Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (27 page)

“Father, you of all people know that we can’t afford two wars.”

“Of course we can’t, but Great Britain doesn’t want war any more than we do. If we call their bluff, they will not attack us.”

“Can we be certain of that?”

“We’ve received confidential assurances from respected officials in London that if the present dispute is resolved amicably, Great Britain will not interfere further in our American conflict. That suggests to me that they are not eager for war.”

“By not interfering further,” Kate queried, “do they mean that they will not recognize the Confederacy?”

Father spread his hands and sighed. “That’s how I understand it.”

“Then this dispute
must
be resolved amicably,” Kate said, “even if that means appeasing the British at the expense of our pride. At this moment, nothing could help the Union cause more than avoiding a new war with Great Britain and keeping them out of our current one.”

Father mulled over her words, and nodded. “Of course you’re right, but I resent the necessity of releasing the men, and it’s disingenuous of the British to pontificate about their neutrality while advocating for two would-be rebel diplomats.”

“You make a fair point, but I don’t see any other way.” Kate sighed, sat down beside him on the sofa, and rested her head on his shoulder. “Perhaps inspiration will strike Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward while they sleep tonight, and they’ll contrive some other, more tolerable option you and I haven’t thought of.”

Father uttered a short, dry laugh. “That would be a Christmas miracle indeed.”

They rejoined their guests, and later, restored by a delicious Christmas feast and the company and laughter of loved ones, Father appeared less haggard and plagued by worry. Even so, after everyone went off to bed and the house grew dark and still, Kate thought she heard Father pacing in his bedchamber, and she imagined him brooding.

The family and guests were at breakfast the next morning when Mr. Seward showed up unexpectedly at the door. Father invited him in to dine with them, but Mr. Seward accepted only a cup of coffee and asked if he could read to Father the revised draft of his dispatch. Father readily agreed, and having finished his breakfast, he escorted the secretary of state to his study. Although she had not been invited to accompany them, Kate quickly excused herself from the table and hurried after, and when she shut the study door behind them, the two men gave no indication whatsoever that her presence was unexpected or unwanted.

Mr. Seward read the document aloud, all twenty-six pages of it. Although the legal argument seemed somewhat convoluted to Kate, Father listened intently, nodding from time to time. “I think it is well done,” he said when Mr. Seward had finished. “And I think you are right.”

Looking greatly relieved, Mr. Seward thanked him, offered his regards to Kate, and departed with assurances that he would see Father soon at the White House. “His reply offers no apology,” Kate pointed out when they were alone.

“Yes. The British won’t like that, but our people will, including the president and his cabinet.”

Sure enough, when the president and his cabinet met later that day, all admitted to regretting the necessity of releasing the prisoners, but they were satisfied that no apology would be rendered. The dispatch was unanimously approved, and Father returned home soon thereafter, smiling and humming a Bach Christmas cantata.

In the days to come, the British would accept the decision and the people of the North would meet the fragile accord with relief, not outrage. The crisis averted, the Chase family resumed their holiday observances with thankful hearts. Kate’s only disappointment was that William did not visit. He had said that he would try, but on the day before he had been expected, Kate had received a letter expressing his regrets instead. She tried not to dwell upon his absence, and indeed she was never truly lonely, surrounded as she was by affectionate friends, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She understood that the demands of William’s offices, both official in Providence and unofficial in the field of war, left him little time for travel.

On New Year’s Day, Father escorted Kate and Nettie to a grand reception at the White House. The cabinet, the diplomatic corps, the Supreme Court, and military officers arrived at eleven o’clock, but after them, the public were invited to pour through the receiving line and pay their respects to the president and his wife.

It was an unusually beautiful day, the sky clear and bright, the air soft and balmy, more reminiscent of May than January. The grounds of the Executive Mansion were already packed when the Chases arrived, but they managed to squeeze their way inside, offer New Year’s greetings to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and make their way outside again before the crush of people swelled to even greater proportions.

“I can only imagine how many hands Mr. Lincoln will shake today,” Nettie remarked when they reached the front portico. The unseasonable temperate breeze offered a welcome respite from the packed, overheated public chambers of the mansion. Although the rooms had become uncomfortable after the public had poured in, Kate had to admit that Mrs. Lincoln had refurbished them magnificently. Gone were the tattered drapes and worn furniture, the stained carpets and ripped wallpaper. Now exquisite Parisian paper adorned the walls, gleaming new china graced the tables, and fine, lush rugs felt soft and restful underfoot. The refurbished Executive Mansion was as tastefully and elegantly appointed as any home or public edifice Kate had every visited, as befit a glorious nation. She was proud and pleased to think of the fine impression it would make upon visiting foreign dignitaries—but she wished that she had been the First Lady to arrange it.

The Chases had just climbed into the carriage and were setting out for home when Father suddenly bolted upright in his seat and began patting his greatcoat, and then searching all of his pockets with increasing alarm.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.

His brow furrowed in utter disbelief. “My pocket was picked at the reception.”

“What?” she cried. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve checked every pocket, and my purse is gone.”

Kate steeled herself. “How much did it carry?”

“Sixty dollars in gold.”

Nettie gasped. “Should we go back and look for it?”

“It would be no use. The thief will be long gone by now.” Father shook his head. “I cannot believe it. I was robbed in the White House.”

He had been robbed
of
the White House, Kate thought, although she refrained from saying so aloud. They had both been betrayed out of what should have been theirs, and every visit made her feel the sting of disappointment anew.

At home, Father summoned the authorities and reported the theft, although he had little hope that the money would be restored to him. The Chases had no time to mourn the loss, however, for they were hosting their own New Year’s Day reception, which promised to be a far more enjoyable occasion than the unexpectedly expensive visit to the White House had been.

Later that afternoon, Father and Kate received guests in their grand, spacious drawing room, with the kind assistance of Mrs. McDowell, the general’s wife. The most brilliant and distinguished military officers, diplomats, elected officials, men of business, and their ladies were in attendance, the gentlemen elegant in their uniforms or formal suits, the ladies beautiful in their fine gowns. Kate was sure to make all and sundry feel welcome and merry, but she paid special attention to Lord Lyons, to help ease the lingering tensions between their two nations, and to thank him for his fair and frank negotiations with his American counterparts.

“
Pax esto perpetua
,” Father greeted him when he arrived, a smile softening the formality of his bow.

Lord Lyons inclined his head in return. “I hope that my conduct will ever be that of a peacemaker.”

“I am certain it will,” said Kate, smiling warmly, taking his arm, and offering to show him a particular rare volume in her father’s library that she had mentioned to him the last time they had met. He went with her gladly, and as they conversed, she deliberately kept the mood light and pleasant, with no mention of the Trent Affair, which both of their countries undoubtedly hoped the other would soon forgive and forget.

J
ANUARY
–F
EBRUARY
1862

O
n the second day of the New Year, the Chase family marked the occasion with a more intimate gathering than those they had previously enjoyed during the holidays—a delicious turkey feast with their houseguests and a few dear friends, including General McDowell, Mrs. McDowell, and Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. Father and Kate saw Senator Sumner the following evening too, for all had been invited to attend a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution offered by Horace Greeley, the editor of the
New York Tribune
and arguably the most prominent abolitionist orator in the nation.

More than a thousand people filled the auditorium to hear the bald, bespectacled abolitionist speak, and while Kate found a seat in the house, Father was escorted to a chair on the stage behind Mr. Greeley’s podium alongside Mr. Lincoln and ten congressmen. Kate wondered who had arranged for the twelve to be seated onstage, which was probably intended as an honor but strongly implied that they endorsed Mr. Greeley’s positions. Perhaps most of the men did, but as Mr. Greeley launched into his fiery oration, Kate understood well that the president certainly did not. Mr. Lincoln sat stoically as Mr. Greeley declared that General Frémont had been absolutely correct to attempt to grant freedom to the slaves of Confederates in Missouri, and every time he mentioned the general’s name, certain factions in the crowd shouted and jeered at President Lincoln. At one point, Mr. Greeley fixed his gaze squarely on the president and proclaimed that the war’s sole purpose should be the demise of slavery. Most of the audience cheered and applauded in agreement, but Mr. Lincoln merely sat straight in his chair, silent and patient, his expression impassive. Kate marveled at how well he endured it, and although she did feel some sympathy for him, she reminded herself that he could have spared himself the embarrassment if he had been a stronger advocate for emancipation.

The following day, most of the Chases’ friends and family departed, and soon Nettie reluctantly did as well, for her school holidays had come to a close. She left for Brook Hall escorted by her cousin Ralston Skinner, but midway through the journey she fell terribly ill with scarlet fever. Father was as frantic as Kate had ever seen him, for he had lost his firstborn child to an epidemic of the same terrible disease the year Kate was born—Kate was, in fact, the namesake of this poor, lost, much-beloved little girl, as well as the woman who had died giving birth to her.

Kate immediately hurried off to her ailing sister’s bedside, departing on the evening train with her father’s good friend, the wealthy Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke. Under a doctor’s care, and with the tender, watchful ministrations of Kate and Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, Nettie made a fine and steady recovery, but not before Kate fell ill with a less severe case of the same fearsome disease. Within a fortnight both sisters recuperated enough to move on from Philadelphia, Nettie to school and Kate home to Washington, but it was an anxious time for them all, especially for Father, who was so fearful for their lives that in a sense he suffered more than they.

Because of her time away from the capital, Kate missed much of the upheaval that rocked the president’s cabinet that January. President Lincoln had become so frustrated with corruption and malfeasance in the Department of War that he finally ousted Secretary Cameron. When the scandal-ridden general received Mr. Lincoln’s terse letter of dismissal, he wept, declared it a personal degradation, and called on Father that evening after dinner to enlist his help. With the aid of Secretary Seward, Father persuaded Mr. Lincoln to withdraw the brusque letter in lieu of a cordial note indicating that General Cameron had requested to be released from his duties. Kate had always rather liked the general and was sorry to see him go, but of course she was sorrier still that he had engaged in the unethical behavior that had led to his removal.

Like Father, Kate was delighted with Mr. Lincoln’s choice to succeed General Cameron as secretary of war: Edwin Stanton, a lawyer from Cincinnati, a fellow staunch abolitionist, and a longtime intimate friend of Father’s. The sudden announcement of General Cameron’s resignation and Mr. Stanton’s appointment took most of the cabinet by surprise, but on the whole they found the arrangement satisfactory, as did the Senate, which promptly confirmed the nomination.

President Lincoln had also become increasingly impatient with his young, arrogant general in chief, who had assembled and trained a powerful army and yet still insisted he dared not lead them into the field because his forces were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the Confederacy’s. To Kate, General McClellan sometimes seemed like a fastidious housewife who labored for years to stitch a masterpiece quilt, only to hide it away in a trunk for safekeeping rather than use it. The quilt remained unstained, unworn, and unfaded, but the bedchamber was not as lovely as it could have been and its occupants shivered from the cold.

The president’s urgent calls for forward movement upon the rebels did little to prod General McClellan away from his headquarters on Fifteenth Street, where he had arranged for a telegraph office to be established and had ordered that every message from the field had to pass through him. He seemed even more loath to depart his residence on H Street, where he hosted sumptuous dinners every evening for nearly two dozen guests, many of whom were members of the Southern-born and sympathetic elite. Most people of the North chafed at General McClellan’s interminable, inexplicable delays, but Kate’s father had another cause for concern: The Treasury was nearly bankrupt from the enormous expense of providing for hundreds of thousands of stationary soldiers, but Father could not replenish the coffers because the army’s lack of forward progress had rendered bankers and the public too disgruntled to offer the immobile government any more of their hard-earned money.

Since late December, General McClellan had been bedridden from typhoid, but the newly formed Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War suspected that he was feigning illness to justify his inaction. Soon after Kate had left to join Nettie in Philadelphia, the committee met with President Lincoln and his cabinet to vehemently denounce the general and to urge the president to take greater control of the army. Perhaps because his ofttimes rival, Ohio senator Benjamin Wade, led the committee, Father vigorously defended the embattled general. Four days later, after attempting to visit General McClellan but being turned away, President Lincoln summoned Father, most of the other cabinet members, and two generals to a “Council of War” at the White House, where they discussed the problems facing the administration and began devising a strategy for an advance upon the Confederates. The Council of War met again the following day, and the cabinet in special session the next. General McClellan must have realized that the planning of the war was going to go on with or without him, for he experienced a miraculous recovery and was able to attend a council of generals the president convened on January 13. Whether General McClellan would finally commence the forward movement the president and the public so desired remained to be seen, but President Lincoln apparently wanted to permit no room for misunderstanding. Shortly after Kate returned to Washington, he issued General War Order No. 1, which named February 22 as “the day for a general movement of the Land and Naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces.”

Kate’s absence from Washington was also marked by a modest stack of letters from William that she discovered, thankfully unopened, in her bedroom upon her return. “I was surprised to see so many letters from Providence,” said Father somewhat peevishly when he discovered her reading them. “I had supposed Governor Sprague was nothing to you except a friend. If any other relation is desired by him toward you I ought to know about it.”

“Of course you should,” said Kate, keeping her voice reasonable and steady. “I am sure if he ever has other intentions, he will speak with you. Until then, we both must assume that he desires nothing more than my friendship.”

Father seemed satisfied by her reply, but she began to wonder if gossips were circulating stories about her and William, a concern that seemed justified by one of Nettie’s letters from school. “Dear Sister,” she began, “I am going to ask you a question, which you may think I have no right; but I do love you so dearly, that all that concerns you,
seems
to concern me also. Are you really engaged to Gov Sprague? If you think it is not my business and I have no right to ask you Please say so and I will never ask you again.”

Startled by her sister’s question, Kate nevertheless adopted an air of reassuring calm and wrote back that Nettie was welcome to ask her any question she wished—a sister’s privilege Kate intended to invoke from time to time—but in this case, whatever rumors Nettie apparently had heard were false. “I am not engaged to anyone,” Kate wrote. “If that day should ever come, I will share the happy news with my only dear sister myself, and I promise you shall know about it long before the papers do.”

Kate was tempted to write a breezy, cheerful letter to William telling him of Father’s concerns and Nettie’s questions, more to see how he would respond than to prompt him into action. Fortunately she thought better of it before putting pen to paper. The truth of the matter was that William’s letters alternately charmed and distressed her. For weeks at a time, he would seem interested, ambitious, eager, and confident—not only about Kate but about his work and his soldiery too—but then weeks would follow in which his letters were melancholy, terse, discouraged, and discouraging, if he bothered to write at all. William’s sudden and dramatic shifts in temper upset and confused Kate until she became more accustomed to them. She crafted her letters with care, uncertain whether something she wrote was the catalyst that shifted his mood in one direction or the other. Ever mindful of his tragic childhood, she was certain that if only they could be together, in the same city, she could help him learn to master his temper. The distance between them was the cause of their occasional discord, and if that could be remedied, all would be well.

Soon after Kate’s return to Washington, she learned that Mrs. Lincoln was planning an extravagant evening ball to be held at the White House in the first week of February. Kate learned from Mrs. Douglas, who employed the same dressmaker, that Mrs. Lincoln had commissioned an off-the-shoulder, white satin gown with a low neckline, flounces of black lace, black and white bows, and a long, elegant train. From John Hay, Kate heard that Mrs. Lincoln was planning an elaborate menu of roast turkey, foie gras, oysters, beef, duck, quail, partridge, and aspic, complemented by an assortment of fruits, cakes, and ices, and fanciful creations of spun sugar. The First Lady sent out more than five hundred invitations to prominent men in government and their wives, as well as to certain favorite friends, important Washington personages, and visiting dignitaries.

As word of Mrs. Lincoln’s lavish plans spread, she yet again provoked criticism from her usual detractors, who expressed astonishment and disgust for the vain spectacle of the ball and its hostess. But in spite of such denunciations, since the event was not open to the public, invitations remained highly coveted items. “Half the city is jubilant at being invited,” John told Kate, “while the other half is furious at being left out in the cold.”

“Not everyone fits into the two halves you describe,” Kate noted. “What about Senator Wade?”

“Ah, yes.” John grinned impishly. “Your fellow Ohioan did greatly displease Her Satanic Majesty with his reply.”

Rumors of Benjamin Wade’s acerbic rejection had come from other sources, but John had confirmed them. “Are the President and Mrs. Lincoln aware that there is a civil war?” Senator Wade had written acidly as he spurned the invitation. “If they are not, Mr. and Mrs. Wade are, and for that reason decline to participate in dancing and feasting.” Imagining the red flush of mortification that must have come to Mrs. Lincoln’s pale cheeks as she read the note, Kate could almost forgive Senator Wade for the cold, discourteous manner in which he had treated Father in the months leading up to the Republican Convention two years before.

Senator Wade was not alone in his opinion. A great many of Mrs. Lincoln’s invitations had been brusquely declined, or so John reported, and nearly one hundred were returned with indignant notes protesting her excessive frivolity when the nation was distracted, mournful, and impoverished by the war. And yet Mrs. Lincoln did not moderate her plans even a trifle in response to her critics. Kate supposed she would have done the same in the First Lady’s place.

Kate was astonished, then, a few days before the ball when John soberly confided that Mrs. Lincoln wanted to cancel the entire spectacle. “Why?” protested Kate, who had been invited along with Father and had been looking forward to it, and not only to see whether it measured up to expectations, which had soared after the
New York Herald
predicted that the ball would be “the most magnificent affair ever witnessed in America.” Father had permitted her to buy a new silk gown for the occasion, and although she had entertained wistful daydreams of donning it for the first time on a night when she would dance in William’s arms, Mrs. Lincoln’s party would have been an ideal time too.

“Not long ago, young Master Willie caught a severe cold while riding his pony in foul weather,” John said. “A few days ago, it turned into a bad fever. Mrs. Lincoln said that it was ridiculous to think of hosting a grand ball with Willie on his sickbed, but the Tycoon said that she had gone to too much trouble and expense to call back the invitations now. Their doctor examined the boy, declared that he was on the mend, and said there was no reason why the ball should not go on as planned. The Hellcat acquiesced, but now she frets and worries incessantly, as she always does when the boys fall ill.”

“Not without reason. She lost a child to sickness before. She must live in terror of losing another.”