Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  The place seekers, ravenous for post-offices, consulates and Indian agencies, had immediately taken possession of the White House. They occupied the parlors and halls, and loitered on the portico and lawns. At all hours of the day, two queues moved on the broad staircase, one going up, the other going down. The anteroom of the President’s office and the second-floor corridor were filled with restless applicants, bristling with credentials.

  The arrangement of the mansion might have been designed to preclude all decent privacy for the President. Executive business was transacted in three rooms on the east end of the second floor, at the head of the main stairway. The family’s sleeping quarters were situated at the other end of the same hall—Mr. Lincoln occupying the small, southwest bedroom and his wife the larger adjoining chamber, while the two little boys were across the way. In passing between his office and his bedroom or the dining-room, the President was obliged to struggle through the lines of office seekers, some of whom grabbed him, holding out their papers. Only a doorkeeper was on duty at the Executive chamber. The conditions in his new home contrasted strangely with the precautions taken in bringing Lincoln to Washington and in guarding the inauguration. All anxiety for his life had apparently been forgotten as soon as he became President; yet he was still receiving threatening letters, and there were cranks among the strangers who occupied the White House. His secretaries wrote that madmen frequently reached the anteroom, and sometimes even entered Lincoln’s presence.

  To loyal men, in Congress and out of it, there was a bitter incongruity in the administration’s preoccupation with patronage at a time of national emergency. The Confederate States were aggressively preparing for war. Late in February, General David Twiggs, U.S.A., had delivered nineteen Army posts to the rebel authorities of Texas, wearing the uniform of his country while he made the surrender. The newly appointed superintendent of West Point, Captain Pierre G. T. Beauregard of Louisiana, had resigned to become a Confederate brigadier, commanding at Charleston. Many experienced officers of the higher grades in both Army and Navy had offered their services to the rebellion. The resignations were accepted without question, and the officers were given honorable discharges. Some who remained at their posts were known to be unfaithful.

  The air of Washington was thick with treason, and with the suspicion of treason. The Adjutant General, Samuel Cooper of New Jersey, resigned in March to go with the Confederacy. The Quartermaster General, Joseph E. Johnston, was a Virginian, disloyal to the Union. The old Surgeon General’s disaffection was nullified by his infirmity, but the acting head of the Medical Bureau, Robert C. Wood, was Jefferson Davis’s brother-in-law by the latter’s first marriage. The dandified Virginia captain, “Prince John” Magruder, who commanded the First U.S. Artillery, brought for the defense of the capital, was well known to be a secessionist. Commodore Franklin Buchanan, commander of the Washington Navy Yard, was a disunion sympathizer from Maryland, and most of his subordinate officers were unreliable. All the executive departments retained large quotas of unfaithful clerks and messengers. Judge John A. Campbell of the Supreme Court was in active correspondence with the Montgomery authorities, and would eventually cast his fortunes with the South. At the short extra session of the Senate which followed the inauguration, all the slave States save six were represented, in many cases by disunion leaders. The senators from Texas continued to sit in the Capitol, although the State had sent delegates to the Confederate congress. Washington heard the echo of Wigfall’s threats of war on the Senate floor, and his boast that he owed no allegiance to the Government. A motion was made to expel him, but no action was taken.

  An irresolute Republican Cabinet convened in the White House, instead of an indecisive council of Democrats—that was nearly the only visible difference between Government in March and in February. Public opinion in the North was lethargic and divided, and the decadence of patriotic feeling was increased by the inaction of the new administration. In journeying up from the deep South, the traveler passed from an atmosphere of unanimity and martial excitement into a region of apathy and indifference. Early in March, the contrast was noted by a former Army colonel, a red-headed, quick-tempered nervous man named William T. Sherman. He was one of the Northern officers who, despairing of a future in the service, had gone into civil life. For the past year and a half, he had been acting as superintendent of a military academy in Louisiana. Colonel Sherman liked the place and the people, but he could no longer with honor remain there, and he was returning to his home in Ohio to look for another position.

  Sherman knew that war was coming, but he did not suppose that it would give him any employment that would provide for his wife and children. In Washington, however, he had a young brother, John, a Republican congressman from Ohio, who had just been appointed to the Senate, in place of Mr. Chase. John Sherman believed in his brother’s military ability, and he persuaded him to visit Washington. The colonel went, but he was disgusted with everything he saw. There was no appointment waiting for him, and he was by nature impatient. One day, John took him to the White House and introduced him to the President, explaining that his brother was just up from Louisiana and might have some useful information. The colonel began to tell his grim story, that the South was preparing for war. “Oh, well!” said Mr. Lincoln, “I guess we’ll manage to keep house.” Colonel Sherman closed his lips. Outside the President’s office, he broke out and damned the politicians. “You have got things in a hell of a fix,” he told his brother, “and you may get them out as you best can.” The country was sleeping on a volcano that was ready to burst, and William T. Sherman wanted no part in it, and went off to accept a job in St. Louis.

  Washington residents were of two minds about the national crisis. A large minority, which included the fashionable set, looked forward to the exodus of the Black Republicans, and the return of “nice people” to the capital. Secession badges continued to be sold at the doors of the hotels. When the Confederate flag was designed, a few windows flaunted the Stars and Bars, and some women appeared in a symbolic costume—a short skirt broadly striped in red and white, and a blue sacque with seven stars on the bosom. Society regarded the Republican interregnum flippantly. Ladies circulated merry stories about the vulgarity of Mrs. Lincoln, and laughed at the rail splitter for coming to Washington disguised in a Scotch cap. They made fun of dismal parties, at which Republicans did not enjoy themselves amid “the hardly stifled grumbling and growling” of those who were asked to meet them. A letter from the Gwins went to South Carolina—by courtesy of the United States postal service—with the message, “They say Washington offers a perfect realization of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village.”

  While the mass of the inhabitants viewed the overthrow of the Government with apprehension, their fears had been allayed by the orderly passing of Inauguration Day. There was nothing very alarming in the military manuals with which the bookshops were stocked, or in the sight of an occasional squad of District militia drilling in one of the vacant lots. Strangers still crowded the hotels, and wandered about the public buildings. Twice in one week, it was necessary to employ a second steamboat to accommodate all who wished to visit Mount Vernon. Otherwise, life in Washington jogged along as usual. The hungry customers at Harvey’s kept twenty men busy opening oysters and scalding them in steaming cauldrons. Joe Jefferson delighted audiences at the Washington Theatre with his performance of Rip Van Winkle. Some people went to see Duprez and Green’s Original New Orleans and Metropolitan Double Minstrel Troupe; some attended lectures at the First Presbyterian Church on Madame de Maintenon, Pascal and Galileo. Others sat at home, and read Elsie Venner. Elmer Ellsworth, now commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army, caught the measles from the Lincoln boys. A valuable Negro man was put up for auction at the county jail, by order of the Orphans’ Court. There was much distress among the unemployed mechanics in the city. The tulip trees around the Capitol put forth tender green leaves. The purple lilacs budded. Dry-goods shops sold their winter remnants to make room
for organdies, mozambiques, mull muslins, straw bonnets and sun umbrellas.

  Throughout the month of March, Washington was tranquil. There was a general expectation that the crisis would be averted without any serious trouble. Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, had declared his intention of holding the property and places belonging to the Government; but a week afterward it was the universal opinion in Washington that both Forts Sumter and Pickens would shortly be abandoned. All knew the conciliatory views of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State and the most influential man in the administration. Three Confederate commissioners had been sent to Washington to treat for a peaceful settlement, to which the surrender of all Federal property in the seceded States was an indispensable condition. Mr. Seward declined to receive the commissioners, but through intermediaries, one of whom was Judge Campbell, he conveyed the assurance that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. The fort in Charleston harbor had little military value, and Mr. Seward was opposed to making an issue of holding it.

  In believing that he spoke for the administration, Mr. Seward was guided not only by his own egoism, but by the opinion of General Scott. The old man had lost his earlier enthusiasm for strengthening the Southern forts. During Lent, he dined often alone. When the meal was ended, and his body servant had turned his wheel chair and lifted his feet, he sighed, “A dull man would be the death of me now!” In Virginia, the movement for disunion was rapidly spreading. The General shrank from the thought of war, long and devastating, against the seceding States. A phrase had formed in his mind: “Wayward Sisters, depart in peace!” It stood impressively at the close of a letter containing his views on the crisis, which he had prepared for Mr. Seward.

  The President, while he listened to the prayers of aspiring postmasters, was haggard with the problem of Fort Sumter. On assuming office, he had received a report that Major Anderson’s provisions were running low. The fort was menaced by Beauregard’s batteries, and the decision, to relieve or not to relieve, was at once set squarely before the new administration. General Scott gave the opinion, in which the Chief Engineer, old General Joseph G. Totten concurred, that evacuation was almost inevitable. Day after day, the dismayed gentlemen of the Cabinet assembled in the President’s office with its worn carpet and plain, heavy furniture. They sat around a long oak table, covered with a green baize cloth, and listened to the advice of the experts: Army officers, who discouraged the relief of Fort Sumter; Navy men who believed that it could be successfully carried out. Even granted that an expedition was feasible, it was not an easy matter to resolve to undertake it. The Sumter question had become a powder magazine, and only one of the President’s advisers, Mr. Montgomery Blair, was eager to drop a match in it. High above the fireplace, an old engraving of Andrew Jackson stared down on Lincoln and his Cabinet.

  Down in Pensacola harbor, Fort Pickens was still in Federal possession and it, too, was menaced by hostile batteries. The President, however, was hopeful that this fort could hold out, for he had jogged General Scott into sending orders to strengthen it with troops that were on shipboard in the harbor. Although Lincoln was in frequent conference with Scott and had seen his letter to Seward, he had not wholly realized the conciliatory drift of the General’s sentiments. On receiving from Scott a statement that Fort Pickens, as well as Fort Sumter, should be abandoned, Mr. Lincoln was greatly agitated.

  That evening, March 28, the Lincolns were giving their first state dinner for the Cabinet ministers and Vice-President Hamlin and their ladies. Among the guests of less official importance was Mr. William Howard Russell of the London Times, a portly, graying and quietly dandified Briton, given to fiddling with his eyeglasses, which hung on a chain about his neck. All unknown to himself, he was the forerunner of a line of lean, fluent and adventurous gentlemen. He was the first of the war correspondents. His dispatches from the Crimea and from India had already made a name for him in England, and he had now been sent by his newspaper to report on the troubled situation in the democracy overseas.

  Mr. Russell did not find the arrangements for the state dinner remarkable for their ostentation, and he was not, for the most part, impressed by the company. The epaulettes of one old naval officer provided the only glitter, for, though General Scott had been invited, he was unable to be present. Some of the gentlemen—wanting the benefit of Mr. Seward’s supervision—were attired in frock coats. Mrs. Lincoln, in a bright-colored dress, sat indefatigably waving her fan, while her guests were presented. Mr. Russell had been regaled with the malicious gossip of Washington, and he was pleasantly surprised in the President’s wife, whom he thought homely in manners and appearance, but desirous of making herself agreeable. It was evident that Mrs. Lincoln was eclipsed by the brilliance of a very young lady of her “court,” Miss Kate Chase. The Secretary of the Treasury had been three times a widower. Of the two daughters who composed his family, the elder was his close companion, his confidante and his official hostess. As little more than a child, Kate had taken her place at the head of her father’s table, and entertained his many visitors with her wit and her astute political comments. At twenty-one, she was a girl of imperious beauty. Hypercritical persons might carp that her little nose was too tilted, or her graceful figure too slender; but none could deny the loveliness of her queenly head, her bronze hair, large hazel eyes and marble-white complexion. Perhaps, that evening, Mrs. Lincoln was able to divine that the most popular parties in Washington would not be those given at the White House, but at the Secretary of the Treasury’s mansion at the corner of Sixth and E Streets.

  The President, entertaining the company with his funny stories, gave no impression of a man in distress of mind, save to the members of his Cabinet, whom he drew apart for a brief conference; but he did not sleep that night. He felt that national destruction was the alternative to an assertion of the Federal authority, at one point or the other. He had not firmly decided on relieving Fort Sumter, but after the Cabinet meeting next day he signed an order to make ready an expedition, to be used if necessary. In the plans for a similar expedition to Fort Pickens, Mr. Seward was the moving spirit, and all knowledge of this project was withheld from the other Cabinet officers, including the Secretaries of War and the Navy. The resultant inefficiency and confusion of orders impaired the preparations for Fort Sumter, and damaged the morale of the Cabinet. Mr. Lincoln soon saw the mistake he had made in permitting his Secretary of State to override the authority of his colleagues. Clever Mr. Seward, with his air of “a refined New York criminal lawyer enacting Richelieu,” assumed that his abilities entitled him to perform all the executive duties of the Government, and he soon wrote Mr. Lincoln a letter which contained a plain intimation of his alacrity to discharge the functions of President. Mr. Lincoln composed a courteous reply which put Mr. Seward in his place. The Secretary of State played the role of Richelieu on a smaller scale thereafter; but he did not, as a pettier man would have done, bear Mr. Lincoln a grudge for the deflation of his ambition. His mind was supple and his nature generous, and two months later he would write his wife, “The President is the best of us.”

  As every movement of the Federal authorities was promptly reported to the South, the preparations for both expeditions were carefully guarded from the public; but from the New York wharves a flock of rumors presently arose like sea gulls, and the opinion began to be expressed in Washington that Fort Sumter might not after all be evacuated. The Confederate commissioners agitatedly dispatched to Montgomery telegrams which retailed the conjectures of the Avenue, and Judge Campbell accused Mr. Seward of bad faith. The President made an appearance at Mrs. Lincoln’s Saturday afternoon levee on April 6. Among the callers were several Indians, accompanied by their white-bearded friend, Father Beeson, who was holding meetings on behalf of the Red Man; and Larooqua, the Indian Jenny Lind, entertained the company with song. The President, chatty and unceremonious as usual, had that day written a notice to the governor of South Carolina that an attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter, peaceably, if possible. The ex
pedition to Fort Pickens had already started from New York. The two fleets comprised the entire available naval force north of the Chesapeake.

  After a month of relaxation Washington was again uneasy. It was said that a band of five hundred men, led by the Texas ranger, Ben McCulloch, planned to raid the capital from Richmond. According to some, their object was to carry off the President and the Cabinet. Mr. Stanton wrote Mr. Buchanan that McCulloch had made a scouting trip to the capital, spending the night at the Gwin mansion, and telling his friends that he expected to be in possession of the city before long. There was a strong national sentiment in Virginia, and Mr. Lincoln’s initial policy of forbearance and delay had been influenced by the hope that the State would adhere to the Union. The governor, however, was hostile to the North, and the enthusiasts for secession were active. As an emissary to Charleston they sent a United States congressman, Roger A. Pryor, a young fire-eater with an impassioned and truculent face, and long, straight hair, brushed back behind the ears. The message that Pryor carried was “Strike a blow!” If blood were shed, he told the excited crowd in Charleston, in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock, Virginia would join the Confederacy.