Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “He is a small, insignificant youth who bought his place,” John Hay complained when he and Kate went out riding one afternoon along the Potomac, enjoying the spring breezes and sunshine in a scenic spot away from the fetid smells of the city.

  John sounded so uncharacteristically petulant that Kate laughed, astonished, and her horse tossed its head as if in agreement. “What do you mean?” she inquired lightly. “How can it be cause for complaint that he spends his own fortune to equip his regiment? Is that not better than taking money from the public coffers?”

  “I’m not referring to his position at the head of his regiment, but at the head of his state,” John replied. “Were you aware that he spent more than one hundred thousand dollars on his campaign for governor?”

  The astronomical figure startled her, but she said, “I was not aware of that, but although that does seem excessive, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with funding one’s own campaign.”

  “It’s not how much he spent but how he spent it. After the election, it came out that Mr. Sprague’s partisans had escorted eligible voters to the polls, then paid them fifty dollars each after they cast their votes.”

  “That’s a terrible accusation,” Kate remarked. “Is there any proof?”

  John nodded emphatically. “Witnesses swore to the fact afterward. It proved to be a sound investment on Sprague’s part, for he won the election by little more than fifteen hundred votes. And thus the legend of the Boy Governor was born.”

  Kate had to laugh at his comically ironic tone. “This wild tale sounds like jealous hearsay from Governor Sprague’s political rivals to me.”

  “You may be right,” John admitted, and then, a bit sourly, added, “The Tycoon seems to like him quite a lot.”

  Kate hid a smile, for John had unwittingly divulged another source of his discontent. “The Tycoon” was one of John’s secret nicknames for the president, always spoken with sincere affection but never in his presence. “Shouldn’t Mr. Lincoln’s approval speak well of Governor Sprague?”

  “Not always. Mr. Lincoln did marry the Hellcat, after all.”

  “Mr. Hay,” Kate scolded, though she was secretly delighted. John heartily disliked Mrs. Lincoln, whom he described as demanding, irrational, and tempestuous. He and the president’s private secretary, John Nicolay, referred to her as “the Enemy” between themselves, and John Hay often amused Kate with comical descriptions of how the two secretaries conspired to thwart Mrs. Lincoln’s efforts to control her husband’s schedule, dispense patronage, or influence his decisions. “You should not speak of a lady so.”

  “My apologies,” he said, grinning, for he knew there was no love lost between the two women. But then his wicked mirth faded, and a worried frown took its place. “Mr. Lincoln might admire the Boy Governor’s precocious achievements—”

  “You speak of him as if he were a schoolboy who earned high marks for the term,” Kate protested, laughing. “I happen to know he is eight years older than you, and his accomplishments are quite extraordinary.”

  “It is all surface,” John insisted. “He has no education, he bought his governorship, and he plays at soldiering without any real experience in the field of war.”

  “Mr. Lincoln has no formal education,” Kate countered.

  “Fair enough, but he’s endeavored all his life to make up for that with rigorous independent study. I wouldn’t have admitted this a few weeks ago, but I’ve come to realize that Abraham Lincoln is one of the most well-read, wise, and learned men I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. I’m quite sure that Governor Sprague has never undertaken any program of intellectual self-improvement to compare to the Tycoon’s.”

  With a sigh, Kate gazed heavenward, smiling and shaking her head. “Next you will say he did not earn his own millions.”

  John uttered a short, sharp laugh. “He earned them, all right, on the backs of the poor, suffering wretches who pick his cotton.”

  Kate was so shocked she brought her horse to an abrupt halt. “What on earth could you mean?” she asked, a frosty edge to her voice. It was one thing to tease and banter, quite another to speak slander. “Governor Sprague is from Rhode Island. He owns no slaves.”

  John brought his horse up short and turned to face her. “He doesn’t own them per se, but he buys cotton for his mills from planters who do.” His brow furrowed. “Miss Chase, where did you think he acquired the cotton for his mills? Who did you think picked it? Sprague has profited from slave labor as surely as any Southern plantation owner. Given your fervent and admirable abolitionism, I would think that you of all people would find that highly objectionable.”

  “I do,” said Kate quietly, after a long moment. “I confess I never thought of it in quite that way. I should have, and I’m grateful to you for making me aware of it.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said John gruffly, looking aggrieved with himself, surely wishing he had never started in on Governor Sprague.

  “Perhaps next time we should limit our gossip to the Hellcat,” Kate suggested, smiling.

  John agreed that they probably should, and his expression told Kate more plainly than words that he was pleased and relieved to know that there would be a next time.

  • • •

  On a night in the second week of May, Kate was roused from her sleep by the pealing of alarm bells.

  “Katie?” Nettie murmured drowsily beside her. “What is it?”

  Instantly alert, Kate slipped from beneath the quilt and darted to the window. She heard the alarm more clearly there, but in the darkness up and down Fourteenth Street, she saw nothing amiss, and yet the bells rang on.

  “What’s wrong?” Nettie asked, sitting up in bed. “Are the rebels attacking?”

  Kate felt a momentary stir of trepidation, but thinking quickly, she said, “I don’t think so. I don’t hear any artillery fire. Do you?”

  They both fell silent and strained their ears to listen, but beneath the frantic tocsin they heard no low booms of cannon, no sharp crackle of rifle fire.

  Nettie drew her knees up to her chest, anxious. “Should we wake Father just in case?”

  Before Kate could reply, she heard floorboards creak in the other room as Father climbed out of bed. “Kate, what do you see at Franklin Square?”

  Even with his spectacles on, in the dark of night at that distance, Father would not have been able to perceive more than the broadest of movements in the encampment across the street. “All seems quiet and still except for the sentries on patrol,” she called. “Most of the campfires have burned down to embers, so it’s difficult to say for certain.”

  “Very good. If the city were under attack”—a deep yawn interrupted him—“those soldiers would have been rousted from their tents and ordered to take up arms. If it were a government emergency, a messenger would have been dispatched to bring me the news. Go back to sleep, girls. Whatever has happened, we’ll find out in the morning.”

  With a sigh, Nettie promptly fell back against the pillow and was soon asleep. Kate lingered by the window a while longer, studying the encampment of the New York Twelfth and listening for the ominous boom of cannon. She thought she smelled smoke, but the odor was faint, and probably her imagination. Eventually she slipped back beneath the quilt, put her arm around her sister, and drifted back to sleep.

  In the morning, Will returned with the morning papers and the startling news that the Willard Hotel would have burned down the night before, if not for the swift and valiant actions of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth’s Fire Zouaves.

  With a gasp, Kate snatched up one of the papers—Father’s least favorite, which he would not get to right away—and read that at three o’clock that morning, the building adjacent to the Willard, home to Mr. Owen’s tailor shop and Mr. Field’s restaurant, had been utterly engulfed by fire. As the flames had spread, hotel guests had fled the Willard, clumsily dr
agging their trunks and satchels down the stairs while the Willard brothers scrambled to rescue cash, ledgers, and essential documents from their offices. When the roaring blaze attacked the rear of the hotel, utter ruin seemed inexorable, but suddenly hundreds of Colonel Ellsworth’s Zouaves had raced to the scene from their barracks in the Capitol. Having discovered the city’s firehouses locked, they had broken in, taken the engines, and arrived at the Willard before the local firemen. In the absence of ladders, they had climbed upon one another’s shoulders and scaled lightning rods to reach the higher floors, spraying water down from the smoking eaves. For two hours they had battled the conflagration, eventually reducing it to smoldering embers and saving the hotel.

  Kate’s heart welled up with pride as she thought of Colonel Ellsworth, how determined he had been to select the ablest, bravest men in New York City for the defense of the capital. Now they had saved an important part of it, and just as Colonel Ellsworth had believed, they had been ready and willing to plunge into the thickest of the fight.

  “Can we go see it?” Nettie begged.

  “The fire is out,” said Father. “There will be nothing left to see but smoking ruins.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t mind. I still want to see it.”

  “I’ll take her,” Kate offered. “I confess I’m curious too.”

  Father agreed that they could go after morning scriptures and breakfast. Before long they were dressed and strolling down Fourteenth Street, where the smell of scorched wood and ash drifted on the air. A memory suddenly illuminated Kate’s thoughts—Election Day the previous November, when the Neil House in Columbus had burned to the ground. But the Willard Hotel had not suffered such a calamitous fate, she observed from a few blocks away. As best as she could see through the crowd that had gathered all around the block, although the adjacent building was a total ruin, the Willard Hotel had sustained relatively minor damage to its rear. As a small token of their immense gratitude, Kate overheard, after the fire had been extinguished, the proprietors had invited all of the New York firemen, as well as members of the Massachusetts Fifth Regiment and the New Jersey First who had also rendered service, into the hotel for a well-deserved breakfast. At that moment, the Zouaves, looking remarkably cheerful and energetic though streaked with soot and sweat, were busily engaged in tearing down the burned walls of the ruined structure, basking in the admiration of the gathered throng.

  When the sisters returned to the Rugby House, Kate wrote Colonel Ellsworth a letter of congratulations, and when she saw him a few days later at a review of the district militia on the White House grounds, she said, “Back in New York, I told you that it would greatly reassure me to know that such courageous men were defending our city, and now you have justified every bit of my faith in them, and in you.”

  He accepted the praise with a gallant bow. “Thank you, Miss Chase. I’m exceedingly proud of my men. They performed with exemplary courage and skill last night.”

  “They did indeed, and it is a testament to your leadership.” She gave him a teasing smile. “I know of someone else who will be exceedingly proud. Since I know you are too modest to do so, I’m going to collect every newspaper report I can find about your Zouaves’ adventure and send them to Miss Carrie Spafford of Rockford, Illinois. She should know what a brave, ingenious man she is going to marry.”

  Colonel Ellsworth smiled broadly, but not without a small measure of pleased embarrassment. “If you insist, Miss Chase, I won’t object.”

  • • •

  With the threat to the Willard Hotel and the narrow escape of its occupants fresh in their minds, the Chase family was relieved and thankful to move at long last into the mansion on the corner of Sixth and E streets. Kate, Nettie, Vina, and their new housekeeper, Mrs. Vaudry, took charge of moving in, unpacking, and arranging Kate’s lovely purchases from New York and Philadelphia in place among the cherished items shipped from their home in Columbus, which Father’s agent still had been unable to sell. Father had been counting on the funds from that sale to pay for the furnishings for their Washington home, but the real estate market in Ohio lingered in its slump, and Father found himself deeper in worrisome debt. Reluctantly, he resorted to asking Mr. Barney for a loan of ten thousand dollars.

  As soon as they were settled in their new residence, Father held a reception in the splendidly furnished rooms to mark the occasion, but it was Kate who planned every detail from the invitations to the refreshments to the musical entertainment and the flowers. Kate had invited Mrs. Lincoln as a matter of form, knowing that she would not come, for by custom the First Lady could not accept any invitations to private homes. The Lincolns were absent, but all of the members of the cabinet attended with their wives, if they were in the city, as did Major Anderson, who had not yet returned to New York.

  Their most reluctant guest was unquestionably Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who Kate surmised attended out of a sense of duty rather than any expectation of pleasure. Upon his arrival, he spoke haltingly as he offered Kate the perfunctory compliments on her new home, and he seemed thoroughly wretched in the crowd. He brightened considerably when he spied Nettie across the room, and he made his way to her, speaking as little as possible to those who addressed him. As Kate watched, he sat and spoke with Nettie for a few minutes but departed soon thereafter, his expression conveying a devout thankfulness that the ordeal was over.

  British ambassador Lord Lyons was the most illustrious of the foreign dignitaries who attended, and Kate took special care to welcome him warmly and provide all the attention and flattery that he seemed to desire, for relations between their two countries were in a fragile state. With the possibility that Great Britain might recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation in order to ensure a steady supply of Southern cotton for British mills, no amount of goodwill cultivated for the Union would be wasted.

  Colonel Ellsworth was among the many military officers who visited, and he was justly praised for the courageous actions of his Fire Zouaves, who had become quite the favorites of the people of Washington despite their reputation for occasional raucous behavior. Another notable guest—arriving late, unaccompanied, and not entirely expected—was Governor William Sprague.

  He came to Kate first, even before shaking hands with her father, perhaps because Father was engrossed in conversation with Secretary Cameron in another room. “Miss Chase,” Governor Sprague greeted her, taking the hand she offered him. “What a pleasure it is to see you again. Washington City is at its most beautiful in springtime, and it is all the lovelier for your presence.”

  “Why, thank you, Governor.” She did not know quite what to think. “I understand the city is all the safer for yours.”

  He smiled, pleased, but offered a self-deprecating shrug. “Well, we don’t fight fires as efficiently as Ellsworth’s Zouaves, but if the enemy should approach, we will not fail to rebuff them.”

  He spoke for a while, proudly and earnestly, about the organizing of his regiment, the men’s training at arms, and their fierce loyalty to their country. Kate felt her wariness ebbing away, and gradually a sensation of warmth and admiration filled her. He spoke so well of his men, as if he were their devoted elder brother as well as their military leader, that she could almost forget the doubts John Hay had sown.

  Her duties as hostess left her less time to chat with the governor than she wished, but later, when he bade her good-bye, he asked if he might visit again soon. She agreed, and when he called two days later, Father asked him to come for supper the following night, and the evening passed so pleasantly that Governor Sprague invited her to go riding the following afternoon. They were seeing too much of each other, Kate thought, and people were sure to gossip. But she had come to enjoy his company and conversation more than she had imagined she would, so she banished her concerns and accepted.

  Governor Sprague’s white stallion was a creature of magnificent grace, power, and beauty, and he rode with a natur
al confidence and masterful skill that Kate, an accomplished horsewoman, found impressive and appealing. And yet, as they followed the same shaded path along the Potomac she had last traveled with John Hay, she could not help mulling over his warnings that the Boy Governor was less than what he seemed.

  Delicately, weaving her questions into the conversation so deftly that the governor would not feel subjected to an inquisition, Kate tested his responses against John Hay’s incriminations. The question of whether he had won the gubernatorial election by bribing voters was too ridiculous to address, but when she inquired in a circumspect fashion about his opinions regarding electioneering and ethics, his responses were morally sound. When she mentioned her father’s devotion to the abolitionist cause, the governor himself admitted, without any prompting, that it aggrieved him that the cotton for his mills relied upon slave labor. In fact, it was a trip to the South to consult with plantation owners that had made him fully aware of the horrors of slavery and had compelled him to become an abolitionist and to give generously to abolitionist causes.

  It was more difficult to broach the subject of education. When she mentioned her favorite books and authors, he remarked approvingly of her choices but acknowledged that he had little time for reading other than government documents and pending legislation. When she shared amusing anecdotes from her years at boarding school, he laughed but told no stories of his own. Finally, thwarted at every turn, she abandoned subtlety and said, “I suppose, Governor, you were too eager to make your mark in the business world to idle away the years in school.”

  “Though I’m not much of a scholar myself, I’ve never equated hours spent in study with idleness,” he replied easily. “Do you, Miss Chase?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I do not.”

  His stallion had cantered a few paces ahead, eager to run, but the governor settled him with a firm word and a pat on the neck. Waiting for Kate to catch up, he fixed her with an evaluative look over his shoulder, the long yellow plume in his hat waving in the breeze. “Would you care to hear a very sad story, Miss Chase?”