Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (44 page)

The blistering litany of outlandish charges had gone on and on, and when Father had learned of them, he had been shocked and deeply offended. Mr. Blair had attacked his integrity and honor, which Father prized above all earthly possessions. He waited for his colleagues to defend him, and for President Lincoln to renounce Mr. Blair, and he grew ever more distressed and affronted when none rallied to his side.

Father was still waiting in vain for satisfaction at the end of May when Kate recovered enough to return home. Still weakened from her long illness, she nevertheless tried to arbitrate her father’s latest political crisis. She arranged meetings between him and leading Republicans in an attempt to mend the ever-widening chasms dividing different factions within the party, and eventually a tentative truce was forged. Even so, Mr. Blair refused to withdraw his accusations, the Speaker of the House appointed a Committee of Nine to investigate the allegations, and Father remained outraged by the president’s refusal to discipline Mr. Blair.

All was in a dreadful, tumultuous disarray, but before Kate could wrest control of the situation, William’s attempts to defend his father-in-law made everything worse. His loyalty to his father-in-law had set him at odds with other senators, especially the Radical Republicans, whom William felt had betrayed Father by abandoning him at his time of greatest crisis. One evening, while attempting to resolve their differences over dinner, they all drank far too much, and the evening deteriorated into an undignified drunken brawl.

Kate was more upset about William’s drinking than the fight. “You swore to give it up,” she said, trembling with anger and distress.

“Everyone was drinking,” he shouted back, though she stood within arm’s reach. Wincing, she turned away, but he grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to face him. “You would unman me. You would have me say I cannot toast my fellow senators’ health because my wife forbids it!”

“I would have you toast them with cider or water not because I demand it but because you know liquor is your weakness,” Kate snapped. “You’ve said yourself that it leads you to dissipation and bad decisions, as it very clearly did tonight, for you to come home with your face bruised and clothes torn as if you were a common street hoodlum!”

He struck her hard across the face with the back of his hand, and she staggered back, reeling.

“You are not the master here,” he said, quietly and with preternatural calm.

Stunned, she pressed her cool palm to her hot, stinging cheek and groped for a chair. As she collapsed into it, she felt his gaze boring into her, but he said nothing, only stood watching her silently, radiating triumph. Then, without a word, he turned and strode unsteadily from the room.

Kate sat alone in the foyer, listening to his footsteps fading and the blood rushing in her ears. That would be the last day William touched liquor, she told herself firmly as tears trickled down her face. They had argued furiously before, but he had never struck her. In the morning, when he was sober, the memory of what he had done would so horrify him that he would swear off alcohol forever. It was a terrible thing he had done, but a greater good would come of it.

But the next morning, William greeted her pleasantly at breakfast as if nothing had happened, and if not for the faint bruise on her cheekbone and his bloodshot eyes, she might have convinced herself that she had dreamed the whole shameful incident. She ate slowly, waiting for an apology, for some sign of contrition, but he offered nothing to suggest he felt any remorse whatsoever. He did not want Father to know what had happened, she concluded uncertainly, and so she waited for him to find a more opportune moment; but although the day passed and chances to speak to her alone came and went, still he made no apology. It was as if he had no memory of striking her, or that striking her was not significant enough to remark upon.

Weakened from her recent illness, distressed by the precipitous downturn in Father’s political fortunes, Kate found herself overwhelmed by a desperate need to escape Washington. The family had already arranged for Kate to pick up Nettie at the end of her last term at Miss Macaulay’s school and take her to Newport, Rhode Island, where William had rented a quiet, seaside retreat for the summer. After a week of barely speaking to her husband, Kate announced that she would be leaving the capital early, so that she might visit friends in New York City while Nettie completed her final exams.

William agreed, perfectly amiable, smiling as he instructed her to indulge herself to her heart’s content at her favorite shops on Fifth Avenue. Less reluctantly than she had expected, Father conceded that she ought to go as soon as possible, before the worsening heat and humidity of summer damaged her still-fragile health. She knew that was not the only reason he wanted her away from the capital. In his scathing critiques of her father, Mr. Blair had hinted that Kate was implicated in his worst offenses, and ever since, Father had admonished her to avoid involvement in politics. He might as well have asked her to stop breathing, or to stop being his daughter.

She left the next morning, wordlessly enduring William’s farewell kiss on the platform before boarding her train. She wondered if he realized that he had kissed the same cheek he had struck only a few days before.

• • •

Soon after Kate and Nettie arrived in Newport, moderate and conservative Republican delegates gathered in Baltimore to establish a party platform and to nominate candidates for the upcoming general election. The Radical Republicans did not attend; at the end of May, their faction had split off from the party proper, renamed themselves the Radical Democracy Party, and convened in Cleveland, where they had chosen General Frémont as their nominee. In response, the delegates in Baltimore renamed themselves the National Union Party—not only to distinguish themselves from the radicals, but also to appeal to disgruntled Democrats who supported the war and rejected the Peace Democrat platform, but could not bring themselves to vote for a Republican.

Kate followed the proceedings in the papers with a heavy heart, knowing that if not for a few critical mistakes, her father’s trusted deputies would be in the middle of the convention fray, securing endorsements and gathering delegates around him. Instead, the Republicans and War Democrats united to nominate Mr. Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. The nomination would have been unopposed but for a delegation of twenty-two Radical Republicans from Missouri, who first nominated General Grant before changing their votes so Mr. Lincoln’s nomination would be unanimous. Afterward, the delegates also established their party platform, which praised the president for his management of the war and called for, among other important measures, the pursuit of the war until the Confederacy surrendered unconditionally, a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, assistance for disabled Union veterans, and the construction of a transcontinental railroad.

Next the agenda turned to the selection of a vice-president. Previously Mr. Lincoln had expressed his desire to let the convention decide without his interference, and once the debate began, he stuck to his resolution. Father knew that Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin wanted to be renominated, but many delegates believed that they should select a War Democrat from a border state to broaden the appeal of the ticket. After much heated debate, they eventually chose Andrew Johnson, the Union military governor of Tennessee, a War Democrat and Southern Unionist.

Mr. Lincoln’s nomination had been certain, but Kate was surprised by the choice of Mr. Johnson. She understood the desire to make the ticket more appealing to War Democrats, but she never would have chosen someone who had been so outspoken in the defense of slavery before the war, and so opposed to abolition after it. While serving as the military governor of Tennessee, Mr. Johnson had asked President Lincoln to exempt the state from the provision in the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in areas under rebel control, and the president had complied. Kate hardly dared imagine what other schemes against people of color Mr. Johnson might encourage President Lincoln to enact, once emboldened by his new authority as the highest member of the cabinet.

News from private letters offered Kate at least as much insight as the papers. William wrote to her at Newport, his letters warm and affectionate, which would have delighted her once but bewildered her then. More troublingly, scattered among his inexplicably tender declarations of love were hints that not all was well with Father. Kate knew that Father had clung to vain hopes that he would garner a respectable number of votes on the first ballot at the convention, but as soon as Mr. Lincoln had been nominated, Father had been forced to reconcile himself to his diminished status. Worsening matters, he was apparently embroiled in yet another conflict with President Lincoln regarding appointments.

Since Father wrote little about it, Kate was obliged to piece together her understanding of the situation from the incomplete stories each man offered in his letters. Shortly after the convention in Baltimore, the assistant treasurer of New York had resigned his post, and selecting his replacement was a matter fraught with the potential to offend important factions within the state Republican Party. Since the post fell within the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, choosing a successor was Father’s responsibility, but Mr. Lincoln instructed him to consult with New York senator Edwin Morgan to be sure that all sides were satisfied with his nominee. Instead Father had submitted a formal nomination for his own favorite candidate, though well aware that Senator Morgan strongly disapproved of his choice. Soon thereafter, Mr. Lincoln informed Father that he could not make the appointment and asked him to try harder to find a nominee he and the senator could agree upon. Determined to press his case, Father requested an interview with the president, and when he received no response, he persuaded the outgoing assistant treasurer to remain in his post three months longer in order to buy time. Then, annoyed that the president had refused to meet with him and that he had been obliged yet again to assert his authority over his own department, he submitted his own resignation, certain that Mr. Lincoln would again refuse to accept it. “I cannot help feeling that my position here is not altogether agreeable to you,” he wrote, “and it is certainly too full of embarrassment and difficulty and painful responsibility to allow in me the least desire to retain it. I think it my duty therefore to enclose to you my resignation.”

If Kate had been in Washington, or if her father had sent her a draft of the letter beforehand, she would have strongly urged him not to send it. But she was in Newport, and her father had been too confident in the security of his position to consult her.

She did not see the terse letter the president sent in response until much later, nor did Father himself see it until after Mr. Lincoln had sent John Hay to deliver the news of Father’s resignation to the Senate and to announce his recommendation for his successor.

As William later explained it, Father went to his office at the Treasury Department after breakfast that morning, fully expecting Mr. Lincoln to send a note begging him to reconsider. Instead he received an urgent request from Senator Fessenden of Maine, the chairman of the Finance Committee, to call on him immediately at the Capitol.

“Have you resigned?” Senator Fessenden frantically demanded when Father arrived. “I am called to the Senate and told that the president has sent in the nomination of your successor.”

Thus it was from a distraught colleague that Father learned President Lincoln had accepted his resignation. Salmon P. Chase was out of the Treasury, neither secretary nor candidate but a private citizen like any other far more ordinary man.

J
ULY
–D
ECEMBER
1864

W
hen the devastating news reached Kate and Nettie in Newport, it rendered them shocked and dismayed and disbelieving. Nettie wept openly, but Kate, mindful that her reaction would likely be remarked upon in the press, bore it stoically in public and reserved her grief for her letters to William. As faithful and steadfast as she could possibly want, he reported the news from Washington with unfailing frank sympathy. She was so relieved to find him once again assuming the role of her protector that her heart, desperate for consolation, warmed to him anew.

She found hope too in William’s account of the immediate aftermath of her father’s dismissal from the cabinet, confided to him by trustworthy witnesses. As word of Father’s departure had spread on Capitol Hill, the members of the Senate Finance Committee had held an emergency meeting and had called on the president as a group to lodge a vehement protest. The president had listened patiently while they explained their serious concerns about removing Father from the helm and setting the Treasury Department adrift at a time when Father’s incomparable leadership was most necessary, and they also expressed grave reservations about the man Mr. Lincoln had chosen to replace him. What the president had said in reply William did not know, but although the committee had left the White House unsatisfied, other officials had called on the president throughout the day to register their anxiety and dismay, including Massachusetts congressman Samuel Hooper and Treasury registrar Lucius Chittenden. Mr. Chittenden was particularly upset, and he had insisted that the loss of Father as the head of the Treasury was worse than another defeat at Bull Run. Calm and unperturbed, Mr. Lincoln had explained why Father’s position in the cabinet had become untenable. “And yet,” he had mused, “there is not a man in the Union who would make as good a chief justice as Chase, and, if I have the opportunity, I will make him chief justice of the United States.”

At this revelation Kate’s hopes soared, and she prayed William’s informant was not mistaken—and that Mr. Lincoln had not let the remark fall merely to appease the stream of worried petitioners. Her father, William wrote, had been greatly moved when Congressman Hooper told him that the president had made a similar comment to him. Father also had admitted that if the president had tendered any such expressions of goodwill before he had resigned, he might not have done so.

As the days passed, newspapers throughout the North lamented Father’s departure from the Treasury. “Mr. Chase is one of the very few great men left in public life,” declared the
New York Tribune
. But the president did not give in to the upswell of regret and dismay, except to reconsider his choice for Father’s successor. When his first choice declined, citing poor health, Mr. Lincoln asked Senator Fessenden, who adamantly declared that he could not possibly accept. Later, when Senator Fessenden returned to Capitol Hill and met with the hearty congratulations of his Senate colleagues, he discovered, much as Father had three years before, that the president had already submitted his nomination, rendering it all but impossible for him to decline.

In a state of numb disbelief, Father introduced his friend and successor to the department, and stayed on long enough to see him settled. Then he vacated his beautiful offices, a private citizen for the first time in years, though one with aspirations of returning to public life as soon as the right circumstances arose. In a letter to Kate, Father noted sorrowfully that only Secretary Stanton, “warm & cordial as ever,” had bothered to call on him after his resignation, and no one else in the cabinet seemed very sorry to see him go. As she read the words, Kate suddenly imagined Mrs. Lincoln in the elegantly refurbished East Room of the White House, clad in a sumptuous gown made by the incomparable Mrs. Keckley, gloating because her rival’s father had been brought low. She had never wanted Father in the cabinet, and she had pestered her husband to dismiss him almost from the moment he had assumed the post. It nettled Kate to imagine Mrs. Lincoln glorying in her triumph, and she was thankful for the many miles between them that prevented her from witnessing it.

On Independence Day, just before the congressional session concluded, William earned her gratitude by making a speech in the Senate defending her father and rebutting the accusations Senator Blair had made in his diatribe weeks before. Soon thereafter, Father traveled to New York City, where after a conference with Mr. Cooke and other friends, he met his daughters for dinner at the Astor House on Broadway. That evening, the three departed together for Newport, where Father spent a week’s vacation enjoying his daughters’ sympathetic company, recovering from his recent ordeals, and contemplating his future. Retirement did not suit him, not with the country still mired in crisis, and although the position of chief justice was enticing, it had not been offered to him, nor did the ancient and ailing Justice Taney seem in any haste to vacate it.

On July 22, Father departed for Boston, where he met with friends and was honored with a dinner at the Union Club, with Senator Sumter, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Lowell, and Mr. Agassiz in attendance. To Kate’s consternation, Father then moved on to visit his longtime dear friend the widow Mrs. Eastman, who of all the attractive, mature ladies who had caught his eye through the years seemed most likely to become the fourth Mrs. Chase. Kate did not complain. She adamantly did not want her father to remarry, but if Mrs. Eastman was able to comfort him in his disappointment, Kate could not bring herself to begrudge him that.

While Father continued his travels, visiting Salem, Naushon Island, and other charming locales in New England, William joined Kate and Nettie in Newport. He had recently purchased several hundred acres on the western shore of Narragansett Bay with the intention of transforming the rambling farmhouse on the property into a gracious mansion. Kate had been eagerly anticipating his arrival for weeks, warmed by his affectionate letters and hopeful that the conflicts of their newlywed days were at last behind them. But when she met him at the station, she quickly took in his bloodshot eyes, his flushed cheeks, the slight tremble of his hands, the faint slur in his voice, and she knew he was drinking again.

Bitterly disappointed, she blinked away her tears and forced a smile. “How were your travels?” she asked, kissing him on the cheek. “Pleasant, I hope.”

“The journey was more stomach-churning than usual,” he complained wearily, “but I am much better for getting off that train.”

Kate murmured sympathetically as she beckoned the porter to stow William’s bags on the carriage. As they set out to meet Nettie at the hotel, he looked so queasy that Kate was sorely tempted to point out that it seemed to her that the cause of his sour stomach was his dissipation, not any particular vehicle.

After dinner that evening, William, much recovered, invited her to accompany him on a stroll along the beach. As they walked, he held her hand and talked enthusiastically about his plans for the construction on their new estate, and how he intended for her to decorate the mansion as beautifully as their home in Washington City. She promised to do so, but she suspected he had given her the pleasurable task—along with the promise that he would grant her a generous allowance for it—in order to distract her from his return to intemperance.

It did not work, of course; she managed to contain her anger for a few days, reminding herself constantly of her father’s repeated admonitions to submit and to endure all with Christian forbearance, but eventually her anger and disappointment boiled over, and she and William argued more furiously than they ever had. He did not strike her, although he seemed close to it, but as soon as their anger was spent, they reconciled with excuses for their tempers and promises on both sides to do better, to be more loving and patient.

For days on end, peace and tenderness and affection would rule over the household. William would contend with matters of business, Kate would supervise the building of their new home, Nettie would swim and sail and sketch and spend time with William’s younger cousins, and at the close of day they would gather around the dinner table happy and full of stories of how they had spent the hours since breakfast. Then the glass would fall, and the ominous thunderclouds would roll in, and the storm would burst—and Nettie would seek shelter out of sight while her sister and brother-in-law raged at each other, waiting for the downpour to cease and the clouds to drift away, borne away on a wind of tearful apologies.

All summer long, as the refurbishing and construction on the Narragansett property progressed enough that they were able to move into one wing of the house, Kate and William struggled to reclaim the affection and amity they had achieved through the mails. Through Confederate general Jubal Early’s frightening raid into the North, the Battle of the Monocacy, the ongoing stalemate around Petersburg, the Battle of the Crater, and more skirmishes than they could keep track of, the pattern of argument and reconciliation continued until even Nettie grew accustomed to it.

To Kate it seemed that their frayed tempers reflected the mood of the nation. With General Grant unable to advance upon Richmond and General Sherman stalled near Atlanta, the war had ground to a dispiriting halt, and dissatisfaction with the Lincoln administration was on the rise. Kate found it tragically ironic that one significant element of the dreadful Pomeroy Circular seemed to have been remarkably prescient: As the summer passed and disgruntlement grew, Mr. Lincoln’s reelection seemed ever more unlikely.

She was not the only one to think so. Everywhere Father traveled, as he confided in his letters to Kate, he was called upon to speak, and afterward he invariably was approached by gentlemen who would disparage the president and denounce Father’s removal from the cabinet. A few Union organizations in New York had demanded a new convention to nominate “a man who would put an end to the war,” but when they had tried to draft Father as their candidate, he had flatly refused. It pained Kate to read her father’s matter-of-fact, stoic descriptions of the state of things, for they both knew that if Father were in the race he very likely would have claimed the Republican nomination; but if Mr. Lincoln lost in November, Father’s chance to be named chief justice would vanish like mist in the August sunshine.

Other political opportunities to return to public service had come Father’s way that summer, none promising enough for him to accept. Early in August, several of Father’s friends in Ohio had, without his knowledge, submitted his name for consideration as the Republican nominee for Congress from Cincinnati’s first district. Father was intrigued, but he informed his friends that only if the district convention nominated him unanimously would he accept. The caveat turned out to be unnecessary, for another candidate won the nomination. Soon after that humiliating loss of an office Father had not even sought, Secretary Fessenden had met him in Boston to consult him on various Treasury Department matters, and also to suggest somewhat obliquely that Father might be offered an ambassador’s post in Europe. It was only the vague, indefinite shadow of an offer, but Father firmly declined, unwilling to absent himself from his beloved country before its great crisis was resolved.

On the second day of September, Father took the train from Boston to Providence; William met him at the station and escorted him to Narragansett, where Kate and Nettie welcomed their father joyously. In unmistakable but unintended contrast, Kate greeted her husband with polite reserve. She and William had not yet reconciled from their most recent squabble, and although they were careful not to argue in front of her father, they were abrupt and sometimes hostile to each other. They could not seem to help it. Father was clearly shocked to witness how poorly they were getting along, and for his sake Kate endeavored not to engage William in argument for the duration of her father’s visit, even if that meant ignoring her husband entirely.

But the next day, their ongoing quarrel was driven from their thoughts by the news from the South: General Sherman had captured Atlanta.

The people of the North were jubilant. After a dismal summer marked by stalemate, discouragement, and defeat, the Union army suddenly surged toward victory—and so too did Mr. Lincoln. Overnight he had become a victorious commander in chief, and in the transformed political environment, the Radical Republican effort to put forth another candidate seemed foolhardy, even dangerous. Father and Kate speculated that unless the National Union and Radical Democracy parties united around a single candidate, it was entirely possible that the Republican voters would divide their ballots between Mr. Lincoln and General Frémont, and thereby allow the Democrats to seize the presidency. At the end of August, the Democratic National Convention met in Chicago to nominate General McClellan on a peace platform that called for a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with the Confederacy. This, the family agreed, would be disastrous for the Union cause—but with Father out of the cabinet, he was unable to advise the president on a better course.

But that did not mean he was powerless to help. In mid-September, a few days before Nettie’s seventeenth birthday, the Spragues and Chases returned to Washington City, where Father made the perfunctory round of calls to his remaining loyal friends, all of whom urged Father to campaign yet again for Mr. Lincoln. Secretary Fessenden promised to speak to Mr. Lincoln on his behalf, and he encouraged Father to call at the White House himself as soon as possible. Father eventually did, albeit reluctantly, but as Kate had privately foreseen, the meeting was stiff and awkward and uncomfortable despite Mr. Lincoln’s attempts to welcome Father with his usual cordiality. Afterward, Father decided to endorse his former rival, and he promptly began writing letters to friends and allies declaring that he wholeheartedly supported Mr. Lincoln for president, and if they cared at all about saving the Union, they would too.

Not long after Father joined the campaign, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair resigned from the cabinet. “A late birthday present for me,” exclaimed Nettie when Father broke the surprising news of his enemy’s ouster.