A Friend of Mr. Lincoln (37 page)

He laughed and took a sip of beer. They stood there talking pleasantly enough for another ten minutes, Cage doing his best to steer the conversation away from politics, since Shields was combustible on that subject. They reminisced instead about the Black Hawk War, in which Shields had also fought, and on their shipboard service—Cage as a mere deckhand on the Illinois River, Shields as a merchant seaman who had sailed all over the world and survived a fall from the topmast. An agreeable conversation between two acquaintances on a mild summer night, one of them rather pitiably lovelorn and distractedly scanning the grounds for the whereabouts of Julia Jayne. It would have been very odd even to imagine that in a few months these two men would find themselves on the opposite sides of a dueling ground, but where honor was involved—or where it could be forced into being involved—very odd things tended to happen in Illinois with great regularity.

H
E'S DONE IT AGAIN.
That was Cage's immediate reaction as he sat in Cornelius's coffeehouse reading the incendiary letter in the
Sangamo Journal
that everyone in Springfield was talking about. The letter was purportedly written by a caustic-tongued, uneducated farm widow named Rebecca. It was the second such letter from Rebecca. The first had appeared a few weeks earlier. It was the work of another unsigned humorist and nobody had suspected Abraham Lincoln of writing it. But it must have inspired Lincoln, because this second letter was transparently his work. He had grown up among such people and the dialect—full of morsels like “kivered over” and “kungeerin” and “mought”—was precise. And funny. And cruel.

The letter took aim at James Shields's order that the state no longer take paper currency in payment of taxes. Everybody had known this was coming—Shields himself had admitted as much to Cage on that Fourth of July night two months ago. Lincoln, had he been the state auditor instead of Shields, would have had to do the same thing. But it gave the Whigs an excuse to stir up a political fuss, which Lincoln had cleverly stirred up even more in the guise of Rebecca and her disgust for the “High Comb'd Cocks” like James Shields who were now demanding that common folks somehow scare up hard silver.

The letter hewed close to acceptable political satire until it cut mercilessly deep, portraying Shields himself not just as the perpetrator of the currency directive but as a conceited romantic blowhard swanning among the maidens and widows of the Lost Township where Rebecca claimed she lived: “Dear girls, it is
distressing,
but I cannot marry you all. Too well I know how much you suffer; but do,
do
remember, it is not my fault that I am
so
handsome and
so
interesting.”

It would be hard to underestimate the offense Shields would take at such a personal attack, but Cage decided it wasn't his problem. If Lincoln wanted his opinion about whether he should be continuing his self-destructive habit of character assassination through pseudonymous letters, he would be happy to offer it. But he wasn't going to track him down and lecture him. Besides, maybe it was an indication that Lincoln was recovering his confidence and his political fire, which was the only thing that made him happy.

The backfire was even worse than Cage would have predicted. A few weeks after the letter in the
Journal
appeared, Ned Baker summoned a contingent of Lincoln's friends for an emergency breakfast meeting at the American House.

“Shields is going to kill him,” Ned told them. “He's really going to do it.”

Shields had just returned from Quincy on state business, he said, and was storming all over town looking for Lincoln. Fortunately, Lincoln himself was out of town, up at Tremont for the start of the judicial circuit.

“What do you mean?” Cage said. “Is Shields planning to murder him?”

“No, he's going to challenge him, but Shields is hot-tempered and handy with a pistol and the result will be the same: Abraham Lincoln lying dead on the ground with a ball in his breast because of some comical letter in the newspaper.”

“Shields probably just wants him to retract what he wrote,” Cage said.

“Well, he can't very well retract it!” Ash Merritt said.

“Why not?”

“It's a matter of honor, of course.”

“In Lincoln's case,” Cage said, “honor's a dangerous virtue. It almost ended his sanity during that Mary Todd embrigglement. Now there's his mortal life to consider.”

“And his political future,” Ned said. “Dueling's a crime in Illinois. He could survive the duel and be convicted and barred from holding office.”

“That in itself is a trifling matter,” Ash pointed out. “All he'd have to do is cross the river and get out of Illinois and fight the duel in Missouri. He'll have done nothing illegal and if he kills Shields instead of Shields killing him his reputation is enhanced. Also, as the man who's been challenged he'd have his choice of weapons. That's a strong advantage.”

“I thought we were here to prevent a duel,” Cage said. “Not to argue how to fight one.”

“Of course,” Ash agreed. “But if the thing should—”

Billy Herndon interrupted them, rushing in with the morning's edition of the
Journal.

“There's a poem in here that you all have to read right away. Oh, never mind.” He picked up the paper impatiently. “I'll read it to you.”

It was a new comic salvo against Shields, purportedly written by someone named “Cathleen.” It took the form of a poem of mock triumph celebrating the news that Rebecca, the backwoods commentator impersonated by Lincoln, had just gotten married to none other than James Shields himself.

“ ‘To the widow he's bound,' ” Billy read, unable to suppress a laugh, though it was a serious matter. “ ‘Oh! Bright be his lot!' ”

“This is not going to go down with Shields, not at all,” Baker said. “Really, Lincoln should know when to stop.”

“It wasn't Lincoln who wrote it,” Billy said. “It was Mary Todd and Julia Jayne. Sim Francis told me.”

The men stared at each other in incredulity, though it made a kind of sense. Cage had, after all, witnessed the women responding with undisguised ridicule as Shields followed Julia about at the Fourth of July celebration with his mouth hanging open. And he had to admit there was a certain polish to the verses Billy had just read to them, the sort of effortless fluency that might be expected from someone like Mary who was the product of an exclusive Kentucky boarding school.

“The situation has just gotten preposterously worse,” Baker said. “Something has to be done.”

“And it has to be done fast,” Billy said. “Because Shields just left town with John Whiteside.”

“Where to?”

“Where do you think? They're heading to Tremont to entice Mr. Lincoln into a duel.”

Lincoln had to be warned. He would need the benefit of his friends' advice before he responded to a challenge for a duel. Ash said his buggy could be ready for the trip in half an hour. Cage volunteered to go with him. If Shields and Whiteside spent the night on the way, as most travelers to Tremont tended to do, they could overtake them and get to Lincoln before they arrived.

The last time Cage had made the trip to Tazewell County, to rescue Cordelia, he had ridden through the full glory of a prairie spring among the delighted wandering men of the circuit court. But today, as he sat in the seat next to Ash, the mercury easily stood at over a hundred degrees with the sun bearing down on the parched grass. The doctor's carriage was a sprightly big-wheeled device pulled by a gray gelding named Xavier. The horse snorted in the heat and shook his head and shivered the muscles of his neck to stir away the flies. There was no hint of rain, or of any other meteorological relief. Even the blue of the sky appeared to have been bleached away by the white sun. As they rode past outlying farms, hogs grunted in evaporating wallows on the side of the road. The leaves in the cornfields were so dry Cage could imagine them crackling like paper.

They stopped only to rest Xavier and to relieve themselves. Otherwise they continued at the same monotonous pace along the dry rutted road, the light carriage transmitting every bump to their sore backsides. Ash was a compulsive retailer of medical horror stories. He told Cage about famous surgeries gone wrong, of hideous cancers and deformities and curious misadventures involving the voluntary insertion of foreign objects into the urethra and the rectal canal, passageways renowned for their wonderful elasticity. It was after dark when they got to Delavan. They drove straight through, curious about whether Shields and Whiteside had put up for the night but not daring to stop for fear of being spotted by the men they were trying to overtake. They were in Tremont before midnight. They took a room at the Franklin House, where the drowsy clerk confirmed that Lincoln was also in residence.

While Ash unloaded their luggage, Cage knocked on the door of Lincoln's room. He was sharing it with two other circuit lawyers and none of them were asleep. All were still working by candlelight on pleas and continuances and other legal business that would be taken up in the court the next day.

“I'm astonished to see you,” Lincoln said when he opened the door. “Has something terrible happened?”

“Not as yet.” Cage glanced into the room at the two other lawyers, one of whom he recognized from his previous trip to Tazewell County, the other a stranger. They were both looking up from their work with frank curiosity. Cage whispered to Lincoln that it would be better if he packed his things and moved downstairs with him and Ash Merritt.

“Merritt is here too?”

“Yes, but I'd rather not explain everything while standing in your doorway.”

Twenty minutes later, having moved in with Cage and Ash and heard the reason for their errand to Tazewell County, Lincoln paced restlessly back and forth from one wall. He kept laughing, but in a calculated, nervous way. “Who knew Shields had such a thin skin?”

“Everybody knew.”

“Well, that's true enough, Cage. But if we had a rule against poking at a man's vanity there'd be no more fun left in the world.”

He stopped pacing and stood against the wall, pounding it softly with the back of his head. He bent his left arm behind his back in one of his speechmaking gestures, but no speech came. He just stood there thinking.

“How do you know Whiteside?” he finally asked Ash. “He's a fellow doctor, isn't he?”

“Yes, but no fellow of mine,” Ash said. “He's a blustery son of a bitch. Adjutant general in the state militia, but as far as I know he's never fought in any war. He may be goading Shields just for the excitement of it.”

“Maybe Shields will have forgotten the whole thing by tomorrow and just go on home to Springfield.”

“Not likely,” Cage said. He handed him the cutting from that morning's paper. “There's this to remind him.”

Lincoln read the poem about Rebecca marrying Shields and laughed out loud. He laughed even harder when they told him that Mary Todd and Julia Jayne had written it.

“So now we have Molly jumping into the fracas. I think she and I make a good team when it comes to giving Jim Shields a purple face.”

“One member of the team may be dead in the next few days if we don't find a way of resolving this,” Cage said.

“Oh, it won't come to that,” Lincoln decided. “The two of you are true friends to have ridden all the way up here to warn me, but human nature being what it is Shields won't want to get killed over this nonsense any more than I do.”

And yet the challenge came. John Whiteside came up to Lincoln as he was walking to the Tazewell County courthouse the next morning, took off his hat, said he had the honor of addressing him on behalf of Mr. James Shields. Whiteside was tall and slender, well-dressed, well-barbered, outwardly serene and peaceable. He had a fine nose and a pale complexion. He handed Lincoln a letter which that same Mr. Shields asked to be delivered with his compliments.

“You may thank Mr. Shields for his great kindness in initiating a correspondence with me,” Lincoln said to Whiteside as Cage and Ash stood behind him, observing this charade of civility. “Have you had your breakfast, General Whiteside?”

“I have, sir, thank you.”

“Well, I wish you a happy digestion, then.” Whiteside stood there awkwardly waiting for Lincoln to read the letter, but instead Lincoln slipped it into the pocket of his coat. “If you'll excuse me, I have a full day inside the courthouse.”

“Mr. Lincoln, you need to know that Mr. Shields is anxious for an immediate reply.”

“I hate to think of your friend in a state of anxiety, General. Please tell him I'll read his letter at my first opportunity and consider its contents and my answer carefully. I'm sure he'd prefer that to a half-cocked reply when my mind is elsewhere. Why don't you call on me at the inn at, say, eight o'clock tonight?”