For all the good and bad said and written about this first lady, she herself did provide grist for the gossip mill. Under the guise of helping her husband, she took an active hand in political affairs. Having spent years advising him in his clothes, social etiquette, and even urging the reluctant eater to finish his vegetables, she felt equally qualified to advise him in such things as Cabinet appointments. The president having encouraged her participation in certain areas, she was quick to take an active role. Quite often she wore her official prestige like a uniform, for all to see, even representing her husband in reviewing troops and inspecting ships!
Mary felt so strongly about their Republican cause that she wrote letters to editor Bennett of the New York Herald, himself not always to be counted in their corner. On one occasion she was brazen enough to write him concerning Cabinet posts.
Fully convinced of the importance of her womanly suggestions, Mary ever so sweetly said, “I have a great terror of strong minded Ladies, yet if a word fitly spoken and in due season, can be urged, in a time, like this, we should not withhold it.” The president, though, once told her, “If I listened to you, I should soon be without a Cabinet.”
From her schoolgirl days, Mary of course had been intrigued by royalty and the grandeur in which they lived. And now, she was the grand lady living in the Republic’s grand Executive Mansion…and she would make sure it was turned into an appropriate setting for the leader of a great nation—and, of course, for his wife as well. Approaching the challenge with characteristic energy, she found an ally in the form of William S. Wood, a man of less than impeccable reputation whom she insisted upon having named a commissioner of public buildings. That done, off they went to New York to invade the city’s finest shops.
Quite naturally, reporters followed Mary wherever she went, and even though her niece Lizzie Todd Grimsley went with them, tongues now wagged furiously back in Washington. Soon, the president received an anonymous note warning him of the “scandal of your wife and Wood” and asserting, “If he continues as commissioner, he will stab you in your most vital part.”
Even though Lincoln reportedly had words with his wife over Wood, she and the commissioner soon had overspent the entire $20,000 allowance Congress had given her for the White House refurbishments. In all, Mary made eleven trips to New York, but Wood eventually became too controversial to remain a companion.
In any case, despite wartime shortages and delays, the White House interiors did sparkle with a new look as Mary held court. She organized various White House receptions and attended them even when miserable with headaches. Enjoying the spotlight that entertaining gave her, she impressed the diplomats with her bright and knowledgeable conversation. The ambassador from Chile and his wife were most grateful to the first lady when she conversed with them in French because they spoke no English. Then, too, a contemporary historian came away from one evening soiree so impressed that he wrote: “She told what orders she had given for renewing the White House and her elegant fitting up of Mr. Lincoln’s room, her conservatory and love of flowers . . . and ended with giving me a gracious invitation to repeat my visit and saying she would send me a bouquet. I came home entranced.”
But Mary’s importance to Lincoln as a political counsel or really did diminish—quite understandably, his preoccupation with the war tended to pull him away from their congenial companionship of old.
Seeking ways to compensate, Mary not only staged formal state dinners and receptions, but she also held her own private salons, attended by stimulating patrons, mostly men. To be sure, a few brilliant women were included in these affairs . . . but only if they could hold their own in the political conversation sure to take place. Though Mary was knowledgeable on women’s concerns, she turned a cold shoulder to the idea of women’s suffrage—she never lent her name to the feminist causes of the fair sex.
Still, she joined an association to boycott international goods, which put a damper on the elegant and expensive fabrics used in ladies’ dresses. Even without European materials, however, the first lady would not be daunted in her quest to be the best-dressed lady in Washington. Her old fascination with royalty, stemming from her school days under Madame Mentelle’s tutelage, drew Mary to the fashions favored by the beautiful redheaded Empress Eugénie of France, who had married Napoleon III in 1853. War or not, the American press itself was fascinated with the two “fashion queens.”
One member of her salon, Nathaniel Willis, columnist for Home Journal, wrote of Mary Lincoln as the “Republican Queen in her White Palace.” What he didn’t say was that she was an insecure and lonely queen in need of constant companionship. And soon this role was filled by a former slave, a mulatto seamstress who became the first lady’s confidante and closest friend.
In fact, on Mary’s second day in the historic “White Palace,” her first visitor was the same Elizabeth Keckley, one of Washington’s most treasured dressmakers. She came recommended by several well-known customers, and ironically she had made gowns for the first lady of the Confederate States of America, Varina Davis, wife of the former senator from Mississippi who now was president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis.
The fact is, the Union’s first lady had been raised in the presence of family slaves, had once looked upon her Mammy Sally as a surrogate mother helping to fill the void in her little-girl life after her mother’s death. Thus, it was only natural that Mary welcomed Keckley with open arms. In response, the newcomer draped her patron in beautiful clothes and soothed her worried brow through many of the troubles and sadnesses of the first family. And Mary in turn lent a helping hand in 1863 to her trusted seamstress in the latter’s campaign to help the “contrabands,” newly freed blacks pouring into the city from Unionliberated areas down south.
Keckley convinced Mrs. Lincoln of the desperate situation of these former slaves, many of them dying of want. The president’s wife responded so positively, she set herself apart from many other Union women of goodwill, recalled biographer Baker, not for “her attention to good causes but rather her commitment to an unpopular one.”
As if such an unpopular cause were not trouble enough for an already muchmaligned first lady, she added more fuel to the critical fires by soliciting help from her male friends, most of them counted among what she called “my beau monde friends of the Blue Room.” She meant the steady attendees of what is thought to be the first salon in America. Notoriously to some onlookers, she had included interesting men, not all of them boasting an impeccable past. They ranged, wrote biographer Baker, from those who could discuss love, law, literature, and war, to those able to talk of philosophers and kings of the past, of the great writers, of commerce, the church, even of the boudoir.
If Mary stubbornly sought to have her way—and Abraham, too, on a larger, national scale—they could not always shake the always-pursuing shadow of tragedy in their lives. As first lady, Mary was determined to show the political and social forces of Washington that she could bring gracious galas to the White House, grand events reminiscent of Dolley Madison’s hospitality. To this end in 1862 she planned with great care her first large party since moving into the White House. Five hundred invitations went out—to a “dancing party,” a decided break with tradition. Although the guests arrived in their best ballroom attire, they learned the dancing itself had been canceled.
Despite the ban on dancing, a bow to those critics who viewed such activity in the White House as inappropriate in time of war, the attempt at gaiety, the music, and the serving of fabulous food all went forward as planned. Upstairs earlier that evening the president had come into his wife’s dressing room as Keckley was helping her into her new gown. “Whew!” was his reaction to Mary’s bold finery. “Our cat has a long tail tonight. Mother, it is my opinion if some of that tail was nearer the head, it would be in better style.”
But Mary was determined that her best features—her white shoulders and arms—should be shown, and Keckley agreed. Minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. President walked down t
he stairs to greet their guests, then together began the traditional promenade around the East Room. Mary of course made a fetching picture in her low-cut gown of white satin. A train of black chantilly lace trimmed in crepe myrtle flowed behind her, while a matching wreath of crepe myrtle crowned her dark hair. Her jewelry—as always—was pearls. But for the war, it should have been a happy occasion for Mary, the hostess, especially. All around her, ladies in jewel-bedecked gowns, hoops, and crinolines swished as they moved about the floor…without dancing.
This was to be Mary’s triumph, a platform to display her knowledge of fashion and grace. But upstairs in this perfect White Palace a dark cloud hovered ever lower and lower.
In the private family quarters little Willie lay ill, very ill with a fever. The Lincolns had considered calling off the party, but the doctor had assured them that their young son was better. Throughout the evening both parents slipped away to check on their child, who was later diagnosed as suffering from typhoid. Along the hall and stairwells flower-scented air wafted up to the sick room, and music could be dimly heard…as Mary came again and again to see her Willie. Keckley, who was at the bedside, reported that his fever had dropped.
But it wouldn’t be for long. Both Keckley and Willie’s faithful playmate Bud Taft kept the hard vigil in the days ahead with Mary. The end came on February 20. The president, in and out of his son’s room for days, said, “It is hard, hard to have him die!” and buried his face in his hands.
“Mrs. Lincoln alternated between bouts of convulsive weeping and total prostration,” reported historian Ishbel Ross. Mary couldn’t face the funeral that followed, nor would she ever again enter the guest room where her Willie had died.
Mary in fact displayed such paroxysms of grief that her despairing husband finally sent for Mary’s sister Elizabeth because she usually had “such a power & control, such an influence over Mary.” He knew Elizabeth would have little patience with such incessant grief, especially with the nation at war, its casualty lists growing day by day.
Now emulating Queen Victoria, who had recently lost her dear Prince Albert, Mary draped herself in black taffeta. More than a year later, a visiting Emilie Helm, herself just left a widow by Confederate Gen. Ben Helm’s death in battle, was startled by Mary’s hallucinations and seemingly serious talk of trying to communicate with Emilie’s dead husband. Mary also claimed to have nightly visitations with her departed sons, Willie and Eddie. Emilie felt obliged to discuss Mary’s condition with the president, who had already warned her that Mary was highly nervous.
As if the Lincolns didn’t have enough to worry about, oldest son Robert’s relations with his family were strained. He was anxious to join the ranks with his friends and do his duty for the Union. But his mother was putting every obstacle in the way of his joining the army. She continued to use Willie’s death as an excuse, saying, “We have lost one son, and his loss is as much as I can bear, without being called upon to make another sacrifice.”
The split nation, North and South, saw the death tolls mounting day by day. Mary herself could count a brother, three half brothers, and three brothersin-law as casualties, and all on the side of the Confederacy—Rebels in her eyes whom she refused to mourn. She did feel her sister Emilie’s loss of her husband, even if he had been a Rebel general. And Mary told Emilie that in his “visitations,” Willie had let her know that he was in touch with their brother Alexander, also recently killed in battle.
While Lincoln’s religious faith deepened over the profound experience of Willie’s death, Mary’s nighttime visitations with her dead sons convinced her that a medium could put her in touch with her lost loved ones. It is easy to understand that she would fall into the hands of a charlatan who went by the alias of Colchester. After several séances, the so-called medium was exposed as a fraud, an episode that only added to Mary’s many humiliations.
Lincoln desperately needed help in caring for his sick wife and his youngest son Tad, also ill with raging fever. Tad was not only sick, he was prostrate with spasms of crying over his lost brother and playmate. Fortunately, he recovered, but Lincoln in the meantime found a well-recommended nurse, Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomroy, who had lost loved ones of her own…and had found consolation in her religious faith. She appeared to be just what the doctor ordered, and a relieved Lincoln greeted her with the words, “I am heartily glad to see you, and feel you can comfort us and the poor sick boy.” And indeed she did win over the hearts of everyone in the household.
Mary Lincoln, of course, was more sick at heart…an emotional or mental illness, rather than a physical malady. In modern times she or her family would surely have sought help from mental health specialists, but in her day women especially were expected to carry the burden of tragedy stoically. That attitude clearly comes through in letters written by stern older sister Elizabeth, who had hurried to Mary’s side right after Willie’s death then stayed on in an effort to ease Mary’s obvious pain. “Your aunt Mary’s manner is very distressed and subdued,” Elizabeth wrote to her daughter. “It is a serious crush to her unexampled frivolity, such language sounds harsh, but the excessive indulgence, [it] has been revealed to me, fully justifies it.”
Mary might have felt not only the censure of family members, but outside the family circle, the ever-ready hostile tongues also were finding fault with everything she did. As Randall so aptly put it, “Newspapers on all sides were denouncing the invalid who wept in the White House.” Mary herself forever felt remorse over the ball that went on despite little Willie’s illness. She had wanted to cancel the invitations, she lamented. “I have had evil counselors,” she shrieked in front of a friend.
Adding one more cruel blow, Eleanor G. Donelly wrote a widely read poem called “The Lady-President’s Ball.” The poem was supposedly written by a poor dying soldier who through glazed eyes could see the bright lights of the White House. A typical stanza of it went like this:
What matter that I, poor private,
Lie here on my narrow bed,
With fever gripping my vitals,
And dazing my hapless head!
What matter that nurses are callous,
And rations meagre and small,
So long as the beau monde revel
At the Lady-President’s ball!
These heartless verses were printed in a newspaper four days before Willie’s death. Mary Lincoln had rallied from her little Eddie’s death, “with the help of youth,” Randall noted. “But now youth was behind her, health was impaired, and she was in the midst of war, suspicion, criticism, slander and hate. The future was dark and uncertain. She would never recover from this blow.”
It wasn’t until ten long months later that Mary would finally emerge from this dark period and stand by her husband’s side at their New Year’s Day reception of 1863. As the guests passed through the reception line, they no doubt studied with added interest this woman who had been so removed from the public eye, yet not the public’s curiosity. Fashionably attired for the occasion but clad in her ever-present mourning clothes, her black hair coiffed in a severe style, Mary was the very picture of a somber Victorian mourner. No lively coterie now, no wonderful White House entertainments in view…she had visibly changed.
Perhaps there was a moment’s cheer for Mary not long after, when who should come avisiting at the White House but “Gen. Tom Thumb” (real name, Charles Sherwood Stratton), whose recent marriage to the equally petite Miss Lavinia Warren had momentarily pushed the war news aside (with a little help from that early public relations genius P. T. Barnum of circus fame). Tom Thumb, one of the shortest adult visitors ever to walk into the presidential abode, stood all of three feet, four inches tall. He and his tiny bride had been married in New York’s Grace Episcopal Church on February 10, 1863.
But this was also the year of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and so many other confrontations, with unthinkable slaughter taking place even in the Union victories such as those two benchmark battles. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was emerging as the m
an of the hour. War-fattened nouveau riche were flocking into the capital, helping to swell the population from 60,000 to 200,000. Hotels were crowded, gambling flourished, restaurants did a booming business, and the money flowed accordingly. The theater flourished also—Ford’s and Grover’s were sold out at every performance.
At the very moment that the battle was raging in Gettysburg, Mary Lincoln was out for a ride in her carriage. Suddenly the coachman fell from his seat. The first lady was thrown to the ground and hit her head on a rock. It was later discovered that the seat had been deliberately tampered with. Regardless of the cause, however, the mishap was still another setback for the anguished mourner. Her son Robert believed that his mother never recovered from the accident.
Mary did emerge again to perform her hostess duties and care for Tad, long since recovered from his bout with fever. Now, too, her concern was for her husband’s health, since the pressures of the presidency and the war were taking an obvious toll. Even the press began to notice the tired, strained face of the president. So it was a welcome turn of events in 1865 when General Grant invited the Lincolns to view the front at Petersburg and Richmond, where the war was grinding down to its inevitable end. They embarked on the River Queen for City Point, Virginia, with a large official party on board, plus the ever-present Keckley. It was an especially happy time for the dressmaker because she would be visiting newly emancipated friends in her birthplace of Petersburg.
Best Little Stories from the Civil War: More than 100 true stories Page 41