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I was peeved, and worn, and even good John Wesley had his pride. If Mr. Gowen believed that he must condescend to me, he still might have shown regard for our country’s uniform. His own brother would die in Union blue before the war’s end.
    As to our recent elections, well, I fear that fraud is the stepchild of democracy. Oh, the counting of ballots is no common arithmetic. Yet, to be fair, Mr. Gowen had won his place beyond a drunkard’s challenge. Although he had not won a majority in Pottsville, where the people are sensible.
    “What’s your point, Jones?” Mr. Gowen asked. “You still owe me an explanation. By whose authority did you open that grave?”
    I sighed and sat me back. Twas then I reached deep into my uniform—a fresh frock coat, mind, not the one I had dirtied. I had transferred one bit of paper to my clean get-up, a letter carefully preserved in a wallet of oilskin. Its signature was my armor.
    I handed the letter across the piled desk.
    He swept the document from my hand and glanced over it as he stood. Then he sat down hard and read it through. He didnot raise his eyes a single time. But his lips moved, as if he must taste the words to judge their power.
    At last, he looked up. He stared at me. Pale he was, although by nature florid.
    “This is infamous,” he said.
    “By the power invested in me by the President of these United States,” I told him, “I forbid you to speak of the contents of that letter with any man.”
    He let the letter drop to his desk, then shook his head in anguish. When he spoke his voice was chastened, wounded and low.
    “And he calls that democracy, does he?” He gave a little puff, but could not work up his old steam. “What, are we living in a new age of lettres de cachet ? When an innocent man might find himself hurled into prison? At the whim of his political enemies?” He looked at me then, with that coldness I would come to know too well, that self-regard that would drive men to the gallows. “He’s thrown away habeus corpus. Now it appears the man’s trampling the rest of the Constitution.”
    “Mr. Lincoln,” I began, in a voice too much the schoolmaster’s, “is doing what he must to save our Union. Like you, he has read the law and knows his doings. And I will tell you, Mr. Gowen: I will not hear a word spoken against him.”
    “He’s becoming a damnable tyrant, if you ask me. Why, look how little appreciation he shows to George McClellan. The ape’s as jealous as a caesar.”
    “That is enough, now. As for your habeus corpus, I may not have my Latin or my Greek, but I know what it means. If you are so intent upon producing bodies, how is it you object to my inspection of that grave?”
    He sighed. “Don’t you see, Jones? I simply want to keep order. Cripes. That’s what I was elected to do. These people of ours . . . these Irish miners and laborers . . . they’ve come here looking for honest wages, not for a war. Certainly not to squander their meager lives to free the nigger. Oh, I’m all for preserving the Union, you understand. I’m as patriotic as the nextman. I wish circumstances had permitted me to serve under the colors. It doesn’t take a prophet to see that we’re all better off with one continental market, rather than with a country split in two. Let us hope for a negotiated settlement among reasonable men. But the Southrons do have a point, as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to the rights of the states. And, I might add, the rights of the individual citizen.”
    He got a little air back into his lungs. “Look here. The Union needs the coal that these men dig. The government can find soldiers elsewhere, but not skilled miners. Why stir up trouble with this draft nonsense when they’re already doing their part for the Union by digging our coal? You know well enough what this county’s been through this year. Work stoppages. Pumps laid idle, productive mines flooded. Good men driven to bankruptcy, when every other