Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (22 page)

“And you believe that only by lying will my application succeed?”

“I know it,” said Owen Lovejoy in a voice that allowed no room for doubt.

“Then that is what I shall do.”

The Lovejoy brothers nodded, satisfied that they had persuaded her. She wondered if they understood precisely which of their carefully measured phrases had ultimately convinced her. Owen Lovejoy had said—and the law maintained—that her son had earned that pension for his mother by giving his life for the Union. That was what did it.
She would not cast aside George’s last gift to her out of deference to foolish laws governing race and marriage that had not been designed with colored people in mind and that had never helped a single slave, not one, not ever. Why should those laws apply to her now when they had never applied before, during the long, difficult years when they might have eased her suffering?

She trusted that the Lord would forgive her for the lies she intended to tell, freely and without reservation.

In the middle of April, Elizabeth stood before Justice of the Peace William S. Clary and two respected witnesses to offer her sworn testimony. She was the widowed mother of George W. D. Kirkland, private, First Missouri Volunteers, Company D, killed on August 10, 1861, in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. George’s father was her first husband, Mr. Alexander Kirkland, a white man, who died when George was only eighteen months old. The Garland family later took mother and son to St. Louis, where Elizabeth married James Keckley, but for the past three years they had lived apart and Elizabeth received no support from him. She had purchased her freedom and her son’s for twelve hundred dollars and infinite toil and labor, and she had relied upon her son’s contributions from his wages to help pay back the debts she had incurred by doing so. She still owed two hundred dollars upon that debt, as well as one hundred more yet unpaid for George’s education. George had left no widow or minor child under the age of sixteen. Elizabeth had not, in any way, been engaged in, or aided or abetted, the rebellion in the United States, and she had willingly laid her son’s life upon the altar of her country.

Any lingering guilt she might have felt about lying was dispelled when two respected ministers, Daniel A. Payne, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and John M. Brown, clergyman, separately swore that they had known her for ten years and that every word of her testimony was true. Elizabeth wondered how anyone could possibly be fooled by that, when she had never denied—and it could be easily proven—that she had not come to Washington City until 1860.

But Elizabeth did so solemnly swear, and the documents were signed
and the seals affixed, and within a few weeks her application was approved. From that day forward, and for the rest of her life, she received a pension from the federal government. As compensation for her loss it was hopelessly inadequate—eight dollars a month, later raised to twelve, for the life of her son—but it often made the difference between contentment and worry, so she was grateful.

The fair weather of spring helped to lift spirits a trifle throughout the beleaguered city, but to Elizabeth it seemed as if Mr. Lincoln was becoming gaunt and aged beyond his years by the cares of war. The Union Army was in such great need of soldiers that Congress had been obliged to pass a draft law applying to married white men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, and single white men up to the age of forty-five. Black men were exempt because they were not considered citizens, and anyone who could afford to hire a substitute could avoid service. The unfairness of a system that sent poor men to war and let rich men buy their way out created great anger and resentment throughout the North.

At the end of April and into May, Union and Confederate forces met at Chancellorsville, a crossroads town west of Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Although the Confederates lost their celebrated general Stonewall Jackson to friendly fire, General Lee won a decisive victory in what became the bloodiest battle the war had yet manifested, with over seventeen thousand casualties for the North and nearly thirteen thousand for the South. Devastating news and thousands of wounded flooded Washington City, turning it again into one expansive, sprawling field hospital, with the stench of death and decay pervading the air so that Elizabeth kept her windows closed day and night in a futile attempt to block out the smell and the images of battlefield horror it evoked.

A few weeks later, in mid-May, General Grant led his troops across the Big Black River in Mississippi and on to Vicksburg, but two direct assaults on the city were repulsed, and the Union forces settled back to the dispiriting, tedious business of the siege.

Although Mrs. Lincoln did not like her husband to walk about Washington City without a military escort because of the frequent letters he received threatening assassination, the president often went alone back and forth between the White House and telegraph office in the War Department to collect the most recent bulletins from the field. Once, when Elizabeth was with Mrs. Lincoln in the family’s sitting room fitting a dress, the president returned from one of those solitary walks, his step slow and heavy, his expression careworn and unhappy. Like an exhausted boy he flung himself upon a sofa and shaded his eyes with his long, bony hands, a complete picture of dejection.

Mrs. Lincoln exchanged a quick, worried look with Elizabeth and asked, “Where have you been, Father?”

“To the War Department,” he replied shortly.

Mrs. Lincoln did not let his tone discourage her. “Any news?”

“Yes, plenty of news, but no good news. It is dark, dark everywhere.”

Mrs. Lincoln sighed softly, and Elizabeth’s heart went out to the president. When she tried to imagine what it must be like to bear his burdens, she did not know how one man could carry so much upon his shoulders.

She continued adjusting the fit of Mrs. Lincoln’s bodice, watching from the corner of her eye as Mr. Lincoln stretched out one of his long arms, took a small Bible from a stand near the head of the sofa, opened it, and leafed through the pages almost idly until a passage caught his eye. Soon he was engrossed in reading, and after about fifteen minutes had passed in near silence, Elizabeth glanced his way and observed that his expression seemed greatly changed, almost cheerful. The dejected frown had vanished, and a new resolution and hope lit up his countenance. Curious, Elizabeth wondered what he had read to have discovered so much comfort so quickly. Murmuring an excuse about a misplaced pincushion, Elizabeth quietly walked around the sofa pretending to search for it, but really stealing a glimpse of the open Bible, and she discovered that the president was reading from the Book of Job. Greatly moved, Elizabeth could almost imagine hearing the Lord speaking to him in a thunderous voice from the whirlwind of battle:
“Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.” The sublimity of witnessing the ruler of a mighty nation turning to Holy Scripture for comfort and courage, and finding both in his darkest hour, brought tears to her eyes, and she was obliged to quickly compose herself before returning to Mrs. Lincoln’s side.

Mrs. Lincoln too looked to the Bible for solace and guidance, but after Willie’s death, she delved more and more often into the mysteries of spiritualism. She consulted mediums and invited them to hold séances in the White House, hoping to communicate with the spirits of her dead children. Not only did the most gifted spiritualists help her to see and speak with Willie and Eddie, Mrs. Lincoln affirmed, but they also warned her about daring new offensives General Lee was planning and treachery within her husband’s cabinet. “I have been warned that there is not one man among them except the postmaster general who would not stab my husband in the back if the opportunity arose,” Mrs. Lincoln told Elizabeth one morning after a séance. While Elizabeth believed that some of the spiritualists certainly did possess unexplained powers, she knew that long before any message from the beyond told her so, Mrs. Lincoln already had been convinced that the cabinet secretaries were motivated by avarice and the lust for power rather than love of country and loyalty to her husband.

In matters of spiritualism, Elizabeth also encouraged the First Lady to develop a little healthy skepticism. Unscrupulous frauds were known to prey upon widows and bereaved parents, interpreting the ringing of an unseen bell or mysterious tappings as messages from their departed loved ones, coded messages of undying love and reassurance, when in fact the mediums themselves made the noises with devices concealed beneath the table. The previous summer, Mrs. Lincoln had been taken in by just such a scoundrel, a stout, debonair British gentleman who called himself Lord Colchester and claimed to be the illegitimate son of an English duke. He earned quite a reputation in Washington for his prowess, so Mrs. Lincoln invited him to the White House for a demonstration. Sometime after that, gossip about the alleged nobleman raised Mr. Lincoln’s suspicions, so he asked Dr. Joseph Henry, head of the
Smithsonian Institution, to investigate. Dr. Henry in turn enlisted the aid of Noah Brooks, a correspondent for
The
Sacramento Union
and President Lincoln’s closest friend within the press. Mr. Brooks attended one of Lord Colchester’s séances in a darkened room at the residence of a true believer, but just when the unseen spirits were at their most loquacious, Mr. Brooks reached beneath the table, seized a hand that was rapping upon a drum with a bell, and shouted, “Strike a match!” Before any of the astonished participants could comply, the drum struck Mr. Brooks a strong blow across the head. When someone finally lit a lamp, it illuminated a startling scene—Mr. Brooks, blood trickling down his face, grasping the arm of Lord Colchester.

In the uproar that followed, the Englishman slipped away, but a few days later, Mrs. Lincoln summoned Mr. Brooks to the White House. She had received a note from Lord Colchester demanding that she arrange a War Department pass for him and hinting at blackmail if she did not obey. Together Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Brooks arranged for the false clairvoyant to come to the White House, ostensibly to collect his pass, and when he arrived Mr. Brooks confronted him as a swindler and a humbug, and ordered him to leave Washington immediately or be thrown into the Old Capitol Prison. Lord Colchester promptly fled the city and did not trouble Mrs. Lincoln again. When Mrs. Lincoln later told Elizabeth the entire story, she laughed so merrily that one would almost think she had been amused by a farce rather than deceived by a charlatan. But even though Lord Colchester had been discredited, Mrs. Lincoln retained her faith in other spiritualists and clung to her belief that her dear sons Willie and Eddie did indeed appear to her, not only in the midst of a séance, but beside her bed at night, waking her from sleep to assure her they were together and happy in heaven.

Not all of Mrs. Lincoln’s messages from the spirit realm offered comfort. Sometimes when Elizabeth arrived at the White House, she found Mrs. Lincoln shaken and pale, with dark shadows beneath her eyes. Those were the mornings Mrs. Lincoln had been visited the night before by terrifying premonitions that her husband would be murdered. They were only nightmares, Elizabeth tried in vain to assure her,
terrible to endure but still nothing more than unpleasant dreams. Mrs. Lincoln was not convinced, and even Elizabeth had to admit she had good reason. It was wartime. President Lincoln moved freely about in a city full of strangers and secessionists. He regularly received anonymous letters full of wild threats and promises that he did not have long to live. Sometimes his friends became so worried on his behalf that they took turns sleeping in the White House to watch over him. For his part, although he too sometimes endured sleepless nights and suffered foreboding dreams, Mr. Lincoln ignored the dangers, or laughed off the threats, and only reluctantly conceded to the guards assigned to escort him when he traveled longer distances from the mansion.

Elizabeth was bent over her sewing in the Lincolns’ sitting room one afternoon when Mrs. Lincoln broke off their conversation at the sight of Mr. Lincoln putting on his overshoes and shawl. “Where are you going now, Father?” she asked.

“I am going over to the War Department, Mother,” he said resignedly as he stood and adjusted his collar, “to try and learn some news.”

“But, Father, you should not go out alone. You know you are surrounded with danger.”

“All imagination,” he said. “What does anyone want to harm me for? Don’t worry about me as if I were a little child, for no one is going to molest me.” Utterly unconcerned, or perhaps simply fatalistic, he departed for his solitary walk, closing the door behind him.

Mrs. Lincoln could not emulate his studious confidence. She seemed to read impending danger in every rustling leaf, in every whisper of the wind, and Elizabeth could not honestly say that she was wrong to do so.