The Day Lincoln Lost Read online

  On that second night, with the wagon stopped near an inn, she saw her chance. Luke had gone in some hours ago but had not returned. The two guards had been drinking—despite Luke’s constantly yelling at them that he wasn’t paying them to imbibe. They seemed to have fallen into a deep slumber, as had the other slaves.

  Lucy looked up, found the North Star and tried to fix in her mind where it was. Then she waited for the moon to set. Once it did, she looked around and saw that everyone in the wagon was still asleep.

  Her first problem was the rope that tied her to the railing. It was loose enough that she was able to twist around in her seat and reach the knot. It was poorly made and she had it undone in seconds.

  With the rope gathered up into her hand, she climbed quietly over the tailgate and lowered herself to the ground, trying to keep the manacles from jangling. It was hard because she had begun shaking from fear again. She willed it to stop, and, to her surprise, it did.

  She walked slowly and quietly north until she reached some scrub woods. She turned into the woods, walked some more and finally began to run when she thought that the noise she was making would no longer reach back to the wagon. She had also brought two blankets with her: her own, and one from one of the other slaves, which she had picked up as she fled.

  Once she had gone a ways, she dropped the other slave’s blanket where she hoped it would be easily seen. Perhaps the dogs would find it, and the smell would lead them to circle back to the blanket’s owner, who was still back in the wagon. It probably wouldn’t work, but she smiled at the thought.

  She needed to get the manacles off her wrists. She folded her thumbs into her palms and tried to work the metal off. It proved more difficult than she thought it would be. Finally, after much pushing and shoving, including using a thin tree as a lever against which to pull, she managed to get them off. The effort had left her wrists and hands scraped raw.

  What to do with the manacles and their trailing rope? She unknotted the rope and kept it, thinking she might have need of it later. When she came upon a stream, she threw the manacles into a deep pool.

  Now all she needed to do was to find the Railroad. She checked the North Star, set off and thanked Yaya for her help.

  3

  Lucy’s first two days on the run had been terrifying.

  The terror had begun not long after she dropped the manacles into the stream. When, after a few more minutes of running, she looked up to check the North Star once again, it had disappeared. The thickening forest canopy had blocked out the sky, and she no longer knew in which direction she was running. Was she perhaps heading back toward her captors? She stopped for a few seconds, then started running again. Not long after that, she heard dogs barking and men yelling. They sounded close.

  One of the returned slaves, whose wounds she had tried to soothe, had told her, “If they’re close, get in the water and walk as far as you can. Then get down in it. They won’t be able to smell you.”

  Within minutes of hearing the dogs, she found a stream, jumped in and walked down it, stumbling at times on the bottom stones, but managing each time to catch herself. When she could walk no farther, she collapsed and let the water wash over her for what seemed like forever. It must have worked, she thought, because no dogs found her.

  She hadn’t counted on the insects—what seemed like thousands of mosquitoes, each and every one looking for its next blood meal. Or the chiggers and ticks and other things that bit deep. She tried to stop scratching, because she knew from what she’d seen on the men who worked the fields back home that the bites she picked at would soon begin to fester. “Stop it!” she said aloud to herself. “Stop! Stop!” It did little good, and by the second day some of the bites were starting to ooze.

  She tried to comfort herself by imagining herself in Canada, although she had trouble picturing exactly what that would be like or what she would be doing there. But it made her smile and, briefly, stop scratching.

  On the third day she found a tree whose oozing sap, leaking from holes that bird or insects had drilled in its bark, soothed her bites.

  That night she woke up screaming. A snake had crawled right across her face before moving on.

  In the morning, she woke up and said to herself, “I have to get out of these woods and use the roads.”

  But she figured she could only trust the roads late at night. As each day dawned, she retreated back into the woods, found a hollow spot to sleep in and covered herself with leaves. It not only obscured her from sight but seemed to keep at least some of the bugs and all of the snakes away.

  By the start of the fourth day, she had exhausted the smoked meat she had brought. At one point, growing hungry, she ate some berries, but it didn’t help. Later, she leaned over a stream, waited for what seemed like forever and finally flipped a small fish onto the bank.

  Her grandmother had shown her how to clean a fish with a knife. This time she did it with her fingers, and ate the flesh raw, gagging at first at the thought of putting it in her mouth uncooked. When she had finished every morsel of flesh she could find amid the small bones, she said, aloud, “Thank you, Yaya.”

  Despite the fish, by the end of the fourth day she was weak from hunger. That night, as she trudged along a road in the dark, she came upon an abandoned cabin, its door gone and one wall half-caved-in. It looked dangerous to go inside, but looking in, she thought she saw a jar of something sitting on a high shelf and decided to risk it. She went in, stepping carefully across the rotting floor lest it cave in. She reached up to the shelf and found what turned out to be a jar of preserves.

  As she stepped out of the house, the rotted wall collapsed inward, and she realized she was at a point where she would do almost anything to get food.

  She managed to eat only a little bit of the preserves at a time, making it last for more than a day.

  Still, she was brutally hungry. On the next night, as she walked along a darkened road, she saw, in the far distance, a lone house that seemed to be out in the country, away from any town. She could see a family of two adults and two children getting into a carriage in front of the house. She hid in the woods until the carriage moved out of sight.

  When she got to the house, there were no candles burning inside. She hoped that meant everyone was gone. She felt herself trembling as she walked up to the front door and pushed on it. It yielded and swung open. With her heart pounding loudly in her chest, she walked in.

  Soon enough, though, she discovered that whatever food there was in that house had been put in a cupboard and shut fast behind a sturdy lock. She had neither the skill not the strength to pry it open. She broke into tears and left.

  4

  Over the next several days and nights, she managed to flip a few more fish out of streams. She also came upon two more abandoned cabins and took from them the small amounts of food that had been left behind. But it was not enough to stave off her growing hunger. One day she lifted her shift and looked down at her torso. Where before there had been a thin layer of fat, she could now see each and every one of her ribs.

  Finally, toward the end of still another seemingly endless day on the run (Lucy had long ago lost track of how many days it had been), she came to a large river. It was the widest she had ever seen. She had no idea how to get across. Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she walked downstream, keeping near the bank until she came to some big boats tethered to a pier. She heard men talking and watched them loading something onto the boats. Long past dark, after the men had left, she sneaked aboard one of boats, went down a ladder to the hold and hid under a large pile of smelly rags and tarps. Early in the night, she had to pee, and peed where she was. She worried someone would smell it when they came back in the morning. Eventually, her worry gave way to sleep.

  She was awakened by the sound of men coming back down the ladder and talking among themselves, saying it was time to shove off. S
he was shaking in fear about the smell of her pee, which was sharp in her nostrils, but no one said anything about it. She was terrified her shaking would make the pile of rags move, but if it did no one noticed.

  She felt the boat start to move and, later, bump when it hit something. She waited until she heard the men leave again, then moved out from under the rags and crept back up the ladder to the deck, where the light that temporarily blinded her told her it was morning. She could see that the boat was now at a dock. The men were nowhere to be seen, nor was anyone on the dock. She looked behind her and could see that they had crossed the river. She saw no choice but to make a run for it.

  She moved down a gangway onto the dock and sprinted toward a road she could see in the distance. She heard men shouting, but none came after her. She reached the road and ran along it for a minute or two, then plunged into the woods, trying to run as fast as she could without stepping in a hole. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Eventually, she could go no farther and collapsed.

  As she lay there panting, she realized that sooner or later she was going to get caught. And sooner or later, if she didn’t want to be found and sent back in chains, she was going to have to throw herself on the mercy of some white person and hope they would take pity on her and lead her to the Railroad. Otherwise, she was going to break an ankle or a leg and die in the woods. Or be eaten by something. Along the way, she had already avoided a few bears and stepped away from several snakes, all of whom had, luckily, seemed uninterested in her.

  After her breathing returned to normal, she got up and continued to make her way through the trees, avoiding the road for the time being. When she was finally too exhausted to go any farther, she lay down, covered herself over with leaves and fell asleep again.

  She was roused by a foot poking her side and a voice saying, “Well, well, what have we here?”

  A hand brushed the leaves away from her face and she found herself staring up at an old white man with bone-white hair and blue eyes.

  “You must be that slave girl what escaped from Riverview Plantation down in Kentuck. They had posters up about you all over the towns near there.”

  She said nothing in response.

  “Lucky none of them posters got put up hereabouts. Slave catchers be on you in a second.”

  And then, as if to answer a question she wanted to ask but was afraid to voice, he said, “Guess there ain’t no posters ’round here because they think you died in the river or got yourself ate by one creature or the other.”

  She still said nothing.

  “I know your name, too,” he said. “From the posters. Lucy Battelle.”

  There seemed little point in denying it so, finally, she spoke and said, “Yes.”

  “And I suppose you’re looking for the Underground Railroad,” he said.

  She shook her head up and down.

  “Well, I can take you to ’em. Usual, I charge the Railroaders for delivering the slave to ’em. But seeing as you are so young, I’m gonna do it free.” He grinned and she saw that there was something wrong with his upper lip. Odd as it was, she felt sorry for him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Stand on up,” he said.

  She did and when the leaves had fallen away, he looked her up and down and said, “Here’s the thing. I can’t hardly take you anywhere looking like that. We gotta get you cleaned up.”

  He thought for a moment. “There’s a town right close. I’m gonna get you some better things to put on so you don’t look like no escaped slave. You stay here while I get ’em and come back.” Almost as an afterthought, he said, “I’ll bring food.”

  With that, he walked off.

  After he left, Lucy thought, I should get up and run away. Then she thought, Well, why would he leave me here to run away if he wasn’t really gonna help me? She burrowed back under the leaves and fell back asleep. After some time—she had no idea how long it had been—the man came back with clothes for her—a green, cotton dress that more or less fit—and some shoes.

  He turned around while she changed into the dress.

  When they walked back to the road, she saw that he had brought a one-horse carriage and there was bread, cheese and a small piece of meat in a basket on the seat. “Please get in,” he said. “Eat what you want.”

  After she was seated, he said, “Here’s the thing. We are in Illinois, a free state. People here can’t legally have no slaves. But folks ’round here is used to people with Negro servants. So that’s what you gonna be. Get it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “We’re still three days’ ride from a house I know is on the Railroad. I got friends along the way we kin stay with, won’t ask no questions. But you got to shut up, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We run into anyone, I talk. You say nothing.”

  “Alright. What’s your name?” she said.

  “Robert Hacker. Friends call me Bobby.”

  He flicked his whip at the horse, and the carriage moved forward. Lucy picked up the piece of meat out of the basket—it was chicken—and bit into it. It tasted like the best thing she’d ever eaten. In Canada, there would be endless chicken, she was sure.

  5

  Springfield, Illinois

  Late August 1860

  Abby Kelley Foster knew she had become famous, even though her Quaker upbringing required that she pay it no heed, and she did not—except when she needed something done for the cause of the slave. In those cases, she was always willing to take full advantage.

  She also knew that she was beautiful. Well, she had once been beautiful. Now, at age forty-nine, she had become what people called handsome. Her eyes were still deep and blue, but her hair, once flaxen, was going gray, and the bloom of youth had left her cheeks. And yet...

  “Do not be vain.” She said it aloud to the mirror. “It does not become you.” Even twenty years after her mother’s death, she could still hear her mother reproving her for her vanity.

  If she were honest with herself, the mirror reflected back to her more than just the lost bloom of youth. She looked downright worn-out. Perhaps it was because she was bone-tired, not just from the long train ride, but from her entire career. This month would see the twenty-second anniversary of the day she had first gone out on her own, near her hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts, as an abolition lecturer, asking people to “consider the poor slave.” And asking them to do something about it, lecturing to the few who might’ve been willing to listen way back then. If they had not instead been throwing things at her.

  In some ways, she realized, that day was a more important anniversary to her than the day she had gotten married or the day her daughter had been born. Because it was the day, as her Quaker parents would have said, that the way had opened to her.

  The mirror she had been staring into was on the wall of her room in the Chenery House Hotel, in Springfield, Illinois, where she had just checked in. Abby had never been to Illinois before. She had come at the request of a good friend, whose abolitionist husband had been taken seriously ill on a trip to Springfield and needed someone to accompany him back to Boston. It would be a multiday trip with many changes of train and difficult for an invalid traveling alone.

  In the old days, the idea of a woman of her social class traveling openly with a man to whom she was not married would have been a scandal. Now, at least among the more progressive of the abolitionists, it was routine. It was—mostly—not like the old days when her appointment to a committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society had split the organization down the middle, as some of the men walked out in protest at serving with a woman, and went on to form their own antislavery organization.

  Somehow, the Reverend Albert Hale, the pastor of Springfield’s Second Presbyterian Church, whom she had met several times at antislavery meetings, had learned she was coming to town. He had se
nt her a telegram importuning her to give a lecture at his church, the largest abolitionist congregation in Springfield. He had added that she could expect to address a large, fervently abolitionist crowd, from whom she could raise a lot of money for the cause. The latter point had attracted her because The Bugle, the antislavery newspaper she had founded in Ohio was, as always, in need of funds.

  The only downside to speaking at Hale’s church was that she would be speaking in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for president of the United States. She supposed that people would expect her to say something about him. She hoped they would not be disappointed because what she had to say about Lincoln was not going to be anything good.

  She sighed, put on her plain Quaker bonnet and went down to the hotel dining room to join Reverend Hale for an early supper. In the lobby, she instantly recognized Hale from their last encounter, years before. He had hardly changed—still thin and balding on top, with a graying thatch of hair on each side that gave him a slightly impish look.

  He clearly recognized her, too, because he strode forward and held out his hand. She took it and they shook. “Mrs. Foster, it is so good to see you again after so long a time. Welcome to Springfield.”

  “Thank you, but please call me Abby.”

  “Of course! Let us go in to supper. I have made a reservation at the hotel’s very fine restaurant.”

  She noted that he had not in return invited her to call him Albert. She had noticed, over the years, that ministers—she had met hundreds of them—tended to be a rather formal lot. She would call him Albert or not, as it pleased her.

  The restaurant was indeed fine, although its menu seemed focused on clearing the prairie of cows, so that they might be turned into beefsteaks, beef stews, beef potpies and a dozen other beef dishes, with a few chickens thrown in for good measure. Without explaining her dietary preferences, she asked for a double order of a chicken noodle casserole. She ate the noodles but not the chicken, and when Hale asked about it, just said the train ride had upset her stomach.