Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Mrs. Lincoln,” said Elizabeth steadily, “is there anything I can do for you, anything at all, for you or for Mr. Lincoln?”

  “You’ve done what I needed most, Elizabeth, as you always do.” Mrs. Lincoln offered her a sad, tight smile. “Sometimes I don’t know how I’d endure living in this—” She waved a hand as if to indicate all of Washington City. “Well. You know how it is, and how I rely upon you.”

  A small glow of pride warmed Elizabeth’s heart. She did indeed know. “It is my great pleasure, Mrs. Lincoln.”

  A few days later, when Mrs. Lincoln next summoned her to the White House, Elizabeth learned that thousands of mourners had come to pay their respects to the young colonel as he lay in state in the East Room. Among them was Robert Lincoln, who had traveled all the way from Harvard to mourn and to comfort his parents. They seemed shaken, not only by their personal loss, but also by the sense that this early, violent, and sudden death heralded the sacrifice of many young, valiant men who would perish in the months ahead.

  Afterward, the flag that Colonel Ellsworth had given his life for was presented to the First Lady. Mrs. Lincoln was honored and deeply moved, and kept it always.

  The death of this soldier she had barely known made Elizabeth ever more fearful for the one she loved most of all.

  George wrote often, at least twice a week, entertaining her with tales of camp life and his humorous early mishaps as a novice soldier. Elizabeth had seen enough of soldiering in Washington to realize that he gave her only the most optimistic, uncomplaining version of his new life, and that it was certainly more difficult than he let on. As far as he could tell, he was the only man of color in the regiment, which was comprised nearly entirely of German immigrants, with some Irish and native-born Americans mixed among them. “I am whiter than most of my comrades,” he said in an early letter, “so you need not worry that I will be found out.” Many civilian Missourians disliked the Germans, but George admired their industry and stoicism, and he shared their abolitionist views.

  The slave state of Missouri was a curious case, having voted in March to remain in the Union but not to supply men or weapons to either side. That decision had not prevented Unionists and secessionists alike from forming militia units on their own and jostling for control over the various federal armories located throughout the state. Within weeks of George’s enlistment, the First Missouri under the command of Captain Nathaniel Lyon marched on Camp Jackson, where secessionist Missouri Volunteer Militia troops were holding captured Union heavy artillery and munitions, which had been given to them by the Confederates so they could attack the St. Louis Arsenal. Nearly seven hundred militiamen were forced to surrender, but when they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, Captain Lyon decided to arrest them and march them through the streets of St. Louis to the arsenal, where he intended to parole the humiliated men and order them to disperse.

  George’s account of how Captain Lyon’s plans went terribly wrong, though rendered in a son’s carefully selective prose, reminded Elizabeth alarmingly of the altercation in Baltimore. As the First Missouri marched the captured secessionists through the city, indignant residents shouted insults and hurled rocks and paving stones upon the soldiers. “The refrain ‘Damn the Dutch!’ was shouted at our German comrades so often and with such anger that I thought, at last there is someone hated more than the Negro,” George wrote. Next, some accounts claimed, a drunken civilian stumbled into the path of the marching troops, fired a pistol at them, and fatally wounded a captain in the Third Missouri. The soldiers responded by opening fire, first above the heads of the civilians and then into the crowd. Twenty-eight people were killed, including women and children, and some fifty more were injured. Several days of rioting broke out, during which anti-German hatred ran rampant throughout St. Louis, civilians shot at soldiers from the windows of their businesses and homes, and troops once again fired upon crowds in the streets. Although George described the events lightly, with a young man’s bravado, Elizabeth could tell he was shaken.

  In the middle of June, George told her in a later letter, the First Missouri and other federal regiments marched on Jefferson City to find that the secessionist governor had abandoned the state capital. The Union forces easily captured the city and pursued the governor and his Missouri State Guard to the town of Boonville, about fifty miles to the northwest. “It was a minor skirmish, short and sweet,” George wrote, “but we whipped the State Guard, drove the secesh away, and secured the Missouri River Valley for the Union. Not a bad day’s work if I do say so myself.”

  They were encamped at the time he wrote his letter, and he did not know when they would march again or to where. He urged her not to worry, and asked her to pray for him, and promised he would write again soon. “I am ever mindful of my special obligation,” he wrote in closing. “Nothing I suffer on the battlefield is of any consequence if it brings freedom to all our race. I only wish my friends from college would be allowed to take up arms as I have done. Sometimes when I hear my comrades talk about the cowardice and inferiority of the Negro I am tempted to do more than speak up in ‘their’ defense. I want to leap to my feet and shout, ‘Haven’t I fought as bravely as you? Haven’t I marched as far and endured as much? If my blood is shed, will it not be as red as yours? Well, I too am a Negro, and I defy you to explain how I am not as good a soldier as you!’ But of course I cannot say it—not yet. When the war is over the truth will be known, and then let no man call me his inferior.”

  Elizabeth was too proud of him to burden him with her worries and misgivings. George had enlisted to prove himself, to preserve the Union, to deliver others of their race from bondage. She, who had lived nearly forty years a slave, knew all too well that his purpose was noble and necessary.

  To think that when she first discovered she was carrying him, more than twenty-four years ago, she had been despondent. She had not wanted to have relations with Alexander Kirkland, and she had dreaded bearing a child into slavery. But after George was born, her greatest fear had been that he would be taken away from her.

  By midsummer, the newspapers were filled with stories of battles here, skirmishes there, advances and retreats upon towns Elizabeth had never heard of. Prisoners were taken on both sides, but Mr. Lincoln and his advisers did not know what to do with the men in their custody. As rebels, they had committed treason and should by law have been hanged, but that would be abhorrent on such a large scale—and would almost certainly result in retaliation against captured Union soldiers. An exchange of prisoners, a well-established practice between nations at war, would be construed as recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate, sovereign government, which the president was disinclined to do. So captured rebels were held indefinitely, sometimes moved from slave pens to navy brigs to civilian Washington prisons, while Mr. Lincoln and his advisers debated what to do with them—and with rebel property the Union Army had seized on the other side of the Potomac. Robert E. Lee’s captured Arlington plantation was perhaps the most valuable estate in Virginia, and some of Mr. Lincoln’s advisers urged him to sell it to help fund the war and to act as a warning to other planters. Elizabeth understood that the gentleman who had once smiled at her as he pressed one hundred dollars into her hand and told her to spare no expense on his wife’s gown was now a rebel, not only a rebel but their general, but she could not help feeling sorry for his wife, her former patron. The plantation had come to the Lees from her side of the family, descendants of Martha Washington. It pained Elizabeth to think that Mrs. Lee might never see her ancestral home again.

  Elizabeth had not forgotten other former patrons who had fled Washington for their seceded states. In June she completed the fine needlework Varina Davis had left in her care, but she was confounded by the puzzle of how to get it to her. The postal service had stopped delivery to the Confederacy on the first of June, and although Elizabeth heard tales of smugglers who carried goods freely between North and South, she had no idea how to make such arrangements nor
would she feel comfortable trusting anyone who engaged in the practice. In the end she entrusted the embroidery to Mrs. Davis’s friend Matilda Emory, the wife of Major William Emory. A Marylander serving alternately in Indian Territory and the capital, he had quit the Union Army in May against his wife’s wishes. Not content merely to protest, Mrs. Emory had had her husband reinstated by retrieving his letter of resignation herself. Despite Mrs. Emory’s strong Union sentiments, she had remained close to Mrs. Davis, and, without explaining how she would accomplish the task, she assured Elizabeth that she would get the embroidery safely to her friend.

  Since leaving Washington City barely six months before, Mr. Davis had been elected president of the Confederacy and Mrs. Davis had become their First Lady. Sometimes Elizabeth thought back to her months working in the Davis household and marveled at the changes time had wrought. Mrs. Davis and her husband had moved from Alabama to Virginia, or so the papers claimed, and they now resided in another White House in Richmond, the new Confederate capital. Elizabeth wondered if her former patron still entertained hopes that the Confederates would capture Washington City and that she would take her place in the first grand residence to bear that title. Observing the new Union defenses all around the district, Elizabeth suspected that conquering the city would not be as easy as Mrs. Davis had once believed.

  The First Lady presently occupying the White House would certainly have something to say about Mrs. Davis’s confident declarations, if Elizabeth were foolhardy enough to stir up her temper by telling her about them. Mrs. Lincoln was, as she had ever been, a patriotic Unionist, and although the president’s cabinet repeatedly thwarted her efforts to influence her husband on policy matters, she used her position to support the Union cause in other ways. She hosted dinners for dignitaries and, hoping to raise people’s spirits, she arranged for the Marine Band to perform concerts every Wednesday and Saturday when the White House grounds were open to the public. She toured regimental encampments and visited soldiers in the hospital, often distributing delicacies from the White House kitchen and gardens with her own hands. She obtained weapons from the War Department and had them sent to a Union colonel in her home state of Kentucky along with a sincere, heartfelt letter professing her admiration for him as well as her loyalty and love for the nation. She reviewed troops with her husband and was charmed when an army colonel broke a bottle of champagne over a carriage to christen the field where his men were bivouacked as “Camp Mary” in her honor.

  Elizabeth wished Mrs. Lincoln’s sincere and helpful efforts received more than an occasional complimentary aside in the press. Unfortunately, reporters and gossips alike were far more fascinated by stories of her secessionist relatives and her lavish expenditures on fringed satin bed curtains and a purple-and-gold dinner service emblazoned with the seal of the United States on each piece—as well as a second set adorned with her own initials. The press hounded her so that she could not escape them, not even on her trips away from Washington to escape the heat, the disease, and the swarms of flies and mosquitoes that plagued the city throughout those oppressive summer days.

  Mrs. Lincoln was at home at the end of July when word began to spread that troops were gathering near Manassas Junction, Virginia. Thousands of citizens eager for diversion packed picnic hampers and hired carriages to take them out to watch the spectacle. Politicians determined to witness history, reporters chasing the story, curious workmen, ladies with parasols thrilled by the prospect of danger and heroism—all wanted to watch Brigadier General Irvin McDowell and his mighty Army of Northeastern Virginia soundly defeat the rebels before marching on to take Richmond and bring a quick and decisive end to the conflict.

  Several of Elizabeth’s young assistant seamstresses had been invited to accompany a few young men in their wagon. “Come with us, Mrs. Keckley,” urged Emma Stevens, a former slave from Maryland who rented a small attic room in the Lewises’ boardinghouse. As a very young child, she and her mother had been granted their freedom when their old mistress passed away, but the woman’s heirs had contested the will. Emma and her mother had been kept in slavery for ten long years more while the lawsuit Emma’s mother brought against the heirs dragged out in court. Upon miraculously winning their case, and their freedom, Emma and her mother had adopted the last name of the lawyer who had courageously represented them in a hostile courtroom.

  Elizabeth smiled and shook her head. “Thank you, no.”

  “Oh, do join us,” Emma said persistently. “There will be plenty of room in the wagon. And it’s a Sunday. You shouldn’t work on a Sunday.”

  “I must,” Elizabeth said. “Mrs. Lincoln needs the white day dress finished before her trip to the seaside. You young people go and have a good time, but do take care.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief when Emma gave her a small disappointed pout and set off on her own, immediately brightening at the thought of her friends and the charming escorts awaiting them. Elizabeth didn’t want to admit to the younger woman, her favorite of her assistants, that she could not bear to watch the scenes of battle and to be painfully, vividly reminded of what George might be facing at that very moment somewhere in Missouri.

  She sewed all day in her rooms with the windows and doors open to stir the stifling air, breaking only for lunch and for a walk with Virginia along the river, where the stench diminished the pleasure of the cooling breeze. They heard the rumble of gunfire to the west, and they wondered how the battle was faring. “We may be sorry later that we missed all the excitement,” Virginia remarked.

  “I’m certain I won’t,” Elizabeth replied.

  As they walked back to Twelfth Street, they passed a telegraph office, where men and boys lingered, waiting for news of the battle. The Confederates were on the run, from the sound of it, and they overheard two men say that the Union Army was expected to be in Richmond within a week. Gladdened by the remarkably good report, they returned home to tell Walker what they had learned. Back in her rooms again, Elizabeth took up Mrs. Lincoln’s dress, threaded a needle, and allowed herself to hope that the war could be over by the autumn, in time for George to muster out of the army and resume his classes at the start of the term.

  Her hopes were dashed before morning.

  Sometime after nightfall, noises outside roused her from sleep—carriage wheels, horses’ hooves, voices raised in alarm. She hurried to the windows, but they looked out over the garden and she could see nothing but the backs of other houses and the glow of a few lighted lamps visible through the windows. As the commotion continued, more lights joined them. Elizabeth dressed quickly and went outside to the front sidewalk, where she found Virginia, Walker, and a few of their neighbors watching in stunned amazement as carriages and wagons and men on horseback came streaming through the city as fast as their tired horses could carry them, their expressions stricken and terrified.

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked Virginia, who only shook her head, pressed her lips together, and clutched her arm. They held on to one another as the ominous parade went by, realization dawning that these were the spectators who had so enthusiastically set out for Centreville to observe the battlefield earlier that day.

  Finally Walker waved down a colored man on a dray, who slowed his team but would not stop. “It was a rout,” he called down from the driver’s seat. “Hundreds dead. Whole companies lost. McDowell’s army’s retreating back to the city if they haven’t been caught or killed yet, and the rebels are right behind them.”

  Virginia gasped, and Elizabeth felt a chill. Emma and two of her other young protégées were in the midst of all that chaos. “Were any civilians hurt?” she called out to the driver, but he had already hastened away.

  All through the night the civilians made their way back to the capital, shaken and exhausted, with wild tales of their narrow escape from certain death. They had been at some distance from the fighting, closer to the river, so they were the first to return. Elizabeth had almost given up hope when Emma appeared, escorted by a young man w
ho solicitously entrusted her to the care of Walker, Elizabeth, and Virginia. “It was a nightmare,” Emma told them, wide-eyed and trembling. “I’ve never seen anything like it. If we hadn’t been near the back of the crowd, close to the wagon—” She shook her head and fell silent as Virginia led her into the house.

  Not until dawn did the first soldiers reach the city, their expressions stunned and haggard, their uniforms torn and disheveled, their ranks diminished. Gone were the waving of regimental colors and the stirring martial music of fife and drum. Famished and exhausted, some of the troops dropped their kits in doorways, on sidewalks, on empty lots, and lay down to sleep where they were. Some observers cast off their shock and hurried back into their homes, quickly returning with bread, cheese, apples, and other food to distribute to the passing soldiers. Elizabeth and Virginia joined in, offering water from pitchers and pails as quickly as one man could pass the dipper to the next.

  The wounded came too, brought into the city by the wagonload. There were not enough beds for all the soldiers who needed them, nor enough bandages, nurses, food—nor hospitals for that matter. A few gray-clad rebel prisoners were marched in on foot and under guard. Some citizens shouted curses and threw stones at the captives, but a few bold Confederate sympathizers among them called out encouragement as they were led off to the Old Capitol on First and A streets Northeast, which had been turned into a federal military prison.

  For hours the people of Washington waited in terror for the Confederate army to press their advantage and take the city, but the invasion never came.