Thousands of mourners paid tribute to the young soldier when his body came back to Washington, then the chief mourner, the President of the United States, moved Elmer Ellsworth’s remains to the East Room of the White House to lie in state before his solemn military funeral. “The bell tolled all day,” Ann Green wrote, describing the grief-stricken scene, with the hearse “drawn by four magnificent white horses” and the various regiments in front, “then followed all the different Zouave companies headed by his own with the secession flag which he pulled down. . . . Then came the President’s carriage and heads of departments, his horse covered with a black pall was led by the side of the procession by a field officer on horseback.” All of this for one very young colonel, but a colonel loved by President Lincoln and his family. “It was the most impressive military funeral I have seen, the times & the circumstances conspired to make it so,” Louisa Meigs described it to her mother. “The Zouaves followed the hearse, looking dull and depressed. Many persons saw them wiping away their tears.” The cannon salute to the young soldier confused and terrified the edgy city; many thought the Virginians had counterattacked and soldiers rushed to cross the bridges in “one moving mass of glittering bayonets.” Ann Green somewhat breathlessly relayed before finishing: “All a false alarm, I am happy to say.”
BUT THERE WAS no letting down of the guard; the city fully understood the danger still looming: “Oh how happily I thought I should spend this month with my children and grandchildren all around me at Rosedale,” moaned Ann Green as the month of June came to the capital, “but what a changed scene—in the midst of civil war—our own neighborhood the field of action (for a speedy battle is expected between here and Manassas Gap).” And bad news just kept coming. On June 8, Tennessee joined the Confederacy, following Arkansas and North Carolina, bringing the total to eleven states in rebellion. Then word came from Chicago that Stephen Douglas, who had traveled west rallying support for the Union, had died at the age of forty-eight, as Adele held his hand. The New York Times declared the death a “national calamity,” mourning that “his influence in favor of the right, can, in these perilous times, be illy spared by the nation.” The White House, occupied by the man who had run against Douglas twice, was draped in black. Testimonials addressed to Adele streamed in from across the nation hailing the son of Illinois as she attended to business there. By the end of June she was back home in Washington and in the hands of dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley, who outfitted the widow “in deep mourning, with excellent taste,” the seamstress admiringly attested, “and several of the leading ladies of Washington society were extremely jealous of her superior attractions.”
Mrs. Keckley also made “fifteen or sixteen” dresses for the woman who was becoming her fast friend, Mary Todd Lincoln. Though she could count few friends in her new home—“the women kind are giving Mrs. Lincoln the cold shoulder in the City,” Lizzie Lee confided to her husband—the first lady doggedly continued to entertain through the “perilous times.” On June 4, thirty-four members of the diplomatic corps convened in the State Dining Room for an evening the Washington Star declared “the most brilliant affair of the sort that has ever taken place in the Executive Mansion,” giving full credit to “the good taste of Mrs. Lincoln.” If the women of Washington were cool to the new mistress of the White House, at least for the time being she was enjoying some good press. The evening was calculated to woo the diplomats into sticking with the Union, even as the Confederates sought recognition from the European nations their cotton merchants had done business with for years. “I cannot think England will take any part in this war,” Elizabeth Blair Lee judged hopefully at the beginning of June. She knew the new ambassador to the Court of St. James’s since Charles Francis Adams and his wife, Abigail, had been to dinner at Silver Spring several times while they were in Washington. And the Union was counting on Adams to convince the British not to build blockade-breaking privateers in their shipyards.
Soon after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Lincoln had thrown up a blockade of southern ports; Lizzie’s husband, Captain Samuel Phillips Lee, a cousin of Robert E. Lee, commanded a Navy vessel enforcing the sanction and Lizzie and their little boy Blair traveled to Philadelphia to visit the renowned social reformer Rebecca Gratz, a distant relative. (Lizzie’s aunt was married to Rebecca’s brother.) It was mainly a social visit to “Aunt Becky” but also an opportunity to check out the living arrangements in Pennsylvania if the Blair family determined that Lizzie should evacuate from Washington or the Maryland country house, Silver Spring. For now, she felt safe. “We are never at night with less than 4 or eight soldiers sleeping in the house,” she assured her husband; “our horses are fast—& our neighbors reliable.” Back at home a few days later, Lizzie Lee entertained a friend who had just returned from the South and a visit with Varina Davis. “Mrs. D talks all the time of Washington & of her friends with unaltered feelings. She is one of the victims of this war,” came the report; “how sincerely I wish her no ill—& yet how fervently I pray that our Government may go through the trials now beset it & come out—greater & better than ever.” Her country and her friend in rebellion against the country both mattered to Lizzie. But the war was young. As it festered on, friendships frayed.
More and more troops marched into the city, many with the “vivandieres,” the women in uniform who provided supplies for the soldiers, marching alongside them. Now Washington was ready for war and wondering why it wasn’t happening. Mary Lincoln went regularly to visit the soldiers in their camps, often bringing her little boys with her. After one of those visits to the New York Twenty-Fifth Regiment, “the tongue of carriage suddenly broke, and the horses started off at a rapid rate . . . but for the timely assistance of several members of the twenty-fifth, serious consequences might have ensued.” Lucky for Mrs. Lincoln, who was quite shaken by the near calamity, the soldiers had ready reflexes, all the more reason to question why General Scott wasn’t mustering his men and taking on the Confederate States Army in what the capital was convinced would be a single decisive battle.
IN THE SAME way that the South had pressed for a march on Washington, now the North demanded a raid of Richmond, the new Confederate capital. “On to Richmond,” Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune shouted. But days, then weeks passed with no real action. The vaunted New York Seventh had signed up for only a month so they had already headed home, having collected $103 for the Washington Monument fund as a parting gesture. “There are now 75 thousand men in front of—& in the City of Washington & one universal grumble at Gen[era]l Scott’s do nothing policy with such immense means,” Lizzie Lee divulged to Phil. “Some think him too old & others that his heart is averse to an attack upon Virginia—but all this is speculation. I only know he says he is not ready yet & that horses & cannon & men & wagons are now pouring in to the city.” The soldiers were beginning to get on everyone’s nerves as they foraged for food. “Six of the soldiers came and flourished about the place, and helped themselves to cherries,” Ann Green complained. “I went out and told them gently that if they did not want anything that they had better go, and they were quite civil and went off, giving the good advice ‘not to make a fuss for a few cherries.’ Poor creatures—I pitied them very much. They have a hard time of it.” She might pity the soldiers but Mrs. Green had no sympathy for the politicians: “At the bottom of all this wretched war may be traced pride, ambition and personal feud. I pray God it may speedily be brought to a close.” The politicians were coming back to town. President Lincoln had called a special session of Congress. “I do hope for some good result.”
Lincoln chose the symbolic date of July 4 for Congress to convene. Just two nights earlier a huge comet lit up the skies of the city, “far exceeding in splendor any which the present generation have ever witnessed and probably outshining the great comet of 1758,” marveled the National Republican. The astronomical phenomenon came as a complete surprise and many saw it as an ominous portent as the lawmakers reassembled. The halls and walls of the Capi
tol had been scrubbed and painted to try to clean up the mess left by the soldiers who had camped there. But the warm aromas from the bakeries below still wafted into the chambers where members met, reminding them of the war at hand. Also reminding them were the empty seats of the departed southerners, and the silent voices of southern men. Though Kentucky uneasily remained in the Union, one of its senators, former Vice President John Breckinridge, stood on the edge of revolt, accusing President Lincoln of unconstitutional “executive usurpation” of power. On July 17, Lizzie Lee and some female friends went to hear Breckinridge’s speech. “All he said was easily answered—but I held my tongue and endured his specious pleading,” Lizzie reported, clearly considering herself an equal in debate.
Anna Ella Carroll did not hold her tongue or her pen. She wrote a pamphlet answering Breckinridge’s every point, earning praise from Lincoln supporters like Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith: “I trust this reply may have an extended circulation at the present time, as I am sure its perusal by the people will do much to aid the cause of the Constitution and the Union.” Ignoring Breckinridge, who soon joined the Confederate army, the Congress accepted Lincoln’s assumption of war powers and retroactively approved his call up of troops, upping the ante by authorizing up to a million more. But why, members pressed the president, weren’t the current crop of soldiers fighting? Why wasn’t Scott moving on the enemy assembling at Manassas, Virginia? The press, the politicians, and the public demanded that the Union army advance.
In mid-July, the soldiers who had been gathering in and around Washington finally received their marching orders. “Overwhelming forces are making their way to the scene of action today,” Ann Green reported with trepidation on July 16. Friends had gone to Arlington and seen the men breaking camp; “they saw seven regiments and three hundred wagons go.” As the troops moved deeper into Virginia, some of their friends went with them as far as Fairfax Courthouse, where one told Ann what he had witnessed: “The soldiers were destroying everything that they could lay their hands on. He saw beautiful pianos smashed to pieces with all other kinds of furniture—law libraries thrown into the gutters, and four houses on the edge of town set fire to and quietly allowed to burn down. All sorts of barbarous acts.” Finally, this war was real.
Even so, as troops advanced on Manassas, Virginia, they were accompanied by hundreds of civilians who thought the whole thing was a lark. Expecting an easy victory, they brought picnic baskets for a day in the country, where they watched the action through opera glasses as if it were a play. The soundtrack of the performance could be heard in the city, thirty miles away from the battle along the shores of Bull Run Creek: “the morning guns seem very loud to me,” Lizzie Lee shuddered on that fateful July 21 as she went for a walk, “hoping the woods would stop the roar in my ears.” Ann Green also heard the “booming of cannon” and trembled at the sound: “It is in vain to attempt to describe the feeling produced by every report. The conviction that each sound brought death and destruction to our countrymen—either on one side or the other . . . I still cling to the idea that they are all my fellow citizens but it is very unlikely that bloodshed will restore or perpetuate the Union that we have heretofore enjoyed.” At first reports reached the capital that the Union was winning: “when last news at 5 o’clock came in our side were victorious, 3 batteries taken—the Confederate lines broken—& they retreating to their entrenchment at the Junction,” Lizzie Lee reported, “but at 8 o’clock—as I was rocking our boy to sleep I heard that dreadful roar still.”
By the time the battle finally ended the North had been firmly trounced; defeated Union soldiers retreated to Washington along with the frightened congressmen and their friends who kept getting in the soldiers’ way. The makeshift hospitals were quickly overwhelmed with the wounded. Louisa Meigs waited all night for news of her young son, until “a horseman came galloping to the door. It was John, black with dust & smoke.” He personally delivered news of the debacle to his father, now the Quartermaster of the Union army: “Father, the army is completely routed.” Ann Green echoed that account: “Every face betrayed the horrors of the preceding day. Soldiers were coming in, in every direction, some in wagons wounded, some still able to sit their horses but man and beast bleeding—others rushing in for self-preservation, with such tales of carnage and bloodshed and final flight that one’s blood ran cold to hear.” She was fearful “that all who sympathized with the southern victory were to be arrested.” As someone with relatives in the South and an opponent of the war, Mrs. Green lived in suspicion of people she considered Union spies. “I have heard and read much of the reign of terror—but never expected to live under it in this our boasted free country. But here no one ventures to express their sentiments.”
AS IT TURNED out, the Union was right to worry about southern spies—one southern spy in particular, who had been largely responsible for the Rebel victory at Bull Run: Rose Greenhow. Rose was not doing her usual round of entertaining that spring and summer because her daughter Gertrude had just died, marking the loss of the fifth of her eight children. She didn’t think much of the society in town those days anyway: “the refinement and grace which had once constituted the charm of Washington life had long since departed, and like its former freedom, was now alas! A tradition only.” And she was angry with her niece, Adele Cutts Douglas, for what she considered fraternizing with the enemy—Abe and Mary Lincoln. Still, Rose was doing a good bit of fraternizing of her own, much of it late at night with the shades drawn. She saw enough of Massachusetts senator Henry Wilson, the chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, and government functionaries from department clerks to Secretary of State Seward that she was able to keep abreast of Union plans.
So when Confederate spymaster Captain Thomas Jordan came to ask her to do some espionage work, she was in an excellent position to help him out. He gave her an elementary code for encrypting her messages and she assembled a network of southern spies, even as she entertained northern congressmen and lobbied for a position for her son-in-law in the Union army. She hit the jackpot with her intelligence gathering when she learned the date of the Yankees’ advance on Manassas. Rose summoned one of her team, the very beautiful Bettie Duvall, and arranged for her to carry the critical information to the southern command. Disguised as a simple farm girl, Bettie drove her cart past Union sentries until she reached a friendly home in Virginia, where she changed into riding gear and traveled on to Fairfax Courthouse. There she unpinned her glossy brown hair, letting it cascade down her back as she reached under it for a tiny purse with the message for General Beauregard, the commander of the Rebel forces at Manassas. The surprise attack planned by the North was thwarted, Rebel reinforcements sent for, and another messenger dispatched to Rose for more information.
On July 16 she sent back word that more than fifty thousand troops “would positively commence that day to advance from Arlington Heights and Alexandria on to Manassas, via Fairfax Court House and Centerville.” By then “the tramp of armed men was heard on every side—martial music filled the air; in short, a mighty host was marshalling, with all the ‘pomp and circumstance of glorious war.’ ‘On to Richmond!’ was the war-cry,” Rose remembered a few years later, proudly taking credit for stopping that march to the Confederate capital. The word came from Captain Jordan in Manassas: “Yours was received at eight o’clock at night. Let them come: we are ready for them.” Then yet another piece of essential information arrived from the alluring widow in Washington: the Union planned to cut the railroad line leading into Manassas. Forewarned, the South could prepare its defenses.
A story in the New York Times a few days after the battle quotes a British man who went to watch the excitement with a senator, got lost in the confusion of retreat, and ended up briefly as a prisoner in camp with the southern officers. There Jordan “boasted that he had received, before the attack at Bull Run, a cipher dispatch from some well-informed person within our lines, giving full details of movement, including the particulars of th
e plan of battle, the time at which operations would commence, and the number of our troops.” And Rose Greenhow, that “well-informed person,” received her due from the captain when the victory in that first major battle of the Civil War went to the Confederates: “Our President and Our General direct me to thank you. We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy owes you a debt.”
Exultant, Rose rushed to the Capitol to consult with her unwitting accomplices. Several senators assured her “that it was their individual exertions alone which had prevented the entire ‘Grand Army’ from precipitating itself pell-mell into the Potomac.” As humorous as she found their exaggerated accounts, the city was becoming a dangerous place for her: “the fanatical feeling was now at its height. Maddened by defeat, they sought a safe means of venting their pent-up wrath. The streets were filled with armed and unarmed ruffians; women were afraid to go singly into the streets for fear of insult; curses and blasphemy rent the air, and no one would have been surprised at any hour at a general massacre of the peaceful inhabitants.” Rose was urged to leave town. Lizzie Lee did leave. So did Louisa Meigs. But, flush with pride from her accomplishment, Mrs. Greenhow “resolved to remain, conscious of the great service I could render my country, my position giving me remarkable facilities for obtaining information.” Her oldest living daughter, far off in Nevada, warned her mother: “They say some ladies have been taken up as spies. I so dread to hear of some of my friends. Dear mama, please keep as clear of all secessionists as you possibly can. I so much fear everything to you all alone there.” But Rose, with her cadre of co-conspirators, was hardly alone.
Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 Page 12