Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen (34 page)

INAUGURAL JOURNEY BANQUETS AND SETTLING INTO THE WHITE HOUSE

T
he
Lincolns arrived in the City of
Washington, as the downtown core of the District of Columbia was called, in the 1860s. They had left Springfield, Illinois, where they lived their daily routines surrounded by friends and family. They had traveled east buoyed on waves of adulation, but that changed as they entered the city filled with doubters and, at times, even enemies.

We lived in the Washington area for a while, moving there from the Midwest, as had the Lincolns. I was surprised at how southern the nation's capital felt in the mid-1970s. The rich aroma of boxwood hedges filled the air in the residential side streets of Washington, as well as in the gardens of George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, and the narrow, cobbled streets of Alexandria. There was a different rhythm to life and different foods, too. Some foods we know were common in the Lincolns' kitchen—grits and country ham—were unfamiliar to me and my midwestern way of cooking. It was our
first experience living in the South away from family and familiar customs. As we tiptoed below the Mason-Dixon Line, southern style took some getting used to.

The Lincolns faced bigger changes when they arrived in the City of Washington. During the first year in the White House, Mary Lincoln invited Illinois friends and family to stay in the presidential home while she carefully reached out to old friends and new acquaintances to establish a secure world for their sons and to create moments of escape for increasingly besieged Abraham.

Julia Taft, whose younger brothers became constant playmates for
Lincoln's sons Willie and Tad, wrote of the Southern influence even on Northern families living in
Washington on the eve of the inauguration. “Before the war Washington was really a Southern city. We were accustomed to the convenience of having Negro servants and a good many Northern people like my parents hired such servants from their masters, though they would have been horrified at the idea of actually owning slaves.”

I had thought that writing about the food
during Lincoln's
White House years would be a simple task. Certainly, now that the Lincolns were in Washington, there would be extensive reports of their every action, including the meals they ate. I was wrong. I did find people who presented key insights into life in the Lincoln White House, a few food descriptions, and an inaugural dinner mystery. I'll tell those stories in two chapters. This chapter focuses on 1861, the first year the Lincolns spent in the White House. The next chapter centers on their sanctuary at what is now called “
President Lincoln's Cottage,” a summer White House just three miles northeast of the White House.

We begin with the journey from Springfield. Abraham Lincoln had left Washington eleven years earlier when he completed his term in Congress. Now, the train carrying President-elect Lincoln, Mary, Robert, Willie, and Tad along with Lincoln's secretaries,
John Nicolay and
John Hay, and two people from Springfield (
Ellen, a nanny, and
William H. Johnson, the young man of color who served as Lincoln's barber and valet)
traveled twelve days on a circuitous route from Springfield to Washington. Crowds thronged the route eager to see the new president and his family. Lincoln made speeches at nearly all of the seventy-five city and town stops along the way, no matter how brief. Even at small stations, he would appear and say a few words to the gathering. At many places he offered this standard comment: “I appear before you merely to greet you and say farewell. If I should make a speech at every town, I would not get to Washington until some time after the inauguration.”

There was more time for entertaining and politics at the overnight stops in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, and Harrisburg. In those cities Lincoln spoke to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Civic leaders and political allies tried to outdo each other, hosting receptions, levees, balls,
and concerts. Former President Millard Fillmore headed the welcoming committee in Buffalo.

For all the meals in public and private on this journey eastward, the press reported only two menus. None of the travelers on the
train or guests at these breakfasts, lunches, and dinners apparently noted them either. At a brief stop in Syracuse, lunch was brought on board. Waiters passed “various dishes including chicken, turkey, bread, and cake.”

Finally, in
New York City, a newspaper reports a full menu! And what a menu it was. The Lincoln party spent the nights of February 19 and 20 lodging at the famed
Astor House, a six-story hotel on the west side of Broadway in the Wall Street area, between Vesey and Barclay Streets. Lincoln had stayed in the hotel just a year before as he prepared to give his address at the
Cooper Union. Then, he walked from the station to the hotel and checked into a small, first-floor room. This time, the presidential party rode in eleven carriages from 30th Street Station to the hotel, where they stayed in a suite of rooms. Lincoln rode in an open carriage with a military aide, Colonel Edward Sumner, city alderman Charles Cornell, and Illinois friend
Judge David Davis. The
Baltimore Sun
reported that there was no band or military company in this procession as there had been at some of the other overnight stops.

The New York agenda was full. Lincoln met with a constant stream of politicians, friends, and business leaders. Two competing hat manufacturers each presented him with a top hat. When asked their relative value, Lincoln tactfully replied, “They mutually surpassed each other.” The Lincoln family did find time for sightseeing. President-elect Lincoln attended the opera at the Academy of Music. Mrs. Lincoln and the boys accepted P. T. Barnum's invitation to see the wonders at his museum.

The Astor House was the leading hotel of the day. Its 309 rooms surrounded a central courtyard covered by a cast-iron and glass roof. Many of its staff lived in the hotel, ready to provide top-level service. The presidential party dined in their suite both nights of their stay. The
New York Herald
published the details of the elegant “reception” dinner on the first night. The party of ten was seated at a round table with a nosegay of flowers at each place. The oval menu card was printed in black ink with a gold border, and “pink and other soft colors” formed the outer decorative edge. Although the menu reprinted in the newspaper lists the meal being
served in five courses, the statement that “the buffet carried a handsome new silver service, never used before,” and the number of entrée choices, suggest the meal was presented as a buffet or, perhaps, family style, with the Lincolns helping themselves to the rich foods.

As printed in the
Herald
, there was a first course of a light soup of julienned vegetables in broth, then a fish course of boiled salmon with anchovy sauce. Two cold dishes followed: tureen of goose liver and boned turkey with jelly. Next, the main course offered six choices: larded fillet of beef with green peas, larded sweetbreads with tomato sauce, fillet of chicken with truffle sauce, Shrewsbury oysters baked in their shells, roast canvasback duck, and roast stuffed quail. Sturdy vegetables rounded out the main course choices: potatoes—boiled or mashed—turnips in cream sauce, beets, lettuce, and celery. For dessert the Lincoln party could select fresh seasonal fruits,
ice cream, champagne jelly, claret jelly—think
wine Jell-O—or a variety of pastries: Charlotte Russe, cream cakes, cupcakes, ladies' fingers, and kisses—a meringue cookie.

The next evening Vice President-elect Hannibal Hamlin and his wife, Ellen, joined the Lincoln family group. The newspaper published this menu in
French. The translated dishes included raw oysters in the shell,
brunoise soup with poached egg—like the julienne soup the previous evening, only the vegetables are diced instead of thinly sliced—stuffed shad, stuffed quail, lamb chops with mushrooms and small potatoes fried in butter, chicken timbale—minced chicken molded with decorative pieces of beef tongue and black truffles—and partridge. The canvasback duck made a repeat appearance. Many of the same vegetables were served, too: boiled potatoes, potatoes au gratin, spinach with eggs, small peas French style, turnips in cream sauce, beets, celery, and lettuce. Champagne and Bordeaux jellies, Charlotte Russe, Swiss meringue, almond macaroons, and vanilla ice cream completed the meal.

But we have more than a menu from the Astor House. Thanks to the efforts of a
New York Times
reporter, we have a sense of the hotel's service standard and food quality. In 1859 the “Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times,” as his articles were by-lined, embarked on a series of restaurant reviews from one end of New York to the other, from the swanky “Astor House restaurant to the smallest description of a dining saloon in the City.” Of the Astor House he wrote: “The waiter who would permit himself
to call out to another or in any way to disturb ‘the harmony of the meeting,' would be—well, I should not like to state publicly what they really do with waiters at that establishment under such circumstances—but they do it immediately. The meats are all cooked in perfection and served in perfection, and the bread!—I am ready at any moment to go before a Justice of the Peace and affirm … that it is the best bread in the Universe.”

On February 21 the Lincolns left New York heading to Pennsylvania, stopping in the state capital, Harrisburg. On the 23rd, as the route continued southward, traveling through Philadelphia and
Baltimore to Washington, the risk to President-elect Lincoln increased. There were rumors of a plot to assassinate Lincoln when he passed through Baltimore. To thwart the attack, Lincoln, friend Ward Lamon, and detective Alan Pinkerton with his female operative Kate Worne boarded a middle-of-the-night train from Philadelphia into Washington, arriving without incident at six in the morning. Mrs. Lincoln and the rest of the presidential party followed on the scheduled train, arriving at four in the afternoon. The Lincolns, their family, and small staff checked into the
Willard Hotel, Washington's leading hotel, for the ten days until the inauguration and their move into the White House.

And now we come to the food puzzle during the first hours of the Lincoln administration, what I call the “Great Lincoln Inaugural Corned
Beef and Cabbage Mystery.” According to Willard Hotel oral history, Lincoln, after taking the oath of office, enjoyed an inaugural meal at the hotel consisting of mock
turtle
soup, corned beef and cabbage, parsley potatoes, and blackberry pie. Some print and Internet sources suggest that after the swearing-in ceremony and his inaugural address, Lincoln actually walked back to the Willard where he ate the corned beef meal, watched the inaugural parade, and then somehow got to the White House just a couple of blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Much more reliable sources, including the benchmark
Day by Day
, an authoritative collection from primary sources, present a more realistic description of the full day's events. Outgoing
President James Buchanan picked Abraham Lincoln up at the Willard shortly after noon. They rode to the Capitol in an open carriage. The family followed in another carriage along with the rest of the “procession.” Sixteen-year-old
Julia Taft watched from a window above Pennsylvania Avenue. “Troops
lined the avenue and at every corner there was a mounted orderly. The usual applause was lacking as the President's carriage, surrounded by a close guard of cavalry, passed and an ugly murmur punctuated by some abusive remarks followed it down the avenue.”

At about one o'clock from the East Portico,
Lincoln began his
inaugural address and, after speaking for about a half hour, he then took the oath of office. In his speech, Lincoln reached out to the Southern states considering secession: “We are not enemies, but friends.” He closed with a call to unified patriotism. “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

After the ceremonies Lincoln got back into the carriage with now former President Buchanan and drove, again in a celebratory procession, “the parade,” to the White House.

The Lincolns' first meal in the executive mansion was an “elegant
dinner” arranged by Miss Harriet Lane, President Buchanan's niece and official hostess, as reported by Mary Lincoln's cousin
Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, one of the relatives who traveled from Springfield for the inauguration. Mrs. Grimsley stayed with the Lincolns for six months and described the settling-in process. She wrote that at the end of the ceremonies former
President Buchanan escorted President Lincoln to the vestibule of the Executive Mansion, “where, after courteous words of welcome, he left him.”

Mrs. Grimsley explained that the White House was “in a perfect state of readiness for the incomers—A competent chef with efficient butler and waiters under the direction of Miss Lane had an elegant dinner prepared.” Seventeen people sat down to dinner, including Mary's sister Elizabeth Edwards and her two daughters. Alas, Mrs. Grimsley neglected to provide the menu. The only
food she mentioned on public or family tables during her whole six-month stay was Potomac shad. After eating it, everyone in the family took ill. Some suspected poisoning, but the reason she gave was simply overconsumption of a food “new to Western palates.”