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

by Cokie Roberts

  154 “more given to enjoy hospitality”: Ibid., locs. 385–99.

  154 “service against the rebels”: David Herbert Donald and Harold Holzer, eds., Lincoln in the Times: The Life of Abraham Lincoln as Originally Reported in the New York Times (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 135.

  155 “I told him you had enemies”: Ellen Ewing Sherman to William T. Sherman, January 19, 1862, William T. Sherman Family papers, University of Notre Dame Archives.

  156 “Public receptions are more democratic”: Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868), 80.

  156 “abrogate state dinners”: Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 164.

  157–58 “costly and inappropriate festivity”: Cincinnati Daily Press, February 10, 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84028745/1862-02-10/ed-1/seq-1/.

  158 “a ghastly failure”: Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence, eds., The Letters of Jessie Frémont (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 313n.

  158 “a complete success”: Frémont to Frederick Billings, February 7, 1862, ibid., 311.

  158 “our soldiers are sick, suffering and dying”: Emporia News (Emporia, Kan.), February 15, 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016419/1862-02-15/ed-1/seq-1/.

  159 “a season of mutual congratulations”: National Republican (Washington, D.C.), February 19, 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014760/1862-02-19/ed-1/seq-2/.

  159 “the children have a good time”: Julia Taft Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father (1931; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), e-book, 47.

  159 “ ‘he will call for me’ ”: Ibid., 82.

  159 “his rugged nature”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 85–87.

  159–60 “sent for Bud to see Willie”: Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father, 82.

  160 “‘Try and control your grief’”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 87.

  160 “ten times better looking than Mrs. Lincoln”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, March 1, 1862, in Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee, ed. Virginia Jeans Laas (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 104.

  160 “was tearful but very kind”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, March 27, 1862, ibid., 104n.

  160 “I am so completely unnerved”: Mary Todd Lincoln to Julia Ann Sprigg, quoted in Mark Hartsell, “A Mother’s Grief,” Library of Congress Magazine, November/December 2012, 27, http://www.loc.gov/lcm/pdf/LCM_2012_1112.pdf.

  161 “I shall be glad for you to call on me”: Ernest B. Furguson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2005), 134.

  162 “In fact she married him”: Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father, 35–36.

  162 “extensive purchases at Lord & Taylor’s”: New York Daily Tribune, May 14, 1861, quoted in Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln, footnote to 134, 358.

  162 “Mrs. Lincoln ‘shopped’ ”: Ames, Ten Years in Washington, 237–38.

  163 “making too much of the Negro”: Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln, 171, and Ishbel Ross, Proud Kate: Portrait of an Ambitious Woman (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), 90.

  163 “A humbug”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 115.

  164 “the champagne and oyster suppers”: Edwin Stanton to Charles A. Dana, January 24, 1862, quoted in Frank Abial Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton: The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation and Reconstruction (Akron, OH: Saalfield, 1905), Google e-book, 125.

  165 “life and motion into the inert army”: Salmon P. Chase to Katherine Chase, January 11[?], 1862, in “Spur Up Your Pegasus”: Family Letters of Salmon, Kate and Nettie Chase, 1844–1873, ed. James P. McClure, Peg A. Lamphier, and Erika M. Kreger (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009), 193.

  165 “evacuated without a fight”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 5, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 123.

  166 “diminish their means of war”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, March 18, 1862, ibid., 112.

  166 “a huge Newfoundland dog”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, March 20, 1862, ibid., 115.

  166 “McClellan invested Yorktown”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 10, 1862, ibid., 125.

  166 “He wants more troops”: Ibid., 127.

  166 “Yorktown siege will be slow & long”: Ibid., 127.

  166 “on the lips of all”: Ibid., 129.

  166 “now turned to New Orleans”: Ibid., 137.

  166 “the Yorktown line under eclipse”: Ibid., 139.

  167 “the biggest feeling in my heart”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 8, 1862, ibid., 141n.

  167 “Frenchmen & quadroons”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 10, 1862, ibid., 126.

  167 “ ‘dear unto life’s end’ ”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, March 13, 1862, ibid., 110.

  168 “the slaves who are released from bondage”: Raftsman’s Journal (Clearfield, Pa.), April 23, 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85054616/1862-04-23/ed-1/seq-2/.

  168 “beyond the limits of the United States”: Furgurson, Freedom Rising, 173.

  168 “Miss Kate’s father”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 14, 1862 in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 130n.

  169 “Prince George’s and St. Mary’s counties”: “Hurrying them Off,” National Republican, April 18, 1862, http://www.newspapers.com.

  169 “renewed the rebellious spirit”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 19, 1862 in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 130.

  169 provided ready cash: Mary Mitchell, Divided Town: A Study of Georgetown, DC During the Civil War (Barre, MA: Barre, 1968), 64.

  169 “delighted that her children are free”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, April 18, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 130–31.

  169 “as the Yankees had the Pequots”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 20, 1862, ibid., 151n.

  170 “poor women! poor slaves!”: C. Vann Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, eds., The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 21.

  171 “I intend to dance and sing ‘Jeff Davis is coming’ ”: Rose O’Neal Greenhow, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington (1863; reprint, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2010), 74.

  171 “charged with insanity”: “Important from Washington,” Evening Bulletin (Charlotte, N.C.), April 15, 1862, http://www.newspapers.com.

  171 “a stern joy in your martyrdom”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 96.

  172 “cherish my own political faith”: Ibid., 96.

  172 “my being immediately sent South”: Ibid., 105.

  172 “thought differently”: Ibid., 106.

  172 “past all endurance”: “Traitors in Crinoline and in Congress,” Goodhue Volunteer (Goodhue, Minn.), April 16, 1862, http://www.newspapers.com.

  172 “with swords and carbines”: Greenhow, My Imprisonment, 108.

  173 “their brethren of the South”: Ibid., 109.

  173 “in sight of the promised land”: Ibid., 110.

  174 “proudest moment of my life”: Ibid., 111.

  174 “shaken by mental torture”: Ann Blackman, Wild Rose: Rose O’Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy, a True Story (New York: Random House, 2005), 241.

  175 “Secesh surrenders the sea”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 11, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 142n.

  175 “spiked & filled with sunken vessels”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 18, 1862, ibid., 147.

  175 “kept them inviolate”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 20, 1862, ibid., 149n.

  175 “I’ll not wound any who like him”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 19, 1862, ibid., 148.

  176 “he looks thin but well”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, June 15, 1862
, ibid., 157.

  176 “a street joke”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, May 26,1862, ibid., 150.

  176 “feel alien to the Rebels”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, July 7, 1862, ibid., 162.

  176 “Heaven save our poor country!”: Salmon P. Chase to Kate Chase, July 11, 1862, in McClure, Lamphier, and Kreger, eds., Family Letters, 209.

  177 “Miss Carroll’s usual vigor”: “Miss Carroll on the Relation of the National Government to the Revolted Citizens,” National Republican (Washington, D.C.), June 3, 1862, http://www.newspapers.com.

  177 “as long as the Declaration of Independence”: Janet L. Coryell, Neither Heroine nor Fool: Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 79.

  177 “ ‘any government on earth’ ”: Ibid., 80.

  177 “Mr. President, there is another subject”: Ibid., 70.

  178 “substantial and liberal recognition”: Anna Ella Carroll to Abraham Lincoln, June 21, 1862, ibid., 79.

  179 “hot, hotter, hottest”: Salmon P. Chase to Kate Chase, July 7, 1862, in McClure, Lamphier, and Kreger, eds., Family Letters, 208.

  179 “retrieve its disasters”: Salmon P. Chase to Kate Chase, July 6, 1862, ibid., 207.

  180 “a repetition of McClellanism”: Salmon P. Chase to Kate Chase, July 11, 1862, ibid., 209.

  180 “deemed captives of war”: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 500.

  180 “persons of African descent”: Ibid., 499.

  181 “I hope he will”: Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington 1860–1865 (New York: Harper, 1941), 224.

  181 “oppress those around me”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, September 12, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 180.

  181 “Our cause is righteous”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, September 13, 1862, ibid., 180n.

  181 “lose the fruits of this hard won fight”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, September 16, 1862, ibid., 182.

  182 “not a bandage, rag, lint, or string”: Stephen B. Oates, A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1994), 85.

  182 “a ball had passed between my body”: “Aftermath of Antietam—September 1862: Clara Barton—The Angel of the Battlefield, ‘God has indeed remembered us,’ ” The American Civil War: Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, accessed January 4, 2015, www.brotherswar.com/Antietam-8.htm.

  183 “the angel of the battlefield”: Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 99.

  183 “born believing in the full right of woman”: Ibid., 6.

  183 “less than a man’s pay”: Ibid., 23.

  184 “impropriety of mixing two sexes”: Ibid., 59.

  184 “gnaws at my peace”: Ibid., 71.

  185 “does not hurt me to pioneer”: Ibid., 76.

  185 “stand and feed and nurse them”: Ibid., 80.

  188 “must change our tactics, or lose the game”: Emancipation Proclamation Summary Facts, accessed January 4, 2015, http://www.historynet.com/emancipation-proclamation.

  188 “all that could be done to hurt our cause”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, September 23, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 186.

  188 the Republicans emerged with a majority: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 561.

  188 “the country’s well being”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, November 8, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 209–10n.

  189 “we assure freedom to the free”: “Annual Message to Congress—Concluding Remarks,” Abraham Lincoln Online: Speeches and Writings, accessed January 5, 2014, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm.

  189 “high crime against the Constitution”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 562.

  189 “an idle, dependent race”: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 95.

  189 “any bits of carpeting to cover themselves”: Mary Todd Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln, November 3, 1862, in Women in the Civil War: Warriors, Patriots, Nurses, and Spies, ed. Phyllis Raybin Emert, Perspectives on History Series (Boston: History Compass, 2007), 68.

  190 “the comfort of the sick and dying”: Scott Korb, “Harriet Jacobs’s First Assignment,” New York Times, September 6, 2012, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.

  190 “I heard was in flames”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, December 12, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 213.

  190 “your place is here”: Pryor, Professional Angel, 106.

  190 Nearly 200,000 soldiers skirmished over four days: “The Battle of Fredericksburg,” Civil War Trust, accessed January 4, 2015, http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/fredericksburg.html.

  191 “broken by this woeful war”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, December 16, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 216.

  191 “Our city is being filled with hospitals”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, June 15, 1862, ibid., 157.

  191 “Our church has not been converted”: Dr. John Blake to Harriet Lane, May 16, 1862, James Buchanan and Harriet Lane Johnston Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  191 “neglecting the soldiers”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, June 25, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 158.

  191 “a great want of good nurses”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, July 2, 1862, ibid., 159n.

  192 “I am quite a skillful nurse”: Louisa Rodgers Meigs to Montgomery C. Meigs, September 2, 1862, Montgomery C. Meigs Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  192 “my family are far from the center”: Montgomery C. Meigs to Louisa Rodgers Meigs, September 12, 1862, Montgomery C. Meigs Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  192 “bring his wife to that beleaguered city”: Louisa Rodgers Meigs to Montgomery C. Meigs, November 18, 1862, Montgomery C. Meigs Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  192 “all so badly ventilated”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, July 5, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 161.

  193 “decided to go to Washington as a nurse”: Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy, eds., Madeleine B. Stern, assoc. ed., The Journals of Louisa May Alcott (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), November 1862, 110.

  193 “the son of the house going to war”: Ibid., December 1862.

  193 “all stages of suffering, disease & death”: Ibid., January 1863, 113.

  193 “surprise and delight”: Ibid., June 1863, 119.

  193–94 “breed a pestilence”: Ibid., January 1863, 113–14.

  194 “very queer & arbitrary”: Ibid., 116.

  194 “no one likes her”: Ibid., 123n.

  194 “a comrade gave his name to be recorded”: Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches (Boston: J. Redpath, 1863), e-book, 39.

  194 decorate the wards and deliver dinners: Leech, Reveille in Washington, 279.

  194 “angel of mercy”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 459.

  194 “does them great honor”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, August 9, 1862, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 175.

  195 “who did not stab her husband & the Country”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 14, 1863, ibid., 231.

  195 “dreams of such things”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, November 10, 1862, Ibid., 203.

  CHAPTER 6: LIZZIE REPORTS ON THE ACTION, JANET GOES TO CAMP, LOUISA TAKES CHARGE

  197 “I am under orders”: Allan C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 345, quoted in “Final Proclamation: January 1, 1863,” Mr. Lincoln and Freedom, the Lincoln Institute and the Lehrman Institute, accessed January 24, 2015, http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=47&subjectID=3.

  198 “very brilliant” scene: Fanny Seward diary entry, January 1, 1863, the Papers of William Henry Seward, microfilm set in Department of Rare Books and Special Collections Reels, University of Rochester Library, quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The
Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 498.

  198 “Chases had the roughest set”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 1, 1863, in Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee, ed. Virginia Jeans Laas (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 224.

  199 “Men squealed, women fainted, dogs barked”: James MacPherson, Marching Toward Freedom: Blacks in the Civil War 1861–1865, Library of American History (New York: Facts on File, 1994), 21, quoted in “Final Proclamation: January 1, 1863,” Mr. Lincoln and Freedom, the Lincoln Institute and the Lehrman Institute, accessed January 24, 2015, http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=47&subjectID=3.

  199 “Nothing like it will ever be seen again”: Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2005), 220.

  200 “inciting servile insurrection”: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 622.

  200 “we care not for his proclamations”: Daily Progress, Raleigh, NC, January 2, 1863, http://www.newspapers.com.

  200 “starve them out”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 8, 1863, in Laas, ed., Wartime Washington, 229n.

  201 “he lacks everything but courage”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 27, 1863, in ibid., 237n.

  201 “turn up a General”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 28, 1863, in ibid., 236.

  201 “two soldiers’ orphans—& 3 sailors’ orphans”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 6, 1863, in ibid., 228.

  201 “The Army generally take care of their own people”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, November 17, 1862, in ibid., 229n.

  202 “emaciated and thinner than ever”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, January 14, 1863, in ibid., 232.

  202 “ ‘we know better’ ”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, December 30, 1862, in ibid., 222.

  203 “womankind in the south”: Lee to Samuel Phillips Lee, August 23, 1863, 301n.

  203 “the rebs can’t be conquered”: Joseph Medill to Elihu Washburne, January 16, 1863, quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 648.