Read The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln for Free Online

the horse resting while the negro driver stroked its flanks and glared at Jonathan with a fury that the young man could not fathom.
    Washington City these days.
    Upstairs at last, Jonathan stepped into the office, drawing a startled gasp from Abigail Canner, who sat at the long table, a heavy book open before her, flickery lamplight playing across the pages.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked, very surprised.
    “Reading Blackstone, volume one,” she said, calmly. She put down the pencil with which she had been making notes. “I am on page thirty-four.”
    IV
    “Thank you for waiting,” said Abigail to her brother, Michael, as the wagon moved slowly through the snow. “I had extra work. There was no way to let you know.”
    Michael considered this pitiful excuse as he drew the horse around left, turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “So, what do you think? Are they going to impeach Old Abe or not?”
    “They will impeach him next week.”
    “Who’ll be the President then?”
    Abigail shut her eyes, never sure when her brother was baiting her. She spoke as tonelessly as possible, because Michael, when offended, was unpredictable. “To impeach him only means to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors. There is still a trial in the Senate to decide whether to remove him from office.”
    “So who’ll be President? The Vice-President is dead.”
    “If Mr. Lincoln is convicted, his successor will be Senator Wade from Ohio. He is what they call the president pro tempore of the Senate, and under the statutes—”
    “President pro tempore?”
    “He is in charge of the Senate.”
    A cruel laugh. “White folks.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    They rolled past trees and houses and the occasional hotel or bar. Here and there a federal building stood like a lone sentry.
    “Let me understand this,” said Michael. “This Wade gets to vote on whether to kick Old Abe out of the White House, and then he also gets to move in and take his place? Who dreamed that up?”
    “The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution,” she said sleepily.
    “The
white
gentlemen.”
    An ornate carriage passed, traveling much too fast the other way, spattering them both with the freezing Washington mud. The horse shied, but Michael eased it back on course. The trees thickened as they approached the canal. Dozing, Abigail let her hand drift to the seat cushion. She encountered a lump. Delving, she touched a metal cylinder. It felt like—
    “Michael, why is there a pistol in the wagon?”
    “The city is dangerous at night. Especially for our people.”
    She digested this. “If the police should stop you—”
    “Then I’ll protect myself.”

CHAPTER 3

Vote
    I
    “ SO I HEAR they’ll be impeaching your man in the morning,” said Fielding Bannerman, swirling his brandy sourly as he lounged before the grate. “Pity, I suppose.” He brightened. “I say. Is that why there are so many soldiers about? On the way back from the club I was all but run over by a troop of cavalry.”
    Jonathan was toying with the cigar that he would never have touched except that as a man he was expected to. The fire, unreasonably hot, reminded him of the spectacular blazes of his Rhode Island youth, when his dying father complained constantly of cold, and his mother discharged on the spot any servant who let the flames die. It was the late evening of Monday, February 18; or, as Jonathan had come to measure the days, two weeks since the arrival of Abigail Canner at Dennard & McShane.
    “Even if the impeachment succeeds,” he said woodenly, “the trial is yet ahead of us.”
    “Where your man is bound to lose.”
    “I would not say that.”
    “Then why are there so many soldiers about? Somebody was saying at the club that your man would arrest the Speaker of the House rather than allow himself to be impeached.” He shut his eyes. “I say. That would be rather thrilling, wouldn’t it?” Fielding chuckled self-importantly. He was grinning and, as usual,