If Kate had been in Washington, or if her father had sent her a draft of the letter beforehand, she would have strongly urged him not to send it. But she was in Newport, and her father had been too confident in the security of his position to consult her.
She did not see the terse letter the president sent in response until much later, nor did Father himself see it until after Mr. Lincoln had sent John Hay to deliver the news of Father’s resignation to the Senate and to announce his recommendation for his successor.
As William later explained it, Father went to his office at the Treasury Department after breakfast that morning, fully expecting Mr. Lincoln to send a note begging him to reconsider. Instead he received an urgent request from Senator Fessenden of Maine, the chairman of the Finance Committee, to call on him immediately at the Capitol.
“Have you resigned?” Senator Fessenden frantically demanded when Father arrived. “I am called to the Senate and told that the president has sent in the nomination of your successor.”
Thus it was from a distraught colleague that Father learned President Lincoln had accepted his resignation. Salmon P. Chase was out of the Treasury, neither secretary nor candidate but a private citizen like any other far more ordinary man.
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
JULY–DECEMBER 1864
W
hen the devastating news reached Kate and Nettie in Newport, it rendered them shocked and dismayed and disbelieving. Nettie wept openly, but Kate, mindful that her reaction would likely be remarked upon in the press, bore it stoically in public and reserved her grief for her letters to William. As faithful and steadfast as she could possibly want, he reported the news from Washington with unfailing frank sympathy. She was so relieved to find him once again assuming the role of her protector that her heart, desperate for consolation, warmed to him anew.
She found hope too in William’s account of the immediate aftermath of her father’s dismissal from the cabinet, confided to him by trustworthy witnesses. As word of Father’s departure had spread on Capitol Hill, the members of the Senate Finance Committee had held an emergency meeting and had called on the president as a group to lodge a vehement protest. The president had listened patiently while they explained their serious concerns about removing Father from the helm and setting the Treasury Department adrift at a time when Father’s incomparable leadership was most necessary, and they also expressed grave reservations about the man Mr. Lincoln had chosen to replace him. What the president had said in reply William did not know, but although the committee had left the White House unsatisfied, other officials had called on the president throughout the day to register their anxiety and dismay, including Massachusetts congressman Samuel Hooper and Treasury registrar Lucius Chittenden. Mr. Chittenden was particularly upset, and he had insisted that the loss of Father as the head of the Treasury was worse than another defeat at Bull Run. Calm and unperturbed, Mr. Lincoln had explained why Father’s position in the cabinet had become untenable. “And yet,” he had mused, “there is not a man in the Union who would make as good a chief justice as Chase, and, if I have the opportunity, I will make him chief justice of the United States.”
At this revelation Kate’s hopes soared, and she prayed William’s informant was not mistaken—and that Mr. Lincoln had not let the remark fall merely to appease the stream of worried petitioners. Her father, William wrote, had been greatly moved when Congressman Hooper told him that the president had made a similar comment to him. Father also had admitted that if the president had tendered any such expressions of goodwill before he had resigned, he might not have done so.
As the days passed, newspapers throughout the North lamented Father’s departure from the Treasury. “Mr. Chase is one of the very few great men left in public life,” declared the New York Tribune. But the president did not give in to the upswell of regret and dismay, except to reconsider his choice for Father’s successor. When his first choice declined, citing poor health, Mr. Lincoln asked Senator Fessenden, who adamantly declared that he could not possibly accept. Later, when Senator Fessenden returned to Capitol Hill and met with the hearty congratulations of his Senate colleagues, he discovered, much as Father had three years before, that the president had already submitted his nomination, rendering it all but impossible for him to decline.
In a state of numb disbelief, Father introduced his friend and successor to the department, and stayed on long enough to see him settled. Then he vacated his beautiful offices, a private citizen for the first time in years, though one with aspirations of returning to public life as soon as the right circumstances arose. In a letter to Kate, Father noted sorrowfully that only Secretary Stanton, “warm & cordial as ever,” had bothered to call on him after his resignation, and no one else in the cabinet seemed very sorry to see him go. As she read the words, Kate suddenly imagined Mrs. Lincoln in the elegantly refurbished East Room of the White House, clad in a sumptuous gown made by the incomparable Mrs. Keckley, gloating because her rival’s father had been brought low. She had never wanted Father in the cabinet, and she had pestered her husband to dismiss him almost from the moment he had assumed the post. It nettled Kate to imagine Mrs. Lincoln glorying in her triumph, and she was thankful for the many miles between them that prevented her from witnessing it.
On Independence Day, just before the congressional session concluded, William earned her gratitude by making a speech in the Senate defending her father and rebutting the accusations Senator Blair had made in his diatribe weeks before. Soon thereafter, Father traveled to New York City, where after a conference with Mr. Cooke and other friends, he met his daughters for dinner at the Astor House on Broadway. That evening, the three departed together for Newport, where Father spent a week’s vacation enjoying his daughters’ sympathetic company, recovering from his recent ordeals, and contemplating his future. Retirement did not suit him, not with the country still mired in crisis, and although the position of chief justice was enticing, it had not been offered to him, nor did the ancient and ailing Justice Taney seem in any haste to vacate it.
On July 22, Father departed for Boston, where he met with friends and was honored with a dinner at the Union Club, with Senator Sumter, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Lowell, and Mr. Agassiz in attendance. To Kate’s consternation, Father then moved on to visit his longtime dear friend the widow Mrs. Eastman, who of all the attractive, mature ladies who had caught his eye through the years seemed most likely to become the fourth Mrs. Chase. Kate did not complain. She adamantly did not want her father to remarry, but if Mrs. Eastman was able to comfort him in his disappointment, Kate could not bring herself to begrudge him that.
While Father continued his travels, visiting Salem, Naushon Island, and other charming locales in New England, William joined Kate and Nettie in Newport. He had recently purchased several hundred acres on the western shore of Narragansett Bay with the intention of transforming the rambling farmhouse on the property into a gracious mansion. Kate had been eagerly anticipating his arrival for weeks, warmed by his affectionate letters and hopeful that the conflicts of their newlywed days were at last behind them. But when she met him at the station, she quickly took in his bloodshot eyes, his flushed cheeks, the slight tremble of his hands, the faint slur in his voice, and she knew he was drinking again.
Bitterly disappointed, she blinked away her tears and forced a smile. “How were your travels?” she asked, kissing him on the cheek. “Pleasant, I hope.”
“The journey was more stomach-churning than usual,” he complained wearily, “but I am much better for getting off that train.”
Kate murmured sympathetically as she beckoned the porter to stow William’s bags on the carriage. As they set out to meet Nettie at the hotel, he looked so queasy that Kate was sorely tempted to point out that it seemed to her that the cause of his sour stomach was his dissipation, not any particular vehicle.
After dinner that evening, William, much recovered,
invited her to accompany him on a stroll along the beach. As they walked, he held her hand and talked enthusiastically about his plans for the construction on their new estate, and how he intended for her to decorate the mansion as beautifully as their home in Washington City. She promised to do so, but she suspected he had given her the pleasurable task—along with the promise that he would grant her a generous allowance for it—in order to distract her from his return to intemperance.
It did not work, of course; she managed to contain her anger for a few days, reminding herself constantly of her father’s repeated admonitions to submit and to endure all with Christian forbearance, but eventually her anger and disappointment boiled over, and she and William argued more furiously than they ever had. He did not strike her, although he seemed close to it, but as soon as their anger was spent, they reconciled with excuses for their tempers and promises on both sides to do better, to be more loving and patient.
For days on end, peace and tenderness and affection would rule over the household. William would contend with matters of business, Kate would supervise the building of their new home, Nettie would swim and sail and sketch and spend time with William’s younger cousins, and at the close of day they would gather around the dinner table happy and full of stories of how they had spent the hours since breakfast. Then the glass would fall, and the ominous thunderclouds would roll in, and the storm would burst—and Nettie would seek shelter out of sight while her sister and brother-in-law raged at each other, waiting for the downpour to cease and the clouds to drift away, borne away on a wind of tearful apologies.
All summer long, as the refurbishing and construction on the Narragansett property progressed enough that they were able to move into one wing of the house, Kate and William struggled to reclaim the affection and amity they had achieved through the mails. Through Confederate general Jubal Early’s frightening raid into the North, the Battle of the Monocacy, the ongoing stalemate around Petersburg, the Battle of the Crater, and more skirmishes than they could keep track of, the pattern of argument and reconciliation continued until even Nettie grew accustomed to it.
To Kate it seemed that their frayed tempers reflected the mood of the nation. With General Grant unable to advance upon Richmond and General Sherman stalled near Atlanta, the war had ground to a dispiriting halt, and dissatisfaction with the Lincoln administration was on the rise. Kate found it tragically ironic that one significant element of the dreadful Pomeroy Circular seemed to have been remarkably prescient: As the summer passed and disgruntlement grew, Mr. Lincoln’s reelection seemed ever more unlikely.
She was not the only one to think so. Everywhere Father traveled, as he confided in his letters to Kate, he was called upon to speak, and afterward he invariably was approached by gentlemen who would disparage the president and denounce Father’s removal from the cabinet. A few Union organizations in New York had demanded a new convention to nominate “a man who would put an end to the war,” but when they had tried to draft Father as their candidate, he had flatly refused. It pained Kate to read her father’s matter-of-fact, stoic descriptions of the state of things, for they both knew that if Father were in the race he very likely would have claimed the Republican nomination; but if Mr. Lincoln lost in November, Father’s chance to be named chief justice would vanish like mist in the August sunshine.
Other political opportunities to return to public service had come Father’s way that summer, none promising enough for him to accept. Early in August, several of Father’s friends in Ohio had, without his knowledge, submitted his name for consideration as the Republican nominee for Congress from Cincinnati’s first district. Father was intrigued, but he informed his friends that only if the district convention nominated him unanimously would he accept. The caveat turned out to be unnecessary, for another candidate won the nomination. Soon after that humiliating loss of an office Father had not even sought, Secretary Fessenden had met him in Boston to consult him on various Treasury Department matters, and also to suggest somewhat obliquely that Father might be offered an ambassador’s post in Europe. It was only the vague, indefinite shadow of an offer, but Father firmly declined, unwilling to absent himself from his beloved country before its great crisis was resolved.
On the second day of September, Father took the train from Boston to Providence; William met him at the station and escorted him to Narragansett, where Kate and Nettie welcomed their father joyously. In unmistakable but unintended contrast, Kate greeted her husband with polite reserve. She and William had not yet reconciled from their most recent squabble, and although they were careful not to argue in front of her father, they were abrupt and sometimes hostile to each other. They could not seem to help it. Father was clearly shocked to witness how poorly they were getting along, and for his sake Kate endeavored not to engage William in argument for the duration of her father’s visit, even if that meant ignoring her husband entirely.
But the next day, their ongoing quarrel was driven from their thoughts by the news from the South: General Sherman had captured Atlanta.
The people of the North were jubilant. After a dismal summer marked by stalemate, discouragement, and defeat, the Union army suddenly surged toward victory—and so too did Mr. Lincoln. Overnight he had become a victorious commander in chief, and in the transformed political environment, the Radical Republican effort to put forth another candidate seemed foolhardy, even dangerous. Father and Kate speculated that unless the National Union and Radical Democracy parties united around a single candidate, it was entirely possible that the Republican voters would divide their ballots between Mr. Lincoln and General Frémont, and thereby allow the Democrats to seize the presidency. At the end of August, the Democratic National Convention met in Chicago to nominate General McClellan on a peace platform that called for a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with the Confederacy. This, the family agreed, would be disastrous for the Union cause—but with Father out of the cabinet, he was unable to advise the president on a better course.
But that did not mean he was powerless to help. In mid-September, a few days before Nettie’s seventeenth birthday, the Spragues and Chases returned to Washington City, where Father made the perfunctory round of calls to his remaining loyal friends, all of whom urged Father to campaign yet again for Mr. Lincoln. Secretary Fessenden promised to speak to Mr. Lincoln on his behalf, and he encouraged Father to call at the White House himself as soon as possible. Father eventually did, albeit reluctantly, but as Kate had privately foreseen, the meeting was stiff and awkward and uncomfortable despite Mr. Lincoln’s attempts to welcome Father with his usual cordiality. Afterward, Father decided to endorse his former rival, and he promptly began writing letters to friends and allies declaring that he wholeheartedly supported Mr. Lincoln for president, and if they cared at all about saving the Union, they would too.
Not long after Father joined the campaign, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair resigned from the cabinet. “A late birthday present for me,” exclaimed Nettie when Father broke the surprising news of his enemy’s ouster.
Kate, William, and Father laughed, but their mirth quickly turned to speculation. Mr. Lincoln was fond of Mr. Blair, he needed the support of the powerful Blair family among conservatives, and Mr. Blair had seemed to relish his position in the cabinet. “I cannot fathom why he would resign unless the president requested it,” said Father, “but I cannot imagine Mr. Lincoln doing so.” They were all pleased when Mr. Lincoln named as Mr. Blair’s replacement Father’s own successor, the former governor of Ohio William Dennison, who remained Father’s friend even though he had stood firmly with Mr. Lincoln in the wake of the Pomeroy Circular fiasco.
Soon thereafter, an intriguing possible explanation for Mr. Blair’s removal emerged when General Frémont, the Radical Democracy candidate, abruptly withdrew from the race. Although the Chases could not prove any reciprocity, they agreed that the timing was too suspect to be a coincidence, considering that the Radical Republicans
had particularly despised Mr. Blair and had long wanted him excised from the cabinet. Now the separate factions of the divided Republican Party were almost certain to rally around Mr. Lincoln, for the political distinction between the two remaining candidates could not have been more clear. President Lincoln was the leader of a victorious army and the savior of the Union, while General McClellan was remembered as a perpetually hesitant military officer whose party insisted upon a platform of peace at any price, a position most loyal Unionists could not abide.
Although Mr. Lincoln’s prospects had greatly improved, Father campaigned for him as vigorously as ever, traveling to Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan to urge voters to reelect him. Kate and Nettie accompanied their father as far as Cincinnati, where Kate was heartened to see him addressing the crowds, dignified and earnest, enjoining them to show up in record numbers at the polls on election day. Kate knew well that a lesser man would have sulked at home, bitterly wishing for his rival to fail, but Father cared too much about the survival of the Union to sacrifice it to his vanity. She wished his detractors knew this about him, but they had closed their hearts and minds to his nobility of spirit long ago.
On October 11, exultant Republicans celebrated victories in state elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, races that were considered auguries of the presidential contest to follow a month later. The next day, a more somber mood prevailed when it was announced that Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney had passed away at the age of eighty-seven, leaving a vacancy on the Supreme Court. By then Kate and Nettie had returned to Washington, but Kate gleaned from her father’s letters that he fervently hoped Mr. Lincoln would nominate him for the position immediately. Neither she nor her father was surprised when the president deferred his decision until after the election.
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