Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Kate and Father exchanged a look, and they knew that Mr. Garrett’s gifts would never be served in their dining room. “What shall we do with them?” Kate asked her father.

  He thought for a moment. “Perhaps they would find the basement comfortable.”

  Nettie was very pleased by this suggestion, as the basement was a far better destination than the cookstove, so Father and Will hauled the crate to the basement and left the top off. It was only a matter of hours before the reptiles deserted the crate and scuttled off into the nooks and crannies of the dimly lit room, and within a few days, all had contrived to flee the house, if terrapin can be said to flee, through a hatch Kate had deliberately propped open. Most were never seen again, but occasionally the sisters spotted one or two ambling unconcernedly in the garden as if unaware of how narrowly they had escaped their doom.

  With her own captives liberated, Nettie became quite concerned about their brethren that had been shipped to the White House. The next time both sisters accompanied Father to an event where the president was in attendance, Nettie, her brows drawn together in worry, asked him what had become of his terrapin. Mr. Lincoln, who Kate had observed was always kind and solicitous to children, smiled upon Nettie and confessed, “I felt so sorry for the poor little fellows that I took mine all out into the garden and let them run away.”

  Nettie nodded seriously and told him she thought he had made the right decision.

  Another new arrival to the capital—and one who received a far grander and more widespread welcome than the terrapin—was General George McClellan. Handsome, athletic, and at thirty-four one of the Union’s youngest generals, General McClellan was celebrated and cheered by a relieved populace who believed he was the man to create a strong, disciplined army out of the scattered, inexperienced troops still shaken by the terrible rout at Manassas. Descended from a distinguished, well-educated Philadelphia family, he had attended excellent schools, including the military academy at West Point. Reassuringly, he had recently defeated a band of Confederate partisans in western Virginia, the Union’s only victory in the war thus far. Under his direction, the capital soon took on a more martial appearance; no longer did hotel bars spill drunken soldiers into the streets, nor did troops wander the city late at night pounding on doors in search of lodgings. General McClellan seemed to infuse the demoralized army with his own abundant confidence, and their renewed courage and pride was soon evident in their marching, their carriage, and their words.

  Father said that President Lincoln hoped the young general’s spirited strength would complement the mature General Scott’s experience and wisdom, and that together they would form a powerful, effective team. Privately, Father was somewhat concerned that General McClellan seemed to view General Scott as more of an obstacle than a partner. He infuriated the old soldier by questioning his judgment—even putting his concerns in a letter that he copied to the president—and by arguing that the Army of the Potomac was entirely insufficient compared to the vast numbers of Confederate troops arrayed against them. “Mr. Lincoln mollified the generals by asking McClellan to withdraw his letter,” Father told Kate, “but I fear they’ve achieved a temporary peace at best.”

  The rival generals were not the only officers to create additional difficulties for an already overburdened commander in chief. At the end of August, Major General John C. Frémont, commander of the Department of the West, issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of Confederates within the state of Missouri. Not only had he not received any authorization from the president beforehand, but Mr. Lincoln first learned of Frémont’s proclamation on the same day and by the same method Father, Kate, and most of the nation did—from the newspapers. Acting entirely on his own, General Frémont had defined the war as what Kate had always thought it to be: a war against slavery. Furious, Mr. Lincoln commanded General Frémont to rescind the proclamation, and when the general refused, the president revoked it himself, angering Northern abolitionists and provoking a storm of criticism from Radical Republicans in the Congress and the press.

  “Slaves were freed, and now your Mr. Lincoln has put them back into bondage,” Kate lamented one afternoon as she and John Hay went riding along the Potomac. She usually refrained from criticizing Mr. Lincoln in his company, for he had become more loyal and admiring of the Tycoon with each passing day in his employment. In unspoken agreement, John held back his criticism of William Sprague, which Kate knew was inspired mostly by envy.

  “Mr. Lincoln was convinced that making this conflict a war against slavery instead of a war to preserve the Union would drive Kentucky right out of it,” John explained. “If you had seen the alarmed and panicked letters the president received from Unionists in Kentucky after Frémont’s reckless act, you’d understand why he had no choice but to do exactly as he did.”

  “Perhaps I would,” said Kate, more icily than she intended. She would like John much better if he did not believe Mr. Lincoln to be so superior to every other man in the cabinet, including her father.

  “Now, Kate,” he cajoled. “Don’t be cross just because on this one matter I’ve taken the Tycoon’s side instead of yours.”

  “Who says I’m cross?” said Kate airily. And how could he suggest it was only that one time? John rarely disagreed with anything the president did or said anymore, and his conversations had become much less entertaining for it. “I’m merely regretful that you embrace willful ignorance out of blind, misguided loyalty to your boss.”

  John whooped with laughter, causing his horse to toss its head and whinny in annoyance. “My loyalty is neither blind nor misguided,” he said, patting the horse reassuringly on the withers. “I came to it gradually, as I realized how much Mr. Lincoln deserves it.”

  Kate sighed with exaggerated sorrow, although in truth, she did feel a pang of regret. Already John’s ever-increasing admiration for the president was creating friction in their friendship. She dreaded to think how badly they would get along three years hence when her father competed with Mr. Lincoln for the Republican nomination.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” John confided, “Mrs. Seward feels as you do. She’s furious with Mr. Lincoln for revoking the proclamation and with her husband for allowing it, and since she can’t scold the president, her husband bears the brunt of her fury.”

  “I always did like Frances Seward,” Kate remarked, her temper much improved. John grinned, and she smiled back at him, their harmony restored for the moment.

  • • •

  September brought blessed relief from the heat and humidity, but Nettie did not welcome the end of summer, for Father had arranged for her to attend boarding school at the Brook Hall Female Seminary in Media, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia. She was a bright student, but the coursework was rigorous and she was often homesick. Nettie turned fourteen that month, and she spent part of that day composing a letter to her sister. “Today is my birthday, I ought to have some proper thoughts for the great? occasion, and I fully intended to have them, but I can not for the life of me think what they were”—Kate laughed aloud—“except that I want to see you and Father ever so much but I think of that often or rather always.”

  Kate felt a wrench of sympathy for her sweet, lonely little sister, but the sentiment was startled out of her by the paragraph that followed. “Is Gov Sprague back yet?” Nettie inquired. “I wish (if you do not think me impertinent) that you would marry him. I like him very much wont you? But of course not until I grow up I shant give my consent before that, perhaps though he may get tired of waiting.”

  Kate needed a moment to collect her thoughts before she read on. Such a bold suggestion from a young girl, who Kate suspected was more than half in love with William herself! Kate had tried to conceal her increasing admiration for him, but Nettie’s query proved she had not done so particularly well. William had never spoken of marriage. Perhaps he had been called the Boy Governor so often that he had forgotten he was a gentlem
an of thirty-one and was still waiting until he came of age to marry. Kate desired him very much, and her feelings of affection were powerful and enduring, but she was not sure how she would respond if he proposed. He possessed many attributes that would make him an excellent husband, but Kate could not imagine leaving her father’s house, certainly not before the 1864 election.

  But William did write to her, warm and frequent letters. At the end of September, when he returned to Washington with fresh troops and engaged in a brief skirmish in Virginia, she worried terribly for him, and when he called on her at home afterward, she was so relieved and grateful to see him unharmed that she pulled him into the butler’s pantry and kissed him full on the lips, allowing him to explore her mouth with his tongue as he seemed to like to do before quickly breaking free at the sound of Mrs. Vaudry’s footsteps in the hall.

  William’s visit to Washington was all too brief, and when he returned to Rhode Island Kate missed him very much, but she was never at a loss for ways to occupy her time and thoughts. Throughout late summer and early autumn, she traveled to New York and Philadelphia and elsewhere, sometimes with Father, sometimes with one or more of her many cousins. Father had never been more preoccupied with his work—prevailing upon bankers to offer enormous loans to the government at reasonable rates, organizing the sale of bonds, proposing new tariffs and taxes. By October, Mrs. Lincoln and the ladies of the elite had returned to Washington, and the social season resumed, defiantly merry as the war hung foreboding above their receptions and balls and levees.

  The battlefront had moved away from the outskirts of Washington, but every day brought new reports of intense fighting and grisly descriptions of death and destruction. War raged in several states, and the Union army endured one demoralizing defeat after another. In the middle of October, the Lincolns lost another dear friend from Illinois, Colonel Edward Baker, who was killed along with forty-eight of his men on a riverbank at Ball’s Bluff. So many others were seriously wounded that the hospitals again could not accommodate them all, and the Chases once more welcomed sick and injured soldiers into their home, among them Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a son of the renowned poet.

  Colonel Baker’s death was as devastating to the Lincoln family as Colonel Ellsworth’s had been. From John Hay, Kate learned that Mary Lincoln was utterly distraught. Edward Baker had been the namesake of her second-born son, who had died years before as a very young child. Willie and Tad also adored the colonel, and the tenderhearted, introspective Willie composed a touching poem in his honor, which was printed in the National Republican and was actually quite good for a boy’s composition. Kate sent flowers to the Lincolns on behalf of the Chase family along with a sincere letter expressing her condolences. She did not know whether Mrs. Lincoln would appreciate a letter from a young woman she despised or furiously tear up the page and throw it upon the fire, but sending a letter was the proper thing to do in such circumstances, and she would rather Mrs. Lincoln be angry at her for extending a courtesy than for withholding it.

  By that time, General McClellan’s image had lost much of its luster and murmurs of puzzlement had swelled into a chorus of discontent. The people of Washington City gloried in the magnificent performance of General McClellan’s army, more than fifty thousand strong, as they marched in perfectly straight columns in perfect unison through the streets and on the well-trampled parade grounds, but they were frustrated and bewildered by the general’s apparent reluctance to lead such well-trained men onto the field of battle. General McClellan insisted that they were not yet prepared, nor were their numbers great enough to confront the vastly more numerous enemy. The defeat at Ball’s Bluff—which he blamed on everyone but himself, including Colonel Baker—only increased the people’s impatience, and both Father and John Hay observed that the president was becoming increasingly exasperated with him.

  General Scott had grown weary of grappling with the young upstart, who insulted him regularly, ignored his orders, and defied the chain of command by failing to keep General Scott informed about his position and the size of his forces. Unwilling to contend with his junior officer for control of the military, General Scott informed the president that he would willingly retire as soon as appropriate arrangements could be made. He had served long and honorably, but he suffered from dropsy in his feet and legs and paralysis in the small of his back, so he could not walk or sit on a horse. He might have stuck it out for the sake of the Union if Mr. Lincoln’s attempts to mediate a truce between the two generals had brought about any improvement in their relations, but all his efforts had been in vain. Finally, on November 1, President Lincoln reluctantly accepted General Scott’s resignation letter, which was published in all the papers alongside Mr. Lincoln’s sincere and gracious reply.

  At five o’clock in the morning two days later, a large crowd assembled at the train station to bid General Scott farewell—loyal admirers and numerous aging veterans who were determined to pay their respects to the old soldier despite the driving rain and the early hour. General McClellan, General Scott’s entire staff, and a cavalry escort saw him off, and Father and Secretary Cameron accompanied him on his journey home to Harrisburg. “All were grieved to see General Scott go,” Father told Kate upon his return. “With the exception of General McClellan, I suppose. We shall see what he can accomplish now that he no longer has Scott to blame for his difficulties.”

  General McClellan was Father’s man, so Father keenly wanted him to succeed, but McClellan’s disrespect for his venerable superior officer had left Father disillusioned and disappointed. He hoped for the best as President Lincoln appointed General McClellan to succeed General Scott as general in chief of the Union army. Kate did not care for the new general in chief—he had tumbled out of her favor the moment she heard him declare that since the institution of slavery was recognized in the Constitution, it was entitled to federal protection—but she prayed he would be a good leader and bring about a swift victory for the Union.

  Two weeks after General Scott’s departure, Kate learned that General McClellan’s promotion had not taught him humility and likely would not inspire a new, respectful sense of cooperation with his commander in chief. One afternoon, when plans to go riding were thwarted by a heavy, cold drizzle, John Hay sat with Kate in the Chases’ parlor fuming about General McClellan’s arrogance and disrespect. “Yesterday, Mr. Seward and I accompanied President Lincoln to call on McClellan at his home,” John told her, his voice taut with anger. “We were told that the general was at a wedding, and we were shown to his parlor, where we waited for an hour. When McClellan arrived home, his servant told him that the president was waiting, but he quietly crept past the parlor and up the stairs to his bedchamber. A minute passed, and then another, and with every tick of the mantel clock my blood grew nearer its boiling point.”

  “And Mr. Lincoln?” Kate asked.

  “He sat patiently all the while, dignified and unflustered, which I must confess shamed me into trying harder to master my angry restlessness,” said John. “After another half hour dragged by, Mr. Lincoln reminded the servant that he was waiting, only to be informed that the general had retired for the night and could not see him.”

  “Such impudence,” said Kate, astounded. “How unbecoming an officer.”

  “It is the arrogance of epaulettes,” said John scathingly. “Mr. Lincoln accepted the rebuff with good grace, and seemed not altogether troubled by McClellan’s insolence. As we returned to the White House, the president said that he preferred not to score points of etiquette and personal dignity.” He frowned and shook his head, indignant. “He even said, and I am not altogether sure he was joking, that he would hold McClellan’s horse for him if it would help him achieve victory.”

  “Mr. Lincoln seems as humble as General McClellan is arrogant.”

  “There are days I wish President Lincoln had less humility,” John admitted. “This is not the first occasion McClellan has kept him waiting, and I doub
t it will be the last.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Lincoln should visit him less frequently,” Kate suggested. “If he wishes to speak with his general, he should summon him to the White House instead. The grand setting will impress upon the general the dignity of Mr. Lincoln’s high office and their relative rank, and less of the president’s time will be wasted.”

  “That’s an excellent idea, and I’ll do my best to put it forward,” said John, with an admiring smile. “Really, Kate, you should be working in the White House.”

  “Perhaps someday I shall,” she said. “I can only imagine the cruel nicknames you would invent for me if I did.”

  John laughed aloud, and she silently congratulated herself for cheering him out of his indignant anger. If her advice helped the president too, John would remember, and would appreciate her all the more.

  • • •

  Although Kate took exception to General McClellan’s disrespect for the office of the president, she did not share John Hay’s boundless veneration for Mr. Lincoln. He had not done as badly in his high office as she had feared he would, but he had not done as well as her father would have in his place either.

  As the autumn leaves fell and the winds took on the chilly bite of early winter, she kept up her usual schedule of entertainments with alacrity and great enjoyment, welcoming important politicians and dignitaries to breakfast parties, receptions, and dinners every day of the week. Radical Republicans and other sympathetic guests knew that within the Chase residence, they could freely criticize the Lincoln administration without fear of repercussions. Kate took particular pleasure in sharing gossip about Mrs. Lincoln, who was perpetually embroiled in one scandal or another, from her shockingly excessive expenditures for her White House renovations to the coterie of questionable characters who populated her evening salons. A matter with greater relevance to the nation was her uncertain loyalties. Mrs. Lincoln was from Kentucky, and her family had owned slaves, and she had one brother, three half brothers, and three brothers-in-law in the Confederate army. Privately, Kate believed that Mrs. Lincoln was a stronger abolitionist than Mr. Lincoln, and that she was fiercely loyal to her husband and thus would never intentionally undermine his administration, but if others wanted to speculate and doubt, Kate would not insist upon changing the subject.