Never one to be outdone, Kate Chase was hard at work decorating her father’s new home—a large three-story brick mansion at Sixth and E Street NW. Though the secretary of the treasury worried constantly about money, he understood the importance of having an elegant home with expansive public rooms appropriate for entertaining senators, congressmen, diplomats, and generals. In the years ahead, he intended to gather friends and associates who would be ready to back him when the time came for the next presidential election. The lease on the house came to $1,200 a year; when the furnishing costs were added on, Chase found himself in debt. Unable to sell off his Cincinnati and Columbus properties in the depressed real estate market that prevailed in Ohio, he was forced to borrow $10,000 from his old friend Hiram Barney. It must have been painfully awkward for the straitlaced model of probity to request the loan, particularly since Barney, as collector of customs in New York, was technically his subordinate. Nevertheless, Chase persuaded himself that a person in his position, who had given so much to the public for so many years, deserved to live in a distinguished home.
So, like Mary Lincoln, Kate traveled to New York and Philadelphia to purchase carpets, draperies, and furniture. The house, complete with six servants, would prove perfect for entertaining, although Chase later complained that the distance from the White House, in comparison with Seward’s new lodgings at Lafayette Square, denied him an equal intimacy with the president. He apparently never considered that Lincoln might simply find Seward more lively and amiable company.
None of her father’s social demeanor or leaden eminence hindered Kate. As the mistress of his Washington household, she managed “in a single season” to be “as much at home in the society of the national capital as if she had lived there for a lifetime.” Dozens of young men paid court to her. A contemporary reporter noted that “no other maiden in Washington had more suitors at her feet.” Yet, he continued, “it was early noticed that among all the young men who flocked to the Chase home, and who were eager to obey her slightest nod, there was not one who seemed to obtain even the remotest hold upon her affections”—until Rhode Island’s young governor, William Sprague, came to Washington and drew her attention.
Kate had first met the fabulously wealthy Sprague, whose family owned one of the largest textile manufacturing establishments in the country, the previous September in Cleveland. Sprague had come to Ohio at the head of an official delegation to dedicate a statue of Rhode Island native Commodore Oliver Perry, which was to be placed in the public square. Introduced at the festive ball that followed the ceremony, the two immediately hit it off. “For the rest of the evening,” one observer recalled, “whenever we saw one of them we were pretty sure to see the other.”
For his part, Sprague would never forget his first sight of Kate, “dressed in that celebrated dress,” when “you became my gaze and the gaze of all observers, and you left the house taking with you my admiration and my appreciation, but more than all my pulsations. I remember well how I was possessed that night and the following day.” Years later, he assured her he could “recall the sensation better than if it was yesterday.”
Ten years Kate’s senior, William Sprague had assumed responsibility for the family business at an early age. When William was thirteen, his father, Amasa Sprague, was shot down on the street as he walked home from his cotton mill one evening. The elder Sprague had been involved in a nasty fight over the renewal of a liquor license. The owner of the gin mill shut down by Sprague was arrested and hanged for the murder. Control of the company passed to William’s uncle, who determined that young William should cut short his education to learn the business from the bottom up. “I was thrust into the counting-room, performing its lowest drudgeries, raising myself to all of its highest positions,” he later recalled. When his uncle died of typhoid fever, William, at twenty-six, took over.
As the largest employer in Rhode Island, with more than ten thousand workers, young Sprague wielded enormous political influence. He capitalized on his resources when he ran for governor in 1860 and won on the Democratic ticket, spending over $100,000 of his own money. After the attack on Fort Sumter, Sprague organized the First Rhode Island Regiment, providing the state with “a loan of one hundred thousand dollars to outfit the troops,” while his brother supplied the artillery battery with ninety-six horses. When the lavishly supplied volunteer regiment arrived in the threatened capital, the men were received as heroes. On April 29, the regiment was officially sworn in before the president and General Scott after a dress parade from its headquarters at the Patent Office to the White House. “The entire street was filled with spectators from Seventh to Ninth street,” the Evening Star reported, “and many were the complimentary remarks made by the multitude upon the general appearance and movements of the regiment.”
All the members of the cabinet were present at the ceremony, joining in the rousing greeting for the resplendent troops. Though Sprague stood only five feet six inches tall, his military uniform and his “yellow-plumed hat” undoubtedly increased his stature. John Hay commented after meeting the young man with brown wavy hair, gray eyes, and a thin mustache that while he appeared at first “a small, insignificant youth, who bought his place,” he “is certainly all right now. He is very proud of his Company of its wealth and social standing.” Hay, too, was impressed by the number of eminent young men in Sprague’s regiment. “When men like these leave their horses, their women and their wine, harden their hands, eat crackers for dinner, wear a shirt for a week and never black their shoes,—all for a principle, it is hard to set any bounds to the possibilities of such an army.” Washingtonians nicknamed the First Rhode Island “the millionaires’ regiment” and dubbed Sprague the most eligible bachelor in the city.
It was only a matter of days before Sprague called on Kate. Unlike earlier tentative suitors, intimidated perhaps by Kate’s beauty and brains, Sprague moved confidently to establish a place in her heart, becoming “the first, the only man,” she said afterward, “that had found a lodgment there.” Years later, writing to Kate, Sprague vividly recalled their earlier courtship days. “Do you remember the hesitating kiss I stole, and the glowing, blushing face that responded to the touch. I well remember it all. The step forward from the Cleveland meeting, and the enhanced poetical sensation, for it was poetry, if there ever is such in life.”
For Kate, who acknowledged that she was “accustomed to command and be obeyed, to wish and be anticipated,” Sprague’s cocksure attitude must have presented a welcome challenge. In the weeks that followed, the young couple saw each other frequently. By summer’s end, Nettie Chase told Kate that she liked Sprague “very much” and hoped the two would marry. Nettie’s hopes were put on hold, however, as the war continued to escalate, changing the course of countless lives throughout the fractured nation.
The tragedies of war came home to the Lincolns with the death of Elmer Ellsworth on May 24, 1861. Young Ellsworth had read law in Lincoln’s office and had become so close to the family that he made the journey from Springfield to Washington with them, catching the measles from Willie and Tad along the way. Once in the capital, Ellsworth joined the war effort by organizing a group of New York firemen into a Zouave unit, distinguished by their exotic and colorful uniforms. After Virginia seceded from the Union, Ellsworth’s Zouaves were among the first troops to cross the Potomac River into Alexandria, a town counting ardent secessionists among its residents, including the proprietor of the Marshall House. Spying a Confederate flag waving above the hotel, Ellsworth dashed up to the roof to confiscate it. Having captured the flag, Ellsworth met the armed hotel manager, secessionist James Jackson, on his way down the stairs. Jackson killed Ellsworth on the spot, only to be shot by Ellsworth’s men.
Ellsworth’s death, as one of the first casualties of the war, was national news and mourned across the country. The bereaved president wrote a personal note of condolence to Ellsworth’s parents, praising the young man whose body lay in state in the East Room. Nicolay confesse
d that he had been “quite unable to keep the tears out of my eyes” whenever he thought of Ellsworth. After the funeral, Mary was presented with the bloodied flag for which Ellsworth had given his life; but the horrified first lady, not wanting to be reminded of the sad event, quickly had it packed away.
WITH MORE THAN ENOUGH TROUBLES to occupy him at home, Lincoln faced a tangled situation abroad. A member of the British Parliament had introduced a resolution urging England to accord the Southern Confederacy belligerent status. If passed, the resolution would give Confederate ships the same rights in neutral ports enjoyed by Federal ships. Britain’s textile economy depended on cotton furnished by Southern plantations. Unless the British broke the Union blockade to ensure a continuing supply of cotton, the great textile mills in Manchester and Leeds would be forced to cut back or come to a halt. Merchants would lose money, and thousands of workers would lose their jobs.
Seward feared that England would back the South simply to feed its own factories. While the “younger branch of the British stock” might support freedom, he told his wife, the aristocrats, concerned more with economics than morality, would become “the ally of the traitors.” To prevent this from happening, he was “trying to get a bold remonstrance through the Cabinet, before it is too late.” He hoped not only to halt further thoughts of recognition of the Confederacy but to ensure that the British would respect the Union blockade and refuse, even informally, to meet with the three Southern commissioners who had been sent to London to negotiate for the Confederacy. To achieve these goals, Seward was willing to wage war. “God damn ’em, I’ll give ’em hell,” he told Sumner, thrusting his foot in the air as he spoke.
On May 21, Seward brought Lincoln a surly letter drafted for Charles Francis Adams to read verbatim to Lord John Russell, Britain’s foreign secretary. Lincoln recognized immediately that the tone was too abrasive for a diplomatic communication. While decisive action might be necessary to prevent Britain from any form of overt sympathy with the South, Lincoln had no intention of fighting two wars at once. All his life, he had taken care not to send letters written in anger. Now, to mitigate the harshness of the draft, he altered the tone of the letter at numerous points. Where Seward had claimed that the president was “surprised and grieved” that no protest had been made against unofficial meetings with the Southern commissioners, Lincoln wrote simply that the “President regrets.” Where Seward threatened that “no one of these proceedings [informal or formal recognition, or breaking the blockade] will be borne,” Lincoln shifted the phrase to “will pass unnoticed.”
Most important, where Seward had indicated that the letter be read directly to the British foreign secretary, Lincoln insisted that it serve merely for Adams’s guidance and should not “be read, or shown to any one.” Still, the central message remained clear: a warning to Britain that if the vexing issues were not resolved, and Britain decided “to fraternize with our domestic enemy,” then a war between the United States and Britain “may ensue,” caused by “the action of Great Britain, not our own.” In that event, Britain would forever lose “the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim.”
Thus, a threatening message that might have embroiled the Union in two wars at the same time became instead the basis for a hard-line policy that effectively interrupted British momentum toward recognizing the Confederacy. Furthermore, France, whose ministers had promised to act in concert with Britain, followed suit. This was a critical victory for the Union, preventing for the time being the recognition that would have conferred legitimacy on the Confederacy in the eyes of the world, weakened Northern morale, and accorded “currency to Southern bonds.”
History would later give Secretary of State Seward high marks for his role in preventing Britain and France from intervening in the war. He is considered by some to have been “the ablest American diplomatist of the century.” But here, as was so often the case, Lincoln’s unseen hand had shaped critical policy. Only three months earlier, the frontier lawyer had confessed to Seward that he knew little of foreign affairs. His revisions of the dispatch, however, exhibit the sophisticated prowess of a veteran statesman: he had analyzed a complex situation and sought the least provocative way to neutralize a potential enemy while making crystal-clear his country’s position.
Seward was slowly but inevitably coming to appreciate Lincoln’s remarkable abilities. “It is due to the President to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman,” he told his wife in mid-May. “His confidence and sympathy increase every day.” As Lincoln began to trust his own abilities, Seward became more confident in him. In early June, he told Frances: “Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation.” Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet. He committed himself “to his chief,” Nicolay and Hay observed, “not only without reserve, but with a sincere and devoted personal attachment.”
Seward’s mortification at not having received his party’s nomination in 1860 never fully abated, but he no longer felt compelled to belittle Lincoln to ease his pain. He settled into his position as secretary of state, and his optimistic and gregarious nature reasserted itself. Once more, his elaborate parties and receptions became the talk of Washington. Five days after the dispatch was sent, Seward hosted “a brilliant assemblage” at his new home. All the rooms were full, with dancing in one, drinks in another, and good conversation all around. Seward was “in excellent spirits,” moving easily among cabinet members, military officers, diplomats, and senators. Even white-haired Secretary Welles, who, it was mockingly remarked, should have died, “to all intents and purposes, twenty years ago,” was having such a good time that he seemed “good for, at least, twenty years more.”
LINCOLN LOOKED TO CHASE for guidance on the complex problem of financing a war at a time when the government was heavily in debt. The economic Panic of 1857, corruption in the Buchanan administration, and the partial dismemberment of the Union had taken a massive toll on the government coffers. With Congress not in session to authorize new tariffs and taxes, Chase was forced to rely on government loans to sustain war expenditures. Banks held back at first, demanding higher interest rates than the government could afford to pay, but eventually, Chase cobbled together enough revenue to meet expenses until Congress convened.
Chase later noted proudly that in the early days of the war, Lincoln relied on him to carry out functions that ordinarily belonged to the War Department. According to Chase, he assumed “the principal charge” of preventing the key border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee from falling into secessionist hands. He authorized a loyal state senator from Kentucky to muster twenty companies. He drew up the orders that allowed Andrew Johnson, the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union, “to raise regiments in Tennessee.” He believed himself instrumental in keeping Kentucky and Missouri in the Union, seriously underestimating Lincoln’s critical role.
Indeed, Chase would never cease to underestimate Lincoln, nor to resent the fact that he had lost the presidency to a man he considered his inferior. In late April, he presumptuously sent Lincoln a New York Times article highly derogatory of the administration. “The President and the Cabinet at Washington are far behind the people,” the Times argued. “They are like a person just aroused from sleep, and in a state of dreamy half-consciousness.” This charge, Chase informed Lincoln, “has too much truth in it.” Lincoln did not reply, well understanding Chase’s implacable yearning for the presidency. But for now he needed the Ohioan’s enormous talents and total cooperation.
Cameron, meanwhile, found the task of running the War Department unbearable. Unable to manage his vast responsibilities, he turned to both Seward and Chase for help. “Oh, it was a terrible time,” Cameron remembere
d years later. “We were entirely unprepared for such a conflict, and for the moment, at least, absolutely without even the simplest instruments with which to engage in war. We had no guns, and even if we had, they would have been of but little use, for we had no ammunition to put in them—no powder, no saltpetre, no bullets, no anything.” The demands placed on the War Department in the early days of the war were indeed excruciating. Not only were weapons in short supply, but uniforms, blankets, horses, medical supplies, food, and everything necessary to outfit the vast numbers of volunteer soldiers arriving daily in Washington were unobtainable. It would have taken thousands of personnel to handle the varied functions of the quartermaster’s department, the ordnance office, the engineering department, the medical office, and the pay department. Yet, in 1861, the entire War Department consisted of fewer than two hundred people, including clerks, messengers, and watchmen. As Cameron lamented afterward: “I was certainly not in a place to be envied.”
Lincoln later explained that with “so large a number of disloyal persons” infiltrating every department, the government could not rely on official agents to manage contracts for manufacturing the weapons and supplies necessary to maintain a fighting force. With the cabinet’s unanimous consent, he directed Chase to dispense millions of dollars to a small number of trusted private individuals to negotiate and sign contracts that would mobilize the military. Acting “without compensation,” the majority of these men did their utmost under the circumstances. A few, including Alexander Cummings, one of Cameron’s lieutenants, would bring shame to the War Department.
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