Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker (27 page)

Mrs. Lincoln refused to sit idly by and hope everything worked out in her husband’s favor. She campaigned for him in her own way, cultivating friendships with politicians and businessmen of dubious character but with ample wealth, influence, or, ideally, both. Gossip swirled about her yet again, scathingly impugning her for surrounding herself with a certain class of men. When Elizabeth, ever attuned to appearances, delicately ventured that Mrs. Lincoln’s new friends and correspondents did not seem to be the sort of gentlemen Mr. Lincoln would choose as friends, Mrs. Lincoln replied, “I have an object in view, Elizabeth. In a political canvass it is policy to cultivate every element of strength.”

Dubious, Elizabeth asked, “And you consider these gentlemen from New York to be a strength, despite the unpleasant chatter your friendship with them inspires?”

“These men have influence, and we require influence to reelect Mr. Lincoln,” the First Lady explained. “I will be clever to them until after the election, and then, if we remain at the White House, I will drop every one of them, and let them know very plainly that I only made tools of them. They are an unprincipled set, and I don’t mind a little double-dealing with them.”

Elizabeth was shocked that Mrs. Lincoln could so blithely plan to use unscrupulous, possibly dangerous men to her own advantage, dismiss them when they had served their purpose, and then mock them by announcing what she had done. “Does Mr. Lincoln know what your purpose is?”

“God, no! He would never sanction such a proceeding.”

“Perhaps that should be enough to recommend against it.”

“Oh, Elizabeth.” Mrs. Lincoln shook her head as if she should have known that Elizabeth would understand no better than her husband. “I keep him in the dark, and will tell him when all is over. He is too honest to take the proper care of his own interests, so I feel it to be my duty to electioneer for him.”

As always, Mrs. Lincoln professed the best of intentions and truly seemed to believe she was doing what was good and necessary—and once again, Elizabeth found herself dismayed. She wished Mrs. Lincoln would be more prudent. The First Lady was quite a schemer, but she was surely out of her depth among such shrewd, experienced New York politicians, for whom double-dealing and electioneering were a way of life. Elizabeth feared that it was far more likely that the crafty, flattering gentlemen were using Mrs. Lincoln than that she was using them. She did not see any way the First Lady’s alliances with such men would end well.

Elizabeth had another reason for disliking the First Lady’s trips to New York. Whenever Mrs. Lincoln was worried or upset, she found comfort in shopping. Whenever she traveled to the North, the newspapers were full of snide reports about how she had ransacked the treasures of Broadway stores, filling her carriage with shawls, boas, capes, handkerchiefs, parasols, fans, bonnets, boots, and gloves. Elizabeth fought to conceal her astonishment if she happened to be present when Mrs. Lincoln’s purchases were delivered, but one eighty-dollar handkerchief made her jaw drop, and a two-thousand-dollar shawl caused her to gasp aloud, hand to her heart. Estimating the bills, Elizabeth could not see how Mrs. Lincoln could possibly afford all that she acquired, not when her rough calculations strongly suggested that Mrs. Lincoln’s personal expenses that spring surpassed her entire budget for the White House refurbishing during the first year of her husband’s presidency.

A member of the White House staff was charged with the thankless task of approving all of Mrs. Lincoln’s official expenditures, but no one monitored her personal spending. Perhaps everyone assumed it would be constrained by her husband’s salary, but that, of course, was not so. If the First Lady ordered luxurious goods from a fine shop on Broadway or Pennsylvania Avenue, every shopkeeper therein would be all too delighted to extend her credit—but eventually, the bills would come due, and payment in full would be expected, and later demanded.

As soon as the spring sunshine dried the muddy roads of Virginia enough to make them passable, the armies would be on the move, and for the first time, General Grant would face General Lee. Everyone in the North realized that defeating General Lee was crucial to ending the rebellion, not only because General Lee was a brilliant strategist, but also because his army protected the Confederate capital of Richmond.

On April 25, at midday, Elizabeth, Emma, Virginia, and the Lewis girls joined the crowds lining Fourteenth Street to watch General Burnside’s thirty thousand troops march out to reinforce the Army of the Potomac. In the early months of the war, every parade of soldiers had drawn throngs of cheering onlookers, but since then the sight of passing regiments had become so commonplace that they attracted little notice. But this was no ordinary procession. This time the column included seven regiments of United States Colored Troops, three of them recruited in nearby Maryland, and it seemed that every person of color in Washington and many more besides had come to see them set out to confront General Lee.

Pride surged through Elizabeth’s veins as she waited, listening as the stirring sounds of fife and drums heralded the column’s approach. Down New York Avenue they came, smart and polished, turning south onto Fourteenth Street past cheering crowds. Virginia lifted toddler Alberta up to her shoulder while the older Lewis girls, Jane and Lucy, rose up high on tiptoe, craning their necks to see over the heads of the crowd. “There they are,” Virginia cried, gesturing for her children to look. “Do you see how well they march? Do you see? Those are
our
soldiers, our brave colored soldiers.”

As the girls, eyes shining, assured their mother that they did indeed see, Elizabeth gazed at the dark, proud, eager faces of the colored soldiers and felt her throat constricting with emotion. Their splendid uniforms, the rousing music, the bold and steady marching, the cheering crowd—in that glorious moment it seemed to Elizabeth that there might be no limit to what the people of her race could accomplish in the years to come, unhindered by slavery, when peace reigned over a nation united once again. It was the most sublime spectacle she had ever
witnessed, and she prayed that the men would acquit themselves bravely. Everyone would be watching them, she knew, and many would maliciously hope for them to fail. They must succeed, and they would succeed, and in so doing they would disprove every false, slanderous word uttered about the folly of allowing men of color to enlist.

The marching corps approached Willard’s Hotel, where President Lincoln and General Burnside stood on the eastern portico to review the parade. When the colored troops passed the president, they waved their hats in the air and cheered for the Great Emancipator, the man who had set their people free. Mr. Lincoln stood with his hat off, bowing and nodding, showing them the same respect and courtesy he had shown every white soldier.

The column needed more than four hours to cross Pennsylvania Avenue. After the soldiers came ambulances, then thousands of cattle to feed the troops, all heading across the river to Virginia. A renewed sense of purpose and determination filled the city, from the marching soldiers to the people lining the streets shouting blessings and good wishes upon them. And then they were gone, leaving hope and fear and anticipation and apprehension in their wake.

The crowds dispersed, and the people went home. Now, all knew, they had to brace themselves for the inevitable onslaught of casualties.

They did not have long to wait.

While the Union and Confederate armies clashed in the Wilderness, the dead and wounded came flooding into Washington from field hospitals, just as they had after the battles at Bull Run, the Peninsula, Antietam, and Gettysburg. The wounded arrived in ambulances, one train a day, but the trains were miles long and had jolted and jerked their suffering passengers over great distances, without food and comforts, filthy and fainting, limbs gone, wounds untended. Injured, sick, and dying soldiers, corpses, prisoners, officials—the choked docks and stations and roadways could not be cleared swiftly enough to make room for new transports. The noxious odor of bodies in the summer heat hung sickly sweet over every street and alley, and the remains of the dead piled up faster than the embalmers could attend to them. One
Washington undertaker fell so far behind as he raced to work through his backlog of deceased that he was briefly arrested and cited for causing a public nuisance. All of Washington seemed to be one great, terrible hospital, and no corner of it was spared the miasma of death.

From the Wilderness the fighting moved on to the Spotsylvania Court House, and from there to the North Anna River, and then on to Cold Harbor. Casualties were massive on both sides, disproportionately so for the Union, but the outcomes of the battles were tactically inconclusive. More revealing was what General Grant did each time he failed to destroy General Lee’s army: In circumstances where his predecessors had always chosen to retreat, General Grant regrouped and moved his army forward, again and again, keeping General Lee on the defensive and inching ever closer to Richmond. The people of the North realized then that General Grant possessed a very different military mind than they had witnessed thus far in the war.

In the last major battle of the campaign, General Grant surprised General Lee by directing his engineers to construct a pontoon bridge 2,100 feet across the James, stealthily crossing the river, and threatening Petersburg, the most important supply base and railway depot for the entire region, including the Confederate capital of Richmond. If General Grant could capture Petersburg, Richmond would inevitably fall. The Union troops settled in for the siege.

The split within the Republican Party widened throughout the spring. At the end of May, the radical Republican faction convened in Cleveland to select their own candidate for the general election, determined that he should win enough delegates to make Mr. Lincoln’s nomination irrelevant. Styling themselves as the Radical Democracy Party, they were expected to choose General Frémont as their nominee, although rumors floated about that some among them held out hope for General Grant, who could not have made his disinterest in the office more clear. He had enough to do fighting the war, Elizabeth thought, without taking on all the additional fighting that went on in Washington.

Soon after the convention closed, Elizabeth was dressing Mrs. Lincoln for an evening at the opera with Postmaster General Blair and his daughter when Mr. Lincoln entered carrying a newspaper. “Nicolay brought me the
Herald,
so I can examine the news from Cleveland at my leisure,” he told his wife, his expression nonchalant but his eyes shining with suppressed amusement.

Mrs. Lincoln’s brows drew together. “Didn’t you read the report at the telegraph office yesterday?”

“I did,” he said, settling down on the sofa and stretching out his long legs in front of him, “but Nicolay must have believed I wanted it.”

“Has the news changed?” inquired Mrs. Lincoln, in an ironical tone that implied she knew it had not.

“No, every word is the same. Frémont is their man—the man, anyway, of the four hundred people who showed up for the convention.”

“Was that all?” exclaimed Elizabeth, forgetting herself. “Only four hundred?”

Mr. Lincoln’s mouth quirked in a smile. “That’s right, Madam Elizabeth. A mere four hundred.” Suddenly inspired, he sat upright and reached for the Bible on the wooden stand nearby. “That reminds me,” he said, turning pages. “First Samuel, chapter twenty-two, verse two.” He found the passage, cleared his throat, and began to read the scripture. “‘And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.’” He replaced the open Bible on the stand. “Four hundred again. An interesting number, it seems to me.”

In this way, Elizabeth discovered that Mr. Lincoln was not terribly concerned about Mr. Frémont being put up against him.

A few days later, at their convention in Baltimore, Republicans loyal to Abraham Lincoln renamed themselves the National Union Party to distinguish themselves from the gentlemen who had met in Cleveland. They also hoped the new name would appeal to War Democrats, with whom they wanted to forge a coalition. Like themselves, the War Democrats were in favor of the war, and they wanted to break away from the
antiwar Peace Democrats to support a candidate who reflected their views—but they could not bring themselves to vote for a Republican. A candidate from the new National Union Party, on the other hand, might be tolerable.