The Lincoln Deception Page 22

  As Cook had predicted, the carriage pulled onto the gravel drive of a brick home at the corner of Seventeenth and Rhode Island Avenue, the home of General Longstreet. Tulip poplars, their leaves yellowing with the season, rose far above the three-story house. Townsend led the way up the front steps and opened the door. Confident that Cook was watching them from some concealed perch, Fraser followed.

  Two burly men, somewhat past their best years, nearly filled the bright entrance hall. They advanced on Fraser.

  “Doctor,” Townsend said as he placed his hat on a table, “these gentlemen will be glad to care for any weapons you may have.”

  Flanked by the intimidating reception committee, Fraser replied, “This is hardly the way to welcome a gentleman.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” Townsend said, “but it is entirely appropriate in these circumstances, Dr. Fraser—or is it McIntire?” Fraser made a small show of reluctance as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a revolver. He handed it over, relieved to be rid of it.

  Fraser followed Townsend into a parlor. The shades were drawn against the sunlight. The keepers of his revolver remained outside.

  Fraser’s eyes adjusted slowly in the darkened room. A single electric lamp glowed at the far end. Five empty armchairs formed a conversational group. Following the lead of his host, Fraser sat. He selected the chair closest to the hallway.

  “Who else is coming?” Fraser asked.

  “Patience, my dear doctor. All will be revealed.”

  After a minute, Fraser asked again.

  “Won’t be long,” Townsend said.

  More minutes eased by. Fraser yawned, pleased that he could seem unconcerned even as anxiety ate at his insides. Something was amiss on Townsend’s side. Was there a problem with Cook? Townsend stood and walked to the front hall. On his return, he nodded to Fraser but said nothing.

  A door on the far side of the room burst open and Barstow stumbled in. “Sam,” Townsend called out, standing up. Cook stepped through the same door, keeping a gun aimed at Barstow.

  Two of the burlies from the hall piled into the room with guns drawn, but Barstow stopped them with an outstretched hand. “Afternoon, gents,” Cook said in a strong voice. “Sorry to be late, but your friend here threw me off schedule. If you make one move toward me, I will shoot this nigger-hating son of a bitch.”

  “Go on,” Barstow said to his men. “Get out.” They backed out slowly.

  With the gun, Cook waved Barstow into a chair next to Townsend. “Mr. Barstow,” he said, “you’ve been treating Dr. Fraser very poorly, when all he has done is exercise his American right to ask questions. However, he is a large-minded man, and more interested in the answers to his questions than in repaying your bad manners. So why don’t you start telling us what this soiree’s all about?” Cook sat across from Barstow and Townsend, who exchanged glances. “Now,” Cook said, “would be an excellent time to start talking.”

  “Doctor,” Barstow said to Fraser, “you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble, and caused a great deal of trouble, to get to this conversation. Mr. Townsend here has persuaded me that I have been following a poor policy, attempting to prevent you from learning that which you have no reason to know. He insists that a better policy is to tell you what you want to know and rely on your good sense to understand that no one else should. For now, and under the current circumstances . . .” Barstow paused meaningfully. “I’ve decided to follow Mr. Townsend’s recommendation. We will shortly be joined by someone who, I hope, will persuade you of the folly of your effort.”

  Cook smiled slowly. “That’s good, Sam, but just remember that even if you can’t see the gun, it’s pointed at you.”

  Townsend cleared his throat. “With your permission,” he said to Cook, “I’ll invite our guest?” Cook nodded.

  Townsend walked to a door that led to the rear of the house. After a moment, an old man limped through it. Sporting extravagant white side whiskers, he leaned heavily on a cane of dark wood. His right arm hung limply. His cheeks had a translucent quality, revealing an inner terrain of blue blood vessels. He sat with elaborate care. Grunting with relief as he leaned back, he looked a greeting at each man in turn.

  “General Longstreet,” Fraser said, happy to demonstrate his knowledge of the man’s identity.

  Longstreet placed his good hand on top of the cane before him and answered in a hoarse whisper. “I know who you are, and I propose to proceed directly to business. Is that agreeable?” Pausing for only a second, he began again. “I’m informed that you have contrived an interest in the activities and connections of John Wilkes Booth. That’s so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Major Barstow’s asked me to speak with you, with both of you.” He nodded to Cook. “Though long in the habit of distrusting Major Barstow, I have agreed, for my own reasons, to his request.”

  Townsend interrupted in a loud voice. “Perhaps I should provide some preface. I have told both of these gentlemen”—he indicated Longstreet and Barstow—“about John Bingham’s statement on his deathbed, which you shared with me in the spring, including his statements about Mrs. Surratt’s confession. So they know why you’re interested in this subject. Of course, I cannot know exactly what Mrs. Surratt told Mr. Bingham, but I have a fair idea of what Mr. Bingham might have concluded from what she said. And I have a fair idea of what you have been able to unearth. You’ve been most resourceful. That’s why I proposed to Major Barstow and General Longstreet that we arrange this conversation.”

  He nodded to Longstreet, who made to speak. Instead, the old man coughed lightly. He coughed again, then erupted in a hacking paroxysm that turned his face bright red. He spat into a large handkerchief produced from a jacket pocket. As the flush faded from his cheeks, he jammed the linen back in his pocket.

  “I never met that young fool Booth, but I can tell you certain things that may put your minds at ease about the current state of our republic. Or perhaps not. That will be up to you.” Longstreet moved his gaze slowly from Fraser to Cook and back. “But I’m one of the few left who can tell you much of anything. There’s always Major Barstow, of course, but I’ve never known him to tell the truth. Townsend describes you as men of sense, so I assume you wouldn’t accept his word, or Townsend’s, about anything.”

  “General,” Fraser broke in, “we know that Booth had money from the Confederacy, and was actively working with agents of the Confederacy, but we think more were involved—”

  Longstreet had reached down next to his chair with his good hand and lifted a shiny ear trumpet to his left ear. After a few moments, he dropped the device in his lap and raised a restraining hand. “I will do this my way,” he said in his urgent, raspy whisper, “or not at all. You can ask questions when I’m done. I may answer them. Or you’re welcome to leave and meet whatever fate Major Barstow might have in mind for you.”

  Cook smiled with some malice. “Or the major may meet the fate we have in mind for him.”

  “That may be,” General Longstreet said quietly, “but the major, among his other qualities, is undeniably persistent. That is a quality you should respect.”

  Fraser leaned forward to cut off the exchange. “We’ll listen, General, then we’ll decide what to do,” he said.

  “Probably ought to start near the end of 1864,” the old man said. “By then, we knew—those of us in the army knew—that we were going to lose the war. If George McClellan had been elected president in November, an honorable peace between two American nations was possible. But that hope died with Lincoln’s reelection. He wasn’t going to end the war that way.”

  Longstreet started coughing. Again, the coughing built in intensity until he appeared ready to burst. With a long, unsteady breath, he regained his composure.

  In the silence, Cook asked, “What you mean is, McClellan would have agreed to one country with slavery forever?”

  Longstreet looked over at him. “Yes, I suppose that was the idea. My service to my country during t
he war was also service to slavery. I have tried to atone for that ever since, and God will judge whether I have. That atonement, I fear, is the principal reason why I am increasingly denounced by my countrymen for most of the defeats suffered by the Confederacy.”

  After the 1864 election, the old man continued, the Confederates contrived ever more desperate plans. One group proposed tunneling under the end of the White House that held Lincoln’s office and blowing it up. “Lunatics,” Longstreet said. “Pure lunatics.”

  Booth and others worked on the equally fanciful plan to kidnap Lincoln and hold him hostage, perhaps trade him for peace, or at least for Confederate prisoners of war who could rejoin the army and restore Southern military fortunes. The times, Longstreet repeated several times, were desperate.

  “You see,” he went on. “The war changed wherever Sam Grant took over. He understood that he had to break our spirit, not just our armies. So he sent Sherman marching to the sea. He proved we couldn’t protect our homes or our old people, or our wives or our children. And on the battlefield he showed us in the bloodiest way possible that we didn’t have enough soldiers or bullets. I had loved Sam Grant like a brother since when we were at West Point together. He married my cousin, you know. But in war he was the very angel of death.” Longstreet shook his head ruefully.

  “We always had spies and agents. They were supposed to find out where the other side’s armies were, where they were going, how many of them there were. Then, as our affairs grew more perilous, the spies proposed to win the war for us. They were going to mount an invasion from Canada, to free our soldiers in Northern prison camps and open a new battlefront in the north.” Longstreet drew a long, uncertain breath. “It was crazy, every bit of it. One of the scarcest commodities during war is sense, and in an army that’s losing, it’s nowhere to be found.

  “Major Barstow,” Longstreet said with a nod to the silver-haired man across from him, “came forward in the final days of the Petersburg siege. Bitter days. The men were starving. General Lee had decided, and I agreed, to break the siege and run to North Carolina. There we could hook up with Joe Johnston and his army and fight Billy Sherman. We’d had enough of Sam Grant. Major Barstow laid out a plot. He proposed to lop off the Union command: Lincoln, Grant, Edwin Stanton, even Andy Johnson. The next president would be weak, he told us, and would have no real legitimacy.

  “None of us,” Longstreet breathed, “had ever heard of the man who was supposed to become president then. I still couldn’t tell you his name. We knew that Billy Sherman would be the strongest man left standing, and some of us felt he had some sympathies with our side. He hated niggers the way only a northern man can. Major Barstow’s plan involved bringing George McClellan back from Europe, making him president or grand high pooh-bah, and then everything would be peaches and cream. We’d make an honorable peace with the Copperhead Democrats of the North, one that would allow the Southern people to hold their heads high and live as they always had. He claimed this scheme had support all through the North—senators and congressmen, governors and mayors, bankers and railroad men. And cotton men.”

  Longstreet stared at Barstow. “Just crazy, all of it,” he said. “But General Lee didn’t object. I don’t know that he thought about it very much. He was fighting a war, one that was going poorly, and that takes a right smart amount of energy and attention. But he didn’t tell Barstow not to do it. Lee wanted to strike any blow against the enemy that he could. So Major Barstow went off to Richmond and presented his plan to President Davis. And with his customary genius, Jeff Davis thought it was a capital idea.”

  After another coughing jag, Longstreet started again. “You gentlemen know how this ends. Major Barstow sent that pretty-boy actor to do the job with the damnedest bunch of defectives that’s ever been collected in one place. No one had the gumption even to raise a hand against Sam Grant. I hear you’ve talked to Julia, his widow, about that, and so have I. They took one look at Sam and changed their minds, which was pretty smart, since Sam would have ate them for breakfast. The man they sent after Johnson ran away, too, and the one they sent after Stanton was so dumb he cut up Seward instead, the wrong damned man!” Longstreet allowed himself a rueful smile.

  “Why, with Lincoln gone, Seward would have been a pushover for peace. Stanton was the strong man. But that idiot carves up Seward, most of his family, but doesn’t even manage to kill him! It was fools as far as the eye could see. But one of them kept his head and did his job, and that was the pretty-boy actor. The only thing done right in that whole operation was to make sure he didn’t live to tell who sent him.”

  “Also,” Cook said in a flat tone, “the part about killing President Lincoln.”

  “Yes, sir,” Longstreet nodded. “That, too.” He shrugged with his good shoulder. “Of course, I’ve always assumed that the confusion of the assassination allowed Major Barstow to complete a few more cotton and tobacco deals with his Northern friends. Just to ease himself back into peacetime.” Barstow did not react to Longstreet’s remark.

  Fraser took care to speak in a loud voice so Longstreet could hear him. “If you thought Barstow’s plan was so crazy, why didn’t you try to stop him?”

  Longstreet gazed at him, then cleared his throat violently. “Abe Lincoln was a soldier, just like I was and just like even Barstow here. You see what the war did to me.” He gestured at his useless right arm. “Soldiers get killed, ruined. Townsend says your daddy paid his price, too. We knew what war meant. More than half a million died, at least that many went home less than whole. Do you have any idea how many men I ordered to their deaths? Or how many were killed by my soldiers on my orders? At the end of the war, one more killing could hardly get my attention. Was Abe Lincoln’s life worth more than any one of the boys who fought for me? Or your father’s?”

  After another silence, Fraser asked, “How many people know this secret?”

  “Fewer every year,” Longstreet whispered. “Other than you, Townsend here’s the only one figured it out on his own. Which is pretty damned remarkable. Doesn’t actually seem that hard to figure out. It’s like the whole country decided not to notice something sitting right in the middle of the road.”

  Cook shook his head. “Don’t count on it being a secret much longer. We’re going to tell this story when we get out of here. The world needs to know the evil you people did.”

  Longstreet shook his head and scratched his abundant side whiskers with his good hand. He sighed.

  “You maybe should think about that,” Barstow said. “First off, we’ll all deny it just like we have for thirty-five years. That’s worked pretty good so far. In fact, we’ll wonder how you ever came up with such outlandish ideas. Second, you’re late, extremely late, with this news.”

  “It’s never too late for the truth,” Cook said.

  Barstow smiled. “I disagree. You’ll be one more crank with a new theory. You’ll never dislodge the story of John Wilkes Booth as the sole author of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln. No one wants to believe anything else.”

  “But it’s not true,” Fraser said.

  “Doctor.” Barstow turned to face him. “I thought you’d be smarter than that.” Returning his gaze to Cook, he said, “Third, you’re a black man. How could you possibly know such a thing? And you,” Barstow faced Fraser, “are a well-meaning country doctor who has fallen under the spell of John Wilkes Booth’s illegitimate spawn.”

  Fraser couldn’t conceal his anger. “You wouldn’t dare make such an accusation.”

  Barstow smiled. “We wouldn’t? But it’s even true. Don’t you think the newspapers of Mr. Hearst and Mr. Pulitzer would find that considerably more interesting than some crackpot theory about an assassination that was solved two generations ago and is settled in the pages of history? Now, Booth’s bastard child—that would sell newspapers!”

  They fell silent when Longstreet held up his good hand. He began again. “Those are Major Barstow’s reasons. And to his credit, he hasn’t yet presented rea
sons that would involve pain and injury to you. He can favor very crude methods. As you say, that sort of tactic hasn’t worked so far with you gentlemen, but Major Barstow is a determined individual who, it should be clear, is not limited by good sense and judgment.”

  Longstreet paused. “I suspect that all of his reasons are odious to you. But allow me to offer one that should not be. It’s the one that worked with Mr. Townsend.”

  Townsend inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “John Bingham wouldn’t want you to reveal these matters. Old Bingham took his secret to the grave with him because he thought that was the best thing. He was glad to accuse Jeff Davis of the crime—even without the evidence to prove it. But when he heard the true story, that Northerners also were behind the killing of Abe Lincoln, he knew it would threaten the Union and the peace. And he knew that nothing was going to bring Abe Lincoln back. That’s why I’ve been silent these past thirty-five years. Through all those years I’ve been trying to reconcile North and South so we can rebuild a great nation. And that’s why you, too, should remain silent. Because Bingham was right.”

  After only a moment, Longstreet hauled himself up from his chair. He made his painful way to the door that led to the rear of the house. He left the ear trumpet in the chair.

  “What kind of a writer are you?” Cook said to Townsend. “You learn the truth and then hide it, let the culprits get away clean? Instead, you write a bunch of nonsense that you know isn’t true. Which side are you on?”

  “Bingham’s side.”

  Barstow stood abruptly. “My men will not molest you on your return to your hotel, or on your departure from this city. But, please, do not doubt that the Sons of Liberty will be watching you, and that we’re prepared to do what’s necessary to preserve the integrity of history.”