Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Under Stanton’s altered regime, the War Department opened early in the morning and the gas lamps remained lit late into the night. “As his carriage turned from Pennsylvania Avenue into Seventeenth Street,” one of his clerks recalled, “the door-keeper on watch would put his head inside and cry, in a low, warning tone, ‘The Secretary!’ The word was passed along and around till the whole building was traversed by it, and for a minute or two there was a shuffling of feet and a noise of opening and shutting of doors, as the stragglers and loungers everywhere fled to their stations.”
Stanton kept his meetings brief and pointed. He was “fluent without wordiness,” George Templeton Strong wrote, “and above all, earnest, warm-hearted, and large-hearted.” His tireless work style invigorated his colleagues. “Persons at a distance,” a correspondent in the capital city wrote, “cannot well realize what a revolution has been wrought in Washington by the change of the head of the War Department. The very atmosphere of the city breathes of change; the streets, the hotels, the halls of Congress speak it.”
After nearly a year of disappointment with Cameron, Lincoln had found in Stanton the leader the War Department needed.
E
ARLY IN
F
EBRUARY
1862, Mary Lincoln pioneered a new form of entertainment at the White House. Instead of the traditional public receptions, which allowed anyone to walk in off the street, or the expensive state dinners, designed for only a small number, she sent out some five hundred invitations for an evening ball to be held at the White House on February 5. Since the party was not open to the public, an invitation became a mark of prestige in Washington society. Those who were not on the original list, according to Nicolay, “sought, and almost begged their invitations.”
Mary prepared for her gala with great enthusiasm. She arranged for the Marine Band to play in the corridor and brought in a famous New York catering firm to serve the midnight supper. She had her black seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley, create a beautiful white satin gown with black trimming, a long train, and a low-cut neckline that instantly attracted Lincoln’s eye. He laughingly suggested that “if some of that tail was nearer the head, it would be in better style.”
Meanwhile, Willie and Tad had settled into a happy routine. They worked with their tutor in the mornings and played with the two Taft boys in the afternoons and evenings, either at the White House or at the Taft home. Judge Taft became “much attached” to both Lincoln boys. He believed that Willie “had more judgment and foresight than any boy of his age that [he had] ever known.” The four boys built a cabin on the mansion’s flat roof, which was protectively encircled by “a high stone Ballistrade.” They named their makeshift fortification the “Ship of State,” and equipped it with a spyglass that enabled them to watch the movement of boats on the Potomac and troops on the shore. They invited guests to theatrical performances in the attic. Riding the pony given Willie as a gift became another favorite pastime. In mid-January, when Robert came home on vacation from Harvard College, the family was complete.
Then, a few days before Mary’s grand party, Willie came down with a fever. Illness had been prevalent in Washington that January, as snow was followed by sleet and rain that left the ground covered with a thick layer of foul-smelling mud. Smallpox and typhoid fever had taken many lives. “There is a good deal of alarm in the City on account of the prevalence of the Small pox,” Judge Taft recorded in his diary. “There are cases of it in almost every Street in the City.”
Illness had struck the Stantons, the Sewards, and the Chases. Stanton’s youngest son, James, had become critically ill after a smallpox vaccination caused “a dreadful eruption” on all parts of the baby boy’s body. The illness continued for six weeks, during which time he was “not expected to live.” In this same period, Fanny Seward, who had gone to Philadelphia with her mother, contracted what was first suspected to be smallpox but was probably typhoid. Her “burning fever,” back pains, and “ulcerated” throat lasted for nearly two weeks. Seward left Washington in alarm to be with Fanny, one of the few departures from his work during the entire war. Nettie Chase was also seriously ill, having contracted scarlet fever on her way to boarding school in Pennsylvania.
Mary thought it best to cancel the party because of Willie’s illness, but Lincoln hesitated, since the invitations had already been sent out. He called in Dr. Robert Stone, who was considered “the dean of the Washington medical community.” After examining Willie, the renowned doctor concluded that the boy was “in no immediate danger” and “that there was every reason for an early recovery.” Relieved by the diagnosis, the Lincolns decided to hold the ball.
The carriages began arriving at the brilliantly lit White House around 9 p.m. All the Washington elite were present—the cabinet members and their wives, generals and their high staff, the members of the diplomatic corps, senators and congressmen, lawyers and businessmen. McClellan, in dress uniform, attracted much attention, as did the new secretary of war. The Green, Red, and Blue parlors were open for inspection, along with the East Room, where the Lincolns received their guests. Society reporters commented on both the “exquisite taste with which the White House has been refitted under Mrs. Lincoln’s directions” and the magnificence of the women’s attire. The “violet-eyed” Kate Chase was singled out, as usual. “She wore a dress of mauve-colored silk, without ornament,” one reporter wrote admiringly. “On her small, classically-shaped head a simple wreath of minute white flowers mingled with the blond waves of her sunny hair, which was arranged in a Grecian knot behind.”
At midnight, the crowd began to move toward the closed dining room. During a slight delay occasioned by a steward who had temporarily misplaced the key, someone exclaimed, “I am in favor of a forward movement,” and everyone laughed, including General McClellan. The doors were thrown open to reveal a sumptuous banquet, which was to be served with excellent wine and champagne. “The brilliance of the scene could not dispel the sadness that rested upon the face of Mrs. Lincoln,” Elizabeth Keckley, the seamstress who had become a close confidante, recalled. “During the evening she came up-stairs several times, and stood by the bedside of the suffering boy.”
Despite Mary’s worry and watchfulness, the ball was a triumph. “Those who were here,” Nicolay told his fiancée, “will be forever happy in the recollection of the favor enjoyed, because their vanity has been tickled with the thought that they have attained something which others have not.” Although there was some caviling about “frivolity, hilarity and gluttony, while hundreds of sick and suffering soldiers” were “within plain sight,” reviews in the capital city were overwhelmingly favorable. The Washington
Evening Star
pronounced the event “a brilliant spectacle,” while
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
described Mary as “our fair ‘Republican Queen,’” garbed in a “lustrous white satin robe” and black and white headdress “in perfect keeping with her regal style of beauty.”
The success of the White House ball was followed by two Union victories in Tennessee, the captures of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. These twin victories shifted the defensive struggle in the West to an offensive war and brought national recognition to a new hero: General Ulysses S. Grant. A West Point graduate whose weakness for alcohol had contributed to his resignation from the army eight years earlier, Grant was struggling to support his family as a leather salesman in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War began. He volunteered to serve immediately, and was put in charge of a regiment in Missouri. From the start, Grant understood that a southward movement from Missouri was essential, but he was unable to persuade General Henry Halleck, Frémont’s successor, to authorize the move. Hearing rumors that the unkempt, bewhiskered Grant still drank too much, Halleck was unwilling to trust him with an important mission. Finally, on February 1, after the navy’s Admiral Andrew Foote agreed to a joint army-navy expedition, Halleck gave the go-ahead for Grant “to take and hold Fort Henry.”
Grant and Foote set out at once. The navy gunboats opened a blistering attack, forcing the retreat of 2,500 rebel troops to the more heavily reinforced Fort Donelson, twelve miles away. The remaining troops surrendered. “Fort Henry is ours,” Grant telegraphed Halleck in the terse, straightforward style that would become his trademark. “I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th.” Though a severe rainstorm delayed the eastward march to Donelson, Grant remained confident. Writing to his sister, he assured her that her “plain brother however has, as yet, had no reason to feel himself unequal to the task.” This was not a boast, he said, but “a presentiment” that proved accurate a few days later when he surrounded the rebel forces at Fort Donelson and began his successful assault. After many had died, the Confederate commander, Kentucky native General Simon Buckner, proposed a cease-fire “and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation.” On February 16, Grant telegraphed back the historic words that would define both his character and career: “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” Buckner and fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers were taken prisoner.
More than a thousand troops on both sides were killed and three times that number wounded. It was “a most bloody fight,” a young Union soldier told his father, so devastating to his company that despite the victory, he remained “sad, lonely and down-hearted.” Only seven of the eighty-five men in his unit survived, but “the flag was brought through.”
The North was jubilant upon receiving news of Grant’s triumph at Donelson, the first substantial Union victory in the war. Hundred-gun salutes were fired in celebrations across the land. The capital city was “quite wild with Excitement.” In the Senate, “the gallery rose
en masse
and gave three enthusiastic cheers.” Elaborate plans were made to illuminate the capital’s public buildings in joint celebration of the double victory and George Washington’s birthday.
The day after Grant’s victory at Donelson, the president signed papers promoting him to major general. Lincoln had been following the Western general since he had read the gracious proclamation Grant issued when he had marched into Paducah, Kentucky, the previous fall. “I have come among you, not as an enemy,” he told the Kentuckians, “but as your friend and fellow-citizen.” Reports that “Grant had taken the field with only a spare shirt, a hair brush, and a tooth brush” made comparisons between “Western hardihood” and McClellan’s “Eastern luxury” inevitable; it was well known that “six immense four-horse wagons” had arrived at McClellan’s door to carry his clothes and other items to the front.
Fort Donelson’s capture provided the Union with a strategic foothold in the South. After a ghastly battle at Shiloh two months later left twenty thousand casualties on both sides, the Union would go on to secure Memphis and the entire state of Tennessee. These victories would soon be followed by the capture of New Orleans.
T
HE COUNTRY’S EXULTATION
at Grant’s victory at Donelson found no echo in the White House. Willie’s condition had grown steadily worse since the White House ball, and Tad, too, had become ill. It is believed that both boys had contracted typhoid fever, likely caused by the unsanitary conditions in Washington. The White House drew its water supply from the Potomac River, along the banks of which tens of thousands of troops without proper latrines were stationed. Perhaps because his constitution had been weakened by his earlier bout with scarlet fever, Willie was affected by the bacterial infection more severely than his brother Tad. He “grew weaker and more shadow-like” as the debilitating symptoms of his illness took their toll—high fever, diarrhea, painful cramps, internal hemorrhage, vomiting, profound exhaustion, delirium.
Tending to both boys, Mary “almost wore herself out with watching,” Commissioner French observed. She canceled the customary Saturday receptions and levees. For Lincoln, too, it was an agonizing period. Nicolay reported that the president gave “pretty much all his attention” to his sons, but the grim business of conducting the war could not be avoided.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, Willie would call for his friend Bud Taft, who sat by his bedside day and night. Late one evening, seeing Bud at his son’s side, Lincoln “laid his arm across Bud’s shoulder and stroked Willie’s hair.” Turning to Bud, he said quietly, “You ought to go to bed, Bud,” but Bud refused to leave, saying, “If I go he will call for me.” Returning later, Lincoln “picked up Bud, who had fallen asleep, and carried him tenderly to bed.”
As news of the boy’s critical condition spread through Washington, most of the celebratory illuminations were canceled. The
Evening Star
wrote that “the President and Mrs. Lincoln have deep sympathy in this community in this hour of their affliction.” Though work continued in the offices of the White House, staffers walked slowly down the corridors “as if they did not wish to make a noise.” Lincoln’s secretary, William Stoddard, recalled the question on everyone’s lips: “Is there no hope? Not any. So the doctors say.”
At 5 p.m. on Thursday, February 20, Willie died. Minutes later, Lincoln burst into Nicolay’s office. “Well, Nicolay,” he said, “my boy is gone—he is actually gone!” He began to sob. According to Elizabeth Keckley, when Lincoln came back into the room after Willie’s body had been washed and dressed, he “buried his head in his hands, and his tall frame was convulsed with emotion.” Though Keckley had observed Lincoln more intimately than most, she “did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved.”
Mary Lincoln was “inconsolable,” Keckley recorded. “The pale face of her dead boy threw her into convulsions.” She had frequently said of her blue-eyed, handsome son that “if spared by Providence, [he] would be the hope and stay of her old age.” She took to her bed with no way to sleep or ease her grief.