The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (61 page)

I

ON THE TRIAL’S
second Friday sitting, the Managers called Mrs. Sally Orne to the stand. The President’s lawyers had not been able to find out what Mrs. Orne was expected to say. Mrs. Orne, married to the Philadelphia industrialist, had been one of the late Mrs. Lincoln’s closest friends and confidantes. Her name on the witness list had startled them all, and had shaken even Lincoln himself. But she had refused to meet his counsel to discuss her testimony, and the Managers, under the complex rules adopted by the Senate, had been required only to disclose the vaguest version of her testimony. “Re Count 4,” was the only note the prosecution had turned over; no amount of investigation by the President’s people had turned up any indication of what Mrs. Orne could possibly know about Lincoln’s supposed plan to overthrow the authority of the Congress. The Chanticleer letters were silent. And so it was that Sickles rose, before she had even been sworn, to ask the purpose for which the witness was being called.

Bingham was silkily polite. “May it please the Court, this witness possesses firsthand knowledge about the President’s plans concerning the Department of the Atlantic.”

Consternation in the chamber. Chase slipped off his glasses, squeezed the bridge of his nose.

Sickles said, “May it please the Court, Mrs. Orne’s knowledge cannot be firsthand unless she had it from the President’s mouth. Else it is hearsay, and we would object on that ground.”

“Your Honor, counsel is free to object to any particular question we might put to the witness. But we will not tell him in advance all that we expect Mrs. Orne to say.”

Chase nodded. “I agree.”

Sickles was not quite through. “Your Honor, we also wish to pursue another objection to Mrs. Orne’s testimony. We believe that her presence in this chamber will itself be highly prejudicial, inevitably bringing to mind the unfortunate events regarding the death of Mrs. Lincoln.”

“Mrs. Lincoln is not on trial,” said Bingham.

“We agree,” Sickles began. “And that is why—”

“If counsel will allow me to finish. We would much rather spare the nation, and Mr. Lincoln, any unnecessary pain. Unfortunately, it is the respondent himself who has created this situation, by refusing to appear and be sworn. In consequence, we are forced to reconstruct his words and actions through the testimony of others. No one was closer to Mrs. Lincoln than Mrs. Orne. She must be heard.”

“Objections overruled,” said Chase. To the clerk: “Swear the witness.”

II

Bingham trod cautiously. Mrs. Orne’s reluctance was obvious from the pious reserve of her face and the tension in her tiny body—and the fact that she, alone among all the witnesses, had brought her own lawyers, a whole squadron, seated at the back of the chamber in case needed. She conceded that she was the wife of the famous merchant, and a longtime friend and correspondent of the late First Lady.

“Would you describe yourself as her confidante?”

“If so, Mr. Bingham, the honor was entirely mine.”

“Were you still close to Mrs. Lincoln at the time of her death?”

“Sir, we were lifelong friends.”

“How often did you see her over the last two years of her life?”

“Every three or four months, Mr. Bingham.” A faint smile of reminiscence split the aged, well-powdered face, and she flashed dimples that thirty years ago must have been spectacular. “Sometimes I would visit her in Springfield, sometimes she would visit me in Philadelphia. We also traveled to Europe together.”

“And you corresponded regularly?”

“At least once a month. Occasionally more often.”

“Could you describe for us the First Lady’s mood during the last six months of her life?”

Sickles objected. Chase considered. “Overruled. The witness may answer, but must limit herself to her own impression based on observation.”

“She seemed unhappy,” said Mrs. Orne. She was looking down at her hands. “Very unhappy.”

“What was she unhappy about?”

This time Chase sustained the objection.

“When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Lincoln?”

“About a month before she died.”

“And was she unhappy then, too?”

“She was, Mr. Bingham. Very much so.”

Bingham asked for a moment, and returned to the table. He and Butler and Stevens engaged in brief and animated discussion. Jonathan, able to overhear snippets, had the impression that the others wanted Bingham to linger on Mrs. Lincoln’s death, whereas Bingham preferred to move on to the substance.

Bingham evidently prevailed. And Jonathan thought his judgment correct. By eliciting testimony that Mrs. Lincoln was unhappy, he reminded the chamber of the rumors that she had taken her own life; to delve further, however, would make it appear that the Managers were dancing on her corpse.

“Mrs. Orne, have you ever heard of the Department of the Atlantic?”

Silence in the chamber.

“Yes,” she finally said.

“Was the Department of the Atlantic at any time a subject of conversation between yourself and Mrs. Lincoln?”

Again Jonathan sensed the reluctance, the plea in the tired eyes that she not be forced to disclose her friend’s confidences.

“Not conversation,” said Mrs. Orne finally. “No.”

“Did Mrs. Lincoln ever communicate with you by any means on the subject of the Department of the Atlantic?”

A whispered response.

“Please speak up, Mrs. Orne,” said Chase.

She looked down at her hands. “She wrote me.”

“Are you saying that you received a letter from Mrs. Lincoln that mentioned the Department of the Atlantic?”

Sickles was on his feet. The contents of a letter had to be proved by the letter itself—

“I fear counsel is mistaken,” said Bingham. “The exceptions to that rule are as old as—”

Chase gaveled them both silent. He leaned toward the witness. “Mrs. Orne, do you have the letter in your possession?”

“No, sir.”

“Has it been lost?”

“No, sir.”

“Has it been destroyed?”

“No, sir.”

“Then where is the letter?”

“Sir, I returned the letter to the President.”

A murmur of surprise in the chamber, which Chase’s gavel swiftly quelled. Butler spoke up, although Mrs. Orne was Bingham’s witness. “Mr. Chief Justice, if the letter in question is in the possession of the individual against whom it is sought to be admitted, then the rule does not apply.”

“No such exception exists,” said Sickles. “The distinguished Manager is manufacturing new doctrines as needed.”

“The doctrine is at least as well established,” scoffed Butler, “as, say, the doctrine of temporary insanity.”

A slow sigh rippled through the chamber, like air being squeezed from a bellows. Temporary insanity was the doctrine used successfully by Stanton when he represented Sickles in his trial for murder. Nobody other than the jury had believed a word of it. Butler had managed, once more, to remind the Senators of what sort of man the President had chosen to represent him.

Chase turned to Sickles, who was bright red but holding his temper. “Counsel, is the letter in question in the possession of your client?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“If it were, and your client did not produce it upon demand, he would be in contempt. So would you.”

“I am quite certain that my client possesses no such letter.”

Chase turned to Butler. “Counsel?”

“May it please the Court, the witness has just testified that she returned the letter to Mr. Lincoln. The law presumes that it is still in his possession. If he does not produce it, she may testify to the contents.”

“He is inventing another principle,” groaned Sickles.

Chase nodded. “I am inclined to agree with respondent,” he said. “Unless the Managers are prepared to present additional evidence that the letter is in the President’s possession, the witness will be dismissed.”

Senator Hickman, among the most fiery of the Radicals, demanded that the chamber be polled. The Senate divided evenly on whether to admit the testimony, so Chase’s decision was upheld, and Mrs. Orne was excused.

The Managers conferred. Bingham rose. “Sir, on behalf of the People of the United States, the Managers rest.”

Chase announced that counsel for the respondent would begin presenting their case on Monday at noon, then adjourned the proceeding for the weekend.

As the lawyers packed their bags, Jonathan touched Sickles on the arm. He pointed out that the Managers had rested because Mrs. Orne had not been allowed to testify, and Mrs. Orne’s testimony had been excluded only because Sumner and the votes he controlled had been cast in favor of upholding Chase’s ruling.

“I wouldn’t weigh that too heavily,” Sickles said. “Sumner was very close to Mrs. Lincoln, and he is not close to many women. I suspect that the Managers put on Mrs. Orne because they had some convoluted notion that they could remind him that the man on trial drove his friend Mrs. Lincoln out of her mind. They miscalculated. Sumner preferred not to have his friend’s memory besmirched.” He saw Jonathan’s face. “No, no, it didn’t happen that way. Mrs. Lincoln wasn’t crazy. Or, if she was, it wasn’t Mr. Lincoln’s fault. She was what she was.”

They headed for the side door, and the conference suite beyond. “I notice that Miss Canner left early today,” said Dennard.

Jonathan looked up at the balcony, but it was already nearly empty. “I had not noticed.”

“She departed immediately after the Senate voted not to hear what Mrs. Orne had to say.” Dennard gave him a long look. “I wonder why.”

Jonathan knew an order when he heard one.

III

But when he arrived at the house on Tenth Street, Louisa told him that her sister was out for the evening. Standing behind the screen door, she
batted her eyelashes. “Aren’t you going to ask me who she’s out with, Mr. Hilliman?”

Sometimes we have no pride. “Very well. Who?”

“The other white gentleman. He brought her home, and she ran upstairs to get something and then ran right out again. Nanny was beside herself.”

“The other—do you mean Fielding? Fielding Bannerman?” He recovered his aplomb. “Did they happen to mention where they were going?”

Louisa shook her head. “I heard them talking about some hotel.”

“The National?”

She didn’t remember, she didn’t know. “He had a real fancy carriage,” she said. “A whole lot fancier than yours.”

Jonathan returned to Fourteenth and G feeling defeated and dejected. Last night he had tried to shape the words to let Abigail know how he felt about her, and although they were interrupted, she could hardly have mistaken his meaning. So her decision to go off this evening with Fielding had to be taken as her answer.

In the common room there was no sign of Abigail, but Dennard and Speed and Sickles were going over Mrs. Orne’s testimony, as Rellman took notes. They were trying to work out a strategy in case the Managers were able somehow to call her as a rebuttal witness following the defense case. Jonathan joined them, and Dennard asked whether he had tracked down Miss Canner.

“No, sir.”

“Peculiar, her running off like that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, she isn’t our problem just now. Mrs. Orne is.”

The discussion went on for another hour. Speed argued that nothing in the respondent’s case would justify allowing the testimony. Sickles, from his place on the settee, answered dryly that neither Chase nor the Senators seemed terribly worried about justification any longer. They continued in this vein. Jonathan, at Dennard’s direction, pulled several volumes from the wall, leafing through to find precedents. He had just gone back to the shelf for a third time when Abigail walked in, quite breathless. All eyes turned her way, seeming to wait.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” she said.

“There is no excuse for conduct of this kind,” Dennard began. “If
you hope to be a lawyer, or even to read law with reasonable success, you will have to learn to work in a hierarchy. One cannot go gallivanting about on a whim. Especially not at this point in a trial—”

For the first time, Abigail spoke over him. “I have been with Mrs. Orne,” she said. “And I can assure you that under no circumstances will she testify against the President.”

A general exhalation.

“Are you certain?” said Dennard.

“I am.” She tilted her head toward McShane’s vacant office. Jonathan she ignored entirely. “Mr. Sickles, may I see you alone for a moment?”

IV

“I think we should talk about what Mrs. Orne’s testimony would have been,” said Abigail when they were alone.

Dan Sickles’s look was half smile, half grimace. There was nowhere to stretch out in McShane’s office, so he perched on the narrow window seat, his foot on the floor, the bad leg up on the cushion, where he could massage it. As hard as he was rubbing, the pain tonight was obviously intense.

“So tell me,” he said. “You’re the one who talked to her. I imagine young Bannerman got you in. Old Philadelphia families, of course they’d have known each other for years. Sorry we didn’t think of it before. Hilliman should have come up with this one.”

Abigail refused to be distracted. “I don’t know what she was going to say, Mr. Sickles. She never told me directly. She spent most of the time talking about Mrs. Lincoln. But she dropped enough hints for me to work it out.” She could not remain still and so was striding back and forth on the narrow strip of available carpeting. “Mrs. Orne was one of Mrs. Lincoln’s best friends. Mrs. Lincoln confided to her things she never shared with anyone else. In this case, by correspondence.”

“So?”

“So, I am put in mind of that little speech you gave me the other day, all about how the envelope you took from Mr. McShane’s desk could not possibly be relevant evidence. If it were, you said, a defendant inclined to hide it could just as well burn it. Since Mr. Lincoln hadn’t burned it, it must not be relevant. Do you recall that conversation, Mr. Sickles?”

Sickles had closed his eyes. “Rings a faint bell.”

“But what if he couldn’t bring himself to burn it? What if the letter were from his own wife?” Hearing no response, she pressed on. “A letter Mrs. Lincoln wrote not to the President but to her friend Mrs. Orne. A letter describing certain plans that the President might be considering. Plans, say, to use the military to close down Congress.”