Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Elizabeth was keeping vigil alone when Mr. Lincoln entered the room, his face ashen and haggard, his eyes red and tormented. Elizabeth was too shocked and sorrowful to address him, so she nodded respectfully and stepped aside to the foot of the bed as he approached. She had never seen a man so bowed with grief, and she had seen many, far more than she could ever bring herself to count.

  He lifted the sheet from his son’s face and gazed at him long and tenderly. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” he murmured. “God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!”

  Great, heaving sobs choked off his words. Tears filled Elizabeth’s eyes as she watched the anguished father bury his head in his hands, his angular frame shaking with grief. She wanted more than anything to offer words of comfort, but she knew none would suffice, and she found herself unable to speak.

  Later Elizabeth sat with Mrs. Lincoln in her rooms, where the curtains were drawn and the mirrors covered. She came again the next day and found Mrs. Lincoln wild with lamentations and sorrow. She was inconsolable, shattered by loss, unable to rise from her bed even to care for Tad, who was still struggling to recover from his illness. As the White House was draped in the black crepe of mourning, she collapsed in paroxysms of grief, shrieking and wailing, frightening Tad and worrying Elizabeth, who could do nothing to help her. Dr. Stone prescribed laudanum, but whenever the stupor of a dose lifted, Mrs. Lincoln seemed worse off than before. Elizabeth had nursed many people through illnesses, but she had never faced anything like Mrs. Lincoln’s hysteria and felt powerless to help her. To her relief, Mr. Lincoln quickly understood that she was out of her depth and arranged for Rebecca Pomroy, a nurse who had been working in a military hospital, to be reassigned to the White House so she could look after Mrs. Lincoln and Tad.

  Under Nurse Pomroy’s care, Mrs. Lincoln regained the presence of mind to write to Mrs. Taft, begging her to keep her boys at home during the funeral because the sight of the children with whom her son had passed so many happy hours would devastate her. Elizabeth never told Mrs. Lincoln that her husband had secretly allowed Bud to come to the White House to see Willie one last time before he was placed in his casket. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Lincoln managed to leave her bed for a final, private farewell with her husband and two surviving sons in the East Room, where the public services would be held later that day. Mrs. Lincoln was too distressed to endure the rituals of grief, so she retreated to her rooms while members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, diplomats, generals, and dignitaries filed in to pay their respects and offer condolences.

  On the one-week anniversary of Willie’s death, the president locked himself in the Green Room for a time—Elizabeth did not know but could well imagine—to be alone with his thoughts, to remember his beloved son, to pray. He observed the private mourning ritual every Thursday for several weeks thereafter, and it seemed to offer him solace. Tad improved day by day under the watchful eye of Nurse Pomroy, but as he would take his medicine from no one but his father, the president was frequently called out of meetings to administer the dose. Robert grieved the loss of his young brother, but he endeavored to maintain a brave, manly front, and the effort seemed to sustain him. Of the survivors, Mrs. Lincoln alone found no lessening of her grief. She was alternately paralyzed by sorrow or frantic with despair, and her sudden bouts of keening frightened Tad and alarmed the entire household.

  Elizabeth was present the day Mr. Lincoln inadvertently revealed that he feared his wife’s nerves would never recover. Once, when Mrs. Lincoln was caught up in one of her spells of unmitigated anguish, Mr. Lincoln took her gently by the arm, led her to the window, and solemnly pointed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in the distance.

  “Mother,” he said, “do you see that large white building on the hill yonder?”

  Mrs. Lincoln nodded, her eyes widening. Everyone in Washington recognized the lunatic asylum, an imposing landmark on the city skyline.

  “Try and control your grief,” the president continued steadily, “or it will drive you mad, and we may have to send you there.”

  Elizabeth muffled a gasp of horror. That this might be Mrs. Lincoln’s fate was an idea too terrible to contemplate, and she was shocked that Mr. Lincoln would speak so to his grieving wife. And yet, in the days that followed, it seemed that the warning alone had compelled her to try to regain control of her nerves. Even so, Robert was so concerned by his mother’s slow progress that he implored for his aunt Elizabeth Edwards to return to the White House, hoping that she would be able to comfort his mother even though the sisters had had a falling out the previous autumn. When she arrived, she discovered her younger sister bedridden with grief and her nephew Tad sobbing that he would never see his brother again. But Elizabeth observed that Mrs. Edward’s presence brought an immediate sense of relief to the family. It was she who was able to persuade Mrs. Lincoln to leave her bed and dress, and later, to venture out to attend church services.

  But despite these incremental improvements, Mrs. Lincoln was often overcome and overwhelmed by sorrow and spent most of the next month in seclusion within the White House. Elizabeth was often with her, sewing her mourning wardrobe, offering whatever comfort she could. Once, when Mrs. Edwards was not with them, Mrs. Lincoln suddenly said, “If Willie had lived, he would have been the hope and stay of my old age.” Her voice was quiet, her thoughts faraway. “But Providence did not spare him.”

  Elizabeth understood, perhaps as only another grieving mother could. She had hoped that George would go far in life and that she would be able to rely upon him in her later years, but Providence had not spared her son either.

  In the same distant voice, Mrs. Lincoln added, “I believe Willie’s death is God’s punishment for my sins, for my vanity and self-indulgence.”

  “What?” exclaimed Elizabeth. “You cannot mean that.”

  “His decline began on the night of my lavish reception,” she said bitterly. “What clearer sign do I need of God’s judgment than that?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Lincoln, no.” Elizabeth shook her head. “No. God is not so cruel.”

  “Isn’t He?” Mrs. Lincoln’s gaze drifted to the window, but Elizabeth could not tell what it rested upon. The church steeple? The hospitals filled with wounded soldiers? St. Elizabeths across the Anacostia River? “If His punishment is just, who are we to call it cruelty?”

  Chapter Six

  MARCH–APRIL 1862

  In the weeks following Willie’s death, Mrs. Lincoln struggled to get through each day. She avoided public appearances and clung to her sister Mrs. Edwards, who often stood in for her when she did not feel up to receiving visitors. She shunned the Green Room, where her dear son had been laid out, and she never again invited the little Taft boys to the White House. She saved the casket flowers from Willie’s funeral and a poignant eulogy written by the poet Nathaniel Parker Willis, but she gave away all his toys and games. She could not bear to be reminded of him, and yet he was always in her thoughts.

  Mr. Lincoln mourned also, but he did not have the luxury of secluding himself away from the world. Squabbles in Congress continued, the profound question of what to do about the slaves persisted, and the war went on.

  The Confederates had salvaged the steam frigate Merrimack from the Norfolk navy yard, cut off its upper hull, armored it with iron, and rechristened it the Virginia before sending it out upon the James River to decimate the Union fleet. The next day the Union navy retaliated with its own ironclad ship, the Monitor, whose unconventional deck design and revolving gun turret astonished all who witnessed the battle from other Union and Confederate ships on the water and the riverbanks on both sides. Neither warship was able to inflict much damage upon the other, but the North was able to maintain its blockade of Norfolk and Richmond, and thus claim victory.

  A few weeks later in early April, the Union defeated the Confederates at Shiloh in Tennessee, but it was the bloodiest battle of the war so far, with
more than thirteen thousand killed, wounded, or missing on the Union side and nearly eleven thousand for the South. Among those killed was Mrs. Lincoln’s half brother Samuel B. Todd, an officer serving with the Twenty-fourth Louisiana. His death reminded Mrs. Lincoln’s critics of her family ties to secessionists and stirred up the old, groundless questions about her loyalties—a monstrous thing to do at such a time, Elizabeth thought, showing utter disregard for Mrs. Lincoln’s grief. After the costly victory, General Ulysses S. Grant was vilified in the press and many called for his removal, but President Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”

  President Lincoln too fought, on other fronts. Recent antislavery lectures at the Smithsonian Institution had inspired a rising chorus of voices among abolitionists and radical Republican factions in Congress calling for emancipation. Some of his military officers had taken the lead in emancipating slaves under certain circumstances, but not always with the president’s sanction. For more than a year, abolitionists had been arguing that the Union could not hope to win the war unless it deprived the Confederates of their labor force by emancipating their slaves. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and tireless advocate for the colored race—and someone Elizabeth greatly admired—concurred, writing in his newspaper, “Arrest that hoe in the hands of the Negro, and you smite the rebellion in the very seat of its life.” In July 1861, General Benjamin Butler had put three escaped slaves to work at Fort Monroe, declaring that they were “contraband of war” and that he was not obliged to return them to their masters under the Fugitive Slave Law because they had come from a state that had left the Union. Congress upheld the legality of General Butler’s policy, and thereafter, other “contraband” were offered work to help the war effort, and their numbers rapidly grew. At the end of August, and without any authorization from the president whatsoever, Major General John C. Frémont, commander of the army’s Department of the West, issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of Confederates within the state of Missouri. The president was furious when he learned what Frémont had done and commanded him to rescind the proclamation; when Frémont refused, Lincoln revoked it himself, angering Northern abolitionists and bringing a storm of criticism down upon himself.

  President Lincoln’s ostensible reluctance to free the slaves puzzled and disappointed Elizabeth, but the longer she worked in the White House and the better she knew him, the more she understood that he indeed wished to abolish slavery, but on his own terms and on his own timetable. She knew he worried that immediate and total emancipation would drive the slaveholding border states out of the Union and into the Confederacy, and she did not envy him his burdens. But by early spring of 1862, attitudes had shifted and opportunities had manifested. Perhaps encouraged by the increasing demands from the public, and perhaps inspired by reports from his field commanders who employed “contraband” as laborers, cooks, and nurses, President Lincoln must have decided the time was right to nudge the idea of abolition forward. One morning in early March, he called Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner to the White House to read him the draft of a bill that would grant individual states the right to establish emancipation within their borders. Slave owners would be compensated with federal funds for the loss of their property, and freed slaves would be given the opportunity to immigrate to proposed colonies in Africa or Central America. In the past, the abolitionist senator had decried such incremental, compensatory measures, but recognizing the opportunity for great and lasting change the bill offered, he resolved to support it. Within hours, he and his fellow Massachusetts senator Henry Wilson began to push through Congress a bill calling for emancipation in the District of Columbia.

  On the Senate floor, Henry Wilson spoke eloquently of the contributions the free colored population had made to the district—how they strove for self-improvement and had created schools, churches, businesses, and benevolent societies. All their accomplishments had come about despite the unfair “black codes” that constricted their lives and freedoms. They paid taxes for schools that their own children were not permitted to attend, a grievous injustice. It was time for them to become truly, fully free, and no honest citizen had any reason to doubt that emancipated slaves would follow their fine example and become industrious members of society upon gaining their liberty.

  Not everyone agreed with Senator Wilson, of course, or with another important supporter of the bill, Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the radical Republican faction and the lawyer who had represented Emma and her mother in the legal suit that had granted them their long-deferred freedom. Strong opposition to the bill was led by Peace Democrat Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, and the debate played out over several days. Walker Lewis and several other respected colored men of Washington City came to the Senate gallery day after day to observe the speeches, evoking displeasure and alarm from some senators, especially Garret Davis of Kentucky, who interrupted a bitter speech against the bill to snarl, “I suppose in a few months they will be crowding white ladies out of the galleries!” Undeterred, Walker and his companions continued to attend the debates and report on the progress of the bill to the colored community, who awaited the vote for passage with great anticipation and hope.

  Newspaper reporters covered the story in a more official capacity; the National Republican praised Senator Wilson, but the Washington Evening Star warned that the aim of the Emancipation Bill was to enforce Negro equality upon white men. In New York, Horace Greeley, who for years had lambasted President Lincoln in the pages of his Tribune, was so elated by the proposal that he thanked the Lord Almighty that Lincoln had become so wise a ruler. Mr. Lincoln showed no reaction to Mr. Greeley’s endorsement in Elizabeth’s presence, but Mrs. Lincoln made no effort to hide that she was unimpressed. “Today he showers my husband in praise,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Tomorrow it may well be criticism again.”

  It seemed to Elizabeth that most white Washingtonians did not share Mr. Greeley’s opinion of the president. In letters and petitions to congressmen, editors, and anyone else with any degree of influence, they demanded that the bill be voted down. Those who owned slaves were against the bill for reasons they hardly needed to explain, but some citizens who had never owned a slave denounced the measure also. Emancipation would open the floodgates to a tide of free Negros who would compete with white citizens for jobs, they warned. Runaway slaves would flee to Washington and become a burden to the public. With the war on, the government couldn’t afford to compensate district slave owners up to three hundred dollars per slave as the bill called for; it would be more prudent, more frugal, and all over better to let them keep their slaves for now and be responsible for their upkeep than to have the government shoulder that burden.

  The bill’s opponents could complain and they could protest, but the federal government did not need their approval to bring the measure to a vote. On April 3, the Senate passed the Emancipation Bill twenty-nine to fourteen, and a few days later, the House voted in favor by a margin of ninety-three to twenty-nine. After that, President Lincoln waited four days, a time in which he listened respectfully to impassioned arguments on both sides of the issue, and then, on April 16, a beautiful spring day, he signed the bill into law.

  With a few strokes of his pen, he had abolished slavery forever in the capital of the United States.

  The colored residents of Washington responded with unrestrained jubilation. Voices rose in joyful cheers and reverent hymns throughout colored neighborhoods, where community leaders, well aware that their every action was being watched and judged, urged them to respond with quiet dignity. Such self-possession came naturally to Elizabeth, but even she laughed and cheered and danced a little jig with Virginia in the parlor when they heard the news. “If I had known this was coming, I would have saved my money,” remarked another boarder, an elderly shoemaker who had recently bought his freedom. He said it so comically that all who heard him burst out laughing, the sound of it ringing out with exultation and joy, echoing other happy celebrations throughout
the city. Their faith in the president had been renewed, as was their resolve to see slavery abolished everywhere, for everyone, for all time.

  On Sunday, Elizabeth joined her fellow believers at Union Bethel Church, where freeborn, freedmen, and the newly, suddenly free rejoiced and gave thanks. She gloried in the minister’s sermon, heartfelt words of rejoicing and thankfulness and praise to God, who had delivered them from bondage. And yet there was a somber undercurrent to their worship, for they were ever mindful of the great many people of their race who had not benefitted from the new law, and they understood that freedom brought with it great responsibility. “We must resolve,” the minister declared, as surely other ministers were also doing in the sixteen other colored churches throughout Washington, “that by our industry, character, and moral righteousness we will prove ourselves worthy of the glorious privilege that has been conferred upon us. We have always been an orderly and law-abiding people, and so in the future we must strive to live so morally and industriously that anyone who is today disappointed with the passage of this law will forget why they ever opposed it.”

  Elizabeth’s hopes for those outraged white citizens of Washington were less ambitious. She wouldn’t ask for them to forget their objections altogether, but she would gladly settle for their acceptance of the fact that emancipation was the new law of the land—and for their greater tolerance for the colored folks who had also made the city their home.

  The day after Mr. Lincoln signed the bill into law, Elizabeth was sewing in her rooms, her windows wide open to the faintly pungent spring breeze and the chirping of songbirds, when a knock sounded upon her door. In the hallway stood a dark-haired white woman of about thirty years, sensibly attired in a brown wool dress. “Good afternoon,” Elizabeth greeted her. “May I help you?”

  The woman’s brown eyes lit up with expectation. “You are Elizabeth Keckley, the mantua maker?”