Settling into his daily routine after the inauguration, Lincoln was determined to avoid the thousands of office seekers who again descended “like Egyptian locusts” upon Washington. “The bare thought of going through again what I did the first year here, would crush me,” he confessed. In the first months of his presidency, he had been disparaged for allowing office seekers to accost him at all hours, consuming his energy and disrupting his concentration. Nicolay and Hay had tried to get him to be more methodical, to close his door to outsiders for longer periods, but at the time he had insisted that “they don’t want much; they get but little, and I must see them.” Experience had finally taught him that he must set priorities and concentrate on the vital questions of war and Reconstruction confronting his administration. “I think now that I will not remove a single man, except for delinquency,” he told New Hampshire senator Clark. “To remove a man is very easy,” he commented to another visitor, “but when I go to fill his place, there are twenty applicants, and of these I must make nineteen enemies.”
With two classes of office seekers, however, he was prepared to take a personal interest—artists and disabled veterans. He expressed to Seward his hope that consul positions could be offered to “facilitate artists a little [in] their profession,” mentioning in particular a poet and a sculptor he wished to help. To General Scott, who was working with the Sanitary Commission to find government jobs for disabled veterans, Lincoln emphasized that the Commission should “at all times be ready to recognize the paramount claims of the soldiers of the nation, in the disposition of public trusts.”
With his cabinet, he was satisfied. The only change he made after the inauguration was to replace treasury secretary William Pitt Fessenden with the banker Hugh McCulloch. When he had assumed the post the previous summer, Fessenden had been assured that he could leave once the finances of the country were in good shape. By the spring of 1865, the Treasury was stable, and when Maine reelected him to the Senate for a term to begin on March 4, Fessenden felt free to resign.
Lincoln was sorry to lose his brilliant, hardworking secretary. Fessenden, too, “parted from the President with regret.” During his tenure at the Treasury, his initial critical attitude toward Lincoln had been transformed into warm admiration. “I desire gratefully to acknowledge the kindness and consideration with which you have invariably treated me,” he wrote to the president, “and to assure you that in retiring I carry with me great and increased respect for your personal character and for the ability which has marked your administration.” Noting that the “prolonged struggle for national life” was finally nearing a successful conclusion, he went on, “no one can claim to have so largely contributed as the chosen chief magistrate of this great people.”
Hugh McCulloch was entirely familiar with Treasury operations, having served as comptroller of the currency. When Lincoln first approached him, however, he was nervous about accepting the position. “I should be glad to comply with your wishes,” he told Lincoln, “if I did not distrust my ability to do what will be required of the Secretary of the Treasury.” Lincoln cheerfully replied, “I will be responsible for that, and so I reckon we will consider the matter settled.” McCulloch would remain at his post for four years and was “never sorry” that he had acceded to Lincoln’s wishes. The only other cabinet change Lincoln anticipated was in the Department of the Interior, where, in several months’ time, he intended to replace Usher with Senator James Harlan of Iowa.
The time had also come for John Nicolay and John Hay to move on. The two secretaries had served Lincoln exceptionally well, introducing a systematic order into the president’s vast correspondence and drafting replies to the great majority of letters he received. In their small offices on the second floor of the White House, they had served as gatekeepers, tactfully holding back the crush of senators, congressmen, generals, diplomats, and office seekers endeavoring to gain access to the president. John Hay was particularly adept at keeping the throngs entertained. “No one could be in his presence, even for a few moments,” Hay’s college roommate recalled, “without falling under the spell which his conversation and companionship invariably cast upon all who came within his influence.”
Lincoln had increased their responsibilities with each passing year. In 1864, Nicolay functioned as the “unofficial manager of Lincoln’s reelection campaign” and was dispatched as his personal emissary to ease tensions in Missouri and New York. Hay was chosen to accompany Greeley to Canada, to carry sensitive messages back and forth to Capitol Hill, and to enroll Confederate voters under Lincoln’s plan for the reconstruction of Florida.
More essential to Lincoln than the duties they so faithfully discharged was the camaraderie the young assistants provided him. They were part of his family, like sons during the troubled days and nights of his first term. They would listen spellbound when he recited Shakespeare or told another tale from his endless store. Throughout their years in the White House, they offered Lincoln conversation, undivided loyalty, and love. They were awake late at night when he could not sleep, up early in the morning to share the latest news, offering the lonely president round-the-clock companionship.
At the outset, Hay had been dumbfounded by the haphazard administrative style of the man he nicknamed “the Ancient” or “the Tycoon.” Something of an intellectual snob, the young college graduate had betrayed early on a hint of condescension toward his self-taught boss. Proximity to the president soon altered his opinion. He had come to believe by 1863 that “the hand of God” had put the prairie lawyer in the White House. If the “patent leather kid glove set” did not yet appreciate this giant of a man, it was because they “know no more of him than an owl does of a comet, blazing into his blinking eyes.”
By the spring of 1865, Nicolay, soon to marry Therena Bates, was contemplating the purchase of a newspaper in Washington or Baltimore, while Hay wanted time for his studies and his active social life, too long constrained by fourteen-hour workdays. While they would both miss Lincoln, they were glad to escape the constant struggles with Mary—the “Hellcat,” as they irreverently called her—who still resented their claims on her husband’s attention. Indeed, soon after Lincoln’s reelection, Mary had enlisted the help of Dr. Anson Henry in an effort to replace Nicolay with the journalist Noah Brooks. Nicolay had apparently tried to talk with Lincoln about his problems with Mary, but the president had refused any such discussion.
Seward found worthy alternatives for both Nicolay and Hay. When the consulate in Paris opened up in March, he recommended Nicolay for the job. The president agreed, understanding the significance of the opportunity for his loyal assistant. “So important an appointment has rarely been conferred on one so young,” the National Republican commented when the Senate confirmed Nicolay without a dissenting vote. Nicolay was thrilled. The position paid five thousand dollars a year, allowing him to start married life on solid ground.
Once Nicolay was confirmed, Seward turned his attentions to Hay, with whom he had become especially close over the years. Many nights Hay had wandered over to Seward’s house, where he was certain to find a good meal, vivid conversation, and a warm welcome. Moreover, in watching Seward and Lincoln together, Hay had recognized that the secretary of state had been the first cabinet member to recognize Lincoln’s “personal preeminence.”
In mid-March, Seward arranged for Hay to receive an appointment as secretary of the legation in Paris. “It was entirely unsolicited and unexpected,” Hay told his brother Charles. “It is a pleasant and honorable way of leaving my present post which I should have left in any event very soon.” He had thought of returning to Warsaw, Illinois, but Paris, France, was far more exciting. Hay planned to stay at the White House for another month or so, until arrangements were completed for Noah Brooks to assume his duties. Then he and Nicolay would sail for Europe to begin their new adventures. “It will be exceedingly pleasant,” Nicolay said, “for both of us, to be there at the same time.”
Spring seemed to revive the
spirits of Mary Lincoln, who invariably sank into depression each February, with the anniversary of Willie’s death. “We are having charming weather,” she wrote to her friend Abram Wakeman on March 20. “We went to the Opera on Saturday eve; Mr Sumner accompanied us—we had a very gay little time. Mr S when he throws off his heavy manner, as he often does, can make himself very very agreeable. Last evening, he again joined our little coterie & tomorrow eve,—we all go again to hear ‘Robin Adair,’ sung in ‘La Dame Blanche’ by Habelmann. This is always the pleasant time to me in W. springtime, some few of the most pleasant Senators families remain until June, & all ceremony, with each other is laid aside.” A few days later, she wrote a note to Sumner, telling him that she would be sending along a copy of Louis Napoleon’s manuscript on Julius Caesar, which she had just received from the State Department and knew he would want to read. “In the coming summer,” she promised, “I shall peruse it myself, for I have so sadly neglected the little French, I fancied so familiar to me.”
Like his mother, Tad Lincoln possessed “an emotional temperament much like an April day, sunning all over with laughter one moment, the next crying as though [his] heart would break.” The painter Francis Carpenter recounted an incident when photographers from Brady’s studio set up their equipment in an unoccupied room that Tad had turned into a little theater. Taking “great offence at the occupation of his room without his consent,” Tad locked the door and hid the key, preventing the photographers from retrieving their chemicals and supplies. Carpenter pleaded with Tad to unlock the door, but he refused. Finally, the president had to intervene. He left his office and returned a few minutes later with the key. Though Tad “was violently excited when I went to him,” Lincoln told Carpenter, “I said, ‘Tad, do you know you are making your father a great deal of trouble?’ He burst into tears, instantly giving me up the key.”
Most of the time, however, Tad was “so full of life and vigor,” recalled John Hay, “so bubbling over with health and high spirits, that he kept the house alive with his pranks and his fantastic enterprises.” From dawn to dusk, “you could hear his shrill pipe resounding through the dreary corridors of the Executive residence…and when the President laid down his weary pen toward midnight, he generally found his infant goblin asleep under his table or roasting his curly head by the open fire-place; and the tall chief would pick up the child and trudge off to bed with the drowsy little burden on his shoulder, stooping under the doors and dodging the chandeliers.”
Though Tad never developed a love of books, and “felt he could not waste time in learning to spell,” he had a clever, intuitive mind and was a good judge of character. “He treated flatterers and office-seekers with a curious coolness and contempt,” marveled Hay, “but he often espoused the cause of some poor widow or tattered soldier, whom he found waiting in the ante-rooms.” His enterprising nature and natural shrewdness would augur well for him once his schooling was completed. With all his heart, Lincoln loved his “little sprite.”
IN LATE MARCH, Lincoln, Mary, and Tad journeyed to City Point to visit General Grant. For Lincoln, the eighteen-day sojourn was his longest break from Washington in four years. Grant had issued the invitation at the suggestion of his wife, Julia, who had been struck by constant newspaper reports of “the exhausted appearance of the President.” Grant worried at first about the propriety of issuing an invitation when the president could visit without waiting “to be asked,” but on March 20, he wrote a note to Lincoln: “Can you not visit City Point for a day or two? I would like very much to see you and I think the rest would do you good.”
Delighted with the idea, Lincoln asked the Navy Department to make arrangements for a ship to carry him south. Assistant Secretary Fox was not happy to be assigned the task, for he believed “the President was incurring great risk in making the journey.” To minimize danger, he ordered John Barnes, commander of the Bat, a fast-moving gunboat, to report to the Washington Navy Yard at once. Work immediately commenced on the interior of the armed ship to make alterations necessary “to insure the personal comfort of the President as long as he desired to make the Bat his home.” To discuss the meals and amenities Lincoln might require, Fox brought Barnes to the White House. Lincoln told Barnes “he wanted no luxuries but only plain, simple food and ordinary comfort—that what was good for me would be good enough for him.” Barnes returned to the Navy Yard to supervise the changes.
The next morning, Lincoln summoned Barnes back to the White House. Embarrassed at the thought that workers had stayed up all night to make alterations that might now require additional work, Lincoln explained apologetically that “Mrs. Lincoln had decided that she would accompany him to City Point, and could the Bat accommodate her and her maid servant.” Barnes was, “in sailor’s phrase, taken ‘all aback,’” knowing that the austere gunboat “was in no respect adapted to the private life of womankind, nor could she be made so.” He returned to the Navy Yard, where “the alterations to the Bat were stopped and the steamer River Queen was chartered.” The change of plans was particularly upsetting to Fox, who “expressed great regret that the determination of Mrs. Lincoln to accompany the President” had forced the shift to “an unarmed, fragile, river-boat, so easily assailed and so vulnerable.” He directed Barnes to follow Lincoln’s steamer in the Bat, but still could not shake his anxiety. Though aware of the danger, Lincoln remained relaxed and cheerful, talking about the problems of accommodating womenfolk at sea “in very funny terms.”
The presidential party, which included army captain Charles B. Penrose, Tad and Mary Lincoln, Mary’s maid, and Lincoln’s bodyguard, W. H. Crook, departed from the Arsenal Wharf at Sixth Street at 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 23. Stanton had been laid up for several days, but against Ellen’s advice, he took a carriage to see Lincoln off, arriving minutes after the River Queen’s departure. Anxious about the president’s safety, Stanton panicked an hour later when “a hurricane swept over the city.” The “terrific squalls of winds, accompanied by thunder and lightning, did considerable damage here,” the Herald’s Washington correspondent reported. “The roof of a factory on Sixth street was blown off into the street and fell upon a hack, crushing the horses and its driver.” In some neighborhoods, trees were felled and houses destroyed, “while down the river the steamboats and sailing craft were dashed about with great violence.” Leaving his bed once again, Stanton went to the War Department and telegraphed Lincoln at 8:45 p.m. “I hope you have reached Point Lookout safely notwithstanding the furious gale that came on soon after you started…. Please let me hear from you at Point Lookout.”
Lincoln, meanwhile, was enjoying himself immensely. While Tad raced around the ship, investigating every nook and befriending members of the crew, Lincoln remained on deck, watching “the city until he could see it no more.” Once inside, he listened with relish to the adventures of the River Queen’s captain, who had chased blockade runners early in the war. “It was nearly midnight when he went to bed,” Crook recalled.
Crook, who shared a stateroom with Tad, was “startled out of a sound sleep” by Mary Lincoln. “It is growing colder,” she explained, “and I came in to see if my little boy has covers enough on him.” Later that night, Crook was awakened by the steamer passing through rough waters, which felt as if it were “slowly climbing up one side of a hill and then rushing down the other.” The next morning, still feeling seasick, Crook noted that the turbulent passage had apparently not disturbed Lincoln. On the contrary, the president looked rested, claimed to be “feeling splendidly,” and did “full justice to the delicious fish” served at breakfast.
Mary would nostalgically recall her husband’s fine humor during this last trip to City Point. “Feeling so encouraged” the war “was near its close,” and relieved from the daily burdens of his office, “he freely gave vent to his cheerfulness,” to such an extent that “he was almost boyish, in his mirth & reminded me, of his original nature, what I had always remembered of him, in our own home—free from care, surround
ed by those he loved so well.”
Crook recalled that “it was after dark on the 24th” when the River Queen reached City Point. He would long remember the beauty of the scene that stretched before him, “the many-colored lights of the boats in the harbor and the lights of the town straggling up the high bluffs of the shore, crowned by the lights from Grant’s headquarters at the top.”
Newly minted captain Robert Lincoln escorted General and Mrs. Grant to call on the president shortly after he arrived. “Our gracious President met us at the gangplank,” Julia Grant recalled, “greeted the General most heartily, and, giving me his arm, conducted us to where Mrs. Lincoln was awaiting.” Leaving the two women together, the men went into the president’s room for a short consultation, “at the end of which,” reported Crook, “Mr. Lincoln appeared particularly happy,” reassured by Grant’s estimation that the conflict was nearing an end. After the Grants left, Lincoln and Mary, appearing “in very good spirits,” talked late into the night.
While the Lincolns were breakfasting the next day on the lower deck, Robert came by to report that the review planned for that morning would have to be postponed. Rebels had initiated an attack on Fort Stedman, only eight miles away. With Grant and Sherman closing in upon him, Lee had decided to abandon Petersburg and move his army south to North Carolina, hoping to join General Joseph Johnston and prevent Sherman from joining Grant. Abandoning Petersburg meant losing Richmond, but it was the only way to save his army. The attack on Fort Stedman, intended to open an escape route, took the Federals by surprise. Nonetheless, within hours, Grant’s men succeeded in retaking the fort and restoring the original line.