The Shut Mouth Society (24 page)

“
What do you mean?”

“
A play that would appeal to Bryant and Lincoln.”

“
It’s a big leap to assume Bryant wrote that code.”

“
Humor me.”

She set her own book down. Evarts could almost see her think through the long list of Shakespearian plays. “I don’t know about Lincoln, but Bryant would choose
The Tempest
.”

“
Why?”

“
The Tempest
was Shakespeare’s final play and the only one to take place in North America. More important to Bryant, it carried an antislavery theme.”

Evarts said thanks and reopened a thick book containing Shakespeare’s complete works. In less than twenty minutes, he yelled, “Eureka!”

“
You’re kidding.”

“
I don’t think so.”

Baldwin didn’t go back to her book. Instead she watched Evarts with such intensity that he grew nervous. In about twenty more minutes, he looked up and said, “This might be the key, but it will take me about an hour to translate enough of the message to be sure.”

In just under an hour, he handed her a slip of paper. “See these numbers?”

The paper listed the following numbers: 413825, 129062, 217434, 41194, 4120108, 221117, 129197, 111024, 517242, 2113537, 5127116, 126127.

“
If you use these numbers for act, scene, speaker, line, and word, then they translate into this sentence.”

He handed her another slip of paper. It read, “meet bees her at play mouth place of worship sun day service.”

“
Mean anything to you?” he asked.

Baldwin studied it a minute and then exclaimed, “You did it! You broke the code!”

“
What does it mean?”

She ran her fingers through her hair. “Nothing historians don’t already know. On the Sunday before his Cooper Union address, Lincoln went to services at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. The minister at this famous church was Henry Ward Beecher, an antislavery crusader and renowned speaker.”

“
Meet Beecher at Plymouth Church, Sunday service.” Evarts smiled. “Makes sense.”

“
No, it doesn’t. We know Lincoln went to Plymouth Church that Sunday. There were hundreds of witnesses.”

“
But did you know he arranged a secret rendezvous?”

“
No, but why set up such a meeting? Henry Ward Beecher was a celebrity in his day, and his church was a pilgrimage for aspiring politicians. Everyone would’ve expected Lincoln to attend Sunday services.”

“
Was he religious?”

“
No, probably a deist, but like everything else personal, he left few telltale signs.”

“
Would it have been appropriate for Lincoln to have a private conversation with Beecher?” Evarts asked.

That stopped Baldwin for a moment. “If he wanted to maintain his reputation as a moderate on slavery, it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. Beecher and his sister were radical abolitionists.”

“
His sister?”

“
Harriet Beecher Stowe. She wrote
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
in 1852, and it fomented the radical abolitionist movement.” She gave Evarts a long look. “Are you suggesting that Lincoln was in cahoots with the radicals prior to his nomination?”

“
I’m not suggesting anything … yet. But the more public you can make a clandestine meeting, the better. It reduces suspicion.”

“
What could they possibly talk about?” she asked.

“
I’m not the historian, but it would seem like they had only one thing to discuss: Lincoln’s run at the White House.”

Baldwin became thoughtful. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded as if she were talking to herself. “If that were the case, then Lincoln would be the supplicant.”

Baldwin stood and paced the tiny room. “Back then, just like today, the radical elements of a party provided the energy and ardent campaign workers. Candidates had to appeal to these elements or at least to appease them.”

“
If Lincoln wanted to contact Beecher, would he use William Cullen Bryant?”

“
Possibly. Bryant was one of the radicals accepted by the moderate wings of the party. He even introduced Lincoln the next evening at Cooper Union.” She quit her pacing and stood over Evarts. “Lincoln might have used Bryant as a conduit to the radical Republicans, but Greg, there’s something I don’t get. At the most, this is an interesting factoid. It doesn’t enlighten the historical record that much. Why were we given this code, and why have people been murdered because of it?”

“
Three reasons. First, someone gave us those documents as bait. Remember, the Cooper Union document held nothing new either. They gave us two innocuous documents to suck us into their labyrinth. Douglass said more papers were stashed away. Whoever pulled these two particular documents out of their treasure trove wanted to entice us to take the next step, but didn’t want to expose anything really vital in case we didn’t bite. The second reason is to give us a sample so we can break the code. After we found the key, we’d be able to read other encrypted messages.”

“
What’s the third reason?”

“
The second sentence of this message.” He handed her another piece of paper. It listed only three numbers: 122681, 121016, 5150117. The three corresponding words read, “subject house divided.”

“
Do you know what this means?” she asked in a tone that said she knew.

“
Yes. You told me all about Lincoln’s House Divided speech on the drive from the West Coast. Remember?”

“
He delivered that speech when he accepted the nomination to run against Steven Douglas for the Senate. That was 1858, two years before his run at the presidency. It was the last time he sounded alarmist about slavery.” She looked up from the decoded message and met Evarts’s eyes. “He said the nation couldn’t survive half slave and half free.”

Evarts nodded. “I’ve read it.”

“
When?”

“
Just a few minutes ago. I translated those last three words first. I find code breaking easier back to front.” He lifted a book of Lincoln speeches. “I read the House Divided speech to make sure I hadn’t just randomly found three words that didn’t sound like gibberish.”

Evarts opened the book and read, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.”

Evarts plopped the book back onto the table. “This man believed a pivotal moral issue gripped the nation, and he publicly announced on which side he stood.” Evarts pushed the book a few inches toward Baldwin. “I think he might have gone after the presidency to facilitate the ‘ultimate extinction’ of slavery.”

“
That’s too simple. You need to study the entire man. He said nothing during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that condemned slavery. Quite the opposite, in fact. At Cooper Union, he reassured the South that Republicans wouldn’t threaten slavery where it already existed. His platform as a presidential candidate again reassured the South and attacked only the extension of slavery into the territories. You can’t take this one speech and say this is the one true reflection of the man’s inner feelings and that all the rest of his utterances were just bunk he said to get a job he wanted.”

“
Listen, I’m not a historian and I sure as hell haven’t examined all the evidence, but as a detective I’m trained to uncover the real motives for why people take a particular action. I’m not suggesting that everything Lincoln did after the House Divided speech was bullshit. I’m just saying that maybe he had a higher purpose than just getting a job. Maybe he wanted enough power to destroy slavery in America.”

“
You’re not proposing that he purposely started the Civil War?”

Evarts hesitated. Then he started to speak but closed his mouth. Finally, he looked Baldwin in the eye and said, “I don’t know.”

Chapter 26

“
What now?” she asked.

“
I’m not sure. We broke the code, but this encrypted communication didn’t tell us much. I presume that after we had broken the code, Douglass or one of his accomplices would’ve slipped us additional documents. With Douglass dead and us in hiding, I don’t see how we can get our hands on the secret cache.” Evarts leaned forward across the small table that separated them. “The Greenes remain our sole lead, and she skedaddled when she spotted us at the Roger Sherman Inn.”

“
Omaha?”

“
Possibly … but they might have mentioned Omaha to the staff to build a false trail … like our feint toward Mexico.” Evarts stood and paced the small room. He finally sat back down. “I keep coming back to the document cache. It must contain revelations that will shake the foundations of some power base.” He picked up the decoded message and read it again. “Someone used this encrypted message to rouse our curiosity so that we’d be drawn into their little intrigue.” Evarts covered Baldwin’s hand with his own. “Trish, it could’ve been your parents that engineered our coming together.”

“
I know.” A tear emerged from the corner of her eye.

Evarts squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

Baldwin lifted her chin and made a defiant toss of her hair. “We need to think about ourselves now. How do we get our life back?”

Evarts let go of her hand and leaned back in his chair. He loved her use of the plural pronoun, but pursuing that issue could wait. “We can’t waste time. Unless we missed something, I don’t think the documents that Douglass already gave us will provide much more help. Our focus should shift to finding the storehouse of documents.”

“
How? They’ve been successfully hidden for a hundred and fifty years.”

“
Few even knew they existed, so probably nobody has looked for them. Besides, I can’t think of an alternative.”

“
Neither can I.” She sat a moment. “How do we proceed?”

“
Someone killed Douglass and your parents to protect a really big secret. I still think it must involve the end of the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, or the Johnson impeachment.”

“
Which?”

Evarts laughed. “Hell if I know. What’s your guess?”

Baldwin drummed her fingers. “There’s so much nonsense about Lincoln’s assassination … almost as much as Kennedy’s, except with Lincoln, we know a conspiracy actually existed.”

“
A CSA conspiracy?”

“
Confederate loyalists for sure, but it probably wasn’t sanctioned by the government. The picture’s confusing because there was so much spying going on, especially by the South.”

“
I studied Civil War intelligence in the army, but I want the historian’s perspective. Start with why you said there was more spying by the South.”

“
Opportunity, I guess. Washington was a Southern city surrounded by slaveholding states. In fact, at the beginning of the war, slavery was even legal in D.C. Lincoln’s biggest political accomplishment might have been keeping Maryland in the Union, but he still fought a war from a city filled with enemy sympathizers, hemmed in by Virginia to the south and Maryland to the north. The Confederates had no trouble finding people willing to pass them information or sabotage things like telegraph lines.”

“
Didn’t Jefferson Davis authorize kidnapping Lincoln?”

“
Probably, but whether he later authorized the assassination remains an unresolved question. Most historians don’t believe he did.”

“
Why not?”

“
Several times, nefarious characters approached Davis with plans to assassinate Lincoln. It would’ve been easy, because he traveled with only a light guard. Davis turned them all down, until he learned that Lincoln had approved a clandestine operation to kidnap him. Circumstantial evidence indicates that, after he gained this knowledge, Davis authorized a small group of Southern partisans to kidnap Lincoln. Davis wanted to hold him hostage in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners. He needed them to replenish his army. The plan—”

“
That group included John Wilkes Booth, didn’t it?”

“
So?” Her voice sounded irritated. “At the time, he was just another rebel sympathizer. What’s your point?”

“
It’s a direct link from Davis to Booth.”

“
Not direct. Davis only knew the ringleaders. Besides, few historians believe Davis would’ve endorsed fruitless revenge. His early reluctance to attack Lincoln substantiates this view.” Baldwin used her fingers to tap a closed book in front of her as if to indicate that the contents shored up her argument. “Davis envisioned himself as a Southern gentleman, and he practiced personal honor like a religious creed.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t believe he would back a band of murderers.”