Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “No, thank you.” He peered at her with a rueful grin like a schoolboy who knew he deserved a scolding. “I came by this morning to invite you to accompany me to an exhibition on the Washington Monument grounds this afternoon. The Second Rhode Island Regiment demonstrated the James rifled cannon.”

  “How interesting.”

  “President Lincoln certainly thought so. He and several military engineers offered their warmest commendations. Do you know, the cannon’s range is between three and four miles?”

  “My goodness,” she replied with polite coolness. “That is quite far. I hope the accuracy is equally sound.”

  “It is, I assure you,” he said proudly. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to see the test. Perhaps tomorrow we could go riding together, and I could tell you more about it.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, but I’ve already agreed to go riding with Mr. Hay tomorrow.”

  The governor’s smile faltered. “The day after, then?”

  She shook her head. “Mrs. McLean is having a reception, and I offered to help her prepare.”

  “I see.” His smile had become a grimace. “You’re a very busy young lady.”

  “And you, I’m sure, have been very busy yourself.” She inclined her head in a parting bow. “Congratulations for the successful exhibition. Good day, Governor.”

  He nodded glumly as she turned her back to him and went inside. She would have felt sorry for him had he not been so unkind to her before.

  She made sure to be in her father’s study busily engaged with her correspondence when the governor departed so she would not be obliged to bid him a second farewell. Only when she knew he was gone did she emerge and seek out her father, who was displeased with her. “You could have remained to talk with us a little while,” he protested.

  “Nettie stayed to play hostess,” Kate pointed out, feigning innocence, “and it was you he came to see.”

  “Perhaps, but I think the governor would have enjoyed hearing your observations about Fort Monroe.”

  “Another time, perhaps.”

  “Another time, certainly,” Father corrected. “When will you be home from your ride tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure. It depends on the weather and the horses. By late afternoon, in any case.”

  “Good,” said Father, “because Governor Sprague is coming to dine with us.”

  • • •

  Kate had no time to spare, so rather than squander any of it in protest, she sighed inwardly and assured her father that she would see to everything, as she always did. She quickly devised a menu, instructed Mrs. Vaudry, the housekeeper, and Addie, the cook, and invited two other couples and Mrs. Douglas so that Governor Sprague’s attentions would be diluted among a larger party. Father seemed especially pleased that she had included Mrs. Douglas, and something in his bashful eagerness made Kate suspect that the lovely widow’s charms were not lost on him. Ordinarily a widow would not accept a social engagement so soon after her husband’s death, but Kate had wanted to invite her and so she did. If Mrs. Douglas cared what prying gossips thought, she could have declined. Kate thought she at least ought to be given the choice.

  Kate put the dinner preparations out of her thoughts while she went riding with John Hay, determined to enjoy his company and not anticipate anyone else’s. The ride was exhilarating, the scenery charming, and John was, as always, amusing and clever. He intrigued her with stories of President Lincoln’s late-night debates with his staff, and had her laughing with shocked amusement when he revealed the new nickname he and John Nicolay had devised for Mrs. Lincoln: Her Satanic Majesty. “That is too cruel,” she protested, fighting to contain her laughter, but John merely grinned wickedly and worked the unkind sobriquet into the conversation at every possible opportunity.

  She returned home in plenty of time to wash and dress and supervise the last-minute preparations, and to greet her guests at the door when they arrived. Mrs. Douglas was as gracious and beautiful as ever, and although she was draped from head to foot in black crepe, her attire was so exquisitely fashioned that Kate wished, not for the first time, that she could afford Mrs. Douglas’s exceptionally gifted dressmaker. The two couples were longtime friends of her father from Cincinnati and Columbus, as dear and well-known to Kate and Nettie as their own aunts and uncles, and always pleasant company. Governor Sprague arrived, handsomely attired in his dress uniform, bearing gifts of flowers for her and Nettie, which had the younger girl blushing sweetly.

  Although it was pulled together at the last minute, the dinner party was a complete success, in part because Kate deftly arranged never to be left alone with the governor, so he was powerless to play upon her sympathies and persuade her to forgive him. She would have considered the entire evening a triumph if only he had not returned to the house after the other guests had departed, claiming to have mislaid a glove.

  “I’ll look for it,” Nettie promised, darting off to the dining room.

  “Miss Chase,” the governor said quietly when they were alone, “I think we should always be honest with each other.”

  She furrowed her brow, feigning confusion. “By this declaration, do you mean to say that you haven’t been honest with me in the past, or that you’re not usually honest with people as a matter of course?”

  “Neither.” He regarded her with dark, contrite eyes. “You feel that I’ve neglected you.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I have.”

  She regarded him steadily. “You could neglect me only if we had an understanding, which we don’t. You haven’t neglected me, because you had no obligation to me. Rest assured, your conscience is clear.”

  “Then why doesn’t it feel clear?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Miss Chase, I would like us to have the sort of friendship where you would feel neglected if you didn’t hear from me often, if I forgot to write or failed to visit.”

  Kate laughed, astonished. “I don’t consider that a proper friendship at all, burdened as it is with expectations of neglect.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t understand me.” His voice was low and impassioned. “I don’t want to feel like you have to go riding with John Hay, or any other man, because you fear I am inconstant.”

  “I go riding with John Hay because I like him,” she said sharply. “He’s my friend, and he is always pleasant company.”

  Pained, the governor put on his hat, the famous black felt hat with the long yellow plume and the rakishly rolled brim, and stepped toward the door. “Miss Chase,” he said resignedly, “I would like very much for the . . . the feeling between us to go back to the way it was.”

  “I don’t want that,” Kate said. “I’ve been unhappy. You made me so. I have no claim to your affections, but I think you trifled with me, and I will not endure it.”

  “You will not have to,” he said. “But understand, Kate, I have responsibilities. An entire state looks to me to guide them through this time of crisis. If I forget to write love letters because I’m busy leading a state and mustering a regiment to fight the rebels, I think that is forgivable. Even so, I won’t neglect you again, if neglect is what it was.”

  “I found it,” said Nettie. Kate whirled about and discovered her sister standing on the far side of the foyer, holding a man’s leather glove and watching them uncertainly.

  “Very well done, Miss Nettie,” said the governor, smiling kindly as he held out his palm. Nettie beamed and brought the glove to him, and blushed a deep pink when he thanked her and bent to kiss her on the forehead. When he straightened, he regarded Kate seriously, his eyes deep, soulful, and almost level with her own. “As for you, Miss Chase, are you free to go riding with me tomorrow afternoon?”

  She shook her head, wondering whether he had forgotten or thought she had lied. “Mrs. McLean’s reception.”

  “Of course.” He considered. “The day after?” />
  Kate knew that if she refused him, he would not ask her again for a very long time, if ever—and suddenly the very thought was unbearable.

  “Yes,” she said, for it was what she had wanted to say all along. “I will go riding with you, Governor Sprague.”

  Chapter Ten

  * * *

  JULY 1861

  I

  n the days that followed, Governor Sprague was true to his word. He called on Kate often and was so attentive that she could almost forget how lonely he had made her feel in the weeks before.

  He confided in her his ambitions, his disappointments, his hopes, his fears—but, still wary, she guarded her heart more carefully than before, and listened to his confidences more often than she shared her own. When they rode out together one morning to visit the Rhode Island encampment on the shady ridges above the city, he revealed that in May, he had written to Secretary Cameron suggesting that he be granted a commission with the rank of major general. When the secretary of war offered him a mere brigadier generalship instead, Governor Sprague had declined. “I told him that the people of Rhode Island could not accept a position of less rank for their governor,” he told her.

  “That was probably wise,” she remarked. “You wouldn’t want an empty title. The wags and wits claim that one cannot throw a stick in Washington City these days without striking six brigadier generals.”

  The governor laughed and seemed much reassured, and all the more endearing for the way he responded to her confidence in him. Although he was bold and daring, she detected a note of uncertainty intermingled with his courage and pride. It came, she surmised, of having no father in the home from the time he was quite a young man. Father too had lost his father at a young age, and it had thrown his family into financial difficulties, but Father had always found other men to serve as guides and mentors, from his brilliant but stern uncle Philander Chase, the Episcopal bishop of Ohio and school headmaster, to William Wirt, attorney general to President Adams and Father’s instructor as he studied the law, as well as numerous others throughout his life. If Governor Sprague had benefited from the guidance of great men as Father had done, he would not be afflicted by self-doubt, which he sometimes, to Kate’s chagrin, attempted to silence with whiskey. When Kate reflected upon all that William had accomplished on his own without such guidance, she considered it a testament to his perseverance, strength of character, and extraordinary abilities. It was entirely possible that he would earn the rank of general in the field with his Rhode Island regiments before long. It was even conceivable that he could someday become president.

  Sometimes Kate imagined what it would be like to be First Lady not once but twice—first in her father’s administration, and later, as William’s wife. But she only rarely indulged in such silly daydreams, and she never divulged them to William.

  In the middle of July, General McDowell at long last began to advance his command from Washington and Alexandria deeper into Virginia. Kate and Nettie were out walking one morning with Bishop Charles McIlvaine from Ohio, who was visiting their family, when they observed the lengthy procession of soldiers, army wagons, and accoutrements filing across Long Bridge over the Potomac. “What are those curious carriages there?” asked Nettie. “The oddly shaped ones, with the black curtains.”

  Bishop McIlvaine studied the long, dark vehicles as they rolled slowly over the bridge. “Those are ambulances.”

  “So many!”

  “Let us pray they will need no more than this,” the bishop replied solemnly. He was tall and slender, with snow-white hair, bright-blue eyes, and noble features that usually offered a gentle and compassionate expression but at that moment had settled into sad resignation.

  Kate’s heart sank as the sunlight gleamed off the polished metal and fresh paint and the breeze stirred the curtains. The ambulances would never again be as bright and shining as they were at that moment, not after they had been splattered with battlefield mud and gore, and had borne their ghastly burdens of suffering and death.

  Two days later, on July 18, General McDowell and his thirty-two thousand troops approached Centreville, where General Beauregard waited with about twenty-two thousand Confederates stretched out along an eight-mile front on the other side of a creek called Bull Run. General McDowell’s movements had been anything but a secret. For weeks, newspapers throughout the North had eagerly reported the names and positions of regiments, information they easily collected from casual, careless talk in encampments and taverns—and Northern papers were smuggled into Richmond within a day or two of publication, just as Confederate papers were brought into the North.

  On the same day General McDowell reached Bull Run, William accompanied Major John Barnard of the US Corps of Engineers on a reconnaissance mission to Blackburn’s Ford, a crossing between Manassas and Centreville in Virginia. He had promised Kate that he would return safely, but a heavy sense of dread hung over her the entire time he was away. When he returned, exhilarated and proud, to report that the sortie had succeeded, he cheerfully described how they had been fired upon by the Confederates but had escaped unharmed. The mission had satisfied William’s long-held desire to “feel the enemy,” as he put it, and he was eager to return to the field to test his regiments’ mettle against that of the swaggering, boastful rebels, who claimed that one Southern man could whip a dozen Yankees.

  By Sunday morning, word had spread throughout Washington that an exciting battle was imminent, and 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.

  “May we go and watch too, Father?” Nettie implored, watching from the window as carriages and wagons packed with sightseers rumbled past their home. “Bishop McIlvaine can escort us.”

  Bishop McIlvaine’s eyebrows rose as if the proposal had caught him entirely by surprise and was not particularly agreeable. Fortunately for him, Father promptly shook his head. “Even escorted by a clergyman, a battlefield is no place for young ladies,” he replied. “Nor are the hills above a battlefield. The lines could shift, a cannon could misfire, a stray bullet could find an innocent mark—no, absolutely not.”

  Nettie was desperately disappointed, but Kate was relieved. William was out there leading the Rhode Island artillery battery, and if he should fall, she could not bear to witness it.

  The Chase family attended church together that morning as if it were any ordinary Sunday, but the battle was never far from their thoughts. At midday, Father joined President Lincoln and the rest of the cabinet in the telegraph office in the War Department to await news from the field. Kate lingered at home until her curiosity and apprehension became intolerable, and then she invited Nettie to go for a walk, to see what they could learn. Nettie eagerly accepted, and they both kept their eyes and ears open as they strolled down Fourteenth Street toward Lafayette Square. As they approached the Willard Hotel, they spotted a jubilant crowd hundreds strong gathered around the entrance. Suddenly a young man with his hat and coat askew pushed his way to the front, climbed atop a low stone wall, and read aloud a dispatch from the field. The Union troops had driven the rebels south into the woods, he announced, and a complete victory seemed assured. As the throng burst into vehement cheers, fairly intoxicated with joy, Kate felt a tremulous wave of relief wash through her, although she knew that even a decisive Union victory could not guarantee that William would survive the day.

  The sisters walked home to the sounds of rejoicing in the streets and the distant rumble of artillery to the west. Their hopes rose as the afternoon passed, and shortly before five o’clock Father returned, fairly burst
ing with relief and elation. Every fifteen minutes, bulletins had arrived from the telegraph office at Fairfax Station about three or four miles from the battlefield, and throughout the long day, they had brought increasingly good news. “At half past four, we received the news we had long awaited but could not have taken for granted,” Father told them. “The Union army has achieved a glorious victory.”

  “Oh, thank heavens,” Kate said, pressing a hand to her stomach, where a knot of worry at last began to unravel.

  “Praise God,” said Bishop McIlvaine. “May this be the first and last great battle of the rebellion.”

  “It is expected that General McDowell will reach Richmond within the week,” said Father. “This insurrection will be over soon.”

  Victory was so certain that the cabinet was no longer required at the War Department, and Mr. Lincoln had gone out for his usual Sunday carriage ride, accompanied by his two youngest sons and Secretary Bates. It was the best possible news they could have hoped for, and yet Kate’s joy was incomplete, and would remain so until she heard from William.

  Shortly after seven o’clock, a messenger arrived from the White House, and as Father read the dispatch, he grew pale and still. “What is it?” Kate asked.

  “The cabinet has been summoned back to the War Department,” he said grimly, reaching for his hat. “General McDowell’s army is in full retreat. The day is lost.”

  “How can this be?” the bishop asked, astounded. “The battle was declared a total Union victory.”

  “Apparently that declaration was premature.” Father patted Kate’s shoulder and kissed Nettie swiftly on the cheek. “I’ll send word when I know more.”

  Kate waited in vain for a message from her father, concealing her anxiety for Nettie’s sake, eventually sending her off to bed with a kiss and reassurances that all would be well. Bishop McIlvaine sat up with her, his head bent in prayer over his Bible, often stealing pensive glances to the window.