The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Read Online Free

sported a magnificent black beard. He had just laid his coat across Little’s waiting arms. “They need two-thirds.”
    McShane ignored him. “One bit of good news”—eyeing Abigail suddenly, obviously not sure who she might be, but, after a moment’s hesitation, plunging on—“good news, that is, for our side. They won’t vote on admitting Nebraska to the Union until after the trial. You remember what happened with Nevada last year. The price of statehood was sending two anti-Lincoln men to the Senate, bound to vote for conviction. Well, that bit of skulduggery embarrassed the Radicals, so they’ve agreed not to admit Nebraska just yet. This is Mr. Baker.”
    “Jonathan Hilliman.” He thrust out a hand, which Baker seemed to examine for traps before grabbing. The stranger’s shake was perfunctory, an unappealing duty to be gotten over with. “And this”—Jonathan hesitated; names had never been his forte. “This is, um, Mr. Dennard’s new clerk—”
    “Abigail Canner,” she said, lifting a white-gloved hand. Baker barely bowed his head, but McShane took her fingers as he would do for any lady, and lightly kissed her knuckles.
    “Welcome, Miss Canner,” said the lawyer. He smiled. He was shorter than Abigail, and so was smiling up at her. He said, innocently, what Jonathan had been afraid of saying awkwardly. “Dennard did tell me that he had hired a woman. He made no mention of your race. He says that Dr. Charles Finney wrote him on your behalf. Dr. Finney still running things at Oberlin, is he?”
    “He is on in years, sir, but in spirit he is strong.”
    “I believe Dennard and Finney knew each other in the old days, at the Broadway Tabernacle. Well, never mind. Little, clear a space at the table. Jonathan, I’m afraid there is a bit of a crisis. You will come with me to see the President.”
    Abigail said, “What should I—”
    McShane continued to smile. “You should wait here until Mr. Dennard returns.” Jonathan had stepped to the blackboard and was using a cloth to wipe off the numbers inscribed there. He wrote:
14–27–11
. Abigail realized that he was recording the likely votes in the Senate for acquittal and conviction and those undecided. Now, hearing his employer’s comment, Jonathan turned and was about to speak,but the lawyer silenced him with a look. “Wait. Let me see your letter.”
    She handed it over. The lawyer took it in at a glance. “This says you are a clerk. Not a law clerk.”
    “Is there a difference, Mr. McShane?”
    His face remained gentle but his voice hardened. “You have never met Dennard, have you?”
    “No, sir. Our interview was entirely via correspondence.”
    “Did you inform him that you are colored?”
    Abigail began to feel as if she had somehow wandered in the wrong door. The way Finney had explained things, it all seemed so simple. “The issue never arose.”
    “I suspected as much.” McShane nodded, evidently in confirmation of a private theory. “A law clerk,” he explained, “is a young man who works in an attorney’s office while studying the law, in the hope of being called to the bar. A clerk, on the other hand—not a law clerk, just a plain clerk—is a sort of an assistant. A secretary. To take notes, as it were. Do filing. Make deliveries. Copy out documents. Answer correspondence.” He could not possibly miss the mortification on her face. Yet his smile actually broadened. “You should be proud of yourself, Miss Canner. I do not believe that there are five female clerks in the entire city working for lawyers. And none of them are colored.”
    “But it is 1867!”
    “Perhaps in 1967 things will be different. What I have told you is the way things are now.”
    “Mr. McShane,” she managed, surprised to find herself fighting tears, “I—I want to read law.”
    The lawyer was crisp. “That is not the purpose for which you were hired.”
    “Yes, but—but surely we could arrange—”
    “You are of course free to discuss