Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (8 page)

It was not embarrassment or shame that kept him from her. She knew that, though she could not say how she knew, nor what it was that restrained him.

O
CTOBER
1860–J
ANUARY
1861

K
ate thought she might hear from Governor Sprague before the Chases left Cleveland, but he sent no word to her at the Parsons residence, nor did he write to her in Columbus upon her return home. Bewildered, she tried to put him out of her mind, and to forget the strange, unsettling effect he had upon her. He intimated that she had enchanted him, and yet she felt as if he had worked some sort of mesmerism upon her instead. She had not found a man so distracting since the shameful episode of her youth she had tried so hard to expunge from memory. It was a relief and a blessing, she told herself as she resumed the familiar routines of home, that half of a continent separated them, and that it was not likely she would see him again.

As the vivid hues of autumn stole over the forests and fields of Ohio, political fervor seized the nation. Father resumed his electioneering for Mr. Lincoln, and he soon learned that he was not the only former candidate for the Republican nomination to come out in support of the man who had unexpectedly defeated him. Mutual friends confirmed rumors that Mr. Thurlow Weed, Mr. Seward’s longtime political advisor, had visited Mr. Lincoln in Springfield and had come away much impressed with his intuitive knowledge of human nature and the virtues and caprice of politicians. Mr. Weed began to work quietly on Mr. Lincoln’s behalf, and eventually, although Mr. Seward had been rendered so dejected by his upset in Chicago that he had contemplated resigning from the Senate and retiring to his estate in Auburn, he too campaigned for Mr. Lincoln, embarking on a lengthy speaking tour on his erstwhile rival’s behalf. Judge Edward Bates penned an open letter published in newspapers both Northern and Southern in which he extolled Mr. Lincoln’s virtues and conservative values, and declared that he intended to support the Republican ticket. He praised especially Mr. Lincoln’s fairness, his commitment to nationalism rather than sectional politics, and his “high reputation for truth, courage, candor, morals and ability.”

Kate understood well that Father and his fellow newly made Lincolnites had their work cut out for them. In order to win the election, Mr. Lincoln would have to capture at least 152 of the 303 electoral votes. Since he was unlikely to pick up any in the slaveholding South—in some Southern states he would not even appear on the ballot—he would have to take almost the entire North. That would be no small feat, considering that in some of the most important Northern states—Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania—Mr. Douglas was quite popular in border counties where many natives of Southern states had settled.

It did not help that Mr. Lincoln was a stranger to a vast number of men he urgently needed to vote for him. He was so little known even within his own party that after the convention, there had been some confusion within the Republican press whether his given name was Abraham or Abram. In Washington City, news of his nomination had been met with general incredulity, and Democratic newspapers gleefully ridiculed his humble origins, calling him a “third-rate Western lawyer”—a sentiment Kate herself had been guilty of harboring—and a “fourth-rate lecturer who cannot speak good grammar” and whose illiterate speeches were “interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes”—a claim she knew from her own experience was patently untrue. Not surprisingly, the Southern press provided the most blistering vitriol, mocking not only Mr. Lincoln’s intellect, which they wrongly assumed to be quite insignificant, but also his appearance. “Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame,” the
Houston Telegraph
declared with fascinated horror. “He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly.” Remarking upon Mr. Lincoln’s image in
Harper’s Weekly
, the
Charleston Mercury
proclaimed, “A horrid looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man, a creature fit evidently for petty treason, small strategems, and all sorts of spoils.” Kate found such lurid prose utterly unfair; Mr. Lincoln might not be what most people would consider handsome, but he was not the grotesquerie depicted in the papers, either. There were enough legitimate reasons to criticize Mr. Lincoln without inventing fictions.

Someone—the indefatigable Mr. Weed, perhaps, or another Republican ally, or even Mr. Lincoln himself—must have carefully crafted a response, because as the weeks passed, more favorable reports began to appear in the press, at least in the North. Mr. Lincoln’s friend published a brief, modest, and yet compelling biography about him, which sold more than a million copies. At his home in Springfield Mr. Lincoln met with reporters, who invariably departed with favorable impressions, which they expressed in glowing phrases to their readers back home. His life, home, and habits came under scrutiny, but none held more fascination for Kate than the accounts of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. She was said to be as graceful as her husband was awkward, her family as distinguished as her husband’s was humble. Mrs. Lincoln was well educated and refined, the reporters enthused; self-assured, vivacious, and handsome; fluent in French; and a fascinating conversationalist. She was a devout member of the Presbyterian Church and the mother of three living sons, of whom the eldest, Robert, was a student at Harvard College. Kate was as curious about Mr. Lincoln’s wife as everyone else, and she concluded that if the newspaper reports were reliable, Mary Lincoln would be an asset to her husband and bring dignity and grace to his administration.

Kate suspected that in Washington City, Adele Douglas was following the newspaper reports too, sizing up her newest rival. As much as Kate liked her friend and wished for her happiness, she would rather see Mrs. Lincoln assume the role of First Lady if it meant that Mr. Douglas had been denied the White House. Mr. Lincoln was not as ardent an abolitionist as her father, but he was far better on the issue than Mr. Douglas, who seemed content to let the poison of slavery spread across the continent if it would appease the South.

As November approached, the results of early fall elections boded well for Mr. Lincoln, with sweeping Republican victories in local and state elections in Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Then, at long last and yet before Kate felt quite prepared for it, Election Day arrived.

On that momentous morning, Kate and Nettie accompanied Father to the polls and proudly stood by as he cast his ballot. “I hope you wrote in your own name,” Kate murmured as they walked home, and her father rewarded her with a smile.

It was a long, anxious day, painfully reminiscent of the time in mid-May when they had waited with dwindling hopes for the results from the Republican Convention. Father had arranged for a messenger, the fifteen-year-old son of one of his clerks from his time as governor, to wait at the telegraph office and bring him the election returns as they came down the wire. By early evening, the boy had come by to announce that Mr. Lincoln had won the New England states. An hour and a half later he returned, and when Will, Father’s servant, escorted him to Father’s study, he was out of breath and so wild-eyed that Kate’s heart plummeted and she was certain he would announce that Mr. Douglas had won the presidency. Instead he gasped out, “Mr. Lincoln won Pennsylvania, and the Neil House is on fire!”

Father bolted from his chair. “The alarm,” he muttered. Not long after he had sent Nettie to bed, he and Kate had heard the bells pealing, but they had taken it as an announcement that the polls would soon close, and had attributed the faint odor of smoke to the bonfires and torches of the Wide Awakes, Republican men who marched in the streets clad in uniforms of full capes and black glazed hats and kept vigil at polling places.

“How bad is the fire?” Kate asked the messenger boy. The Neil House, the largest and most elegant hotel in Columbus, occupied an entire block on High Street across from the capitol and had hosted countless visiting dignitaries since it was built in 1842. It was impossible to imagine the city landscape without it.

“Terrible,” he said eagerly, edging toward the door as if he needed all his willpower to not to break into a run.

“Don’t linger to gape at the scene,” Father admonished him sternly. “I need you at the telegraph office.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Chase,” he said, and darted off without waiting for Will to show him out.

Kate pressed a hand to her stomach and inhaled shakily. “I hope all the guests escaped unharmed.”

“Yes,” said Father distantly. He had stayed at the Neil House numerous times while traveling on political and legal business before becoming governor, and in the years since, he had attended more meetings and luncheons there than Kate could count. Its public rooms were so lively with political activity that some wags claimed it was the real capitol. If the blaze was as bad as the messenger said, at that moment, a significant part of Columbus history was turning to ashes.

Abruptly Father turned and strode from the library.

“Father?” Kate called, hurrying after him. She caught up to him in the front foyer, where he had summoned Will to bring his coat. “Where are you going?”

“To observe the progress of the fire.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, Katie.” He slipped his arms into the coat as Will held it open. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’ll stay well back from the flames.” She gestured to Will to fetch her wraps too, but he hesitated, glancing from her to Father and back, unwilling to displease either of them.

“I was referring not to the flames but to the thick smoke, and its effect on your weak lungs.”

“I don’t have weak lungs,” Kate replied, a trifle sharply. She had suffered more than the usual childhood ailments, perhaps, but that was years ago, and her lungs were as robust as anyone’s. “I need a distraction as much as you.”

“Katie—” Father broke off and regarded her with mild exasperation. Then he relented, and after admonishing her that she must cover her nose and mouth with a handkerchief and be certain not to get in the way of the men fighting the blaze, he told her to put on her wraps. She did so, and within minutes they were hurrying off down State Street west toward the capitol.

From a distance, they saw dark smoke rising above the trees and rooftops and churning into the night sky. As they hurried closer, they heard the roaring and snapping of the blaze. Shock brought them to an abrupt halt when they reached the corner of State and Third, for across the Capitol Square grounds they saw the Neil House engulfed in flames.

All the fire companies had come out, dozens upon dozens of men racing to subdue the blaze, but it seemed impossible that they could succeed. Five stories of black walnut, Kate thought numbly. More than three hundred suites. Beautifully appointed lobbies and sitting rooms, the site of countless political debates and negotiations and immeasurable intrigue. Ashes to ashes, she thought. Dust to dust. So everything ends.

Her eyes stinging from smoke, she turned her head away to blink and to clear her throat, and it was then that she noticed the men milling about on the capitol grounds, a few in their nightclothes, and several women and children too. An aged woman wept and clung to a white-bearded man, likely her husband, but as Kate took an instinctive step toward her, a woman in her middle years ran up and embraced them both, her face a study of fright and relief.

“It is both glorious and terrible, is it not?” her father said at her side.

Kate glanced up at him, startled, uncertain whether she had heard him correctly. She saw nothing glorious in the destruction and terror roaring like a monstrous, ravenous beast in the heart of the city. “How do you mean?”

“It is grand to see the fire gradually prevail over the enormous ruin,” he said, his gaze fixed on the conflagration. “It is sickening to feel human impotence to avert the devastation. See, look there—burning embers are drifting on the hot wind raised by the flames, and they fall upon the roof of the Odeon Theater. The Neil House is lost. All we can hope now is that the fire will be extinguished before it spreads.”

Kate stared at him a moment before turning her gaze back to the inferno. “You don’t suppose . . .” She hesitated. “Surely this was an accident?”

He threw her a curious look. “We have no reason to believe it was not. When the fire is extinguished, the authorities will examine the ruins and determine the cause.” He tucked her hand through his arm. “You needn’t fear that a mad arsonist is on the loose.”

“It just seems so . . . strange, that this should happen tonight, of all nights.”

“Pure coincidence,” Father said firmly. “If it were meant as an act of intimidation to keep voters from the polls, your mad arsonist would have struck earlier in the day, and the statehouse itself would be burning.”

“And the polling places too,” added Kate dubiously, not entirely believing it.

Her throat tightened and she coughed to clear it, just a small, barely audible cough, but enough to convince her father that she had spent quite enough time gazing, stunned and horror-stricken, at the fiery death throes of the celebrated city landmark, the stately edifice that represented, perhaps second only to the statehouse itself, the bringing together of divergent voices in the marvelous experiment of democracy.

“It’s difficult not to see a foreboding portent in this,” Kate said as they walked along State Street to home, weaving their way past the men and boys hurrying in the opposite direction toward the fire.

“Do you mean as a fearsome warning that Mr. Lincoln will lose the election?” Father shook his head, frowning impatiently. He abhorred superstition and fortune-telling, the sort of popular spiritualism that seized hold of the weak-minded and unfaithful, tempting them away from Christian truth.

“No, not that,” said Kate, quickly adding, “and I don’t mean that I believe it to be an omen, but rather a symbol, a dreadful sign of what might become of the country after Mr. Lincoln takes the White House.”

“It is just a fire,” said her father. “A terrible fire, but no more than that. There is no divine message, no demonic cause in it.”