NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1864, dawned “fearfully cold and windy,” Noah Brooks recorded, and “the morning newspaper and the milkman were alike snapped up by the nipping frosts.” Eventually, a bright sun scattered the clouds, and a mood of good cheer enveloped the city as the National Republican headlined the long list of Union victories during the previous year—“Murfreesboro, Vicksburg, Morris Island, Gettysburg, Port Hudson, Chattanooga, Knoxville.”
“History does not furnish a year’s victories by the armies of any country in any war that will excel these,” the National Republican boasted. “We have a right to be somewhat gay and festive here at the national metropolis. No one wishes to deny that we have had a rebellious storm, and that the political horizon is still somewhat muggy; but our gallant old ship of State, with Abraham Lincoln at the helm, has weathered the gale.” William Stoddard echoed these sentiments in a published dispatch. “The instinct of all, rather than the reasoning, teaches us, as it has the rest of the country, that once and for all the danger is over.”
At 10 a.m., official Washington began arriving at the White House for the traditional New Year’s reception. At noon, when the gates opened to the general public, eight thousand people streamed in—“a human kaleidescope, constantly changing,” of “diplomats and dragoons, exquisites from the Atlantic cities and hardy backwoodsmen, contented contractors and shoddy swindlers, ingenious patentees and persevering petitioners.”
Lincoln considered his meetings with the general public his “public-opinion baths.” They “serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung,” he told a visitor, “and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty.”
“European democrats go into ecstasies over so palpable a sign of our universal equality,” Stoddard noted, while “European aristocrats, attaches of legations, tourists, and the like, turn up their noses somewhat scornfully at so singularly American a custom.” Visitors noted that Lincoln “appeared to be in excellent health and spirits, and whatever perplexities his generals may give him, he possesses the happy faculty of leaving them in his office upstairs, when he comes down to receive the salutations of the people. His clear eyes beamed with good humor, and he not only cordially returned the pressure of each offered hand, but generally said a pleasant word or two.” Noah Brooks noted that Mary Lincoln “never looked better,” having replaced her black “mourning garb” with a rich purple velvet dress.
“We seem to have reached a new stage in the war,” Fred Seward wrote home. “Gayety has become as epidemic in Washington this winter, as gloom was last winter. There is a lull in political discussions; and people are inclined to eat, drink, and be merry. The newspapers can furnish nothing more interesting to their readers, than accounts of parties, balls and theaters, like so many Court Journals. Questions of etiquette are debated with gravity. People talk of ‘society,’ who never before knew or cared about it.”
The winter social calendar followed a prescribed order. The president’s receptions were on Tuesday evenings, the first lady’s matinées on Saturday afternoons, the soirées of the Speaker of the House on Friday nights. No cards of invitation were required for these events. Since the president and speaker held their offices at the will of the people, their homes were open to the public at large. In contrast, invitations were necessary, and highly coveted, for the elegant parties at the dwellings of cabinet officers. Access to the drawing rooms of Seward and Chase were prized most of all.
Social columnists attributed the legendary success of the parties held by the secretary of state to both his genial wit and the “grace and elegance” of his daughter-in-law, Anna, “who with such rare art groups those of congenial tastes, and makes all truly ‘at home.’” For young belles, there was added mystique in the presence of the diplomatic corps, which held out the titillating prospect of attracting a titled foreigner. For those fascinated by fashion and etiquette, nothing compared to the impeccable manners and gorgeous dress of the diplomats, bespangled with ribbons and garters denoting different orders of knighthood. “Who wonders that the House of Gov. Seward is a favorite resort,” one columnist asked, “and who that enjoys his hospitality does not wish that he might be Secretary of State forever, and be ‘at home’ once a week.”
At the Chase mansion, Kate Sprague continued to be the “observed of all observers.” Whether dressed in blue brocade, gray, or simple black, she impressed congressmen, senators, and generals alike with her interest in politics and familiarity with military affairs. Holding court at the entrance, she had an appropriate greeting for every guest. Benjamin French thought her “one of the most lovable women” he had ever seen. Noah Brooks was likewise smitten, at once recognizing the delightful contrast to her “frosty” father, who “looked uncomfortable and generally bothered” at these affairs. Chase’s nearsightedness had grown so extreme that he was unable to recognize anyone without “a very close examination.” Nevertheless, he still refused to wear glasses.
The Washington elite preferred the fancy dinner parties at the Seward and Chase mansions to the public levees at the White House, where bonnets were crushed and cloaks occasionally stolen in the chaos. During the winter, Mary found it necessary to put durable brown coverings over her elegant French carpets to protect them from the muddy tramp of the “human tide” that poured in to shake hands with the president. Many visitors were ill dressed and bedraggled, as after a long dusty ride, and some still carried their carpetbags. The elegant furnishings that Mary had so lovingly and expensively put in place took a beating. Brooks noted that “the lace curtains, heavy cords, tassels, and damask drapery have suffered considerably this season from the hands of relic-hunting vandals who actually clip off small bits of the precious stuff to carry home as mementoes.” Desperate to preserve their experience, some even lifted the brown covering and cut out pieces of the French carpet “as large as a man’s hand.”
For Mary, who relished her position as first lady, it was galling to read in the papers that Seward, not she, would inaugurate “the fashionable ‘season.’” He was to host an exclusive party for the visiting members of the National Academy of Science, along with “the heads of the foreign Legations, the Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the presiding officers of the two Houses of Congress and the Committees on Foreign Relations, with their families.” That same week, the New York Herald noted, the White House reception was “not so largely attended as usual.” Benjamin French, who was Mary’s customary escort at public functions, saw that she was “disappointed.” The Sewards hosted three more receptions in January 1864, accounted the “grandest,” “most elegant,” and “most brilliant” affairs of the season, with guest lists including barons, counts, lords, ladies, and young Robert Lincoln, home for vacation.
Mary’s wounded pride increased her feelings of resentment toward Seward. She continued to begrudge the intimacy he shared with her husband, the many nights Lincoln chose to spend with Seward instead of her. Fred Seward records a pleasant evening that January when Lincoln walked over to Seward’s with John Hay to share a humorous language guidebook, English as She is Spoke. “As John Hay read aloud its queer inverted sentences, Lincoln and Seward laughed heartily, their minds finding a brief but welcome relief from care.” Though Seward had long since ceased to be a political threat to her husband, Mary could not relinquish her suspicions. She told their family friend Anson Henry that Seward and his friends were behind the various “scandalous reports in circulation about her.” Dr. Henry dismissed her fears, saying that the nasty rumors probably originated in “the Treasury Department,” for he had “traced many of them” to Chase’s friends and supporters.
Indeed, by early 1864, Chase’s presidential ambitions were widely known and frequently discussed in political circles. Mary’s anger toward Chase grew “very bitter,” Elizabeth Keckley recalled: she “warned Mr. Lincoln not to trust him,” but Lincoln continued to insist that Chase was “a patriot.” As Mary planned for her first state dinner of the year, traditionally held for the members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, and their families, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She perused the guest list compiled by John Nicolay, and crossed out the names of Kate Chase and William Sprague. Certain the “snub” would become public and reflect badly on Lincoln, Nicolay appealed to his boss to reinstate the Spragues. Lincoln immediately agreed, sending Mary into a rage.
“There soon arose such a rampage as the House hasn’t seen for a year,” Nicolay confided to an absent Hay, “and I am again taboo. How the thing is to end is yet as dark a problem as the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty.” Mary directed her wrath toward Nicolay, banishing him from the dinner and eschewing his customary help with the arrangements. “Things ran on thus till the afternoon of the dinner,” Nicolay reported, when Mary “backed down, requested my presence and assistance—apologizing, and explaining that the affair had worried her so she hadn’t slept for a night or two.”
The dinner “was pleasant,” Welles recorded in his diary. “A little stiff and awkward on the part of the some of the guests [perhaps referring to Chase], but passed off very well.” Welles, however, was unable to share the capital’s renewed delight in parties, receptions, and fairs. It all seemed inappropriate, “like merry-making at a funeral,” he wrote his son Edgar.
Not every occasion was merely a frivolous distraction. The hosts and partygoers did not forget the imperiled men in the armed forces. Where once “the old secession or semi-secesh element” reigned in Washington society, injured soldiers and sailors became the stars of every occasion. Admiral Dahlgren’s twenty-one-year-old son, Ulric, had lost a leg at Gettysburg. When he appeared at a Washington party, he was surrounded by pretty girls. They stayed by his side all night, refusing to dance, in tribute to the handsome colonel who had been known as an expert waltzer.
In late January, Copperhead congressman Fernando Wood of New York, who had often and bitterly denounced the Republican administration and the war, threw a great party to which he invited Republicans as well as fellow Democrats. Republicans were expected to stay away, but many actually attended, as did “Abolitionists of the most ultra stripe.” Stoddard found it “one of the charming features of life in Washington” that “political animosities” were not carried “into social life,” that people who publicly savaged one another could still be “commendably cordial and friendly in all personal intercourse.”
In keeping with that tradition, Mary Lincoln sent a bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Wood. The Woods exaggerated the courtesy by placing cards that read: “Compliments of Mrs. A. Lincoln” beside all the many flower vases, making it appear that Mary had supplied the entire array. Newspapers played up the story, citing the supposedly lavish display as evidence of Mary’s Southern sympathies. Stung by the criticism, Mary wrote her influential friend General Sickles: “I am pleased to announce to you my entire innocence…. With the exception of two political public receptions, they[the Woods] have not entered the [White] house—all of my, friends, who know my detestation of disloyal persons will discredit the rumor—You know me too well to believe it.”
Still, slander against the president and first lady continued to fill the columns of opposition papers. In December, when Emilie Todd Helm had come through Union lines after her husband’s death, she had been accompanied north by another sister, Martha Todd White. After Emilie left the White House, Lincoln issued a pass to Martha, allowing her to return to the Confederacy. Such passes were not unusual, but the false story spread that Lincoln, presumably at his wife’s request, had granted a special permit allowing Martha to bring her bags through without inspection. Some opposition papers claimed that she was, in fact, a Confederate spy and had used her privilege to smuggle contraband through Union lines. It was bruited that when she arrived at Fort Monroe and was told to open her trunks, she waved the president’s permit in General Butler’s face, defiantly proclaiming: “Here (pushing it under their noses) here is the positive order of your master.”
Ordinarily, Lincoln took little heed of scurrilous rumors, but in this case, he directed Nicolay to ascertain the facts from General Butler. Butler replied that the smuggling story was spurious. Mrs. White’s bags had undergone the usual search. Nothing untoward had been found. Nicolay used Butler’s letter to document a public rebuttal of the fraudulent story. Butler was surprised that the White House would even bother to respond to something so “silly,” but after the Wood affair had cast doubt on his wife’s loyalty, Lincoln may have wanted to nip the new round of rumors in the bud. Nor did he want his soldiers to think that he would ever facilitate the Confederacy’s access to contraband items that might sustain the rebel cause.
It is scarcely surprising that Lincoln not long afterward showed little patience when his old friend Orville Browning requested a favor for a loyal Unionist who owned a cotton plantation in Mississippi. When the Union Army overran her home and took her slaves, she had fallen into poverty. She asked if the government could provide her an equal number of Negroes whom she would pay to work her farm. Lincoln “became very much excited,” according to Browning, and “said with great vehemence he had rather take a rope and hang himself than to do it.” When Browning argued for “some sort of remuneration” for the lost property, Lincoln countered that “she had lost no property—that her slaves were free when they were taken.” Puzzled by Lincoln’s sharp reaction, Browning “left him in no very good humor.”
As was usually the case with Lincoln’s rare episodes of pique, other strains had contributed to the sharp rejoinder. Earlier that day, he had visited the sickbed of Illinois congressman Owen Lovejoy, whom he considered “the best friend [he] had in Congress.” The fifty-three-year-old Lovejoy was suffering from a debilitating liver and kidney ailment that would soon take his life. Lincoln was distraught over Lovejoy’s misery and seemed to internalize the grim prospects facing his friend. “This war is eating my life out,” he told the dying Lovejoy. “I have a strong impression that I shall not live to see the end.”
On the night of February 10, a fire alarm rang in the White House. Smoke was seen issuing from the president’s private stables, which stood between the mansion and the Treasury building, and Lincoln raced to the scene. “When he reached the boxwood hedge that served as an enclosure to the stables,” a member of his bodyguard, Robert McBride, recalled, “he sprang over it like a deer.” Learning that the horses were still inside, Lincoln, “with his own hands burst open the stable door.” It was immediately apparent that the fast-moving fire, the work of an arsonist, prevented any hope of rescue. “Notwithstanding this,” McBride observed, “he would apparently have tried to enter the burning building had not those standing near caught and restrained him.”
Six horses burned to death that night. When McBride returned to the White House, he found Lincoln in tears. Ten-year-old Tad “explained his father’s emotion”: one of the ponies had belonged to his brother, Willie. A coachman who had been fired by Mary that morning was charged with setting the fire. The following day, Lincoln had collected himself and moved forward. He called Commissioner French to his office and instructed him to consult contractors, estimate the cost, and “bring the matter to the attention of Congress to-day, if possible, that measures might be taken to have it rebuilt.”
LINCOLN’S GIFT FOR MANAGING men was never more apparent than during the presidential boomlet for Chase that peaked in the winter months of 1864. While Chase’s supporters prematurely showed their hand, Lincoln, according to the Pennsylvania politician Alexander McClure, “carefully veiled his keen and sometimes bitter resentment against Chase, and waited the fullness of time when he could by some fortuitous circumstance remove Chase as a competitor, or by some shrewd manipulation of politics make him a hopeless one.”
The game had begun in earnest early in January. Friends of Chase, including Jay and Henry Cooke, contributed thousands of dollars to the publisher of the American Exchange and Review, a small Philadelphia magazine, so he would print a flattering biographical sketch of the treasury secretary. Chase’s friend William Orton warned him that “no matter how able or ‘faithful’ the biography may be,” its publication in a “seedy” magazine with a reputation for selling its space to whomever could pay enough would be seen “as a flimsy political trick.” Orton’s note elicited no direct reply, but at some point the president had apparently questioned the involvement of the Cooke brothers, who were still official agents for selling government bonds. The president’s questions elicited a long, emotional letter from Chase.
Chase opened his letter with the assertion that his actions, as always, proceeded from the purest of motives. He claimed he had “never, consciously & deliberately, injured one fellow man.” He had been told that the publisher intended to print a series of sketches about prominent figures, starting with him. “How could I object?” Treasury business so occupied him that he had paid no further attention to the matter. “What Mr. H. D. Cooke did about the unfortunate biography was done of his own accord without any prompting from me,” Chase insisted. Had Cooke or his brother sought his consent, he would have stopped them. “Not that any wrong was intended or done; but because the act was subject to misconstruction…. You will pardon me if I write as one somewhat moved. It makes me hate public life when I realize how powerless are the most faithful labors and the most upright conduct to protect any man from carping envy or malignant denunciations.”
Embarrassment over the circumstances surrounding the Exchange and Review piece did not stop Chase from writing twenty-five long letters that winter to the Boston writer John Trowbridge. His missives were designed to provide the foundation for a small inspirational book about his life, The Ferry-Boy and the Financier. An excerpt appeared that spring in the Atlantic Monthly. These letters were but a small part of a massive campaign to extol his own virtues at Lincoln’s expense. From early morning until late at night, Chase toiled to maintain his stream of correspondence with friends and supporters. “So far,” he told a friend in Cincinnati, “I think I have made few mistakes. Indeed, on looking back over the whole ground with an earnest desire to detect error and correct it, I am not able to see where, if I had to do my work all over again, I could in any matter do materially otherwise than I have.”
With Kate married and Nettie away at school, Chase resumed his sporadic correspondence with Charlotte Eastman. “I think of you constantly,” he assured her, “and—if any feeling is left in me—with the sincerest affection…. How I wish you were here in our house—in this little library room—and that we could talk, instead of this writing by myself, while you are—where?” Such romantic inclinations were probably never consummated. Similarly, though he enjoyed the company of Susan Walker, an educated “bluestocking” from Cincinnati, the relationship never seemed to deepen. “I wish you could come to Washington,” he wrote Miss Walker in late January, “though I could probably see so little of you that it would be difficult to tell which would be greater, the pleasure of seeing you, or the sensation of not seeing you enough.” Though Chase obviously admired both Eastman and Walker, his intense focus on his ambition for the presidency kept him from ever making the time to unbend in their company.
The second push in Chase’s race for the presidential nomination opened with the public announcement of a “Chase for President” committee. The committee, headed by Kansas senator Samuel Pomeroy and a successful railroad agent, James Winchell, was another enterprise backed by Jay Cooke. In this case, however, Chase’s son-in-law, William Sprague, contributed the largest share of the funds. Pomeroy and Winchell were both committed abolitionists who believed Chase would best protect the rights of blacks. Their appearance of altruistic principle was compromised by the fact that they stood to benefit financially if Chase released funds for the construction of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad in which both held a large interest.
Lincoln’s old friend Judge David Davis was incensed that Chase was “eating a man’s bread and stabbing him at the same time.” Chase, unsurprisingly, viewed things differently. Since one-term presidencies had become the rule, Chase felt justified in presenting himself as an alternative. While the committee was being organized, Chase busied himself lining up support in Ohio, determined to avoid the humiliation he had suffered in 1860, when his own state had withheld its support.
Optimistic that he might defeat Lincoln, Chase told his old law partner Flamen Ball that he was immensely “gratified” by the newly formed committee and the quality of the people supporting his candidacy, for they tended to be “men of great weight.” Much would depend on the Buckeye State, for “if Ohio should express a preference for any other person, I would not allow my name to be used.” Should all go well, Chase believed he would put up a good fight against the president, for, sad to say, the prairie lawyer was simply not up to the job. “If to his kindliness of spirit and good sense he joined strong will and energetic action, there would be little left to wish for in him. As it is, I think that he will be likely to close his first term with more honor than he will the second, should he be reelected.”
Nor did Chase confine his criticisms of Lincoln to conversation and correspondence with trusted friends. Speaking with Gideon Welles early in February, he “lamented the want of energy and force by the President, which he said paralyzed everything.” Disregarding Welles’s silence, he went on to suggest that the president’s “weakness was crushing” the nation. When Welles still “did not respond to this distinct feeler,” Chase finally let the matter drop. Chase was equally indiscreet with Bates, seeming not to recognize that while the Attorney General occasionally criticized the president, he “immeasurably” preferred him to any other candidate.
Lincoln seemed unfazed by the machinations surrounding the race. Welles reported with delight an exchange with a “fair plump lady” who appeared in the hallway just before a cabinet meeting. She said she lived in Iowa and had come to get a look at the president. Hearing her story, Lincoln invited her into his office. “Well, in the matter of looking at one another,” said he with a smile and a chuckle, “I have altogether the advantage.”
In February, the Pomeroy Committee distributed a confidential circular to one hundred leading Republicans throughout the North. Intended to mobilize support for Chase, the circular opened with a slashing critique of the president, claiming that “even were the reelection of Mr. Lincoln desirable, it is practically impossible,” given the widespread opposition. Furthermore, “should he be reelected, his manifest tendency toward compromises and temporary expedients of policy will become stronger during a second term than it has been in the first.” The war would “continue to languish,” the country would be bankrupted, and “the dignity of the nation” would suffer. Therefore, in order to win the war, establish the peace, and “vindicate the honor of the republic,” it was essential that Republicans unite in nominating the one man with “more of the qualities needed in a President, during the next four years, than are combined in any other available candidate”—Salmon P. Chase.
When the Pomeroy circular was leaked to the press, it created a political explosion. Lincoln’s friends were furious, while Democrats celebrated the open division in Republican ranks. “No sensible man here is in doubt that Chase was privy to this,” David Davis told a friend. “They did not expect that it wd see the light so soon…. I wd dismiss him [from] the cabinet if it killed me.”
In a state of panic, Chase sent Lincoln a letter in which he claimed he “had no knowledge” of the circular until it was printed in the Constitutional Union on February 20. Though he had been approached by friends to use his name in the coming election, he had not been consulted about the formation of the Pomeroy Committee and was unfamiliar with its members. “You are not responsible for acts not your own,” he reminded Lincoln, “nor will you hold me responsible except for what I do or say myself.” Yet, he proclaimed, “if there is anything in my action or position which, in your judgment, will prejudice the public interest under my charge I beg you to say so. I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence.”
It is unlikely that Lincoln believed Chase’s protestations of innocence. Indeed, a decade later, the circular’s author, James Winchell, testified that Chase had been fully informed about everything and had personally affirmed “that the arraignment of the Administration made in the circular was one which he thoroughly indorsed, and would sustain.” Still, Lincoln restrained his anger and carefully gauged his response, taking a dispassionate view of the situation. He understood the political landscape, he assured Bates. There was a number of malcontents within his own party who “would strike him at once, if they durst; but they fear that the blow would be ineffectual, and so, they would fall under his power, as beaten enemies.” So long as he remained confident that he had the public’s support, he could afford to let the game play out a little longer. Keeping Chase in suspense, Lincoln simply acknowledged receipt of the letter and promised to “answer a little more fully when I can find time to do so.” Then he sat back to measure the reaction of the people to the circular.
It did not take long. The morning it was printed, Welles correctly predicted: “Its recoil will be more dangerous I apprehend than its projectile. That is, it will damage Chase more than Lincoln.” Even papers friendly to Chase lamented the circular’s publication. “It is unworthy of the cause,” the New York Times proclaimed. “We protest against the spirit of this movement.” Four days later, Nicolay happily informed his fiancée, Therena, that the effect of the circular had been the opposite of what its authors intended, for “it has stirred up all Mr. Lincoln’s friends to active exertion,” seriously diminishing Chase’s prospects. In state after state, Republicans met and passed unanimous resolutions in favor of Lincoln’s renomination. Even in Pomeroy’s home state of Kansas, a counter-circular was distributed among Republicans that denounced the efforts to carry the state for Chase and rallied support for Lincoln.
Noting the “long list” of state legislatures that had come out for Lincoln, the Times acknowledged that the “universality of popular sentiment in favor of Mr. Lincoln’s reelection, is one of the most remarkable developments of the time…. The faith of the people in the sound judgment and honest purpose of Mr. Lincoln is as tenacious as if it were a veritable instinct. Nothing can overcome it or seriously weaken it. This power of attracting and holding popular confidence springs only from a rare combination of qualities. Very few public men in American history have possessed it in an equal degree with Abraham Lincoln.” Harper’s Weekly agreed. In an editorial endorsing the president’s reelection, it claimed that “among all the prominent men in our history from the beginning none have ever shown the power of understanding the popular mind so accurately as Mr. Lincoln.” In moving gradually toward emancipation, as he had done, the Harper’s editor observed, Lincoln understood that in a democracy, “every step he took must seem wise to the great public mind.” Thus, he had wisely nullified the premature proclamations issued by Frémont and Hunter, waiting until “the blood of sons and brothers and friends would wash clear a thousand eyes that had been blinded.” In his grudging fashion, even Lincoln’s critic Count Gurowski acknowledged the president’s hold on the people’s affections. “The masses are taken in by Lincoln’s apparent simplicity and good-naturedness, by his awkwardness, by his vulgar jokes, and, in the people’s belief, the great shifter is earnest and honest.”
The fatal blow to the Chase campaign came again in Ohio, as it had four years before. Although Chase’s friends in the Union caucus of the state legislature had previously blocked attempts to endorse Lincoln’s reelection, the publication of the Pomeroy circular, a Chase ally conceded, “brought matters to a crisis…. It arrayed at once men agt each other who had been party friends always; & finally produced a perfect convulsion in the party.” The end result was the unanimous passage of a resolution in favor of Lincoln. “As matters now stand here, with so many states already declared for Lincoln,” Chase’s friend Cleveland attorney Richard Parsons warned, “prolonging a contest that will in the end array our ‘house against itself,’ & bring no good to our party at last, seems to me one of the gravest character.”
Perceiving this turn of events, Lincoln decided the time was right to answer Chase’s letter. He informed Chase that the circular had not surprised him, for he “had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s Committee,” and of its “secret issues” and “secret agents,” for a number of weeks. However, he did not intend to hold Chase responsible. “I fully concur with you that neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation, or with my countenance.” As to whether Chase should remain as treasury secretary, Lincoln would decide based solely on “my judgement of the public service.” For the present, he wrote, “I do not perceive occasion for a change.”
A few days later, Chase withdrew his presidential bid. In a public letter to an influential state senator in Ohio, he reminded his fellow Ohioans that he had determined to withdraw from the race if he did not gain the support of his home state. With the legislature’s support of Lincoln, “it becomes my duty therefore,—and I count it more a privilege than a duty,—to ask that no further consideration be given to my name.”
Trying as ever to explain his action as an unselfish move, Chase told his daughter Nettie that he had withdrawn from the race, though “a good many of the best and most earnest men of the country desired to make me a candidate,” because “it was becoming daily more & more clear that the continuance of my name before the people would produce serious discords in the Union organization and might endanger the success of the measures & the establishment of the principles I thought most indispensable to the welfare of the country.” Attorney General Bates suggested a less patriotic explanation: “It proves only that the present prospects of Mr. Lincoln are too good to be openly resisted.”
Discipline and keen insight had once again served Lincoln most effectively. By regulating his emotions and resisting the impulse to strike back at Chase when the circular first became known, he gained time for his friends to mobilize the massive latent support for his candidacy. Chase’s aspirations were crushed without Lincoln’s direct intrusion. He had known all along that his treasury secretary was no innocent, but by seeming to accept Chase’s word, he allowed the secretary to retain some measure of his dignity while the country retained his services in the cabinet. Lincoln himself would determine the appropriate time for Chase’s departure.
LINCOLN’S ABILITY TO RETAIN his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in an acute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways. In the most difficult moments of his presidency, nothing provided Lincoln greater respite and renewal than to immerse himself in a play at either Grover’s or Ford’s. Leonard Grover estimated that Lincoln had visited his theater “more than a hundred times” during his four years as president. He was most frequently accompanied by Seward, who shared Lincoln’s passion for drama and was an old friend of Mr. Grover’s. But his three young assistants, Nicolay, Hay, and Stoddard, also joined him on occasion, as did Noah Brooks, Mary, and Tad. On many nights, Lincoln came by himself, delighted at the chance to sink into his seat as the gaslights dimmed and the action on the stage began.
“It gave him an hour or two of freedom from care and worry,” observed Brooks, “and what was better, freedom from the interruption of office-seekers and politicians. He was on such terms with the managers of two of the theaters that he could go in privately by the stage door, and slip into the stage boxes without being seen by the audience.” More than anything else, Stoddard remarked how “the drama by drawing his mind into other channels of thought, afforded him the most entire relief.” At a performance of Henry IV: Part One, Stoddard noted how thoroughly Lincoln enjoyed himself. “He has forgotten the war. He has forgotten Congress. He is out of politics. He is living in Prince Hal’s time.”
It is not surprising that the theater offered ideal refreshment for a man who regularly employed storytelling to ease tensions. The theater held all the elements of a perfect escape. Enthralled by the live drama, the costumes and scenery, the stagecraft, and the rhetorical extravagances, he was transported into a realm far from the troubling events that filled the rest of his waking hours.
In the mid-nineteenth century, developments with gaslight had vastly improved the experience of theatergoers. Managers had learned “to dim or brighten illumination” by manipulating the valves that fed the gas to the jets. A setting sun, a full moon, or a misty evening could be achieved by placing “colored glass mantles” over the lamps. Technicians stationed above the balcony could illuminate individual actors as they made their entrance onto the stage.
“To envision nineteenth-century theater audiences correctly,” the cultural historian Lawrence Levine suggests, “one might do well to visit a contemporary sporting event in which the spectators not only are similarly heterogeneous but are also…more than an audience; they are participants who can enter into the action on the field, who feel a sense of immediacy and at times even of control, who articulate their opinions and feelings vocally and unmistakably.” Though different classes occupied different areas of the theater—the wealthy in the first-tier boxes, the working class in the orchestra, and the poor in the balcony—the entire audience shared a fairly intimate space. Indeed, Frances Trollope complained that in American theaters she encountered men without jackets, their sleeves rolled to their elbows, and their breath smelling of “onions and whiskey.” Though Lincoln was seated in his presidential box, he could still enjoy the communal experience, which allowed him to feel the pulse of the people, much as he had done when he traveled the circuit in his early days.
The years surrounding the Civil War have been called the golden age of American acting. During those years, one historian claims, “the American theatre was blessed with a galaxy of performers who have never been excelled”—including Edwin Forrest, John McCullough, Edwin Booth, Laura Keene, and Charlotte Cushman. It was said of Miss Cushman, who was lionized in both Europe and America for her role as Lady Macbeth, that “she was not a great actress merely, but she was a great woman.” She had a magnetic personality and “when she came upon the stage she filled it with…the brilliant vitality of her presence.” A liberated woman, far ahead of her time, she had lovers but never married. Her work was her chief passion.
Seward and Miss Cushman had met in the 1850s and become great friends. Whenever she was in Washington, she stayed at the Seward home. The celebrated actress forged a close relationship with young Fanny, who idolized her. Miss Cushman offered a glimpse of the vital and independent life Fanny hoped to lead someday, if her dream to become a writer came true. “Imagine me,” Fanny wrote her mother after one of Miss Cushman’s visits, “full of the old literary fervor and anxious to be at work, to try hard—& at the same time ‘learn to labor, & to wait’ I mean, improve in the work which I cannot choose but take…I am full of hope that I may yet make my life worth the living and be of some use in the world.”
In honor of the star guest, Seward organized a series of dinner parties, inviting members of foreign legations and cabinet colleagues. For her part, Miss Cushman regarded Seward as “the greatest man this country ever produced.” Fanny believed that Cushman understood her noble father better than almost anyone outside their family.
Fred Seward recalled that Lincoln made his way to their house almost every night while Miss Cushman visited. Seward had introduced Cushman to the president in the summer of 1861. She had hoped to ask Lincoln for help in obtaining a West Point appointment for a young friend, but the scintillating conversation distracted her from the purpose of her visit. And Lincoln was undoubtedly riveted by the celebrated actress of his beloved Shakespeare.
Unlike Seward, who had been attending theater since he was a young man, Lincoln had seen very few live performances until he came to Washington. So excited was he by his first sight of Falstaff on the stage that he wrote the actor, James Hackett: “Perhaps the best compliment I can pay is to say, as I truly can, I am very anxious to see it again.” Although he had not read all of Shakespeare’s plays, he told Hackett that he had studied some of them “perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing ‘O, my offence is rank’ surpasses that commencing, ‘To be, or not to be.’ But pardon this small attempt at criticism.” When Hackett shared the president’s letter with friends, it unfortunately made its way into opposition newspapers. Lincoln was promptly ridiculed for his attempt to render dramatic judgments. An embarrassed Hackett apologized to Lincoln, who urged him to have “no uneasiness on the subject.” He was not “shocked by the newspaper comments,” for all his life he had “endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice.”
The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country.
Congressman William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania recalled bringing the actor John McDonough to the White House on a stormy night. Lincoln had relished McDonough’s performance as Edgar in King Lear and was delighted to meet him. For his part, McDonough was “an intensely partisan Democrat, and had accepted the theory that Mr. Lincoln was a mere buffoon.” His attitude changed after spending four hours discussing Shakespeare with the president. Lincoln was eager to know why certain scenes were left out of productions. He was fascinated by the different ways that classic lines could be delivered. He lifted his “well-thumbed volume” of Shakespeare from the shelf, reading aloud some passages, repeating others from memory. When the clock approached midnight, Kelley stood up to go, chagrined to have kept the president so long. Lincoln swiftly assured his guests that he had “not enjoyed such a season of literary recreation” in many months. The evening had provided an immensely “pleasant interval” from his work.
Of all the remarkable stage actors in this golden time, none surpassed Edwin Booth, son of the celebrated tragedian Junius Booth and elder brother to Lincoln’s future assassin, John Wilkes Booth. “Edwin Booth has done more for the stage in America than any other man,” wrote a drama critic in the 1860s. The soulful young actor captivated audiences everywhere with the naturalness of his performances and his conversational tone, which stood in contrast to the bombastic, stylized performances of the older generation.
In late February and early March 1864, Edwin Booth came to Grover’s Theatre for a three-week engagement, delivering one masterly performance after another. Lincoln and Seward attended the theater night after night. They saw Booth in the title roles of Hamlet and Richard III. They applauded his performance as Brutus in Julius Caesar and as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
On Friday evening, March 11, Booth came to dinner at the Sewards’. Twenty-year-old Fanny Seward could barely contain her excitement. She had seen every one of his performances and had been transfixed by his “magnificent dark eyes.” At dinner, Seward presumed to ask Booth if he might advise the thespian how “his acting might be improved.” According to Fanny, Booth “accepted Father’s criticisms very gracefully—often saying he had felt those defects himself.” Seward focused particularly on Booth’s performance in Bulwer-Lytton’s Richelieu, where he thought he had made the crafty cardinal “too old and infirm.” Long identified as the power behind the throne himself, Seward perhaps wanted a younger, more vibrant characterization for Richelieu. When Seward told Booth he thought his performance as Shylock was perfect, Booth disagreed, saying he “had a painful sense of something wanting—could compare it to nothing else but the want of body in wine.”
Detained at the White House, Lincoln missed the enjoyable interchange with Booth. A few days earlier, anticipating Booth’s Hamlet, Lincoln had talked about the play with Francis Carpenter, the young artist who was at work on his picture depicting the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the course of the conversation, Lincoln recited from memory his favorite passage, the king’s soliloquy after the murder of Hamlet’s father, “with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage.”
What struck Carpenter most forcefully was Lincoln’s ability to appreciate tragedy and comedy with equal intensity. He could, in one sitting, bring tears to a visitor’s eyes with a sensitive rendering from Richard III and moments later induce riotous laughter with a comic tall tale. His “laugh,” Carpenter observed, “stood by itself. The ‘neigh’ of a wild horse on his native prairie is not more undisguised and hearty.” Lincoln’s ability to commingle joy with sorrow seemed to Carpenter a trait the president shared with his favorite playwright. “It has been well said,” Carpenter noted, “that ‘the spirit which held the woe of “Lear,” and the tragedy of “Hamlet,” would have broken, had it not also had the humor of the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” and the merriment of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” ’”
No other cabinet member went to the theater as regularly as Lincoln and Seward. Chase and Bates considered it a foolish waste of time, perhaps even a “Satanic diversion,” while Stanton came only once to Grover’s playhouse, with the sole intention of buttonholing Lincoln about some pressing matter. Seated with Lincoln in his box, Grover had been startled when Stanton arrived a half hour late, sidled up to Lincoln, and engaged him in a long conversation. Lincoln listened attentively but kept his eyes on the stage. Frustrated, Stanton “grasped Mr. Lincoln by the lapel of his coat, slowly pulled him round face to face, and continued the conversation. Mr. Lincoln responded to this brusque act with all the smiling geniality that one might bestow on a similar act from a favorite child, but soon again turned his eyes to the stage.” Finally, Stanton despaired utterly of conducting his business. He “arose, said good night, and withdrew.”
According to Grover, Tad loved the theater as much as his father. John Hay noted that Tad would laugh “enormously whenever he saw his father’s eye twinkle, though not seeing clearly why.” Often escorted to Grover’s by his tutor, Tad “felt at home and frequently came alone to the rehearsals, which he watched with rapt interest. He made the acquaintance of the stage attachés, who liked him and gave him complete liberty of action.” Tad would help them move scenery, and on one occasion, he actually appeared in a play. For the lonely boy, who broke down in tears when the appearance of Julia Taft at a White House reception recalled his happier days with Willie and the Taft boys, the camaraderie of the playhouse must have been immensely comforting.
ULYSSES S. GRANT, the hero of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, arrived in the nation’s capital on March 8, 1864, to take command of all the Union armies. A grateful Congress had revived the grade of lieutenant general, not held since George Washington, and Lincoln had nominated Grant to receive the honored rank. With Grant’s promotion, Halleck became chief of staff, and Sherman assumed Grant’s old command of the Western armies.
Grant’s entrance into Washington was consistent with his image as an unpretentious man of action, the polar opposite of McClellan. He walked into the Willard Hotel at dusk, accompanied only by his teenage son, Fred. Unrecognized by the desk clerk, he was told that nothing was available except a small room on the top floor. The situation was remedied only when the embarrassed clerk looked at the signature in the register—U. S. Grant and son, Galena, Illinois—and immediately switched the accommodations. After freshening up, Grant took his son to the dining room at the lobby level. His slim build, “stooping shoulders, mild blue eyes, and light brown hair and whiskers” attracted little notice until someone began pointing at his table. Suddenly, “there was a shout of welcome from all present, an immense cheer going up from the crowd,” who banged their fists on the tops of the tables until he finally stood up and took a bow.
After readying his son for bed, Grant walked over to the White House, where a large crowd had gathered for the president’s weekly reception. Horace Porter, a young colonel who would later become Grant’s aide-de-camp, was standing near Lincoln in the Blue Room when “a sudden commotion near the entrance to the room attracted general attention.” The cause was the appearance of General Grant, “walking along modestly with the rest of the crowd toward Mr. Lincoln.” Meeting Grant for the first time, Lincoln’s face lit up with a broad smile. Not waiting for his visitor to reach him, the president “advanced rapidly two or three steps,” taking Grant by the hand. “Why, here is General Grant! Well, this is a great pleasure.”
Porter was struck by the physical contrast between the two men. From his uncommon height, the president “looked down with beaming countenance” upon Grant, who stood eight inches shorter. The collar on Lincoln’s evening dress was “a size too large,” his necktie “awkwardly tied.” He seemed to Porter “more of a Hercules than an Adonis.” Yet Porter noted the “merry twinkle” in his gray eyes and “a tone of familiarity” that instantly set people at ease. Watching the two men together, Welles, who was also present, was slightly disconcerted by Grant’s demeanor, remarking on his lack of soldierly presence, “a degree of awkwardness.”
After talking with Grant, Lincoln referred him to Seward, knowing that his gregarious secretary could best help the general navigate the crowds of admirers shouting his name and rapidly descending upon him. So frantic was the cheering throng to draw near the conquering hero that “laces were torn, crinoline mashed, and things were generally much mixed.” Seward rapidly maneuvered Grant into the East Room, where he persuaded the general to stand on a sofa so that everyone could see his face. “He blushed like a girl,” the New York Herald correspondent noted. “The handshaking brought streams of perspiration down his forehead and over his face.” Grant later remarked that the reception was “his warmest campaign during the war.”
The president was delighted by the crowd’s embrace of Grant. He willingly ceded to the unassuming general his own customary place of honor, fully aware that the path to victory was wide enough, as Porter phrased it, for the two of them to “walk it abreast.” Lincoln’s reception of Grant might have been more calculated if he had thought the general intended to compete for the presidency, but he had ascertained from a trustworthy source that Grant wanted nothing more than to successfully complete his mission to end the war. “My son, you will never know how gratifying that is to me,” Lincoln had told J. Russell Jones, the emissary who carried a letter from Grant affirming that not only did he have no desire for the presidency but he fully supported “keeping Mr. Lincoln in the presidential chair.”
After mingling with the excited crowd for an hour, the indefatigable Seward and the exhausted general made their way back to Lincoln, who was waiting with Stanton in the drawing room. They talked over the details of the ceremony the next day, when Grant would be given his commission. To help him prepare his response, Lincoln handed the general a copy of the remarks he would deliver before Grant was expected to speak. Returning to his room at the Willard, Grant wrote out his statement in pencil on a half sheet of paper. When the time came the following afternoon to speak, he seemed, according to Nicolay, “quite embarrassed by the occasion, and finding his own writing so very difficult to read,” he stumbled through his speech.
After the ceremony, Lincoln and Grant went upstairs to talk in private. Lincoln explained that while “procrastination on the part of commanders” had led him in the past to issue military orders from the White House, “all he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act,” leaving to him the task of mobilizing “all the power of the government” to provide whatever assistance was needed.
On Thursday, Grant journeyed by rail to the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac to consult with General Meade. Upon Grant’s return, Lincoln informed him that Mrs. Lincoln was planning a dinner in his honor that Saturday. When Grant begged off, arguing that he wanted to get back to the field as soon as possible, Lincoln laughingly said: “But we can’t excuse you. It would be the play of ‘Hamlet’ with Hamlet left out.” Still, Grant insisted. “I appreciate fully the honor,” he said, “but—time is very precious just now—and—really, Mr. President, I believe I have had enough of the ‘show’ business!”
Grant’s visit to Washington that March solidified his image as a man of the people. The public had already heard stories of his aversion to what Congressman Elihu Washburne called the “trappings and paraphernalia so common to many military men.” While the bill to establish the new rank of lieutenant general was being debated in Washington, Washburne recounted spending six days on the road with Grant, who “took with him neither a horse nor an orderly nor a servant nor a camp-chest nor an overcoat nor a blanket nor even a clean shirt.” Carrying only a toothbrush, “he fared like the commonest soldier in his command, partaking of his rations and sleeping upon the ground with no covering except the canopy of heaven.” Noting his preference for pork and beans, the New York Times speculated that caterers who had previously served “the delicate palates” of officers were “in spasms.” Everything Grant did during his four-day stay in Washington, from his unheralded entrance to his early departure, “was done exactly right,” the historian William McFeely concludes. “He was consummately modest and quietly confident; the image held for the rest of his political career—and beyond, into history.”
THE SPRING OF 1864 was “unusually backward,” Bates recorded in his diary. Trees that normally blossomed in early April did not “put out their leaves” until the end of the month. To those waiting anxiously for the army’s spring campaign to begin, it seemed that the “stormy and inclement” weather, which brought “torrents” of rain day after day, was nature’s attempt to forestall the inevitable bloodshed. Stoddard speculated that Grant was detained by the same “old enemy” that had stymied McClellan, obstructed Burnside, and allowed Lee to escape after Gettysburg: “the red mud of the Old Dominion.”
Lincoln remained convinced that in Ulysses S. Grant he had finally found the commander he needed. At a White House reception in late March, held in the midst of “the toughest snowstorm” of the year, Benjamin French reported that the president was “as full of fun and story as ever I saw him.” Three weeks later, on another stormy day, Lincoln was still “as pleasant and funny as could be,” entertaining an immense crowd of visitors at his Saturday levee. The following Sunday, he strolled into John Hay’s room, “picked up a paper and read the Richmond Examiners recent attack on Jeff. Davis. It amused him. ‘Why,’ said he ‘the Examiner seems abt. as fond of Jeff as the World is of me.’”
That Jefferson Davis was under attack in his own house was not surprising. In the spring of 1864, the Confederacy was “a beleaguered nation,” in James Randall’s words. “Finances were shaky; currency was unsound; the foreign outlook was never bright.” Though rebel convictions remained remarkably steady, there was “real suffering among the people.” A letter intended to be sent overseas fell into the hands of a New York Times correspondent. The writer, a Virginian, acknowledged the harsh impact of the blockade and rampant inflation upon daily life. “Refined and graceful ladies, who have been used to drink Chambertin, and to eat the rich beef and mutton…are reduced to such a state that they know not tea nor coffee, and are glad to put up daily with a slice or two of the coarsest bacon.” Furthermore, the “mass of misery” increased exponentially “as one goes down in the social scale.” Food riots had broken out in Richmond and Atlanta, and clothing was in such short supply that shops were vandalized.
Davis’s health gradually succumbed to the strain; his innate despondency deepened. Friends noticed a withdrawn air about him, and his evening rides were often companionless. Only the company of his wife, Varina, and his family let him truly relax and replenish his energies. Much like Lincoln, he spoiled his children, letting them interrupt grave cabinet meetings and enjoying their games.
Tragedy struck the Davis household on the last day of April 1864. Varina Davis had left five-year-old Joseph and his seven-year-old brother, Jeff Junior, for a few moments while she brought lunch to her husband in his second-floor office. Little Joe had climbed onto the balcony railing and lost his balance. He died when his head hit the brick pavement below. His parents were inconsolable. It was said that Varina’s screams could be heard for hours, while Davis isolated himself on the top floor. The “tramp” of his feet pacing up and down, recalled the diarist Mary Chesnut, wife of Confederate general James Chesnut, produced an eerie echo in the drawing room below. The relentless pace of the war allowed little time for mourning, for Davis understood, as did Lincoln, that it was only a matter of days before the spring campaign would begin.
By the first week of May, William Stoddard observed, Washington was filled with an “oppressive sense of something coming,” almost like the “pause and hush before the coming of the hurricane.” Although the trees were finally “full of buds and blossoms” and “a few adventurous birds” had begun to sing, “the day had no spring sunshine in it, nor any temptations to make music,” for everyone knew that ominous events were imminent. While confidence in Grant remained high, many people, Nicolay conceded, were “beginning to feel superstitious” about his prospects, since previous spring campaigns had “so generally been failures.”
Aware that communications would be sporadic once Lieutenant General Grant launched his assault on Lee, Lincoln wrote him a letter that Hay described as “full of kindness & dignity at once.” He conveyed his “entire satisfaction with what you have done,” and promised that “if there is anything wanting which is within my power to give,” it would be provided. Grant graciously replied that he had thus far “been astonished at the readiness with which every thing asked for has been yielded.” The final line of Grant’s letter illustrated the profound difference between his character and McClellan’s. “Should my success be less than I desire, and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.”
Lincoln had heartily approved Grant’s plan to move in three directions at once: the Army of the Potomac would strike Lee head-on, forcing him to retreat south toward Richmond; Sherman would move through Georgia from west to east, with the aim of capturing Atlanta; Butler, meanwhile, would move northeast against Richmond from the James River. “This concerted movement,” Lincoln reminded Hay, was what he had wanted all along, “so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers.” Still, on the eve of battle, Lincoln felt great “solicitude” for his lieutenant general, telling Browning that while he had complete confidence in Grant, he feared that “Lee would select his own ground, and await an attack, which would give him great advantages.”
Lincoln’s fears proved prescient. As Grant moved south, Lee awaited him in an area just west of Fredericksburg known as the Wilderness—an unforgiving maze of craggy ravines and slippery bogs, dense with vines and thorn bushes. The gloomy terrain provided cover for Lee’s earthworks and prevented Grant’s superb artillery from being used: it effectively negated the Union’s superiority of numbers. Nonetheless, Grant pushed relentlessly south to Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, slightly northeast of Richmond, engaging Lee in a hideous struggle. Men on both sides had to climb over the dead and dying, “lying in some places in piles three and four deep.” Grant’s biographer calls the campaign “a nightmare of inhumanity,” resulting in 86,000 Union and Confederate casualties in the space of seven weeks. “The world has never seen so bloody and so protracted a battle as the one being fought,” Grant told his wife at the end of the first nine days, “and I hope never will again.” He later admitted in his memoirs that he “always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.”
Grant buried the dead and sent the wounded to Washington, where they arrived by the thousands. Noah Brooks recorded the heartbreaking scene as steamers reached the city wharves, carrying the “shattered wrecks” of brave soldiers. “Long trains of ambulances are in waiting, and the suffering heroes are tenderly handled and brought out upon stretchers, though with some of them even the lightest touch is torture and pain.” The ghastly scene, repeated day after day, was hard for Washingtonians to bear. Judge Taft was present at the wharves one morning when three thousand wounded soldiers disembarked, “some with their heads bound up and some with their arms in a Sling,” others limping along. As each steamer landed, crowds gathered around, hoping to recognize in “a maimed and battle-stained form, once so proud and manly,” a husband, son, or brother. Elizabeth Blair fled the city, admitting that “the lines [of] ambulances & the moans of their poor suffering men were too much for my nerves.”
“The carnage has been unexampled,” a depressed Bates lamented in his diary. Even the optimistic Seward acknowledged in his European circular that “it seems to myself like exaggeration, when I find, that, in describing conflict after conflict, in this energetic campaign, I am required always to say of the last one, that it was the severest battle of the war.” The immense tension in the War Department, where the cabinet colleagues gathered each night to await the latest news, made it impossible to carry out ordinary business. “The intense anxiety is oppressive,” Welles conceded, “and almost unfits the mind for mental activity.” John Nicolay wrote to Therena that he was “more nervous and anxious” during these weeks than he had been “for a year previous.” Still, he added, “if my own anxiety is so great, what must be [the president’s] solicitude, after waiting through three long, weary years of doubt and disaster.”
There were, indeed, nights when Lincoln did not sleep. One of these nights, Francis Carpenter “met him, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth…his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast.” There were moments when he was overwhelmed with sorrow at the appalling loss of life. As the leader of his cabinet and the leader of his country, however, he understood the need to remain collected and project hope and confidence to his colleagues and his people. Between anxious hours at the War Department awaiting news from the front, Lincoln made time to get to the theater, attend a public lecture on Gettysburg, and see an opera. “People may think strange of it,” he explained, “but I must have some relief from this terrible anxiety, or it will kill me.”
Schuyler Colfax came to visit one Sunday during the Battle of the Wilderness. “I saw [Lincoln] walk up and down the Executive Chamber, his long arms behind his back, his dark features contracted still more with gloom; and as he looked up, I thought his face the saddest one I had ever seen.” But, Colfax added, “he quickly recovered,” and suddenly spoke of Grant with such confidence that “hope beamed on his face.” An hour later, greeting a delegation of congressional visitors, he managed to tell “story after story,” which hid “his saddened heart from their keen and anxious scrutiny.”
Lincoln never lost faith in Grant. He realized that whereas “any other General” would have retreated after sustaining such terrible losses, Grant somehow retained “the dogged pertinacity…that wins.” Lincoln hugged and kissed a young reporter on the forehead who arrived at the White House with a verbal message from the general that said, “there is to be no turning back.” His spirits rose further when he read the words in Grant’s famous dispatch on May 11: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” When a visitor asked one day about the prospects of the army under Grant, Lincoln’s face lit up “with that peculiar smile which he always puts on when about to tell a good story.” The question, he said, “reminds me of a little anecdote about the automaton chessplayer, which many years ago astonished the world by its skill in that game. After a while the automaton was challenged by a celebrated player, who, to his great chagrin, was beaten twice by the machine. At the end of the second game, the player, significantly pointing his finger at the automaton, exclaimed in a very decided tone. ‘There’s a man in it!’” That, he explained, referring to Grant, was “the secret” to the army’s fortunes.
IN EARLY JUNE, when the Republican Convention was set to open in Baltimore, Salmon Chase grew restless. Though he had withdrawn his name from the race the previous March, he still retained the hope that events might turn in his favor. Thurlow Weed had repeatedly warned the president that Chase’s withdrawal was simply a “shrewd dodge” that would allow him “to turn up again with more strength than ever.” The well-informed political boss had compiled a long list of Treasury employees who were devoting all their energies to the Chase campaign. More troubling still, Weed had heard from myriad sources that corrupt Treasury agents were exchanging army supplies for Confederate cotton in violation of the congressional law that forbade any trade between the free and slave states without an express permit from the Treasury. Weed believed that Chase’s son-in-law, Sprague, was a beneficiary of one of these schemes. He could not fathom Lincoln’s refusal to fire Chase, predicting that if the president “goes into the canvass with this mill-stone tied to him, he will inevitably sink.”
Meanwhile, the smoldering feud between Chase and the Blairs erupted into full public view. With the army in winter quarters the previous January, Frank Blair had resigned his commission and retaken his seat in Congress. He intended to return to Sherman’s command in time for the march to Atlanta, but first, he had a score to settle with Chase. A Chase partisan had publicly accused Blair of swindling the government by charging $8,000 for a personal shipment of liquor and tobacco. Blair knew the document in question was spurious and suspected that it had been forged in the Treasury Department. He asked a congressional committee to investigate the matter. The resulting report fully exonerated Blair. The accusing document was, indeed, a forgery penned by a Treasury agent. Although there was no suggestion of Chase’s personal involvement, Blair waited for the issuance of the committee’s report before rising to speak on the floor.
Addressing a packed audience the day before his scheduled departure for Sherman’s army, he began by calmly summarizing the report’s findings. His self-control swiftly vanished, however, as he turned his anger on Chase. “These dogs have been set on me by their master, and since I have whipped them back into their kennel I mean to hold their master responsible for this outrage and not the curs who have been set upon me.” Speaker Colfax admonished Blair to stick to the committee report, but Blair’s supporters insisted that he be allowed to continue. He accused Chase of corruption, treachery against Lincoln, lack of patriotism, and sordid ambition for the presidency.
Elizabeth Blair, present in the galleries, believed the speech “a complete triumph” in the short run but worried about its livid tone. “Anger is the poorest of counselors,” she conceded, “& revenge is suicide.” She was right to worry, for the speech inflamed the ongoing war between Chase and Blair that would end by damaging both men. Chase’s friends reacted quickly, labeling the accusations against the treasury secretary “mendacious slanders.”
Gideon Welles considered the speech “violent and injudicious” and feared that it would ultimately hurt the president. The wise navy secretary was dismayed by the continuing feud between Chase and the Blairs, believing both sides shared the blame. “Chase is deficient in magnanimity and generosity. The Blairs have both, but they have strong resentments. Warfare with them is open, bold and unsparing. With Chase it is silent, persistent, but regulated with discretion.”
Chase was told about the speech later that night as he boarded a train to the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore. His friend Congressman Albert Riddle joined him in his private car. “He was alone,” Riddle recalled, “and in a frightful rage, and controlled himself with difficulty while he explained the cause. The recital in a hoarse, constrained voice, seemed to rekindle his anger and aggravate his intensity. The spacious car fairly trembled under his feet.” Chase felt certain that “all this, including the speech, had been done with the cordial approval of the President.” Ohio congressman James Garfield agreed with this assessment. He considered Frank Blair Lincoln’s “creature,” sent to the House for the “special purpose” of destroying Chase’s reputation. With this accomplished, Garfield charged, Lincoln would simply renew Blair’s commission and return him to the front, “thus ratifying all he said and did while here.” Chase told Riddle that unless Lincoln repudiated Blair, he would feel honor-bound once again to tender his resignation.
Riddle and another friend of Chase’s, Rufus Spalding, called on the president. They warned him that “Chase’s abrupt resignation now would be equal in its effects to a severe set-back of the army under Grant.” Explaining that the coincidence of Blair’s vicious speech and the president’s renewal of his commission “seemed as if planned for dramatic effect, as parts of a conspiracy against a most important member of the Cabinet,” they demanded to know if Lincoln had known ahead of time the nature of Blair’s remarks.
Lincoln had prepared well for the encounter. The last thing he wanted was for Chase to resign on a point of honor. The rift between the radicals and conservatives in the Republican Party might then become irreparable. He gave the visitors his usual undivided attention. When they finished, Riddle recalled, “he arose, came round, and with great cordiality took each of us by the hand and evinced the greatest satisfaction at our presence.” Then, taking up a stack of papers on his desk, he inquired if either of them had seen his letter to Chase two months earlier when the secretary had offered to resign over his implication in the humiliating Pomeroy circular. Determining that Riddle had not, Lincoln read aloud the lines where he concurred with Chase that neither of them should be “held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance.”
He explained that while he had great respect for Frank Blair, he “was annoyed and mortified by the speech.” He had, in fact, warned Blair against “pursuing a personal warfare.” As soon as he heard of Blair’s rant, Lincoln knew that “another beehive was kicked over” and considered canceling “the orders restoring him to the army and assigning him to command.” After assessing how much General Sherman valued Frank’s services, however, he had decided to let the orders stand.
In making his case, Riddle recalled, Lincoln “was plain, sincere, and most impressive.” Riddle and Spalding were “perfectly satisfied” and assured Lincoln that Chase would be, too. Once again, Lincoln had sutured a potentially dangerous wound within his administration and his party.
IT WAS A WARM DAY on June 7, 1864, when Republicans gathered in Baltimore to choose their candidates for president and vice president. Noah Brooks was moved by the sight of the people’s representatives gathering “in the midst of a civil war and in the actual din of battle” to perform the most precious function of democracy. The Democrats would also meet that summer, though they delayed their convention until the end of August to give themselves a better chance to react to the latest events on the battlefield.
As the delegates from twenty-five states flocked to the Republican Convention, which was relabeled the National Union Convention, Lincoln’s renomination was assured. So certain was the outcome that David Davis, who had been instrumental in guiding Lincoln to the nomination four years earlier, chose not to attend. He had originally planned to go, he told Lincoln, “but since the New York & Ohio Conventions, the necessity for doing so is foreclosed—I have kept count of all the States that have instructed, & you must be nominated by acclamation—if there had been a speck of opposition, I wd have gone to Baltimore—But the opposition is so utterly beaten, that the fight is not even interesting, and the services of no one is necessary.” In Judge Davis’s stead, Lincoln sent John Nicolay as his personal emissary to the convention.
Even Horace Greeley, while holding out for an alternative, acknowledged that the president had earned an honored place in the hearts of his fellow Americans. “The People think of him by night & by day & pray for him & their hearts are where they have made so heavy investments.” Long before the convention opened its doors, the official nominating committee said, “popular instinct had plainly indicated [Lincoln] as its candidate,” and the work of the convention was simply to register “the popular will.” While politicians in Washington may have entertained other prospects, Brooks observed, “the country at large really thought of no name but Lincoln’s.”
There were, of course, some pockets of resistance. At the end of May, several hundred malcontents had gathered in Cleveland’s Chapin Hall to nominate John Frémont for president on a third-party ticket. Frémont had never forgiven Lincoln for relieving him of command in 1861. Though he had eventually been offered another commission, he had refused upon learning that he would report to another general. His supporters were a mix of radicals, abolitionists, disappointed office seekers, and Copperheads. They hoped to split the Republican Party with a platform calling for a constitutional amendment ending slavery. They demanded that Congress, rather than the president, take the lead on Reconstruction, and pressed for the “confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers.”
Lincoln had been in the telegraph office when reports of the Frémont convention came over the wires. Hearing that the attendance was a mere four hundred of the expected thousands, he was reminded of a passage in the Bible. Opening his Bible to I Samuel 22:2, he read aloud: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”
The night before the Baltimore convention, Lincoln talked with Noah Brooks. When Brooks observed that his “renomination was an absolute certainty,” Lincoln “cheerfully conceded that point without any false modesty.” Understanding that there were several candidates for vice president, including the incumbent Hannibal Hamlin, New York’s Daniel Dickinson, and Tennessee’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln declined to express his preference. He did say, however, that “he hoped that the convention would declare in favor of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery,” and he asked Brooks to report back to him all “the odd bits of gossip” that a good reporter would pick up.
As expected, the convention was initially confronted with two contesting delegations from Missouri: an anti-Blair radical delegation pledged to vote for Grant as a means of expressing displeasure with Lincoln, and a pro-Blair conservative delegation pledged to Lincoln. With the president’s approval, the radical delegation was seated. Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating “all the elements of the Republican party—including the impracticables, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women.” Moreover, the radicals had tacitly agreed that they would switch their votes to Lincoln after the first ballot, making the president’s nomination unanimous.
Nothing better indicated the nation’s transformation since the Chicago convention four years earlier than the tumultuous applause that greeted the third resolution of the platform: “Resolved, That as Slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength, of this Rebellion…[we] demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic.” While upholding the president’s proclamation, which “aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil,” the resolution continued: “we are in favor, furthermore,” of a constitutional amendment to “forever prohibit the existence of slavery” in the United States.
Resounding applause also greeted the resolution thanking soldiers and sailors, “who have periled their lives in defense of their country”; but the crowd’s greatest demonstration was reserved for the resolution endorsing Lincoln’s leadership. “The enthusiasm was terrific,” Brooks noted, “the convention breaking out into yells and cheers unbounded as soon as the beloved name of Lincoln was spoken.” The only discordant note was the passage of a radical plank aimed at conservative Montgomery Blair, calling for “a purge of any cabinet member” who failed to support the platform in full. “Harmony was restored” when the roll call nominating Lincoln was completed, at which point, the National Republican noted, “the audience rose en masse, and such an enthusiastic demonstration was scarcely ever paralleled. Men waved their hands and hats, and ladies, in the galleries, their kerchiefs,” while the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The next order of business was the nomination of a vice president. Though Thurlow Weed was not a delegate, his towering presence played a central role in the selection of Andrew Johnson. Always alive to the interests of his oldest friend, Seward, Weed at once understood that if New York’s Daniel Dickinson received the vice presidential nod, Seward might not retain his position as secretary of state. An unwritten rule dictated that two significant posts could not be allotted to a single state. Weed had initially supported Hamlin but soon saw that the growing sentiment for a War Democrat would result in the nomination of either Dickinson or Johnson. He placed the Weed-Seward machine behind the victorious Johnson.
The results of the convention were routed through the telegraph office at the War Department. It was “Stanton’s theory,” his secretary explained, that “everything concerned his own Department,” and he had centralized into his office “the whole telegraphic system of the United States.” Lincoln was present in the late afternoon when a clerk handed him a dispatch reporting Johnson’s nomination. Having not yet heard his own nomination confirmed, Lincoln was startled. “What! do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?” Is that not putting “the cart before the horse”? The embarrassed operator explained that the dispatch about the president’s nomination had come in several hours earlier, while Lincoln was at lunch, and had been sent directly to the White House. “It is all right,” replied Lincoln. “I shall probably find it on my return.”
The following day, a committee appointed by the delegates arrived at the White House to officially notify Lincoln of his nomination. In response to their laudatory statement, Lincoln said he did not assume that the convention had found him to be “the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.’” Later that night, when the Ohio delegation came to serenade him at the White House, he humbly directed their attention to the soldiers in the field. “What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant,” he said. “I propose that you help me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers for Gen. Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command.”
A visitor to the White House at this time told Lincoln that “nothing could defeat him but Grant’s capture of Richmond, to be followed by [the general’s] nomination at Chicago”—where the Democratic Convention was scheduled to take place later that summer. “Well,” said Lincoln, “I feel very much like the man who said he didn’t want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of.”