One Glorious Ambition (36 page)

“You know there are many pressing issues before the Congress. Will California enter the Union as a slave state? Will the other territories be free or not? Will fugitive slaves from the South be required by law to be returned as property to their owners?” Fillmore ticked off the items from an imaginary list. “Will the federal government assist in that return though it be against the morals of those who receive the escaping slaves? Should other states carved out of the Mexican accessions decide for themselves about slavery or ought there to be a wider federal policy? These are highly controversial matters, Miss Dix.” The vice president–elect raised his eyebrows. “You do understand?”

“I know. But for those desperate souls who have no one to speak for them, I must be their voice.
We
must be their voice, Mr. Fillmore.”

The politician sighed. “I suspect I will be presiding over a senate as cantankerous as a bull with a nose full of porcupine quills.”

“Will there be any room on your agenda for my bill?”

He was thoughtful. “It falls under the rubric of land use, Miss Dix. Land and property are the issues of note, those and the role of the states and the federal government. But please know that I am sympathetic to your cause.”

“I thought you might be.”

He nodded. “I believe it is the role of federal government to put its resources to good use for the whole nation, ‘to form a more perfect union,’ and not dribble things state by state, like a patchwork quilt.”

“And the president-elect?”

Fillmore hesitated. “He is a southern slaveholder. I doubt that the issue of the insane has come to his attention, but we will see what we can do with your bill, Miss Dix. We can work on it together, perhaps go around the president if need be.”

Dorothea knew her smile was broader than it ought to be, but she was heartened by the vice president–elect’s words. She had a champion at the highest level of government. God had given her another man of faith with whom to work.

“Meanwhile, it would please Millard and me to have you to tea each week, should your schedule permit,” Abigail offered. “We can keep up on the progress of your bill, and perhaps you will enjoy a little concert now and then.”

“I will indeed.”

She would happily sit through a young girl’s harp playing, knowing that music soothed the raging souls of the insane. She was hopeful again about her memorial. “Maybe the Senate should
consider music to begin their day,” Dorothea mused. “It might reduce their cantankerousness.”

“Oh, if only that would do it,” Fillmore said. “I should encourage an executive order immediately.”

The weekly teas, which the vice president sometimes attended, nurtured a growing fondness for young Abby Fillmore, reminding Dorothea of her teaching years. She found friendship with the spirited Abigail when they discussed books, and Dorothea silenced those moments of aching envy when she watched a husband treat his wife with gentleness and admiration. If this was what marriage could be, then it was indeed an institution worth considering. They were like the Rathbones and the Channings in that way, spouses who mutually cared for each other.

Away from those idyllic moments, however, Dorothea grew impatient with still more wrangling over land during the lame duck session. March could not come fast enough for the inaugural and Millard’s—as she now thought of the vice president—impending influence on behalf of her bill.

A February drizzle threatened to keep her indoors, so she forced herself to survey prisons in the Washington area instead. She also visited acquaintances to solicit funds for books for several jails and for the almshouses she had visited before. She heard
several music boxes play during her inspections, confirming that they had been distributed since her prior visits. The cacophony of tunes playing simultaneously suggested to her that she might intersperse the music boxes with kaleidoscopes. Dorothea believed these would bring ease to people, along with magic boxes that popped up to delight. She found a shop displaying inexpensive prints of flowers and landscapes. She had them framed and gave them to the jailers and the asylum superintendents to offer the promise of spring in a world stuck in winter.

Dorothea met with legislators, wrote letters, even corresponding with her brother Joseph, telling him of her current social status in the capital and her weekly meetings with the vice president’s family. She compared her life in Washington with tedious stagecoach travel, though her journey through the halls of power was not nearly as likely to bring her to her desired destination. She stayed in the city for the inaugural and spent the last days of the congressional session listening to arguments that did not advance her cause. At the end of the session, she packed her bags, hooked her glass shoe buttons tightly around her narrow ankles, and moved on to the next campaign. By her calculations, fifty of the sixty senators supported her bill. She would push it again in the next session, after things had settled down for the new administration.

Dorothea headed south again, spending nearly seven months traveling. In November 1849 she arrived in Alabama. She did her
usual work, cajoling and telling stories of the needy in her gentle yet mesmerizing way. “I was almost successful here in Mobile,” she wrote to Abigail Fillmore. “But then the statehouse burned, and when the assembly reconvened, of course, they had to fund reconstruction rather than my state mental hospital.”

She next headed to Mississippi, hoping for better results. These came about in March 1850 when the state set aside fifty thousand dollars for construction of the asylum the legislature had agreed to construct two years prior. “They want to name the institution after me,” she wrote to the vice president. “But I have told them in no uncertain terms I will not allow it, and my forcefulness has prevailed.”

“I have need of you!” Horace Mann told her. He championed her bill during the present term. “What were you doing in Alabama? You have to be here, be present. You never know when something will come up that can mean the life or death of your bill.”

“All the talk has been of slavery,” Dorothea defended. “Even rumblings about secession roll across the magnolia and jasmine, though I think it much exaggerated. No one speaks of those who have lost their reason. The vice president’s kept me informed, as have you.”

“Quite.” Mann brushed the air dismissively. “You’re here now. I have arranged for you to have an office in the Library of Congress. You may use my franking privileges and those of Senator Bell to write the necessary letters to once again gain support and
move the bill forward. Write to Kirkbride. Get him to get the hospital superintendents behind this.”

“That’s … quite accommodating of you, Horace. An office? I will make good use of it and your postal benefits. I’m … I apologize. I simply could not sit in the gallery each day and hold my patience. I feared I would leap up and shout out at the futility of so many political speeches. I had to get away and make something happen.”

“I understand.” His voice softened and he patted her gloved hand. “I’ve thought of screaming once or twice myself. But we are now trying to find a way to soothe the western and southern states that object to the land distribution arrangement in the bill. They resist the New England states receiving money from federal lands in
their
states. They want to keep it all. We have to forge a compromise.”

A compromise? “No! I’ve determined this is the only way to fund this! If we lower the federal minimum for land sales, there won’t be enough money for the institutions. You know the western states will want to give the money from the lowered acreage and keep the remaining for their projects that might not include the insane.”

“It would be a start, Dolly.”

“Watered-down soup lacks nutrition even if you intend to later add meat. We must begin with a full-bodied meal.”

He sighed. “See who you can persuade then.”

“I shall sit right outside the Library of Congress, and I’ll … I’ll hook them.”

The thought had just come to her. She would use the small end of her shoe buttonhook to lightly grab at the congressmen’s sleeves as they rushed to their next meeting. She would pour on her charm, let her eyes twinkle. “I’ll invite them in for a moment of their precious time, sugar.” She took on the drawl of southern women quite easily. She noticed it worked to get a gentleman’s attention, and if it didn’t, the buttonhook would.

Mann laughed. “Well, we might place the bill into the land committee, where those details could be worked out.”

Dorothea shook her head. “No, it remains in the select committee or it will be muted.”

“Stephen Douglas managed to get three million acres set aside for the Illinois Central Railroad. Think about that!”

“Did he?” Dorothea sat forward. “That bodes well, doesn’t it?”

“He succeeded by confirming that the railroad would extend to Mobile. There are always terms, Dolly. Always compromise.”

“And they did that? Pure politics.” She sat back, crossed her arms. “I will not stoop to such measures.”

Mann softened his voice. He was being reasonable. “If it was in the land committee, Dolly, you might see opportunities like what Davis managed. It’s how things get done here.”

“This is a good bill. You know it is. The Senate has just given three million acres for a railroad. I ask for little more for the insane. Is there not a higher authority than politics these men should follow?”

“Unfortunately,” Mann told her with a long sigh, “the wires to that higher authority are strung by men.”

Hooking anyone during the debate that came to be known as the Compromise of 1850 seemed futile, but Dorothea continued to sit outside the halls of Congress, chatting with anyone whenever the doors opened from the heated meetings. The men, however, either avoided seeing her, as they rushed by or paused and spoke of things deemed appropriate for public conversation with a woman. How was she feeling? Was her brother well? Did she like her office furnishings? All of this was a diversion from the work at hand, and Dorothea knew it. Each time, she brought the subject back to explore who might have personal concerns about someone relieved of their reason.

Yet the tediousness of the debate about lands and slavery upset her, and she undertook writing a bill to have two million acres set aside for schools for the blind, deaf, and mute.

Horace Mann chastised her. “You are weakening the position of your own bill by going off on these other tangents, however important they may be.”

“I have to achieve something.”

“We need your bill to go to the land committee.” His high forehead, sharp jaw line, and erect posture reminded Dorothea of a statue. “There is precedent now with the railroad acreage set aside.”

“We have discussed this. I will not give in to another congressman’s or senator’s pet project to get mine through. I won’t
have it. My bill stands on its merits. It is worthy, and I will not diminish it with politics.”

Mann brushed his white hair behind his ears with both hands. “You can be stubborn beyond good reason, Dolly. It does not always serve you. At least consider adapting it to make it more acceptable. Talk with Daniel Webster.”