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

by Cokie Roberts

  Just as Blair’s private communication reached Washington, General Frémont dropped his bombshell. He declared martial law, emancipated the slaves of the thousands of Missouri men in revolt against the Union, and instituted a “bureau of abolition.” Lincoln learned about it from the newspapers. Convinced that the move would drive Kentucky right out of the Union and that Missouri and Maryland would follow, the president privately asked his general to change the order to coincide with the law passed by Congress that only freed the slaves being used for Rebel military purposes. Frémont refused. His emancipation order made him an abolitionist icon, hailed as a hero by the antislavery press. He had intended to rally the abolitionist forces into action and he did. He also made himself their champion and guaranteed a conflict with the President of the United States. This time John agreed that his wife should go to Washington to explain his position.

  “I see Jessie is at Washington but I have not had a line from there for near a week & I expect Fremont is in a peck of trouble about his proclamation—I do not know it, only infer from signs,” Lizzie Lee accurately reported that September. After a three-day train ride, sitting up the whole way, Jessie Benton Frémont checked into the familiar Willard’s Hotel, where she had arranged for some influential friends from New York to meet her and accompany her to the White House. She immediately sent a message to President Lincoln saying she had brought a letter and some “verbal communications” from General Frémont: “If it suits the President’s convenience will he name a time this evening to receive them—or at some early hour tomorrow.” According to Jessie, the messenger soon returned with a card “on which was written, ‘A. Lincoln. Now.’ ” From there on out the story changes depending on who is telling it.

  John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary and biographer, wrote that “Mrs. Fremont took the opportunity, in her interview with Mr. Lincoln, to justify General Fremont in all he had done, and to denounce his accusers with impetuous earnestness.” Describing Frémont’s action as a purely political move that Hay thought was calculated to raise the general “to the position of new party leader,” the secretary printed a memorandum of a conversation Lincoln had in his office a few years later when the president recalled the meeting with Jessie: “She sought an audience with me at midnight, and taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarreling with her.” He even implied that Jessie had threatened him. When she read the account, Mrs. Frémont quickly penned one of her own.

  She had just arrived, she said, dusty and exhausted at the hotel and met her friends from New York when the president summoned her for their interview: “All my life I had been at home in the President’s House—as well received there as in the family circle, and with the old confidence of the past I went forward now,” said this former pet of Andrew Jackson. But this time would be starkly different. “The President did not speak, only bowed slightly. . . . I gave him the letter, telling him General Fremont felt the subject to be of so much importance, that he had sent me to answer any points on which the President might want more information. At this he smiled with an expression that was not agreeable.” When Lincoln informed her that he had written to Frémont stating what he wanted done, Jessie retorted that her husband thought arms alone would not win the war, “that there must be other considerations to get us the support of foreign countries.” She then proceeded to make the argument for emancipation. “The President said, ‘You are quite a female politician.’ I felt the sneering tone and saw there was a foregone decision against all listening.”

  Then, Jessie claimed, Lincoln got mad: “ ‘The General should never have dragged the negro into the war. It is a war for a great national object and the negro has nothing to do with it,’ ” she reports Lincoln saying. And, for good measure: “ ‘he never would have done it if he had consulted Frank Blair.’ ” Stunned, Mrs. Frémont took her leave, asking when she might have a reply for Frémont from the president. He answered curtly, “tomorrow or the day after.” Reflecting back on this remarkable scene, Jessie later concluded: “When a man expresses a conviction fearlessly, he is reported as having made a trenchant and forceful statement, but when a woman speaks thus earnestly, she is reported as a lady who has lost her temper.”

  If Jessie had lost her temper, she wasn’t the only one. The next day a livid Preston Blair, whom she had loved so much that she named a child after him, came to call at Willard’s. As Jessie told the story, her old friend shouted: “ ‘Look what Fremont has done; made the President his enemy,’ ” and he castigated her for not heeding him in his advice to come to Washington: “ ‘it is not fit for a woman to go with an army. If you had stayed here in Washington you could have had anything you wanted.’ ” Of course, Blair was worried that Lincoln would blame his family for their protégé’s actions and he berated the woman he had raised like his own child, reminding her of all the Blairs had done for Frémont—to promote him, protect his property, “to elevate him in the public eye.” Then, Preston recounted to his daughter Lizzie, Jessie “bridled up at this & put on a very high look.” In the three hours he spent at Willard’s venting his frustration, Preston Blair let slip the fact that Frank had written about Frémont’s incompetence and arrogance, and he revealed to Jessie that the president had just dispatched Montgomery Blair and the Quartermaster General of the Army, Montgomery Meigs, to St. Louis to inspect the situation.

  Jessie shot off a telegram to John, warning him of the impending investigation—and then probably leaked it to the New York Times, which printed the missive along with the fact that she was in Washington. She then sent off a message to the president demanding to see Frank’s letter “and any other communications, if any, which in your judgment have made that investigation necessary.” She followed up with a second note, when she wanted to know from the president if she would have an answer to her husband’s letter. Lincoln dismissively notified her that he had replied directly to Frémont by mail and would not show her “copies of letters in my possession without the consent of the writer,” but, he assured her, “no impression has been made on my mind against the honor or integrity of Gen. Fremont; and I now enter my protest against being understood as acting in any hostility towards him.” Just as Frémont had done, President Lincoln announced publicly that he had ordered the general to rescind his emancipation proclamation, and the story hit the newspapers before Lincoln’s letter reached Missouri. And with that, Jessie Benton Frémont returned to St. Louis. The New York Times reported rumblings that Frémont would be replaced by Meigs but then added in an editorial note that a telegram had arrived from Washington advising “that Mrs. Fremont left there yesterday morning for St. Louis with assurances that the General should not be interfered with.” That was far from the end of the story, however.

  When John Frémont read about Frank Blair’s letter he slammed his former ally behind bars, arresting him for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” in his criticism of the commander. The long relationship between the Blairs and the Frémonts had come to an end. “I had been astonished by reading the telegraph on Frank’s arrest. Jessie carried a high head.” Lizzie was astonished that her best friend of decades had crossed the family: “the day of the arrest with pride precedes a fall & when down they come this time let them stay.” But the Frémonts weren’t falling anywhere fast, despite the efforts of the Blairs to depose them. “All the members of the Cabinet are or seemed to be impressed with the necessity of removing Fremont,” Preston Blair fretted to his daughter, but the general kept his command. “One of the leading members told me that it is Seward’s jealousy of the Blairs.”

  President Lincoln hesitated before removing the popular Frémont while the story played out in the press, with the Blairs leaking their letters and Jessie’s communications with the president, and the Frémont forces wooing reporters with interviews and access to the Army encampment in Jefferson City, where “the General and his Body Guard proceeded to the depot and received Mrs. Fremont on her arrival fr
om Washington.” That was enough information for Louisa Meigs. Her husband might be filing reports critical of Frémont, but as far as she was concerned, “Whatever his conduct as a General may be, there is no doubt that he is a very gallant & devoted husband. His reception of Mrs. F at the Camp was a proof of his attention to that lady which every military man will do well to consider.” Louisa was miserable about her exile from Washington for safety’s sake, and wanted her husband to want her at home. Lizzie Lee, of course, had a more sarcastic take on the Frémont pair: “He travels with a grand cuisine & his fine traveling carriage—Jessie went off to Jefferson in a special train.”

  But Lizzie was none too happy with her own family, either: “I have just read Fremont’s charges against Frank,” she bristled to her husband, blaming her father and brother Montgomery “for the want of the right reserve.” The men in her family had gone overboard: “Father was most incautious in his talk with Jessie.” And Montgomery Blair was convinced it was Preston’s confrontation with Jessie that caused his brother’s arrest: “That was . . . ‘Genl’ Jessie’s doing altogether,” he contended. “I understand now that spies are set upon Frank by Jessie to see if she can’t get hold of some talk to eke out the prosecution. . . . She is perfectly unscrupulous you know.” Montgomery Blair managed to calm Frémont down enough to get Frank out of jail but Lizzie sadly concluded, “Jessie’s part in this matter has disappointed me sorely. Things which I had learnt to believe about her husband made me think him unreliable—but only added to my pity & affection for her. I am now convinced that in countenancing & covering his sins she has shared & been degraded by them—& yet I can see in her efforts to elevate him & excite his ambition a struggle to win him from his groveling nature.” Lizzie kept trying to hold on to something to save her female friendships.

  Jessie was doing her best to save her husband’s job, defending his handling of the war to anyone who would listen, accusing other generals of trying to sabotage John: “If anyone had the power to put this truth clearly before Mr. Lincoln so that he would recognize it as the simple truth it would be a benefit rendered to the country. He is too prejudiced against me, I can’t do it.” Jessie thought she knew someone who could get to the president—Dorothea Dix. “I can but think that if the President had one interview with Mr. Fremont there never would have grown up this state of injury to the public service,” she insisted to the influential woman. It was all the Blairs’ fault that the general was in trouble: “the same good brain & bad heart that made the President so unjust and deaf to me has influenced not only the President but the newspapers.” Her pleading in the end was to no avail. Frémont’s incompetent leadership continued to take its toll in Missouri. President Lincoln relieved General John C. Frémont of his command. The couple moved to New York, where abolitionists celebrated John’s stance against slavery and Jessie put the best spin on their situation that she could: “It is nobler, & one can but feel it so, even after having had the charm of power, to work without visible reward. And good work we are doing. Perhaps serving to point the evils of this tenderness toward slavery.”

  THOUGH LINCOLN WAS trying to frame the war as a struggle to preserve the Union, the issue of slavery could not be avoided. Even with the Deep South out of the counsels of government, the subject still divided the politicians and the people. The president’s own Cabinet included Montgomery Blair from a slaveholding family and Salmon Chase, an ardent abolitionist. The Congress met in a Capitol built by enslaved workers, took taxis driven by hired-out slaves, and headed to restaurants or barbershops where they were likely to be waited on by slaves. The whole city where the war was being orchestrated depended on slave labor. To the locals, it was nothing remarkable. “We were accustomed to the convenience of having Negro servants and a good many Northern people, like my parents, hired such servants from their masters, though they would have been horrified at the idea of actually owning slaves,” the Lincolns’ friend Julia Taft remembered years later. To the abolitionists it was an outrage and their voices were growing louder, arguing for both moral and practical reasons that the president should declare publicly and proudly what everyone knew—that this war was about slavery, despite the congressional resolution passed in July explicitly disavowing the abolition of slavery as a war aim. Yes, the North wanted to preserve the Union, but the Union had shattered because the South seceded. And yes, the South seceded to defend states’ rights, but the right the secessionists cared about was the right to own people as property.

  Abolitionists contended that European countries toying with recognizing the Confederacy would not be able to do so if the war were defined as a crusade against slavery, because public opinion in England and France would then demand support for the Union. And they fervently believed the moral force of the issue would inspire northern men to enlist for the fight. Still President Lincoln temporized. He had promised in his inaugural address that he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed. And it existed in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—states he had to hold on to. They presented a far bigger concern at the moment than Britain or France. But regardless of what the president proclaimed, many enslaved people believed the war would set them free. And they found ways to make it so.

  As Union forces occupied parts of Virginia, African Americans there started to show up in the army camps, assuming they were crossing into safety. When a few men arrived at General Benjamin Butler’s garrison, he put them to work rather than return them to their owners, who were no longer protected by the Fugitive Slave Act, in his view, because they claimed to hail from a foreign country, the Confederate States of America. Word spread, and more men came and told their stories to a newspaper reporter: “ ‘We had heard it . . . . since last Fall, that if Lincoln was elected, you would come down and set us free . . . the colored people have talked it all over; we heard that if we could get in here we should be free, or, at any rate, we should be among friends.’ ” With no official guidance from Washington to tell him what to do, Butler decided that the men were contraband property and could be removed from their enemy owners in the same way that horses or ammunition could be. When the word went out, more escaped slaves, including whole families, arrived at his fort daily. The reporter disclosed, “I understand that the General has decided to retain all the negroes who have come.” The floodgates opened. Between May and July, close to one thousand slaves found refuge with Butler at Fort Monroe near Norfolk. And many of the so-called contrabands made their way to Washington, adding to the already overburdened capital teeming with soldiers still expecting an attack.

  Lizzie Lee, accustomed to being useful, battled boredom in Philadelphia that fall as her plugged-in father insisted she stay there because any day the siege could begin. General Meigs too had exiled his restive wife, Louisa, to points north, telling her that in Washington people “think every artillery drill the beginning of a battle.” For Ann Green, still trying to farm her fields well inside the District lines, every few days brought new alarms: “Everybody seems to expect that some important war event will take place in a day or two, which keeps me very anxious.” Abraham Lincoln kept thinking that an important war event should take place. But his cocky young general George McClellan seemed curiously hesitant to take action even as he amassed thousands of troops in and around Washington—reaching some 200,000 strong.

  So many young men concentrated in the area in turn attracted all kinds of unsavory characters, and Congress tried to exert some control by making it illegal to sell alcohol to the soldiers. Wildly popular with his troops, McClellan had managed to instill discipline and dignity but camps crammed with men in close quarters bred something neither the Congress nor the commanders could control—disease. Epidemics coursed through the campgrounds, sending hundreds of sick and dying men to the hospitals set up in government buildings, hotels, schools, and churches all over the city. And hundreds of dedicated women came in to care for them under the direction of Superintendent of the Female Nurses of the Army Dorothea Dix.

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p; WHEN PRESIDENT LINCOLN called up the troops in response to the attack on Fort Sumter, Dorothea Dix answered the call. Arriving in Baltimore the same day as the Massachusetts regiment was attacked, Dorothea quietly made her way across town and into Washington, where she immediately volunteered her services to the Surgeon General and the War Department. The Secretary of War accepted with alacrity: “she will give aid in organizing Military Hospitals . . . aiding the Chief Surgeon by supplying nurses . . . she is fully authorized to receive, control and disburse special supplies bestowed by individuals or associations for the comfort of their friends . . . also . . . to draw from the army stores.” Miss Dix continued to be well-known in Washington, where she had kept up her connections after the failure of her bill to set aside public lands for the poor. The indefatigable advocate had spent the last few years traveling Europe and the United States investigating the conditions of the mentally ill, establishing hospitals where there were none and inspecting the hospitals born out of her efforts. She was so admired that she was given free passes for her transportation and had access to the powerful the world over, including the pope.

  Now she would use that influence to create a corps of female nurses, something that had never happened before; formal nursing had never been women’s work. But women were eager to play a part in the war effort and when thousands applied for the nursing jobs, Dorothea Dix immediately ruled out whole categories of them. No Catholic nuns; no young, good-looking women need apply. First priority would be given to “matronly persons of experience, good conduct or superior education and serious disposition.” They would be required to “dress plain, (colors brown, grey, or black) and while connected with the service without ornaments of any sort.” All applicants must be between the ages of thirty-five and fifty, though she herself was almost sixty.