Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Fred Seward recalled that his father shut himself off from all visitors and “devoted one entire day” to drafting a reply. The astute secretary understood the dilemma perfectly. As a practical matter, the United States could not afford to go to war with Britain. “With England as an auxiliary to rebellion,” Weed had forewarned, “we are ‘crushed out.’” It was necessary that the government release the prisoners and allow them to continue their journey to England. Yet, overwhelming popular support in the North for the seizure of the rebels had to be taken into consideration. “They can never be given up,” one newspaper protested. “The country would never forgive any man who should propose such a surrender.” Lincoln himself, though resolved to avoid war with England, was reportedly unhappy about submitting to the British demands, which many considered humiliating.
Seward composed an ingenious response, arguing that while Captain Wilkes had acted lawfully in searching the
Trent,
the legality of seizing contraband prisoners should have been decided by an American Prize Court. He recognized, he wrote, that he appeared to be taking “the British side” of the dispute “against my own country,” but he was “really defending and maintaining, not an exclusively British interest, but an old, honored, and cherished American cause.” The principle of referring such disputes to a legal tribunal, he reminded Britain, had been established nearly six decades earlier by Secretary of State James Madison when Britain had seized contraband from American ships in similar fashion. To “deny the justice” of the present British claim would be to “reverse and forever abandon” the very rationale upon which the United States had proudly stood in those earlier disputes. Therefore, in defense of “principles confessedly American,” the government would “cheerfully” free the prisoners and turn them over to Lord Lyons.
Seward presented his arguments in an extraordinary cabinet session on Christmas morning. The discussion continued for four hours. “There was great reluctance on the part of some of the members of the cabinet—and even the President himself” to accept Seward’s argument, Bates recorded. They feared “the displeasure of our own people—lest they should accuse us of timidly truckling to the power of England.” The prospect of returning the prisoners was “gall and wormwood” to Chase. “Rather than consent to the liberation of these men,” he wrote, “I would sacrifice everything I possess.” Only Monty Blair, the consummate realist, stood firmly with Seward at the start. At Lincoln’s invitation, Charles Sumner joined the session. As chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he had conferred with Lincoln frequently during the crisis, asserting that the government should not risk war with England. Sumner had read letters from two respected London officials to Lincoln and Seward, revealing that Britain did not want war and that “if the present dispute were settled amicably Britain would not interfere further in the North’s problems.” The presentations by Seward and Sumner gained some support; but the cabinet, unable to reach a conclusion, decided to meet again the following day to hear Seward present a new draft.
As the meeting adjourned, Lincoln turned to his secretary of state. “Governor Seward, you will go on, of course, preparing your answer, which, as I understand it, will state the reasons why they [the prisoners] ought to be given up. Now I have a mind to try my hand at stating the reasons why they ought
not
to be given up. We will compare the points on each side.”
Seward finished his twenty-six-page dispatch that night and read it to Chase at his house the next morning before the cabinet convened. After brooding through the night, Chase had concluded that Seward was right. “I am consoled by the reflection that while nothing but severest retribution is due to them, the surrender under existing circumstances, is but simply doing right,” he recorded in his diary.
When the cabinet met the following day, Seward presented his final draft. Though disturbed by the prospect of surrendering the prisoners, the members were relieved that no apology had been rendered and, as Seward boasted, “a great point was gained for our Government.” The dispatch was unanimously adopted. After the meeting, Seward asked Lincoln why he had not presented “an argument for the other side?” With a smile, Lincoln replied, “I found I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind, and that proved to me your ground was the right one.”
The following night, Seward hosted a dinner party to which he invited Senators Crittenden and Conkling and their wives, Orville Browning, Charles Sumner, Preston King, and English novelist Anthony Trollope, whom Fanny described as “a great homely, red, stupid faced Englishman, with a disgusting beard of iron grey.” The conversation at dinner was lively and contentious. Kentucky’s Crittenden became enraged when Seward pronounced John Brown “a hero.” Fanny was upset when Crittenden criticized Florence Nightingale, the celebrated British nurse of the Crimean War, saying, “he thought it a very unwomanly thing for a gentle lady to go into a hospital of wounded men.” Fanny saved her retort for her diary. “That was enough of you, Mr. C. if I hadn’t seen you at the table turn your head an[d] spit on the floor cloth.” After dinner, Seward took the men into the cloakroom, where he read his
Trent
dispatch. The listeners generally commended Seward’s handling of the crisis, though at the end of the reading, Crittenden “swore vehemently.” Everyone assumed the public would be infuriated by the decision and that the publication of the dispatch would “doom [Seward] to unpopularity.”
In the end, the public greeted the dispatch with relief, not anger. Compared to the prospect of fighting both a civil war and a foreign war at the same time, the release of the two prisoners seemed inconsequential. “The general acquiescence in this concession is a good sign,” George Templeton Strong observed. “It looks like willingness to pass over affronts that touch the democracy in its tenderest point for the sake of concentrating all our national energies on the trampling out of domestic treason.”
Lincoln himself finally recognized both the diplomatic logic and the absolute necessity of giving up the prisoners. And he was willing to admit that, in this case, his secretary of state had pursued the right course all along—a characteristic response that Fred Seward fully appreciated. “Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments,” he wrote, “but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart.”
W
ITH THE RETURN OF
C
ONGRESS
for the winter session, the pace of social life in Washington quickened. “Houses are being fitted for winter gayeties, rich dresses and laughing faces pass on every side,” reported
Iowa State Register
columnist Mrs. Cara Kasson, wife of the assistant postmaster general, who wrote under the pseudonym of “Miriam.” The city is “thronged with strangers, every nook and corner is occupied with…lookers-on at this swiftly-moving Panorama of life in the Capital.”
The crowds who streamed into the White House receptions that winter found a mansion transformed by Mary Lincoln’s tireless efforts. Peeling walls had been stripped and covered with elegant Parisian wallpaper. New sets of china adorned the tables. Magnificent new rugs replaced their threadbare predecessors. Even one of Mary’s severest critics, Mary Clemmer Ames, grudgingly admitted that the new rugs were magnificent. She considered the velvet one in the East Room the “most exquisite carpet ever” to cover the historic floor. “Its ground was of pale sea green, and in effect looked as if [the] ocean, in gleaming and transparent waves, were tossing roses at your feet.” A California journalist praised the finished product highly: “The President’s house has once more assumed the appearance of comfort and comparative beauty.”
The historian George Bancroft reported favorably to his wife about a visit with the first lady, who was able with equal charm to discuss her plans for the “elegant fitting up of Mr. Lincoln’s room” and to “discourse eloquently” on a recent military review. Bancroft “came home entranced.” Mary “is better in manners and in spirit than we have generally heard: is friendly and not in the least arrogant.”
As the bills came in, however, Mary discovered that she had overspent the $20,000 allowance by more than $6,800. Afraid to inform her husband, she inveigled John Watt, the White House groundskeeper, to inflate his expense accounts and funnel the extra money over to her. She had replaced her first Commissioner of Public Buildings after he refused to pay for an elaborate White House dinner from the manure account. She exchanged her patronage influence for reduced bills, and accepted gifts from wealthy donors. At one point, she asked John Hay to turn over the White House stationery fund for her use, and later to pay her as the White House steward. “I told her to kiss mine,” Hay jokingly informed Nicolay. “Was I right?” Mary was irate when Hay denied her requests. She tried to have him fired, forever losing his goodwill. “The devil is abroad, having great wrath,” he confided to Nicolay. “His daughter, the Hell-Cat…is in ‘a state of mind’ about the Steward’s salary.”
Despite her finagling, Mary found herself in trouble shortly before the New Year when more bills arrived with no money left in the account. She had no recourse but to tell her husband what had happened and to beg him to ask for an additional appropriation. To bolster her case, she asked Benjamin French, the new Commissioner of Public Buildings, to speak with her husband. French caught up with the president shortly after he returned home from a memorial service in the Senate for Edward Baker. The juxtaposition between the moving eulogies for his old friend and the unpleasant topic of decorating bills provoked in Lincoln an unusual display of anger.
The president was “inexorable,” French recalled; “he said it would stink in the land to have it said that an appropriation of $20,000 for furnishing the house had been overrun by the President when the poor freezing soldiers could not have blankets, & he
swore
he would never approve the bills for
flub dubs for that damned old house!”
Moreover, Lincoln angrily pointed out, the place was “furnished well enough when they came—better than any house
they
had ever lived in—& rather than put his name to such a bill he would pay it out of his own pocket!”
French was nonetheless determined to aid Mary’s cause. He liked her “better and better the more I see of her,” he admitted, “and think she is an admirable woman. She bears herself, in every particular, like a lady and, say what they may about her, I will defend her.” He succeeded in convincing a friendly congressman to hide a deficiency appropriation in a complex list of military appropriations. The crisis was resolved, at least temporarily, until Mary’s continued spending produced another round of bills.
Mary was not alone in her worries about money. In the fall of 1861, Kate spent several weeks in Philadelphia and New York on a mission to purchase new furnishings for her father’s mansion. Merchants gladly extended lines of credit for Kate as they had for Mary, creating great anxiety in her father’s mind. “I need hardly caution you to avoid extravagance, as it is going to be hard work to make both ends meet here; and if any circumstances should compel me to resign before long my expences shall have far exceeded my income. It does seem a little hard that one who has so much & such important work to do as I have had for the past twelve years should all the time have to pay such a large part of his own expences.”
The sense of injustice Chase felt in having to bear the burdens of public life lured him into a questionable relationship with a wealthy Philadelphia banker, Jay Cooke, who had been granted a lucrative contract from the Treasury Department for the sale of government bonds. Perceiving both Chase’s financial strain and his aggrieved pride, Cooke began to send valuable gifts to the Chase household, including an elegant open carriage for Kate and a set of bookcases for the parlor. As the relationship warmed, Chase borrowed money from Cooke, and eventually, Cooke took it upon himself to set up his own investment account for Chase. “I will take great pains to lay aside occasionally some choice ‘tid bits’ managing the investments for you and not bothering your head with them.” If all went well, Cooke hoped, the profit earned would make up “the deficiency” between Chase’s salary and his expenses, “for it is a shame that you should go ‘behind hand’ working as you do.” In the smooth Philadelphia banker, the Chases had found what Mary Lincoln unsuccessfully sought—a reliable source to fund the high cost of being a leader of society in wartime Washington.
B
Y THE END OF
1861, Lincoln realized that he had made a serious mistake in placing Simon Cameron at the head of the War Department. For many decades, Cameron had maintained his power base in Pennsylvania through the skillful use of patronage to reward loyalists and punish opponents. Unfortunately, the expertise of a wily political boss proved inadequate to the tremendous administrative challenge of leading the War Department in the midst of a civil war. A central system of civilian command was essential to construct a machine capable of providing strategy, supplies, logistics, and training for an army that had grown from 16,000 in March to 670,000 in December. Careful record keeping was indispensable when contracts worth millions had to be negotiated for rifles, cannons, horses, uniforms, food, and blankets.
As Lincoln confided to Nicolay, Cameron was “incapable either of organizing details or conceiving and advising general plans.” His primitive filing system consisted mainly of scribbled notes. According to Ohio congressman Albert Riddle, when Cameron was asked about the progress of a particular matter, “he would look about, find a scrap of paper, borrow your pencil, make a note, put the paper in one pocket of his trousers and your pencil in the other.”
The war was less than two months old when detailed accusations of corruption and inefficiency in the War Department began to surface in newspapers. In July, the Congress appointed a committee to investigate charges that middlemen had made off with scandalous profits on contracts for unworkable pistols and carbines, blind horses, and knapsacks that disintegrated when it rained. Though Cameron was not charged with pocketing the money himself, several of his political cronies had grown rich, vast public funds had been wasted, and the lives of Union soldiers had been jeopardized. As the charges multiplied, Republican newspapers began to call for his resignation, lest the entire administration become tainted by the scandal. “It is better to lose a mortified finger of the right hand at once,” the
New York Times
declared, “than to cherish it till the arm is full of disease, and the whole system threatened with dissolution.”