The First Lady and the Rebel, page 30
“That seems ages ago, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, we still have our hops, but it’s not quite the same with so many of Louisville’s finest gone to war. Still, it’s lively enough here. We’ve been getting some good theater. Have you heard of the actor John Wilkes Booth? Being down South for so long, you might not have.”
“I have, actually.” Mr. Lincoln had spoken highly of his acting, although Mary had seemed less impressed.
“Well, he’s just begun an engagement here, and the ladies are wild to see him, including Mother and my sisters. They’re pestering me to take them.”
“He’s here?” Kitty breathed. “Ooh.”
“I’ve an idea. Why don’t we make a party of it? Any night you choose.”
“I cannot—”
“Oh, come, Emily. You’re past the deepest part of mourning, and this isn’t England, where everyone measures the length of your veil.”
“Miss Todd is right, Mrs. Helm. It’s healthier in all respects to be out and about. In fact, as a doctor, I shall order you to come to the theater.”
“I have been out and about,” Emily said. She sighed. “Out and about, and up and down from North to South. So I suppose a little more could do no harm. But it must be something appropriate, not a farce or a comedy.”
Dr. McCawley agreed, and that very night organized a theater party to see Mr. Booth in Othello, which was certainly tragic enough to meet Emily’s criteria. To her relief, she found upon her arrival that she was not the only widow who had been tempted into a visit to the theater. In any case, the place was so packed full of spectators that no one was likely to notice her, much less censure her.
The widowed Mrs. McCawley, a sprightly woman who appeared to be the source of Mac’s short stature, leaned over as they settled into their box. “It was so kind of you to send dear George’s letter, Mrs. Helm. He speaks of you and poor Mr. Helm very highly.”
“He was invaluable to me, Mrs. McCawley, in my bereavement.” Mrs. McCawley was smiling at her so approvingly that Emily wondered what exactly Mac might have said, but the dimming of the theater lights and the entrance of the scheming Iago soon occupied her thoughts.
Unseemly as doing so was in her present position, she could not help but admit to herself that Mr. Booth, who had darkened his face only slightly in assuming the role of the Moor, was an extremely handsome man, with a passionate, athletic style of acting that impressed her and mesmerized Kitty, who even after the curtain fell for intermission remained staring raptly at the stage. Only when hawkers began strolling through the theater, selling cartes de visite of Booth, did her sister come out of her trance. “Oh, I must have one!”
Dr. McCawley obligingly reached into his pocket and bought photographs for Kitty and his sisters—Emily, who had not yet shaken her refugee habit of traveling as little encumbered as possible, having demurred. Kitty squealed her thanks. “Dear, have you forgotten Captain Herr?” Emily hissed, only half jokingly. At Hardin’s funeral, the captain had given Emily his condolences and a letter for Miss Kitty, which Emily had dutifully passed to its recipient.
“No, of course not,” Kitty said stoutly. “But Mr. Booth’s so beautiful.”
Othello having murdered the unfortunate Desdemona with such fury that Emily had to restrain herself from crying for help, and having expressed his remorse with equal violence, the lights came up and Dr. McCawley said, “Well, ladies, I have a surprise for you. I doctored the manager here some time ago, and he’s invited me to bring you backstage for a quick visit with Mr. Booth. What of it?”
Kitty could only fan herself in reply.
Mr. Booth looked exhausted when he appeared, but he managed a gallant bow as Kitty squeaked, “I did so enjoy your performance, Mr. Booth.”
“Why, thank you, Miss—”
“Miss Todd.” Kitty’s voice had nearly reached its normal timbre.
A faint ripple, too slight to be described as a frown, passed over Mr. Booth’s face, but he said easily, his voice slightly hoarse, “Then shall I inscribe your photo that way?”
“That would be lovely.”
Mr. Booth inscribed it with a flourish, gaining Kitty’s prettiest smile, and then turned his attention and his charm upon the McCawley ladies. Then he glanced at Emily, standing in her widow’s weeds at a remove from the rest. “The war, madam?”
“Yes.” Something made her add, “My husband died fighting for the South.”
There was no artifice in the look Mr. Booth gave her then. “Then he died nobly, madam. My condolences.”
* * *
Though Emily had been slow to notice it in her relief at returning to Kentucky, Lexington was not the town of her youth. The city was packed with loyalist refugees who had been turned out of their homes when Tennessee was held by the South, the streets were full of Union troops, there to hold any rebellion at bay, and the hospitals literally groaned with wounded soldiers. The elegant Medical Hall of Transylvania University, closed before the war and later commandeered as a Union hospital, had burned to the ground in 1863—a calamity that appeared to be accidental, but which was still dispiriting.
Entire families had stopped speaking to each other, and when Mrs. Todd at last found a suitable house to rent, some of the ladies who once would have been quick to call stayed away. Not that Mrs. Todd cared, for she was happy to confine her acquaintance to the ladies whose men were or had been supporting the South. Indeed, she was on the best of terms with Lexington’s Mrs. Henrietta Morgan, mother of the notorious Colonel John Hunt Morgan, the guerilla who had conducted raids on behalf of the Confederacy into Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio, capturing Union soldiers, seizing goods, money, and horses, and diverting Union resources that could have been expended elsewhere, before his spree ended with his own capture. News of his escape from prison in November 1863 had cheered the entire South, although Emily in her preoccupation with getting home had hardly noticed it at the time. “You do know, Mama, that the Yankees are watching Mrs. Morgan’s house very closely?” Emily ventured to say as Mrs. Todd packed up some preserves and set off to visit the fugitive’s mother in her handsome home at Gratz Park.
“As if a couple of old friends having tea together could harm the Yankees,” her mother said. She sniffed. “I just wish it could.”
Though Emily prudently stayed home, Martha sometimes accompanied her mother to Mrs. Morgan’s until she and her quantity of trunks finally set off for Alabama in late February, with Mr. Lincoln’s permission. Soon, a rumor floated from South to North, acquiring embellishments along its journey, that Martha had managed to outfox Mr. Lincoln by smuggling to the South an officer’s uniform decked with buttons that proved to be solid gold coins, valued at more than four thousand dollars. Emily knew the story to be nonsense, having helped pack the trunks herself. There had been plenty in them to delight Southern hearts—whiskey, coffee, letters, even a wedding trousseau for a wealthy bride-to-be in Richmond—and Emily had slipped in a few things for her friend Mrs. Pember, as well as letters to Mac and to a few of her lady friends. But there had been no uniform and no gold. Still, the rumor was too enjoyable, for both the South and Mr. Lincoln’s opponents in the North, to die quickly, especially when Martha was invited to meet President Davis.
None of these matters had escaped the attention of Lexington’s Union officials. And if truth be told, Emily had not been entirely inconspicuous herself. When she had left the South, her trunk had contained a modest amount of gold—not her own, but contributions for the welfare of the Confederate prisoners at Chicago’s Camp Douglas. She had asked Mr. Lincoln for permission to convert the money into clothing and other necessities, and as he, presumably in the press of business, had not replied, she had taken this as permission to do so. Nor had she hesitated to do what she could for those captured Confederate soldiers in Lexington’s hospitals, some of whom had served under Hardin. Few things made Emily happier in those days than to sit by the side of a sick man’s bed and knit warm things for him while listening to tales of her husband’s gallantry and kindness. She would not deprive herself, or her charges, of that pleasure because of a few Yankee glares; if anything, the glares made her hold her head higher as she went on her rounds.
In putting pen to paper, at least, Emily was more careful, especially in her letters to her sisters in Selma and to Mac, which went through flag-of-truce mail and therefore had to pass through censors. With her sisters, this was an easy enough task to accomplish as there was plenty of family news to discuss, most particularly Elodie’s new and so-far-thriving baby, whose doings might bore the censors to death but posed no threat to the Union. Mac presented more of a challenge. Emily filled one letter with an account of the play, to which the censors surely could not find any objection, but the next was more difficult. Writing about the irksome state of Lexington would not do, nor would discussing the war news. So instead, she gave him news of her children’s doings, followed by a description of a Kentucky spring. When Mac wrote back, he told her it brought back his home marvelously, and he hoped that his poor offering—a violet he’d found on his travels—would be a suitable return.
The violet was arranged perfectly on the page. Perhaps the censor had been as moved as Emily was by Mac’s offering.
* * *
As the evenings grew pleasantly warm, Lexington began holding concerts in the park, with a band playing a selection of tunes carefully chosen so as to anger neither the Confederate sympathizers nor the Union ones, or at least to anger both equally. Early in June, Emily had taken the children to one such event when she noticed a stir around the edges of the crowd, which began to thin out even as the band gamely played on. “John Hunt Morgan’s back raiding in Kentucky!” someone whispered.
“And headed to Lexington, they say!”
A man growled nearby, “His men are no better than brigands. Better hide your horses and money.”
When Emily reached home and questioned her mother, Mrs. Todd only smiled archly. “I hope he finds time to see his mother,” she said.
“He’s not coming here just to see his mother.”
“No, I expect not.” Mrs. Todd frowned in concentration at her knitting. Having successfully completed a maneuver, she said, “I believe they will be stopping by the government stables. They need horses.”
The Union government housed hundreds of horses in Lexington, many intended for the use of the colored troops at nearby Camp Nelson. Stabled with the Yankee horses, and apparently none the worse for it, were some of the finest equines in the country, put there by their nervous owners after General Morgan’s raid the year before.
“I’m quite sure they won’t bother our own stables,” Mrs. Todd said, reading Emily’s mind. “They know where we stand.”
This was not entirely reassuring to Emily. Hardin had often bemoaned the difficulties of stopping his men from plundering, and he had certainly tried. How hard General Morgan might try was unclear. And how were his men to know the Todds from anyone else in Lexington? Emily knew General Morgan but slightly, having been barely in her teens when her father’s death had obliged them to sell their house in Lexington, and there was no reason for him to remember her.
So after the others had gone to bed, she remained in the parlor with her pistol on the table beside her. She was nearly dozing off when she became aware of a glow in the window that had not been there before. Running out onto the front steps, she saw the city surrounded by a ring of fire.
Two men on horses, all with an ill-fed appearance, rode by as she stood transfixed on the steps. “You’re not going to use that dainty pistol on us, ma’am, are you?”
“Not if you leave my house alone.”
“We’ll relay that to General Morgan, ma’am. Now why don’t you go back inside?”
Emily obeyed, shouting the house awake lest the fire spread. As her mother’s servants scurried about, filling every possible container with water, she, Kitty, and Mrs. Todd secreted what valuables they could, making ample use of their corsets and pockets and suspending purses of money from their crinoline cages.
As the night wore on, Morgan’s men continued to clatter into town. From the safety of an upper window, her view illuminated by the still-burning fires of what she later learned were the brewery and a series of emptied stables, Emily watched them smash the windows of the nearby banks and stores, then grab anything that might be of use to an army—whiskey, clothing, shoes, hats, saddles, writing supplies, money—and even a few things that were not. A storekeeper, running out to remonstrate, was kicked to the curb, while one of the few Union soldiers who had not taken refuge in Fort Clay met the unhappier fate of being shot in the chest.
Fighting back nausea, Emily turned away from the window, unable to bear any more, even if the victims were Yankees and their sympathizers. Then she heard the sound of artillery fire, whizzing from Fort Clay over the rooftops. “Into the cellar,” she commanded, and the children, huddled in a corner with Delilah, obeyed as the women brought up the rear.
By early morning, the firing had ceased. The town secured for them—for a few hours, anyway—General Morgan and his main body of men rode around Lexington in grand style, many on their newly acquired Yankee horses fitted with freshly stolen saddles. The rebel ladies of the town—their bosoms adorned with long-hidden-away secession cockades and their hands waving long-folded Confederate flags—thronged into the streets, all but mobbing the general, who waved cheerily to everyone before heading to Gratz Park and his mother’s house, leaving his men to accept the many offers of breakfast called out. “Maybe we should have some of them over,” Kitty said.
Emily shook her head. “What if it got back to Mr. Lincoln? I dare not risk it.”
Kitty was about to reply when Mrs. Todd said, “She’s right, dear. She is in a delicate position with that man, and we’d best not jeopardize it.”
Grudgingly, Kitty obeyed, and they went inside, following the example of Lexington’s Unionists. As they sat down to their guestless breakfast, they heard a gate open and a horse whinny. “They’re breaking into the stables,” Kitty said flatly. “You were wrong, Mama.”
“So I was,” Mrs. Todd said. She sighed. “He was brought up so well. It must be the riffraff he picked up along the way.”
Kate put her head in her hands. “They’re going to take Queen Bess!”
“And Lord Dudley!” Dee began to sob. “If Papa were here…”
“They’ll take nothing.” Emily rose. “I’ll be right back.”
“Emily, darling!”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Ignoring the remonstrances around her, Emily hurried to her bedroom, then emerged from the house to find two men leading out a puzzled-looking Queen Bess. She lifted her pistol. “Put my horse back immediately.”
“Why, of course, ma’am.” The taller of the men, who did indeed look ruffianly, pointed a rifle at her. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
Despite being hopelessly outgunned, Emily stood her ground. “My husband fought and died for the Confederacy. Would you steal the horses of his widow—and of his little children?”
“‘Confiscate’ is the word we prefer to use, ma’am. Who was your husband?”
“General Benjamin Hardin Helm. He fell at Chickamauga leading the First Kentucky.”
“Orphan Brigade?”
“Yes.”
The men exchanged a glance, and still gripping the gun, Emily awkwardly unfurled the cloth she had been clutching. “This is the flag that covered his casket. Do you need more proof than this?”
“No, ma’am. I suppose not.” The older of the men lifted his cap. “Put her back, Jim. There’s enough other horseflesh in this town. Don’t want to get on the wrong side of those boys.”
Jim, who could not have been more than seventeen, obeyed. Emily winced as she observed his pinched cheeks and ragged clothes. “Now come in and have some breakfast,” she commanded. “There’s plenty of it.”
* * *
Their raid a rousing success, Morgan and his men headed out of town shortly after that, leaving Lexington denuded of goods and horses and more divided than ever. Emily knew that it had not gone unnoticed that the Todds’ stables had been spared.
A few days later, she and the children were walking home from the photographer’s, having fulfilled a request by Hardin’s parents for pictures of Ben and the girls, when two neighboring ladies passed by. Emily greeted them and waited to receive the usual frigid nod in return, as their sons were fighting for the Union. Instead, one asked, “Did you hear the news, Mrs. Helm?”
“I suppose not.”
“Morgan has been driven out of Kentucky. His escapade here was an utter waste of time. Don’t you think so, Tilda?”
Tilda merely smirked, to which Emily gave her own frigid nod. “Good day,” she said. The June day, pleasant when she had set off on her errand, suddenly seemed muggy and oppressive.
Kate sighed. “Sometimes, Mama, Kentucky doesn’t seem like home anymore.”
“No.” Emily wiped a drop of sweat from her forehead. “It doesn’t.”
25
Mary
June to July 1864
In June, President Lincoln was nominated to be his party’s candidate in the 1864 election—not a mean feat, as both Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who had been intensely interested in being the Republican nominee, and General Ulysses S. Grant, who had not been interested, had both been potential rivals. This was a start, but Mary was taking no chances. Not only would a loss be humiliating for her husband and a boon to the rebel government, but it would be disastrous for Mary, whose creditors, freed of the benefits of being obliging and forbearing, would surely descend upon her. How much did she owe, anyway? Mary was not certain. Just looking through the bills made her ill.
