Moreover, as Lincoln later explained to Orville Browning, "Fremont"s proclamation, as to confiscation of property, and the liberation of slaves, is purely political, and not within the range of military law, or necessity." As chief executive, he could not allow a general in the field to determine the "permanent future condition" of slaves. Seward fully supported Lincoln on principle as well as policy. "The trouble with Fremont was, that he acted without authority from the President," Seward later maintained. "The President could permit no subordinate to a.s.sume a responsibility which belonged only to himself."
Lincoln"s fears about the reaction to Fremont"s proclamation in the border states were justified. Within days, frantic letters reached Washington from Unionists in Kentucky. Joshua Speed wrote to Lincoln that Fremont"s proclamation had left him "unable to eat or sleep-It will crush out every vestage of a union party in the state-I perhaps & a few others will be left alone." He reminded his old friend that there were "from 180 to 200000 slaves" in Kentucky, of whom only 20,000 belonged to rebels. "So fixed is public sentiment in this state against freeing negroes & allowing negroes to be emanc.i.p.ated & remain among us," he continued, "that you had as well attack the freedom of worship in the north or the right of a parent to teach his child to read-as to wage war in a slave state on such a principle."
Meanwhile, events in Missouri took a strange turn. On September 1, the same day that Fremont made his proclamation public, Colonel Frank Blair penned a long letter to his brother, Montgomery, that would lead to the colonel"s arrest and imprisonment two weeks later. "I know that you and I are both in some sort responsible for Fremonts appointment," he admitted, but "my decided opinion is that he should be relieved of his command." Blair was not reacting to the proclamation, as was a.s.sumed by contemporaries and historians alike. On the contrary, he told Monty he agreed with the proclamation, believing that stringent measures, including the liberation of slaves, were necessary to dispel the illusions of impunity the marauding bands of rebel guerrillas seemed to harbor. He wished only that the proclamation had been issued earlier, when Fremont "had the power to enforce it & the enemy no power to retaliate."
But since Fremont had taken command, Frank told his brother, the situation in Missouri had grown increasingly desperate. Through "gross & inexcusable negligence," the rebels had acc.u.mulated a substantial following. "Oh! for one hour of our dead Lyon," he lamented, adding that many now ascribed Lyon"s death to Fremont"s failure to reinforce him. Moreover, in the camps around St. Louis, there was "an active want of discipline" reminiscent of the disorganization in Washington that led to Bull Run. If his brother had information absolving Fremont, Frank continued, if the government knew more of Fremont"s plans than he, then Montgomery should "burn this paper and say that I am an alarmist"; but at this moment, his faith was shaken "to the very foundations."
Monty Blair showed his brother"s frank letter to Lincoln and added a letter of his own. He a.s.serted that he himself had reluctantly concluded that Fremont must be dismissed. He acknowledged that he had sponsored Fremont at the start, having enjoyed a warm friendship with the celebrated explorer, "but being now satisfied of my mistake duty requires that I should frankly admit it and ask that it may be promptly corrected." Like Frank, he took no issue with the proclamation, believing a show of strength was necessary. Fremont"s removal, he concluded, was "required by public interests."
Hearing similar testimony from other sources in Missouri, Lincoln sent General Meigs and Montgomery Blair on September 10 to talk with Fremont and "look into the affair." At this point, the president still had not received confirmation from Fremont that he would modify the proclamation as requested.
That evening, Fremont"s spirited wife, Jessie, the daughter of former senator Thomas Benton, arrived in Washington after a three-day trip on a dusty, cramped train to hand-deliver Fremont"s delayed response. She sent Lincoln a card asking when she could see him and received the peremptory response: "A. Lincoln. Now." Straightaway, Jessie left her room at the Willard in the wrinkled dress she had worn during her sweltering trip. As she later reported, when the president came into the room, he "bowed slightly" but did not speak. Nor did he offer her a seat. She handed him her husband"s letter, which he read standing. To Lincoln"s fury and dismay, Fremont had refused his private request to modify the proclamation, insisting that the president must publicly order him to do so. "If I were to retract of my own accord," the general argued, "it would imply that I myself thought it wrong and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. But I did not do so."
When Lincoln remarked that Fremont clearly knew what was expected of him, Jessie implied that Lincoln did not understand the complex situation in Missouri. Nor did he appreciate that unless the war became one of emanc.i.p.ation, European powers were more than likely to recognize the Confederacy. "You are quite a female politician," Lincoln remarked. He later recalled that Jessie Fremont had "taxed me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the awkward tact I have to avoid quarelling with her.... She more than once intimated that if Gen Fremont should conclude to try conclusions with me he could set up for himself." As Jessie left, she asked Lincoln when she might return to receive his reply. He told her he would send for her when he was ready.
The next morning, Lincoln wrote his reply. This time, he issued "an open order" to Fremont to revise his proclamation to conform to the provisions of the Confiscation Act. Rather than allow Jessie to hand-deliver it, he sent it to be mailed. In keeping with Fremont"s own tactics, he made the reply public before Fremont would receive it.
While Jessie waited vainly at the Willard for word from Lincoln, Francis Blair, Sr., visited her room. "He had always been fond of me," Jessie recalled, "I had been like a child in their family; but Mr. Blair was now very angry." He told her that she and her husband had made a great mistake in incurring the enmity of the president. Talking too freely over a two-hour period, the elder Blair revealed that Frank had sent a letter to Monty describing the situation in Missouri, and that the president had sent Monty to St. Louis to "examine into that Department."
Jessie was infuriated, a.s.suming that Frank"s letter had precipitated the investigation. She "threatened the old man that Fremont should hold Frank personally responsible expecting that she could make [him] quail at the thought of losing the son of whom [he] is most proud in a duel with a skilled duellist." Blair Senior told her "that the Blairs did not shrink from responsibility." Frank"s sister, Lizzie, who, like the rest of the family, adored her high-spirited brother, believed her father had been "most incautious" in discussing Frank"s letter with Jessie, rightly fearing that the Fremonts would retaliate.
Meanwhile, Meigs and Monty Blair had a.s.sessed affairs in Missouri and were heading home. Meigs had come to the clear conclusion that Fremont was not fit to command the Department of the West. "The rebels are killing and ravaging the Unionmen throughout the state," he wrote; "great distress and alarm prevail; In St. Louis the leading people of the state complain that they cannot see him; he does not encourage the men to form regiments for defence." Monty Blair agreed. After what he described to Lincoln as "a full & plain talk with Fremont," he claimed that the general "Seems Stupefied & almost unconscious, & is doing absolutely nothing." Rumors circulated that Fremont was an opium-eater. "No time is to be lost, & no mans feelings should be consulted," Blair concluded.
The day after Monty Blair and Meigs departed for Washington, Fremont imprisoned Frank Blair, claiming that the letter he had written his brother on September 1 was an act of insubordination. By criticizing his commanding officer "with a view of effecting his removal," Frank was guilty of conduct "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."
Fremont and Jessie had concluded that the Blairs had betrayed them. Monty interceded, writing a conciliatory letter to Fremont that led to Frank"s release from jail. Frank insisted on fighting the charges, however, and was soon arrested again. Opinion in Missouri was equally divided between Frank Blair and General Fremont, each intent on destroying the other. General Scott had finally stepped in, ordering a suspension of Frank"s arrest and postponing the trial, which would never take place. But the quarrel between the two old allies would have serious consequences in the years ahead.
Lincoln"s public abrogation of Fremont"s proclamation produced a sigh of relief in the border states but, as Lincoln had apprehended, it profoundly disappointed radical Republicans and abolitionists. Only days earlier, Frances Seward had happily asked her sister, "Were you not pleased with Fremont"s proclamation?" Now Lincoln had once again dashed her hopes. In Chicago, Joseph Medill lamented that Lincoln"s letter "has cast a funeral gloom over our patriotic city.... It comes upon us like a killing June frost-which destroys the comming harvest. It is a step backwards." Senator Ben Wade blamed Lincoln"s "poor white trash" background for his revolting decision, while Frederick Dougla.s.s despaired: "Many blunders have been committed by the Government at Washington during this war, but this, we think, is the largest of them all."
While radicals hoping to make emanc.i.p.ation the war"s focus rallied behind Fremont, his antislavery credentials could not compensate for his flagrant mismanagement of the Department of the West. On September 18, Monty Blair and Meigs delivered their negative report to the cabinet. Still, Lincoln hesitated. The president "is determined to let Fremont have a chance to win the State of Missouri," the frustrated postmaster general told Francis Blair, Sr. Bates, too, was irritated by the president"s lack of resolution. With much of his large family still in Missouri, Bates had followed the state"s troubles closely. He had spoken against Fremont on numerous occasions in the cabinet, certain that Fremont was doing "more damage to our cause than half a dozen of the ablest generals of the enemy can do." Having a.s.sured Unionist friends in his home state that Fremont"s removal was imminent, Bates felt "distressed & mortified" by the president"s inaction.
Anxious about Missouri"s troubles and anguished by the illness of his wife, Julia, who had suffered a slight paralytic stroke, Bates uncharacteristically lashed out at Lincoln. "Immense mischief is caused by his lack of vim," he wrote his brother-in-law, the former governor of Missouri; "he has no will, no power to command-He makes no body afraid of him. And hence discipline is relaxed, & stupid inanity takes the place of action."
Frank Blair was more scathing in his criticisms of Lincoln and his cabinet. "I think G.o.d has made up his mind to ruin this nation," he wrote his brother Monty. "The only way to save it is to kick that pack of old women who compose the Cabinet into the sea. I never since I was born imagined that such a lot of poltroons & apes could be gathered together from the four quarters of the Globe as Old Abe has succeeded in bringing together in his Cabinet." His anger was focused on Seward and Cameron, and indirectly, of course, on Lincoln himself.
In fact, Lincoln had already dispatched Secretary of War Simon Cameron, accompanied by Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, to St. Louis to examine the situation once more and deliver, at his discretion, "a letter directing [Fremont] to surrender his command to the officer next below him." When Cameron arrived in St. Louis, he talked with Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis, who "spoke very freely of [Fremont"s] qualities and conduct" and warned the secretary of war that Missouri"s safety could be guaranteed only by the termination of Fremont"s command. Upon receiving the letter of dismissal, Fremont "was very much mortified." He told Cameron that "he was now in pursuit of the enemy, whom he believed were now within his reach, and that to recall him at this moment would not only destroy him, but render his whole expenditure useless." Cameron was swayed to withhold the order until he returned to Washington and talked with the president.
By this point, Lincoln had little doubt that Fremont should be discharged. In addition to the impressions of Meigs, Monty Blair, and Cameron, he had received a blistering report from Adjutant General Thomas detailing the sorry "const.i.tution of Fremont"s army, its defective equipment and arming, its confusion and imbecility, its lack of transportation," a catalogue of items leading to the una.s.sailable conclusion that "its head is wholly incompetent and unsafe to be instructed with its management." Yet Lincoln still "yielded to delay," Bates angrily confided in his diary, holding Seward responsible when the president hesitated a few days longer. "The President still hangs in painful and mortyfying doubt," Bates wrote. "And if we persist in this sort of impotent indecision, we are very likely to share his fate-and, worse than all, deserve it."
The Attorney General"s impatience was understandable, but Lincoln"s reasoning behind the delay was far shrewder than Bates realized. Two days after Bates made his angry entry, Lincoln dispatched his friend Leonard Swett to hand-carry a removal order to Fremont. Before Swett reached St. Louis, however, the War Department released the d.a.m.ning report of Adjutant General Thomas to the press. Published on October 31, the detailed report was considered by the New York Times "the most remarkable doc.u.ment that has seen the light since the beginning of the present war." So d.a.m.ning were the revelations about Fremont, the Times continued, that it was mystifying why the Lincoln administration had allowed their publication.
In fact, the decision to publicize the report was both calculated and canny. By the time the message was delivered to Fremont, the public had been primed with powerful arguments for his dismissal. Had Lincoln acted earlier, people might have concluded that Fremont was sacrificed to the Blairs or, worse still, cashiered because of his proclamation emanc.i.p.ating the slaves. By leaking the facts in the report, Lincoln had adroitly prepared public opinion to support his decision.
When Swett reached Missouri, he wisely antic.i.p.ated that Fremont would suspect his mission and refuse him entry into camp. So he gave the dismissal order to an army captain, who disguised himself as a farmer. With the doc.u.ment sewed into the lining of his coat, the messenger reached Fremont in person shortly after dawn on November 1, the same day that General Scott"s resignation was announced. When Fremont opened the order, the captain recalled, a "frown came over his brow, and he slammed the paper down on the table and exclaimed, "Sir, how did you get admission into my lines?""
By November 2, when the news was made public, the general reaction was that Lincoln was "justified" in his decision. Fremont no longer had "apologists or defenders" in Washington, the correspondent for the New York Times wrote; "the evidences of his unfitness for command have naturally so acc.u.mulated here-the headquarters of the army-that no defence of him is possible." The Philadelphia Inquirer agreed. "Slowly and reluctantly we are forced to the conviction that General Fremont is unequal to the command of the Western army. The report of Adjutant-General Thomas, which we publish this morning, settles the question in our judgment." In an unusually pro-administration editorial, the Democratic New York Herald noted with approval that while "Lincoln is not the man to deal unjustly or ungenerously with any public officer," his firing of Fremont "had become a public necessity, to which the President could no longer shut his eyes; and this tells the whole story."
Even Chase had to admit that Lincoln had handled the tangled situation admirably. "I am thoroughly persuaded," he wrote a friend, "that in all he has done [concerning] Gen. F. the Prest. has been guided by a true sense of publ[ic] duty."
ONE WEEK AFTER the resignation of General Scott and the dismissal of General Fremont, the administration faced a pressing new dilemma. Seward had received word that the Confederacy had dispatched two prominent Southerners, James Mason and John Slidell, to England to argue its case for formal recognition. Seward hoped to intercept the Confederate ship carrying the two former senators, but they had escaped the Union blockade in Charleston and reached Cuba, where they boarded the Trent, a British mail ship. On November 8, Union captain Charles Wilkes, in command of an armed sloop, encountered the Trent. Acting without official orders, he fired a shot across the bow and then proceeded to search the vessel. When Mason and Slidell were found, they were courteously escorted back to the Union sloop San Jacinto and taken to prison at Fort Warren in Boston. The British ship was allowed to continue its journey.
Captain Wilkes became a national hero to a North desperate for good news. "We do not believe the American heart ever thrilled with more genuine delight than it did yesterday, at the intelligence of the capture of Messrs. Slidell and Mason," the New York Times reported. "If we were to search the whole of Rebeldom, no persons so justly obnoxious to the North, could have been found." Wilkes was feted at Faneuil Hall in Boston, and a great banquet was given in his honor. Cameron appeared before a throng of happy Washingtonians and led "three cheers for Captain Wilkes." Bates recorded "great and general satisfaction" in his diary, while Chase reportedly said he regretted only that the captain had not gone one step further and seized the British ship.
Lincoln, too, seemed pleased at first. In a letter to Edward Everett, he spoke happily of "the items of news coming in last week," first the Union victory at Port Royal, and "then the capture of Mason & Slidell!" His gratification was soon mingled with anxiety, however, when Britain"s furious reaction to the incident became known. It took nearly three weeks for news of Mason and Slidell"s capture to reach London, but, as The Times reported, the "intelligence spread with wonderful rapidity." The complex situation was promptly reduced to a slogan: "Outrage on the British flag-the Southern Commissioners Forcibly Removed From a British Mail Steamer." The London press fulminated against the incident as an explicit violation of the law of nations, demanding "reparation and apology." Fabricated details of the capture depicted a brutal removal of the Southern commissioners.
Looking to give the supposed transgression a face, the British press focused upon Seward. Though the secretary of state told British officials confidentially that Wilkes had "acted without any instructions from the Government," thereby sparing the government "the embarra.s.sment which might have resulted if the act had been specially directed by us," he decided not to speak publicly on the matter. The first public response should come from the British government, Seward maintained. Seward"s silence troubled Thurlow Weed, whom Seward had sent to Europe as an unofficial representative. In one of his daily letters to Washington, Weed warned his oldest friend that "if the taking of the rebels from under the protection of the British flag was intended, and is avowed, and maintained, it means war." Newspapers reported that steamers in every dockyard were being equipped with troops and supplies, ready to leave at the government"s order. The press continued "fanning the popular flame by promising to clear the sea of the American navy in a month; acknowledge the Southern Confederacy; and, by breaking the blockade, letting out cotton, and letting in British manufactures." Secessionists in Europe, Weed reported, were "certainly jubilant."
Moreover, Weed anxiously wrote, word circulated in "high places" that Seward hoped "to provoke a war with England for the purpose of getting Canada." Animosity toward Seward was widespread, he continued, "how created or why, I know not. It has been skillfully worked. I was told yesterday, repeatedly, that I ought to write the President demanding your dismissal."
Agitated by the vituperative attacks by the British press, Seward burst into Lincoln"s office on Sunday afternoon, December 15. Orville Browning, who was taking tea with the president at the time, dismissed Seward"s worries, insisting that England would not do "so foolish a thing" as to declare war. Lincoln was not so sure. He recalled a ferocious bulldog in his hometown. While neighbors convinced themselves that they had nothing to fear, one wise man observed: "I know the bulldog will not bite. You know he will not bite, but does the bulldog know he will not bite?"
The American press hounded Seward with questions about the affair, but both he and Lord Lyons, the British minister to Washington, remained silent as they awaited the official British response. On December 19, nearly six weeks after the initial incident, "Her Majesty"s Government" finally declared the seizure of the envoys from the British ship "an affront to the national honor," which could be restored only if the prisoners were freed and returned to "British protection." In addition, Britain demanded "a suitable apology for the aggression." If the United States did not agree within a few days, Lyons and the entire British delegation were to pack up and return to Britain. Lyons carried the doc.u.ment to the secretary of state"s office, where he discussed the inflamed situation with Seward. Before presenting the doc.u.ment formally, he agreed to leave a copy so that the secretary and the president might have more time to consider their response. "You will perhaps be surprised to find Mr. Seward on the side of peace," Lord Lyons wrote to the British foreign minister.
Fred Seward recalled that his father shut himself off from all visitors and "devoted one entire day" to drafting a reply. The astute secretary understood the dilemma perfectly. As a practical matter, the United States could not afford to go to war with Britain. "With England as an auxiliary to rebellion," Weed had forewarned, "we are "crushed out."" It was necessary that the government release the prisoners and allow them to continue their journey to England. Yet, overwhelming popular support in the North for the seizure of the rebels had to be taken into consideration. "They can never be given up," one newspaper protested. "The country would never forgive any man who should propose such a surrender." Lincoln himself, though resolved to avoid war with England, was reportedly unhappy about submitting to the British demands, which many considered humiliating.
Seward composed an ingenious response, arguing that while Captain Wilkes had acted lawfully in searching the Trent, the legality of seizing contraband prisoners should have been decided by an American Prize Court. He recognized, he wrote, that he appeared to be taking "the British side" of the dispute "against my own country," but he was "really defending and maintaining, not an exclusively British interest, but an old, honored, and cherished American cause." The principle of referring such disputes to a legal tribunal, he reminded Britain, had been established nearly six decades earlier by Secretary of State James Madison when Britain had seized contraband from American ships in similar fashion. To "deny the justice" of the present British claim would be to "reverse and forever abandon" the very rationale upon which the United States had proudly stood in those earlier disputes. Therefore, in defense of "principles confessedly American," the government would "cheerfully" free the prisoners and turn them over to Lord Lyons.
Seward presented his arguments in an extraordinary cabinet session on Christmas morning. The discussion continued for four hours. "There was great reluctance on the part of some of the members of the cabinet-and even the President himself" to accept Seward"s argument, Bates recorded. They feared "the displeasure of our own people-lest they should accuse us of timidly truckling to the power of England." The prospect of returning the prisoners was "gall and wormwood" to Chase. "Rather than consent to the liberation of these men," he wrote, "I would sacrifice everything I possess." Only Monty Blair, the consummate realist, stood firmly with Seward at the start. At Lincoln"s invitation, Charles Sumner joined the session. As chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he had conferred with Lincoln frequently during the crisis, a.s.serting that the government should not risk war with England. Sumner had read letters from two respected London officials to Lincoln and Seward, revealing that Britain did not want war and that "if the present dispute were settled amicably Britain would not interfere further in the North"s problems." The presentations by Seward and Sumner gained some support; but the cabinet, unable to reach a conclusion, decided to meet again the following day to hear Seward present a new draft.
As the meeting adjourned, Lincoln turned to his secretary of state. "Governor Seward, you will go on, of course, preparing your answer, which, as I understand it, will state the reasons why they [the prisoners] ought to be given up. Now I have a mind to try my hand at stating the reasons why they ought not to be given up. We will compare the points on each side."
Seward finished his twenty-six-page dispatch that night and read it to Chase at his house the next morning before the cabinet convened. After brooding through the night, Chase had concluded that Seward was right. "I am consoled by the reflection that while nothing but severest retribution is due to them, the surrender under existing circ.u.mstances, is but simply doing right," he recorded in his diary.
When the cabinet met the following day, Seward presented his final draft. Though disturbed by the prospect of surrendering the prisoners, the members were relieved that no apology had been rendered and, as Seward boasted, "a great point was gained for our Government." The dispatch was unanimously adopted. After the meeting, Seward asked Lincoln why he had not presented "an argument for the other side?" With a smile, Lincoln replied, "I found I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind, and that proved to me your ground was the right one."
The following night, Seward hosted a dinner party to which he invited Senators Crittenden and Conkling and their wives, Orville Browning, Charles Sumner, Preston King, and English novelist Anthony Trollope, whom f.a.n.n.y described as "a great homely, red, stupid faced Englishman, with a disgusting beard of iron grey." The conversation at dinner was lively and contentious. Kentucky"s Crittenden became enraged when Seward p.r.o.nounced John Brown "a hero." f.a.n.n.y was upset when Crittenden criticized Florence Nightingale, the celebrated British nurse of the Crimean War, saying, "he thought it a very unwomanly thing for a gentle lady to go into a hospital of wounded men." f.a.n.n.y saved her retort for her diary. "That was enough of you, Mr. C. if I hadn"t seen you at the table turn your head an[d] spit on the floor cloth." After dinner, Seward took the men into the cloakroom, where he read his Trent dispatch. The listeners generally commended Seward"s handling of the crisis, though at the end of the reading, Crittenden "swore vehemently." Everyone a.s.sumed the public would be infuriated by the decision and that the publication of the dispatch would "doom [Seward] to unpopularity."
In the end, the public greeted the dispatch with relief, not anger. Compared to the prospect of fighting both a civil war and a foreign war at the same time, the release of the two prisoners seemed inconsequential. "The general acquiescence in this concession is a good sign," George Templeton Strong observed. "It looks like willingness to pa.s.s over affronts that touch the democracy in its tenderest point for the sake of concentrating all our national energies on the trampling out of domestic treason."
Lincoln himself finally recognized both the diplomatic logic and the absolute necessity of giving up the prisoners. And he was willing to admit that, in this case, his secretary of state had pursued the right course all along-a characteristic response that Fred Seward fully appreciated. "Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments," he wrote, "but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart."
WITH THE RETURN OF CONGRESS for the winter session, the pace of social life in Washington quickened. "Houses are being fitted for winter gayeties, rich dresses and laughing faces pa.s.s on every side," reported Iowa State Register columnist Mrs. Cara Ka.s.son, wife of the a.s.sistant postmaster general, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Miriam." The city is "thronged with strangers, every nook and corner is occupied with...lookers-on at this swiftly-moving Panorama of life in the Capital."
The crowds who streamed into the White House receptions that winter found a mansion transformed by Mary Lincoln"s tireless efforts. Peeling walls had been stripped and covered with elegant Parisian wallpaper. New sets of china adorned the tables. Magnificent new rugs replaced their threadbare predecessors. Even one of Mary"s severest critics, Mary Clemmer Ames, grudgingly admitted that the new rugs were magnificent. She considered the velvet one in the East Room the "most exquisite carpet ever" to cover the historic floor. "Its ground was of pale sea green, and in effect looked as if [the] ocean, in gleaming and transparent waves, were tossing roses at your feet." A California journalist praised the finished product highly: "The President"s house has once more a.s.sumed the appearance of comfort and comparative beauty."
The historian George Bancroft reported favorably to his wife about a visit with the first lady, who was able with equal charm to discuss her plans for the "elegant fitting up of Mr. Lincoln"s room" and to "discourse eloquently" on a recent military review. Bancroft "came home entranced." Mary "is better in manners and in spirit than we have generally heard: is friendly and not in the least arrogant."
As the bills came in, however, Mary discovered that she had overspent the $20,000 allowance by more than $6,800. Afraid to inform her husband, she inveigled John Watt, the White House groundskeeper, to inflate his expense accounts and funnel the extra money over to her. She had replaced her first Commissioner of Public Buildings after he refused to pay for an elaborate White House dinner from the manure account. She exchanged her patronage influence for reduced bills, and accepted gifts from wealthy donors. At one point, she asked John Hay to turn over the White House stationery fund for her use, and later to pay her as the White House steward. "I told her to kiss mine," Hay jokingly informed Nicolay. "Was I right?" Mary was irate when Hay denied her requests. She tried to have him fired, forever losing his goodwill. "The devil is abroad, having great wrath," he confided to Nicolay. "His daughter, the h.e.l.l-Cat...is in "a state of mind" about the Steward"s salary."
Despite her finagling, Mary found herself in trouble shortly before the New Year when more bills arrived with no money left in the account. She had no recourse but to tell her husband what had happened and to beg him to ask for an additional appropriation. To bolster her case, she asked Benjamin French, the new Commissioner of Public Buildings, to speak with her husband. French caught up with the president shortly after he returned home from a memorial service in the Senate for Edward Baker. The juxtaposition between the moving eulogies for his old friend and the unpleasant topic of decorating bills provoked in Lincoln an unusual display of anger.
The president was "inexorable," French recalled; "he said it would stink in the land to have it said that an appropriation of $20,000 for furnishing the house had been overrun by the President when the poor freezing soldiers could not have blankets, & he swore he would never approve the bills for flub dubs for that d.a.m.ned old house!" Moreover, Lincoln angrily pointed out, the place was "furnished well enough when they came-better than any house they had ever lived in-& rather than put his name to such a bill he would pay it out of his own pocket!"
French was nonetheless determined to aid Mary"s cause. He liked her "better and better the more I see of her," he admitted, "and think she is an admirable woman. She bears herself, in every particular, like a lady and, say what they may about her, I will defend her." He succeeded in convincing a friendly congressman to hide a deficiency appropriation in a complex list of military appropriations. The crisis was resolved, at least temporarily, until Mary"s continued spending produced another round of bills.
Mary was not alone in her worries about money. In the fall of 1861, Kate spent several weeks in Philadelphia and New York on a mission to purchase new furnishings for her father"s mansion. Merchants gladly extended lines of credit for Kate as they had for Mary, creating great anxiety in her father"s mind. "I need hardly caution you to avoid extravagance, as it is going to be hard work to make both ends meet here; and if any circ.u.mstances should compel me to resign before long my expences shall have far exceeded my income. It does seem a little hard that one who has so much & such important work to do as I have had for the past twelve years should all the time have to pay such a large part of his own expences."
The sense of injustice Chase felt in having to bear the burdens of public life lured him into a questionable relationship with a wealthy Philadelphia banker, Jay Cooke, who had been granted a lucrative contract from the Treasury Department for the sale of government bonds. Perceiving both Chase"s financial strain and his aggrieved pride, Cooke began to send valuable gifts to the Chase household, including an elegant open carriage for Kate and a set of bookcases for the parlor. As the relationship warmed, Chase borrowed money from Cooke, and eventually, Cooke took it upon himself to set up his own investment account for Chase. "I will take great pains to lay aside occasionally some choice "tid bits" managing the investments for you and not bothering your head with them." If all went well, Cooke hoped, the profit earned would make up "the deficiency" between Chase"s salary and his expenses, "for it is a shame that you should go "behind hand" working as you do." In the smooth Philadelphia banker, the Chases had found what Mary Lincoln unsuccessfully sought-a reliable source to fund the high cost of being a leader of society in wartime Washington.