Mary’s pleasure in her husband’s victory reflected more than simple pride. During the fall election, she had been terrified that his defeat might signal merchants in New York and Philadelphia—to whom she still owed substantial sums—to call in her debt. “I owe altogether about twenty-seven thousand dollars,” she confided in Elizabeth Keckley. “Mr. Lincoln has but little idea of the expense of a woman’s wardrobe. He glances at my rich dresses, and is happy in the belief that the few hundred dollars that I obtain from him supply all my wants. I must dress in costly materials. The people scrutinize every article that I wear with critical curiosity. The very fact of having grown up in the West, subjects me to more searching observation. To keep up appearances, I must have money—more than Mr. Lincoln can spare for me. He is too honest to make a penny outside of his salary; consequently I had, and still have, no alternative but to run in debt.”
Although padded bills and attempts to trade upon her White House influence exposed her to serious scandal, Mary could not curtail her excessive spending habits. “Here is the carriage of Mrs Lincoln before a dry goods Store,” Judge Taft noted four weeks after the election, “her footman has gone into the Store. The Clerk is just going out to the carriage (where Mrs L is waiting) with some pieces of goods for her to choose from. I should rather think that she would have a better chance at the goods if she was to go into the Store but then she might get jostled and gazed at and that too would be doing just as the common people do. The footman holds the carriage door open. The driver sits on the box and hold[s] the horses. Mrs L. thumbs the goods and asks a great many questions.”
A week later, Mary journeyed to Philadelphia for another shopping trip. Not long afterward, she visited New York, where she purchased a new dress, expensive furs, and “300 pairs of kid gloves.” When the items she purchased did not measure up to her expectations, her manic sprees quickly gave way to depression and anger. “I can neither wear, or settle with you, for my bonnet without different inside flowers,” she threatened a milliner in New York. “I cannot retain or wear the bonnet, as it is—I am certainly taught a lesson, by your acting thus.”
Mary’s self-conscious attention to the details of her bonnet was not entirely misplaced. Newspaper reports of her evening receptions invariably commented on every piece of her apparel. At the first White House levee of the new winter season, the National Republican noted that she “was charmingly and elegantly attired…dressed in a rich, plain white silk, with heavy black lace flounce and black lace shawl, and upon her head was a coronet of white and purple flowers—a most tasteful decoration.” Her outfit at a state dinner a few weeks later drew equal praise. “Mrs. Lincoln was tastefully attired in a heavy black and white spotted silk, elegantly trimmed with black lace, her headdress and rich set of jewelry harmonizing throughout.”
The new season brought new rules of etiquette for visitors at public receptions at the White House: “Overcoats, hats, caps, bonnets, shawls, cloaks &c. should be deposited in the several ante-rooms provided for that purpose, and where they will be in charge of proper persons for safekeeping.” The new arrangement pleased the Washington social elite, who began returning to the open receptions they had shunned. A reporter for the National Republican noted on the part of all the guests “a more general observance of the proprieties of dress and demeanor,” which seemed to suggest “increasing respect for the President, his family and themselves.”
Mary also took great pride in her informal Blue Room receptions, which continued to draw distinguished visitors. She was particularly gratified by the regular appearance of Charles Sumner. The handsome senator, though in his early fifties, was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in Washington. “I was pleased,” Mary later recalled, “knowing he visited no other lady—His time was so immersed in his business—and that cold & haughty looking man to the world—would insist upon my telling him all the news, & we would have such frequent and delightful conversations & often late in the evening—My darling husband would join us & they would laugh together, like two school boys.”
However, the prestige and pleasure of her second term as first lady could not assuage Mary’s lingering grief over the loss of Willie. Over two years after her son’s death, it was still difficult for her to enter the library, which had been one of his favorite rooms. Her “darling Boy!”—“the idolized child, of the household”—was never far from her mind. “I have sometimes feared,” she admitted to a friend, “that the deep waters, through which we have passed would overwhelm me.” In the absence of her gentle son, “The World, has lost so much, of its charm. My position, requires my presence, where my heart is so far from being.”
After Willie’s death, Mary had been determined not to allow her oldest son, Robert, to risk his life in the army. But after his graduation from Harvard, she could no longer detain him. In January 1865, Lincoln wrote to General Grant: “Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but only a friend. My son, now in his twenty second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those who have already served long, are better entitled, and better qualified to hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your Military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered.”
Grant replied two days later. “I will be most happy to have him in my Military family,” he wrote. He suggested that the rank of captain would be most appropriate. So Robert’s wish to join the army was granted. Stationed at Grant’s headquarters, Robert “soon became exceedingly popular,” Horace Porter recalled. “He was always ready to perform his share of hard work, and never expected to be treated differently from any other officer on account of his being the son of the Chief Executive of the nation.”
IN THE FIRST DAYS OF 1865, Gideon Welles was preoccupied with thoughts of “passing time and accumulating years.” His wistful contemplation was shared by Salmon Chase. On the first of January, the Chief Justice’s last surviving sister, Helen, was buried in Ohio. Of ten siblings, only Chase and his brother Edward, both in their mid-fifties, remained alive. Chase wrote to Lincoln explaining that the death of his sister precluded his attendance at the traditional New Year’s reception. “Without your note of to-day,” Lincoln promptly replied, “I should have felt assured that some sufficient reason had detained you. Allow me to condole with you in the sad bereavement.”
One of the guests at the White House reception noted “a great contrast between this ‘New Years’ and any previous one for the past three years, four years ago there was a solemn stillness, a burthensome weight hanging upon the minds of all, a fearful foreboding of Evil, a dread of the future. It was but little better three years or two years ago…. Even one year ago we could scarcely see any light. Today all are in good spirits.”
The stunning success of Sherman’s March to the Sea, which had ended with the capture of Savannah on Christmas Day, was largely responsible for the ebullience that prevailed in Washington. “Our joy was irrepressible,” recalled Assistant Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch, “because it was an assurance that the days of the Confederacy were numbered.” The president had initially been “anxious, if not fearful,” about Sherman’s plan to abandon his supply lines and trust that his men could forage for necessary food and provisions along the way. The day after Savannah fell, Lincoln recalled his skepticism in a gracious note to Sherman: “The honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce.”
Sherman’s March to the Sea proved devastating to Southern property and countryside. Frank Blair, whose troops played a major role in the historic march, rationalized the indiscriminate destruction in a letter to his father: “We have destroyed nearly four hundred miles of Railroad, severing the western from the Eastern part of the C
onfederacy, and we have burned millions of dollars worth of cotton which is the only thing that enables them to maintain credit abroad & to purchase arms & munitions of war & we have actually ‘gobbled’ up enough provisions to have fed Lee’s army for six months.” Though the military gains justified the march in the minds of Union soldiers, the memory of its terrible impact on civilian lives haunts the South to this day.
In his congratulatory note to Sherman, Lincoln also paid tribute to General George Thomas, who had defeated Hood’s forces at Nashville ten days earlier. News of the two victories, Lincoln wrote, brought “those who sat in darkness, to see a great light.” The telegram announcing Thomas’s victory had been carried to Stanton in the middle of the night. “Hurrah,” Stanton cried as he hurriedly dressed and rushed to the White House with Thomas Eckert, the chief of the telegraph office. Eckert would long remember the delight on Lincoln’s face when he heard the news. Standing at the top of the stairs “in his night-dress, with a lighted candle in his hand,” the tall president created an arresting tableau.
The fall of Fort Fisher, which guarded the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, followed in mid-January. Headlines trumpeted the “Combined Work of the Army and Navy!,” which had gained the capture of the fort and its seventy-two large-caliber guns. “This glorious work,” hailed the National Republican, “closes the port of Wilmington, and shuts off supplies to the rebels from abroad.” Gideon Welles was ecstatic, recording that at the cabinet meeting that morning, “there was a very pleasant feeling. Seward thought there was little now for the Navy to do…. The President was happy.” The defeat was shattering to Southern logistics and morale. Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens considered the fall of Fort Fisher “one of the greatest disasters which had befallen our Cause from the beginning of the war—not excepting the loss of Vicksburg or Atlanta.” With nearly every other port closed by the naval blockade, the closing of Wilmington signaled “the complete shutting out of the Confederate States from all intercourse by sea with Foreign Countries,” bringing an end to the exchange of cotton for vitally needed munitions and supplies.
Stanton was in Savannah, Georgia, for a conference with Sherman when “the rebel flag of Fort Fisher was delivered to [him].” Eager to see the battleground, he journeyed to North Carolina, where he spent the night with General Rufus Saxton and his wife. When he arrived, he warned his hosts that “fatigue would compel him to retire early,” but, relaxing before the fire, surrounded by a collection of books, he revived. “Ah, here are old friends,” he said, picking up a volume of Macauley’s poetry from the table. He asked Mrs. Saxton to read “Horatius at the Bridge,” which he followed with “The Battle of Ivry.” Midnight found him still seated by the fire, “repeating snatches of poetry.” During his stay, Mrs. Saxton noted, “the Titan War Secretary was replaced by the genial companion, the man of letters, the lover of nature—the real Stanton.” For a few hours, Stanton allowed himself the distraction and the levity he had often decried in Lincoln.
Stanton had journeyed south to confer with Sherman, concerned by reports of the general’s hostile behavior toward the black refugees who were arriving by the thousands into his lines. It was said that Sherman opposed their employment as soldiers, drove them from his camp even when they were starving, and manifested toward them “an almost criminal dislike.” Sherman countered that the movement of his military columns was hindered “by the crowds of helpless negroes that flock after our armies…clogging my roads, and eating up our substance.” Military success, he felt, had to take precedence over treatment of the Negroes.
In his conversations with Stanton, however, Sherman agreed to issue “Special Field Orders, No. 15,” a temporary plan to allocate “a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground” to help settle the tide of freed slaves along the coast of Georgia and on the neighboring islands. Stanton returned home feeling more at ease about the situation. In the weeks that followed, Congress followed up by creating a Freedmen’s Bureau with authority to distribute lands and provide assistance to displaced refugees throughout the South.
NOTHING ON THE HOME FRONT in January engaged Lincoln with greater urgency than the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. He had long feared that his Emancipation Proclamation would be discarded once the war came to an end. “A question might be raised whether the proclamation was legally valid,” he said. “It might be added that it only aided those who came into our lines…or that it would have no effect upon the children of the slaves born hereafter.” Passage of a constitutional amendment eradicating slavery once and for all would be “a King’s cure for all the evils.”
The previous spring, the Thirteenth Amendment had passed in the Senate by two thirds but failed to garner the necessary two-thirds vote in the House, where Republicans had voted aye and Democrats nay along nearly unanimous party lines. In his annual message in December, Lincoln had urged Congress to reconsider the measure. He acknowledged that he was asking the same body to debate the same question, but he hoped the intervening election had altered the situation. Republican gains in November ensured that if he called a special session after March 4, the amendment would pass. Since it was “only a question of time,” how much better it would be if this Congress could complete the job, if Democrats as well as Republicans could be brought to support its passage in a show of bipartisan unity.
Congressman James M. Ashley of Ohio reintroduced the measure into the House on January 6, 1865. Lincoln set to work at once to sway the votes of moderate Democrats and border-state Unionists. He invited individual House members to his office, dealing gracefully and effectively with each one. “I have sent for you as an old whig friend,” he told Missouri’s James Rollins, “that I might make an appeal to you to vote for this amendment. It is going to be very close, a few votes one way or the other will decide it.” He emphasized the importance of sending a signal to the South that the border states could no longer be relied upon to uphold slavery. This would “bring the war,” he predicted, “rapidly to a close.” When Rollins agreed to support the amendment, Lincoln jumped from his chair and grasped the congressman’s hands, expressing his profound gratitude. The two old Whigs then discussed the leanings of the various members of the Missouri delegation, determining which members might be persuaded. “Tell them of my anxiety to have the measure pass,” Lincoln urged, “and let me know the prospect of the border state vote.”
He assigned two of his allies in the House to deliver the votes of two wavering members. When they asked how to proceed, he said, “I am President of the United States, clothed with great power. The abolition of slavery by constitutional provision settles the fate, for all coming time, not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come—a measure of such importance that those two votes must be procured. I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done; but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes.” It was clear to his emissaries that his powers extended to plum assignments, pardons, campaign contributions, and government jobs for relatives and friends of faithful members. Brooklyn Democrat Moses F. Odell agreed to change his vote; when the session ended, he was given the lucrative post of navy agent in New York. Elizabeth Blair noted that her father had successfully joined in the lobbying effort, persuading several members.
Ashley learned that the Camden & Amboy Railroad could secure the vote of two New Jersey Democrats if Senator Sumner could be convinced to postpone a bill he had introduced to end the monopoly the railroad enjoyed. Unable to move Sumner, Ashley asked Lincoln to intervene. Lincoln regretfully replied that he could “do nothing with Mr. Sumner in these matters,” and feared if he tried, Sumner “would be all the more resolute.”
As the vote neared, pressure intensified. The leader of the opposition was McClellan’s running mate, Democrat George Pendleton of Ohio. “Though he had been defeated in the election,” observed Senator James Blaine, “he returned to the House wi
th increased prestige among his own political associates.” Democrats who considered changing their vote were made to understand that dire consequences would follow if they failed to maintain the party line on an issue compromising the sanctity of states’ rights and effecting a fundamental shift in the Constitution.
Both sides knew that the outcome would be decided by the thinnest of margins. “We are like whalers,” Lincoln observed, “who have been long on a chase: we have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or with one ‘flop’ of his tail he will send us all into eternity.” On the morning of the scheduled vote, Ashley feared that the entire effort would collapse. Rumors circulated that Confederate Peace Commissioners were on the way to Washington or had already arrived in the capital. “If it is true,” Ashley urgently wrote to the president, “I fear we shall [lose] the bill.” The Democratic leadership would prevail upon wavering party members, arguing that the amendment would lead the commissioners to abort the peace talks. “Please authorize me to contradict it, if not true,” Ashley entreated.
“So far as I know,” Lincoln promptly replied, “there are no peace Commissioners in the City, or likely to be in it.” Ashley later learned that Lincoln, in fact, had been informed that three Peace Commissioners were en route to Fort Monroe, but he could honestly, if insincerely, claim that no commissioners were in the capital city. Without this cunning evasion, Ashley believed, “the proposed amendment would have failed.”
As the debate opened, Ashley acknowledged that “never before, and certain I am that never again, will I be seized with so strong a desire to give utterance to the thoughts and emotions which throbbed my heart and brain.” The amendment’s passage would signal “the complete triumph of a cause, which at the beginning of my political life I had not hoped to live long enough to see.”
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