Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  With the notable exception of sympathy with disunion, the President’s advisers represented, like Mr. Chandlee’s cockades, all shades of political sentiment. Four members of the Cabinet, Seward, Chase, Cameron and Bates, had been candidates for the Presidential nomination at the Republican convention, and for the first two the failure to secure it had been a rankling disappointment. It was not to be expected that these dissentient personalities should work together in harmony. Mr. Seward could foresee that it would be difficult to act as premier of the composite council. He sent in a last-minute resignation just before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, but withdrew it in response to the President’s firm request.

  In spite of the pall of the national crisis, the President’s party was not wanting in high spirits. Besides his oldest boy, Bob, a Harvard student of eighteen, it included three young men who had been law students in Mr. Lincoln’s Springfield office, and he was on warmly affectionate terms with them all. John George Nicolay, capable, Teutonic, nearly thirty, was the private secretary. John Hay, the assistant secretary, was a clever, flippant, good-looking college graduate of twenty-two. The handsome little Zouave, Ellsworth, was not much older, and he had a magnetic boyish enthusiasm. He had worked out a plan for reforming the State militia system, and bringing it under Federal control; and he was hoping to be appointed to the chief clerkship of the War Department. Bob Lincoln had been educated at Phillips Exeter, and showed in speech and manner that he had enjoyed more advantages than his father. As a pendant to the campaign publicity for the rail splitter, Bob had been facetiously nick-named “The Prince of Rails.” Some people inevitably called him proud and affected, but he conducted himself sensibly during a prolonged ordeal of popular attention and flattery.

  Nicolay thought that the bevy of ladies in the parlors made it seem like having a party every night. He was, however, occupied with the President’s correspondence, while Ellsworth, though schoolgirls sighed over his black curls, was a moralist and a Spartan. John Hay and Bob Lincoln were the merry, carefree members of the party. Hay made a new friend in Henry Adams, another private secretary, who would soon be going off with his father to the Court of St. James’s. In the evening, Bob sometimes tarried downstairs in the smoking room, listening to the music of the harpists and enjoying a cigar with the other men. Some disunionists, on one of these occasions, induced the musicians to play “Dixie,” which Secessia had adopted as its national air; but the harpists quickly followed it with “Hail, Columbia.” In Parlor Number 6, Mrs. Lincoln, attended by her sister, Mrs. Ninian Edwards, her two nieces and her cousin, Mrs. Grimsley, received a deferential throng in her stylish Springfield toilettes. The President’s Kentucky wife was arrogantly pleased with her position, fancied herself of great importance in politics, and referred in company to Mr. Seward as a “dirty abolition sneak.”

  Every night, the new squads of militia were drilling in the open spaces of the city, but the fears of revolution had largely subsided. Many patriotic men thought that it would be ill-advised to make an ostentatious display of armed force at the inauguration. The threats to his own life, however, had convinced General Scott that the ceremony was a hazardous undertaking, and he prepared to guard the incoming President with every soldier in the city. He now had, exclusive of the marines at the Navy Yard, six hundred and fifty-three regulars at his command. He thought of Mr. Lincoln’s drive from Willard’s to the Capitol as a movement, and he planned to place a picked body of men, the sappers and miners from West Point, in the van. A squadron of District cavalry would ride on either side of the Presidential carriage, and infantry companies of militia would march in its rear. Squads of riflemen and a small number of United States cavalry were ordered to posts along the route. The main force of the regulars, headed by Scott in his coupé, was assigned to “flanking the movement” in F Street.

  While one battery of artillery was situated near the Treasury building, two were stationed outside the north entrance to the Capitol grounds. At this latter important point, Scott himself proposed to remain during the ceremonies, and there, too, would be Major-General John E. Wool, the thin little old man who was the commander of the Department of the East.

  On Saturday and Sunday, strangers, almost all men, were pouring into town in anticipation of the ceremonies on Monday. Baltimore plugs, tippling and shrieking their rallying cries, were but a noisy minority in the swelling influx of the Republicans. There were dignitaries among them—twenty-seven governors and ex-governors of States, and many former senators and congressmen—and there were also militia and civic organizations. Largest by far in number, however, were the plain men of the West—a type only recently familiar to Washington—who dodged forlornly about the city in travel-stained clothes, looking for a place to sleep. Hotel rooms were all preempted. The best accommodation to be had was a cot or a mattress in a parlor. The newcomers were not a spendthrift lot. Bonifaces noted that they were a cold-water army. Hack drivers and porters complained that they were given to walking and carrying their own carpetbags, reluctant to part with a quarter-dollar.

  Sunday, with its roving crowds, did not seem like the Sabbath. In the morning, there was a rush to Fourteenth Street to see the President-elect depart for church. So many people congregated around the ladies’ entrance to Willard’s that police had difficulty in clearing a passage on the sidewalk. All tall men of only moderately good looks, said the tactful Star, were closely scanned, as they passed from the hotel. Uncle Abe, however, did not appear, and the sight-seers had to content themselves with the spectacle of the pugilist, John Morrissey, promenading in a stovepipe hat.

  Willard’s dined fifteen hundred on Sunday, and a thousand feasted at the National. In the evening, laborers were industriously scraping the entire width of the Avenue between the Capitol and the White House, a herculean assignment which they had been unable to finish on Saturday night. The wind whirled the thick dust into clouds, and, though there was now a water supply sufficient for the purpose, the city had no system for dampening the streets. At dusk, crowds of manifestly secular intention were walking toward the lighted Capitol, where the Senate flag was flying. Hundreds of homeless visitors slept on market stalls and lumber piles, or strolled about the streets all night. Orderlies and cavalry platoons rode through the dark. A rumor had reached Scott’s headquarters that an attempt would be made to blow up the platform which had been erected at the east portico of the Capitol. A guard was placed under the floor of the stand, and at daybreak a battalion of District troops marched to form a semicircle around the foot of the steps.

  The city was early astir with unaccommodated strangers, assembling to perform their toilets at the public fountains. People began to turn out for the parade. Boys screamed the morning newspapers, and there were lithographs of Uncle Abe’s features, damp from the press. The sidewalks of the Avenue were filled from building line to curbstone. In the crush, Newton Leonard, aged four, with blue eyes and a full face, dressed in a plaid suit with tight knees, strayed from his parents, and was advertised for next day in the National Intelligencer.

  In spite of bright sunshine, it was a raw, disagreeable day. Whipped by the gusty wind, the people stood waiting, while soldiers and District militia formed in line. It was not a festive gathering. The city seemed anxious and depressed. Few buildings had been decorated in honor of the inauguration. Some houses along the route had closed shutters, and many unfriendly faces frowned from balconies and windows. The story was being whispered that, if Mr. Lincoln were inducted into office in good order, a company of Virginia horsemen intended to dash across the Long Bridge and take the President captive at the Union Ball that evening.

  Among the groups of spectators on the housetops, militiamen with loaded rifles moved to their posts overlooking the Avenue. It was a little after twelve when the word to present arms was passed along the line of cavalry on Fourteenth Street and infantry on the Avenue in front of Willard’s. A band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” and Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Lincoln emerged arm in arm from th
e side door of the hotel, and took their seats in an open barouche. In an hour, an Old Public Functionary would be free of a position which had covered him with ignominy and scorn. The Westerner at his side would be the man to trip over the obstacle of Fort Sumter, to guide, under the blows of hatred, an unruly country from which seven States had withdrawn. Mr. Buchanan sat in silence, as the barouche rolled toward the Capitol. His withered face was pale above his white cravat. Only four years before, he had taken this drive through cheering lanes of people, moving between two pretty floats, the Goddess of Liberty on her pedestal and a full-rigged ship, manned by sailors from the Navy Yard. Now, compact and short, the inaugural procession advanced like a military expedition, fearful of attack. There was little enthusiasm on the packed sidewalks. The spectators could scarcely see the new President through the escort of dancing cavalry. Colonel Stone, riding alongside, was digging his mount with his spurs, and he thought that he succeeded in making the militiamen’s horses so uneasy that it would have been hard for even a good shot to take aim at the occupants of the carriage.

  One hundred mounted marshals, with their trappings of orange, pink and blue, did their utmost to give the parade a garish air of holiday; but, after the disciplined ranks of the regulars and the sizable guard of militia, the civic procession looked straggling and insignificant. There were five hundred Washington Republicans in line, and a few delegations from the States. Thirty-four girls rode in a triumphal car, and were all later kissed by Mr. Lincoln. The Star made fun of the pegged boots of the New Englanders, cracking like air guns in the pauses of the Marine Band. No other startling sounds disturbed the progress on the Avenue. The rowdies had foregathered in the liquor shops. A few drunken men tried to obstruct the march of the soldiers, and one of them shouted insults at a delegation of Republicans from Virginia, and proposed three cheers for the Southern Confederacy. In the eastern park of the Capitol, a little man with red whiskers sat high in a tree and addressed the crowd with oratorical flourishes. These were, however, minor disturbances, soon silenced by the police. Chief Marshal French, after a long day on horseback, would be exultant over the perfect success of his arrangements.

  The official party entered the Capitol by the north door, through a passage enclosed by a high, boarded fence, guarded by marines. While the ceremonies took place in the Senate Chamber, and Vice-President Hamlin and a few senators were sworn in, the multitude silently waited in the eastern park. They saw the spreading structure of the Capitol, with its unfinished dome surmounted by gaunt derricks braced with ropes of steel. The model of the statue of Armed Freedom, destined for its apex, stood in the grass among the littered and ruinous marbles. In every window of the stark new wings, two riflemen were posted; and Colonel Stone, looking from one of the windows, was satisfied that they perfectly flanked the steps. At last, the door opened, and the dignitaries took their places on the platform, over the heads of the fifty armed men concealed beneath it.

  Silver-haired and eloquent, Mr. Lincoln’s old friend, Senator Edward D. Baker of Oregon, stepped forward to introduce the new President. There was a faint ripple of cheers, as Lincoln made his way to the rickety little table provided for his address. Burdened with his gold-headed cane and glossy silk hat, he paused in embarrassment. As he laid his cane under the table, Senator Douglas smilingly reached out his hand for the hat. All the people could see Douglas, seated at the front of the platform, holding Lincoln’s hat as a public profession of faith in a united country. In the background, Senator Wigfall of Texas leaned with folded arms against the Capitol doorway, watching the inaugural scene with contempt on his fierce, scarred face.

  In a resonant, high-pitched voice, trained in the open-air meetings of the West, Mr. Lincoln began to speak. While his audience stood hushed in a painful silence, a tall man with a shrewd, impassive countenance detached himself from the crowd. Like one whom much familiarity backstage has robbed of interest in the play, Mr. Thurlow Weed of Albany turned his back on Mr. Lincoln, and wandered from the Capitol park. Perhaps he was too grieved to stay and see the sadfaced Westerner in the place where he had dreamed and schemed to put a subtle, smiling man. Mr. Weed was the most skillful political manager of his day, but he had failed in his fondest ambition, to manipulate the nomination of Seward by the Republican party.

  As he walked north on Capitol Hill, Mr. Weed came upon two batteries of light artillery. Near one of them, General Scott drooped in splendid decay. Beside the other was General Wool, prim and perpendicular, in his high, choking collar. Like Scott, he bore in his stiffening body the scars of 1812. Mr. Weed started forward. In 1812, this cynical politician had been a drummer boy. Nearly half a century before, he had seen the two old generals, one so fat and the other so thin, as dashing, buoyant young officers. He hastened to present himself to them, and respectfully shake their hands.

  Behind him, Mr. Lincoln’s voice rang out, across the unenthusiastic multitude, across the sundered nation. “We are not enemies, but friends. . . . Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” The voice ceased. There was the noise of applause. Chief Justice Taney tottered forward, a cadaver in black silk. The old regime and the new faced each other, and a Bible lay between them, a pretty book, gilt-clasped and bound in cinnamon velvet. Mr. Lincoln solemnly swore to defend the Constitution of the United States.

  There was a thundering salute from the batteries. Mr. Weed had been deeply moved by his chance encounter with the two commanders. He did not remember De Tocqueville’s warning, that the army of a democracy tends to become weakened by a burden of old and unfit officers. Effulgent with that sentimentality to which the corrupt are prone, he gazed with veneration on the heroes of his boyhood; and failed to see in the antique tableau on Capitol Hill a presentation of the Union’s unpreparedness for long and bloody war.

  IV. Deserted Village

  “THE 4TH OF MARCH has come and gone, and we have a live, Republican President,” wrote a female clerk in the Patent Office, Miss Clara Barton, “and, what is perhaps singular, during the whole day we saw no one who appeared to manifest the least dislike to his living.” After the strain of the inauguration, Washington awoke on Tuesday with a feeling of anticlimax and a suspicion that there had been something slightly ludicrous in the exaggerated military precautions.

  The Union Ball had been held without disturbing incident in the “white muslin Palace of Aladdin” behind the City Hall. The palace was actually a temporary plank structure, divided into rooms for dancing and for supper, and dependent for dressing-rooms on the City Hall, ladies in the Common Council chamber, and gentlemen in the courtroom. Mr. Lincoln, looking exhausted, and worried by his white kid gloves, led the grand march arm in arm with Mayor Berret, while his wife followed with a former admirer, Senator Douglas. The ladies who revolved to the strains of Scala’s Marine Band had discarded the ruffled and garlanded dresses of the fifties in favor of the fashion for stiff and heavy materials, richly braided and trimmed with lace. Crinolines had grown enormous, and, to avoid appearing pinheaded, the ladies crowned themselves with labyrinthine creations of blonde, feathers, velvet and flowers. Mrs. Lincoln, who danced a quadrille with Douglas, was observed to be dressed all in blue, with a necklace and bracelets of gold and pearls. Most of those who had purchased tickets to the ball were strangers to the society of the capital, and they took an innocent pleasure in the muslin decorations, the large gas chandeliers and the elegant pyramids which Gautier had contrived for the supper table. Henry Adams thought it a melancholy function.

  Mr. Lincoln had come to Washington with a heavy heart, sick of his office before he had assumed it. In taking up his terrible responsibilities, he was distracted by two extraneous duties—the social demands of his position and the distribution of appointments.

  The Lincolns were uninstructed in the rules of official Washington etiquette; and for their information the State Department furnished a detailed memorandum on formal functions, the order of precedence and the use of visiting cards. The
President and his wife were warned not to address a titled foreigner as sir, and advised that state dinners should take place at seven o’clock, although the family might dine privately at six. There was a pointed admonition that gentlemen, for evening affairs, should never wear frocks. In matters of protocol, Mr. Seward was the President’s guide and guardian. One of his early duties was to arrange an audience for the Chevalier Bertinatti, the diplomatic representative of Sardinia, who had been appointed minister of the new kingdom of Italy. Mr. Lincoln dutifully made smacking, violent bows to the gorgeous Chevalier, with cocked hat, silver lace and sword; and, in response to a long address, pulled from the pocket of his wrinkled black suit a proper little speech.

  A few days after the inauguration, the President and Mrs. Lincoln held their first evening levee in the Executive Mansion. Measured by the numbers in attendance, it was a monstrous success. At seven o’clock, an hour before the doors opened, the great driveway was blocked with carriages. Senator Charles Sumner arrived in the sartorial perfection of English evening dress; there were military and naval officers, and a number of the foreign ministers presented themselves as a diplomatic, if disagreeable duty. From eight until ten-thirty, the President shook hands without pause, often using his left hand, too, to pass the visitors along. He wore his inauguration suit, and fresh white kid gloves. Ward Hill Lamon stood beside him. Mr. Lincoln intended to nominate his friend as District marshal, one of the Washington appointments which were a Presidential prerogative. It was an office which super-added to the duties of sheriff the occasional role of court chamberlain, for the marshal, who had charge of the county jail and was partially responsible for the preservation of order in Washington, also traditionally presented the guests to the President at White House receptions. A similar attendance on the President’s lady was required of the Commissioner of Public Buildings. Around Mrs. Lincoln clustered the female relatives who had accompanied her from Springfield: her sister, Mrs. Edwards, in brown and black; the two nieces, in lemon color and crimson, respectively; Mrs. Grimsley in blue watered silk. There were also two half sisters who had arrived in season for the inauguration, and one of them, Mrs. Clement White of Alabama, was a secessionist. The function broke up in a disorderly scramble for wraps. During the Buchanan administration, an attempt had been made to check them in the hall, but it had not been popular. At the Lincoln’s first levee, coats and hats, casually discarded, became inextricably confused. Perhaps not one person in ten, in the opinion of the Star, emerged with his own outer garments.