Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Mr. Corwin,” said Kate, disbelieving. “Mr. Corwin nominated Mr. McLean.”

  “And Mr. Delano seconded Lincoln instead of me,” said her father grimly. “Two Ohio delegates have forsaken me before the first ballot.”

  Nettie looked from her father to her sister and back. “How could anyone from Ohio vote for anyone but you?”

  “The vote hasn’t been taken yet,” Kate explained. “These are merely the nominations.”

  “A delegate is hardly likely to nominate or second one man and vote for another,” Father said grumpily.

  Nettie threw Kate an anxious look, and she returned what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Politics is a strange business,” she reminded her father. “That may be a ploy to draw delegates away from Mr. Seward so he doesn’t win on the first ballot.”

  Her father made no reply, but at least he did not disagree.

  Restless and craving fresh air and distraction, Kate had Honeysuckle saddled and went riding through the fashionable districts along State and High streets and around the magnificent capitol. She exchanged greetings in passing from friends and acquaintances, and politely accepted premature congratulations from others. Here and there she observed signs of the great celebration planned for the evening should her father receive the nomination. Brass bands were rehearsing, a sturdy cart had been procured to haul an enormous cannon to the statehouse to announce the good news with a thunderous salute, and somewhere, Kate knew, fireworks were being made ready. She fervently hoped that the city’s preparations would not be in vain.

  Less than an hour after she returned home from her ride, another telegram arrived from Uncle Edward: “First ballot,” Father read aloud, holding the paper close to his eyes. “Seward 173½, Lincoln 102, Cameron 50½, Chase 49, Bates 48, McLean 12, Collamer 10, Wade 3, Sumner 1, Fremont 1.”

  Kate’s heart sank as she and her father read the telegram together in silence, once, twice, and yet again. The delegates of Ohio had not rallied around Father. Mr. Seward was first, as all had expected, but somehow Mr. Lincoln had emerged as the second favorite, with General Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania inexplicably ranked third, ahead of Father. “How can this be?” Father wondered aloud, wounded. “Not even second, but a distant fourth?”

  “Not too distant,” Kate quickly replied. “We all knew Mr. Seward would take the first ballot, but he has not yet taken the nomination. Now that the delegates know how matters stand, and that some candidates have no chance at all, there will be a shifting of votes.”

  “Yes, but will two hundred and thirty-three votes shift to me?”

  Kate found herself at a loss for a satisfactory reply. All they could do was wait for Uncle Edward’s next telegram.

  It was not long in coming, and when Father carried it into the library to read in seclusion, Kate followed close behind and read over his shoulder. “Second ballot,” Uncle Edward had tersely announced. “Seward 184½, Lincoln 181, Chase 42½, Bates 35, Dayton 10, McLean 8, Cameron 2, Clay 2. Third ballot forthcoming.”

  Mr. Seward had gained a little ground, but although Father had overtaken General Cameron in the ranking, he had garnered fewer delegates than on the first ballot. The shifting of votes had gone mostly Mr. Lincoln’s way.

  “It is finished,” Father murmured, letting his brother’s telegram fall to the desktop.

  “It is not yet finished,” Kate protested. “It’s not finished until one man has two hundred and thirty-three delegates.”

  “Katie, dear child,” her father said, reaching for her hand. “Barring some miracle, it is finished for me. Even if I claimed the votes of every candidate lower in the polling than myself, I would not have enough to catch up to Seward and Lincoln.”

  “There are more delegates who don’t want Mr. Seward than do,” Kate countered. “Now that they’ve seen he’s vulnerable, they would be wise to shift their votes to you so that you may overtake him before he collects enough to win the nomination.”

  “If Seward’s enemies consolidate their votes behind someone else to block him, why would they choose me instead of Lincoln?”

  It was a rhetorical question, resignedly posed, but Kate decided to respond as if he meant it. “Mr. Lincoln is not as well-known as you outside his home state, and therefore less likely to prevail in November. That alone makes him a risky nominee, but in his case it is doubly true because the Democrats are likely to choose Mr. Douglas, who has defeated him before, and rather recently. You are the more prudent choice.”

  Her father brooded for a long moment in silence, which he broke, at last, with a heavy sigh. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said wearily. “The third ballot will decide it.”

  It seemed hours until Uncle Edward’s next telegram proved him right. The next time the messenger knocked on the door, Kate and Nettie flew to answer it, with their father and the rest of the household close behind.

  “Read it, Katie,” her father instructed.

  Holding the paper with trembling hands, Kate took a deep breath and said, “Uncle Edward writes, ‘Third ballot. Lincoln 231½, Seward 180, Chase 24½, rest to others. After ballot Cartter—” Her voice faltered, but she steeled herself and plunged ahead. “Cartter switched four Ohio votes to give Lincoln majority. Great enthusiasm and rush to switch votes to make unanimous. My sincere regrets.”

  All eyes went to Father, who stood pale and tall and stoic in their midst. “It comes down to Ohio again,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion. “If they had been true from the outset, and remained true throughout—” He fell silent, opened his mouth again as if he would say more, but then he shook his head and slowly walked off alone. A moment later Kate heard the study door close behind him.

  Tears streamed down Nettie’s fair cheeks. “It’s not fair,” she said, balling up her skirts in her fists. “It’s not right. There must be some mistake. They counted wrong.”

  “Nettie,” Kate soothed, embracing her. “There is no mistake. Uncle Edward would not have gotten it wrong.”

  A catch in her throat silenced her. She was close to weeping too, but she refused to break down in the foyer with all eyes upon her. Her father needed them to be strong, loyal, and reassuring as he prepared for a future far different from his expectations, and the rest of the family would follow her lead. She would grieve later, alone, where no one could see.

  Later that day, as word of her father’s defeat and Mr. Lincoln’s triumph diffused through the city, a muted ceremony to honor the nominee took place. The brass bands and fireworks were canceled, but the cannon fired once at the corner of Third and State streets, and then it was over. Kate, who had hoped to attend a grand celebration at her father’s side, instead heard the thunderous salute from her father’s library, where she had set up the chessboard and invited him to play. After halfheartedly capturing a few of her pawns and losing a knight, he apologized and told her he felt a headache coming on and wanted nothing more than to lie in the quiet darkness of his bedchamber and rest his eyes.

  In the days that followed, Kate stifled her indignant anger as she read how the delegates in Chicago had celebrated after making their choice—the wrong choice—and how cannons had been fired and nearly thirty thousand people had filled the streets, shouting and cheering, how the Press and Tribune buildings had been illuminated from foundation to rooftop, and how bands had played triumphant marches as Republicans paraded through the streets with fence rails on their shoulders in a nod to Mr. Lincoln’s humble origins.

  “Fence rails again,” Kate muttered, shoving the papers aside in disgust. The people could have chosen as their champion a truly wise and good man, a brilliant governor, a courageous defender of the Negro, a tireless enemy of slavery, but instead they had settled for an unpolished, untried country lawyer, a one-term congressman from the wilds of Illinois—all because he told entertaining stories, could make a good speech, and wasn’t William H. Seward.

  The people wou
ld realize their mistake in due course, but by then it would be too late.

  • • •

  Where Kate was disappointed and indignant, her father felt betrayed, bitter, and hurt. In the immediate aftermath of the convention, he could not conceal his fury at the delegates of Ohio for refusing to rally behind him unanimously. “When I reflect upon what Illinois did for Lincoln, what New York did for Seward, and what Missouri did for Bates,” he told Kate one morning as they strolled through the garden, her arm through his, “and then when I consider the actions of the Ohio delegation, I confess it wrenches my heart.”

  “There is no excuse for their treachery,” Kate said hotly. “The outcome would have been entirely different had they been true.”

  Although Father was tormented by thoughts of what might have been, he nevertheless mustered up the good grace to send his best regards to the victor. “I congratulate you most heartily on your nomination,” he wrote to Mr. Lincoln in Springfield, “and shall support you, in 1860, as cordially and earnestly as I did in 1858.” He praised the platform adopted at the convention and the selection of Hannibal Hamlin, “that true & able man,” as the nominee for vice-president. “They will prove, I am confident, as auspicious to the country as they are honorable to the nominees.”

  Soon thereafter, Mr. Lincoln responded with a gracious letter of his own. “Holding myself the humblest of all whose names were before the convention,” he wrote, “I feel in especial need of the assistance of all; and I am glad—very glad—of the indication that you stand ready.”

  Mr. Lincoln’s sincere humility mollified Kate’s anger somewhat. “At least he realizes that he needs your help,” she said, returning the letter to her father. “Will you, as he puts it, ‘do service in the common cause’?”

  “Of course,” Father responded solemnly. “No amount of personal disappointment could compel me to forsake my duty to my country.”

  Kate had never been more proud of him.

  Mr. Lincoln was right to admit that he needed help if he were to win the national election, and some help came to him unwittingly from an unlikely quarter—the Democratic Party. After their convention in Charleston had ended in shambles, the Southern delegates who had walked out were replaced by other men from their states when the Democrats officially reconvened in Baltimore on June 18. There, to no one’s surprise, Mr. Douglas was chosen as the party’s nominee. Five days later, elsewhere in the city, the excluded Southern delegates defiantly held their own convention, where they nominated former congressman and current vice-president John C. Breckinridge, a Kentuckian who adamantly insisted that the Constitution permitted slavery throughout the states and new territories. Further crowding the slate of presidential candidates was Mr. John Bell of Tennessee, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, an alliance of conservative Know-Nothings and Whigs whose simple platform suggested that their approach to the slavery question was to ignore it altogether. With the Democrats splintered, the outlook for a Republican victory in November seemed promising, although Kate and her father agreed that the battle for electoral votes would likely break along geographic lines, with Mr. Lincoln battling Mr. Douglas for the Northern states and Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Bell for the Southern. But as Kate had noted on the last day of the convention, Mr. Douglas had trounced Mr. Lincoln before. The Republicans could take nothing for granted.

  His loyalty to the party stronger than its loyalty to him, Father kept his promise and campaigned on behalf of his former rival in midsummer and into the fall, just as he had when Mr. Lincoln ran for the Senate in 1858.

  In September, Father decided to take time away from his electioneering for a trip to Cleveland to attend the dedication of a monument to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the “Hero of Lake Erie,” who had commanded the American naval forces in tremendous, unprecedented victories against the Royal Navy in the War of 1812. Father’s good friend Richard Parsons, a Cleveland attorney and the Speaker of the state House of Representatives, had invited the Chases to be his honored guests during their visit.

  “A trip to Washington would be more fruitful,” Kate urged. “In half a year you will be in the Senate again. There is no time like the present to begin building a coalition.”

  “It will not look well if I don’t go to Cleveland,” Father said, surprised by her reluctance. “The people will think I sulk at home, or that I begrudge a hero his accolades. No, Katie, I must go, and I would have you come with me.”

  “Take Nettie instead.”

  “I wish to take you both.” His brow furrowed. “You usually relish this sort of pageantry. Why don’t you want to go? Is it because Columbus didn’t celebrate for me back in May?”

  “No, it’s not that.” Kate had not even thought of the canceled fireworks and the muted bands and the melancholy single-cannon salute since the last night of the Republican Convention. “Every notable Ohioan will be in Cleveland, and I confess I haven’t forgiven those who betrayed you in Chicago.”

  “Dear Katie.” Her father held her at arm’s length and studied her sympathetically. He did not have to incline his head far to meet her gaze; for most of her life he had seemed to tower over her, a powerful figure taking up most of her small sky, but now he did so only in her heart and memory. “You must be brave, brave and practical. When I return to the Senate in March, I’ll need friends if I am to push through the good works I intend to accomplish. We must show them we are not cowed, and that we are not broken. They will remember how I bear this disappointment four years hence.”

  She knew he was right, and that it was folly to hold a grudge against the people upon whom her father’s political future might depend.

  “Come, now,” her father cajoled. Suddenly she realized that he did not want to go without her; he would if he must, but he would not impress voters and dignitaries half as well without her by his side. “There will be a ball, and you may buy a new dress. Silk, if you wish.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a different matter entirely,” she replied, managing a smile. Whereas other women of their class adorned themselves in silk and jewels on special occasions, Kate wore white linen and flowers. Others praised her simple, elegant style, saying that it suited her youth and did not distract from her own natural beauty. What they did not know was that linen and flowers were the best her father could afford, and she happily would have bedecked herself in diamonds if permitted. “You didn’t tell me I could have a new silk dress.”

  He smiled back, greatly relieved, although he promptly began to caution her not to spend too much on her gown. She tolerated his warnings fondly. Despite her father’s political stature, he was not a wealthy man. They had invested a great deal of money in their home and had filled it with the trappings of success, but much of their extended family depended upon Father’s support, and he often found himself short of funds. He abhorred debt nearly as much as drunkenness, but the life he had chosen demanded certain unavoidable expenditures.

  Kate dutifully—but not unwillingly—ordered a new gown from her favorite New York dressmaker, who knew her measurements and her tastes and could be relied upon to work swiftly. Two days before their departure, the gown arrived—a lovely pale-green silk trimmed in exquisite lace, with a flatteringly snug bodice embellished with mother-of-pearl buttons up the front and a modest train. Nettie was pleased with her pretty frock too, a fine blue wool dress adorned with white ribbons that had once belonged to Kate but had been let out in the waist and hemmed. Father, as always, would dress impeccably, in a well-fitted gray suit and a new waistcoat of burgundy brocade.

  It rained heavily on the evening they traveled with Governor Dennison’s party north to Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie. Mr. Parsons, an energetic lawyer in his early thirties, was among those who met them at the station, and while the Committee on Arrangements escorted his entourage to the Angier House on the corner of Bank and Saint Clair streets, Mr. Parsons took the Chases home to his charming residence on Pr
ospect, where his wife, Sarah, welcomed them warmly at the door. The rain had stopped but the heat of the day remained, so they took supper in the shady garden. Afterward, while the Parsons’ two young children, a girl and a boy, played nearby and Nettie wandered off with a sketchbook and pencils to draw a bird’s nest she had found nestled in the crook of a tree, Kate and her father and the Parsonses talked politics. While Mr. Parsons would have preferred to vote for Father in November, he and his wife found Mr. Lincoln a satisfactory and even appealing alternative, but reports of increasing rancor between North and South troubled them deeply. “Mr. Lincoln must win,” Mr. Parsons said, “and yet, if he does, I cannot imagine that the South will not respond with violence.”

  “When Mr. Lincoln wins,” Father replied, with decisive emphasis, “the slave powers will discover that their influence in Washington City has diminished precipitously. They will have no choice but to abandon slavery—immediately, as I would have it, or gradually and with compensation for their financial losses, as Mr. Lincoln seems more inclined to do.”

  “There is another choice,” Mr. Parsons reminded him. “War.”

  Father shook his head. “The South would have to be a conglomeration of fools to start a war they have no chance of winning. They lack the resources, the men, and the will to go to war. Generations of slaveholding have rendered them soft and self-indulgent. They preen and polish their swords and threaten duels, but they will not go to war.”

  “Then let us not even speak of it,” urged Mrs. Parsons, shaking her head so that the chestnut-brown curls framing her face bounced lightly. “It is too dreadful a subject to contemplate on such a fine autumn evening, with so many delightful events awaiting us.”

  The gentlemen nodded politely and agreed, as did Kate, although she happily would have discussed politics all evening and well into the night. Some women considered a keen interest in politics unbecoming in a lady, but thankfully, Father had no such prejudices.