Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “What accounts for his delay?” Kate asked. “People have been gathered in churches and meeting halls and telegraph office all across the North for hours already, awaiting word that emancipation is finally the law of the land.”

  “He’s still revising it,” said John, with affectionate exasperation. “Nothing too drastic—that was all done days ago. Just some fine changes here and there, with details from the latest reports from the field inserted in the proper places.” He inclined his head to indicate the guests. “This little party interrupted him, but he’ll finish soon, and he will sign it. Never fear.”

  “Tell that,” said Kate archly, “to the thousands of colored people in Washington City alone who worry, not without justification, that he’ll change his mind at the last minute.”

  “I understand their concern,” John countered. “It’s not official until it’s signed. But to those of us who have labored over this document so long, the signing is merely the simplest and briefest formality. The real mental conflict and moral victory took place last July, when the Tycoon presented his preliminary draft to the cabinet, and when it was announced to the public.”

  Kate did not truly believe that the president would fail to sign the proclamation, but she would still feel much better after he had put pen to parchment.

  Like most of the early arrivals, the Chase entourage departed by noon, before the event was opened to the public and vast throngs crammed into the White House. They, like many of the cabinet officials, had their own reception to prepare. At one o’clock, Kate and her father received their guests in the parlor, which soon became quite crowded with gentlemen and ladies. Kate had planned a sumptuous menu of oysters, salads, game pastries, fruits, cake, and punch, and as their guests enjoyed themselves, the fervent wish expressed by one and all was that 1863 would be the year that brought victory to the Union and peace to a reunited nation.

  The reception was well under way when a messenger brought word from the White House that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Cheers and shouts of joy went up from the gathering, and distantly, Kate heard similar exultant outbursts as other households received the good news. Soon, throngs of triumphant people, white and colored, began streaming past the windows in the direction of the White House, where Kate supposed they intended to cheer and serenade the president, and call for a speech. Considering that he had spent more than three hours shaking hands with the public at the reception earlier that day, Kate hoped the people would be satisfied with a few brief remarks, and then let the president rest. She saw Mr. Lincoln fairly often, but that morning she had been startled by his gaunt, careworn appearance. His tall frame had become more stooped, and his eyes sunken and cavernous, and yet his compassion and interest for all the people who had come to wish him a good New Year remained unaltered by time or tragedy. Seeing that, she understood why people like John Hay admired him so, why his former fierce rival William Seward had become his most trusted and intimate friend in the cabinet. Abraham Lincoln drew others to himself and turned enemies into friends in a way that her father had never been able to do. The people respected Father, but they loved Mr. Lincoln.

  Now that Mr. Lincoln had unquestionably usurped Father’s place as the most eminent abolitionist in the land, Kate was not sure how Father would reclaim the people’s esteem and confidence before the next presidential election.

  • • •

  In the early days of January, throughout the North, celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation drowned out the grumblings of its detractors, but as the winter dragged on and the cheers and serenades and fanfares faded, an angry, sullen resistance rose and crested. Peace Democrats in the Congress, who protested that Mr. Lincoln’s war measures had strayed too far from their professed objectives, used every trick and stratagem at their disposal to prevent the Republicans from enacting any more of the president’s proposals. They fiercely opposed reform legislation, denounced the new conscription law, and contrived to suppress votes on key issues by attaching unacceptable amendments onto bills, keeping the Senate awake with interminable filibusters, and even hiding in the House lobbies and cloakrooms during quorum calls. To Kate’s alarm, the Peace Democrats, or Copperheads as they were also known—not for their similarity to the poisonous snake, but from the Liberty heads they cut from copper pennies and wore as badges—were organizing a movement against the war.

  Assisting the Copperheads as they stirred up discontent was the demoralizing lack of progress on the military front. Warfare customarily slowed in winter, but heavy rains in January and a series of fierce February snowstorms had forced the Army of the Potomac to settle in at winter quarters north of the Rappahannock. In the West, General Grant’s Army of the Tennessee had tried and failed four times to capture Vicksburg, and thus could not seize control of the Mississippi River. At the end of January, General Burnside had attempted to cross the Rappahannock at Banks Ford and Fredericksburg to launch an ill-advised winter offensive, only to become deeply, helplessly mired in mud. In the aftermath of the embarrassing failure, President Lincoln accepted General Burnside’s resignation and named as his replacement General Joseph Hooker. For Kate and her father, General Hooker’s appointment to command the Army of the Potomac, a choice they heartily approved and had long desired, provided a rare bright spot in a gloomy season of war.

  In the weary capital, people in Republican circles looked forward expectantly to spring, when fair weather would allow General Hooker to fully exercise his new authority and the commencement of a new Congress would welcome in new members to replace some of the pesky obstructionist Copperheads. Outwardly, Kate professed the same hopes and expectations for the new Congress as her acquaintances did, but secretly she dreaded its approach, for William Sprague intended to give up his governor’s chair to become the newest senator from Rhode Island.

  Weeks before, when Kate discovered his name in the election returns, she had felt a strange, anxious fluttering in the pit of her stomach. It was fairly easy to avoid William Sprague when he made only sporadic visits to the capital, but after he assumed his new office, he would surely reside in Washington most of the time. She might not have been concerned except that in the beginning of January he had sent her a note, strangely cordial and cheery, wishing her a happy New Year. Though she did not respond, he sent her another a week later describing the pleasant Christmas he had enjoyed with his family. She did not know what to make of it, and although she was tempted to write back a coolly concise reply asking him to give her regards to Mr. Harris Hoyt, Texas cotton farmer, she refrained, in part because she thought he might completely misunderstand her meaning and do exactly as she asked in hopes of pleasing her.

  She was thrown into more confusion thanks to an older and trusted friend. When she accompanied Nettie to Manhattan at the end of her school holiday, Kate stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Barney for a few days, where Mr. Barney utterly confounded her by mentioning Governor Sprague, not merely once in passing but several times, and always to praise him. “I had no idea you and the governor were friends,” Kate replied after Mr. Barney offered a lengthy description of William’s many charitable ventures in Providence and Narragansett, where the Sprague family kept a summer home on a rambling farm.

  “Indeed, yes,” Mr. Barney replied, smiling. “His accomplishments speak for themselves, but we gentlemen require our friends to speak to our other qualities on our behalf, since it is unseemly to boast.”

  Kate smiled back, hiding her uncertainty. Why would Mr. Barney want to praise William to her? If they were such fond acquaintances, wouldn’t William have told Mr. Barney about the mysterious information that had compelled him to end their courtship so abruptly? Perhaps the governor still entertained hopes of charming Kate into begging her father to grant him a cotton trading permit, and he had deceived Mr. Barney too.

  She began to wonder if a plot was afoot when Father’s friend Mr. Jay Cooke, the wealthy Philadelphia banker who had, wit
h his wife, seen Nettie through her bout with scarlet fever, mentioned Governor Sprague favorably several times during a visit to confer with Father about loans and bonds to fund the war. Mystified, as soon as Kate found an opportunity to speak to Mr. Cooke alone, she inquired how well he knew the governor. He admitted that their acquaintance was limited to the realm of business, where Governor Sprague had always conducted himself honorably.

  “I wonder,” Kate said, “do you know his acquaintance Mr. Harris Hoyt?”

  “I don’t recall,” Mr. Cooke said. “Is he a cousin, perhaps? I believe the Spragues are related to the New England Hoyts.”

  “This fellow is a Texas Hoyt,” said Kate, feeling somewhat deflated, as if she had felt a tug on her line and reeled it in only to find the bait missing from the hook. “Please forgive my incessant curiosity, but since you know Governor Sprague through business, do you happen to know how he obtains cotton for his mills?”

  “From Port Royal, South Carolina,” Mr. Cooke said promptly. “He purchases through a distributor, of course, but it comes from the Sea Islands. That is how your name came up in our conversation. Governor Sprague rhapsodized at length about your father’s successes there, but he wondered if the credit should go to his daughter instead.” Mr. Cooke smiled, amused. “Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but he said you were not only a rare beauty, but also compassionate and wise, and he would not be surprised to learn that it was you who thought of turning over the captured plantations to the freed slaves.”

  Kate laughed shortly. “I hope you enlightened him.”

  Mr. Cooke, who had exchanged many letters with Father as he was devising his audacious plan, assured her that he had corrected the misunderstanding. “Even then, the governor insisted that your good influence must have inspired your father in some way.”

  “Perhaps I can take credit for that much,” Kate said, but the conversation left her both more informed and more bewildered than before. If William Sprague already had a reliable source for cotton, he would not need to become entangled with a charlatan from Texas with dubious political inclinations. If he thought Kate compassionate and wise and a good influence, he could not also believe whatever scurrilous tales about her he had heard from some anonymous enemy.

  Why, then, did he not apologize for his parting letter, if he no longer believed what he had written? She wanted so terribly to believe that their falling-out had been nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding, easily remedied by an earnest conversation, but she could not account for the cold, unkind tone of that letter, which she knew by heart from thinking of it too often.

  Throughout the winter, at least once a week the inscrutable Governor Sprague sent Kate a pleasant, informative, undemanding, occasionally amusing missive. She replied to but one of them, and then only because he asked specific questions about particular senators whom he would soon call colleagues, she happened to know the answers, and it seemed politically prudent to advise him.

  When the special session of the Senate convened on March 4, Kate was in the gallery, drawn by curiosity to see William again. To her surprise, he was not there. She did not understand it. Surely he could not be so indifferent to the honor of his high office that he did not wish to be sworn in on the momentous first day.

  He was not the only new senator to fail to appear, she reminded herself as she walked home, but he was the only one whose absence disappointed her.

  She was nearly home when she heard someone call out her name. She turned and looked up to see William Sprague approaching her on a magnificent stallion, the coal-black twin of his fallen white charger.

  “Miss Chase,” he said, raising his familiar black hat with the rakish rolled brim. The long yellow plume had been replaced by a feather of cardinal red.

  “Governor Sprague,” she replied, bowing gracefully to conceal her surprise.

  “May I walk with you?”

  When she nodded, he dismounted and walked beside her, leading his horse. “You look well.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You look late for your swearing in.”

  Too late, she realized that he would assume she had gone to the Senate to see him. He should not flatter himself, she thought indignantly. She often visited the Senate gallery to watch the workings of government, and she intended to continue regardless of his presence or absence.

  “Yes,” he said ruefully. “I was delayed in Providence, and have only just arrived. As it happens, it’s a rather involved process to resign as governor, even of a state as efficiently run as Rhode Island.”

  “I can well imagine.”

  “I will be there tomorrow, if you should happen to return.” He smiled, his gaze lighting warmly on hers, and she had to look away. “It would be good to know that I have an interested friend watching from the gallery.”

  “If I happen to be there,” she said evenly, “I will look around and see if I find anyone who meets that description.”

  “You mean to say you do not?”

  She halted and fixed him with a steady look. “I was not aware that we were friends any longer.”

  “Indeed?” he said, wounded. “What about all the letters we exchanged this past winter?”

  “I don’t believe that ‘exchanged’ describes it properly, but regardless, your recent letters could not have undone the letter you sent me last spring. Or have you truly forgotten it?”

  “I have not forgotten it,” William replied, with quiet calm, “but I do regret it.”

  “Then why have you not said so?”

  “You have always understood me so well, I had hoped it would not be necessary.”

  “Even when apologies for dreadful behavior are not strictly necessary, they are very often desirable.”

  She started to walk away, but he quickly caught up to her. “Miss Chase, please. Let’s go riding together and I will tell you everything.”

  She halted and looked him squarely in the eye. “I am not inclined to go riding with you today. If you have something to say to me, you should say it here and now.”

  He frowned, and glanced up and down the sidewalk warily, and drew closer. “I did not want to say this where anyone might overhear.”

  “Then lower your voice,” she said, resolute.

  He studied her, and when she did not flinch, he heaved a sigh of resignation. “Very well. A year ago, while traveling, I met a man from Columbus. Naturally I mentioned my acquaintance with Secretary Chase, and you, because you were prominent residents of that city. He knew Mr. Chase and had only praise for him, but he made an aside about your character that provoked my anger. When I demanded that he explain himself, he protested that it was common knowledge in Columbus that you had comported yourself inappropriately with a married man, much to the distress of his poor, scorned wife. He even named the gentleman—a Mr. Richard Nevins.”

  The sound of the horrid name made Kate’s stomach lurch. “What exactly am I accused of?” she asked, but she quickly waved off the query. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. A better question is why you peremptorily believed this stranger you had only just met instead of trusting what you knew of my character, why you simply accepted his word instead of asking me if there was any truth to his accusations.”

  “I was shocked and offended, and I acted in haste,” William admitted. “But it’s all right. I now know you did nothing wrong. When I was at the governors’ conference in Altoona last September, I befriended a gentleman from the Ohio entourage, a native of Columbus. He told me that he was aware of the incident, and he insisted that although you were somewhat impetuous as a girl, your behavior was never unethical or immoral, and anyone who claims otherwise speaks either from jealousy, ignorance, or spite. He said everyone in Columbus, with the exception of an envious few, regarded you as a respectable young woman.”

  William clearly seemed to believe his explanation resolved the matter, but Kate fixed him with
a steely gaze. “You mean to say that you’ve judged me innocent of these charges, not because your own observations of my deportment and character make them utterly impossible to believe, but because the testimony of yet another stranger persuaded you?”

  William hesitated. “It was his testimony and my own observations together that persuaded me,” he said. “I never should have listened to that first fellow, and I’m truly sorry I did.”

  “I’m sure you are,” said Kate sharply, “now that you want a cotton trading permit for your friend Mr. Harris Hoyt.”

  “Who?” William’s brow furrowed in confusion, until understanding dawned. “Oh, yes, that fellow. I would hardly call him a friend. We met at the Willard during one of my visits to the capital, and he told me such a sad tale of his longing for his wife and children and his worries about his cotton languishing in Texas that I was moved to write to your father on his behalf.” He winced, chagrined. “At the risk of sounding like a fool, I trusted him in part because he shares a last name with some of my cousins, although of course there is no family connection.”

  Kate studied him intently, searching his face for the smallest nervous flicker that would betray a lie, but his expression was so pained and earnest that she felt her anger ebbing. “I don’t know whether I should believe you.”

  “Kate, listen.” He shifted the reins to one hand and took her hand with the other. “I swear to you, my interest in your friendship has not been some scheme to win a cotton permit. Surely you remember that my . . . fascination with you began not only before your father was in a position to dispense permits, but before the war, when none of us could have conceived that permits would ever be necessary.”