Part 2

Mary would like that, Abraham Lincoln was thinking as they went down the chilly stairs. Fires burned in all the rooms but the ceilings were high and the walls cold and this was a bleak day with the lowering chill of late December. A few snowflakes timidly rode down the icy air, but Mary would wrap herself in rich furs, her round pink face nestled in a deep collar, a stylish bonnet perched on her smooth dark hair.

With white-gloved hands—smooth now, but once they had known a time of rough domestic toil—she would wave brief salutes to the people in the street. He hoped she wouldn’t be haughty about it. He knew her shyness and uncertainty, her feeling of insecurity in a high place for which she had had so little training, and that too often she hid this uncertainty behind a too glib, too tart attitude of arrogance. To Abraham Lincoln’s eyes, to his sensitive insight, it was like seeing a nervous little hen strut and bridle surrounded by the cold angry eyes of foxes and the sharp talons of hawks. There were, unhappily, too many people who misunderstood Mary Todd Lincoln.

Even John Hay had little sympathy for the President’s wife. There had been a scrap of paper that Lincoln had found once, part of a letter Hay had begun and discarded calling Mary a “Hellcat” and adding dryly that she was lately more “hellcatical” than usual.

Too bad Mary occasionally indulged in temper tantrums in the executive offices. Her small explosions, her husband knew, were a form of relief for the eternally seething doubts of herself that tormented her. She adored her husband and the two boys that had been spared to them, but this love was fiercely jealous and possessive and not always wise or controlled.

Christmas would be a sad time for Mary. Last year Willie had been here, the gentle, quiet brown-haired boy who spent so many hours curled up in a chair with a book. Willie had known every railroad line, every station on every line. He had learned timetables by heart and drawn up schedules of his own. It had been just such a raw, dreary day as this last February when Willie had gone riding out on his pony. He had come home soaked and chilled and the nightmare of those next days would haunt Abraham Lincoln as long as he lived—Willie, burning with fever, babbling incoherencies; Mary sobbing and moaning, pacing the floor, her hands in taut, agonized fists, her smooth hair wild over her tear-streaked cheeks; and that ghastly night of the White House ball, with the Marine Band playing, he himself having to shake hands endlessly at the door of the East Room while Willie fought for breath upstairs.

After that, the end. The blue eyes closed and sunken, fading flowers pressed by Mary into the small cold hands, senators, generals, foreign ministers, pressing the numb hand of the President of the United States, while upstairs on her bed Mary writhed and wailed in uncontrolled grief.

Now Christmas would bring it all back. He was glad that Mary could forget for a little while, shopping, buying gifts for Tad who had too much already, who was in a fair way to be badly spoiled.

Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a grim hand pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous.

“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president of this so-called Confederacy?”

“That,” said Lincoln, “turned out not too well. Gilmore, of the New York _Tribune_, wrote too much and prematurely. Those fellows across the river got riled up and a Georgia regiment started a riot in Raleigh in September and burned the Raleigh _Standard_. So the citizens of Raleigh who didn’t have faith in Jeff Davis rose up and burned the Confederate newspaper, the _State Journal_. That widened the breach and Vance has already told Jeff Davis that he would welcome reunion with the Union states and any peace compatible with honor.”

He caught John Hay’s warning look then and said no more. He would not reveal that his agents has just brought in a letter sent by the Governor of North Carolina to Jefferson Davis—a bold and open plea for negotiation with the enemy.

“If North Carolina would make the break it would be a long step toward peace,” said his guest.

“It could also mean anarchy, outrages, and destruction in that state, calling for more Union troops,” Hay reminded them. “So far we have pushed back the borders of this rebellion, opened the Mississippi, and our Navy has tightened the blockade of all the Southern ports.”

“You will not, even under pressure, revoke the Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. President?” The visitor was anxious.

“I shall never revoke that Proclamation, sir.”

When the meal ended and the guest had taken an obsequious departure, Lincoln stopped at Hay’s desk.

“What was that fellow sent here to find out, Johnny? Was he sent by Sumner, you think, to put in a word against my idea of amnesty for any Southern state that wants to come back into the Union? Sumner wants ’em all hung down there and he has some powerful newspapers behind him. Some of ’em are saying I’m having my salary raised to a hundred thousand dollars a year, that I’m drawing it in gold while the Army gets paid in greenbacks, and that I’ve cooked up a scheme to have Congress declare me perpetual president for the rest of my life.”

“Why do you let such fantastic rumors disturb you, Mr. Lincoln?” Hay protested. “That New York _World_ editorial saying you’ve done a fine job and that your death would only prolong the war has been reprinted all over the country.”

“If my death would end this war, John, I’d give my life gladly,” Lincoln declared solemnly. “That would be a fine Christmas gift for this country.”

3

The soldiers of Company K One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania Volunteers had become practically a part of the White House family. Abraham Lincoln treated them as though they were his own sons, called most of them by their first names, personally arranged for their passes and furloughs.

So when Mary Todd Lincoln had all her shopping purchases carried up to the family sitting room and displayed, Lincoln’s face wore a sober look of disappointment. Mary was tired and on edge but she excitedly showed him, one after another, the toys she had bought for Tad, the gifts for Robert, and a few items for members of the household staff.

“Look, Abraham, this gun—it fires like a real cannon! With smoke.”

“Nothing for the boys?” he asked, rubbing his long hands over his knees, a characteristic nervous gesture.

“Why, I’ve just showed you—the wallet and cuff buttons for Bob and all these—”

“I mean _my_ boys. The Company K boys.”

Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of them.”

“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.”

“They could be worse off,” she snapped. “They could be out there along the Rappahannock or down in those marshes of Mississippi. Pennsylvania’s not so far. Lord knows you’re always fixing up furloughs for them so they can go home. Why, it would cost a fortune to give gifts to all that company—and anyway, what can you give a soldier?”

“Some warm socks might come in good. That ground’s frozen out there and it’s likely to snow hard any day now.”

“The commissary should keep them in socks.” She was testy as always in the face of criticism. “Don’t I do enough—going out to those horrid hospitals twice a week—carrying things—this house is practically stripped of bed linen, all torn up for bandages.” She fluttered about her purchases, flushed and breathless, her hands making little snatching gestures, picking up things, putting them down again, twisting string around her fingers.

“Very noble of you, indeed,” he approved. “I’m proud of what you do but I’m still thinking about Joe and Nate and those other boys. They curry horses and clean harness and saddles; they look after Tad and his goat—and of course they’re always on guard for fear I’ll get shot, though I can’t figure any place where I could be where nobody could get at me, unless they buried me.”

“That man, that one-eyed man, you’re crazy to let him come here!” Mary cried. “Mr. Nicolay says so.”

“Gurowski? I know.” He smiled patiently. “If anybody does the Democrats a favor by putting a bullet in my head it might very well be Gurowski. He croaks that the country is marching to it’s tomb and that Seward and McClellan and I are the gravediggers.”

“They’ll be digging your grave if you don’t have a care for yourself!” Her volatile mood had shifted; she was almost in tears. “That horrible creature with those old green goggles, that silly red vest and that big hat and cape—he looks like Satan himself, yet you listen to him!”

“I’m his hired man, Mary,” Lincoln repeated. “The bald-headed old buzzard is smart enough. He had a good job working under Horace Greeley on the _Tribune_, but they had to let him go because he couldn’t distinguish truth from slander. Then Seward put him in the State Department as a translator but he published so many slurs about Seward and me that they dismissed him from that job. He started as a revolutionary in Europe; now he thinks he can save this nation. Maybe by eliminating me. He’s written down now as a dangerous character. He won’t be allowed in here again, so don’t worry.”

Mary would never worry long, he knew. She was too mercurial, too easily diverted by trifles. What troubled Lincoln most was her impulsive inclination to meddle. She took a hand in decisions, was always writing indiscreet letters to newspaper editors, discussing national affairs too brashly; she interfered in decisions over post offices and appointments to military academies. When New York papers printed long items about her travels, her clothes, her bonnets and baggage, she was flattered and excited, unaware that her husband was unhappily reading into some of these accounts an amused note of criticism and contempt. She was as much a child as Tad, he told himself often, but unlike Tad she could not be controlled.

All through the evening she busied herself happily over her gifts, wrapping them in white paper, fetching bits of ribbon from her dozens of bandboxes for bows and decorations. Abraham Lincoln slipped off his elastic-sided shoes and stretched his bony feet to the fire. He dozed a little and had to be warned sharply by Mary when his gray wool socks began to smoke a little.

“I declare, Abraham, you’d burn yourself to a cinder if I didn’t look after you! You’ve even scorched your pantaloons. Yes, you have. I can see where the broadcloth is singed on that right leg. It’s like putting ribbons on a pig to try to dress you up decently. Sometimes I despair of ever making you into a real gentleman!”

Lincoln smacked absently at the hot fabric of his breeches. “In this town, Mary, gentlemen are as thick as fleas in a dog pound. Take credit for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.”

“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic, disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.”

“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is soft. I got toughened up back yonder.”

“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a railsplitter—and a yokel.”

“Well, I know I was a good railsplitter. If they called me a sorry railsplitter I’d resent it.” He was unperturbed. “What is a yokel? A fellow from the country. So I must be a yokel for I sprung from about as deep in the country as you can get air to breathe, so deep there wasn’t even a road there, just an old trace that meandered up the bed of the crick part of the way. America’s made of yokels. Our side, anyway. Your friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.”

She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.”

“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can still lick salt off the top of your head.”

She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over, pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms.

“Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.”

He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.”

“I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering.

He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like Steve Douglas.”

“I didn’t want him. I wanted you.”

“Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S. Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put her gently aside, letting care return to possess him.

“He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.”

“He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.”

“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up, Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently.

He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that remoteness that always baffled her.

4

Desperately she wanted to be liked and admired. She did not even know that this desire tormented her like a hidden thorn. It was lost under the surface imperiousness that she had put on defensively, as a child might dress up in a trailing robe and play at being queen. She had no talent for adjustment or reconciliation and her husband’s propensity for seeing the best in people, even his bitterest enemies, puzzled and irritated her. In her mind she put this down as weakness. When she disliked anyone, it was done with vigor and she made no secret of it. When she was displeased she let the whole world know, yet she could not understand why it was that she felt always alone.

The Christmas party at the White House had to be important, if not gay. State Department people, Supreme Court people, senators, generals and their wives, would not expect hilarity. Not with Lee’s menacing army so near, the carnage of Chickamauga so recent, all the factional strife in New York and Missouri and Ohio only temporarily lulled, and definitely, Mary suspected, not defeated.

She had two dresses spread out on her bed, and Elizabeth Heckley, the mulatto seamstress, pinned bits of lace and ribbon bows here and there over the voluminous folds of coral-colored satin and purple velvet. The satin had wide bands of heavy embroidery touched with gold around the skirt and the folds that draped low over the shoulders. Elizabeth fastened a garland of roses at the bosom of that dress and let it trail down the side of the skirt.

“Needs a gold breastpin right there,” she indicated the fastening place of the flowers. “What Mrs. President goin’ to wear on her head?”

“A turban, Lizzie, of this same satin with some pale blue feathers in front and the roses hanging down over my chignon. This dress will have to be for the Christmas party and I know it’s too gay and likely I’ll be criticized for putting off my mourning for poor little Willie. Good gracious, down home where I was raised, I’d wear black for three solid years for a child and for a husband it was forever. But I look awful in black and I know it. It makes me dumpy and sallow and I do owe something to the people. There’s too much crepe already in Washington. It depresses people and hurts the war.”

“This other one would look mighty fine on you, Mrs. President.” The seamstress lovingly stroked the folds of violet velvet. “This dress look like it was made for a queen.” There were bands of embroidery on this gown too, but the embroidery was all gold cord and beads and there was a light overskirt of draped tulle in shades of lilac, lavender, and purple, caught up with little knots of gold leaves.

A queen! Abraham had called her a queen. Mary could see herself trailing a long robe of crimson with a border of gold and ermine. Too bad democracies did not favor such ornate display by their rulers—but the purple velvet did have a regal look. She would wear plumes in her headdress, three of them in the three shades of the overskirt.

“I’ll wear this at the New Years’ reception, though it is a pity to waste anything so handsome on a company of just anybody. See about some feathers and gold trimmings for my headdress, Lizzie, and plenty of white gloves. Last year I ruined four pairs.”

She must see to it that Abraham had plenty of gloves, too. He hated them; he was always pulling them off and stuffing them untidily into a pocket. He was always bursting them, too, and she kept spare pairs handy. His hands had a tendency to swell from prolonged handshaking and inevitably the buttons popped off or the seams split. A pair would be soiled in half an hour too from all those hands, some calloused, some grimy, some too hot and eager.

The New Year’s reception was a great nuisance in Mary’s book—those tramping feet scuffing the floors and the carpets and almost invariably it snowed. And in spite of the vigilance of the guards she knew there was danger. Lately danger had become a haunting oppression to Mary Todd Lincoln.

The election of 1864 was coming up and even in the Union states there was radical opposition so bold it verged on treason, not to overlook the vicious attacks of the newspapers to the South. On those pages Abraham Lincoln was called everything from a degraded idiot to Mephistopheles reincarnate. The South, as Southern-bred Mary Lincoln knew well, was full of impetuous hotheads ready to dare or to do anything for their sacred Cause. There was that O’Neale Greenhow woman, arrested right here in sight of the White House—and even the Mayor of Washington temporarily lodged in jail. And they said that people right in the Provost Office had supplied the Greenhow woman with information that had brought on so many Union defeats at Manassas and other battles. Mary remembered having once met Rose O’Neale Greenhow at a tea somewhere. A handsome and arrogant woman, too friendly with men. She was banished South of the lines now, but women like that always had impetuous friends.

“Get me out something plain, Lizzie,” she ordered now. “I have to shop again this afternoon. The President thinks every soldier in Company K must have a Christmas gift, and where I’ll find things the Lord only knows! ‘Socks,’ he said, ‘Wool socks.’ I doubt if any can be found, and they’d be two dollars a pair if there are any. Anyway, cakes and candy and tobacco—and all those getting harder and harder to get. The crowds in the streets are getting so rough, too, with all these soldiers coming in.”

“I could go, Mrs. Lincoln,” offered Elizabeth, “if you’d tell me what to buy and give me an order to have it charged—and send somebody to help carry.”

“Would you, Lizzie?” Mary was eager with relief. “I’ll send you in a carriage and a boy with you. I have to make a list. I think we’ll forget the socks—there might not be any and anyway their mothers ought to knit socks for them. We wouldn’t know sizes anyway.” Mary fluttered, hunting pen and paper, sending a maid to order the carriage, getting out a heavy cape of her own to keep the sewing woman warm. “You go down to the market, Lizzie, away down on D Street. Things will be cheaper there. There are thirty-three of those men. Just so each one had some little remembrance the President will be satisfied.”

She was grateful not to have to brave again the streets of Washington that were becoming more horrible every day. Deep mud, which Army wagons were churning up, caissons pounding by, cavalry splashing everybody, and soldiers crowding everywhere. The shops were always crowded with the impatient, pushing military and Negroes, and more colored people were thronging into the capital every day, homeless and bewildered. Some of the Negro men were being integrated into the Army but most were a problem that the provosts and police were coping with in desperate confusion.

It all made for discomfort and danger. No real indignity had as yet been offered to her personally since those grim days in New York in July, when she had been hooted in the streets and followed into a shop by a jeering mob of ruffians. Here in Washington her greatest cross was the thinly veiled contempt of the women, formerly socially important, the women the President called “those Secesh dames.” Very boldly they let it be known that their sympathies were with the South.

Washington, Mr. Seward said, and Mr. Stanton agreed with him, was a nest of spies. In spite of imprisonment, grim guards, and ceaseless precautions, messages still went through the lines to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. It was said that Fontaine Maury, the Confederate admiral, had a direct pipeline into the very heart of the Capitol. Suspicion and distrust were rampant, and Mary harbored a constant, nervous fear that either she or Tad might be kidnapped by the Rebels and held as hostages.

She had wondered sometimes in moments of private bitterness just how much Abraham Lincoln would surrender to get his wife back, but Tad was the key to his heart. Lately Company K had had orders to keep close surveillance over the boy but Tad was quick and mobile as a flea. Less than a month before he had been brought back, shouting protests and struggling, from climbing the scaffolding of the half-finished Washington Monument.