Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (25 page)

Elizabeth agreed, pleased that Mrs. Lincoln was thinking of her husband’s feelings and the difficulties he struggled with as a matter of course and not merely her own.

Tad continued to improve, but two days later, Mr. Lincoln returned from Gettysburg with a fever, which soon turned into varioloid, a mild form of smallpox. He was quarantined in the White House for three weeks, but Mrs. Lincoln confided to Elizabeth that he was rather cheerful about it. Since he had been president, he had noted, people had been crowding about him, always asking for something. “Now let the office-seekers come,” he joked weakly from his sickbed, “for at last I have something I can give all of them.”

In the first week of October, not long after Mrs. Lincoln’s return to Washington City, President Lincoln had issued the Proclamation of Thanksgiving. Despite the destruction of the war, he noted, the year 1863 had been bountiful, with fruitful fields, steady industry, widening national borders, increasing population, and plenteous mines. Even in the midst of a civil war of unprecedented magnitude and severity, peace had been preserved with foreign nations, order had been maintained everywhere except the theater of war, and laws had been made, respected, and obeyed. “It has seemed to me fit and proper,” the president declared, that these gifts of a merciful Lord “should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

After the president’s proclamation was released, Mrs. Lincoln and Elizabeth agreed that it was a wonderful idea, but when the day Mr. Lincoln had selected for the National Day of Thanksgiving finally arrived, it found the president still confined to his sickbed. Elizabeth imagined that he gave thanks nonetheless—for his son Tad’s improving health, for recent military victories that offered a glimmer of hope that the Union would ultimately triumph, and for loyal friends and wise counselors, and that most precious rarity of all, loyal friends who offered wise counsel.

On that Thursday of Thanksgiving, Elizabeth attended a special service at her church. Among the many blessings for which she gave thanks, she included President Abraham Lincoln. She could not imagine a better man to lead the nation through those dark years than he.

One blustery December day soon thereafter, Elizabeth was making her way to the White House sitting room where she usually sewed when a servant took her aside and cautioned her that Mrs. Lincoln was with a visitor, and sounds of intermittent weeping had been heard through the door all morning. Thanking him for the warning, Elizabeth prepared herself before opening the door.

Inside, Elizabeth found Mrs. Lincoln seated on the sofa, her hands clasped in those of a small figure swathed in black crepe—a dark-haired, sweet-faced woman who looked to be nearly two decades younger than Mrs. Lincoln, with pale cheeks and large, tragic, red-rimmed eyes. The ladies were engaged in impassioned conversation, but at the sound of the door, they fell abruptly silent and two tear-streaked faces turned her way. “Ah, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Lincoln, rising, her hand still in the younger woman’s. “Allow me to present my dear sister Mrs. Emilie Helm.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Helm,” said Elizabeth cordially, with a polite bow of the head, but Mrs. Helm was too distraught to do more than press her lips together in a pained semblance of a smile and nod.

Mrs. Lincoln crossed the room, placed a hand on Elizabeth’s elbow, and guided her back toward the door. “My sister and her daughter
arrived only yesterday, and we have so much to discuss. Would you come back tomorrow—no, the day after? And would you please—” Her voice dropped to a murmur. “What I mean is, we would not like it whispered about that Little Sister is staying with us.”

Elizabeth agreed, somewhat bemused, and made her way home. She had worked in the presence of Mrs. Lincoln’s guests many times before, but then again, Mrs. Helm was a most unusual visitor, being the widow of a Confederate general. Elizabeth wondered what the press would make of her finding sanctuary within the White House.

Two days later, Elizabeth resumed sewing for Mrs. Lincoln, and before long she was able to piece together the story of Mrs. Helm’s arrival at the White House. The young widow and her daughter had been traveling to Mrs. Lincoln’s stepmother’s home in Kentucky when they were detained at the border because Mrs. Helm refused to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. To do so would dishonor the memory of her beloved husband, Mrs. Helm insisted, and since the stymied border guards did not know what else to do with her, they held her at Fort Monroe, hoping she would change her mind and swear the oath so they could send her on her way. When her resolve did not falter, they telegraphed President Lincoln to ask him what they should do. He promptly telegraphed back, “Send her to me.”

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln adored the young widow they both called Little Sister, and both found comfort in her presence. Each was anxious to hear her opinion regarding the health of the other; to Mary, Mrs. Helm said that she thought the president looked well, only thinner, but when Mr. Lincoln confided that he thought Mrs. Lincoln’s nerves had gone to pieces, she replied that Mrs. Lincoln seemed very nervous and excitable, and her rapturous insistence that she saw Willie’s and Eddie’s spirits at the foot of her bed at night was frightening, abnormal.

As the days passed, Elizabeth overheard Mr. Lincoln imploring Mrs. Helm to extend her visit, because Mrs. Lincoln seemed better in her sympathetic company. Elizabeth too had noticed a marked improvement in her manner with Little Sister there, but she observed that for all the good she did, Mrs. Helm also introduced an uncomfortable tension into
the household. Word had spread throughout Washington that the Lincolns were harboring an unrepentant rebel beneath their roof, stirring up displeasure and contempt and more aspersions about Mrs. Lincoln’s suspect loyalties. One morning, Tad and his cousin got into a shouting match over who was the real president, Tad’s father or Jefferson Davis. Worst of all was a confrontation that took place in the Blue Room one evening, which a distressed Mrs. Lincoln described to Elizabeth the next day. Senator Ira Harris, father of a colonel in the Army Ordnance Department and stepfather of an officer in the regular army Twelfth Infantry Regiment, and General Daniel Sickles, who had lost a leg at Gettysburg, had come to the White House to meet Mrs. Helm, ostensibly to inquire about mutual acquaintances. The conversation took a disconcerting turn when Senator Harris, perhaps influenced by an excess of alcohol, began taunting the young widow with praise for the Union’s recent victories in the West, where her husband had been killed.

“And, madam,” he had said, fixing his glare upon her, “if I had twenty sons they should all be fighting rebels.”

“And if I had twenty sons, Senator Harris,” she had tearfully retorted, “they should all be opposing yours.”

“And then,” Mrs. Lincoln told Elizabeth, indignant and outraged, “Senator Harris turned his bleary eye upon me and demanded to know why Robert wasn’t in the army!”

“Oh, dear,” said Elizabeth. “What did you reply?”

“I told him that Robert was not a shirker and that he is preparing even now to enter the army. I declared that if fault there be it is mine, as I have insisted that he should stay in college a little longer since I believe an educated man can serve his country with more intelligent purpose than an ignoramus. The senator merely harrumphed at me. I wish I had thought of something more clever, but I was too upset. Robert knows he is criticized for not enlisting, and he would do so this very day if I permitted it.” Mrs. Lincoln frowned and wrung her hands. “I fear that someday soon, my husband will overrule me and let him do it.”

“Perhaps Mr. Lincoln could use his influence to find Robert a safe post.”

“I don’t believe there is any such thing. Oh—but then, after Senator Harris flung that question in my face, General Sickles hobbled out of the room to go harass my husband on his sickbed.”

“No!”

“Yes! Can you believe the nerve? Honestly, the general asked my husband, lying ill in his private chamber, how he could have a rebel in the house. My husband gave him all the courtesy due him as a wounded veteran, and then he said very solemnly, ‘Excuse me, General Sickles, my wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests.’”

“Mrs. Helm is family,” said Elizabeth. “Union or Confederate, family must come first.”

“Oh, Elizabeth”—Mrs. Lincoln shook her head ruefully—“if everyone felt as you do, we might not have had any war at all. I could fill pages and pages if I listed all the families I know that have been divided by this war. I would start with my own and go on and on until it broke my heart.”

Before the month was out, the strain in the household indeed became too much, and Mrs. Helm returned to Kentucky. Before she departed, she consented to take the loyalty oath, and so the president granted her amnesty.

After Little Sister was gone, Mrs. Lincoln sighed wistfully to Elizabeth that it would have been lovely if she could have remained at the White House throughout the holidays, to help them reclaim some joy from the season, but it was not to be.

But as Christmas approached, and as Mr. Lincoln recovered from his illness, and after the ordeal of Willie’s birthday with its painful memories of all they had lost was behind them for another year, something of the spirit of the season must have shone a little brighter for Mrs. Lincoln. One morning, she announced that she would put off her mourning weeds on the first day of January and begin the New Year afresh. Delighted, Elizabeth immediately began working on a new gown for Mrs. Lincoln to wear to the annual New Year’s Day reception. What a pleasure it would be to attire her most visible patron in something other than black silk and crepe after such a long time.

The gown would be magnificent, rich purple velvet adorned with Valenciennes lace and white satin fluting, with a sweeping train, finished with a headdress boasting a large white plume. “It will be good luck to begin the New Year finely attired in new clothes,” Elizabeth told Mrs. Lincoln as she cheerfully fit the muslin lining to her form.

Mrs. Lincoln sighed. “We will need more than good luck if my husband is to win the war and keep his high office in the year to come.”

“That’s certainly true,” Elizabeth replied, pinching two folds of fabric with her thumb and forefinger as she slid a pin into place. The Lincolns would also need perseverance, hard work, faith, and courage. Without those, all the luck in the world wouldn’t make any difference.

G
uests who met the president and his wife at the New Year’s Day reception that year took note of Mrs. Lincoln’s emergence from official mourning, which some believed was long overdue. Elizabeth knew that although Mrs. Lincoln still felt the pain of Willie’s death acutely, she realized that the demands of the upcoming election obliged her to put aside the solace of ritual for the sake of her husband’s political future—and her own.

Mr. Lincoln’s nomination and reelection was by no means certain. History and custom were against him; no sitting president had been reelected in more than three decades, when Andrew Jackson had won his second term in 1832. The people’s approval of President Lincoln reflected the outcomes on the battlefield, soaring in the aftermath of victory and plummeting after defeat. With an eventual Union victory seeming ever more possible, political discourse had begun to address the question of how to bring the South back into the Union after the war was over. Plans were under way for the reconstruction of Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, which were already largely under federal military control, but not everyone agreed with the president’s approach. As
the incumbent, he could not avoid receiving the blame for every wartime failure, and for every partial success that wasn’t succeeding quickly enough. Most Democrats declared his entire presidency a massive failure—an inaccurate but hardly unexpected assessment, given the source—but even his own party was divided in its opinions about his performance in office. Radical Republicans complained that he was too lenient with vanquished Confederates and that his plans for postwar reconstruction were insufficiently harsh. To secure the nomination, Mr. Lincoln would somehow have to convince the Republicans to unite around him, but this would be no easy task.