Now he belongs to the ages.”

Yes, that was what Secretary of War Edwin Stanton would say to the waiting crowd of reporters when he announced the death of President Abraham Lincoln.  It had dignity and gravitas; it would do nicely.  Stanton repeated it in his mind as he tried to drift off to sleep for a few moments at his home on K Street, just blocks from the Executive Mansion.  His wife, Ellen, was already asleep,  breathing in a soft, easy rhythm.

For the first time in more than two years, Stanton was able to relax.  But sleep was harder.  He sighed, thinking back to his decision to place Lincoln under guard in the Executive Mansion basement in September 1862.  After a summer of disastrous defeats for the Union army,  Stanton concluded that the fate of the country had to be wrested from the bumbling fool who sat in the president’s office.  Under Stanton’s firm leadership—through the guise of the Lincoln double he had placed upstairs—the war would be over by Christmas.

However, Christmas came and went, and yet the war still waged on.  Soon Stanton found himself going to the basement to ask Lincoln’s advice on which general to appoint to lead the Army of the Potomac and what strategies to pursue. It was humiliating.  Stanton found himself under stress.  The war shook his once mighty self-confidence.  He had created a terrible quagmire because of his arrogance, and he did not know how to get out of it.  The end of the war finally, inexorably came, and Stanton faced the impossible question of what to do with Lincoln now.

Things had a way of working themselves out, he told himself as he nestled down into his pillow.  All Stanton had to do was exert pressure on the soldier who had murdered the butler and the young man capitulated, agreeing to find assassins to kill Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward.  Stanton’s bagman Baker killed the impersonators and the soldier.  The mob would take care of the assassins.  It was a plan; it was clean; and it was coming to fruition.

Once the duplicate Lincolns and the Vice-President were dispatched, U.S. Rep. Schuyler Colfax, speaker of the House, would be sworn in as president.  Colfax was a simpleton, Stanton reasoned, and Stanton could easily manipulate him as he had the Lincoln imposter.  His entire misbegotten attempt to control the outcome of the Civil War would remain a secret throughout the ages.  Of this he could be sure.  Stanton sighed.

Stanton had never felt in control of his life.  Asthma gripped his body as a child and would not let go.  His parents, devout Methodists, prayed over him, and he miraculously survived.  Stanton was painfully aware that some dark, outside force made all the decisions.  Death hovered over him.  Because so many people in his life died, Stanton had a roiling anger in the pit of his stomach.  The list was relentlessly personal—his father, his first sweetheart, his first wife, his two children and any dreams of being respected as a leader of his country.

Perhaps now he could be in charge of his destiny, he thought, as his eyelids began to feel heavy. A sudden rap at the downstairs door jarred him back to consciousness.  From downstairs, Stanton heard faint mumblings at the door.  His butler was talking to someone who was urgent in his message.  He would soon be climbing the stairs with dreadful news of assassination.

“What’s going on, dear?” his wife, Ellen, asked, not bothering to roll over.

“I don’t know,” he lied.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of it.”

“Very well,” she said, and she drifted back off to sleep.

Stanton got out of bed, put on his slippers and reached for his robe.  After he put it on, he brushed his hair back with his hands, reached for his pebble glasses, and placed them on his pocked nose.  His first instinct was to go for the door, but he decided it would be more prudent to wait for the butler to come for him.  Stanton sat in a nearby padded chair and listened for footsteps up the stairs.  A light rap at his bedroom door made a smile come to his cupid’s bow lips.

“Yes, what is it?”

“A young man downstairs, sir.  Most disturbing news.  Needs your immediate attention, sir.”

Slowly rising, Stanton went to the door.  “Disturbing news?  What is it?”

“I think he should tell you,” the butler said.  “Dreadful, dreadful news.”

“Oh, dear.”  Stanton went to the front door where a young man in civilian clothing, stood, shivering from the night rain.  He recognized him as a family acquaintance, Joe Sterling.  “Mr. Sterling, what news do you bring?”

“The President was shot while at the theater.  I’m afraid he’s dead, sir,” Sterling said.

“Do you know who shot him?”

“Yes,” the young man replied.  “They said it was a man named Booth.  He sprang to the stage from the President’s box with a large knife and escaped in the melee.”  After a pause Sterling added, “As we were coming to your house, a man informed us that Secretary Seward also has been assassinated, but that may be street rumor and untrue.”

“Oh, that can’t be so.  That can’t be so,” Stanton replied, shaking his head solemnly and sympathetically.

Immediately another man appeared on the doorstep.  Maj. Norton Chipman from the Bureau of Military Justice said, “Are you all right, sir?  Secretary Seward has been attacked.”

“I heard he was dead.”

“No, brutally stabbed, but he still lives,” Chipman said.

“Oh.”  Stanton paused.  “That is good news.”  He cleared his throat.  “Have you heard about the President?”

“No, sir,” Chipman replied.

Stanton turned sharply to Sterling.  “Who told you this news about the president?”

“A policeman, I—I don’t know his name,” the young man said, stammering.

“Hmm.” Stanton thought about where he should make his first appearance.  “This rumor about the President is probably just an exaggeration of an altercation at the theater.  I think I shall go to Mr. Seward’s house first with Maj. Chipman.”

“But Mr. Stanton,” Sterling insisted.

“That is all,” Stanton dismissed Sterling abruptly.  He turned to the major.  “Hold the carriage for me.  I’ll be dressed in a moment.”

In the carriage ride over to Seward’s home, Stanton thought about how much he hated the man, remembering the first cabinet meeting in which the Lincoln double conducted the meeting.  Stanton wanted Gen. Ambrose Burnsides to become the next general over the Army of the Potomac.  Unexpectedly Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase put forth the name of Gen. Joseph Hooker.  Attorney Gen. Caleb Smith suggested Gen. John C. Fremont.  Seward, with  silky insinuation, persuaded the befuddled Lincoln impersonator to stay with Gen. George McClellan instead.

Stanton never knew if Seward knew the man in the White House was an imposter or not.  He was not a man who could be easily deciphered.  That was why Stanton hated him.  The carriage pulled up in front of Seward’s home bordering Lafayette Park across from the White House.  Soldiers surrounded the building.  Darting through the rain, Stanton made it to the door and entered a madhouse.  Soldiers milled everywhere.  Blood stained the banister leading to the upper floors.  One man lay on the floor in a pool of blood with a doctor kneeling over him.

“What happened to him?” Stanton asked.

“He’s been slashed the entire length of his back,” the doctor said.  “From the looks of it, perhaps two inches deep.”

Seward’s sixteen-year-old daughter Fanny wiped tears from her eyes as she descended the stairs and staggered to Stanton, falling into his arms.

“It’s my fault,” the girl said.  “It’s all my fault.”

“What do you mean?” Stanton asked impatiently, holding her quivering shoulders at arms length.

“If I hadn’t opened the door to papa’s bedroom, the man wouldn’t have gotten in.”

“What man?  What are you talking about?”  Stanton forced his eyes to widen in shock.  “What did this man do?”

“The man who stabbed papa,” Fanny replied, still blubbering.

“Get hold of yourself, child,” Stanton ordered.

“What kind of insensitive fiend are you?” bellowed a tall man with white hair who had just walked up.

Stanton looked over to see Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, another cabinet member whom he loathed.

“Fanny just witnessed the stabbing of not only her father but also her brothers and two other men.  Of course, she’s crying,” Welles said as he stood next to Stanton, towering over him.

“I’m just trying to learn the facts of this case,” Stanton replied in a huff.  When taller men stood close, he always felt inferior which made him livid.  In addition, when his emotions took over his asthma erupted.  Stanton stifled a wheezing cough before returning his attention to Fanny.  He tried to soften his tone.  “Please tell me what happened.”

Fanny Seward breathed in deeply as though to compose her thoughts.  “There was this loud knocking at the door.  Billy answered it—“

“Who’s Billy?” Stanton interrupted.

“Billy Bell, our Negro doorman, he answered the door, and this huge man said something about having medicine—“

“What do you know about this doorman?” Stanton interrupted again.  “Has he been in the household long?”

“For God’s sake, let the girl finish,” Welles said with exasperation.

“He said he was from Dr. Verdi,” Fanny continued meekly.  “But Dr. Verdi had said nothing to us about more medicine. So Billy tried to tell him to go away but he wouldn’t.  Freddie—“

“Who’s Freddie?” Stanton asked.  He then remembered Seward’s son Frederick.  He had attended the afternoon cabinet meeting to represent his father.  “Yes, I know, your brother.  Go ahead.”

“Freddie heard the commotion and came out of papa’s room to find this man grappling with Billy and forcing his way upstairs.” Fanny paused to put her handkerchief to her wet eyes and look at Welles.

Welles put his large arms around her shoulders.  “There, there.  You’re doing just fine.”

“The man insisted on seeing papa in person, but Freddie said he was asleep.  Then I came out of the room, not knowing what was going on, and said papa was awake and wanted to see Freddie.”

Stanton could not control his asthma any longer.  He emitted a long and loud cough.  As he wiped his mouth he mumbled, “Well, go on, go on.”

“Then this man pushed passed us all and rushed into papa’s room.  It was awful.”

“Both Seward boys, Frederick and Augustus, were stabbed as was a male army nurse and the State Department messenger here on the floor,” Welles filled in as Fanny broke down weeping.

“If I hadn’t opened the door right at that moment the man would have never gotten in.  It was all my fault.”

“My dear, this man was insane,” Welles said soothingly.  “From what all the servants told me, he was a monster with the strength of ten men.  Nothing could have stopped him from his foul deed.”  Welles glanced at the Secretary of War.  “Tell her, Mr. Stanton.  It wasn’t her fault.”

Stanton grunted, but he was not interested in Fanny or her story any longer.  His attention went to the third floor.  Stanton walked up, at first putting his hand on the banister but removing it quickly when his fingers felt a moist tackiness.  His nostrils flared with the acrid smell of blood.  Stanton looked down to see the banister smeared with blood, now turning a dark brown.  When he reached the third floor, he saw Frederick Seward sitting on the floor in a daze, blood flowing from his head.  His brother Augustus stood by his side nursing three gashes in his arm.  Stanton ignored them and march into Seward’s bedroom. The male nurse, who had bandages on his neck and head, attended the doctor who bent over the bed.  At first, Stanton thought they were just looking at a bundle of bloody sheets until he saw Seward’s head, framed by a leather brace.  As Stanton focused on the face, he noticed Seward’s teeth and jawbone exposed through the sagging, slashed bloodied cheek.

When Stanton leaned over the bed, Seward’s eyes focused his eyes on him.  “What have you done?” he whispered.

“Did you recognize the man who attacked you?” Stanton asked, ignoring Seward’s question.

“What have you done?”

“Did he say anything to you?” Stanton said, in a louder voice.

The doctor brusquely pulled him away.  “Do this questioning elsewhere, at another time,” he ordered.  “We have people bleeding to death here!”

“Do you know who I am?” Stanton asked indignantly.

“I don’t give a damn who you are,” the doctor growled.  “Get the hell out of here!”

Taking a step back, Stanton decided not to force a confrontation.  Again, he felt humiliated, and his breathing became labored.  With luck, Stanton told himself, Seward would be dead by dawn anyway.  At the bottom of the stairs, he saw Welles talking to the other doctor attending to the State Department messenger on the floor.

“What does he have to do with this bloody business?”  Stanton said.

“My God, man, don’t you have a heart?”  Welles stared at him but when no answer was forthcoming, he sighed.  “Poor man happened to arrive at the door with documents for Mr. Seward when the madman was escaping.”

“So he knows nothing,” Stanton stated nonchalantly.

“I suppose you heard about the President?” Welles asked.

“Yes, I did.  I thought it was just a rumor.”

“It’s no damn rumor.  The whole world has turned upside down.”  Welles scrutinized Stanton’s face.  “You look like you don’t give a damn.”

“That is an insult, sir,” Stanton snapped.  “But I forgive you because of the emotional scene.”  He paused.  “I have a carriage outside.  Do you want to join me on the ride to Ford’s Theater?”

Welles shook his head as he let out a sardonic laugh.  “I don’t understand you.  First you say I insulted you, and then you offer me a ride in your carriage.”

“That’s because I am a gentleman, sir.”  Actually, Stanton conceded to himself, he was trying to control the situation again.  He did not want to leave Welles at the Seward house asking too many questions.  He wanted him near him so he could filter any information he received throughout the night.

The two cabinet members sat in tense silence as they rode through the streets in the rain.  Occasionally Stanton coughed.  The rain only made his condition worse.  He listened to Welles drumming his knuckles against the wall of the carriage.  Between the rapping and the dripping of rain on the carriage top made Stanton feel ready to explode.  He bent over in an asthmatic rage.

“You should be home in bed,” Welles said in a way that was a lecture as opposed to expressing concern.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Stanton spat.  “Then you could be in charge and not me.”

Welles just shook his large, parrot-like head and stared out the windows at the milling crowds.  “All these people.  The people who loved him.”  Welles made the statement not to Stanton in particular but out the misty window.

Stanton, on the other hand, prayed that Lincoln would already be dead.  The carriage pulled up in front of the theater.  Stanton leaned out of the window and waved over a soldier.

“Where have they taken the President?”

The soldier pointed across the street to a three-story tenement.  “There, sir.”

Both men stared at the huge crowd gathered under their umbrellas in the pouring rain.

“We may as well get out here,” Welles said.  “No way will the driver be able to get the carriage any closer.”

Stanton went first, elbowing his way through the people.  Inside, another soldier told them Lincoln was in a bedroom at the back of the stairs on the first floor.  As they began to walk down the hall, Mary Lincoln appeared from the bedroom and screamed.

“How dare you!” she said at the top of her voice, pointing at Stanton.  “How dare you show up here!”

“She’s overwrought,” Welles muttered.

“She’s insane,” Stanton replied.

She scurried down the hall and slapped Stanton full across the face.  “It’s all his fault!  I knew it was too good to be true!  You would not let him live!  You had to kill him!”

Welles tried to put his large hands on her shoulders but he could not control Mrs. Lincoln because of her flailing arms.

“You’re as stupid as all the rest of them!”  She glared at the Secretary of the Navy.  “Didn’t you know?  Couldn’t you tell the difference?”

“Tell what difference?”  Welles stopped trying to contain Mrs. Lincoln to look deep into her eyes.

Stanton motioned to a soldier.  “This woman is hysterical.  Take her to a parlor down the hall.  Make sure she doesn’t leave until I say so.”

The soldier took her by the elbow and gently guided her away.

“A parlor this time?  Not the basement?  Why not the basement?  Couldn’t you tell the difference?” she screamed.

“The basement?” Welles said incredulously.  “And what did she mean?  Tell the difference?”

“Like I said, the woman is mad.”  With that, Stanton continued down the hall with Welles behind him.  He barged into the tiny bedroom to find a young man in evening clothes bent over Lincoln who was naked.

“Who are you?” Stanton demanded.

The young man looked up and said, “Dr. Charles Leale, Mr. Secretary.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor,” Stanton replied gruffly.

Leale smiled a little.  “Well I wasn’t one until six weeks ago.”

“Hmph.  So.  What’s the situation?”

“The president received a bullet wound on the left back of his head,” Leale explained.  “The bullet is lodged deep inside.”

“So this is a mortal wound?”

“Yes, sir, I believe so, sir.”

“Very well.  Carry on.”    Stanton looked around.  “Is Eckert here?  Is Major Eckert here?”

“Over here, sir,” a voice rang out from the hall.

Stanton looked up to see Eckert, who was the chief of the War Department’s Military Telegraph Bureau, walking briskly toward him.  Stanton liked him because he took orders without question.

“I got here as soon as I could, Mr. Secretary.”

“I need a room to set up in,” Stanton said.

“I already secured the back parlor across the hall, sir.”

“Good.  Set up a relay between here and the department’s telegraph office on Seventeenth Street.”  Turning, Stanton left the room and went across the hall with Eckert close behind.

“You still haven’t told me what you think Mrs. Lincoln meant when she said, ‘Couldn’t you tell the difference.’”  Welles stayed on Stanton’s heels.

Stanton turned to Eckert.  “First thing, get Mr. Welles a room also.  He needs to keep the Navy informed of every development.”  He looked at Welles.  “Don’t you agree, Mr. Secretary?  The assassins might try to make their escape by sea.  You don’t want them to slip through our fingers, do you?”

Welles sighed wearily.  “No, we don’t.”  He turned away and began asking for a naval officer.

“Where’s my desk?” Stanton asked Eckert.

“Right here, sir.”  He led the secretary to a desk and oil lamp.

Stanton sat and reached for paper to begin writing notes.  “Shut down the theater.  Take everyone there in custody for questioning.  Shut down all bridges leaving the city.  Telegraph the New York City police.  Tell them to send every detective they can spare.  Telegraph General Grant.  Tell him to return to the city immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”  Eckert saluted and left.

Stanton knew exactly why he made each of his commands.  He wanted to give the illusion he was doing everything possible to catch the conspirators.  He was certain the owners of the theater were innocent but blame had to be cast everywhere except on him.  New York City had more detectives than any other city in the nation.  Every one of them had to be in the District, getting in the way of the district police who knew where to look and who to interrogate.  And he had to keep General Grant under his supervision.  Left to his own devices Grant might start asking too many questions.

Stanton was now in his element.  He was in charge.  At this point of history, he was the Commander In Chief, and he relished every moment of it.

“Sir,” Eckert said, coming back into the room and leaning over.  “The District chief of police is here, sir.  He demands that his forces be in charge of the investigation.”

“No,” Stanton snapped.  “This is not a civilian affair.  This will be a case for a military tribunal.  No question about it.  Tell him to keep the mob orderly.  That’s his job.”

Stanton instinctively knew if he could keep the war department in charge of the investigation and trial, he could control the release of information.  No one must ever know the truth about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

 

 

 

 

Lafayette Baker pulled on the reigns of the carriage, bringing it to a halt on the dark banks of the Potomac River.  He picked a spot about three miles downstream from the District of Columbia.  No one rode passed her this time of night.  Very secluded.  With a bored sigh, he jumped down from the driver’s seat and went around to the passenger seat.

First he picked up the plump body of the woman he had just shot between the eyes.  Secretary of War Stanton had selected her from the Old Capitol Prison to impersonate Mary Todd Lincoln.  Now the war was over she was no longer needed and was actually an encumbrance.  Baker walked with a stealthy pace to the edge of the water, threw the body in, watched as the tide caught it and carried it toward the middle of the wide river where it eventually sank.

Next he grabbed the other corpse under the arms.  He was a large man, and Baker would have to drag him.  Stanton had saved this man from the gallows at Old Capitol Prison because he looked like President Lincoln.  For two and a half years he pretended to be the president, said and did everything Stanton had ordered.  For his obedience he too had been shot between the eyes.  Baker rolled the body into the water and kicked it hard to make sure it entered the current.  Soon, it disappeared into the depths.

Baker had no sympathy for them.  They had sold their souls for a chance to live and deserved to die.  They were cowards.  Life had defeated the man and woman years ago, and they just got around to leaving now.

Drizzle began falling from the clouded sky as Baker got back in the carriage and drove it back to the Executive Mansion, but it did not bother him.  The personal guard of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Baker had become inured to inconvenience, pain and guilt.  When Stanton had ordered him to intimidate, kidnap and murder, he obeyed because that was what he was supposed to do without question, as long as he was paid.

Baker was on his way back to kill another person who knew too much about Stanton and his plot to live.  That knowledge was a death sentence.  This is what his life had become, Baker sighed to himself.  He pulled the mud-bespeckled horse-drawn carriage into the trail that led to the basement door of the Executive Mansion.  The young man he was going to shoot in the head did not know he was coming.

After tying the reins to a hitching post, he went to the door, one hand resting on his revolver holster.  Before he could touch the handle, the door opened and an odd-looking little old man bumped into him.  The man wore a tall stovepipe hat and an oversized black overcoat, which dragged on the ground.  He had scared blue eyes, gray stubble on his trembling chin, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

“Who the hell are you?” Baker bellowed, causing the old man to hunch over.

“I’m the president, aren’t I?”

Stanton had told him that a demented janitor was in the Executive Mansion basement.  Baker remembered the night he arrived to remove the body of a Negro servant.  From one of the rooms he heard a voice calling out, “Stop hurting people!”  That must have been this fool standing in front of him now.

“Get out of here,” Baker snapped, impatient to finish the job without further distractions.

“Yes, sir,” the old man replied meekly and then scurried out the door into the rainy night.

Baker told himself he would be glad when Stanton’s mad scheme was over.  He did not think much of it when Stanton informed him of his new duties two and a half years earlier in September of 1862.  It was madness, and Baker found himself in the thick of it.

Stanton had been extremely disappointed in the ability of Abraham Lincoln to conduct a war.  Union troops suffered a series of devastating defeats during the summer, and Stanton could not allow the pattern of events to continue.  He knew he could do a better job than that bumbling idiot of a president, Lincoln.

Stanton’s plan was an elaborate one.  He would find a man and woman in the Old Capitol prison who resembled the Lincolns.  Under threat, they would agree to impersonate the presidential couple.  Then Stanton would abduct the real Lincolns, marching them downstairs to the White House basement where they would stay for the duration under the watchful eye of an armed guard, as he replaced them upstairs with the convict look-alikes.   The duplicate Lincoln would carry out Stanton’s strategies and win the war by the end of the year.  At that time, Stanton would release Lincoln who would thank him for saving the Union.

The plan did not work out that way.  The years passed with no resolution to the war.  Now it was over, and President Lincoln had to die.  Everyone thought Mrs. Lincoln was crazy anyway so no one would believe her ravings about her two and a half-year captivity in the basement.  The imposters were at the bottom of the Potomac River, and now the private who had guarded for the Lincolns during their captivity was about to die.

Private Adam Christy had never impressed Baker anyway.  The private was a thin red-haired boy who could not control himself.  In 1864, Christy had become desperately drunk and tried to rape the Negro cook in the basement.  The colored butler tried to intervene and save the girl, but in his drunken rage, Christy killed him.  Baker came in the middle of the night to clean up the private’s mess.  Christy represented weakness, and Baker hated weakness.

Earlier in the week, Stanton ordered Christy to find someone to kill the president.  At first, the private refused, saying he had already done enough to ruin the life of a man who had done him no wrong, but when Stanton threatened him with prosecution in the butler’s death, he relented.  When he arrived under the Aqueduct Bridge at midnight with an odd collection of assassins—an actor, a drunk and two simpletons–Christy confirmed Baker’s suspicions of his incompetence.

“Is this it?” Baker remembered asking Christy about the group.  He looked at the dark-haired, good-looking one, and recognized him as John Wilkes Booth, the popular actor.  He seemed to be the leader.  “Now.  Tell me something that convinces me you’re smarter than you look.”

“Sir,” Booth had said, pulling himself up to his full stature, “you are no gentleman, and not welcome to our noble endeavor.”

“This noble endeavor is murder,” Baker had replied.  “True gentlemen don’t kill, so get that idea right out of your head.”  After puffing on his cigar he had added, “So what are your plans?”

Booth had said he planned to shoot the president at Ford’s Theater.  The drunk, who could barely speak English, would kill Johnson at the Kirkwood Hotel, and the simpletons would stab Seward to death at his house.  Baker remembered Christy just stood there, staring across the darkness of the Potomac.

“And who will kill Stanton?” Booth had asked.

“I’ll kill Stanton,” Baker had lied.

Just then a bang rang out from down the basement hall, rousing Baker from his reminiscences.  He looked down the corridor and saw light from a kerosene lamp glimmering from an open door.  Good, Baker thought, Christy shot himself and saved him the trouble.  When he walked into the room, Baker smirked, his suspicions confirmed.  Christy lay there on his back, his head in a pool of spreading blood.  Baker could tell by the position of the gun near his hand on the floor that the private had stuck the revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Sighing deeply Baker walked over to the body wanting to get it out of the Executive Mansion and dispose of it in the Potomac as he had the others.  It had been a long day and he wanted to lie in bed, drink a pint of whiskey and fall asleep.  However, when he bent over the body, Baker stopped short as he looked into Christy’s blank eyes.  They were so sad, so young, so filled with pain.  Tears stained Christy’s freckled cheeks.  Suddenly Baker realized whom Christy looked like.  He saw himself as a young man.

Memories flooded back of his childhood in western New York as a short, thin boy with carrot-red hair.  The bullies teased him, pushed him down and kicked him.  When he ran home crying, he received no sympathy from his stern father.

“You got to learn to stand up for yourself,” his father lectured him.  “Get tough or die.”

That was the way life was.  As he grew up, Baker became a mechanic, and his body thickened with muscle and his fists were calloused from all the fights he had won over bigger boys.  His once-red hair darkened into auburn and he grew a beard to hide the appearance of youthful innocence.

From his hometown, he drifted out west and became a vigilante in San Francisco where, in the name of justice, he learned to kill men guilty of a wide range of crimes such as gambling, ballot-box stuffing, treason, robbery and murder.  Eventually, he had killed so many men he couldn’t remember when killing felt wrong.  It came to feel like business.

Baker met a lovely, naïve girl by the name of Jenny and married her.  She was his connection to the world of sane and civilized people.  By 1861, he and his wife returned to New York relatively wealthy.

At the outbreak of the Civil War General Winfield Scott hired him as a spy.  He was promptly captured in Richmond but quickly succeeded in escaping which led to his being hired by the State Department as a detective.  Eventually he joined the War Department where he gained a reputation as a vicious interrogator.  His reputation brought him to the attention of the Secretary of War himself, Edwin Stanton.  Baker did not want to expose Jenny to the dirty world of Washington politics so he bought her a new home in Philadelphia.  There she would be closer than New York but far enough away never to learn of his business practices..

Baker’s transformation from an innocent, defenseless red-haired youth to government-paid assassin was complete.  Baker thought he had lost that tender side of his character forever until he stared into the dead eyes of Adam Christy.  Then all his fear and frailty came rushing back.  The same self-loathing that was evident on Christy’s face was deep inside Baker.  He saw in the dead eyes the realization that Christy had failed his first test of character in his short life, and now everything was over.  Yes, Baker conceded, they were alike. Except for one fact.  When Baker first failed a test of character, he considered it a victory of determination over weakness.

Now it was too late to change, he thought.  Baker knew that he was as dead on the inside as Christy was, lying there in his own blood.  He was an utterly empty machine proficient in the arts of torture and murder.  And what for, Baker asked himself.  For the money?  He remembered earlier in the evening he had confronted Stanton about why he had gone to such extraordinary lengths to put Lincoln in the basement and then plan his assassination.  Baker accused him of doing it for the power.

“And what is it for you?” he remembered Stanton asking in spite.

“I’m a simple man,” Baker had told him.  “I’m not a lawyer.  I’m not smart enough to want more than to be comfortable.  And it takes money for that.”

“So it’s just for the money?” Stanton said.

“You’re a fool, Mr. Stanton.  You think power will make you happy.”

“Neither does money.”

“That’s right,” Baker remembered telling Stanton, “but it makes being miserable much more fun.”

Now, standing over Christy’s body, Baker realized he was wrong.  But if it was not for the money, then what was it for, his life of violence?  Perhaps it was in revenge for all the suffering he endured as a child.  More than likely, he would never know. His heart was so hardened at this point it made no difference.  A knot developed in the pit of his stomach.  He could no longer make himself touch, let alone pick up, Christy’s body.  Baker also sensed his throat constricting, his face turning red and his eyes filling with tears.  For the first time since he ran down the dusty streets of his little western New York town, Baker began to cry.

Moreover, Baker did not merely allow tears to flow down his rough ruddy cheeks, he bawled loudly.  He sobbed; he gasped for breath, feeling the back of his head burn red-hot.  All the emotion he had suppressed throughout the years came out.  The heat from the room became unbearable; Baker thought he would pass out if he did not get out of the building and inhale fresh, cool night air.

He only made it as far as the hallway before falling to his knees.  At first, his stomach roiled and then his diaphragm contracted violently.  He gagged and his eyes bulged.  Before he knew it, he was vomiting on the floor, his head sagging down.  His heaving continued so much that pungent, liquor-laced acid flowed from his nose.  Between regurgitations, Baker moaned loudly, thinking he wanted to die.  From down the hall he heard a door open.

“Cleotis, I told you to stay out of it.”  Baker recognized the Negro woman’s voice.  It belonged to the cook whom Christy had tried to rape.  “That’s white folks business.”

“There’s a sick man out here, Phebe,” the butler said in a low, firm tone.  “That’s everybody’s business.”

Baker’s body twitched again, and he readied himself for another purge, but nothing came up this time. It did not lessen the pain.  He became aware of a large, strong hand on his shoulder.

“Mister, are you all right?”

“No,” Baker rasped.  “Go away.”

“Let me help you clean up.”

“I said go away.”  He struggled to his knees, wiping his sputum-covered mouth and nostrils with his coat sleeve.  “I’ll clean this up.”  He heard the butler take a few steps away.

“The soldier boy’s on the floor in there all covered with blood.”

“The boy’s dead?”  Phebe’s voice was startled and concerned.  After a pause, the cynical tone returned.  “None of our business.”

Baker tried to stand but his knees buckled again.  Cleotis went back to him and lifted him by the armpits.

“Mister, I don’t know who you are but you need help,” the butler said gently but firmly. There ain’t no two ways about it.”

“No, no,” Baker replied weakly.

“Come on in the kitchen and take a seat.”  Cleotis dragged him down the hall and through the door to the kitchen, placing him in a chair.  “Sit here awhile and you’ll feel better.”  He turned to a table and picked up a dishtowel.  “Phebe, get me a bucket of water,” he called out.

“I don’t wanna.”

“Woman, I’ve about had all that I’m gonna take,” he called out, still calm but louder.  “Now get the bucket now.”  Cleotis returned his attention to Baker and wiped his face.  “Let me clean you up a bit, sir.”

“Why are you being nice to me?”

Cleotis continued to wipe.  “I’m a butler, sir.  That’s what I do.”

In a moment, Phebe entered the kitchen with a bucket of water.  Baker looked up and noticed that she was pregnant.

“Is that your wife?” he mumbled, succumbing to Cleotis’ care.

“In the eyes of the Lord, sir,” the butler replied.  “Sometimes that’s the best us colored folks can do.”

After feeling the fresh water on his face, Baker began to think more rationally.  He realized he did need help cleaning up the evidence.

“I didn’t shoot the boy.”

“I know, sir,” Cleotis said, finishing up.  “There now.  You look a heap better.”  He turned to Phebe.  “Get the mop and start cleaning up that sickness out there in the hall.”

“Yes, Cleotis,” she said with a sigh while grabbing the mop from behind the door.

“We don’t want to know no more than that,” the butler told Baker.  “It ain’t healthy.  If you get the body out of here then we can clean everything up and by tomorrow morning, everything will be back to normal.  There never was a soldier boy in the basement of the White House, and that’s a fact.”