Team of Rivals

  Moreover, with Lincoln’s blessings, monster mass rallies in city after city throughout the North were organized to express popular support for the war against the defeatism of the Copperheads. In New York, the Times reported, the “largest popular gathering ever held in this City” thronged Madison Square to hear General Scott speak and to “cheer with hearty voice each testimony of fealty to the land of the free and the home of the brave.” In Washington, Lincoln and his cabinet attended a giant Union rally at the Capitol, hailed as “the greatest popular demonstration ever known in Washington.” A journalist noted that while Lincoln was dressed more plainly than the others on the platform, with “no sign of watch chain, white bosom or color…he wore on his breast, an immense jewel, the value of which I can form no estimate.” She was speaking of little Tad, snuggled against his father’s chest. Though he occasionally grew restless during the long speeches and jumped off his father’s lap to wander along the platform, Tad quickly returned to the security of his father’s embrace.

  Scheduled for early April, the congressional and state elections in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire would be a test case in the battle for the heart of the North. Lincoln sent a telegram to Thurlow Weed at the Astor House in New York, requesting that he take the first train to Washington. Weed arrived the next morning, had breakfast with Seward, and met with Lincoln at the White House. “Mr. Weed, we are in a tight place,” Lincoln explained. “Money for legitimate purposes is needed immediately; but there is no appropriation from which it can be lawfully taken. I didn’t know how to raise it, and so I sent for you.” The amount needed was $15,000. Weed returned to New York on the next train. Before the night had ended, “the Dictator” had persuaded fifteen New Yorkers to contribute $1,000 each. Although Weed later claimed that he was ignorant of the purpose of the secret fund, it is most likely, as Welles speculated, that it helped finance a plan worked out between Seward and Lincoln “to influence the New Hampshire and Connecticut elections.”

  It was money well spent. Voters in both states defeated the Copperhead candidates by clear majorities, ensuring that the great war measures would be sustained in the next House of Representatives. The results were “a stunning blow to the Copperheads,” the New York Times noted. The surprising triumph “puts the Administration safely round the cape, and insures it clear seas to the end.” John Hay reveled in the thought that the elections had “frightened” and “disheartened” the rebels and their sympathizers, who had expected war weariness to depress voter sentiment. “I rejoiced with my whole heart in your loyal victory,” Stanton told an administration supporter in Connecticut. “It was in my judgement the most important election held since the War commenced.”

  “The feeling of the country is I think every day becoming more hopeful and buoyant,” Nicolay told his fiancée, “a very healthy reaction against Copperheadism becoming everywhere manifest.” Noah Brooks detected a similar shift in mood. “The glamour which the insidious enemies of the Union had for a while cast over the minds of the people of the North is disappearing,” he noted. The Copperheads “find that they have gone too fast and too far” in talking of a compromise peace, “and they have brought upon themselves the denunciations” of Republicans and loyal “War Democrats” alike.

  This was precisely what Lincoln had anticipated in the dark days of January when he told Browning that “the people” would never sustain the Copperheads’ call for peace on any terms. He had let the reaction against the defeatist propositions grow, then worked to mobilize the renewed Union spirit.

  AMID THE CLAMOROUS OPPOSITION in Congress, the continued threats of intervention from abroad, and the stalemate in the war, Lincoln remained remarkably calm, good-natured, and self-controlled. While Chase confessed to an unremitting anxiety and Stanton suffered from repeated bouts of exhaustion, Lincoln found numerous ways to sustain his spirits. No matter how brutally trying his days, he still found time in the evenings to call at Seward’s house, where he was assured of good conversation and much-needed relaxation.

  Seward appreciated Lincoln’s original mind and his keen wit. Fanny told of an intimate evening in their parlor when Lincoln engaged the entire family with an amusing tale about young women during the War of 1812 who made belts with engraved mottoes to give their lovers departing for battle. When one young girl suggested “Liberty or Death!,” her soldier protested that the phrase was “rather strong.” Couldn’t she make it “Liberty or be crippled” instead? Although Seward laughed as uproariously as Lincoln, it is certain that neither Chase nor the serious-minded Stanton would have enjoyed such broad humor. Nor would either have approved of the grim levity of Lincoln’s response to a gentleman who had waited for weeks to receive a pass to Richmond. “Well,” said Lincoln, “I would be very happy to oblige you, if my passes were respected: but the fact is, sir, I have, within the past two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond, and not one has got there yet.”

  Like Lincoln, Seward usually possessed a profound self-assurance that enabled him to withstand an endless, savage barrage of criticism. Noah Brooks noted that he was unfailingly cheerful, “smoking cigars always, ruffled or excited never, astute, keen to perceive a joke, appreciative of a good thing, and fond of ‘good victuals.’” Newsmen loved to hear Seward’s stories and he loved to tell them. At one dinner party, he talked nonstop from five-thirty to eleven o’clock. What left the deeper impression upon his listeners, however, was Seward’s unconditional love for Lincoln, whom he praised “without limitation” as “the best and wisest man he [had] ever known.”

  On the nights he did not spend with Seward, Lincoln found welcome diversion in the telegraph office, where he could stretch his legs, rest his feet on the table, and enjoy the company of the young telegraph operators. He sought out Captains Dahlgren and Fox, whose conversation always cheered him. Describing a pleasant evening in Captain Fox’s room, Dahlgren remarked that “Abe was in good humor, and at leaving said, ‘Well I will go home; I had no business here; but, as the lawyer said, I had none anywhere else.’”

  Occasionally, late at night, Lincoln would rouse John Hay. Seated on the edge of his young aide’s bed, or calling him into the office, the president would read aloud favorite passages ranging from Shakespeare to the humorist Thomas Hood. Hay recorded one occasion, “a little after midnight,” when Lincoln, with amused gusto, read a portion of Hood, “utterly unconscious that he with his short shirt hanging about his long legs & setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at. What a man it is! Occupied all day with matters of vast moment…he yet has such a wealth of simple bonhommie & good fellow ship that he gets out of bed & perambulates the house in his shirt to find us that we may share with him the fun of one of poor Hoods queer little conceits.”

  Lincoln’s evening rambles suggest that Mary’s continuing depression over Willie precluded easy relaxation at home. “Only those, who have passed through such bereavements, can realize, how the heart bleeds,” Mary admitted to Mary Jane Welles. Yet despite the desolation that still tormented her, Mary had gamely resumed her duties as first lady, telling Benjamin French that she felt responsible to “receive the world at large” and would endeavor “to bear up” under her sorrow. French, in turn, marveled at the “affable and pleasant” demeanor the first lady regularly displayed in public. “The skeleton,” he noted, “is always kept out of sight.”

  As the anniversary of Willie’s death approached, Robert came down from Harvard to spend a few weeks with his family. Encountering him at a number of parties, Fanny Seward found him to be a delightful young man, “much shorter than his father,” with “a good, strong face,” though not an especially handsome one. “I talked some time with him. He is ready and easy in conversation—having, I fancy, considerable humor in his composition.”

  With the official mourning period behind them, the Lincolns resumed the weekly public receptions they both enj
oyed despite the exhausting rounds of handshaking. In gratitude to Rebecca Pomroy, the nurse who had cared for Tad after Willie died, Mary arranged for all the nurses, officers, and soldiers at Pomroy’s hospital to attend a grand White House reception in early March. Mrs. Pomroy instructed the soldiers “to provide themselves with clean white gloves, and to look their best.” The White House that night was “brilliantly lighted and decorated with flowers in the greatest profusion.” Pomroy was certain that her soldiers would remember this night, declaring that if they survived the war, “they will tell their children’s children” of their enchanting evening at the White House.

  The abolitionist Jane Grey Swisshelm had initially been reluctant to join her friends at one of these Saturday receptions. She had no interest in meeting Mary Lincoln after the tales suggesting the first lady’s sympathy with the Confederate cause. Yet when she was actually introduced to Mary, she realized at once that the stories were slanderous gossip. “When I came to Mrs. Lincoln, she did not catch the name at first, and asked to hear it again, then repeated it, and a sudden glow of pleasure lit her face, as she held out her hand and said how very glad she was to see me. I objected to giving her my hand because my black glove would soil her white one; but she said: ‘Then I shall preserve the glove to remember a great pleasure, for I have long wished to see you.’” Over time, as the two women developed a close friendship, Swisshelm came to believe that Mary was “more staunch even than her husband in opposition to the Rebellion and its cause.”

  In February, Mary was delighted and surprised by Lincoln’s impulsive agreement to attend a séance in Georgetown featuring a celebrated medium, Nettie Colburn. The good-looking young woman’s sessions attracted many distinguished people, including Joshua Speed, who described Nettie and a fellow medium to Lincoln as “very choice spirits, themselves. It will I am sure be some relief from the tedious round of office seekers to see two such agreeable ladies.” When the president and first lady arrived, the host said: “Welcome, Mr. Lincoln…you were expected.” Lincoln stopped short. “Expected! Why, it is only five minutes since I knew that I was coming.” The guests settled into chairs for the presentation, which, according to the Philadelphia banker S. P. Kase, included a piano that “began to move up and down in accord with the rise and fall of the music.” Intrigued by the mechanics behind such spectacles, Lincoln told one of the soldiers present to sit on the piano to weigh it down. When it continued to move, the president himself “stepped to the end of the piano and added his weight to that of the soldiers.” When the rise and fall of the piano persisted, Lincoln “resumed his seat in one of the large horse hair easy chairs of the day.”

  At this juncture, Nettie Colburn entered the room, and Lincoln addressed her cheerfully: “Well, Miss Nettie, do you think you have anything to say to me to-night?” There is no evidence that Lincoln believed in spiritualism. On the contrary, after hearing the mysterious clicking sounds in the presence of another medium the previous summer, he had asked the head of the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry, to discover how the noises were produced. Henry interviewed the medium, Lord Colchester, who, unsurprisingly, revealed nothing. Not long afterward, Henry happened to be seated on a train beside a young man who revealed that he manufactured telegraphic devices for spiritualists. Placed around the biceps, the instrument produced telegraphic clicks when the medium stretched his muscle. Asked if he had sold one to Lord Colchester, the young man said yes. Lincoln was reportedly “pleased to learn the secret.”

  Lincoln’s lack of belief did not prevent him, however, from enjoying the evening’s entertainment. Nettie was an accomplished actress, ably mimicking the booming baritone of Daniel Webster or the frail voice of an Indian maiden. She spoke for an hour, channeling one voice and then another as she related historical episodes from the landing of the Pilgrims to the current war. Her oration, which carried a passionate abolitionist message, seemed to S. P. Kase “the grandest” he had ever heard. When the spirits left her, she departed as abruptly as she had arrived. All was silent for a while, then “the President turned in his seat, threw his long right leg over the arm of his chair,” and exclaimed, “Was not this wonderful?” He seemed to have viewed Nettie’s performance with the same pleasure he derived from the theater—respite from the cares of the day.

  CHASE, UNLIKE LINCOLN, was never able to forgo his statesmanlike persona and simply enjoy conversations and lighter amusements. He was inclined to let things fester, brooding over perceived slights and restlessly calculating the effect of every incident on his own standing. Weeks after the cabinet crisis had been resolved, he questioned his own decision to stay on board. “I have neither love nor taste for the position I occupy,” he told Horace Greeley, “and have only two great regrets connected with it—one, that I ever took it; the other, that having resigned it I yielded to the counsels of those who said I must resume it.”

  Chase became physically ill during the tumultuous debate on Capitol Hill over his banking bill, terrified that the measures necessary to finance the war would not make it through. When the bills passed and the new greenbacks were ready for distribution, he momentarily basked in the knowledge that the Treasury was full for the first time since the war began. He was also pleased by the fact that his own handsome face would appear in the left-hand corner of every dollar bill. He had deliberately chosen to place his picture on the ubiquitous one-dollar bill rather than a bill of a higher denomination, knowing that his image would thus reach the greatest number of people. His mood quickly darkened when he contemplated his own strained finances, however, and feared that his personal investments with Jay Cooke and his brother, Henry, might be misconstrued. Their virtual monopoly over the government bond business was beginning to attract negative newspaper comment, though they had succeeded brilliantly in selling the war bonds to the public.

  The stormy and irascible secretary of war also seemed unable to relax or distract himself from the incessant pressures of his office. Stanton’s clerk, Charles Benjamin, recalled that “a word or a gesture would set [Stanton] aflame in an instant. He would dash the glasses before his eyes far up on his forehead, as though they pained or obstructed his vision; the muscles of his face would become agitated, and his voice would tremble and grow intense, without elevation.” Though “the storm would pass away as quickly as it came,” and though Stanton would quickly make amends to victims of his ill humor, the employees in the War Department, while respecting Stanton greatly, never loved him as Lincoln’s aides loved their president.

  Stanton also lacked Lincoln’s ability to put grudges behind him. When asked why he disliked the Sanitary Commission, which had done so much to promote healthy conditions in the army camps, Stanton replied that the commission had persuaded the president and the Senate to appoint a surgeon general against his vigorous objections. “I’m not used to being beaten, and don’t like it,” he said, “and therefore I am hostile to the Commission.” In fact, Stanton admitted, he “detested it.”

  Those who worked with Stanton attributed his “nervous irritability” to the combination of overwork and poor health. At times, his asthma became so severe that he collapsed in “violent fits of strangulation.” Still, he refused to take a break. When doctors pleaded with him to get some rest and exercise, he insisted that he wanted only to be kept alive until the war ended and then, and only then, would he consent to seek rest. Though he loved good conversation and had built his large house in order to gather interesting people around his table, he stayed in the War Department day and night, rarely enjoying the convivial evenings that replenished Seward and Lincoln or that Kate provided for Chase. And while he enjoyed reading novels, with a special preference for Dickens, Stanton seldom found the time to unwind with a book. Instead, one of his clerks recalled, when he wanted “an hour’s rest,” he would lock his door, lie on his couch, and peruse English periodicals sympathetic to the Confederate cause, endeavoring to better understand the British attitude to the war.

  Unlike Seward, who had promptly broug
ht Fred into the State Department and relished the professional and personal support of his own son, Stanton had no family member or intimate friend to rely upon for daily counsel. Except for the initial appointment of his brother-in-law Christopher Wolcott as assistant secretary of war, Stanton refused to bring any of his relatives into his department. When Senator Ben Wade recommended an appointment for Stanton’s capable cousin William, the secretary angrily declared that no relative would have any “office in his gift” so long as he remained at his post. John Hay went so far as to remark that he “would rather make the tour of a small-pox hospital” than be forced to ask Stanton for a favor. Even when Stanton’s own son, Edwin Junior, wanted to serve as his private secretary after graduating from Kenyon, Stanton refused to bend. Only after months of unpaid labor for an assistant secretary did the boy receive his father’s consent to an official appointment.

  Stanton rarely returned to Steubenville during the war. During the winter of 1862, Christopher Wolcott had become seriously ill. When he died in April 1863, Stanton and his son boarded a special train to join Stanton’s sister for the funeral in Ohio. Pamphila’s conviction that her husband had died from overwork must have made Stanton’s attempts at consolation difficult. Though he tried to relax on his old home ground, revisit the places he had loved, Stanton returned to Washington more exhausted than restored.

  As the pressure on all the key administration officials mounted, Lincoln, with the hardest task of all, maintained the most generous and even-tempered disposition. Even he, however, was sorely tried on occasion. After recommending that the War Department utilize the services of a meteorologist, Francis Capen, Lincoln was exasperated when none of Capen’s presumably scientific predictions proved correct. “It seems to me Mr. Capen knows nothing about the weather, in advance,” Lincoln wrote three days after Capen had assured him it would not rain for five or six days. “It is raining now & has been for ten hours. I can not spare any more time to Mr. Capen.” He was more irritated when warring factions in Missouri refused to reconcile. He informed the recalcitrant groups that their continuing feud was “very painful” for him. “I have been tormented with it beyond endurance for months, by both sides. Neither side pays the least respect to my appeals to your reason. I am now compelled to take hold of the case.”