THE IMPEACHMENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Prologue
 
April 14 – 16, 1865

TURMOIL

The President was dying.
As the grim news spread through Washington City, angry crowds spilled into the cold, muddy night. Abraham Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s Theatre, on Tenth Street. The wounds were mortal, people were saying. There was no way he could survive. The war was over, the South utterly vanquished, yet somehow its withered hand had reached up into the nation’s capital and extracted this bitter revenge. The crowds became mobs, looking for somebody to hang. Some wanted to burn Ford’s to the ground. Others marched toward Old Capitol Prison, where many leaders of the late rebellion were still being held. Rumors passed from mouth to mouth: The Vice- President had been murdered in his rooms at Kirkwood House. The Secretary of State had been stabbed to death in his mansion on Lafayette Square. Confederate troops were advancing on the city. Or Union troops: nobody seemed to know for sure, and a coup d’état had been rumored for years. Outside Ford’s Theatre, a man in the blood-spattered uniform of an army major and a doctor carrying a candle fought their way into the street. A group bearing Lincoln’s unmoving body followed behind. Mrs. Lincoln, face like chalk, clutched her husband’s stiff hand. People leaned in, trying to see or touch. Men groaned. Women wept. A soldier banged on the door of a row house across the way. They carried the President inside and shut the door. People craned to peer in the windows. Minutes later, Secretary of War Stanton, the most feared man in Washington, arrived in an unguarded carriage and raced inside. Other officials followed. Furious soldiers took up positions on the sidewalk but seemed to have no clear orders. They battered members of the crowd for practice. Other men went in. The people who had been closest to the body passed on the story: the President’s head was a mass of blood.

Meanwhile, the hue and cry had been raised. That actor fellow. Wilkes Booth. He had shot the President and leaped to the stage, then escaped on horseback. Somehow the mob was armed now, looking for someone to whom they might do mayhem. Booth would be best, but any Southern sympathizer or paroled Confederate soldier would do, or, in the absence of so obvious a target, any man dressed in gray, or a Catholic, or a darkie. In the confusion, Stanton took command. He ordered the city sealed. Trains were stopped. Guards allowed no one across the bridges. Telegrams were sent to military commanders in Virginia and Maryland, warning them to watch for men on horses fleeing Washington. On the Potomac River, a steamer was prepared as a floating prison should any of the conspirators be apprehended, the better to protect them from the mob: good order required that they be hanged swiftly by soldiers rather than by citizens.

The Union had been struck a hard blow, and wanted revenge.

From Philadelphia to New York to Chicago, newspapers were out with special late editions, their entire front pages devoted to the shooting. Some headlines pronounced the President already dead. Editors who had been Lincoln’s sworn foes eulogized him as the nation’s savior; others, who had openly despised Mrs. Lincoln, assured the nation that they stood beside the First Lady in her impending widowhood. In the war-ravaged South, where few telegraph lines were intact, the news moved more slowly. Lincoln’s longtime bodyguard, Allan Pinkerton, was in New Orleans, and would not learn of the shooting for several days. In the cities of the North, vengeful citizens marched. Church doors were flung open so that people might pray for the President’s recovery. But the prayers, like the mobs, seemed fruitless. Everybody knew that it was too late. Little squares of black crepe began to appear in windows, signaling a nation already mourning.

That was Friday. By Saturday, however, the rumors began to change. Perhaps all was not lost. The doctors had cleaned the wound repeatedly and removed the clotting blood. And a miracle was occurring. The President’s indomitable will was asserting itself. He was breathing strongly on his own, his eyes were fl uttering open, and the damage to his brain appeared less severe than first thought. The telegraph flashed the news across the country: Lincoln lives! True, Vice-President Andrew Johnson was dead, and the Secretary of State so badly wounded that he might not see another day, but Abraham Lincoln, savior of the nation, seemed to be improving.

He had been shot on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday, he rose.

By the middle of the week, the President was sitting up, meeting with his staff, once again in charge of the affairs of the nation. Across the country, people cheered. Those who felt otherwise kept their disappointment to themselves, content to bide their time.
 
November 19, 1866
 
The night riders were gaining.

Bending low, the black man spurred his tiring horse down the tangled leaf- strewn lane. On either side, fields thick with brightleaf tobacco stretched into the chilly Virginia darkness. Just a few miles ahead loomed the lower slopes of the Shenandoah, with its welcoming forest. If he could only reach the tree belt, he would be safe. A few miles to the north, an entire brigade of Union troops garrisoned the town of Winchester, but with three hooded pursuers only a few hundred yards behind, his chances of reaching either sanctuary were small. He had a pistol in his saddlebag and a knife in his belt, and he knew that if he slowed to draw either, the night riders would have him.

That would be bad.

In a hidden pocket sewn beneath the lining of his right boot was the message. If he was caught and searched, the night riders might find it.

That would be worse.

He rode faster. The autumn drizzle turned to steam on the horse’s burning flanks. He heard a low crackle that might have been distant lightning or a nearby gunshot. He rounded a bend, jumped a fallen tree, nearly spilled on the other side. Very soon his mount would collapse.

Pounding hooves and shouting voices carried across the night air. The riders were close behind. He searched for a turnoff but found none. Had he possessed a sense of irony, he might have considered that not far to the south was Appomattox Court House, where, a year and a half earlier, Lee had surrendered the Army of Virginia, ending the Civil War but setting off the more secretive conflict in which he himself was now playing so carefully scripted a part. But there was no time for such musings. The moon had burst from the clouds, and lighted the path to escape.

Up ahead, the road split into two branches. He took the southmost fork, which led, if he remembered correctly, to a shattered plantation and an old church. His pursuers, he reasoned, would break into two groups to make sure that they did not lose him. He could make his stand in the church, or even the plantation house, if he just got there ahead of them. He was not a great shot, but from hiding he could certainly handle one or two men coming up the road toward—

The sudden hard burning in his leg, followed by the horse’s shriek, told him that bullets were being fired. He heard the fl at clap of the gun as the horse threw him. He hit the frozen earth hard. More shots followed. Just before he passed out, he realized that he had been chased into a trap, forgetting, in his desperation to escape the men behind him, to worry about what might be waiting out front.
 
HE OPENED HIS eyes, and was aware at once that the burning in his leg was worse. He groaned and tried to shift, only to realize that a boot was pressing into the wound. He was propped against a tree, hands bound behind him. Through the haze of pain, he was able to make out a small group of men, all of them hooded. The man with his foot on the wound was thickset, and wore a blue mask. Beside him was a taller and thinner man, head covered by a burlap sack with eyeholes cut into it.

“He’s awake,” said the man in blue.

“Course he is,” said the man in burlap, “seeing as how you’re pretty much breaking his leg.”

The heavy man stooped. He was sodden with sweat. “Whatcha doin out here, boy? There’s a curfew.”

The black man grimaced, and dropped his eyes. “Sorry, suh.”

“Say that again.”

“Sorry, suh.”

The man in the blue mask stood up and walked over to the others. The black man laid his head against the tree, glad to be free of the pain. His eyes were glazed, but his hearing was fine.

“I don’t like how he sounds,” said the man in blue, who seemed to be the leader. “He’s faking. He’s not one of ours. He’s one of them Northern niggers.”

“I’ve seen this boy,” said the man in brown burlap. “He’s a Dempsey boy.”

The leader’s face was invisible inside the blue hood, but, even so, his posture seemed to communicate disappointment. He leaned close to the prisoner. “Is that true, boy? Do you work for Mr. Dempsey?”

“Mrs. Dempsey, suh. Yassuh.”

“Mrs. Claire Dempsey up Warrenton way?”

“Suh, I don’t know a Missus Claire. I works for Missus Henrietta, at Heddon Hills.”

The release of tension was general. Heddon Hills was indeed the Dempsey family plantation: fallen on hard times, to be sure, since the Yankees came through, but still in Dempsey hands. The man in burlap put his hand on the leader’s shoulder. “Satisfied?”

“No.”

“He’s a Dempsey boy, I told you— ”

“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t,” said the leader. He shook himself free of the other’s grip. “I say he’s educated.”

All five hoods turned his way.

“He’s an educated nigger,” he continued, eyes fairly glowing through the slits. “He’ll ‘Yassuh’ and ‘Nossuh’ till Judgment Day, but behind that black face he’s laughing at us. He’s one of those educated niggers, he’s been to some nigger school somewhere, and now he thinks he’s better than we are.” With a movement of sublime laziness, he tucked the muzzle of his shotgun up against the black man’s chin. “Is that right, boy? You’ve been to some nigger school, haven’t you?”

“Nossuh,” said the prisoner, eyes wide in the smooth brown face.

“You’re a Dempsey boy.”

“Yassuh.”

“Search him.”

Immediately the black man felt his bound hands drawn farther behind him. The pain would have doubled him over but for the shotgun pressing into his neck. One of his captors was going through his pockets, and another through his saddlebags. He heard an exclamation and knew they had found his little supply of greenbacks. Another, and he knew they had found the weapons.

“There’s a letter,” somebody said, and handed it to the thin man who had tried to protect him. He tore open the envelope. “It’s from Mrs. Dempsey all right. It says this here is Royal, and he’s been loyal to her since he was a boy. He never ran off with the Yankees. It says he’s carrying a message down to a Mr. Toombs in Snickers Gap.” He gave the paper to the leader. “That’s Mrs. Dempsey’s signature. She does some of her banking with me.”
The leader sneered. “And now this boy knows who you are.”

Silence.

The gun barrel prodded the black man’s neck. “What’s the message?”

“Suh?”

“What message does Mrs. Dempsey have you sending to Mr. Toombs?”

“Suh, Mrs. Dempsey wants to invite her goddaughter to spend the holidays at Heddon Hills.”

“That’s the whole message?”

“Yassuh.”

“Enough,” said the man in burlap. “This ain’t who we’re looking for. Let him go, Bill.”

The leader turned his way. “And now he knows who I am, too.” He lowered the shotgun and, without warning, pulled the trigger. The black man cried out in agony. Wounded now in both thigh and foot, he collapsed against the tree.

Bill crouched beside the prisoner. “Do you think we’re stupid, boy? You think we’re illiterate crackers? I was with Jubal Early for two years. I was a colonel. My friend Jedediah here—since we’re telling names—was a captain. He was with Whiting at Fort Fisher. Now, let me tell you something.” The gun caressed the wounded man’s thigh. “I know who you are. I know what you’re doing. You are a courier for the Yankee secret service.” The black man was shaking his head frantically. “You are a courier, and you are carrying a secret message. Tell us the truth, and tell us where the message is hidden, or I’ll blow your balls off and let you bleed to death, and meanwhile we’ll find the message anyway.” The man called Jedediah tugged at his arm. The others were already inching toward their mounts. “Come on, Bill. Let’s get out of here.”

“Get him up.”

“What?”

“Get him up. I want him on his horse.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re gonna have us a hanging.”

“But— ”

“He’s a spy, Jedediah. Spies get hanged.”

The man in burlap shook his head. “The war’s over.”

“Not for me.”
 
 THE BODY WAS found two days later by a Union patrol. The night riders had left him in a ditch, after stealing his horse, his weapons, and his money. The soldiers made nothing of it. The night riders were killing colored men all over the South, and there was not much to be done about it. There was no way of investigating, even if anybody had wanted to. Nobody talked to the Yankees.

The soldiers took the corpse up to Winchester and turned it over to the colored Benevolent Association, who would bury the remains somewhere. But before the soldiers surrendered the body, they took the boots, because supplies were still short, and if they didn’t fit you, you could always trade with somebody they did. And the boots were passed a good way down the line before somebody found the false lining, and the wad of paper hidden inside. He thought it was money, but it turned out to be just a list of names. The private told his sergeant, who said the dead man was probably in the black market. The names were his customers.

The sergeant told the private to deliver the paper to the office of the adjutant general, just in case military personnel were involved. The soldier meant to do just that in the morning, but that night he went drinking in town, got into a bar fight, and wound up with his head smashed in. He died the next morning.

The sergeant took his duties seriously. He asked the dead private’s tentmates to go through the man’s things and bring him the letter with the list of names. When they came back an hour later to say they couldn’t find it, the sergeant looked for himself.
The letter was gone.
 
Chapter 1

Clerk

i

THEY WERE HANGING white folks in Louisiana and shooting black folks in Richmond. Union troops had invaded Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and every brothel in the South. Confederate troops were holed up in the Smoky Mountains, waiting for the signal to attack. The casket of the First Lady, who had drowned last year while visiting relations in Illinois, had been exhumed, and found empty. Meanwhile, Abe Lincoln, facing an impeachment trial, was sneaking off to see a medium in New York, and Jefferson Davis, onetime leader of the rebellion and supposedly locked up in Fort Monroe, was actually in Philadelphia, sipping champagne with his rich friends. None of this was true, but all of it was in the newspapers.

It was late winter of 1867,...