Part 12

In the Democratic Convention of the summer of 1856 Douglas and Buchanan were rival candidates for the Presidential nomination. Pierce, also, though there had been some doubt in the minds of his own townsmen about his making a successful President at all, was seeking the nomination for a second term. "Frank Pierce is all very well up here where he knows everybody and everybody knows Frank Pierce," said a New Hampshire sage during the summer preceding Pierce's election, "but when it comes to spreading him out over the whole country, I'm afraid he'll be mighty thin in some places." The thinness had evidently been apparent, for while he had the high honor of coming in almost unanimously, as Senator Benton said, he went out with as great a unanimity.

When it became evident that the nomination was not for Douglas, so intensely was he beloved by the people of the West, and particularly by those of his own State, that many a sturdy, hard-featured delegate from that section, to all appearances the embodiment of stoicism, put down his head and wept like a little heart-broken child.

On the 20th of November, a few weeks after the election of Buchanan, he was married to Adèle Cutts, and it has been said that, of the many beautiful women who witnessed the incoming of Buchanan's administration at his inaugural ball, Douglas's wife was the most beautiful.

Already known to the South and the East, her fame now spread westward, and when it was rumored that Douglas would take her to Chicago, where he had maintained a legal residence for some years, the people of the town made ready to receive her with the enthusiasm which she inspired in them then primarily as the young wife of Stephen A. Douglas. She made her first appearance among them at St. Mary's Church, where many people who had never been in a Catholic church before were found in the congregation that Sunday morning, and far more than the usual external contingent waited patiently on the sidewalk to see her as she came out. When she appeared with her husband at the celebration held on the State line between Illinois and Wisconsin, in honor of the union of the two railroad companies between Chicago and Milwaukee, she was hailed with uproarious cheers. There was that in her very presence which seemed to completely satisfy every man's ideal of all womanly perfection.

It was in the year of the great contest for the Legislature between Lincoln and Douglas that the people of the West came to know her, however, as she was already known at the East, and to love her with that same loyalty and devotion. Her home in Chicago was always in hotels, sometimes at the Tremont House and again at the Lake View. Many of the men who have made Chicago the queen city she is to-day were then young. Among them were professional men and men full of commercial enterprise, all brainy and ambitious, and a fair number of them Democrats and followers of Douglas. These gathered about her in her parlors or under the trees in the garden overlooking the lake, and though she never entered into any political discussion, the very fact that Douglas possessed such a wife inspired them with renewed ardor for his cause. In her gentle graciousness, infinite tact, and entire unconsciousness of the admiration she everywhere aroused, they felt the full force of her high breeding.

Lincoln and Douglas are so conspicuously identified as political enemies, that few people realize that personally they were friends. Not unfrequently they travelled a whole day together only to take the platform that night against each other and to pommel each other, figuratively, out of recognition. Douglas was adroit, however, and Lincoln once said of him that it was difficult to get the best of him in any debate, because his power of bewildering his audience was so great that they never knew when he was worsted. During the summer in which their political enmity first achieved so much prominence, Douglas's wife went with him through the State winning favor for him in all eyes, even including those of the "ablest whig rascal in all Springfield, Abe Lincoln." He liked to sit beside her as they journeyed from place to place and pour some funny story into her attentive ears, or, perhaps, divining the tender sympathy of her true woman's soul, tell her some incident of his early days, touching off its sorrowful details with a bit of homely philosophy or a stroke of his inexhaustible humor; and as the train pulled into some expectant town, and the two opponents were greeted by factions whose enmity was real, he would say, "Here, Douglas, take your woman," and so they would part to meet again as foes. As the final victory was with Douglas, he and his wife made that tour of the Southern States that was much in the nature of a triumphal procession, and was a forerunner of his Presidential campaign which shortly followed.

His real home was in Washington, where as a Senator he spent the greater portion of each year. There he built a commodious house, with a ball-room, by no means a frequent adjunct at that time, which witnessed much generous hospitality in those difficult days preceding secession, when a woman like Mrs. Douglas could best hold warring elements in abeyance.

The result of the campaign of the summer of 1860, in which Lincoln and Douglas again confronted each other, this time for the higher prize of the Presidency, precipitated that crisis which at length brought these two life-long opponents together in defence of the Union. The whole aim of Douglas's life had been for the Presidency. He had accomplished all else he had ever set his heart upon, and he was so absolutely the idol of the people that it had not seemed possible to him he should fail here. He swallowed the bitterness of his disappointment heroically, however, and was a generous and even a graceful friend to Lincoln.

It is related that, when Lincoln rose to read his inaugural address, he hesitated a moment, uncertain as to what disposition to make of his hat; it was a new, high silk hat, too elegant an acquisition to the mind of one reared in the more than frugal atmosphere of Lincoln's home to be intrusted to the pine boards of the flag-draped stand in front of him. Douglas, divining the mental process of which Lincoln himself, in the embarrassment of the moment, was scarcely conscious, stepped forward and relieved him of the hat, holding it for him till the conclusion of the address.

During the early days of the conflict between the North and the South, which he had patriotically done his utmost to avert, he aided Lincoln with able counsel, pointing out to him among other things the necessity of securing Fortress Monroe and cautioning him against bringing the troops through Baltimore, prophesying that bloodshed that did occur. But before the conflict had assumed those proportions which it did later in the same year, on the 3d of June, 1861, Douglas's life closed. His last hours were spent in Chicago among the people he had so ably represented. There, with his wife beside him, and her mother and brother, James Madison Cutts, who was his private secretary, near by, and with his keen, dark eyes upon her face, as if he would forever fix upon his spirit its beautiful lineaments, and his hand in hers, his mind retaining all its strength and clearness till the end, he uttered his last memorable words. She had asked him if he had any message to send to his sons, and he replied, "Tell them to obey the laws of the land and to support the Constitution of the United States."

Generous even to the point of recklessness, he died poor. Subscriptions were immediately begun among his friends towards a fund for his widow. She declined, however, to receive it, and begged that the sum thus raised be devoted to the erection of a monument to Douglas's memory.

She returned to Washington and lived quietly for some years in the first home of her married life, taking no part in the social world whose magnet she had been for so many seasons. But she was not forgotten; and when she again, after four years of seclusion, resumed her place in its midst, her reappearance brought up innumerable memories of her earlier days, of her conquest of the "Little Giant," and of her queenly part in his political campaigns.

She was the guest of honor at a dinner given in the early winter of 1865, just as the war drew to its close, by Miss Harris, whose name lives in history in a very different connection: she was sitting beside Lincoln in his box at the theatre on the night he was shot. Among the guests bidden to meet Mrs. Douglas was Captain, afterwards General, Robert Williams, one of the handsomest and most gallant officers of the army, and a member of a well-established family of Culpeper County, Virginia. Mrs. Douglas was already known to him by fame, and suspecting her to be possessed of all the caprices of a spoiled beauty, he had no desire whatever to meet her, though he accepted Miss Harris's invitation for the sake of the pleasure he would otherwise derive from her hospitality. After he had been presented to Mrs. Douglas, however, whatever enjoyment he had anticipated from meeting others there passed from his mind. Combined with a gentle dignity, there was about her all the sweet simplicity of a young girl, and nothing that ever so remotely suggested any consciousness of a fame that was as wide as her country. He followed her with all the earnestness with which he had meant to avoid her, and in January, 1866, she again became a bride.

The chronicle of the most magnificent ball ever given, not only in Washington, but probably in the country, and which occurred shortly after her marriage to General Williams, hands her name and that of Kate Chase Sprague down to fame as the two most beautiful women who participated in the brilliant event. It was given by the French minister, Count de Moutholon, by order of his Emperor, in honor of the officers of the French fleet then anchored at Annapolis.

She gradually, however, abdicated her social queenship for a crown she wore with no less grace, that of a most noble motherhood.

Wedded to an army man, her life led her from post to post, and the greater part of her days from that time was spent in the West.

The little life of the only child of her first marriage covered but a few months. The six children of her second marriage, however, are all living and grown to manhood and womanhood, two of her sons being in the military service of their country.

The last few years of her life were passed in Washington, where her husband held the office of Adjutant-General until his retirement from the service. There her eldest daughter was married, in January, 1899, to Lieutenant John Bryson Patton, and there also, on the 26th of the same month, her own life terminated. Time had touched her lightly, as if he would not rob her of a loveliness that had been as much a charm to women as to men. Asked once the secret of her youthful appearance, she blushed like a girl and confessed that she was happy, and that therein must lie the solution.

It is difficult to analyze the qualities of that power of fascination which some women have exercised over the world. They are as varied as the individuality of the women to whom they have been intrusted. In Adèle Cutts, however, they seem to have emanated from a singular beauty of soul, a species of primal innocence that proclaimed itself at once to the sense of every beholder and preserved her alike from any touch of vanity or worldliness.

To those who knew her she seemed little changed as the years rolled on, because to her classic beauty of form was added an indestructible quality which was a beauty of the spirit.

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

(MRS. HUGHES-HALLETT)

Every Philadelphia girl who has hoped to be a belle during this last quarter of the century, and even many who have been without social aspirations, have been brought up on traditions of Emilie Schaumburg.

Yet so eminent was the place she held in the old city whose standard of belleship had been fixed far back in the colonial days of America, that no one has ever succeeded her.

Accustomed through long generations to women of wit, beauty, and a certain unapproachable taste in matters of personal adornment, Philadelphia has developed a critical instinct which is not easily satisfied.

"The ladies of Philadelphia," wrote Miss Rebecca Franks over a century ago, "have more cleverness in the turn of an eye than those of New York have in their whole composition. With what ease have I seen a Chew, a Penn, an Oswald, or an Allen, and a thousand others, entertain a large circle of both sexes; the conversation, without the aid of cards, never flagging nor seeming in the least strained or stupid. Here, in New York, you enter the room with a formal set courtesy, and, after the how-dos, things are finished; all is dead calm till the cards are introduced, when you see pleasure dancing in the eyes of all the matrons, and they seem to gain new life."

It is but just to state that this fair critic of New York's social status belonged to Philadelphia, where, though her wit was rather of a satirical turn, she was noted as a lady possessed of "every human and divine advantage." She was the youngest of the three daughters of David Franks, one of whom became the wife of Oliver de Lancey, another of Andrew Hamilton, of "Woodlands," one of the famous suburban estates of the city, while Rebecca, "high in toryism and eccentricity," after an unusually brilliant belleship, bestowed her hand on Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Johnston, and went to live in England.

Of the Chews referred to in her letter from New York, so sparkling was the conversation which Harriet could maintain, that Washington, when he was sitting for his portrait to Stuart, liked to have her in the room that his face might wear its most agreeable expression, such as her wit always induced. She married the son of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the young Charles Carroll who was at one time suspected of having a tender interest in Nellie Custis, Washington's step-granddaughter. Her sister Margaret, who was one of the beauties who made the great feast of the Mischianza so famous, also married a son of Maryland, Colonel John Eager Howard, a patriot and a hero. Passing through her room one evening he heard her relating to her children the pathetic story of Major André, who had been her knight in the tournament of the Mischianza.

"Don't believe a word of it, children," he interrupted, as their young hearts swelled with pity at her graphic and romantic recital; "he was an infernal spy."

Ann Willing, who married William Bingham in her seventeenth year, was another woman who helped to establish the standard of female beauty and excellence in Philadelphia. "She is coming quite into fashion here," John Adams's daughter wrote of her from London, "and is very much admired. The hair-dresser who dresses us on court days inquired of mamma whether she knew the lady so much talked of here from America, Mrs. Bingham. He had heard of her from a lady who had seen her at Lord Duncan's."

London society, and especially that of the court circle, was not very favorably disposed towards Americans in the year 1786, and the subsequent graciousness of their reception they doubtless owed largely to the impression created by the beauty and character of such a woman as Mrs. Bingham, who was one of the first to seek a presentation at the court of George III. after our separation from the mother-country. Her striking beauty of face and form, her easy deportment, that had all the pride and grace of high breeding, the intelligence of her countenance, and the entire affability of her attitude disarmed every feeling of unfriendliness and converted every one, said Mrs. Adams, into admiration.

The unfortunate Margaret Shippen, as gifted as she was beautiful, deprived by her husband's treason before she was twenty years old of the shelter of her home and the protection of her family, the Executive Council of Pennsylvania bidding her to leave the State and not return till the close of the war, and Sarah, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and wife of Richard Bache, and the embodiment of Republican principles, which caused her to insist that there was "no rank in America but rank mutton," are two noted examples of that diversity which gave flavor to the social life of a city that has tempted the pens of both native and foreign critics.

Philadelphia was one of the first of the Northern cities to admit women to the pit of its theatres, and visitors from quiet Boston and commercial New York at one time condemned its social tone as fast, because its young men gave wine-suppers, and because it danced to the music of a full colored orchestra, known as Johnson's Band, while other cities were performing their more or less graceful gyrations to the tunes furnished by one or two musicians.

The Quaker town had made a brilliant social record before many of the cities of America had so much as laid one stone upon another. By comparison it is old. It has its elements of newness, like all bodies that grow and progress, but they are not readily assimilated by that little coterie that long ago laid the foundation of its establishment in the southeastern section of the city. It is from the predominance of this conservative social principle in Philadelphia that people unfamiliar with its life have derived the erroneous impression that its general progress and development have been correspondingly deliberate.

To hold such a position as Emilie Schaumburg held in Philadelphia implies the possession of such personal qualities and such gifts as would be an open door to the most exclusive society of the world.

She was well born, coming of ancestry distinguished both in their native land and in that of their adoption. Her grandfather, Colonel Bartholomew Schaumburg, belonged to one of the oldest families in Germany. He was a godson and ward of the Landgrave Frederick William, with whom he was closely connected. When still quite a youth, the Landgrave made him an aide-de-camp to Count Donop, who commanded the Hessian subsidies furnished by Germany to England to aid her in the war with the American colonies.

Schaumburg was sent with despatches to Donop, who, however, had been killed before the arrival of his young aide-de-camp. Learning for the first time of the righteousness of the American cause, he gallantly offered his services to the commander-in-chief of the American forces. He fought valiantly all through the war, and at its close accepted a commission in the standing army organized by the new government. At the Cotton Centennial held at New Orleans in 1884, his commissions signed by Washington were exhibited and were objects of much interest. He took part in many of the early Indian wars, and was appointed quartermaster-general in the war of 1812.

His home was at New Orleans. His eldest daughter, at the time of General Lafayette's visit to that city, was one of the twelve young girls selected on account of their beauty from its most distinguished families to crown America's friend. She lived to an advanced age, surviving her eleven companions of that memorable occasion and retaining much of her beauty till the close of her life.

The site of the city of Cincinnati was indirectly chosen by Colonel Schaumburg when he selected the spot where it later sprung up for the establishment of a fort, which he called, in honor of his first American friend, Fort Washington.

He was an accomplished artillerist, and under his direction was cast the first cannon made in the United States. While stationed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, upon military duty, he met the lady whom he afterwards married, and who had not long previously arrived in America, whither she had come with her parents to trace a recent acquisition of land.

She was a lineal descendant of the principal Indian chief, Secaneh, of the Lenape tribe, who signed the treaty of 1683 with William Penn, selling him the large tract of land on which Philadelphia is built.

The Princess Susahena, the daughter of Secaneh, had been married to Thomas Holme McFarlane, a nephew of Thomas Holme, who was the first Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania. Three years after their marriage they sailed for Dublin, but ocean voyages in those days were trials to the stoutest constitutions, and the poor princess died before reaching the other side.

Her child, a daughter, lived, and it was the great-granddaughter of this child who became the wife of Colonel Schaumburg, so that Emilie Schaumburg is the seventh generation in lineal descent from the aboriginal princess, and attained her remarkable social queenship on the native heath of her royal ancestors.

Mrs. Henry D. Gilpin, who had known Colonel Schaumburg's family intimately and had spent much time with them in their Southern home, frequently spoke of the great beauty of Emilie Schaumburg's grandmother, and of the resemblance Emilie bore to her. She had the fresh Irish complexion and violet eyes, together with suggestions of the Indian type of her ancestry in the tall, lithe figure, delicately aquiline features, and black hair, which almost swept the ground.

They were a strikingly handsome couple, for Colonel Schaumburg was as magnificent in appearance as he was conspicuous in courage. He was several inches over six feet in height, and clung all his life to powdered hair and lace ruffles, those outward signs of the aristocrat; yet he adopted republican principles, dropped his title, and besought his children to be satisfied with the record he should leave them of services rendered his adopted country.

He had declined the overtures made him by his family in Germany, from whom he had become estranged owing to the course he had pursued in espousing the American cause. He had no desire to return and resume his career there.

When his granddaughter, however, visited Germany she was received with marked consideration by the Princess of Schaumburg-Lippe, who was reigning at the time.

True to his principles, Colonel Schaumburg opposed the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, refusing to become a member of it, and arguing that it had for its object the inauguration of an aristocracy, and was in direct opposition to the very principles for which they had fought.

His son followed in his footsteps in selecting a military career. He was graduated from the National Military Academy in 1833, and entered the cavalry. He was a gallant officer, generous and impetuous, and as magnificent in physique as his father.

He lost his commission through a technicality which the War Department turned to his disadvantage, and fought all his life for reinstatement, being upheld by President Jackson and a majority of the United States Senate.

He had imbibed his father's ideas, and would never use the "von" in his name because his father had dropped it. When his daughter wished to resume it, however, he gave his consent and approval.

Major Schaumburg married a daughter of Stephen Page, originally of Page County, Virginia, and later of Eden Park, a beautiful country-seat, near Philadelphia, where his children were born. Miss Page, who became Mrs. Schaumburg, was a woman of much beauty and many accomplishments, which she transmitted to her daughter.

Emilie von Schaumburg grew up in the home of her uncle, Colonel James Page, with whom her name is ever identified. Though he was a man of social and political prominence, his greatest distinction, in the eyes of his fellow-citizens, arose from his relationship to her.