I support amendment to District emancipation, providing funds for such purpose. But to where? Africa? Central America? Must discuss with their leaders. Immediate general emancipation is a thing I consider but am not ready to do. The real problem with a general emancipation is—

There the writing stopped, at the place where Bates had asked about the raisins.

Again Halsey thought about shoving this diary into one of the locking drawers, but he could not resist turning to the front page.

The first entry was dated March 3, 1861, the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration.

Congress proposes Constitutional amend’t, stating federal gov’t “shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states.” I am for the old ship and the chart of the old pilots. There is no need for amend’t to protect interests of slave owners. It is not now and never will be my intention to interfere with them in their own states, as I’ll say t’morrow.

Halsey flipped through a few more pages, read a few more entries. Each one revealed some new bit of the president’s thinking about slavery and his attitude toward the Negroes, whose existence in bondage may have been the catalyst for the war but was not, in the eyes of thinking men like himself, the true reason for fighting it.

In an entry for early March 1861, Lincoln jotted down calculations:

$400 per slave x number of slaves in Border States = cost of how many days of war? Compensated emancipation cheaper than fighting.

In April, a week after the war had begun, Lincoln wrote:

Gloom and torment. Await troops, but only Mass. answers call. Do we have any army but what comes from Mass. Where are the rest? Do they hesitate, thinking this is war to free the Negro? This is not a war to free the Negro. The central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity of proving that popular gov’t is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority may break away whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove incapability of people to govern themselves.

Halsey heard echoes.… Lincoln had said much of this publicly, but not all of it. And though he could appear the gloomiest of men—until he told a story—he could not have wanted Americans to know that their leader had ever been afflicted by “gloom and torment.”

Halsey realized that his mouth had gone dry. Spittin’ cotton. That’s what the soldiers called it when a man’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth before battle. But for Halsey it happened as he read the thoughts of the man whose election had caused all the battles … or so some claimed.

And he decided, right then, that he would not betray those thoughts. Those that were private and unspoken might also be incendiary. Best return them to the president as soon as possible. But when?

Now.

Though Halsey was not supposed to leave his post, he would rather answer questions about a brief absence than about a small leather-bound diary. So he slipped it into his breast pocket, turned, and …

… bumped into a slope-shouldered man dressed mostly in brown—brown suit, brown vest, brown tie, brown porkpie hat, thick brown beard, stubby brown cigar.

“Leavin’ early, Lieutenant?” Even his voice sounded brown, low pitched and dark.

“I’ll be back.”

“Wouldn’t want you sneakin’ off before your shift ends, not after stuffin’ government property in your pocket.”

Halsey looked into the brown eyes beneath the thick brown brow. The color described the man. Halsey hoped the color red did not describe his own face. He said, “Detective Joseph Albert McNealy, you are a suspicious man.”

“So there’s nothin’ in your pocket?”

“What’s in my pocket’s my own business.”

McNealy flashed a smile, tobacco-stain yellow in that nest of brown facial hair. “We live in a city under siege, Lieutenant. There’s rebel spies on every corner. There’s rebel sympathizers in every family. There’s even rebels in this building, I suspect.”

“Is that why you’re sneaking around at six in the morning?”

There came a commotion in the hall—shuffling feet, snapping heels, muskets presenting, and a single voice rising. It was the sound that always preceded the puffed-up man in the swallowtail coat. Then he appeared:

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, already in high dudgeon, and the day hadn’t even begun yet.