“John is no copperhead,” Lucy told her cousin, though his outburst had left her shaken and confused. “He doesn’t sympathize with the Confederacy, but with the Southern people, who have suffered much throughout this dreadful war. It’s only natural that he should be concerned about their fate. He’s a Marylander, and he considers Virginia an adopted home.”
Parker regarded her speculatively for a long moment. “If you say so, dear cousin,” he finally said, sighing in resignation and settling back down to his book.
• • •
Lucy had looked forward to John’s return to Washington so eagerly that it was disturbing to find herself unexpectedly relieved when he told her that he would be traveling to Baltimore for a few days. Upon his return on the first day of March, when they crossed paths in the lobby, she acknowledged his cheerful greeting by inclining her head, unsmiling, and she did not offer him her hand.
“I had expected a better welcome than this,” he protested, smiling.
Her heart stirred, but she could not rid her memory of his outburst in the drawing room, his harsh words, his angry glares. “Several weeks ago you asked me to acquire this for you,” she said curtly, taking an envelope from her reticule, “but I’m not sure whether you want it anymore.”
His smile turned quizzical as he accepted the envelope. “You’re in a fine mood today.” Opening it, he withdrew a ticket granting admission to the Capitol rotunda for President Lincoln’s second inauguration, one of only a precious few her father had been allotted for family and friends. “Thank you very much, darling. Of course I still want this. Why would you think I might not?”
“After your angry denunciation of Mr. Lincoln in the drawing room the other day, I made the reasonable assumption that perhaps you might not wish to see him renew his oath of office.”
He stared at her for a moment before bursting into laughter. “You’re not still upset about my little speech, are you?”
“‘Little speech’?” She folded her arms. “Yes, of course I’m still upset. I admire President Lincoln. He’s a great man, and I would’ve voted for him if I could have.”
He shrugged and tucked the invitation into the inside pocket of his coat. “I would say that it’s fortunate you couldn’t vote, then, except it would’ve made no difference to the outcome.”
She shook her head, incredulous. “Is that truly how you feel?”
“Don’t be angry, dear girl.” He took her hands and drew her closer, though she resisted, still annoyed. “I regret upsetting you, and I’m grateful for the ticket. We can’t expect our opinions to match perfectly on every single political issue. Very well, so I’m not as enamored with Mr. Lincoln as you are. It breaks my heart to think you might love me less for that.”
“You don’t look particularly heartbroken.”
“Oh, my darling, you forget I am a very good actor.” Grinning impishly, he tapped her nose with his forefinger. “Inside I weep and tear my hair.”
“Nonsense,” she retorted, but her anger was subsiding.
“Inside I have donned sackcloth and ashes.” He kissed the backs of her hands. “Now, be a good girl and tell me you love me.”
She was not quite ready to do that. “You’ll have a very good view of the ceremony, but it’s just as well that you won’t be seated on the platform with me and my family. Those exalted places should be reserved for people who actually want Mr. Lincoln to be president.”
He feigned misery. “You mean to say you won’t condescend to stand amid the rabble with me?”
“And risk enduring another of your disloyal diatribes? Never.”
“I am loyal to my country,” he protested, and when she tossed her head, he teased and cajoled until he managed to coax a smile from her, but not her agreement to relinquish her excellent seat to stand with him instead.
She could not stay angry with him long, for as the capital prepared for Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration, the jubilant, optimistic mood of its citizens and visitors became infectious. The people of the North had every reason to be hopeful, Lucy thought. In mid-January, the Union navy had captured Fort Fisher, which closed the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, and severed supply lines to the Confederacy from abroad. After capturing Savannah, General Sherman’s armies had seized Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, and the next day, the rebels had surrendered Fort Sumter and evacuated Charleston. In the meantime, General Grant had drawn a noose of Union forces around Petersburg and was steadily pulling it closed, tightening his stranglehold and threatening the Confederate capital of Richmond twenty-five miles to the north. On the eve of the commencement of Mr. Lincoln’s second term as president and commander in chief, a Union victory seemed more certain than ever before.
In those first days of March, thousands of visitors flooded Washington City, filling the hotels and boardinghouses until Lucy half expected to see streams of guests spilling out from the doorways and windows into the streets. At the National Hotel, she and John could find no quiet place to sit and talk privately, for hapless gentlemen and even a good many ladies who had been unable to secure rooms sat up through the night in the crowded parlors instead.
On the night before the inauguration, a fierce and terrible storm struck the capital, jolting Lucy awake with a crash of thunder and a scour of hail upon the roof. “Lizzie?” she murmured as she propped herself up on her elbows, disoriented, heart pounding. “Are we under attack?”
“No, silly girl,” Lizzie replied, sounding barely awake. “It’s just a storm. Go back to sleep.”
Lucy lay down and snuggled closer to her sister, hoping the tempest would soon subside. Eventually she drifted back to sleep, and woke hours later to a gray and rain-soaked dawn. One glance out the window revealed that the night’s torrential downpour had turned Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue into thick rivers of mud.
“Will they cancel the parade if the streets cannot dry in time?” Lucy asked her sister as they made their toilette and dressed. A magnificent procession was planned, with soldiers, cavalry, and bands, as well as representatives from fire departments, civic organizations, and fraternal lodges from all across the North, all to march with banners aflutter and flags unfurled.
“I can’t imagine that they would cancel,” said Lizzie. “The newspapers say that fifty thousand will gather at the Capitol to watch and thousands more will line the parade route. They won’t disappoint all those people because of a little mud.”
“I wouldn’t say a little mud,” said Lucy dubiously, but she decided to trust her elder sister’s optimistic prediction.
The Hale ladies would not be among the crowds enjoying the parade anyway, nor would they accompany Papa to the Senate to claim seats in the gallery while he assumed his usual place in the chamber, so that they might observe the traditional valedictory address of the outgoing vice president and the speech and swearing in of incoming vice president Andrew Johnson. Her father’s usual seat in the chamber was his no longer, and they all felt the bittersweetness of the occasion. Before they could celebrate Mr. Lincoln’s oath taking and address, Papa would have to relinquish his Senate seat to his successor.
He had decided against observing the Senate proceeding from the gallery, like any ordinary spectator, and when he had wearily asked his ladies if they might dispense with that part of it, they readily assured him that they would indeed prefer to avoid the crowds. “I was rather hoping you’d suggest we simply take our seats on the East Portico early,” Mama said, and Papa smiled wistfully and thanked them all.
Rumbling over narrow, pitted side roads to avoid the parade route, Lucy’s father directed their carriage as close as they could get to the Capitol and they walked the rest of the way. The guards recognized the former Senator Hale and allowed the family through, so they proceeded to the east front of the Capitol and the platform reserved for honored guests, seating themselves just as the doors opened and the crowd of obse
rvers and dignitaries that had packed the Senate chamber spilled out onto the portico. Lucy took in the scene, awestruck and wistful, wishing her father had kept the Senate seat he had filled so honorably. No longer a senator, he did not yet know what he would become. The position of Minister to France had gone to another gentleman, and no one, not the president nor any of his secretaries or aides, had mentioned any other possibilities to her father. For the future of the country, Lucy was optimistic and hopeful, but for her father, for their family, she was stricken with doubt.
An eager audience thousands strong had packed the muddy Capitol grounds beneath overcast skies, and when Mr. Lincoln emerged onto the East Portico with Chief Justice Chase at his side, a piece of paper in his hand, the newly completed Capitol dome rising in magnificent splendor high above, the people let out a thunderous roar of welcome and jubilation. As the president came forward to deliver his speech, the clouds suddenly parted, the sun broke through, and golden light shone down upon him like a benediction from heaven.
“How glorious,” Lizzie murmured. Lucy nodded, too overwhelmed by the profundity of the moment to speak. Just as her father had said, in the midst of its most terrible crisis, the country had held national elections, and even those who had not cast their ballots for Mr. Lincoln had accepted the result. Their democracy had endured, and its faithful citizens had every reason to believe that they had been tested and had triumphed, and could surely survive any other challenge the future might bring.
The president’s address was brief, simple, and profoundly beautiful—clear and poignant and warm, full of forgiveness and reconciliation. The president spoke of the war, and how slavery was the undeniable cause of it, and how four years earlier everyone, North and South alike, had wanted to avoid war, but one side would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. He suggested that the Lord had allowed them to fall into war as punishment for the offense of slavery, and that the war could be a mighty scourge to rid them of it. All people, North and South alike, hoped and fervently prayed that the war would soon end, but if God willed that it should continue “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” they must accept that the Lord’s judgment was true and righteous.
Tears filled Lucy’s eyes as Mr. Lincoln closed with an extraordinary expression of forgiveness and magnanimity. “With malice toward none,” he urged his listeners, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Lucy reached for Lizzie’s hand and squeezed it tightly as Mr. Lincoln turned to Chief Justice Chase, who came forward to set an open Bible on a wooden stand. Mr. Lincoln placed his right hand upon it, the chief justice solemnly administered the oath of office, and when the last words were spoken, President Abraham Lincoln bent and kissed the holy book.
The crowd, thousands strong, roared their approval, the Marine Band broke into a stirring tune, and an artillery salute boomed. After bowing courteously to the throng to acknowledge their ardent cheers and thunderous applause, Mr. Lincoln left the portico for the lower entrance, where a carriage waited to carry him back to the White House.
Like most of the Washington elite, the Hale family did not plan to attend the public reception at the Executive Mansion that evening, which would have obliged them to stand in line for hours with six thousand citizens, all eager to shake the president’s hand and offer him congratulations. Instead they would defer paying their respects until they could do so much more pleasantly at the Inaugural Ball two evenings hence.
Contemplative, hopeful, and yet inevitably downcast, the Hales retired to their suite and tried to settle down to writing letters, reading, or sewing, but Lucy sensed that they all felt somewhat adrift. Suddenly she remembered John and the ticket she had given him. She had not glimpsed him among the vast multitude, but she was certain he had attended, and she hoped that Mr. Lincoln’s powerful oration had moved him. John was a sensitive soul, and she did not see how he could fail to respond in kind to the president’s message of hope and reconciliation.
Suddenly a knock on the door shattered the pensive quiet. Lucy’s father rose to answer, and from her chair by the window Lucy glanced up from her book to see a messenger with a letter. Papa took it, offered the lad a few coins, closed the door, and stared at the folded paper, one hand lingering on the doorknob, as if he dreaded to discover whatever news it contained.
Eventually he inhaled deeply, squared his shoulders, and opened the note. Lucy studied him, shifting quietly in her chair so she could see his expression better, but he neither brightened nor blanched. Instead he read the letter over again as if he could not quite believe it.
“Lucy, dear,” he said, meaning his wife, “how is your Spanish?”
“As I told President Lincoln,” she replied, eyes widening, “it is worse than my French, but far better than my Portuguese.”
“Well, you’ll have to make a quick study of it, you and the girls.” He smiled, slowly and incredulously, until he fairly glowed with relief and happiness. “President Lincoln wants to know if I would consider accepting the post of Minister to Spain.”
They all ran to embrace him, offering kisses and congratulations and laughingly brushing aside his cautions that the president had not made him an official offer quite yet. “It will be forthcoming,” Mama assured him, and she urged him to sit down with paper and pen and immediately respond that he would accept the prestigious position if it were offered. Papa happily agreed that he should, and they gathered around his desk as he swiftly wrote a gracious reply to the president, breaking into applause when he sealed the letter. As her father took it downstairs to entrust it to a messenger, Lucy was overwhelmed with a dizzying mixture of elation, pride, and dismay. She would be going abroad after all, crossing the ocean to enjoy an exciting adventure in a strange, marvelous, foreign land, far from home, far from John.
After such a momentous day, they all found it difficult to sleep, but they woke the next morning cheerful and refreshed—even Lucy, despite the pangs of grief she felt whenever she imagined bidding John farewell. They were pleased that President Lincoln had honored Papa with such a prestigious post, thankful that their family would be provided for, thrilled to imagine the wonders that awaited them in Madrid, and somewhat daunted by the many tasks they must complete before they sailed for Spain.
As they went down to breakfast, Lucy’s father reminded them that President Lincoln had not publicly announced the appointment yet, so they must not discuss it in the dining room or speak of it to anyone. As her mother and sister nodded, Lucy asked, “May I tell John?”
Her father paused on the staircase. “Yes, in fact, I think you should inform him right away.”
Lucy nodded, and when she saw the glance that passed between her parents as they continued down the stairs, she knew they were very glad that hundreds of miles would soon separate their daughter from her suitor.
John was not at breakfast, and the drawing room and lobby remained so packed with visitors who had come for the inauguration that she had no hope of taking him aside for a private chat anytime soon. Thus when Parker called later that morning, and after her father entrusted him with the secret of his pending appointment, Lucy took him aside and quietly asked him to accompany her to John’s room. His eyebrows rose, but he agreed.
Lucy’s hand trembled when she knocked upon John’s door, but she steeled herself with a deep breath, smoothed her skirts, and silently rehearsed what she intended to say. A minute, perhaps more, passed in silence, so she knocked again, louder, and this
time she heard stirring within. Suddenly the door swung open, and John stood before her, bleary eyed and unshaven, his trousers and shirt unkempt and wrinkled as if he had slept in them. “Lucy,” he said, startled, quickly running a hand through his hair and tucking in his shirt.
“Good morning, John.” She recoiled slightly at the faint, stale odor of liquor on his breath. “I’m sorry we caught you still abed.”
“Late night?” asked Parker archly. “Did we celebrate the inauguration with a little too much enthusiasm?”
John shrugged and managed a wan smile.
With an effort, Lucy kept her expression smooth to conceal her displeasure at his shameful dissipation. “May we come in?”
After a moment’s hesitation, John nodded and stepped back to allow them to enter. Parker gestured to the only chair, which Lucy took, while John glanced around for a moment before sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. Parker closed the door and remained standing near it, hands in his pockets.
“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” John asked, his voice hoarse, his eyes bloodshot.
“I have news. Exciting and yet distressing news.”
Lucy clasped her hands in her lap and told him of Mr. Lincoln’s offer, her voice trembling. John’s brow furrowed in confusion as he listened, but when she finished he ran a hand over his jaw and stared at her as if she were already hundreds of miles away. “You’re leaving,” he said, his voice curiously flat.
“I am.”
“Is there anything I could do to persuade you to stay?”
At his post near the door, Parker stirred, but Lucy did not glance back at him. “I couldn’t live here at the hotel alone. It would be improper.”
“Don’t you have a maiden aunt you could live with?” John’s voice carried an edge. “Someone on this side of the Atlantic?”
Fates and Traitors Page 25