We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but here are these stores, filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry they help themselves.

The response was to suggest that the Sioux eat grass or their own dung. Defrauded of, at one estimate, nearly one hundred thousand dollars by dishonest agents and officials, and facing starvation, warriors attacked numerous settlements throughout the Minnesota River Valley. The surviving settlers spoke of unimaginable tortures and cruelties. Preoccupied by his other war, Lincoln did not send federal forces until early September.

The Dakota Sioux surrendered in late September after their defeat at the Battle of Wood Lake. The uprising was then criminalized. Military tribunals conducted hasty trials with none of the niceties of due process or legal representation. Three hundred and three men were sentenced to death.

Lincoln reviews these case by case, weeding out those who participated in the massacres from those who fought as soldiers. In this way, he commutes the sentences of two hundred and sixty-five. The remaining thirty-eight are hanged together on December 26th. They go to the gallows singing.

This remains the largest act of presidential clemency in United States history. Also the largest mass execution.

iv

Through a friend they met in London, Mary and Edwin become acquainted with Elizabeth and Richard Stoddard. Richard is a poet and critic. Elizabeth has recently published a successful novel, The Morgesons. The Stoddards run a literary salon in New York and they come to meet the Booths for the first time in the library of the Booths’ hotel. The room is elegant—high windows with the light streaming in, tall bookshelves with a ladder to reach them, gleaming silver plates and candlesticks, the tapers gold, and an enormous mirror above the mantel from which, at certain angles, the sunlight flares.

Edwin feels an instant electric connection to Elizabeth. She’s about ten years his elder, dressed rather drably, a small brown bonnet encircling her face. The furrow between her nose and lip is unusually deep, as if God ran His finger down it. “Elizabeth,” he says, taking her hands, which are warm and soft.

“Edwin,” she answers. Everyone in the room turns to watch. Everyone in the room feels suddenly invisible, as if a footlight has illuminated the couple and left the rest in darkness. Edwin drops her hands and slowly undoes the strings to her bonnet. He lifts it from the wings of her dark hair. He leads her to a chair. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. These are intimate gestures yet something about her makes him feel free to take them. Of course, she falls a little in love with him. How could she not?