Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (4 page)

When the men settled down with their cups into comfortable chairs, Kate had barely enough time to smooth her skirts and seat herself when her father somewhat abruptly broached the subject of the upcoming Republican Convention. “I will tell you frankly that I have an ardent desire to be president of the United States,” her father told their guest, who seemed startled by the admission. “You will undoubtedly be sent by the Republicans of Wisconsin as a delegate to the convention in Chicago, and I wish very much to know what you think of my candidacy.”

Mr. Schurz hesitated, drank deeply of his coffee, and frowned briefly at the carpet. “It would give me sincere happiness could I answer with a note of encouragement,” he eventually said, “but I cannot, and I esteem you too highly to flatter you or dissemble with ambiguous phrases.”

Though she had expected as much, Kate nevertheless felt her heart sink, and the look of surprised sadness on her father’s face pained her.

“You’d honor me most by offering the plain truth,” her father said, taken aback. “Please, speak freely, with no fear of embarrassment.”

With a pensive sigh, Mr. Schurz set his coffee cup on the table and met her father’s gaze squarely. “I’m too inexperienced in American politics to estimate the number of votes you might command at the convention, but I have formed a general judgment of the situation.”

“And what is that?” inquired Kate pleasantly, as if they were discussing gardening or poetry rather than her father’s political future.

Mr. Schurz offered her a regretful smile before turning back to her father. “If the Republicans at Chicago have courage enough to nominate a strong antislavery man, they will nominate Seward,” he said in a voice that allowed no doubt. “If they lack that courage, they will not nominate you.”

He said it as kindly as he could, but her father fell silent for a long moment, stunned. “Thank you for so straightforwardly giving your opinion,” he managed to say, “which, possibly, might be correct.”

Mr. Schurz inclined his head in polite acknowledgment that it might not.

“But without impugning Seward’s character and past service to the country,” Father continued in a sudden rush, “I don’t understand why strong antislavery men should place me second in order of leadership instead of first.”

“I hardly wish to argue the point,” Mr. Schurz replied, his broad brow furrowing slightly. “Senator Seward has mustered strong support for his candidacy—strongest in the East, of course, but widespread.”

“He has detractors,” Father countered. “Some say he’s too radical, and they worry that if he’s nominated, it’ll hurt Republicans in local elections.”

Mr. Schurz conceded that some men did indeed hold that opinion, but he did not count himself among them.

Sensing that the discussion would soon devolve into argument if she did not intervene, Kate quickly brought the conversation back to safer ground. Her father could not conceal his disappointment, but he nonetheless maintained a cordial demeanor, and before long, most of the men’s earlier conviviality had been restored.

Soon thereafter, Mr. Schurz retired to the room they had prepared for him to rest after his long, wearying journey. When he emerged from his chamber hours later, they enjoyed a pleasant luncheon, after which Father, Kate, and Nettie took him on a carriage tour of the capital city, showing him the sights and introducing him to many of their most notable citizens. At eight o’clock that evening, Father and Kate escorted Mr. Schurz to the Congregational Church, where an eager audience had gathered to hear his lecture titled “France Since 1848.” Mr. Schurz proved to be an energetic, knowledgeable speaker, and while he was at the podium, Kate was able to forget her father’s disappointment for a little while.

The following morning after breakfast, Kate accompanied Mr. Schurz in the carriage to the station, where he would board the train for Cincinnati, the next city on his tour. As she bade him farewell, he lingered to apologize for offending her and her father with his blunt assessment of Father’s prospects at the upcoming convention.

“There was no offense taken,” Kate assured him. “It is never a disservice to speak the truth. You would have done my father no favors if you had falsely raised his expectations instead of telling him plainly what obstacles lie in his path.”

“It is a path I see he is determined to follow,” Mr. Schurz replied, with obvious regret. “I have studied this country enough to know that ‘presidential fever’ is a troublesome ailment, and sometimes fatal to the peace of mind and moral equilibrium of men afflicted with it. Your father seems to me to be one of the noblest men suffering from that disease.”

Kate managed a laugh. “Suffering has never looked so hale and hearty.”

“I feel obliged to warn you, Miss Chase, that I have never before met anyone so strongly possessed by the desire to be president, to the extent that he believes he owes it to the country and that the country owes it to him that he should assume that high office.”

“Perhaps he is correct in his beliefs,” Kate said lightly, keeping her smile in place. “Many others share them.”

“Perhaps not as many as you think,” said Mr. Schurz carefully. “I have no doubt that your good father will never allow his ambition to corrupt his principles, but I am concerned that repeated disappointments will pierce him like poisoned arrows, and that in the years to come he will be incessantly tortured by feelings that his country did not do justice to him.”

“My father has overcome disappointment before,” Kate reminded him. “Let’s not forget too that it’s entirely possible he won’t find his great ambition thwarted.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Mr. Schurz offered her a small, apologetic smile. “You’re a true and loyal daughter. Your father is richly blessed.”

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to remind him.”

Mr. Schurz laughed aloud, and so despite his foreboding words, they parted as friends.

• • •

Father quickly rebounded from his disappointment, and before the week was out, he told Kate that he still hoped to win the influential German to his side. “I believe Mr. Schurz has settled firmly in Mr. Seward’s camp,” Kate cautioned him, but her father’s optimism did not waver. His hopes were buoyed by laudatory articles in the
Ohio State Journal
, Columbus’s Republican newspaper, which praised him almost daily and suggested that his nomination in May was all but certain. “No man in the country is more worthy, no one is more competent,” the editor declared, praising Father’s “steady devotion to the principles of popular freedom, through a long political career,” which had won him “the confidence and attachment of the people in regions far beyond the State.”

Kate believed her father deserved every word of the
Journal
’s praise, but the steady stream of encouragement filled her with misgivings. Her father seemed too determined to believe that everyone shared the
Journal
’s opinion, ignoring the more derisive reports that appeared in the
Daily Statesman
and elsewhere.

As the national convention approached, her worries grew. Her father had no strong advocate organizing his campaign, as Mr. Seward had in the political impresario Thurlow Weed. Father had not mended fences with rivals in Ohio, but preferred instead to exchange letters with his most ardent supporters, men who no longer needed convincing. When Kate mentioned troubling signs—reports of Mr. Seward’s firm grasp on the delegates from numerous states other than his own, Mr. Lincoln’s rising reputation in the East in the wake of his wildly successful speech at the Cooper Union, an engagement her father never should have declined—her father dismissed them. “If the cherished wishes of the people prevail,” he assured her, with an irritating note of condescension to which she tried not to take offense, “I will be the nominee in Chicago in May.”

Kate feared otherwise, and after much delicate cajoling—and at the urging of her father’s successor, Governor Dennison, and a handful of supporters back East—she managed to convince him that he should travel to Washington City to reinforce his support among the congressmen and senators there, and to remind everyone of his national prominence.

A few weeks before the convention, Kate, her father, Governor Dennison, and his wife boarded a train for Washington City, leaving Nettie forlorn and unhappy at home in the care of an older cousin. After a long, wearying ride spent poring over newspapers and planning a strategy of whom to meet, they arrived at the capital late in the evening and took rooms at the celebrated Willard Hotel on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, an establishment Kate and her father knew well. A year before, they had been among 1,800 guests at the Willard for an elegant, extravagant farewell dinner and ball in honor of the British ambassador, Lord Napier, who was returning to his native country. How different the purpose for their visit this time, Kate reflected as she settled into her room. She could see the White House from her window, luminous and tantalizing in the moonlight on the other side of Lafayette Square.

The next morning, Kate and her father embarked upon a program of meetings, receptions, and dinners, a whirlwind of activity that delighted Kate but, not surprisingly, proved to be an uncomfortable exercise in forced affability for her father. Fortunately she was nearly always at his side to ease the flow of conversation, to calm impatient congressmen, to soften her father’s stoic demeanor with her own warmth and charm. For the most part, as the days passed, their efforts seemed to make headway against the current sweeping toward Mr. Seward, but on other occasions, her father stumbled. He tried to convince Benjamin F. Wade, the senior senator from Ohio whose name had been bandied about as a possible presidential nominee, to withdraw his highly improbable bid rather than risk stealing votes away from himself, but was coldly and rudely rebuffed. He courted favor with the influential editor of the
New York Tribune
, the staunch abolitionist Horace Greeley, who concurred with Mr. Seward on almost every relevant issue but had never forgiven him for blocking his appointment to a state office years before. Rather than giving Father his endorsement, however, Mr. Greeley declared himself for Missouri’s Judge Bates, dumbfounding both father and daughter. “If Greeley’s guiding principle is to promote anyone but Seward,” Father wondered aloud in the carriage on the way back to the Willard, “how could he, an abolition man, choose Bates over me?”

Kate had no logical explanation to offer him.

On some occasions, while her father mingled with congressmen elsewhere in the yet-unfinished Capitol, Kate went alone to the Senate gallery, where she watched the debates with intermingled feelings of excitement and dread. The tension in that venerable chamber was more brittle and electric than she remembered, the men’s expressions gloomier, the insults more biting, the debates more vitriolic. Her father had been engaged in the battle against slavery so long that she took for granted the fierce disagreement between the North and the South, but to witness elected representatives from opposing states argue and shout threats, to glimpse the ominous shape of firearms beneath their coats, to hear talk of duels and of war—the new temper of Washington City startled and troubled her.

The animosity was not confined to the halls of Congress either. It spilled over into the ballrooms and fashionable parlors of the city’s social elite, where for decades a mutual regard for protocol and decorum had enforced civility even when fierce debates waged in the House and Senate. Now the Buchanan administration was in its final year, and no one knew what would replace it, for cracks had begun to appear in the foundation of all they had once accepted as true and immutable.

Kate had made friends on both sides during her visits to the nation’s capital through the years, and she did her best to navigate this new, unsteady terrain without damaging her father’s prospects by favoring one faction over another, and without abandoning her principles.

One day, while her father and Governor Dennison were ensconced at a club favored by Republicans and Whigs, Kate called on Miss Harriet Lane at the White House. Though nearly a decade separated them in age, they had become fast friends during one of Kate’s previous visits to the capital, and even after her bachelor uncle’s election to the presidency elevated her to great prominence as his official hostess, Miss Lane had always graciously received Kate whenever she was in Washington.

Mr. Buchanan, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, had vowed in his inaugural address four years earlier that he would not run for a second term, so Kate’s visit was blessedly free of the inevitable tension that would have come between them were Miss Lane’s uncle and Kate’s father contending for the same post. In the family library on the second floor of the Executive Mansion, Miss Lane embraced Kate as fondly as she would a younger sister, took her by the hand, and led her to the sofa, where she prompted Kate with questions about Columbus, her father’s ambitions, and her opinion about his prospects. Too loyal to confess her doubts even to a trusted friend, Kate touched lightly on his setbacks and instead emphasized recent favorable developments—the resolution of the Ohio Convention naming Father as their first choice; the strong support offered by Joseph Medill, the publisher of the
Chicago Tribune
; and the promises of various officials they had met during their visit. “But what about you?” Kate asked, clasping Miss Lane’s hand. “I can only imagine how it has been for you these past few months, contending with such unrelenting animosity.”

Miss Lane, ever self-possessed and dignified, shook her head as if there were no words for her difficulties, lifting a hand and letting it fall to her lap. “Seating arrangements at official events have become something of a geometric puzzle,” she said, smiling at the profound understatement. “I must place everyone with utmost care, paying due deference to rank while keeping foes apart.” Her smile faltered. “Their differences run far deeper than disagreements over a budget or a bill. I don’t see how the North and South will be able to restore any sort of harmony to the country when they can barely sit around the same dinner table without erupting into angry shouts, or proposing duels, or worse.”