But of course the most coverage went to the first lady, who entered the ballroom escorted by Senator Charles Sumner, giving joy to his Radical Republican colleagues. “Mrs. Lincoln was attired in faultless taste. She wore . . . a splendidly and most elaborately worked white lace dress over the silk skirt. A bertha of point lace and puffs of silk, and a white fan trimmed with ermine and silvered spangles, white kid gloves and lace handkerchief, and a necklace, bracelet and earrings of pearls. Her hair was brushed closely back from the forehead and a head-dress, composed of a wreath of white jasmines and purple violets, with long-trailing vine, completed a most recherché costume.” As for Mr. Lincoln, he “was dressed in a full suit of black, with white kid gloves.” And the correspondent added in amazement, “Among other curious features we noticed several ladies whose locks were powdered with silver and golden dust.”
Those white kid gloves always worn by President Lincoln had special meaning for Mrs. Lincoln’s friend and seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley. All through the election Mrs. Keckley had been assuring Mary that her husband would win. To prove how certain she was, the dressmaker asked a favor: “I should like for you to make me a present of the right-hand glove that the President wears at the first public reception after his second inaugural.” Mary was somewhat taken aback since the glove would “be so filthy when he pulls it off, I shall be tempted to take the tongs and put it in the fire.” As Lizzie Keckley wrote those words in her memoir, her most prized possession was President Lincoln’s glove.
ONE WEEK AFTER the inauguration, Sherman’s army, having slashed its way through South Carolina, moved into Fayetteville, North Carolina. With more and more of the country under Union control, supplying the armies of occupation became a major task. Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs went to assist Sherman. “As he expected to be quite independent having his own party & all his own arrangements he concluded to let Monty accompany him,” Louisa Meigs told her sister. Montgomery Meigs Jr. had just turned eighteen and was “highly delighted” at his mother’s insistence that his father take him along because this might be the only opportunity he would have “to see anything of the Army life.” It’s somewhat surprising that Louisa wanted to expose her surviving son to the military; she had been having a very hard time since the death of her beloved firstborn, John Rodgers Meigs, who was shot and killed by Confederate soldiers five months earlier under circumstances that remained murky.
Fellow soldiers thought the twenty-two-year old army engineer had been murdered in cold blood, not shot down in battle, and outrage over the death led them to burn down the town of Dayton, Virginia, in retaliation. The president and cabinet attended John’s funeral but the shows of sympathy, “letters from every quarter . . . to assure us how much he was loved, & what a reputation he had already achieved,” only contributed to Louisa’s grief. Unable to shake her heartbreak, she sadly explained to her sister, “It seems an increase of agony to know what a brilliant future was before him. All that he was, and all that we have is lost.” The death of the boy she had nagged to start taking dancing lessons and stop biting his nails left her in deep despondency. “I love much to sit alone for I find even the cheerful conversation of the family often jars upon me,” she wrote the month after John died. “It cannot be expected that anyone can mourn as I do, I, the Mother who bore him and have lost him.” How many hundreds of thousands of other mothers were pounded with that pain as the war entered its fourth year?
While Sherman marched north through the Carolinas, Grant prepared to launch his spring campaign against Lee’s army in Virginia. But first, at his wife Julia’s instigation, the general invited the president to come to his camp at City Point. “The papers daily announced the exhausted appearance of the President,” Julia Grant reasoned, so “I petitioned the General with hospitable intent to invite Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln down to visit the army.” Though several of Lincoln’s advisors thought the trip was unsafe, he made up his mind to go anyway, then Mary and Tad decided to come along. Robert Lincoln had finally joined the army, against his mother’s wishes, and was serving on Grant’s staff—this would be a chance to see him as well as to enjoy some nice spring weather outside the city. The party, along with Lincoln’s bodyguard and Mary’s maid, boarded the River Queen, the same ship on which the Hampton Roads Peace Conference had fallen apart, and under the protection of Captain Penrose of the army and with the expert navigation of Captain Bradford of the navy, they set out on March 23 to sail down the Potomac, headed for Chesapeake Bay and then the James River.
By the time they docked at City Point the night of the twenty-fourth all of Washington was wondering what was going on. “There is much talk about the object of the President’s visit to the Army & its peace purpose,” Lizzie Lee informed her husband. If fighting continued, it was the fault of the stubborn southern politicians, she protested: “the Leaders alone are for keeping up the war & there was a regiment of deserters passing here yesterday.” Lizzie had a patient in her charge—after his disgraceful performance at the inauguration, Vice President Andrew Johnson had been bundled off to “recuperate” at Silver Spring, where the Blairs, a political family of the same ideological stripe, could keep an eye on him.
At City Point, the Grants welcomed their guests, and as Julia noted: “Our gracious President met us at the gangplank, greeted the General most heartily, and, giving me his arm, conducted us to where Mrs. Lincoln was awaiting us.” The men went off to talk privately, leaving the women by themselves. An awkward moment followed when Julia sat on the same settee as Mary. When the first lady seemed offended, the general’s wife offered apologies. It was just the beginning of what would be a disastrous visit for Mary Lincoln.
When the party went to review the troops, the men traveled on horseback to the parade area. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant rode in a bumpy Army ambulance and arrived after the exercises had begun. The wife of General Edward Ord, jauntily dressed in a “Robin Hood” hat with a large feather, galloped up on her horse to greet them and encountered an incensed Mary Lincoln. She was furious that Mrs. Ord had been riding in the place of honor next to the president, the place where she should be. The first lady proceeded to dress down the general’s wife in such withering language that Mrs. Ord left in tears. Neither the president nor anyone else could reason with his wife, who ranted into the night, heaping abuse on her husband and demanding that he fire General Ord. After that Mary took to her stateroom for the next few days, probably too embarrassed to emerge.
“It is believed here that there is a huge fight going on between Gen[era]l Grant and Gen[era]l Lee’s armies,” Lizzie Lee advised her husband on March 27. “This idea may have been induced by the fact that the President was expected here early today but his non arrival has started dame rumor in fresh business.” Lincoln was still at City Point when William Tecumseh Sherman showed up at the army camp. Consulting with Grant, the two generals came to the conclusion that there would be one more bloody battle ahead. The military men then reported to their posts for what they fervently hoped would be the last push of the long war. President Lincoln waited vigil at City Point. Everyone assumed he was working on a peace deal, especially after Secretary of State Seward joined him. “The peace talk is on every lip as the wish is in all our hearts,” Lizzie wrote. “I fear there is a huge battle going for these two days --there is an anxious look about some people’s faces . . . this seems now to be a crisis & everybody watches the signs as events are now so portentous.” What was it? Peace? A major battle? Both? No one knew. But on April 1, Seward returned, bringing the secluded Mary Lincoln with him and leaving her husband and son behind on the James River.
The president could see the flash of cannon fire from his ship that night as Grant’s army, including Robert Lincoln, besieged the Rebel defenses of Petersburg. He kept Mary apprised of the action through a stream of telegrams and then the next day rode out to see it for himself. That night Lincoln received the word he had been waiting for from Grant—the long-fought-over prize would soon be his. The e
nd of the war was truly in sight. On April 3, the Union army took possession of Petersburg; Grant sent for the president to meet him in the forsaken town. The starved survivors told Lincoln’s bodyguard that they were grateful that the army had come. Also, “a little girl came up with a bunch of wild flowers for the President. He thanked the child for them kindly, and we rode away.” Back at City Point, they learned that the Confederate government had fled. Richmond had been evacuated.
The newspapers trumpeted the news: “Glory!!! Hail Columbia!!! Halleluia!!! Richmond Ours!!!” From the War Department, Secretary Stanton delivered a prayer of thanksgiving to the expectant crowd outside: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” The people took up the hymn, “then added the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ and finished up with Yankee Doodle and deafening cheers,” Lois Adams marveled. “People seem almost to have gone mad with joy.” The government agencies shut down, as did most shops; public schools allowed the children to join in the glee. “Flags were up everywhere, and bands of music; and impromptu processions were got up, marching here and there . . . cannon from the far-encircling forts rolled their white wreaths around the horizon and shout victory and freedom across the broad valley where the city lies.” In Elizabeth Keckley’s shop her workers “were particularly elated, as it was reported that the rebel capital had surrendered to colored troops.”
Louisa Meigs was not ready to join in the celebration, but with Montgomery Meigs still in North Carolina, one of his men brought her a flag to display. “I told him I thought it unnecessary as Gen[era]l M was absent & for myself I had too sad a heart to wish to make any show of rejoicing.” The soldier advised her to “show some sympathy with the National feeling,” so she followed her friends and neighbors and raised her flag. Her husband’s reaction: “You were very right dear Lou to put up the Flags.” The next night all the public buildings and many private ones appeared as cathedrals of candlelight, and thousands of fireworks blazed into the sky over the Capital City, creating one shining scene of unrestrained (and not-so-sober) exultation. When she came in from Silver Spring, Lizzie Lee “found this city in a tumult of great joy over the fall of Richmond,” but for herself, “I confess to great disappointment when I found the Rebels had escaped.”
From the battlefield, Robert E. Lee had sent word to Jefferson Davis that the army could no longer defend Richmond. The Confederate president quickly fled—his wife and children were waiting in Charlotte, North Carolina, for word from him of what they should do next. The breakaway states no longer had a capital and had very little left of an army. Despite the danger, Abraham Lincoln decided to visit the city the Union had tried for so many years to topple. He and Tad and the bodyguard, Captain Crook, traveled up the booby-trapped river, maneuvering around sunken boats and dead horses and torpedoes edging so close “that we could have put out our hands and touched them.” As they approached the city they saw crowds of gleeful African Americans lining the riverbanks. “They had heard that President Lincoln was on his way . . . by the time we were on shore hundreds of black hands were outstretched to the President.”
Soldiers formed a protective phalanx around Lincoln as he “walked up the streets of Richmond not thirty-six hours after the Confederates had evacuated.” Nervously they stepped through the empty streets, aware that someone might come out from behind a building, or raise a window and shoot at any minute. Captain Crook was much relieved when they reached the place the army had set up headquarters—at the house where Jefferson Davis’s family had lived. A black servant left in charge told the bodyguard “that Mrs. Davis had ordered him to have the house in good condition for the Yankees,” and then she had bid farewell, saying, “I am going out into the world a wanderer without a home.” Young Constance Cary witnessed the president’s return to his ship. “Today, Mr. Lincoln, seated in an ambulance with his son Tad upon his knee, drove down Grace Street, past this house, a mounted escort clattering after.” That ride had been a very long time coming.
Lincoln returned to Grant’s camp at City Point expecting Lee’s surrender any day. Mary Lincoln soon joined him there. She brought a party of dignitaries with her and invited along her friend the seamstress Elizabeth Keckley, who was especially excited to be back in the state of her birth. In Richmond they roamed through the desecrated Confederate Capitol, where Mrs. Keckley happened to pick up “the resolution prohibiting all free colored people from entering the State of Virginia.” They moved on to the Davis mansion, where “the ladies who were in charge of it scowled darkly upon our party as we passed through and inspected the different rooms.” How surprised those ladies would have been to learn that Varina Davis had asked Elizabeth Keckley to move south with her as Mississippi prepared to secede. That evening back on the River Queen a young officer managed to raise Mary Lincoln’s wrath once again, by telling her that Lincoln “is quite a hero when surrounded by pretty young ladies.” Mary turned on the young man. “Quite a scene followed, and I do not think that the Captain who incurred Mrs. Lincoln’s displeasure will ever forget that memorable evening in the cabin of the River Queen at City Point,” Mary’s defender Lizzie Keckley dejectedly recalled.
Moored just about a hundred yards away was Julia Grant’s ship, and though Lincoln had been very courteous to her while Mary was away, once the first lady returned, Julia wasn’t invited to join the group on the River Queen. “I felt this deeply,” Julia later recalled, and “could not understand it. . . . Richmond had fallen; so had Petersburg. All of these places were visited by the President and party and I, not a hundred yards from them, was not invited to join them.” Even worse, Mrs. Grant learned that she was not on the guest list for the Lincolns’ farewell reception aboard the ship before their return to Washington. So she decided to take her ship out for a pleasant ride up and down the James River and asked that a band come along to entertain her. As she sailed past the River Queen the musicians played “Now You’ll Remember Me.” Clearly there would be no love lost between Julia Grant and Mary Lincoln.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN RETURNED to Washington earlier than he wanted to because his secretary of state, trusted counselor, and good friend William Seward had been in a carriage accident and broken several bones, including his jaw. He was in terrible shape, “so disfigured by bruises, his face so swollen that he had scarcely a trace of resemblance to him,” his daughter Fanny divulged in her diary. Lincoln went directly to Seward’s house when he got back to the capital on that Palm Sunday night, April 9. Then he went home to the White House for the first time in more than two weeks. It was almost 10 p.m. when his secretary of war rushed in—telegram in hand: Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. The president went immediately to tell his wife.
“With the dawn of the day began the roar of cannon, the ringing of bells . . . the flash and glow of starry banners floating, streaming, wreathing everywhere.” Lois Adams thought the very trees were glorying in the victory as they suddenly burst into bloom in the pouring rain. “The streets were full; bands and batteries playing and firing salutes as they went; steam fire engines decked with flags and screaming desperately; soldiers, sailors and citizens singing ‘Rally round the Flag’ and Yankee Doodle.” A huge crowd assembled at the White House, screaming loud cheers when Tad popped up in a window waving a captured Rebel flag. But it was the triumphant president the people wanted to see and to hear. Hats flew into the air as Lincoln appeared and promised he would speak later, when he had thought through exactly what he wanted to say, but for now he only had a word for the band: “I think it would be a good plan for you to play Dixie.” The musicians took up the tune and the president went inside to prepare his speech, little knowing it would be his last. For that day it was enough, as the New York Times summarized: “The great rebellion is crushed. The Republic is saved. PEACE comes again. To Heaven be the praise.” Though General Sherman’s army still fought Joe Johnston’s in North Carolina, and smaller skirmishes farther west and south meant more blood would be shed, the capital celeb
rated through the night.
The next day, April 11, Washington amused itself while waiting for the president’s speech. Bands pranced around the city playing patriotic ditties, workmen prepared the public buildings for another night of “illuminations,” and masses mingled in the streets anticipating another stirring soliloquy, like the one at Gettysburg, or at the Lincoln inaugurals. Finally the throngs that had managed to push their way onto the White House grounds, spilling over onto Pennsylvania Avenue and into the park across the street, were about to get what they had been waiting for. Abraham Lincoln came to the window to huge huzzahs but then he let his listeners down. Instead of his usual poetry or prayer, the president offered a somewhat cerebral presentation outlining an important plan for Reconstruction. It took the next speaker, Senator Harlan, to give the crowd the red meat they wanted. When he asked what should be done with the Rebel leaders, the cry came back “Hang ’em” on that Holy Week Tuesday. Harlan suggested, to great approval, that the country should trust in the president. Then, before anyone else could speak, the band placed a perfect coda on the evening with “The Battle Cry”:
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave,
Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 Page 30