Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868

by Cokie Roberts

  BY 1859 THE comforts and pleasures of Washington were much improved. In January, the water in Montgomery Meigs’s elegantly engineered system started flowing into reservoirs and mains that brought running water into private homes. That year too the commissioner of public buildings crowed that over the previous ten years “the city has . . . opened and made more than fifty miles of avenues and streets, at a cost of about one million and a half dollars. It may safely be affirmed that no city, in proportion to its population and wealth, has done more for itself than Washington, notwithstanding nearly one half of the property within its limits belongs to the government, and is not subject to taxation.” The Washington Star burst with unabashed boosterism: “Persons of wealth and taste . . . are coming more and more to appreciate the advantages and pleasures of having a home among the public men of America while the latter are assembled together. . . . In the northern cities what is termed fashionable society is intensely exclusive, the key to admission to it being a golden one. Here, the lock is off and the door stands wide open for any to enter who may be so intelligent, entertaining and well-behaved as to prove agreeable acquaintances.” But, adds a Capital City historian: “No decade of Washington’s history presents sharper contrasts than the 1850’s. Poverty, squalor, prejudice, and violence were as abundantly evident as the ‘wealth and taste’ to which the Star drew attention.” Though the elite private schools, especially the Visitation Convent and Georgetown, offered excellent education, the overcrowded public schools took in so few pupils that only about half of the white school-aged children were enrolled. And there were no public schools for the 18 percent of the population that was black. Still, Catholic nuns and priests and some other enterprising individuals—notably Myrtilla Miner, who opened a high school for girls with the support of prominent abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe—operated private schools that educated more than one thousand African-American children. And Congress appropriated funds for “each deaf, dumb or blind pupil” in the District whose family could not pay for the newly established school headed by educator Edward Gallaudet. Gallaudet University still stands as the nation’s beacon of higher education for the deaf.

  As the city grew in size and sophistication, arts and culture established a toehold. The Smithsonian Institution became a center for research as well as a museum and gathering place. For most of the 1850s the National Theatre produced shows featuring everything from Shakespeare to Chinese acrobats, but a fire in 1857 closed the decades-old performance hall for several years. One of the most popular novelists of the day, Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth (her name was Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, but she used her initials as her byline, or simply signed herself Mrs. Southworth), churned out her serialized melodramas from a large house in Georgetown, which the single mother of two—she had left an unhappy marriage—was able to buy with her own earnings as a writer. In 1859, her hugely successful Hidden Hand captured readers with the story of a starving and frightened abandoned little girl who disguises herself as a boy because “while all the ragged boys I knew could get little jobs to earn bread, I, because I was a girl, was not allowed to carry a gentleman’s parcel or black his boots, or shovel the snow off a shopkeeper’s pavement, or put in coal, or do anything that I could do just as well as they. And so because I was a girl there seemed to be nothing but starvation or beggary before me!” Mrs. Southworth hadn’t yet joined forces with the women who had met at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, but she found other ways to make the point!

  Another sign of progress: the major expansion of the Capitol building, under the direction of Montgomery Meigs with the combined support of strange bedfellows Jefferson Davis and William Seward. Large new chambers for both the House of Representatives and the Senate were ready for occupancy by 1859 and work on the massive new unifying dome was under way. But that symbol of unity belied the reality of what was happening inside the building. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act in March 1859, causing abolitionists to press their case against slavery louder and more insistently. And they got some ammunition from a white southerner named Hinton Helper, who published the book The Impending Crisis in an attempt to rally the nonslaveholders of the South to the abolitionist cause, calling on them to rise up against the slaveholding class. The Republicans reproduced an abridged version of the tract as a piece of political propaganda, and sixty-eight congressmen signed an advertisement for the pamphlet. On the other side, Varina Davis quoted President Buchanan: “No book could be better calculated for the purpose of intensifying the mutual hatred between North and South.” And then John Brown staged his raid on Harpers Ferry.

  Three years earlier the fanatical abolitionist had terrorized the proslavery forces in Kansas when he and four of his twenty children kidnapped five men and split their skulls. Brown deemed it a retaliatory attack after some Free Soilers had been killed, and he got away with the murders in the tumult of the Kansas civil war. On October 16, 1859, Brown struck again. Believing he was commissioned by God, the fiery-eyed zealot led a gang of eighteen men, including three of his sons, as he stormed the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to foment an armed slave rebellion. After seizing the lightly guarded building, Brown sent his followers into the countryside to grab hostages while he waited for what he was convinced would be an outpouring of slaves ready to join him. Undeterred when no outpouring occurred, Brown and his men holed up in a firehouse with the hostages. Along with the citizens of Harpers Ferry, alarmed militia men from Maryland and Virginia tried to roust the raiders out of their fortress without harming the hostages; it didn’t take long before they called in the Marines. Led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, the troops succeeded in capturing Brown and his band, killing two of them in the skirmish.

  At first the whole country was horrified at the idea that John Brown planned to arm slaves and move through the South promoting violence. But antislavery sentiment shifted to Brown’s side as his trial and subsequent hanging turned him first into a sympathetic figure, then into a martyr, and finally into a saint—provoking outrage in the South. Varina Davis later enlisted President Buchanan’s postwar book to bolster the argument that it was not the raid by the “pestilent, forceful man” itself that “made a deeper impression on the Southern mind against the Union than all former events,” but rather that “on the day of Brown’s execution bells were tolled in many places, cannon fired, and prayers offered up for him as if he were a martyr . . . and churches were draped in mourning.” John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. The new Congress convened five days later.

  THE CONGRESS MET when “the whole country was in ferment of the execution of John Brown,” fretted Sara Pryor. “It was evident from the first hour that the atmosphere was heavily charged.” Sara’s husband had left his newspaper job and been newly elected as a Democrat to what became the infamous Thirty-Sixth Congress. Though for the first time the Republicans held the most seats, the party’s choice for Speaker of the House was blocked by Democrats joining with members from smaller parties. During the almost two months of balloting, “everything was said that could be said to fan the flame,” Sara protested. “Hot disputes were accentuated by bitter personal remarks. One day a pistol accidentally fell from the pocket of a member from New York, and, thinking it had been drawn with the intention of using it, some of the members were wild with passion . . . turning the House into a pandemonium.” One of the newcomers from the Republican ranks was also alarmed about the weaponry: “the other side all go armed and put their hands into their breasts upon the slightest provocation,” Abigail Brooks Adams wrote home to her son Henry, arguing, “I believe the Republicans would like a free fight, though they profess to be cool.” She added for good measure, “if there is a free fight I should like to punch a head or two, & kick & bite too.” The pugilistic Mrs. Adams was married to Charles Francis Adams, the son and grandson of presidents, and like the women in his family before her, she had strong views about politics and everything else. And she was eager to ex
press them.

  Though new to Congress, the Adams family was neither new to politics nor to Washington. Charles Francis had served in the Massachusetts legislature and run for vice president on the Free Soil ticket in 1848 before he briefly withdrew from the fray and, with his wife’s help, edited a successful book of his grandmother Abigail Adams’s letters. This Abigail Adams—called Abby—had spent a good bit of time in the Capital City; in fact that’s where the couple met in 1826 when John Quincy Adams was president. As a nineteen-year-old visiting her sister who was married to Massachusetts Congressman Edward Everett, Abby was invited to the White House, where she was introduced to the president’s son, who promptly fell in love with her. In later years she made regular trips to help take care of her mother-in-law, former first lady Louisa Catherine Adams, who had become such a venerated figure that both houses of Congress adjourned in respect and declared a day of silence when she died in 1852. During her frequent visits Abby earned a place as a popular visitor in Washington parlors, entertained by presidents and enlightened by politicians like her friend Charles Sumner. So when the Adams’ officially joined the capital circle the couple were already A-list guests, even at the home of Rose Greenhow, a southern sympathizer who was a friend and advisor to President Buchanan.

  An alluring widow sought after by many suitors, Rose never stopped inviting politicians of all stripes to her home as a way of garnering information and gaining influence. And her influence was great, not only in the private rooms of the White House but also in the public square. Giving her the pseudonym Veritas, the New York Herald’s publication of her letters from Washington meant that Abby and Charles knew exactly the sentiments of their hostess when they sat down at Mrs. Greenhow’s dinner table, but that didn’t stop Mrs. Adams from wading right into the hottest political topic of the day, declaring John Brown a “holy saint and martyr.” Rose instantly shot back: “He was a traitor, and met a traitor’s doom.” The other guests, including New York abolitionist William Seward, shifted uncomfortably in their seats and tried to change the subject but the face-off between the two women made for juicy gossip in society’s sitting rooms—Buchanan told Rose that he had heard about it from “five or six persons, who all greatly commended your spirit and independence. And you have my most hearty approval.”

  Abby knew she was treading in dangerous waters with her outspoken views, which were even more frank in her letters to her son Henry. She referred to fellow Massachusetts Republican Anson Burlingame as a “pig” and was horrified when her husband brought him home for dinner. “I was obliged to be polite, but cool. . . . Dear me I should be killed if these remarks leaked out. It is dreadful to hold my tongue.” Congressman Adams’s grandmother, the first Abigail, had written almost the same words to her husband, John, many years before. And if she had harsh words for the members of Congress, Abby’s pen also mercilessly skewered their wives: “Most of the Republicans are dowdies & I don’t wonder the party wanted us here, for if we are not much, we are better than that. I wish our party was a little more upper crust.” Dowdy wives, however, were the least of the party’s problems. Republicans pushed John Sherman of Ohio for Speaker; the Democrats rejected him outright because he had signed the endorsement of the Hinton Helper book earlier that year. An astonished Sara Pryor reported that Sherman professed total naïveté about the political situation, saying: “ ‘When I came here I did not believe that the slavery question would come up; and but for the unfortunate affair of Brown at Harper’s Ferry I do not believe that there would have been any feeling on the subject.’ ” He couldn’t have been more mistaken—there was a great deal of feeling and there was no other subject.

  The Republicans kept Sherman’s name before the House for thirty-nine ballots, and at times he came tantalizingly close. Anna Carroll, who was trying to effect a merger between what was left of the Know-Nothings and the Republicans, backed Sherman through much of the battle, but by late January, when she knew he’d never be elected, she declared to one of his political patrons: “I intend to tell him the whole truth as I know it and as no man . . . would ever tell him.” Anna might be ready to tell the truth; it took Sherman’s party a few more days to work up the same kind of courage. The Ohio Congressman had to go; New Jersey’s William Pennington would be the compromise candidate. Despite her husband’s objections, Abby Adams insisted on going to the House for the vote: “It meets at twelve, at ½ past ten the immense galleries were packed . . . & oh the excitement of all.” It was quite a moment of surprise for the Democrats when all the Republicans switched to Pennington. However, Abby observed, “Now the question is, what can they do with him . . . this is all private, strictly, but they feel they have a heavy load to carry. He made a dozen mistakes in half an hour & will be a laughing stock I know, mainly from ignorance.”

  The election of a Speaker did little to calm the roiled relationships in Washington. Both the House and Senate launched investigations of the John Brown raid, questioning whether it was backed by a conspiracy and keeping it alive as topic number one. Politics took precedence over politeness: “Our social lines were now strictly drawn between North and South. Names were dropped from visiting lists, occasions avoided on which we might expect to meet members of the party antagonistic to our own,” Sara Pryor sadly attested. “My friend Mrs. Douglas espoused all her husband’s quarrels and distinctly ‘cut’ his opponents.” Senator Douglas’s chief opponent was the president of the United States, and that intraparty rift meant that “Mrs. Douglas never appeared at Miss Lane’s receptions in the winter of 1859–1860.” Adele had other reasons to stay away from the social scene through most of the fall, when she was pregnant and then almost died after her short-lived daughter’s birth. But in the election year 1860, with Stephen Douglas running hard for president, his wife was back at his side.

  Adele wasn’t missing much by being shut out of the White House. President Buchanan only occasionally hosted the large receptions that had been such a fixture of early Washington when Louisa and John Quincy Adams occupied the Executive Mansion. And when Abby Adams went to one of the rare affairs in early February, she thought it didn’t hold a candle to the ones she remembered, which “were stately & elegant & all appeared in their best. At that time, they were held once a week the season through & it was the mode of seeing & paying respect to the Chief Magistrate. But things are changed & Miss Lane does things which would have overturned the government then.”

  For all her criticism of the ways of current Washington, Mrs. Adams had to admit she too had “made one great blunder.” President Buchanan had been roundly criticized for never inviting the opposition party to his dinners, but then when he sought to right the wrong, the Republicans rejected his peace offerings: “the ‘house’ last year declined his invitations, all but one man & many of the Senate.” But the well-brought-up Charles Adams would of course say yes in a display of good manners and “accept any civilities he offered.” When the presidential dinner invitation did come, the Adams had another engagement and Abby determinedly ignored the dictum that White House invitations take precedence. Buchanan took umbrage and, in Abby’s words, the “old Pig, had not dignity enough to hold his tongue, but discussed it at dinner, expressed his mortification & hinted that the excuse was made up, for that we must know Etiquette.” Of course the slight became the talk of the town and Abigail was forced to apologize at the next reception, which rankled her mightily, but she took satisfaction in telling Henry, “Our friends who positively hate him, are tickled beyond measure, not that we were wrong, but that he was mortified.” So much for “paying respect to the Chief Magistrate.”

  The president was hardly alone in preferring to entertain only members of his own party, as Abby reported: “All I meet of the other side are polite enough & at receptions we cross each other, but they never invite any of us to dinners . . . this has been going on for years, but has been increased by the growth of our party & the John Brown affair & the ‘Helper Book’ nonsense.” The distance between and within th
e parties would only increase as the presidential campaign heated up.

  THE CAPITAL CITY did stop bickering for a day on George Washington’s Birthday. Though the monument so grandly dedicated twelve years earlier stood forlornly abandoned at 153 feet high, another tribute to the first president had been completed—an equestrian statue of General Washington was ready for an unveiling ceremony. American sculptor Clark Mills, who had dazzled the city a few years earlier with his replica of Andrew Jackson on horseback, received a commission from Congress to cast the commander in chief as he looked in the Revolutionary War. (Since most of the work going on at the Capitol was in the hands of European artists, the lawmakers were determined to reward a fellow countryman even though Mills’s critics claimed that the only way he had managed to balance Jackson’s horse on his hind legs was by filling its tail with cannonballs.)

  As the day of the unveiling arrived, it seemed doomed to disappoint, clucked the Raleigh, North Carolina, Weekly Standard. “The inclement weather and seeming indifference of our people in regard to the celebration of the day, until the very last moment, kept numbers away who imagined that the display would be poor and unworthy of such an occasion.” The city clearly wasn’t in a mood to celebrate anything that Ash Wednesday, and the event was “wretchedly managed in all its details.” But by afternoon the clouds cleared and crowds spilled onto the streets, where “every window and available stand-point on the route was occupied by fair ladies.” At the site, after the president spoke “and the covering fell from the statue disclosing the revered Washington on his charger, the shout that burst from thousands of patriotic hearts was deafening.” The cheers sounded for a somewhat scaled-down statue: “the appropriation by Congress was insufficient to carry out the original design.” The fleeting celebratory moment brought regions and parties together for the last time before the war.