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"The greatest enemy of truth is often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
- John F. Kennedy
Steve Berry is a master at taking historical facts as well as myths, adding a dash of creative license, and coming up with plausible thriller.
The Lincoln Myth is the fourth of his books I've read and the third of the Cotton Malone spy thrillers I've read. Malone is a retired former special agent with an agency called the Magellan Billet, part of the Justice Department. He is a former Air Force pilot, a skilled marksman and and very smart with an eidetic memory. He knows how to think on his feet to get himself out of tough spots.
And while he is retired, living in Denmark where he owns an antiquarian bookshop, it seems his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, always finds some reason to call on his services, hiring him as a freelance agent for specific projects.
The first Malone book I read was The Paris Vendetta. My wife and I picked it up because we fell in love with Paris when we visited that city in 2011 which led us to picking up a couple of novels which take place in that city. (We also picked up Vince Flynn's Kill Shot which has a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the cover.)
The Paris Vendetta is about a cabal of multi-millionaires out to control the global economy. That seems to be a popular, albeit misguided obsession with some libertarians. The handbook of these plotters is based on a real document which Berry relates in the Writer's Note after the novel. Notably The Report From Iron Mountain which was allegedly a blueprint for maintaining a war economy in the United States because of its supposed economic benefits. I discussed the book briefly in a previous essay, A Machiavellian Take on Fear.
As noted above, all of Berry's books are loosely based on historical events and/or myths. His first novel, a stand-alone called The Amber Room, is about an amazing piece of Russian art that went missing during WWII.
Last month I read The 14th Colony which is about a couple of Soviet era KGB agents who haven't come to terms with the fall of communism and plot to put into effect a decades old plot hatched by Yuri Andropov, one of the last hard-line Soviet premiers. It also involves apparent weaknesses in the law governing the line of succession to the presidency of the United States. Part of the plot revolves around secret plans (real - not fictional) for an invasion of Canada by the Americans over the years.
The 14th Colony reunites Cotton Malone with his former girlfriend Cassiopeia Vitt. The story alludes to their breakup over incidents in Utah. So I went looking for that novel which happens to be The Lincoln Myth.
First the myth. Lincoln was a man motivated by a desire to end the barbaric practice of slavery. The Civil War was fought to free the slaves.
The fact of the matter is that the Civil War was fought to preserve the union, to prevent the Southern states from seceding from the United States.
The prologue takes place on Sept. 10, 1861 when Lincoln met with Jesse Benton Fremont, the wife of one of his generals, John Fremont. Fremont was actually the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party, losing to James Buchanan in 1856.
A month before, the general had unilaterally issued a proclamation freeing all the slaves belonging to rebels in Missouri. The general had ignored a direct order to modify this emancipation declaration. The general had dispatched his wife, a strong and determined woman, to make his case directly to the President.
The prologue notes that Lincoln had "already thrown the secessionists an offer, telling them that they could keep their slaves. They could even raise a flag and have their confederacy - provided they allowed the collection of Northern tariffs in their ports. If the South became free of tariffs, Northern industrial interests would be crippled, the national government would be rendered broke. Tariffs were the country's main source of revenue. Without them, the North would flounder."
The South had rejected these terms, firing on Fort Sumter.
Berry bases the dialogue between Lincoln and Mrs. Fremont on historical accounts and the quotes on slavery are taken verbatim from Lincoln's correspondence with Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, which was published in 1862.
Among others (edited for brevity's sake): "This is a conflict for a great national object and the Negro has nothing to do with it. If this conflict be about freeing of slaves, then we shall surely lose."
"I have not left anyone in doubt. My task is to save the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all slaves, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."
Fremont, ironically, had lost the 1856 election, precisely because he had made abolition the main plank of his platform. Now his insubordination had put Lincoln between a rock and a hard place because "Fremont's unilateral emancipation had become popular with abolitionists and liberal Republicans who wanted slavery ended now. A bold strike at their champion would be political suicide."
From the prologue we move to the present and as Berry states in the end note, "this novel deals with secession, an issue upon which the U.S. Constitution is silent. No mention is made anywhere of how a state could leave the Union."
The definitive account of the debates of the the Federal Convention of 1787 are those published by James Madison. These were not published until 53 years after the convention and Madison had acknowledged that he had altered them and they are suspect. As Berry comments in his end note, "What actually happened at the National Convention we will never know. So to say that secession is unconstitutional, or that the founders did not contemplate such a possibility, would be wrong."
Here's the rub. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union which stipulated that "The Union shall be perpetual". The Constitution made no such mention but did use the words "to create a more perfect union". Did this mean that secession was constitutional or or that it was unconstitutional?
Berry is a lawyer and he believes that secession clearly is legal. A decision of the Supreme Court after the war in 1869 known as Texas v. White (about United States bonds sold by Texas during the Civil War) ruled that "Texas had remained a United States state ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederate States of America and its being under military rule at the time of the decision in the case." A decision Berry believes was politically motivated. "What else could the High Court have done? Rule the entire Civil War a waste of effort? That 600,000 people had died for nothing?"
So the constitutionality of secession plays a central role in the whole novel.
The other historical angle incorporated into the novel is the role that Mormons played in the Civil War. The North was losing early in the war and Lincoln did not want the Utah Territory to help the South. So he brokered a deal with Brigham Young, the Mormon leader and Governor of the territory. Among other things, the federal government promised not to enforce its anti-polygamy law in the territory if they kept out of the Civil War.
The book goes into a lot of history of the Mormon religion which is interesting in and of itself. And two key players emerge, Utah Senator Thaddeus Rowan and a Spanish Mormon fundamentalist, Josepe Salazar, who suffers a mental disorder and sees visions of Mormon founder Joseph Smith as an angel.
Berry adds the following fictional twists. What if the founding fathers had endorsed the right to secession? Madison's account of the Constitutional Convention was published over fifty years after the event and had been edited considerably. So Berry includes a fictional found document from Madison's estate, an unedited version that includes opposition to the idea of perpetual union. Berry uses extensive quotes from the real document with additional language he made up.
Supporting this fictional license, Berry comments in the Writer's Note that "Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York, in their ratification votes for the new Constitution, specifically reserved the right to secede, which was not opposed by the other states."
There is also a fictional side contract, a document signed by the framers of the constitution specifically acknowledging the right to secede, but this document had been suppressed and was now missing. It is believed to have been handed to the Mormons by Lincoln as a measure of good faith, to be returned after the Civil War. Because of his assassination, it was never returned and its whereabouts are unknown.
The plot hinges on Senator Rowan's plan, as a senior apostle of the Mormon faith, to push for the secession of the state of Utah when he becomes the new prophet. The current one is quite old and likely to kick the bucket soon. Polling has shown his people that Utahans would favor such a move.
The Magellan Billet gets involved because Salazar is under investigation by the unit for murder and the agent sent to investigate has disappeared in Denmark. Malone is given the call to investigate.
Unbeknownst to Malone, his girlfriend, Cassiopeia Vitt, also a part time agent of Nelle's, has re-established a relationship with Salazar as she was raised a Mormon herself and years ago was romantically involved with Salazar and so Nelle sent her to gain Salazar's trust and become an insider in the investigation.
But the plot revolves around more than solving a murder and finding their missing agent. It soon develops into a quest for the missing documents that sanction secession by the states.
The President himself (a fictional President named Danny Daniels) wants to get those papers back. They are on to Rowan's secession plans and want to nip it in the bud. Like Lincoln, Daniels wants to preserve the Union at all costs.
Berry notes that "secession remains a hot topic, and all the arguments Thaddeus Rowan considers in Chapter 26 make good sense. The language quoted there from a Texas petition, signed by 125,000 supporters, is exact. And 125,000 real Texans signed that document in 2012."
Here is what that petition said: "Given that the State of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect is citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."
Berry also includes a telling quote from Abraham Lincoln himself from January 12, 1848.
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."
This quote appears at the front of the book ahead of the title page. It appears again in the body of the story near the end, and once again in the Writer's Note.
"Lincoln totally ignored what he said in 1848 and fought to establish, beyond question, that the South had no right to leave the Union," writes Berry.
"The idea of an indivisible, perpetual union of states did not exist prior to 1861," he continues. "For Lincoln, the Union was non-negotiable."
He concludes his note thus: "Our 16th president believed in a perpetual union. One from which no state was free to leave. Here's a fact, beyond the myth. Lincoln did not fight the Civil War to preserve the union. He fought the war to create it."
Now I noted earlier that this book would both fascinate and infuriate libertarians. Let me get to the part that infuriates.
Spoiler Alert
To elaborate on this I need to reveal in loose terms how the story ends. I found it terribly disappointing. More than that, it destroyed the central characters, Malone, Nelle, Luke Daniels and President Daniels, as worthy heroes of the story. Vitt is an exception as she was there but not privy to the President's order and, in fact, tried to prevent it from being carried out.
Daniels' nephew, Luke Daniels, an agent of Nelle's, had retrieved the original Madison notes, the ones where considerable opposition to the idea of perpetual union had been raised. (A fictional document but that is beside the point. They are real within the context of the novel.) A young historian had been recruited to read and analyze the documents.
President Daniels has decided that, like Lincoln, preventing the fracturing of the United States is paramount. He orders Nelle and her agents to terminate the problems - Salazar, Rowan and, if necessary, even Vitt. They know too much. But they are to be murdered in a fashion that the government is not implicated.
While Salazar is a murderous religious crackpot and undoubtedly deserved to die, the final scenes make clear that Rowan did not know of Salazar's murderous actions and repudiates Salazar. He is in all respects an innocent man. He wants to try and get Utah to secede from the union, but he is an upstanding and moral person, as most Mormons are. There is no ambiguity here at all in the novel. Moreover, as noted above, Berry notes that Rowan's arguments for secession are sound.
The story ends in a secret cave in the hills somewhere in Utah. Salazar is armed and has Nelle on her knees, gun pointed at her. She goads the delusional Salazar relentlessly, leading him to believe that Rowan is a traitor to his cause. Rowan washes his hands of the whole affair and turns to leave. Nelle continues to twist the psychological screws until Salazar shoots Rowan in the back, killing him.
Salazar then turns on Vitt. He holds her at gun point. But she is a trained agent and does not believe herself to be in a situation she can't handle. She tries to talk Salazar down, tries to talk him into dropping his gun and surrendering.
Luke Daniels and Malone had been disarmed and are watching this. Luke secretly has a pistol in the back of his waistband within reach of Malone. Malone finally grabs the gun and orders Salazar to drop his weapon. Salazar wheels to shoot and Malone kills him.
Vitt, outraged, calls them all murderers.
The President wanted two men dead, but not at the hands of the government. One was killed by a demented man goaded by a government agent. That man was himself killed by a book seller from Denmark. Mission accomplished.
The found Madison documents - "I burned them," the President tells Nelle. Shades of 1984 - rewriting history, shoving undesirable news down the memory hole. The historian is sworn to secrecy.
In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt writes about the banality of evil, the petty functionary who commits evil acts because he is doing his job, or doing his duty. It doesn't matter whether the evil is on a large scale or a small scale, the idea of serving some duty to the state is servile and reprehensible. To commit murder in its name is disgusting and vile.
Malone, Nelle and the two Daniels rewrote history and murdered a completely innocent man to further a cause - to prevent the idea that secession might be constitutional from getting out. Two men who knew too much were eliminated. Only the fact that Malone loved Vitt saved her from the same fate.
In conclusion, this is an intriguing novel, a detailed defense of the right of secession. It is fatally marred by its ending, an ending that leaves Malone, Nelle and the two Daniels in a morally indefensible position. It taints these characters forever in any future Cotton Malone novels I might read.
But read them I will. When they are fighting renegade communists or a war-mongering cabal out to take over the world they are solid heroes. I just picked up the novel between The Lincoln Myth and The 14th Colony at the library - The Patriot Threat. The blurb reads "The 16th Amendment to the Constitution is why Americans pay income taxes. But what if there were problems associated with that amendment? Secrets that call into question decades of tax collecting? In fact, there is a surprising truth to this hidden possibility." Sounds juicy!
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