Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (28 page)

In the proceedings, Republicans and War Democrats united to nominate Mr. Lincoln as their candidate. The nomination would have been unopposed but for a delegation of twenty-two radical Republicans from Missouri, who first nominated General Grant before changing their votes so Mr. Lincoln’s nomination would be unanimous. The delegates also established their party platform, which praised the president for his management of the war and called for, among other critical issues, the pursuit of the war until the Confederacy surrendered unconditionally, a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, assistance for disabled Union veterans, and the construction of a transcontinental railroad.

Next the agenda turned to the selection of a vice president. Previously Mr. Lincoln had expressed his desire not to interfere and to let the convention decide, and once the debate began, he stuck to his resolution. Vice President Hannibal Hamlin wanted to be renominated, but much had changed since the election of 1860, and this time his candidacy stirred up little enthusiasm. Many delegates believed that they should select a War Democrat from a border state to broaden the appeal of the ticket. After some wrangling, they eventually chose Andrew Johnson, the Union military governor of Tennessee, a War Democrat and Southern Unionist who was nominated overwhelmingly on the first ballot.

Later that same month, the assistant secretary of the treasury resigned. Mr. Lincoln made his criteria for selecting a successor quite clear, but Secretary Chase disregarded the president’s wishes. In the ensuing disagreement, Secretary Chase loftily submitted his resignation as a matter of principle, as he had many times before—but this time, the president astounded him by promptly accepting.

Elizabeth expected Mrs. Lincoln to be overjoyed. At last, two things she had greatly desired had come to pass: Mr. Lincoln would be on the
ballot in the November presidential election, and Mr. Chase was out of the cabinet. Mrs. Lincoln’s worries should have eased, at least a little, but instead she seemed more agitated and anxious than ever. “What do you think about the election?” she asked Elizabeth one sultry morning at the end of June as she gazed out the open window upon the Potomac.

Elizabeth looked up from her work, fabric on her lap, needle in hand. “I think that Mr. Lincoln will remain in the White House four years longer.”

Mrs. Lincoln turned away from the window, her face a curious mixture of hope and apprehension. “What makes you think so? Somehow I have learned to fear that he will be defeated.”

“Because he has been tried, and has proved faithful to the best interests of the country,” replied Elizabeth. “The people of the North recognize in him an honest man, and they are willing to confide in him, at least until the war has been brought to a close. The Southern people made his election a pretext for rebellion, and now to replace him by someone else, after years of sanguinary war, would look too much like a surrender of the North.”

Mrs. Lincoln looked as if she wanted very much to believe her. “So you believe Mr. Lincoln is likely to be reelected?”

“Mr. Lincoln is certain to be reelected,” said Elizabeth emphatically. “He represents a principle, and to maintain this principle the loyal people of the loyal states will vote for him, even if he had no merits to commend him.”

Mrs. Lincoln pondered this for a long moment in silence. “Your view is a plausible one, Elizabeth, and your confidence gives me new hope.” Her expression suddenly clouded over with worry again, belying her words. “If he should be defeated, I do not know what would become of us all. To me, to him, there is more at stake in this election than he dreams of.”

Elizabeth studied her, wary and wondering. “What do you mean, Mrs. Lincoln?”

Mrs. Lincoln hesitated, took a deep breath, and said, all in a rush, “I have contracted large debts, of which he knows nothing, and which he will be unable to pay if he is defeated.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank. She had suspected as much for ages. Steeling herself, she asked, as perhaps she should have asked months before, “What are your debts?”

Mrs. Lincoln began to pace in front of the open window, wringing her hands. “They consist chiefly of store bills. I owe altogether about twenty-seven thousand dollars, the principal portion at Stewart’s, in New York.”

Elizabeth dropped her threaded needle and fell back against her chair. It was a shockingly enormous sum, more than Mr. Lincoln’s entire annual salary.

“You understand, Elizabeth, that Mr. Lincoln has but little idea of the expense of a woman’s wardrobe. He glances at my rich dresses, and is happy in the belief that the few hundred dollars that I obtain from him supply all my wants.” She stopped pacing and threw Elizabeth a beseeching look. “I must dress in costly materials. The people scrutinize every article that I wear with critical curiosity. The very fact of having grown up in the West subjects me to more searching observation. To keep up appearances, I must have money—more than Mr. Lincoln can spare for me. He is too honest to make a penny outside of his salary; consequently I had, and still have, no alternative but to run in debt.”

Shaking her head in disbelief, Elizabeth tried to sort out Mrs. Lincoln’s rationalizations. “And Mr. Lincoln does not even suspect how much you owe?”

“God, no!” she exclaimed. “And I would not have him suspect. If he knew that his wife was involved to the extent that she is, the knowledge would drive him mad. He is so sincere and straightforward himself that he is shocked by the duplicity of others. He does not know a thing about any debts—and I value his happiness, not to speak of my own, too much to allow him to know anything. This is what troubles me so much. If he is reelected, I can keep him in ignorance of my affairs, but if he is defeated, then the bills will be sent in, and he will know all.”

A hysterical sob escaped her then, and Elizabeth was compelled to assure her that Mr. Lincoln would be reelected, of course he would. She was also tempted to warn her that Mr. Lincoln’s reelection would only delay the inevitable, but the First Lady was already in such a dreadful
state that Elizabeth couldn’t bear to make matters worse with more harsh truths. Instead she murmured words of comfort and platitudes about frugality that she resignedly expected Mrs. Lincoln to ignore.

The subject resurfaced from time to time throughout those oppressive summer days, for anxiety seized Mrs. Lincoln with every bill that arrived in the mail or political setback that caused President Lincoln’s popularity to sag. Sometimes Mrs. Lincoln feared that her husband’s enemies would discover the particulars about her debts and use them against him in the campaign. Whenever this thought occurred to her, she became almost wild with agitation and fear.

Sometimes too she seized upon a way out of her troubles that seemed, to Elizabeth, a vain hope. “The Republican politicians must pay my debts,” she would declare. “Hundreds of them are getting immensely rich off the patronage of my husband, and it is but fair that they should help me out of my embarrassment. I will make a demand of them, and when I tell them the facts they cannot refuse to advance whatever money I require.”

Elizabeth thought that they certainly
could
refuse, and very likely
would,
and that all Mrs. Lincoln would accomplish with this scheme would be to place herself in the way of malicious gossip yet again. She gently discouraged her from confessing her debts to anyone but her husband and her trusted sisters, but she could not compel Mrs. Lincoln to heed her counsel—on this, or on practicing frugality, or on any other matter. What frustrated Elizabeth most was that all the while the First Lady fretted about her debts, she continued to spend, buying shawls and gloves and expensive trinkets she did not really need. The pleasure of buying pretty things seemed to help her forget her misery for a brief moment, but all the while, she was really only making matters worse.

Never in her life had Elizabeth known a more peculiarly constituted woman.

In the first week of July, General Sherman was making little headway in his offensive maneuvers upon Atlanta, and in the Shenandoah Valley,
Confederate lieutenant general Jubal Early halted the Union major general David Hunter’s thrust south and then turned his rebel army north toward the Potomac. Most Northerners assumed this was yet another summer raid and paid it little attention, but General Early’s Army of the Valley kept advancing, skirting Harpers Ferry to cross the Potomac at Shepherdstown and moving on into Maryland. State officials in New York and Pennsylvania were worried enough to call out more than twenty-four thousand militia to provide defense, but most people of Washington City had such confidence in General Grant that they could not believe the rumors that their city might soon be in danger.

General Early captured Hagerstown and then Frederick, demanding cash, clothing, food, and other necessary supplies from the citizens. Rebel soldiers fanned out into the countryside, claiming cattle and horses and harvesting at will from local orchards. This seemed to prove that they were indeed on a simple plundering expedition, especially since the War Department released no information to the contrary.

Then worrisome rumors began to circulate that General Early had crossed the Potomac with nearly twenty thousand troops and was advancing upon Washington. The newspapers printed the alarming stories, retracted them, and printed them again: General Lee had sent General Early north to menace Washington and Baltimore in the hopes of forcing General Grant to divert troops from Richmond to defend them. General Early intended to kidnap President Lincoln and hold him hostage, forcing the Union to capitulate. General Early planned to invade the Union capital in order to convince foreign nations that they must recognize the Confederates as a legitimate government. Mrs. Lincoln was with her family at the Soldiers’ Home, so Elizabeth could not hope to overhear anything that might dispel or confirm the talk on the streets. Like everyone else, she could only gather whatever useful news she could, and wait.

On July 9, the governor of Maryland and the mayor of Baltimore declared an emergency and called their citizens to arms. “It may without exaggeration be said today that we are having something of an
excitement,” the Baltimore correspondent of
The
New York Times
breathlessly reported. Union major general Lew Wallace, commander of the Middle Department and Eighth Army Corps, moved his meager forces—about 6,300 troops, mostly Hundred Day Men—in place to resist General Early’s advance, not knowing whether he intended to move toward Baltimore or Washington. The two armies met on the banks of the Monocacy about forty miles northwest of the capital, but General Wallace’s army was badly outnumbered.

Almost immediately, refugees from the countryside of Frederick and upper Montgomery counties began streaming into Washington on wagons piled high with their household goods, babes in arms, livestock trailing along behind. They told harrowing stories of advancing armies and narrow escapes, and it soon became evident that General Early’s forces had pushed forward to Rockville, a mere twenty miles away. The War Department had withheld information from the public to avoid causing a panic, but now there could be no more pretense. General Early was coming, and the city was not prepared to withstand him.

Although miles of trenches and earthworks surrounded Washington, the most experienced soldiers had been gathered into the Army of the Potomac for General Grant’s march on Richmond, and the soldiers left behind, mostly National Guardsmen from Ohio, had not been trained to use their forts’ heavy artillery. Every able-bodied citizen was called to defend the city. The Pennsylvania Bucktails who guarded the White House left their customary posts for the front lines. Quartermaster clerks took up arms and formed ranks. Eighteen hundred men from the convalescent camps and thirty-two hundred more from the Invalid Corps were put on active duty. Nearly one thousand marines and mechanics from the navy yard traded their tools for rifles. Civilians were quickly recruited into a Loyal League militia, and dozens of colored men were compelled to serve as teamsters.

President Lincoln was at Fort Stevens when the defenders began firing upon the Confederate advance; later it was said that he had stood on a parapet, a perfect target amid the flying bullets, until a nearby soldier roughly ordered him to get down unless he wanted his head
knocked off. In a potential disaster worthy of Bull Run three years before, thousands of eager civilians—men, women, and children—rushed to the fort to watch the spectacle, and when soldiers forced them away, they scaled fences, trees, and hills to get a better look at the fight.

But even as General Early’s forces reached the breastworks at Fort Stevens and he began gathering his troops for a full-scale attack, Union reinforcements from the Sixth and the Nineteenth Corps under Major General Horatio G. Wright began arriving in southwest Washington by steamer. The numbers of these desperately needed veteran fighters were few, but General Early must not have known that, because after two days of skirmishing—during which time additional Union troops arrived, further strengthening their defenses—he withdrew before dawn on the morning of July 13, so stealthily and unexpectedly that the Union defenders did not realize the Confederates had gone until it grew light enough to look out from the fort and see that they had disappeared.