Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (31 page)

As midsummer passed, Mr. Lincoln surprised them both with a new resolution that made Father—and Kate too—forget her unhappiness.

Father wrote to Kate immediately, while the events were fresh in his mind. On July 21, a Monday morning, a messenger had brought word that the president had called a special cabinet meeting to convene at ten o’clock in the second floor library. “It has been so long since any consultation has been held that it struck me as a novelty,” Father noted. There, President Lincoln read them several military orders under his consideration, which were intended to bring about a more vigorous prosecution of the war. When the discussions ran long, the president had decided to adjourn until the following day, and when the cabinet reconvened, Mr. Lincoln’s primary reason for calling the cabinet together the previous day had quickly become apparent.

President Lincoln had decided to proclaim the emancipation of all slaves within states remaining in insurrection on the first day of January 1863.

“We listened in silence as the astonishing scope of his proposal sank in,” Father wrote. “Steward and Welles displayed so little surprise that it was obvious the president had informed them already. Stanton immediately voiced his support, for he is an abolition man and understands the great advantage to be gained by depriving the Confederacy of their laborers. Surprisingly, our conservative friend Bates also supported the measure, although he did so on the condition that freed slaves would be obliged to emigrate to Africa, for he does not believe the two races can live and thrive in close proximity.”

That was an opinion Mr. Lincoln shared, Kate recalled, or at least he had once believed so. His position on slavery had become so changeable that Kate hardly knew where he stood from one week to the next. It had been too long since she had seen John Hay. He always let little telling details slip, often inadvertently.

“As for myself,” Father’s letter continued, “I acknowledged that Mr. Lincoln’s proposal went beyond anything I had recommended, and that I feared it would lead to depredation and massacre on the one hand, and support to the insurrection on the other. However, since I regarded the president’s plan as far superior to inaction, I would give it my entire support.”

Father next urged Kate to remember not to divulge the contents of his letter to anyone, as always. “I write you very freely,” he admitted. “Say nothing of what I write unless the news is in the papers. I trust your sense of prudence.” Her discretion was particularly important in this case, for Secretary Seward had convinced President Lincoln to wait until after a decisive Union victory to announce the proclamation to the American people, or it would be viewed “as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help, our last shriek on the retreat.” The president had mulled over Mr. Seward’s words and agreed to delay.

Kate was again torn between rejoicing that the end of slavery was apparently nigh and apprehension that Mr. Lincoln seemed to be usurping Father’s place as the strongest champion of the abolitionist cause in the government. With the Republican nominating convention two years away, the people would have ample time to forget that Mr. Lincoln had come late to the cause that Father had supported nearly all his life.

For the first time since leaving Washington, Kate felt frustrated and full of regret that she was not by her father’s side to witness such astonishing, significant events unfolding. When she wrote back to her father to suggest that she and Nettie return home, he replied that the heat and humidity were so oppressive that he feared for her health if they did. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the disastrous loss at the Second Battle of Bull Run—during which the fighting had been so close to the capital that the distant thunder of cannon had been clearly audible, and when the wind had blown from the west, the smell of gunpowder had filled the air—Father worried that the city remained vulnerable to invasion, and thus too dangerous for his daughters. “Gen. McClellan is so certain that Washington will fall that he is making arrangements to ship his wife’s silver out of the city,” Father wrote. “Sec. Stanton is packing up documents and has ordered a steamer to be prepared to carry the Pres. to safety at a moment’s notice.” Father, and many others, blamed General McClellan’s irresponsible delays and disgraceful conduct for the terrible defeat, and he had collaborated with an outraged Secretary Stanton, who considered General McClellan recklessly disobedient to the point of treason, to force President Lincoln to dismiss him. After much intrigue behind the scenes with other members of the cabinet, the faction’s efforts to be rid of the recalcitrant General McClellan were thwarted when President Lincoln placed him in charge of the defense of Washington. “The president was extremely distressed to discover nearly his entire cabinet opposed to the idea,” Father wrote to Kate, “but not enough to change his directive, which I believe will prove a national calamity. Needless to say, I would not have you and your sister return to this city until I am certain it is safe.”

Instead Father made arrangements for Kate and Nettie to visit Mrs. McDowell, the general’s wife, at their home at Buttermilk Falls in upstate New York. The beautiful countryside along the Hudson River enchanted Nettie, who rambled happily for miles around with her sketch pad and pencils, but Kate grew restless with so much quiet and serenity, and she longed for the quick pace and activity and intrigue of the city. When an opportunity came to accompany friends to Saratoga, where she would be assured of a more vivacious social life, Mrs. McDowell graciously allowed her to go, and wrote to Kate’s father to explain the change in her itinerary. Kate worried about leaving Nettie, but her younger sister cheerfully assured her that she was perfectly content, and Mrs. McDowell promised to arrange for a trustworthy escort home when the time came.

In Saratoga, a lovely resort town in the southernmost foothills of the Adirondacks, Kate felt her spirits reviving in the company of lively friends. She took the waters and enjoyed cotillions and concerts, and at parties and receptions she danced and flirted and enjoyed herself as thoroughly and as determinedly as only a young woman with absolutely no attachments to any gentleman possibly could.

Summer drew to a close, and with each passing day Kate felt more restored to herself. Nettie returned to Washington before her, in mid-September, and Kate followed soon thereafter. Her father welcomed her home joyfully and proclaimed that the time away had certainly done her good, for she looked happier and more radiant than she had been in months.

“Thank you, Father,” she said, embracing him. He could not possibly know how glad she was to be home, and how relieved she was to have left her foolish passion for William Sprague behind her.

S
EPTEMBER
–O
CTOBER
1862

O
n September 17, while Kate was still in Saratoga, General McClellan had managed to repulse General Lee’s advance into the North in a costly battle along Antietam Creek in Maryland. Although the president was displeased that General McClellan had allowed the battered Confederate army to withdraw to Virginia without pursuit, a stalemate was victory enough for his immediate purposes.

Two days after Kate returned to Washington, Mr. Lincoln called the cabinet together unexpectedly, so Father and the other secretaries suspected a matter of great importance was to be addressed. To begin, Mr. Lincoln attempted to lighten the serious mood, as he often did, by reading aloud a humorous chapter from a book by Artemus Ward; everyone except Secretary Stanton had laughed aloud, Father told Kate afterward. Then the president adopted a more serious tone and reminded them of the draft emancipation order he had presented in July. He told them that some time before, he had determined to issue the preliminary proclamation as soon as General Lee’s army was driven out of Maryland, and that time at last had come. He was not seeking their advice on the matter, the president emphasized, for he had already taken their opinions into consideration while reaching his own conclusions and revising the draft. He would, however, welcome their suggestions regarding language.

Mr. Seward recommended a few changes to the section regarding colonization, to which all present agreed. Mr. Blair said that since the matter had already been decided he would make no objection, although he feared the proclamation would have an adverse effect in the army and the border states. Judge Bates felt much as Mr. Blair did. Father conceded that the president’s course was not precisely what he would have set, but he was ready to accept the proclamation as written and to stand by it with all his heart.

The next day, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was published in newspapers throughout the Union. Soon the people, North and South, learned that “on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

In Washington City, people of color and abolitionists of all races rejoiced, but in the days that followed, as the preliminary proclamation was discussed and debated, their celebration was tempered by concerns that it did not do enough to ensure liberty for all. The proclamation called for the abolition of slavery only in states that were in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, so if a state agreed to return to the Union before then, slavery could continue there. The proclamation did nothing to free the enslaved people living within the loyal Union border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, as well as Confederate territory that had come under Union control in Tennessee and parts of Louisiana. It seemed to Kate that Mr. Lincoln had emancipated slaves where the Union could not free them and had kept them enslaved in places where the Union did enjoy the power to give them liberty, a sentiment Mr. Greeley soon echoed in the pages of the
New York Tribune.

And yet, despite its weaknesses, the proclamation was proof that the nation was moving toward freedom and liberty for all. The old Union was gone forever. When the nation was restored, it would be a new United States.

In the evening of the day after the proclamation was published, a large crowd complete with a band gathered outside the White House to serenade the president and make laudatory speeches in his honor. The president came to an upstairs window to thank them, saying, “I have not been distinctly informed why it is this occasion you appear to do me this honor, though I suppose it is because of the proclamation.” The crowd applauded and shouted back that he was absolutely right. The president then declared, “What I did, I did after very full deliberation, and under a very heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. I can only trust in God I have made no mistake.”

The crowd roared back their assurances that he had not.

After noting that it was now for the country and the world to pass judgment on his actions, Mr. Lincoln acknowledged that although his high office confronted him with many challenges, they were “scarcely so great as the difficulties of those who, upon the battlefield, are endeavoring to purchase with their blood and their lives the future happiness and prosperity of this country.” Long and sustained applause interrupted him. “Let us never forget them. On the fourteenth and seventeenth days of the present month there have been battles bravely, skillfully and successfully fought. We do not yet know the particulars. Let us be sure that in giving praise to particular individuals we do no injustice to others. I only ask you at the conclusion of these few remarks to give three hearty cheers to all good and brave officers and men who fought these successful battles.”

The crowd cheerfully and boisterously complied, and the White House lawn rang with their cheers.

All this Kate learned from John Hay soon thereafter, for he was among the serenaders, and after Mr. Lincoln withdrew from the window, the lively crowd, cheering and singing, moved on to the Chase residence. The household heard them coming from blocks away, but Nettie was first to the window. “Come quick,” she called, gesturing excitedly to her sister and father without turning away from the scene outside. “We are either going to be serenaded or stoned, and I don’t know which.”

“If you really think it might be the latter,” Kate remarked, joining her at the window, “perhaps we should draw the curtains and pretend we’re not home.” Then she glanced outside, and her gaze fell upon John Hay, grinning up at her as he sang with the others, banging what looked to be a tin plate with a wooden spoon. She nudged her sister. “Look. There’s Mr. Hay. So it is to be a serenade after all.”

“Mr. Hay,” Nettie exclaimed, throwing Kate a mischievous grin. “So it is to be a love song.”

“Nettie!”

As Nettie laughed, Father came to the window, and as soon as the crowd saw him, they called out loudly for a speech. “Well, although it is late, I suppose I must appease them,” Father said, looking immensely pleased. “I haven’t prepared anything.”

“They know that.” Smiling, Kate adjusted her father’s coat and straightened his tie. “You will rise to the occasion as you always do.”

Kissing her quickly on the cheek and ruffling Nettie’s blond curls, Father excused himself and hurried downstairs, and a moment later, his daughters watched him emerge onto the pedimented entrance just outside the front door. In the twilight, with a hint of autumn in the air, he conferred briefly with a dark-haired young man at the front of the crowd, then raised his hands for their attention. Before he could speak, someone called for him to put on the gaslight so they could see him better.

“My friends,” Father replied, “I believe all the light you need this evening is the light reflected from the great act of the president.”

“Good, good,” shouted someone in the crowd, and applause rang out.

“I understand that you have just paid your respects to the chief magistrate of the Republic, to assure him that the proclamation he has recently issued finds a welcome response in the hearts of the American people.” Father nodded to the affirmative applause. “No one can rejoice more sincerely in the belief that the judgment you have expressed of that act will be the judgment of the whole people of the United States.”

“The
whole
people?” echoed Nettie as her father paused for the people’s cheers. “But he said he expects lots of people to be angry about it.”

“True,” said Kate quickly, as the cheers went on and her father, his hands raised to quiet them, prepared to continue. “But as a rhetorical strategy, that would be a particularly unwise idea to introduce at the moment. Hush now, and listen.”

“I am, fellow citizens,” Father said, “more accustomed to work than to speak. I love acts better than words.”

As the crowd applauded in acknowledgment, Kate nodded approvingly. Yes. Abraham Lincoln was the far superior speaker, so Father would do well to present himself as a man of deeds instead, turning a deficiency into an advantage.

“But, fellow citizens, nothing has ever given me more sincere pleasure than to say Amen for the last great act of the chief magistrate.”

“Amen, amen!” the people chorused in reply.

“In my judgment, it is the dawn of a new era.”

“That’s so,” a man shouted back. A loud clanging rang out as if to underscore the sentiment, and when Kate turned instinctively toward the sound, her gaze lit upon John Hay, banging wildly upon his tin plate with the spoon and grinning wickedly up at her. She smiled broadly and shook her head at him, but her heart grew lighter, lifted by his merriment. He was, as Nettie had said, very nice indeed. He was handsome and clever and well educated, and all the young ladies of society adored him. While it was true that he was only an assistant secretary now, he was the assistant secretary of the president of the United States, and that was no small accomplishment. He was also a young man of not quite twenty-four with a promising future ahead of him—not an aging adolescent of thirty-two, playing at soldier, racing giddily between the statehouse and the battlefield as the whim struck.

He was in many respects far superior to the man upon whom Kate had until recently squandered her affections. Why should Kate not allow something deeper than friendship to develop between her and John instead?

Father had continued his speech as Kate stood at the window lost in thought. Suddenly she realized that she had kept her gaze locked on John’s for far too long, so after giving him a gracious nod, she returned her attention to her father.

“The time has come,” her father declared, “when all jealousies and divisions, all personal aims and aspirations should be banished so that we may unite in one common resolve to stand by the integrity of the Republic.”

Cries of “Good!” and “Hear, hear!” rang out amid tremendous applause, and with a wince of guilt, Kate thought of Mrs. Lincoln. They were both political creatures, both Republicans, both women for the Union. Why should they be rivals when they had so many reasons to be friends?

“Dismissing all the past, let us look to the future,” urged Father, “and henceforth let the time of dissension and discord be ended. Let us do nothing but work for our country, in whatever sphere God in his providence has called upon us to work.”

To thunderous applause, Father nodded to the crowd, stepped aside, and gestured to invite Cassius Clay, who had arrived with the serenaders, to take his place on the makeshift stage. The Kentucky abolitionist and politician did not speak as long as Father had, but his fiery oration made quite an impression nonetheless, for he declared that anyone who did not stand by the president’s proclamation was a traitor.

“That might be overstating it just a bit,” said Kate. “We are a democracy, after all. Our Constitution provides for civil disagreement and debate.”

“Mr. Lincoln doesn’t like it when Father disagrees with him,” Nettie pointed out.

“No, but he cannot forbid Father from doing it.”

“But he
could
ask Father to leave the cabinet.”

“He could,” Kate acknowledged, “but that would be a terrible mistake.”

When Mr. Clay finished speaking, he and Father acknowledged their listeners’ adulation with dignified bows before withdrawing into the house. Kate and Nettie left the window and hurried downstairs to meet them, only to find that several other gentlemen they knew well had accompanied them inside, while the rest of the serenaders moved on to Secretary Bates’s residence. Kate was pleased to see that John Hay was among those who had remained.

Kate had only time enough to smile at him from the other side of the vestibule before hurrying off to the kitchen to arrange refreshments for the impromptu party. Everyone was in a grand, celebratory mood, and they became even more lively after Kate served the wine. She and her father did not drink alcohol, of course, but Father had resigned himself to the necessity of keeping a modest wine cellar for his guests, although he never kept hard spirits in the house.

Father held court in the drawing room, where he led a toast to the president and his proclamation. The conversation soon turned to how the news of emancipation would be received in the South, and depending upon the speaker, the tone ranged from worried to maliciously gleeful.

“If the rebels don’t like it, what can they do?” Mr. Clay called out. “Secede a second time?”

The gentlemen laughed uproariously, but Kate could only smile. Her imagination could conceive of many terrible ways the South could express their intense disapproval—retaliation against prisoners, for example.

“Secession,” began Father in what Nettie called his “speechifying voice,” and the raucous conversation quieted expectantly. “Secession was the most wonderful display of the insanity of a particular class that the world had ever seen.”

“How so?” called out a gentleman, more to encourage than to challenge him.

“If the slaveholders had stayed in the Union,” Father explained, “they might have kept their peculiar institution going for many years to come.” He shook his head, marveling at their foolishness. “And now look what their rebellion has wrought. Slavery, which no political party and no public feeling in the North could ever have hoped to touch, so long as we needed to appease the Southern people in the Congress and at the polls, they madly placed in the very path of destruction.”

“You’ve got that right, General Greenbacks,” someone else called out, and the gentlemen roared with laughter. Father smiled and raised his glass of cider to them. Kate knew he rather enjoyed the nickname his new legal tender had earned him.

“The old fogies seem to be enjoying themselves,” someone said close to her ear, and she whirled about to find John Hay smiling at her. She had not heard him approach over the din.

“Mr. Hay,” she said, smiling and offering her hand. “I’m very pleased to see you. I had no idea you were such a talented musician. Have you been playing the tin plate and wooden spoon long?”