The Emancipator's Wife

by Barbara Hambly

  He was elected, and he did resign—and, Mary learned a few days after the election, so did Lyman Trumbull, who had just won the Congressional seat for Alton. A Democrat, Trumbull had split with Douglas over the Nebraska Act—“He's the one we have to beat,” growled the fat Judge Davis, when Lincoln held a strategy session in the parlor one sleeting December evening. Mary greeted the men at the door and made coffee and cake, enormously grateful that Emilie was keeping the boys out of the way in the kitchen.

  Emilie, with her piquant face and beautiful red-gold hair, had only a passing interest in politics, but she was lively and funny and all three boys adored her. She had no trouble inventing a word-guessing game that interested both an inquisitive four-year-old and an eleven-year-old who considered himself too grown-up for such “baby” things, leaving Mary to listen quietly from the kitchen to the talk of the men.

  Politicians, yes, but different from the drawling wealthy landholders and bankers who had thronged her father's parlors and argued about the National Bank over juleps. Different, too, from the smoothly powerful transplanted Southerners of Ninian's clique. These were lawyers and businessmen, harder and, Mary thought, shrewder than her father's friends or Ninian's cronies.

  Judge David Davis was wealthy, but that wealth was self-made in land speculation. Immense and opulent, he occupied most of the sofa, plump hands folded over acres of subdued waistcoat—his eyes snapped with the single-minded attentiveness of a predator waiting to pounce. Ward Lamon, too, was massive, but instead of being fat like Davis he more resembled a grizzly who could kill with a swat—a lawyer from Danville, where he'd partnered Lincoln on any number of court cases. Lamon would play the banjo and tell jokes to the boys, when he'd come with Lincoln to Springfield, but Mary knew Elizabeth would never have had him in her parlor. Nor would she have had canny Simeon Francis—she had never forgiven the editor for fostering Lincoln's courtship of Mary and, in Elizabeth's eyes, making a fool of her before all Springfield. Stringy Leonard Swett reminded Mary of Cassius in Julius Caesar, too lean and hungry-looking to be completely trusted, and little Stephen Logan—the eccentric of the Todd-Edwards clan—was not a man who had patience with anything that was not life and death.

  Mary understood that in the matter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, they were, indeed, facing the possibility of the life or death of the United States. She knew instinctively she would not be welcome in their strategy session. They were like soldiers closing ranks for battle, wary of any outsider and of women most of all.

  “Trumbull's got the Chicago Democrats behind him.” Davis turned toward Lincoln, who—she was glad to see—sat in the chair nearest the fire, even though he sat with his long legs drawn up so that his knees were under his chin. “Norman Judd and John Palmer, railroad men.”

  “The Democrats are split,” said Lamon dismissively. “Pro- and anti-Nebraska—half of them will waste their votes on Jimmy Shields, of all people. I hear Governor Matteson supports him.”

  “The one we need to watch out for,” said Lincoln softly, “is Matteson himself. He runs his supporters like Wellington running the Battle of Waterloo. I watched him horse-tradin' all over the state. He's pro-Nebraska and pro-Douglas, and he'll support Douglas up to the steps of the White House . . . over the smokin' ruins of this nation.”

  Watching their faces from the door of the dark little dining-room, as Lamon waved aside the chances of Matteson being nominated and Davis outlined who should approach which legislators for support, she was reminded of men playing chess, or poker for high stakes. Gone was the camaraderie of the gentry who ran the countryside because they were the landowners and it was their taxes that supported the state. These were men gambling for position, for the control of patronage that would allow them to do favors for those who would help them to more power.

  With the possibility of slavery spreading to all new states—and flowing back like blocked sewage into the established old ones—the stakes were too high for hesitation or mercy. Lincoln's face in the firelight was hard, almost a stranger's face to her. The face of a lawyer whose client stands in grave peril of hanging.

  In the days that followed, Mary and Lincoln made endless lists of supporters, tallying whose votes in the Legislature were assured, and whose would require more work, more promises, more convincing. Mary pulled together her neatly organized envelopes of newspaper clippings: not only Lincoln's speeches, but records going back years of who supported whom and why. It was clear that Lincoln was the strongest of the anti-Nebraska contenders.

  “We'll win this time,” breathed Mary, as Emilie fixed her hair and laced her up for the New Year's Day reception at the House on the Hill. “We'll win....This time we will take a house, for we'll be there six years . . . at the very least! One simply cannot do anything from a boardinghouse....Of course Lafayette Square is the most fashionable, but it's quite expensive....Though the neighborhood along Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets is perfectly genteel....You will come visit us for the Congressional season, will you not?”

  On the twentieth of January a blizzard dumped over a foot of snow on the town and hammered the small neat houses of clapboard and the brick mansions of the wealthy alike. Trains were stranded on the prairie, the rails buried under snow, trapping most of the Legislature and delaying the voting. Lincoln came in from chopping wood or milking Clarabelle shivering and half-frozen. He plowed his way across the knee-deep snow of the yard half a dozen times a day to make sure Buck and Clarabelle were warm enough in their snug stable, and dug out the path to the outhouse three and four times. On the third day of this he came in with something tucked in the front of his coat—

  “What is it, Pa?” asked Robert, as Lincoln knelt by the kitchen stove, and Willie cried ecstatically, “It's a puppy!”

  “Oh, the poor thing!” Mary knelt beside the wet ball of shuddering yellow fur. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the stable.” Lincoln tugged off his gloves and unwound his scarf. “Must have wandered there to get out of the wind—Bob, maybe you can break off a chunk of this morning's milk and heat it up for our little friend?”

  Robert laughed—the milk had been thawed earlier in the day. There wasn't much of it, but Mary knew better than to protest that it should all be saved for baby Tad. The puppy lapped weakly and Willie, with great presence of mind for a four-year-old, fetched a clean towel and hung it in front of the hearth, to heat up as a bed for the newcomer. Emilie said, “One of those split-oak breadbaskets will do, won't it, Mary dearest?” and from beneath the kitchen table Sheba, Cinders, Little, and Bigger sneered as only cats can, as if to say they'd seen more impressive rats.

  That night, while the wind screamed around the eaves, little Fido crept across the hall and scratched at the bedroom door, whining to be let in—which of course Lincoln did. He settled the pup on the foot of the bed by his feet, despite Mary's protests—“Those cats are bad enough. He's warm enough in the kitchen, surely?”

  “He'll be no trouble,” Lincoln promised, with the blitheness of one who hasn't had a cat spit up a hairball into his braids. He slithered back under the covers, shivering. Mary felt the pup curl itself confidingly as close to her feet as he could, and heard, from somewhere, one of the cats growl warningly. “Now, girls,” her husband admonished. Then, to Mary, “The poor little fellow's probably lonely in the kitchen. When he's bigger he'll be fine there.”

  Mary sighed, knowing she'd acquired yet another bedmate for life. “You'll be sorry when he follows you into the Senate chamber, Father.”

  “I'll sic him on the Democrats,” came Lincoln's voice out of the darkness, and strong arms wrapped around her waist. “I think even he could take on Jimmy Shields, don't you?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JIMMY SHIELDS GOT FORTY-ONE LEGISLATIVE VOTES ON THE FIRST ballot when the Legislature finally assembled, after twelve snowbound days—Lincoln got forty-five. In the gallery of the Legislative chamber, Mary hugged her cloak around her and shivered with apprehension. All Lincoln needed to
win was fifty-one votes.

  Definitely, F Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. Or possibly Capitol Hill? For her first reception she'd serve quail, with the béchamel sauce M'sieu Giron had taught her the secret of, and perhaps a few touches of her good Kentucky specialties....

  She glanced beside her at Julia Trumbull, whose face was pink with the cold within the black fur of her coat-collar. Lyman Trumbull got exactly five votes. Mary squeezed her hand in sympathy, and on her other side, Emilie pressed her elbow in discreet congratulation.

  The balloting began again. The crowd in the gallery up under the Legislative chamber's dome reminded her of the Washington Congressional audiences, only without the brightly dressed contingent of prostitutes. It certainly was as good as a theater—better, in some ways, because you knew everyone.

  She watched from above as wizened little Cousin Stephen Logan moved among the legislators; watched his faded red head, his hands move as he spoke. A ladies' cloakroom had been set up off the lobby for the convenience of the spectators who'd come to watch the vote—ordinarily, of course, the building had facilities only for men. On her way downstairs, breathless so as not to miss the moment when Lincoln's victory would be announced, Mary saw Simeon Francis talking to big-shouldered Ward Lamon in the lobby. He tipped his hat to her and she came up to him and asked, “How goes it?”

  “Sewn up,” declared Lamon, and Mary clapped her hands in triumph.

  “I'll be the first to tell Elizabeth. That will teach her to call Mr. Lincoln a bumpkin. She's just torn, you know, between admitting she was wrong about him and having a Senator for a brother-in-law. But pride won—it always does, with Elizabeth. She's doing the handsome thing, though, and is holding a victory reception for Mr. Lincoln at the House on the Hill tonight....”

  Simeon's eyes narrowed. “I think it'll be closer than your sister's counting on, Mrs. Lincoln. Governor Matteson's working to bring back Democratic votes, like your husband said he would....”

  “Matteson's had one vote!”

  “He picked up support on this last ballot....”

  Drat, thought Mary, I did miss the count. . . .

  “And Judd and Palmer say they won't vote for a Whig under any circumstances.”

  “They're afraid Mr. Lincoln won't pass along contracts to Democrats, is what they're afraid of,” retorted Mary, and Simeon raised his grizzled brows.

  “That's exactly what they're afraid of, Mrs. Lincoln,” he answered. “We've got some of the anti-Nebraska Democrats voting for Lincoln now, but they're doing it looking over their shoulders, hoping they haven't guessed wrong.”

  By the sixth ballot most of Jimmy Shields's supporters had switched their allegiance to Governor Matteson. Mary saw Billy Herndon—chinless and self-important as ever, though nowadays he wore the dignity of the Mayor of Springfield—scuttle from the Representatives' chamber for the third or fourth time, hurrying, she knew, down the State House steps and across the trampled snow of the square to the office he and Lincoln shared. Lincoln would be there, she knew, pacing the worn carpet or stopping by the iron stove in the long room's center to warm his hands, his shabby shawl pulled close around his shoulders, waiting and listening for someone's step on the stair. Willie had protested at not being allowed to stay with his father while he waited—the two younger boys were at the Wheelocks' house, where Robert would go for supper when he got out of school. But Mary for once had been firm. The day would be nerve-wracking enough for Lincoln. At least he shouldn't have to play nursemaid as well.

  On the next ballot, a number of Lincoln's Whig supporters—who on the whole either liked Matteson's noncommittal politics or hoped for public works contracts—voted for the governor.

  “Why doesn't Lyman throw his votes to Lincoln?” demanded Mary, leaning over to tweak Julia's sleeve. “That would end this, and it would still get an anti-Nebraska candidate into the Senate. That's what Mr. Judd and the others want, isn't it? What difference does it make to them who it is?”

  Julia's dark eyes avoided Mary's as she replied with forced lightness, “Good heavens, Molly, I don't know why politicians do what they do! I'd certainly never dream of asking Mr. Trumbull. Besides,” she added, with a touch of smugness in her voice, “Mr. Trumbull is picking up votes, as you can see.”

  “I wonder if that could be because Mr. Trumbull is a rich man, and my husband a poor one.”

  Julia stared at her for one moment as the implication of that sank in; then her face turned crimson within the frame of dark hair and dark fur, and she whispered, “Oh—!” and turned away.

  Mary scarcely noticed, because the tally had just been read out: Governor Matteson (Another rich man, thought Mary in fury, with patronage to give out. . . .) forty-seven, Lyman Trumbull thirty-five—she could not imagine how she had once thought he was so attractive! Abraham Lincoln, fifteen.

  Billy Herndon left the chamber again. Mary knew exactly how long it took, for him to cross the snowy State House square, to climb those two flights of stairs. To come back, including a brief stop in the lobby to take a drink from his hip-flask, if he wasn't swearing Temperance this week . . .

  She saw Logan, Francis, and Lamon huddled around the tall fair paunchy Herndon in a corner of the chamber, Logan shaking his head again and again. Her hands clenched hard, unbelieving, knowing what she saw, as the three men moved among the milling figures below, speaking now to one man, now to another . . . speaking only to those fifteen who still supported Lincoln.

  No, Mary thought, NO . . .

  Tears flooded to her eyes; she clung to the support of Emilie's hand.

  On the tenth ballot, Lyman Trumbull was appointed to the United States Senate.

  “You said yourself, what difference does it make who it is,” said Julia.

  “None, I suppose,” retorted Mary, hot with fury for her husband's sake, “if both men are honest.”

  She turned and flounced down the gallery stairs, brushed past Bessie Francis's extended hand of sympathy, strode out across the lobby to the icy night beyond the huge bronze State House doors.

  The party at Elizabeth's that night was still held, in Lyman Trumbull's honor. “I know how disappointed you must be,” sympathized Elizabeth as Lincoln entered the lamp-lit parlor, with Mary and Emilie on either arm. Lincoln smiled and shook his head.

  “Not too disappointed to congratulate my friend Trumbull,” he replied, stepping forward to shake the new Senator's hand. Afterwards he kept everyone at the party in a roar of laughter for hours with stories.

  For her part, Mary could not bring herself to be so forbearing. She cut Julia Trumbull dead, and never spoke to her again.

  THROUGHOUT THE FOLLOWING YEAR THERE WAS INCREASING bloodshed in Kansas, as Missouri squatters forced a slaveowner's constitution and government on the state, and Free-Soilers set up their own, rival government in Topeka. Mary avidly read newspaper accounts all spring, of intimidation, ballot-stuffing, and outright fraud, while Lincoln was on the circuit and away in Chicago. More and more often he was called in on patent-infringement cases for the McCormick Reaper company, or for Norman Judd's Illinois Central Railroad. Meanwhile—according to Cash's letters—the Free-Soilers of Kansas began to import guns.

  She found her time fully occupied, even had she not been giving small dinners for Lincoln's political friends, and introducing Emilie to every eligible bachelor in Springfield. To her despair, it was becoming clearer to her that Tad, like Robert, had been born with a deformity, in Tad's case a speech impediment that rendered his words nearly incomprehensible. Having seen what her distaste for imperfection had done to Robert, she worked hard to be patient in teaching the child, who in addition was nervous and cried at the slightest provocation.

  Only Willie made up for her frustration and occasional despair, and Willie—perhaps because she was relaxed with him as she could not bring herself to be with his brothers—quickly took on himself the role of her protector, when his father was away.

  In the spring Emilie returned to Lexington
unbetrothed, and promptly fell in love with one of Mary's Hardin connections, a young lawyer named Ben Helm. Excited letters passed back and forth, Elizabeth temperately approved....

  But both Mary and Lincoln were aware that, in a sense, Lincoln was only marking time until the next Senatorial race.

  Marking time, and praying that the sectional conflict would not explode before then.

  When he returned to Springfield, they would talk of the bloody raids by one Kansas faction against another, of the horrors of retaliation and blood-feud. “It's like watchin' a fuse burn down,” said Lincoln one night, dropping an armful of newspapers on the parlor table, “an' us sittin' on the keg.” Billy Herndon—who to everyone's surprise had made an excellent Mayor—joined the antislavery forces with his usual headlong enthusiasm, arguing that any means, “however desperate,” should be used against the enemies of freedom. Lincoln, who as his longtime partner was inevitably tarred with the same brush, was hard put to calm the radicals.

  “We're fighting for freedom and for our country,” he said to Mary later. “We can't do that by breaking our country's laws.”

  Billy, being Billy, signed Lincoln's name to a call for a meeting of Sangamon County anti-Nebraska supporters while Lincoln was away in May. Mary stormed over to the law office and screamed at him that he would ruin Lincoln with the more moderate voters, and—when Billy only looked down his nose at her and intoned, “This is politics, ma'am, and not something to discuss with ladies,”—went to Cousin John Stuart, who reprimanded Billy himself. By year's end, the anti-Nebraska Whigs had been absorbed into the Republicans: the more radical abolitionists, who objected also to foreigners and Catholics, formed the American Party, also known as the Know-Nothings.

  By the middle of the following year—1856—Lincoln received over a hundred Republican nominations for Vice-President, to run in tandem with the flashy adventurer and hero of the Mexican War, John C. Frémont.