Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  That night, Elizabeth would later hear, a gracious and cordial President Lincoln had shaken hands with hundreds of well-wishers for more than two hours, welcoming strangers as warmly as friends and greeting many by name. Some of Elizabeth’s longtime patrons had attended the event, but most Southern ladies of the established Washington social elite had stayed away, a calculated snub that could not have escaped the First Lady’s notice. Those who did attend mingled freely, Northerners and Southerners alike, but their disagreements were surely never far from their thoughts, what with militias forming in their home states and Major Anderson’s men languishing at Fort Sumter. While all eyes were fixed on the Lincolns—measuring, appraising—mischief had broken out in the unwatched cloakroom; when the guests departed, they discovered that their coats and wraps had been haphazardly mixed up and some had been stolen, inspiring one wag to remark that only one in ten guests left the gala clad in the same outer garments he had worn upon his arrival.

  Mrs. Lincoln herself was well pleased with her first levee, having perhaps forgotten her distress and anger in the hours preceding it. She was less sanguine on the morning after the president’s first state dinner held for members of his cabinet a few weeks later. Elizabeth had dressed her in a striking blue silk gown, beautifully embroidered, and had watched her take her husband’s arm happily and descend the grand staircase as if she expected to have a perfectly lovely time. The next day, however, when Elizabeth returned to the White House to sew and to present various ribbons for Mrs. Lincoln to consider for a new bonnet, she found her patron in a state of bewildered distress. The previous night, as the dinner guests were leaving, the secretary of the treasury’s daughter, the twenty-year-old, auburn-haired beauty Miss Kate Chase, had slighted Mrs. Lincoln in front of all their guests.

  “Including men from the papers,” lamented Mrs. Lincoln. “Soon everyone will hear of it.”

  Elizabeth decided it would be kinder not to warn her that gossip would spread the tale swiftly enough without help from the press, if something deliciously shocking had indeed happened. Miss Chase was one of the most popular young ladies in Washington society, praised for her charm and wit as well as her beauty, and if she had affronted the First Lady, it would be quite a story. “What did she do?”

  “Well…” Mrs. Lincoln hesitated. “It sounds silly when I describe it.”

  “Then perhaps it’s really nothing after all.”

  “Oh, no, no, it’s something.” Mrs. Lincoln picked up a spool of ribbon, turned it over in her hands, and set it aside without really seeming to examine it. “I was bidding my guests good-bye, and when it came to be Miss Chase’s turn, I said, ‘I shall be glad to see you anytime, Miss Chase.’ She replied, in a thoroughly lofty tone, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, I shall be glad to have you call on me at anytime.’ See how she puts herself above me? I will have to go to her. She does not intend to visit me.”

  Elizabeth frowned. Miss Chase’s remark did possess a certain air of disrespect, but her reputation was that of a perfectly lovely and admirable, if ambitious, young woman. “That was not kind of her.”

  “Not kind? It was more than that. It was impertinent and unbecoming a young lady.” Mrs. Lincoln rose and went to the window, looking out over the Potomac to the green hills of Virginia on the other side. “I suppose I should expect nothing better from the daughter of Secretary Chase. You know she and her father expected the Republican Party to nominate him instead of my husband.”

  “I did not know.”

  Mrs. Lincoln turned away from the window, nodding. “It’s true, and since her mother is dead, if her father had been elected president, Miss Chase would have been his hostess. She believes that their rightful place is here in the White House, and that she should be First Lady now, not I.”

  “Well,” said Elizabeth mildly, “he wasn’t, and she isn’t.”

  After a moment, Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “Yes, that’s right. Still, I’m certain it remains her greatest ambition.”

  From that day forward, Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Chase were social rivals, each considering herself the highest lady in Washington society and resenting the other’s attempts to demonstrate her superior rank. Miss Chase had the advantage of beauty, popularity, charm, and long-standing ties to the established elites, but Mrs. Lincoln had the president, the White House, and the title of First Lady. And, Elizabeth liked to flatter herself, Mrs. Lincoln had the advantage of a particularly skilled dressmaker who would make sure she always went out in public—or into battle, as it sometimes seemed—perfectly turned out.

  For Elizabeth had become Mrs. Lincoln’s regular modiste, and throughout the spring of 1861, she would sew more than fifteen gowns for the First Lady. She also often dressed Mrs. Lincoln in her finery and arranged her hair for balls, dinners, and levees. One evening, as the president observed how skillfully Elizabeth tended to his wife, he asked her if she were brave enough to attempt to subdue his own unruly locks.

  “If you didn’t make such a habit of running your hands through your hair, it wouldn’t be such a tangle,” Mrs. Lincoln admonished him.

  The president merely smiled and sat down in his easy chair. “Well, Madam Elizabeth,” he asked, “will you brush my bristles down tonight?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” she replied, taking his comb and brush in hand. When she finished, he examined himself in the mirror and declared that his hair looked as if it had been taught a lesson. He was so pleased that it became his custom to ask Elizabeth to attend to his hair after she finished dressing his wife, and Elizabeth did what she could with it.

  As the weeks went by, Elizabeth took on other duties within the White House, such as running errands for Mrs. Lincoln and tending to Willie and Tad when they fell ill with the usual mild childhood ailments, but modiste to the First Lady remained her most prominent role. Over time she would learn that Mrs. Lincoln preferred to wear white but that she was also fond of pink, crimson, bright yellow, deep purple, and royal blue. She loved to wear pearls against her skin and flowers in her hair, and she favored low, open necklines with short sleeves to show off her well-formed neck and shoulders, ignoring whispered criticism that such styles were more appropriate for younger women.

  Elizabeth soon learned that scathing criticism of her newest and most important patron would be unrelenting, coming from all corners in copious amounts, much to the dismay and consternation of its unhappy subject, who could do nothing to staunch the flood.

  On the morning of April 12, Washington was jolted awake by shocking and often contradictory reports from Charleston. Before sunrise that day, Confederate cannon had fired upon Fort Sumter. No, indeed—both parties were still engaged in serious negotiations. No, that was but wishful thinking—shots had been fired. No one knew what to believe. A furious battle was ongoing, or Major Anderson had surrendered. The fort was destroyed utterly and its defenders slaughtered, or the starving, exhausted Union troops had marched out under a flag of truce and were being held prisoner. The citizens of Washington crowded telegraph offices and hotels, demanding news and spreading rumors, but no one knew precisely what was happening, what might have already happened. Secessionists who had kept their opinions to themselves since Mr. Lincoln’s administration took over the capital now cheered the start of war. Southern sympathizers openly sought recruits for the Confederate army, while loyal Union men rushed to join militias. In the streets, arguments turned into fistfights, and then the most alarming rumor of all swept through the city: Rebels were marching on Washington with an army twenty thousand strong.

  Eventually the truth of Fort Sumter reached the capital: After his troops had exchanged fire with Confederate guns for thirty-four hours, Major Robert Anderson had been forced to surrender. On April 14, five additional Washington militia companies were called into active duty, for a total of about twenty-five hundred local soldiers serving throughout the district. Mounted soldiers were posted at all approaches to Washington City. Twenty cavalrymen guarded the White House, with hundreds more stationed in the immedia
te surroundings and at the Capitol, the Treasury, and the post office. The following day, President Lincoln issued a nationwide call for seventy-five thousand recruits, assigning a quota to each state. These troops, who would enlist to serve for ninety days, would surely be sufficient to put down the rebellion.

  As Washington awaited reinforcements from the North and fears of an imminent Confederate invasion grew, the young colored men of Elizabeth’s comfortable middle-class neighborhood as well as the less fortunate who lived along the alleyways were as eager as their white counterparts to take up arms in defense of their city. Even Peter Brown’s eleven-year-old son, who worked as a shoeshine boy on the grounds of the Treasury Building, proudly told Elizabeth of his plans to enlist as a drummer boy as soon as he turned twelve. But every young man of color who tried to enlist, regardless of his age, strength, or status, was turned away.

  “Either the need for soldiers is very small or the foolishness of Mr. Lincoln’s recruiters is very great,” Virginia Lewis remarked to Elizabeth one Sunday afternoon as they went on their customary stroll and discovered a few militia soldiers drilling on the grounds of the Capitol. The city had taken on the appearance of an armed camp, and everywhere, apprehensions were on the rise. Although it was the capital of the Union, Washington was essentially a Southern city, surrounded by the Union slaveholding state of Maryland on one side and Virginia, which had seceded after Mr. Lincoln issued the state quotas for recruits, on the other side, with only the Potomac separating them.

  A few days earlier, the husband of one of Elizabeth’s favorite patrons, Colonel Robert E. Lee, a Virginian, had been offered the command of the entire United States Army, but after careful consideration, he had declined and had gone home to his plantation in Arlington on the other side of the river. Elizabeth knew from conversations overheard in the White House that President Lincoln had fought valiantly to keep Virginia in the Union, and she knew from remarks Mrs. Lee had made in her presence that her husband had not wanted Virginia to secede. For every firebrand eager for war, there seemed to be two or more who had been drawn into the conflict reluctantly but were nonetheless resolved to do their duty with all their might. And with the conflict so obviously pivoting upon the point of slavery, was it any wonder that Negro men too wanted to do their part to help the Union triumph?

  “The recruiters must think they’ll have more than enough white volunteers to fill their quotas,” Elizabeth said. “If the fighting goes on longer than they expect, maybe they’ll let colored men enlist later.”

  Although the day was balmy, Virginia shivered. “I’d rather have the fighting over before that day could come. How terrible this rebellion would be if seventy-five thousand men weren’t enough to finish it. Can you imagine the bloodshed?”

  Elizabeth inhaled shakily, the acrid odors of camp refuse and coal smoke so heavy in the air that her eyes stung and watered. “I can imagine it all too well.”

  She tucked her arm through Virginia’s and they turned toward home. Although she thought it was an outrage that men of color were forbidden to enlist, she was secretly relieved that her son would not be required to lay down his life for his country.

  Elizabeth wondered if her husband, James, would try to enlist. As a young man he had been full of fight, and after John Brown’s failed raid on Harpers Ferry, he had declared that if he had been there, he would have taken up arms and stirred up the slave revolt John Brown had intended. Suddenly James’s visage appeared so clearly to her mind’s eye that it was as if he stood before her, not rambling and drunk as he had been in their last years together but smiling, bold, and handsome as he had been when they first met.

  Elizabeth gasped and stopped short, shaken by the vision. She had not thought of her husband in weeks, perhaps months. Why would he come unbidden to her thoughts now?

  “Elizabeth?” Virginia had been brought to an abrupt halt when Elizabeth stopped. “What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Elizabeth managed a shaky laugh. “I haven’t, not as far as I know. At least not recently.”

  Virginia smiled tentatively at her joke, but she looked uncertain. “What’s troubling you, then?”

  Elizabeth hesitated. Virginia knew she was married and that she and her husband were estranged, but Elizabeth disliked speaking ill of James, and as a consequence, she had told Virginia little about him. She wasn’t sure why, but she was reluctant to admit that she had been thinking about him then.

  So instead she nodded to the scenes of preparation for the defense of the city—all around them, and all inadequate. “Aren’t there reasons enough for all of us to be troubled these days?”

  Virginia nodded. They watched a few moments more before continuing on home.

  Soon, Elizabeth would wonder whether James’s restless, wistful spirit had indeed visited her in that moment she had imagined him so vividly.

  Not two days after her stroll with Virginia, a letter came from Missouri, written in a deliberate yet shaky hand, full of misspellings and apologies.

  Dear Mrs Keckley

  It greves me to writ and tell you that your husband James past on from this life in Feb of an alement of the liver. He did not suffer long and he was not alone at the end. Being as there was no money for a funerl he was layd to rest in the slaves field I hope this suits you. It was a gud Christian service there were prayers and hyms.

  I know you and he livd apart but I thot you should be told because you are his wife and only kin. He was a gud man in his way as you know and his frens will miss him.

  I am sorry I culd not tell you sooner but I did not know were you are. But your old landlady gave me this adres and I hope this letter will find you there and well.

  Most Truly Yours I remain

  Ephraim Johnson

  Elizabeth held the letter for a long moment before folding it deliberately and returning it to the envelope. She was relieved to hear that James had not suffered long, but it pained her to think he had suffered at all.

  She wondered who Ephraim Johnson was. She knew no one by that name.

  No tears came to her eyes, and she wondered what that said about her, that she did not weep for her husband, a man she had once loved so dearly. The news of his death saddened her, but she did not feel grief stricken, perhaps because she found no small measure of relief in knowing that at last he was at peace. His earthly torment had ended.

  “So,” she said softly to the empty room, “I am now a widow.”

  Let James’s faults be buried with him. She had no desire to think ill of him now that he was gone.

  The residents of Washington City waited apprehensively to see which would arrive first, trained militia companies from the north or invaders from the south. Union troops traveling by train to the capital from Northern states would have to pass through Baltimore, about forty miles to the northeast. This should have been no concern; although Maryland was a slave state, it had remained in the Union. But rumors abounded that thousands of Marylanders with Southern sympathies were plotting to block the passage of Northern troops through the city, and since Baltimore had a history of street-mob violence, the rumors could not be ignored. Complicating matters was a quirk of Baltimore’s railway system that meant Washington-bound trains would arrive at President Street Station, but would then have to be towed by teams of horses several blocks west through the city streets to Camden Station, from which they could resume their journey by rail. The system, merely inconvenient in peacetime, was potentially disastrous in war.

  On the morning of April 19, the Sixth Massachusetts left Philadelphia on a train bound for Washington, arriving in Baltimore with weapons loaded. The wary men hoped for unimpeded passage through the city, but they had been warned that in the interim between stations they would likely receive insults, abuse, and possibly assault, all of which they had been ordered to ignore. Even if they were fired upon, they were not to fire back unless their officers gave the command.

  The train carrying the Sixth Massachusetts arrived in
Baltimore unannounced, and cars carrying seven of its companies were towed through the city unhindered. But word of the soldiers’ presence spread quickly, and soon a crowd massed in the streets, shouting insults and threats. The mob tore up the train tracks and blocked the way with heavy anchors hauled over from the Pratt Street piers, forcing the last four companies of the Sixth to abandon their railcars and march through the city. Almost immediately, several thousand men and boys swarmed them, hurling bricks and paving stones, and dishes and bottles rained down upon them from upstairs windows. As the mob’s rage grew, some few among them broke into a gun shop, and from somewhere, the soldiers heard pistol shots. The companies pushed onward at quick time, but when the furious mob blocked the streets ahead, the soldiers opened fire. The crowd dropped back and the soldiers managed to fight their way to the Camden Street Station, and after repairing other tracks sabotaged in the melee, the train sped off to Washington.

  When the Sixth Massachusetts finally arrived, battered and bloodied, their appearance brought more alarm than relief to the citizens who had awaited them so anxiously. Four soldiers and at least nine civilians had been killed and scores more injured on the streets of Baltimore, and as reports came in of other railway lines destroyed, bridges burned, and telegraph lines severed, panic ignited as the people of Washington City realized they had been cut off from the North. As she walked to the White House, Elizabeth was shaken to observe citizens frantically piling their belongings onto wagons and into coaches and fleeing the city.

  Within the Executive Mansion, Mrs. Lincoln worked valiantly to maintain a sense of calm, of normalcy. She fulfilled her role as hostess at official events the ladies of the entrenched Washington elite disdained, she enrolled Willie and Tad in the Fourth Presbyterian Sunday School, and she cajoled her husband out of his melancholy, which deepened as the crisis worsened. “I begin to believe there is no North,” Elizabeth once heard the president say, and indeed, with no reinforcements arriving, no telegraph reports, no mail, she too felt the strange gloom of isolation, of being alone and surrounded by hostile, unseen enemies. It did not help that Southern newspapers managed to make their way into Washington with an ease that mocked their defenses. Time and again the Richmond Examiner proclaimed that Washington would make an excellent capital for the Confederacy, noting that most of the city’s residents were from Virginia or Maryland anyway and would likely welcome the Confederate army as liberators, with cheers and flowers, rejoicing to be restored to the South.