full head or more to brandish over Jonathan—and yet so thin that one felt from him a sense less of strength than of fragility. His expensive black suit hung loosely. Wispy white hair decorated his temples, but the bald pate shone. His eyes were small and disagreeable behind thick lenses, and his hand was clutching something just out of sight beyond the edge of the door frame: presumably a pistol.

“I have no need of clothing or food from your missionary society,” he said, without preamble. His voice was thick and rolling, a preacher’s voice. The accent suggested a provenance deeper in the South. “I have no need of an assistance from any Yankees. You have done enough damage to my country. Please leave.”

All the while, his eyes were on the white man on the porch, as if he
could not bear to look at a black woman. But all the same it was Abigail who spoke, before Jonathan could quite come up with an answer.

“We are not here, sir, to add to your burdens or your grief. We are not here to insult or offend your sense of honor. We are here only to ask you about this.” She slipped a hand into her bag and pulled out the Chanticleer letter.

Chastain stared at her defiantly, but she continued to hold out the pages, and slowly, as if against his will, his gaze traveled to her hand. His mouth moved, but no words emerged.

“Arthur McShane is dead,” she said. “We have come from Washington to find out what else you hoped to provide him, so that we can do whatever it is you wanted him to do.”

III

It was unlikely that the Reverend Dr. Hollis Chastain had ever entertained a woman of color in the parlor, but he was evidently willing to try. A black woman who reminded Abigail in looks and manner but not age of Nanny Pork served them lemonade, despite the season, her narrow eyes flashing with resentment and disapproval every time they lit upon Abigail.

“So you worked for Mr. McShane,” said Chastain, addressing himself so far entirely to Jonathan. “Tell me about his last days.”

“He was preparing for the impeachment trial. He was busy.”

“I should think so.” Chastain sipped his lemonade. He sat, very still, in an ancient rocking chair. The furniture was comfortable without quite being plush. Ornate shelves held books. Magazines were stacked on the floor. “Defending that man.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jonathan, following his own advice never to disagree with their host, whose secrets they needed, and possessed no means to compel.

“A matter of professional obligation, I would think,” the minister continued. “Or did he perhaps
agree
with that man?” Unable to say Lincoln’s name.

“About what, sir?”

“Perhaps about that man’s use of armed force to conquer independent states simply trying to depart in peace the compact they had voluntarily entered. Perhaps about the hundreds of thousands of deaths and
the hundreds of millions of dollars of destruction caused by that man’s policy.” Chastain never raised his voice, but the eyes grew fierce. “And then there is the matter of that man’s deciding for us, a free and independent nation, the particular matter of our social relations.”

Abigail could no longer restrain herself. “You are referring to the freeing of my people from bondage.”

Chastain turned her way at last, his gaze surprisingly gentle, even meek. “It pains me to hear you refer to the social relations formerly enjoyed by your people and mine as bondage. Zillah, whom you have met”—inclining his head toward the woman who had served them lemonade, and still lurked, disapproving, near the fireplace—“has always been a much-beloved member of this household. Much beloved,” he repeated, and, for the briefest of instants, dropped his eyes. But when he spoke again his voice was forceful and clear. “There is a cruelty, surely, in tearing families forcibly apart, which is why the better men of the South always opposed the separation, through commerce, of negro women from their children, and fought against the restoration of the African slave trade. Here on these shores, the relations between blacks and whites were warm and friendly, at times even loving; and so they would have remained for a very long while, had not that man intervened.” He pursed his lips, as if the next words carried a sour taste. “Naturally, in time, the social and economic system of the South would have become unsustainable. This has been true of every system ever developed by man. But, as I have argued in the
Southern Presbyterian Review
, it is one thing to let the forces of time and fate move the world, through the mysterious Providence of God. It is a different matter altogether to use force of arms in an effort to reorder the world according to the ideas of mortal and fallible men. Surely you see this point.”

“I hardly think—”

For all the kindliness in his voice, Chastain did not take warmly to interruptions, least of all from a colored woman sipping lemonade in his parlor. “Perhaps, in the fullness of time, the dark race will be ready to take its place among the great peoples of the earth. I can imagine such an event. I do not believe that you are cursed. I do not believe that you are without the spark of God. I believe that you need, for a while longer, the guidance of those to whom the Lord has entrusted knowledge and wisdom, industry and pure manners. Miss Canner, it is obvious that you are an educated woman. Surely you do not imagine that those of your race who remain in the state of brutishness and immorality that we see
so widespread at the South are prepared for a life without guidance, or, indeed, a life in which they are considered fit to rule their betters.” Not waiting for a response, he turned back to Jonathan. “Consider the situation at the North. You are locked in a battle between two rising forces, labor and capital. Each one gains power from year to year. Soon they will be so powerful that they will determine the entire economy, and the entire social structure, at the North. Why would we not resist the impression of this precarious and ultimately violent system upon ourselves?” His voice rose. “You did not like our system. We did not like yours. But that man decided to inflame the North with the message that our system was the more evil of the two, in order that he might rouse a sufficient fervor to make war upon our system, for the benefit of yours.” Chastain shut his eyes briefly. “Then, when the lunatic Booth shot him, Southern men of the cloth were ordered by our occupiers—ordered!—to preach Sunday sermons eulogizing that man and praying for his recovery. I told my flock that the shooting was wrong, but it would be a hypocrisy to turn that man into a hero on account of it. He is no hero. He is a conqueror and an oppressor.”