“I have a family,” Chester says, but so does John; this excuse holds no water. John insists. He cajoles. He threatens.

In the face of Chester’s intransigence, he’s sorry to have ever divulged his plans. He holds a gun under Chester’s chin. “If you mention this to anyone,” John says, “I will send Confederate agents after you. They will hunt you down. Wherever you hide, they will find you. And your family.” Chester feels the barrel of the gun pressing into his neck. He finds it persuasive. He regrets having saved John’s life, but cannot say even that to anyone.

—

Edwin gets a letter from Adam Badeau. Adam is in the middle of his second great heartbreak. His intimate friend, James Wilson, has cut him off, alluding to a single night Wilson now regrets. Adam blames jealous fate for this, “jealous fate which cannot bear that men should be so purely happy, and so happily pure—so nearly good . . . I’d give ten years of my life to annihilate one day and its consequences,” Adam writes to Wilson.

None of this agony is in his letter to Edwin. To Edwin he says that the young man Edwin saved on the train tracks a few weeks back was Robert Lincoln, the president’s son. Robert is also on Grant’s staff and has told them all the whole story. Grant would like to do something to thank Edwin. He may have saved Robert from serious injury.

It takes Edwin a moment to even remember this incident. Still, it is gratifying. He tells Adam that all he needs is for Grant to drive the nail straight into the Southern head.

Edwin tells Asia and Rosalie about the rescue on the train tracks.

He assumes they won’t tell John and they don’t.

—

In January of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment passes, abolishing slavery in the United States forever.

—

In February, while Edwin struggles with exhaustion in the midst of his historic run, June arranges his schedule to spend a day with John in Washington, DC. Rosalie, Edwin, and June have had a tête-à-tête-à-tête about John.

Asia is home in Philadelphia. She is so much better informed on John’s activities than the rest of them. If she’d been there, if she’d been consulted, things might have gone differently. Or not. Asia is John’s most intimate connection to the family. Her instinct is to admire and support him.

The other three are concerned at the way his passion and febrile certitude are erasing every other thing he used to be. They’re not thinking about anything he might do so much as who he is becoming—Father’s madness without Father’s genius to excuse it. And how will he react when his beloved Richmond falls, as it surely will and soon?