In January of 1838, Lincoln delivers, to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, his first major speech. He is one month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, recently reelected to his third term in the Illinois General Assembly. He’s already been a farmer, a clerk, a postmaster, a surveyor, an army captain, and a lawyer.
Two horrific murders, the first of a black man, the second of a white, form the backdrop to this speech. The first was the lynching of twenty-six-year-old Francis McIntosh in St. Louis. McIntosh was tied to a tree and burned alive. A grand jury being convened, the judge instructed them not to blame the mob, but rather those abolitionists who had stirred things up. He called one out by name—the minister and newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy then fled St. Louis for Alton, Illinois, where the mob killed him anyway. In that trial, the jury chair had been part of the mob and the judge himself was called as a witness for the defense. In neither case was anyone found guilty.
The death of the white man, Lovejoy, has a national impact. This is allegedly the moment John Brown decides to devote his life to the eradication of slavery. But both murders affect Lincoln deeply. In his speech, he warns of two possible threats to the republic. The first is found in the lawless actions of the mob, the second in the inevitable rise someday of an aspiring dictator. The gravest peril will come if the mob and the dictator unite.
BOOK ONE
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.
—W. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Rosalie
i
The Living
Rosalie, the oldest daughter, is sitting on the steps that lead down to Beech Spring, watching her baby brother and sister make boats out of leaves. She is thinking of Ophelia, drifting in her sodden gown, her hair spread over the water, her face surrounded by flowers. She is dreaming of what it would be like to be beautiful and dead. The month is March, the year 1838. In July, Rosalie will be fifteen years old. She finds Love Tragic more satisfying to contemplate than Love Triumphant.
Rosalie is neither dead nor beautiful though the first is easier for her to imagine than the second. She resembles her father and her older brother, but in miniature, and with little feminizing of their features. Reclusive, reticent, stocky, she is not witty and graceful like the rest. Nothing is expected of her, except that she be a good girl and a help to her mother. She wants little attention and gets less—the most unremarkable child in this remarkable family.
The long winter is just coming to its end. The blackbirds have arrived, the robins are expected, and Rosalie feels the turn in her breath, in her bones. She is not quite happy, but surprisingly close to it. She feels light. Perhaps the bad times are over.
The moment she registers the feeling, it slips away. There is a palpable relief whenever Father leaves on tour. Mail day is the exception. By noon, Mother will be reading a letter from Father. The letter will be good or it will be bad. Mother will need her desperately or she won’t need her at all.
The sky above the trees is pale and bare and skims in reflection over the flat surface of the water. It’s not a warm day, but it’s a dry one. Rosalie is wearing her shawl, her bonnet, and a pair of sturdy boots that were bought some years ago for her brother June.
At sixteen, June is the oldest child. He’s off in the barley fields this morning, because Father has read an article on some new fertilizing technique and so it must be tried at once. Father is always impatient for the completion of projects in which he has no part. He often berates his own father for lack of industry. Father thinks Grandfather drinks too much.
Grandfather thinks the same of Father. They quarrel about this endlessly whenever Father is home, often from their customary chairs at the Churchville Tavern, where all such arguments can be fueled by the jolly god.
Rosalie doesn’t know where her grandfather is just now. Since her little brother Henry Byron died, Grandfather is often hard to find, and mostly they don’t look. He comes. He goes. Sometimes he misses a meal, but not often. He used to give the children lessons, but really this was just for Henry; none of the other children are promising enough to interest him. Not June, who is more brawn than brains, a handsome, genial disappointment they once hoped would be a doctor or lawyer. Certainly not Rosalie.
Upslope, Mother appears at the door of the cabin, stands looking across the lawn. Her arms curve around her belly, holding it up like a great globe. She can’t put on her shoes now or hook the laces without Rosalie’s help.
Her face is in the sun, her eyes closed to better enjoy the warmth. She looks tired, but peaceful. She looks, just for the moment, like a young girl. “Someone is having a busy morning,” she says, “swimming about in there.” And then, opening her eyes, aging instantly back into her cares and worries, “Don’t let Asia play so near the water.” She vanishes back into the dark cabin.
As if Rosalie is not watching every move Asia makes.
As if Asia will do anything Rosalie asks! Asia is the youngest, if you don’t count the swimmer in Mother’s belly. Two years old, but only recently named and Rosalie still isn’t used to thinking of her as Asia. Her parents had settled on Ayesha, or maybe Sidney, unable to choose between the two. Then suddenly, a letter from Father. “Let her be called Asia,” he wrote, “because God first walked with man on that continent. With Frigga for a middle name since she was born on a Friday.” Mother wasn’t entirely pleased so they surreptitiously call her Asia Sidney now, and will until she’s grown enough to bear the full weight of Frigga.
In point of fact, Asia was born on a Thursday.
Edwin, Rosalie’s little brother, is four. Edwin is crying, which he does the way he does all things, quietly. He’s been trying to collect pebbles and seed pods to be passengers in his boats, but Asia keeps taking them and throwing them into the spring.
Rosalie comes to kneel beside him, pushes up her sleeve with one hand, and reaches into the cold water with the other. She’s distracted momentarily by the magic of her fingers elongating and refracting. Asia cannot throw well. Edwin’s pebbles are easily rescued. She hands three back to him, wiping her cold hand on the hem of her skirt.
This makes Asia so angry she can’t even speak. She points to the water and sobs. She stamps her feet and screams. Mother comes to the door again. “We’re all fine here,” Rosalie says, but she speaks so softly that only Asia and Edwin hear her. What she says makes Asia even louder and angrier since it isn’t at all true.