She glanced up from the sheet.
“The Mormons still have that information,” Daniels said. “They’ve had it since 1863, when Lincoln made the deal with Brigham Young.”
“Edwin told me about that.”
“Pretty smart move, actually. Lincoln never enforced the anti-polygamy act against the Mormons, and Young kept the telegraph lines and the railroads heading west. He also never sent men to fight for the South.”
“This message passed between the early presidents. Is it real?”
“Apparently so. Something akin to it is mentioned in other classified documents. Ones only presidents can see. I read them seven years ago. The references are fleeting, but there. George Washington definitely passed something down that eventually made its way to Lincoln. Unfortunately, the sixteenth president was killed before he had a chance to pass it to the seventeenth. So it was forgotten. Except by Mary Todd.”
She sensed something else. “What aren’t you saying?”
He opened the file and handed her another sheet of more typed text.
“That’s a clean version of a note included in the classified papers. It’s from James Madison, written at the end of his second term in 1817. Presumably for his successor, James Monroe.”
As to the message sent forward by our first president, I, being the fourth man to hold this honored post do add this addendum, which should likewise be passed forward. Mr. Washington was present that Saturday evening of the great convention. He chaired the extraordinary session and has personal knowledge of all that transpired. Until assuming this office, I was unaware as to what, if anything, had occurred with the result of that gathering. I was pleased to discover that Mr. Washington had ensured that it be passed from president to president. Having never missed a day of the Constitutional Convention, nor at most a casual fraction of an hour in any day, I assumed a seat in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hands. In this favorable position for hearing all that passed, I noted what was read from the chair or spoken by the members. My notes of the great convention were motivated by an earnest desire for completeness and accuracy and, past my death, which hopefully will not occur for a number of years, they shall be published. But all later presidents must know that those notes are not complete. Hidden beneath my summer study is what is needed for a total understanding. If any subsequent holder of this office deems it prudent to act upon what Mr. Washington has allowed to survive, that bounty could prove most useful.
“We’ve had a lot of presidents,” she said, “since Madison. Don’t you think one of them went for a look?”
“This note was never attached to anything, nor passed on. It was apparently secreted away, then found a year ago in some of Madison’s private papers stored at the Library of Congress. No president, except me, has ever seen it. Luckily, the person who found it works for me.” He handed her another item from the file encased with a plastic sheet protector. “That’s Madison’s original note, as handwritten. Notice anything?”
She did. At the bottom.
Two letters.
IV.
“Roman numerals?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We don’t know.”
Daniels was clearly not his usual gregarious self. None of the brash stories or loud voice. Instead, he sat rigid in the chair, his face as stiff as a mask. Was he afraid? She never had seen this man flinch in the face of anything.
“James Buchanan is quoted, just prior to the Civil War, saying he might be the last president of the United States. I never understood what he truly meant by that comment, until recently.”
“Buchanan was wrong. The South lost the war.”
“That’s the problem, Stephanie. He may not have been wrong. But Lincoln came along and bluffed a pair of twos in a poker game where everyone else was holding a much better hand. And he won. Only to have his brains blown out at the end. I’m not going to be the last president of the United States.”
She had to learn more, so she tried a safer subject. “What did Madison mean by his summer study?”
“It’s at Montpelier, his home in Virginia, where he built himself a temple.”
She’d visited there twice and had seen the columned structure. Madison loved Roman classicism, so he’d based the structure on the tempietto of Bramante in Rome. It sat on a knoll, among old-growth cedar and fir trees, in the garden adjacent to the house.
“Madison had style,” Daniels said. “Beneath his temple he dug a pit, which became the icehouse. The original flooring above was wood, so it would have been cool in summer to stand out there. Like air-conditioning. That wood floor is gone, replaced by a concrete slab with a hatch in the middle.”