The Lincoln Myth(11)

She smiled. “That would be lovely.”





SEVEN





ATLANTA, GEORGIA


STEPHANIE WAS A CAREER LAWYER. SHE’D STARTED AT THE State Department right out of law school, then moved to Justice and worked her way up through the ranks to deputy attorney general. Eventually she might have garnered the top spot from some president, but the Magellan Billet changed everything. The idea had been to cultivate a special investigative unit, outside the FBI, the CIA, and the military, directly responsive to the executive branch, its agents schooled in both law and espionage.

Independent. Innovative. Discreet.

Those were the ideals.

And the idea had worked.

But she wasn’t oblivious to politics. She’d served presidents and attorneys general from both parties. Though elected and reelected on a pledge of bipartisan cooperation, for the past seven and a half years Danny Daniels had been locked in a fierce political war. There’d been treacherous incidents with his vice president, one attorney general, and a former deputy national security adviser. Even an assassination attempt. She and the Billet had been involved with all of those crises. Now here she was again. Right in the thick of something extraordinary.

“Ever wonder what you’ll do when your time here is over?” Davis asked.

They still sat in the cafeteria, empty in the midafternoon.

“I plan to work forever.”

“We could both write tell-all books. Or maybe go on TV. CNN or CNBC or Fox. Be their resident expert, spouting zingers. Pointing out how stupid the new administration is. It’s so much easier to Monday-morning-quarterback than play the game on Sunday.”

She wondered about Davis’ fatalism, most likely a case of the last-term blues. She’d seen it before. During Daniels’ first term there’d actually been a strong push to replace her, but the effort had fizzled. Maybe because nobody wanted her job. Not much glamour in working out of a quiet Georgia office, away from the D.C. limelight. Careers were woven from much thicker thread. One thing, though, was clear—Edwin Davis was absolutely loyal to his boss. As was she. And one other thing. Usually, no one at Justice or Congress or the White House ever gave her or the Billet much thought. But now she’d materialized on the radar screen of the senior senator from Utah.

“What does Rowan want from me?”

“He’s after something that we thought was only a myth.”

She caught the tone of his voice, which signaled trouble.

“I need to tell you a story.”


On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. History notes it as a momentous achievement. The reality, though, is far different. The proclamation was not law. Congress never enacted it, and no state adopted it. Lincoln issued it on his supposed authority as commander in chief of the military. But it freed no one. Its mandate applied only to slaves held in the ten states then in rebellion. It did not outlaw slavery, and granted no citizenship to those freed. In the federally held parts of the South, which included much of Tennessee and Virginia, where blacks could have actually been freed and made citizens, the proclamation had no applicability. Maryland and Kentucky were likewise exempted, as were parts of Louisiana. In short, the Emancipation Proclamation was but a political gimmick. It freed slaves only where Lincoln had no authority. William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, said it best. “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

Lincoln publicly called the proclamation a “war measure,” but privately admitted that it was useless. After all, the Constitution itself sanctioned slavery. Article I, Section 2, specifically designated that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person on issues of congressional representation and taxes. Article IV, Section 2, required that fugitive slaves in free states be returned to their masters. Many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had owned slaves—so no surprise that not a single word was included that jeopardized those rights.

At the time, the South was winning the Civil War. So the only practical effect the proclamation could have had was to inspire a slave uprising—a rebellion from within that could have crippled the enemy. Revolt was certainly a concern, as most able-bodied Southerners were away fighting in the army, their farms and plantations supervised by the elderly or their wives.

But no uprising occurred.

Instead the effect of the proclamation was felt primarily in the North.

And not in a good way.

Most Northerners were shocked by the stunt. Few connected the war with the abolition of slavery. White Northerners, by and large, despised Africans, their Black Codes offering nothing in the way of equality for the freed slaves already living there. Discrimination was deeply institutionalized. Northern newspapers strongly opposed the end of slavery. And after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, violence toward Northern blacks radically increased.