With Kate married and Nettie away at school, Chase resumed his sporadic correspondence with Charlotte Eastman. “I think of you constantly,” he assured her, “and—if any feeling is left in me—with the sincerest affection…. How I wish you were here in our house—in this little library room—and that we could talk, instead of this writing by myself, while you are—where?” Such romantic inclinations were probably never consummated. Similarly, though he enjoyed the company of Susan Walker, an educated “bluestocking” from Cincinnati, the relationship never seemed to deepen. “I wish you could come to Washington,” he wrote Miss Walker in late January, “though I could probably see so little of you that it would be difficult to tell which would be greater, the pleasure of seeing you, or the sensation of not seeing you enough.” Though Chase obviously admired both Eastman and Walker, his intense focus on his ambition for the presidency kept him from ever making the time to unbend in their company.
The second push in Chase’s race for the presidential nomination opened with the public announcement of a “Chase for President” committee. The committee, headed by Kansas senator Samuel Pomeroy and a successful railroad agent, James Winchell, was another enterprise backed by Jay Cooke. In this case, however, Chase’s son-in-law, William Sprague, contributed the largest share of the funds. Pomeroy and Winchell were both committed abolitionists who believed Chase would best protect the rights of blacks. Their appearance of altruistic principle was compromised by the fact that they stood to benefit financially if Chase released funds for the construction of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad in which both held a large interest.
Lincoln’s old friend Judge David Davis was incensed that Chase was “eating a man’s bread and stabbing him at the same time.” Chase, unsurprisingly, viewed things differently. Since one-term presidencies had become the rule, Chase felt justified in presenting himself as an alternative. While the committee was being organized, Chase busied himself lining up support in Ohio, determined to avoid the humiliation he had suffered in 1860, when his own state had withheld its support.
Optimistic that he might defeat Lincoln, Chase told his old law partner Flamen Ball that he was immensely “gratified” by the newly formed committee and the quality of the people supporting his candidacy, for they tended to be “men of great weight.” Much would depend on the Buckeye State, for “if Ohio should express a preference for any other person, I would not allow my name to be used.” Should all go well, Chase believed he would put up a good fight against the president, for, sad to say, the prairie lawyer was simply not up to the job. “If to his kindliness of spirit and good sense he joined strong will and energetic action, there would be little left to wish for in him. As it is, I think that he will be likely to close his first term with more honor than he will the second, should he be reelected.”
Nor did Chase confine his criticisms of Lincoln to conversation and correspondence with trusted friends. Speaking with Gideon Welles early in February, he “lamented the want of energy and force by the President, which he said paralyzed everything.” Disregarding Welles’s silence, he went on to suggest that the president’s “weakness was crushing” the nation. When Welles still “did not respond to this distinct feeler,” Chase finally let the matter drop. Chase was equally indiscreet with Bates, seeming not to recognize that while the Attorney General occasionally criticized the president, he “immeasurably” preferred him to any other candidate.
Lincoln seemed unfazed by the machinations surrounding the race. Welles reported with delight an exchange with a “fair plump lady” who appeared in the hallway just before a cabinet meeting. She said she lived in Iowa and had come to get a look at the president. Hearing her story, Lincoln invited her into his office. “Well, in the matter of looking at one another,” said he with a smile and a chuckle, “I have altogether the advantage.”
In February, the Pomeroy Committee distributed a confidential circular to one hundred leading Republicans throughout the North. Intended to mobilize support for Chase, the circular opened with a slashing critique of the president, claiming that “even were the reelection of Mr. Lincoln desirable, it is practically impossible,” given the widespread opposition. Furthermore, “should he be reelected, his manifest tendency toward compromises and temporary expedients of policy will become stronger during a second term than it has been in the first.” The war would “continue to languish,” the country would be bankrupted, and “the dignity of the nation” would suffer. Therefore, in order to win the war, establish the peace, and “vindicate the honor of the republic,” it was essential that Republicans unite in nominating the one man with “more of the qualities needed in a President, during the next four years, than are combined in any other available candidate”—Salmon P. Chase.
When the Pomeroy circular was leaked to the press, it created a political explosion. Lincoln’s friends were furious, while Democrats celebrated the open division in Republican ranks. “No sensible man here is in doubt that Chase was privy to this,” David Davis told a friend. “They did not expect that it wd see the light so soon…. I wd dismiss him [from] the cabinet if it killed me.”
In a state of panic, Chase sent Lincoln a letter in which he claimed he “had no knowledge” of the circular until it was printed in the Constitutional Union on February 20. Though he had been approached by friends to use his name in the coming election, he had not been consulted about the formation of the Pomeroy Committee and was unfamiliar with its members. “You are not responsible for acts not your own,” he reminded Lincoln, “nor will you hold me responsible except for what I do or say myself.” Yet, he proclaimed, “if there is anything in my action or position which, in your judgment, will prejudice the public interest under my charge I beg you to say so. I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence.”
It is unlikely that Lincoln believed Chase’s protestations of innocence. Indeed, a decade later, the circular’s author, James Winchell, testified that Chase had been fully informed about everything and had personally affirmed “that the arraignment of the Administration made in the circular was one which he thoroughly indorsed, and would sustain.” Still, Lincoln restrained his anger and carefully gauged his response, taking a dispassionate view of the situation. He understood the political landscape, he assured Bates. There was a number of malcontents within his own party who “would strike him at once, if they durst; but they fear that the blow would be ineffectual, and so, they would fall under his power, as beaten enemies.” So long as he remained confident that he had the public’s support, he could afford to let the game play out a little longer. Keeping Chase in suspense, Lincoln simply acknowledged receipt of the letter and promised to “answer a little more fully when I can find time to do so.” Then he sat back to measure the reaction of the people to the circular.
It did not take long. The morning it was printed, Welles correctly predicted: “Its recoil will be more dangerous I apprehend than its projectile. That is, it will damage Chase more than Lincoln.” Even papers friendly to Chase lamented the circular’s publication. “It is unworthy of the cause,” the New York Times proclaimed. “We protest against the spirit of this movement.” Four days later, Nicolay happily informed his fiancée, Therena, that the effect of the circular had been the opposite of what its authors intended, for “it has stirred up all Mr. Lincoln’s friends to active exertion,” seriously diminishing Chase’s prospects. In state after state, Republicans met and passed unanimous resolutions in favor of Lincoln’s renomination. Even in Pomeroy’s home state of Kansas, a counter-circular was distributed among Republicans that denounced the efforts to carry the state for Chase and rallied support for Lincoln.
Noting the “long list” of state legislatures that had come out for Lincoln, the Times acknowledged that the “universality of popular sentiment in favor of Mr. Lincoln’s reelection, is one of the most remarkable developments of the time…. The faith of the people in the sound judgment and honest purpose of Mr. Lincoln is as tenacio
us as if it were a veritable instinct. Nothing can overcome it or seriously weaken it. This power of attracting and holding popular confidence springs only from a rare combination of qualities. Very few public men in American history have possessed it in an equal degree with Abraham Lincoln.” Harper’s Weekly agreed. In an editorial endorsing the president’s reelection, it claimed that “among all the prominent men in our history from the beginning none have ever shown the power of understanding the popular mind so accurately as Mr. Lincoln.” In moving gradually toward emancipation, as he had done, the Harper’s editor observed, Lincoln understood that in a democracy, “every step he took must seem wise to the great public mind.” Thus, he had wisely nullified the premature proclamations issued by Frémont and Hunter, waiting until “the blood of sons and brothers and friends would wash clear a thousand eyes that had been blinded.” In his grudging fashion, even Lincoln’s critic Count Gurowski acknowledged the president’s hold on the people’s affections. “The masses are taken in by Lincoln’s apparent simplicity and good-naturedness, by his awkwardness, by his vulgar jokes, and, in the people’s belief, the great shifter is earnest and honest.”
The fatal blow to the Chase campaign came again in Ohio, as it had four years before. Although Chase’s friends in the Union caucus of the state legislature had previously blocked attempts to endorse Lincoln’s reelection, the publication of the Pomeroy circular, a Chase ally conceded, “brought matters to a crisis…. It arrayed at once men agt each other who had been party friends always; & finally produced a perfect convulsion in the party.” The end result was the unanimous passage of a resolution in favor of Lincoln. “As matters now stand here, with so many states already declared for Lincoln,” Chase’s friend Cleveland attorney Richard Parsons warned, “prolonging a contest that will in the end array our ‘house against itself,’ & bring no good to our party at last, seems to me one of the gravest character.”
Perceiving this turn of events, Lincoln decided the time was right to answer Chase’s letter. He informed Chase that the circular had not surprised him, for he “had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s Committee,” and of its “secret issues” and “secret agents,” for a number of weeks. However, he did not intend to hold Chase responsible. “I fully concur with you that neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation, or with my countenance.” As to whether Chase should remain as treasury secretary, Lincoln would decide based solely on “my judgement of the public service.” For the present, he wrote, “I do not perceive occasion for a change.”
A few days later, Chase withdrew his presidential bid. In a public letter to an influential state senator in Ohio, he reminded his fellow Ohioans that he had determined to withdraw from the race if he did not gain the support of his home state. With the legislature’s support of Lincoln, “it becomes my duty therefore,—and I count it more a privilege than a duty,—to ask that no further consideration be given to my name.”
Trying as ever to explain his action as an unselfish move, Chase told his daughter Nettie that he had withdrawn from the race, though “a good many of the best and most earnest men of the country desired to make me a candidate,” because “it was becoming daily more & more clear that the continuance of my name before the people would produce serious discords in the Union organization and might endanger the success of the measures & the establishment of the principles I thought most indispensable to the welfare of the country.” Attorney General Bates suggested a less patriotic explanation: “It proves only that the present prospects of Mr. Lincoln are too good to be openly resisted.”
Discipline and keen insight had once again served Lincoln most effectively. By regulating his emotions and resisting the impulse to strike back at Chase when the circular first became known, he gained time for his friends to mobilize the massive latent support for his candidacy. Chase’s aspirations were crushed without Lincoln’s direct intrusion. He had known all along that his treasury secretary was no innocent, but by seeming to accept Chase’s word, he allowed the secretary to retain some measure of his dignity while the country retained his services in the cabinet. Lincoln himself would determine the appropriate time for Chase’s departure.
LINCOLN’S ABILITY TO RETAIN his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in an acute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways. In the most difficult moments of his presidency, nothing provided Lincoln greater respite and renewal than to immerse himself in a play at either Grover’s or Ford’s. Leonard Grover estimated that Lincoln had visited his theater “more than a hundred times” during his four years as president. He was most frequently accompanied by Seward, who shared Lincoln’s passion for drama and was an old friend of Mr. Grover’s. But his three young assistants, Nicolay, Hay, and Stoddard, also joined him on occasion, as did Noah Brooks, Mary, and Tad. On many nights, Lincoln came by himself, delighted at the chance to sink into his seat as the gaslights dimmed and the action on the stage began.
“It gave him an hour or two of freedom from care and worry,” observed Brooks, “and what was better, freedom from the interruption of office-seekers and politicians. He was on such terms with the managers of two of the theaters that he could go in privately by the stage door, and slip into the stage boxes without being seen by the audience.” More than anything else, Stoddard remarked how “the drama by drawing his mind into other channels of thought, afforded him the most entire relief.” At a performance of Henry IV: Part One, Stoddard noted how thoroughly Lincoln enjoyed himself. “He has forgotten the war. He has forgotten Congress. He is out of politics. He is living in Prince Hal’s time.”
It is not surprising that the theater offered ideal refreshment for a man who regularly employed storytelling to ease tensions. The theater held all the elements of a perfect escape. Enthralled by the live drama, the costumes and scenery, the stagecraft, and the rhetorical extravagances, he was transported into a realm far from the troubling events that filled the rest of his waking hours.
In the mid-nineteenth century, developments with gaslight had vastly improved the experience of theatergoers. Managers had learned “to dim or brighten illumination” by manipulating the valves that fed the gas to the jets. A setting sun, a full moon, or a misty evening could be achieved by placing “colored glass mantles” over the lamps. Technicians stationed above the balcony could illuminate individual actors as they made their entrance onto the stage.
“To envision nineteenth-century theater audiences correctly,” the cultural historian Lawrence Levine suggests, “one might do well to visit a contemporary sporting event in which the spectators not only are similarly heterogeneous but are also…more than an audience; they are participants who can enter into the action on the field, who feel a sense of immediacy and at times even of control, who articulate their opinions and feelings vocally and unmistakably.” Though different classes occupied different areas of the theater—the wealthy in the first-tier boxes, the working class in the orchestra, and the poor in the balcony—the entire audience shared a fairly intimate space. Indeed, Frances Trollope complained that in American theaters she encountered men without jackets, their sleeves rolled to their elbows, and their breath smelling of “onions and whiskey.” Though Lincoln was seated in his presidential box, he could still enjoy the communal experience, which allowed him to feel the pulse of the people, much as he had done when he traveled the circuit in his early days.
The years surrounding the Civil War have been called the golden age of American acting. During those years, one historian claims, “the American theatre was blessed with a galaxy of performers who have never been excelled”—including Edwin Forrest, John McCullough, Edwin Booth, Laura Keene, and Charlotte Cushman. It was said of Miss Cushman, who was lionized in both Europe and America for her role as Lady Macbeth, that “she was not a great actress merely, but sh
e was a great woman.” She had a magnetic personality and “when she came upon the stage she filled it with…the brilliant vitality of her presence.” A liberated woman, far ahead of her time, she had lovers but never married. Her work was her chief passion.
Seward and Miss Cushman had met in the 1850s and become great friends. Whenever she was in Washington, she stayed at the Seward home. The celebrated actress forged a close relationship with young Fanny, who idolized her. Miss Cushman offered a glimpse of the vital and independent life Fanny hoped to lead someday, if her dream to become a writer came true. “Imagine me,” Fanny wrote her mother after one of Miss Cushman’s visits, “full of the old literary fervor and anxious to be at work, to try hard—& at the same time ‘learn to labor, & to wait’ I mean, improve in the work which I cannot choose but take…I am full of hope that I may yet make my life worth the living and be of some use in the world.”
In honor of the star guest, Seward organized a series of dinner parties, inviting members of foreign legations and cabinet colleagues. For her part, Miss Cushman regarded Seward as “the greatest man this country ever produced.” Fanny believed that Cushman understood her noble father better than almost anyone outside their family.
Fred Seward recalled that Lincoln made his way to their house almost every night while Miss Cushman visited. Seward had introduced Cushman to the president in the summer of 1861. She had hoped to ask Lincoln for help in obtaining a West Point appointment for a young friend, but the scintillating conversation distracted her from the purpose of her visit. And Lincoln was undoubtedly riveted by the celebrated actress of his beloved Shakespeare.
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