The Drowned Man by David Whellams Page A

put her aside for the moment and turned to his purchases.
    The two massive histories intimidated him. He had no real idea where to start but, of course, that was the investigator’s lot in life. And so, he began with an investigator’s question: Was there a threat to Canada from the Civil War? Peter had a vague cartographic impression of Canada sitting atop the American behemoth, one-tenth the population, liable to be shrugged off at any minute or, in the mid-nineteenth century, to be swallowed in one gulp.
    He turned to the index of the survey history. The tome addressed John Wilkes Booth’s plot in the last two chapters, while Canada was referenced a mere five times at scattered points in the historical record; Montreal did not earn a mention. Peter thought it worthwhile to try to absorb the main themes of the war, and so he opened the volume to the first chapter and began to read.
    As an Englishman, he found the conflict distant — though not abstract, since the war was bloody, having claimed 623,000 lives. Above all, the struggle had been senseless. Armies mired in outdated Napoleonic tactics had crudely battered one another for four years and robbed the growing country of a generation of young men, all for a cause, emancipation of the slaves, that had been settled in Britain decades before. Even he knew that the classic question for American schoolchildren was “What were the causes of the Civil War?” Slavery refracted the growing pains of the economies of the North and South and the settlement of the West. Slavery distorted all of American society, earning it the label of the Peculiar Institution.
    When it came to the Lincoln assassination, the general history expended few words on John Wilkes Booth, and less on Canada. The author charted the recognition of Southern independence by Britain as a key objective of the Rebel government early in the war but said nothing about any anxieties of the Canadian colonists. The turn of fortunes at Gettysburg in 1863, a Confederate defeat by any measure, pushed Southern hopes into the background, but late in the conflict, as a Union victory seemed assured, British and Canadian fear increased that the million-strong Northern army might decide to pivot a hundred and eighty degrees northward.
    Peter’s first reading of Nicola Hilfgott’s three-page report and her recollection of the stolen Booth correspondence had given him little comprehension of how the letters could have made any difference to the endgame of the war.
    The Lincoln angle proved more useful, although again, the index made no reference to Montreal. Throughout his time in office, old Abe was hectored by the British Question, first when the Confederates threatened to cut off cotton shipments to England’s textile mills, then more ominously when Confederate diplomats began to lobby Parliament in London for official recognition. The European powers sat on the sidelines initially, but after early Southern victories began to expect decisive victory for the secessionists. England and France waffled a few more months but apparently only needed one more major victory by General Robert E. Lee to tip the balance. Gettysburg stalled that juggernaut. Peter had no doubt the issues were far more complex, but the Lincoln biography did a good job of showing the brilliance of the president in avoiding incidents that might have incited Britain to recognize the breakaway regime — or worse, tumble Britain and the Union into a second war, a war for Canada.
    Vague as the text was in both volumes, it was evident that the American-Canadian border remained active throughout the Civil War, with slaves escaping to Ontario and Quebec along the Underground Railroad and Confederates using Montreal and Quebec City to ship goods to, and weapons from, Europe. The Union built prison camps in upstate New York and near the Great Lakes, and Johnny Reb prisoners often escaped to Canadian sanctuary. Peter guessed that