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

by Cokie Roberts

  10 “liberal sentiment to a practice”: Paul M. Zall, Dolley Madison: Presidential Wives Series (Huntington, NY: Nova History Publishers, 2001), 61.

  10 specially cast silver medal: Allgor, “The Politics of Love.”

  10 most famous woman in the land: Daily National Intelligencer, July 17, 1849, http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/.

  10 “our grandchildren were grown”: Louisa Catherine Adams, February 27, 1823, microfilm edition of the Adams family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  10 “delighted with the whole aspect”: Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (New York: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832), e-book, loc. 107.

  11 “beauty and majesty”: Ibid., loc. 107.

  11 “fashionable watering places”: Ibid., loc. 108.

  11 “cultivation of the mind”: National Intelligencer, November 27, 1848, quoted in Green, Washington Village, 170.

  11 “tobacco-tinctured saliva”: Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, vol. 1 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1843), 272.

  11 metropolis of 52,000: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 42.

  11 long lines called “slave-coffles”: Damani Davis, “Slavery and Emancipation in the Nation’s Capital: Using Federal Records to Explore the Lives of African-American Ancestors,” Prologue 42, no. 1 (Spring 2010), www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/spring/dcslavery.html.

  12 Washington’s slave population: J. D. B. DeBow, The Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 (Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, 1853). There is some discrepancy in the census records themselves. The 1970 publication puts the total population at 8,000, with 6,000 whites and 2,000 “Negroes,” not delineated by slave or free. The 1853 one counts more than 14,000 residents in 1800, and gives the breakdown by free and slave status. The two documents agree on the total number for 1850.

  14 further splitting the Whigs: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 88.

  14 “banished all animation”: Jessie Benton Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time: Primary Source Edition (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1887), 103.

  14 “never become a social center”: Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1904), 19.

  14 “evolving novel social relaxations”: Virginia Clay Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853–66, put into narrative form by Ada Sterling (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905), 29.

  14 “so many beautiful women”: Virginia Tatnall Peacock, Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia and London: J. P. Lippincott, 1900), 175.

  15 “the most brilliant woman of her time”: Pryor, Reminiscences, 81.

  15 “genuine loveliness of character”: Peacock, American Belles, 176.

  15 “queenly apparition”: Henry Villard, Memoirs of Henry Villard, Journalist and Financier, 1835–1900, vol. 1, 92, quoted in George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (1934; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1963), 256.

  16 “beautiful as a pearl”: Pryor, Reminiscences, 68.

  16 “and sweetness of nature”: Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time, 115–16.

  16 “the effect she had on strangers”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 35-36.

  16 “never trick myself out in diamonds”: Pryor, Reminiscences, 69.

  16 “sailed fearlessly about”: Ibid., 71.

  16–17 “buried my only child”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 25.

  17 “to mourn in secret”: Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America V1: A Memoir by His Wife (1890; reprint, Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1990), 534–35.

  17 “every Tuesday morning a reception”: Varina Davis to Margaret Howell, January 1854, in Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823–1889, ed. Hudson Strode (1966; reprint, Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), 74.

  17 “formal calls were paid”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 27.

  18 once went to the opera: David W. Miller, Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 67.

  18 “poor and the helpless”: Penny Coleman, Breaking the Chains: The Crusade of Dorothea Lynde Dix (Lincoln, NE: ASJA Press, 1992, 2007), e-book, loc. 910.

  18 “the property of the people”: Ibid., loc. 939.

  19 the indomitable advocate: Ibid., loc. 948.

  19 supported her demand: Ibid., loc. 955.

  19 the care of the poor: Ibid., loc. 971, and Green, Washington Village, 202.

  20 “our political system”: Anna E Carroll to Millard Fillmore, May 28, 1852, quoted in Janet L. Coryell, Neither Heroine nor Fool: Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 7.

  20 “even one cent”: Harvey, National Monument, 685.

  20 similar appeals: Ibid., 702.

  20 “signalize his name and glory”: Daily National Intelligencer, March 4, 1854, quoted in ibid., 719.

  21 pitched it into the Potomac River: Ibid., 735.

  21 new gas lamps: Green, Washington Village, 209.

  21 “I fear the poor will suffer”: Louisa Rodgers Meigs to Nannie, September 6, 1854, Rodgers Family Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  21 an economic downturn: “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” National Bureau of Economic Research, last modified April 23, 2012, www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html. December 1854 is cited as the first economic “trough.”

  CHAPTER 2: JESSIE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT BUT HARRIET TAKES THE WHITE HOUSE AND MARY JANE REPORTS

  23 “your nomination by that party”: Anna Ella Carroll to Millard Fillmore, May 15, 1855, in Janet L. Coryell, Neither Heroine nor Fool: Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 11.

  24 “between Christianity and Political Romanism”: Daily Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), April 30, 1856, Chronicling America: Historic Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024738/1856-04-30/ed-1/seq-2/.

  24 “a woman has ventured openly”: Anna Ella Carroll to Millard Fillmore, June 26, 1856, in Coryell, Neither Heroine, 25.

  26 “most flagging goose-quill to flowing”: Mary Jane Windle, Life in Washington, and Life Here and There (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859), hardpress.net e-book, 83.

  26 “he is a public man!”: Ibid., 242.

  26 “ ‘throw away the scabbard’ ”: Elbert B. Smith, Francis Preston Blair (New York: Free Press, 1980), 224–25.

  27 nursed by the Blair women: Ibid., 227.

  27 “historic assault on Mr. Sumner”: Virginia Clay Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853–66, put into narrative form by Ada Sterling (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905), 95.

  27 “a meeting ground for conspirators,” and “Have we a Presidentess among us”: Frémont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, March 8, 1856, and Frémont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, April 18, 1856, in The Letters of Jessie Frémont, ed. Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 94 and 97–99.

  27 “triumph with us”: Frémont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, June 9, 1856, in ibid., 106.

  27 “let us see Jessie”: Albany Evening Journal, quoted in Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Anti-Slavery Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), e-book, loc. 2539.

  28 “astonished even me”: Frémont to John Charles Frémont, June 18, 1846, in Herr and Spence, eds., Letters, 25.

  28 “cut loose from everything”: Jessie Benton Frémont, A Year of American Travel (1878; reprint, Big Byte Books, 2014),
e-book, loc. 138.

  29 “undefined for the future”: Ibid., loc. 160–72.

  29 “I had no idea”: Ibid., loc. 389.

  30 “burned to death”: Ibid., loc. 400.

  30 “canvas and blanket tents”: Ibid., loc. 831.

  30 “San Francisco society”: Ibid., loc. 856.

  30 “quite a town”: Ibid., loc. 893.

  30 “the example of happiness”: Ibid., loc. 1213.

  31 “a new sense of power”: Ibid., loc. 1300.

  31 “too costly an amusement”: Frémont to Francis Preston Blair, August 14, 1851, in Herr and Spence, eds., Letters, 46.

  31 “She is very outspoken”: Pamela Herr, Jessie Benton Frémont: American Woman of the 19th Century (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), 234.

  32 “advice and friendly counsel”: Frémont to Francis Preston Blair, August 27, 1855, in Herr and Spence, eds., Letters, 71.

  32 “I refused to buy a slave”: Frémont to Lydia Maria Child, July, August, 1856, in Herr and Spence, eds., Letters, 121.

  32 “a wayfaring man”: Pierson, Free Hearts, loc. 2548.

  32 “than five stump orators”: Western Reserve Chronicle (Warren, Ohio), July 2, 1856, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84028385/1856-07-02/ed-1/seq-2/.

  33 FOR PRESIDENT: M’arthur Democrat (McArthur, Vinton County, Ohio), July 17, 1856, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87075163/1856-07-17/ed-1/seq-1/.

  33 she is a crown to his head: Catherine Coffin Phillips, Jessie Benton Frémont: A Woman Who Made History (1935; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 210.

  34 “the safest chance”: New York Times, June 6, 1856, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1856/06/06/issue.html.

  34 “more than a Jessie Fremont”: Anna Ella Carroll to Millard Fillmore, October 31, 1856, quoted in Coryell, Neither Heroine, 29.

  35 “the engrossing excitement”: Frémont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, November 18, 1856, in Herr, American Woman, 143–45.

  35 “fashionable and political circles”: George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (1934; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1963), 257.

  35 “put me out of patience”: Varina Howell Davis to her parents, September 15, 1856, in Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823–1889, ed. Hudson Strode (1966; reprint, Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), 80–81.

  36 “brought from the street pump”: Louisa Rodgers Meigs to Nannie, September 1854, Rodgers Family Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  36 “and a reception to give”: Varina Howell Davis to her father, January 13, 1857, in Strode, ed., Private Letters, 83.

  36 “Free-Soilers, Black Republicans and Bloomers”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 43.

  36 “as plenty as blackberries”: Ibid., 98.

  36 “the Civil War of Kansas!”: Ibid., 58.

  37 “accomplished, and clever wife”: Thomas Keneally, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 72.

  37 “the soul of every company”: Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1904), 80–81.

  37 “What’s all this noise”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 104.

  37 “the women composing our circle”: Ibid., 45.

  38 “publish the ages”: Ibid., 77.

  38 named after Clay: Ibid., 65–66.

  38 “the prestige of your patronage”: Anna Cora Ritchie to Adele Cutts Douglas, July 29, 1857, Box 46, Folder 4, Stephen A. Douglas Papers 1764–1908, Special Collection Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  38 “offered prayers this day”: Margaret Hertford to Adele Cutts Douglas, December 7, 1857, Stephen A. Douglas Papers 1764–1908, Special Collection Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  38 “the uncrowned queen of Capitol society”: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 258.

  39 “a remarkable sway for years”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 35.

  39 “the engrossing subject of discourse”: Windle, Life in Washington, 88.

  39 1,200 quarts of ice cream: Milton Stern, Harriet Lane: America’s First Lady (Lulu.com, 2005), e-book, locs. 191, 21.

  39 “an extra force of Shuckers”: Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), March 3, 1857, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1857-03-03/ed-1/seq-2/.

  39 “the grandest affair of the kind”: Nashville Union and American, March 13, 1857, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038518/1857-03-13/ed-1/seq-2/.

  40 “the favorite of the evening”: Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, N.C.), March 11, 1857, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045450/1857-03-11/ed-1/seq-3/.

  40 “the duties of the White House”: Nashville Union and American, March 13, 1857, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038518/1857-03-13/ed-1/seq-2/.

  41 “Honorary Ambassadress”: Stern, Harriet Lane, 810.

  41 “your position in this country”: Sophia Plitt to Harriet Lane, James Buchanan and Harriet Lane Johnston Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  41 “any foreign airs & graces”: James Buchanan to Harriet Lane, October 12, 1855, James Buchanan and Harriet Lane Johnston Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  43 “poet’s ideal of an English dairymaid”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 114–15.

  43 “so interesting a relative”: Windle, Life in Washington, 144.

  43 “she made no enemies”: Pryor, Reminiscences, 53.

  44 “ ‘Take it away!’ ”: Ibid., 52.

  44 “your Virginia ham will be perfect”: Sarah Agnes Pryor to Adele Cutts Douglas, n.d., probably 1860, Box 46, Folder 6, Stephen A. Douglas Papers 1764–1908, Special Collection Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  44 “an ‘Art Association’ recently formed”: Windle, Life in Washington, 147.

  44 “a black bertha of lace”: Varina Howell Davis to Margaret Howell, December 16, 1857, in Strode, ed., Private Letters, 97.

  45 “rounded length of a pretty arm”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 89.

  45 “the days of the Goths and Vandals”: Windle, Life in Washington, 264–65.

  46 “withering sarcasm and crushing invective”: Ibid., 266.

  46 a member’s wig was pulled off: “35th Congress (1857–1859),” History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, accessed December 12, 2014, http://history.house.gov/Congressional-Overview/Profiles/35th/.

  46 “Mrs. Gwin’s ‘fancy ball’ ”: Windle, Life in Washington, 329.

  47 “radicals and fire-eaters”: New York Times, April 13, 1858, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1858/04/13/issue.html.

  47 “the onus of such egotism”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 128.

  47 “angry and menacing look”: Windle, Life in Washington, 333–35.

  48 “the sentiment and romance of life”: Ibid., 353–54.

  48 “The gay season is over”: Ibid., 354.

  49 “ugly and dirty this city is”: Adele Cutts Douglas to her mother, June 24, 1857, in Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, ed. Robert W. Johannsen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 384.

  49 “upon his enemies”: R. F. Merrick to Adele Cutts Douglas, May 7, 1858, Box 46, Folder 4, Stephen A. Douglas Papers 1764–1908, Special Collection Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  49 “furnish you with your ‘confectionery’ ”: Eckardt & Co., July 14, 1858, Box 46, Folder 4, Stephen A. Douglas Papers 1764–1908, Special Collection Research Center, University of Chicago Library.r />
  49 combatants remained cordial: Milton, Eve of Conflict, 332.

  50 a bleak reminder: Frederick L. Harvey, The History of the Washington National Monument and of the Washington National Monument Society (Washington, D.C.: N. T. Elliott, 1902), e-book, loc. 982.

  CHAPTER 3: VARINA LEADS AND LEAVES AS ABBY DROPS BY

  52 “the well bred of both sections”: Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America, V1: A Memoir by His Wife (1890; reprint, 1990, Baltimore: Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1990), 574.

  52 “confine ourselves to trivialities”: Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1904), 82–83.

  52 “a rather unwelcome guest”: New York Times, February 19, 1859, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1859/02/19/78885361.html.

  53 “haystacks of spun sugar”: Pryor, Reminiscences, 58.

  53 “stirred Washington to its centre”: Virginia Clay Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853-66, put into narrative form by Ada Sterling (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905), 97.

  54 newly minted congressional wife: Thomas Keneally, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), Kindle ed., 64.

  54 “an accumulation of heartless cruelties”: Frémont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, April 2, 1859, quoted in Pamela Herr, Jessie Benton Frémont: American Woman of the 19th Century (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), 213.

  55 “no punishment upon its author”: Clopton, Belle of the Fifties, 97.

  55 Key got what was coming to him: Sam Roberts, “Sex, Politics and Murder on the Potomac,” New York Times, March 1, 1992.

  55 “filth, filth”: Davis to Margaret Howell, July 2, 1859, quoted in Joan E. Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 85.

  55 “stirring around like mad”: Varina Howell Davis to Margaret Howell, March 1, 1859, in Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823–1889, ed. Hudson Strode (1966; reprint, Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), 102.

  56 “yet he is a Democrat!”: Varina Howell Davis quoted in Cashin, First Lady, 35.