The First Lady and the Rebel, page 9
Only once had he lost his temper. During some quarrel, the cause of which she could not bear to remember, she had actually pursued him into their yard, waving a knife at him. She had not even realized she was holding a knife, much less intended to use it, but a neighbor had happened along, and Mr. Lincoln, catching sight of him, had grabbed Mary and shoved her into the house. “There, damn it,” he had said, in a low and distinct tone she had never heard him use before to anyone, man or woman, “stay in the house and don’t disgrace us before the eyes of the world.” And for the entire day, she had done exactly that, weeping in her bed until he had come home from his office and she had sunk to her knees and begged for his forgiveness. Which, of course, he had given even before she had got on her knees in the first place. “Just stay away from the cutlery, Mother,” he had advised, which had actually infuriated her all over again, but this time she had managed to force a smile instead.
She knew she trespassed on his good nature, that she became infuriated over trifles. Why couldn’t she just stop herself?
But this—a threat to his life that he had actually taken seriously—couldn’t be viewed as a trifle. And this time, it was the entire nation, not just herself, that was at risk. Granted, Mary didn’t know precisely how she could protect him by being at his side, but she certainly could do nothing to help him with her in Harrisburg and him on a train.
Presently, a man came to the door—Norman Judd, one of Mr. Lincoln’s supporters. Plainly, he had been sent as a reinforcement by Mr. Lincoln. While he explained the plan to her, as patronizingly and repetitiously as if he were conversing with little Tad, her temper broke again, and only the absence of the brush from her dressing table kept her from launching it yet again. In due time, he scurried out, but not before snapping, “Mrs. Lincoln, please do be quiet about this. Much depends on complete secrecy.”
“Don’t you think I know that, you fool?”
She had bellowed that, but she certainly had not let out any secrets.
As he left, she stared out the window. In the gaslight, she saw three men getting into a coach. The tallest was stooping, and he was wearing a low hat instead of his usual high hat, but there was no possibility of her not recognizing him, even if others might be fooled. She longed to open the window and tell him goodbye, to wish him a safe journey, to, above all, tell him that she loved him and had not meant anything she said. She never did! But she managed to restrain herself, even if she could not pull herself from her post at the window until long after the coach had disappeared from view.
She did not sleep at all that night, and had not expected to. The next morning, Mr. Judd knocked. Without a word, he handed her a telegram from “A. Lincoln, Willard Hotel” containing a message of one word: SAFE.
* * *
Although Mr. Lincoln had reached Washington without incident, his absence left the remaining passengers on the train in dismal spirits. The younger boys were as quiet—no, quieter—as if they were in church, and Bob pulled out one of his textbooks and began studying it, something he had not bothered to do the entire journey.
Though exhausted from her night of worrying, Mary was in better sorts than the rest. She had invited Margaret and Agnes Williams, the daughters of a prominent Pennsylvania politician, to travel with her to Washington, and she was content to relax in her upholstered chair and half listen, half sleep as the young women reviewed the all-encompassing question of what they were to wear to the inaugural ball. It was pleasant to have the well-brought-up, deferential, and yet lively Williams girls on the trip, although she wished that her younger sisters could have been there instead. But Kitty was firmly under Mrs. Todd’s wing in Kentucky, and Elodie was visiting Martha, who had married a warehouse keeper, Clement White, in Selma, Alabama—an awkward place for sisters of Mary to be since the collection of rebellious states calling themselves the Confederacy had established their own capital in Montgomery. If only Emily could have come! But she had two small children and a husband who was very busy with his law practice, although Mary suspected that he, like Mr. Lincoln in his early days, was not yet making as much money as he should be. But no doubt Mr. Lincoln could find some suitable position for Mr. Helm.
“Maryland at last,” Bob announced. For the first time since they had left Harrisburg, he smiled. “Let’s not let these rebels dampen our spirits, shall we?” Undaunted by the fact that he, like his father, could not sing a note, he began to warble, “Oh, say can you see,” and presently the entire car began to follow him in singing the tune.
When the city of Baltimore came into view, however, the car grew silent once more. Elmer Ellsworth muttered something about wishing he had brought his sword, and Bob said, “You and the young ladies had best move away from the windows, Mother.”
No sooner had they obeyed than the train pulled into the station where a crowd so thoroughly covered the platform that Mary had no idea how the passengers were to exit. The train had not even halted when rough-looking men began to press at the windows and even to grab at the doors. “Where’s Lincoln?”
“Trot him out!”
“Let’s have him!”
“Bloody Republicans!”
“The President-elect is already in Washington,” the conductor called out. “Now back off! Let these people out!”
Instead, two men suddenly barged onto the train. Never in her life had Mary been so close to such ruffian-looking creatures. Before she could scream, John Hay, a young man who had been serving as Mr. Lincoln’s secretary, grabbed a cane and, wielding it to excellent effect, forced the men backward onto the platform, then bolted the door, all the while using language that Mary had not heard before. “My apologies, Mrs. Lincoln,” he said when the car was secured.
“It is quite all right, Mr. Hay.” The young man looked thoroughly pleased with himself, as he often did, but this time Mary shared his sentiment.
At length, the conductor and the station personnel managed to force the crowd far back enough so that they could exit, but even so, they had to walk down the platform single file, Mary’s skirts brushing the train on one side and the bystanders on the other. All the while, the crowd jeered and pointed, not so much at her but at the men, but just that was quite frightening enough.
What would they have done to Mr. Lincoln if he had been on this platform? Mary shuddered.
After a pleasant luncheon with the president of the railway company, who was duly apologetic for the disrespect shown to her—not that he could help it, but Mary was gratified to get at least one apology for the ordeal of the last day—they drove to the Camden Station, where for a half hour a group of boys took turns staring into their car and pointing as if visiting a menagerie. Bob smoked a cigar, taking some considerable satisfaction in blowing the smoke out the window toward the urchins, who were finally scattered by the police. And then, at last, the train pulled out of the station and, finally, into Washington’s Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Depot, where a carriage awaited them. Mary gazed at her surroundings. Washington! It had not improved in appearance since she had accompanied Mr. Lincoln there years before. The copper dome that had sat awkwardly atop the Capitol had been torn down, but its replacement had yet to be completed—an emblem, more than one wag would say in the months to come, of the sundered nature of the Union itself. The buildings sprouted haphazardly—a civic edifice here, a modest dwelling there, a mansion here—and just beyond Pennsylvania Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare, were rows of shanties, home to the city’s free colored people and to the Irish. Dotted among the other dwellings were shuttered-up, forlorn-looking residences, some marked “To Let,” vacated by the Southern families who had decamped Washington to join the rebels.
Presently, they arrived at the Willard. When Mr. Lincoln had served in Congress in 1847, it had been an unimpressive establishment of forty rooms, but it, like Mr. Lincoln, had come up in life, and it now covered a city block and boasted 150 rooms, separate men’s and ladies’ dining rooms, and its own lecture hall. The Willard brothers themselves were on hand to welcome Mary and to guide her through the lobby, dense with men reading newspapers and conferring among themselves. “We have a suite of five rooms set aside for you, madam,” Joseph Willard informed her. “You won’t find a more comfortable lodging in Washington.”
“Not even the White House, Mr. Willard?”
Joseph Willard grinned. “Frankly, madam, I would say not. But here we are.”
He knocked, and someone promptly opened the door—not a servant, but her own husband. “Now, Molly,” he said as he took her into his arms while Mr. Willard hurried away. “I told you everything would be fine. Didn’t I?”
* * *
“‘We are not enemies, but friends,’” Bob read, squinting at the paper he was holding. “‘We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memories—’”
“Memory,” Mr. Lincoln said. “I’ll change that to ‘memory.’ Go on, Son.”
“‘—stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’”
“That is beautiful, Mr. Lincoln,” Mary said.
“Well,” her husband said, “I’ve been working on it long enough.”
“Shall I read it again?” Bob asked.
“No. I’m satisfied with it at last. Just don’t let me forget the thing.”
He suppressed a yawn; he had arisen at five that morning, the last they would spend in the Willard. In hours, servants would pack their goods and send them to the White House. “Well,” he said, “I’d like to be alone for a while before it all starts up.”
Mary rose. “The next time I speak to you, Mr. Lincoln, you will be the President. I want you to know how very proud of you I am. I do wish your mother had lived to see this day. And your father.”
“Yes, I do, too. Well, my mother… As for my father, I loved the man, I guess, but we were better off miles apart, I learned. I think that even today, he would still think of me as an odd duck. And he’d probably be pestering me for a job.”
* * *
The Willard was so crowded that, the night before, the Willard brothers, absolutely out of rooms, had borrowed hundreds of mattresses and laid them anyplace they could be squeezed in order to accommodate the spectators coming into town for the inauguration. Fortunately, an entourage of Todds had arrived in time to be given lodgings: Mary’s sister Elizabeth Edwards and her two daughters, Mary’s sister Margaret Kellogg from Cincinnati, and Mary’s cousin Lizzie Grimsley, who, as Miss Elizabeth Todd, had been one of Mary’s bridesmaids. Nothing like her married surname, she was Mary’s favorite cousin. As quietly as possible, she had divorced her faithless husband not long before, and Mary trusted that a White House invitation would silence the petty-minded gossips of Springfield. Why should a woman be required to put up with what a man would never abide? She hoped that Mr. Lincoln would make her cousin a postmistress, which would allow her to live in comfort and not to be dependent upon her relations. Not that poor Mr. Lincoln had had any time to consider the matter, for since he had arrived in Washington, he had been besieged by seekers of offices great and small, who filled the hotel lobby and lined the staircase leading to Mr. Lincoln’s parlor.
With the help of Cousin Lizzie and the rest, Mary dressed in a Havana-colored wool gown. She had chosen it for its simplicity, for she would be very much in the background at the inaugural ceremony, and in any case would have a chance to shine later at the ball that evening in the blue watered silk she had purchased in New York just weeks before.
In due time, the two senators who were to escort Mary and her group of ladies to the Capitol ahead of her husband arrived. As their carriage made its slow progress down Pennsylvania Avenue, Mary saw that Washington’s main street was clotted with people, filling every inch of pavement, perching in trees, and lining the rooftops and upper-story windows. Some clutched carpetbags, having found no place to sleep the night before. Every species of military unit, well-armed, lined the avenue and the roofs as well. Even Mr. Lincoln, who would be riding in an open carriage with President James Buchanan, had not gainsaid their presence.
Having taken her place in the gallery of the Senate reserved for herself and other prominent ladies, Mary half watched as the incoming vice president, Mr. Hannibal Hamlin, took his oath. Years ago, she had sat in another gallery, watching as Mr. Lincoln attempted to win a seat in the Senate, which he had never managed to reach. If only she had known he was destined for higher things, she would have never wasted so much time bewailing his defeats.
Since Election Day, her sister Elizabeth and the rest of the family had been walking about in a state of perpetual surprise, still unbelieving that the man that they had thought not good enough for Mary was now the man who would have to pull the nation through this time of crisis. But Mary wasn’t surprised—at least not at her core. She’d always known there was something about Mr. Lincoln.
Mr. Hamlin having finished, the room fell silent. Then dignitaries started to file in—the diplomatic corps, the justices of the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives. At last, the outgoing President, looking relieved to be done with the whole business, and the incoming one, his face impassive, entered, arm in arm. Mary had urged Mr. Lincoln, whose clothes always took on a rumpled look after being worn for more than an hour or so, to dress at the last minute, and from the neat look of his plain black suit, he had heeded her advice.
Having processed in, after some formalities, the groups processed out to the Capitol’s east front, where a platform had been erected. As the Marine Band played a lively tune, Mary took her seat there along with the rest.
At last, Mr. Lincoln stepped to the platform, placed his speech upon it, and removed his hat—only to find there was no room for it on the table. Mary found herself instinctively rising until a small figure arose and, bowing, took the hat and returned to the seat. It was Senator Douglas, Mr. Lincoln’s rival for the presidency and Mary’s would-be suitor from those early days in Springfield.
Relieved of the burden of his hat, Mr. Lincoln reached into his coat and took out a pair of spectacles. As he slipped them on, someone yelled, “Leave them off. We want to see your eyes!”
For a moment, Mr. Lincoln fought back a smile. Then, spectacles in place, he read his speech in a clear, unfaltering voice, delivering a message of union intended more for the wavering states such as Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland than for the crowd below him. Finishing to applause, he took the oath of office administered by the elderly Chief Justice Roger Taney—who was fortunate that there was no wind, or otherwise the frail judge would have surely been blown off the platform—and kissed the Bible.
The crowd cheered, and Mary let out a breath. For better or worse, Mr. Lincoln was now President.
In an instant, the new President was engulfed by well-wishers (and, perhaps, ill-wishers as well), shaking his hand. Even if protocol had allowed Mary to go to his side to add her congratulations, she could not have managed to press through the crowd.
At length, her escort delivered her to a closed carriage. The two Presidents, old and new, had long left in their carriage, and as Mary’s carriage pulled up to the Executive Mansion, President Buchanan was already departing.
The doorkeeper, an Irishman who Mary would soon know as Edward, was ready for them. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln,” he said as if she had been residing here for years.
There in the hall stood Mr. Lincoln, who bent and kissed her decorously. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Lincoln.”
“And good afternoon to you, Mr. President.” She sniffed. Would there be any way to rid this place of the stench of tobacco?
“President Buchanan gave me some valuable parting advice.”
“Oh?”
“He told me that the right-hand well here gave better water than the left.” He shook his head and looked around. “Good to know, I guess, since this will be home for the next four years.”
Mary shook her head. “Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Lincoln. Eight, at least.”
4
Emily
March 1861
“Do you have your gumshoes on?” Hardin asked as they set forth for Louisville’s railway station. “It looks like rain.”
Kate pointed to her feet proudly, and Emily smiled. “We both do, darling.”
“Very good.”
Mary had told her that after she married, she would learn all sorts of things about her husband. Most of the things Mary had reported were good ones—that Mr. Lincoln, unlike many husbands, paid little attention to how she spent the household money as long as all the bills were paid. He’d also told her, startlingly, that he believed that while no one should commit adultery, a woman who did so was no worse than a man who did so. On the negative side, Mary had discovered that he had almost no sense of color and was just as happy to see her in a white dress as a black one—and was completely useless for telling her which suited her better.
For Emily’s part, she had learned that her husband had a decided mother-hennish quality. When she had become pregnant with Kate and he was on the circuit, he had issued so many directives about her health that Emily had begun to think he was a frustrated doctor. She was to walk out daily, except in the worst weather, but on foul days, she was to wear her gumshoes. She was to wake early and go to bed early, like the tedious maxim by Benjamin Franklin. She was, above all, not to eat green apples—advice that, when pressed, he admitted he had gained from his old mammy. Much of Emily’s conduct, it seemed, would be guided by this long-dead servant.
Still, three-year-old Kate and one-year-old Dee were healthy children whose births had been easy, so perhaps there was something to be said for that advice. And Emily didn’t really like green apples all that much anyway.
