Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  As the June weather grew sultry, Mrs. Lincoln traveled north, as she had in summers past, to escape the heat and the other afflictions of summer. She and Tad spent a week visiting her friend Sally Orne in Philadelphia before returning to Washington to prepare for the family’s annual retreat to the cool, quiet haven of the Soldiers’ Home. While Mrs. Lincoln was away, Virginia gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, whom she and Walker named Alberta Elizabeth. The delivery was blessedly easy, and both mother and child were in good health and spirits. Elizabeth was proud and honored when the Lewises asked her to be Alberta’s godmother, a role she gladly accepted.

  It was an unexpected stroke of good fortune that the birth coincided with Mrs. Lincoln’s absence, freeing Elizabeth to care for Virginia as she recovered and to help Walker look after the older children. Elizabeth did not expect to see the First Lady again until later summer or perhaps early autumn, but on July 2, as Washington stirred anxiously with rumors that General Lee was on the move toward the Potomac, Elizabeth was shocked by news that Mrs. Lincoln had been badly injured in a carriage accident.

  Elizabeth immediately raced to the White House, where she found Mrs. Lincoln in bed with her head bandaged, the able Nurse Pomroy nearby. “Mrs. Lincoln,” she exclaimed, hastening to her side. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, you’re so good to come to me. I’m somewhat bruised but I’m really quite fine.” Even so, Mrs. Lincoln looked pale and anxious. She waited for Nurse Pomroy to step out of the room before adding, “Mr. Lincoln and I were at the Soldiers’ Home. He was going to take the carriage into the city, but at the last minute he decided to depart earlier on horseback instead, so I came along in the carriage later, alone.”

  “And Tad?” prompted Elizabeth, worried. “Was he riding with you?”

  “No, thank heavens. He remained behind with friends.” Mrs. Lincoln took a deep, shaky breath. “I was riding along as pleasantly as always when suddenly, without warning, the horses bolted. The carriage absolutely broke apart. I had to jump to safety or I would have—well, I hardly dare to think of what could have happened.”

  “Did you injure yourself in the carriage or in the jump?”

  “Neither,” said Mrs. Lincoln with a wry twist to her mouth. “In my clumsy landing. I stumbled and fell, and I hit my head on a rock. It bled a frightening amount and I confess I was a bit dazed afterward, but thankfully, I happened to fall almost directly in front of an army hospital, of all things, and some dutiful soldiers serving there ran to my aid.”

  “Thank heavens they were nearby.”

  “Thank heavens, indeed.” Mrs. Lincoln reached for her hand and pulled her to a seat on the edge of the bed. “Elizabeth, I’m frightened. It was no accident.”

  Elizabeth felt a chill of dread. “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Lincoln’s voice trembled, and her hand tightened around Elizabeth’s. “After the horses were brought under control, it was discovered that someone had unscrewed the bolts holding down the driver’s seat of the carriage. When the seat came loose, it frightened the horses. That’s why they jumped and ran.”

  “How terrible,” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Someone deliberately tried to injure you?”

  “Not me—Mr. Lincoln. He was supposed to be riding in the carriage, remember?”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Elizabeth felt faint with alarm. “Do you have any idea who’s responsible?”

  Mrs. Lincoln shook her head. “My husband has entire states full of enemies. It could have been one of the authors of any of those dreadful letters he’s received. We should have been keeping a list of their names. It could have been a Southern spy chosen by Jefferson Davis himself.”

  Elizabeth could not imagine Mr. Davis arranging for Mr. Lincoln’s murder, but she had known him in peacetime, not at war. He could have changed.

  “After this, Mr. Lincoln simply must agree to increase his guards.” Mrs. Lincoln settled back weakly against her pillow. “I simply must insist upon it and he must agree. You can imagine how terrible and guilty he feels knowing that I was injured in his stead.”

  Elizabeth managed a helpless laugh. “Then I suppose now is the time to press your advantage.”

  Mrs. Lincoln joined in, her laughter weaker than Elizabeth’s and bearing a slight note of hysteria. “I hadn’t considered that. Perhaps today I should also confess my debts.”

  “Oh, dear me, no. The shock would injure him far worse than any carriage accident.”

  Mrs. Lincoln smiled, too fatigued to laugh anymore. She closed her eyes, and Elizabeth held her hand until she drifted off to sleep.

  By the next morning, Mrs. Lincoln felt much improved, and so she continued to prepare for a glorious Independence Day celebration. She had agreed to a grander, more elaborate event than she had allowed since Willie’s death, with the Marine Band scheduled to perform on the White House grounds, a large viewing stand erected on the Mall, firecrackers, and a parade of regiments to march alongside twelve councils of the Masons, Odd Fellows, and Union League. The spectacle was meant to inspire patriotism and boost morale, but with increasing ire over Congress’s new draft measures and worries about the Confederate army’s bold advances, some administration officials wanted to cancel the celebration. All of Washington was in a state of nervous agitation as General Lee led his army across the Potomac and into Pennsylvania, and as military engagements in that state seemed increasingly likely, fears that Washington sat helpless and undefended soared. Nevertheless, when the president’s private secretary shared these worries with Mrs. Lincoln, she told him stoutly that her husband was confident that the Union forces would halt Lee’s advance and that they should not let their resolve crumble or it would dishearten the entire city.

  So the celebration went on as planned—but Mrs. Lincoln did not join in. On the morning of July 4, while her husband anxiously awaited reports from Vicksburg, where Grant was attempting a new assault on the city, and from a small farm town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg, where Union and Confederate forces had finally met, Mrs. Lincoln’s injury took a sudden turn for the worse. A messenger came for Elizabeth while she was out with Emma enjoying the festive day, so it was not until midafternoon that she realized she was needed and she hurried off to the White House.

  She found Mrs. Lincoln in bed, fretful and feverish. Earlier that day, Nurse Pomroy had discovered that her wound was badly infected, and she had been obliged to reopen it to drain the laudable pus. The injury became inflamed, and Mrs. Lincoln was in significant distress.

  Elizabeth sat with her that day and the next, and at times her fever became so dangerously high that Mr. Lincoln sent a telegram to Robert to urge him to return home at once. The president paced from his wife’s sickroom to the telegraph office and back, but the welcome news of the Union victory at Gettysburg and promising but unconfirmed reports of Grant’s success at Vicksburg distracted him only momentarily from his wife’s decline.

  Elizabeth assisted Nurse Pomroy as best she could, but she could do frustratingly little more than bathe Mrs. Lincoln’s brow, read to her, assure her that all would be well, and pray. Within days General Grant’s success in Vicksburg was confirmed and it seemed that the momentum of the war had finally shifted in favor of the Union, but Mrs. Lincoln was no better and Robert had still not arrived, nor had he sent word of when he might be expected. Worried anew when no one could confirm his eldest son’s whereabouts, Mr. Lincoln telegraphed Robert again and urged him to make haste to Washington. Then draft riots broke out in New York, where Robert was last known to have been; over the course of several terrifying days, mobs of white men, most of them Irish immigrants, attacked draft offices, looted shops, destroyed black-owned businesses, burned to the ground an orphanage for colored children, and violently attacked people of color in the streets, brutally murdering more than one hundred. Finally the New York State Militia and other troops were sent in to restore order, but the death and destruction sent waves of shock throughout the North and sparked fears that the
draft would evoke similar violence in other cities.

  Two weeks after Mrs. Lincoln’s accident, Mr. Lincoln seemed so overwhelmed by worry and strain that Elizabeth began to fear for his health as much as for his wife’s. While most of the North celebrated the recent military victories, Mr. Lincoln was preoccupied with calamities—New York City was in a shambles, General Meade had failed to pursue General Lee and had allowed him to escape, Robert Lincoln was unaccounted for, and Mrs. Lincoln was fading away, struck down by a blow meant for himself.

  Finally, days later, Robert arrived home, greatly easing his father’s worries. If the young man offered an explanation for his lengthy absence and his silence, Elizabeth never learned what it was. Under Nurse Pomroy’s attentive care, Mrs. Lincoln gradually improved. Her fever relented; her wound closed. To Elizabeth’s relief, every day she seemed a little stronger, but the midsummer heat and humidity impeded her recovery. When malaria began to spread through the city, it was decided that Mrs. Lincoln could not endure the climate of Washington in her condition and should relocate to the north until she regained her health. Mr. Lincoln quickly made the necessary arrangements: As soon as she was strong enough, Robert would escort his mother and brother to a resort in Manchester, Vermont, nestled in the sublimely beautiful Green Mountains and famed for the healing properties of its natural mineral waters. It sounded to Elizabeth like a cool, restful haven, the ideal place for Mrs. Lincoln to convalesce.

  Elizabeth packed Mrs. Lincoln’s trunks for her, and on the day of her departure, Elizabeth came to the White House to see her off. “You should come with me,” Mrs. Lincoln urged again, as she had several times before. “I feel so much better in your company.”

  Elizabeth was tempted, but she had accepted too much work from her other clients to pack a bag and quit the city on such short notice. “I wish I could,” she said, “but my commitments oblige me to stay behind.”

  Mrs. Lincoln sighed her acceptance, and soon the carriage departed with her and her sons to meet the train that would speed them northward.

  As Elizabeth walked along the curved path in front of the White House on her way home, she heard a man behind her remark to a companion, “The Hellcat gave the Tycoon quite a scare, didn’t she?”

  Stung, Elizabeth halted, drew herself up, and turned to face them. “If you please,” she said crisply, looking up at the men, quietly furious, “do not ever again use that loathsome word to describe Mrs. Lincoln in my presence.”

  She recognized the stupefied men gaping back at her as two very junior secretaries within two obscure departments. She did not even know their names, but she would bet they knew hers.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” the younger of the two managed to reply. The men quickly tipped their hats and shamefacedly hurried past her down the sidewalk.

  Her anger spent, Elizabeth watched them scurry off, and the ridiculousness of the scene obliged her to smother a laugh. Perhaps no woman of color had ever addressed them like that before. They had better learn to mind their manners or they would be hearing from her again.

  Suddenly she realized that she had objected to “Hellcat” but not the equally disrespectful, if less spiteful, “Tycoon,” and then she truly did laugh.

  Mrs. Lincoln stayed away from Washington for nearly two months. In all that time, Elizabeth sewed for other ladies and dedicated the rest of her hours to the Contraband Relief Association, raising funds from abolitionists and well-to-do people of color from throughout the North and teaching sewing and other practical skills to the women and girls residing in the camps. She took on a few promising young freedwomen as apprentice seamstresses, and with their earnings they were able to afford rooms in pleasant boardinghouses and escape the camps, which seemed perpetually squalid despite the bedding and other small comforts Elizabeth and the other volunteers provided for them. Her young assistants bloomed in their new lives, mentored by Elizabeth and Emma, their eager guides to all things a young woman of color needed to know in order to successfully navigate Washington City.

  During Mrs. Lincoln’s absence, the president was preoccupied with the hard business of war. The Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg seemed, to him, to mark a turning point, but the weeks following those costly triumphs were not without setbacks. The valiant but ultimately bloody and unsuccessful attack of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts upon the Confederate stronghold Fort Wagner near Charleston was especially heart wrenching for the Negro community, for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts was one of the first official colored regiments and a great source of pride for their race. Their casualties in the fierce assault were shockingly high, so reports of their courage and heroism were bittersweet. Elizabeth was proud that the men of her race had acquitted themselves so nobly and had inspired more colored men to enlist, but she mourned for them, and prayed for their wives and mothers.

  Shortly before Mrs. Lincoln returned to the capital, Elizabeth heard other sad news from the battlefield—sad for the Lincolns personally, at any rate, although not for the Union. Mrs. Lincoln’s brother-in-law, the Confederate general Ben Helm, husband of her beloved half sister Emilie, had been killed at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia. Years before, on the advent of war, Mr. Lincoln had offered his favorite sister-in-law’s husband a generous commission as paymaster of the Union Army, but Mr. Helm had declined and had enlisted with the Confederates instead. After Shiloh, he had been promoted to brigadier general and had gone on to lead the famed “Orphan Brigade,” Kentucky’s most celebrated infantry unit. Now he was gone, and their darling “Little Sister” was in mourning, but the Lincolns could not publicly grieve for a rebel.

  Soon thereafter, only a day or two after Mrs. Lincoln returned home, word spread that her youngest half brother, Captain Alexander Todd, had been killed the day before his brother-in-law General Helm while serving as his aide-de-camp at the Battle of Baton Rouge. Aleck had been only an infant when Mrs. Lincoln had left home, but the red-haired, cheerful boy had been everyone’s favorite, and Elizabeth knew Mrs. Lincoln was very fond of him.

  When Elizabeth next received a summons to the White House, she departed at once, eager to see her best patron again after so many weeks apart. Mrs. Lincoln greeted her warmly, clasping her hands and smiling, and declared theirs the happiest of reunions. Elizabeth was relieved to see that Mrs. Lincoln’s health seemed almost entirely restored to her, but an air of sadness lingered about her that Elizabeth could only assume sprang from her recent losses.

  They had been discussing new dresses for the upcoming social season for only a few minutes when Mrs. Lincoln suddenly said, “Elizabeth, I have just heard that one of my brothers has been killed in the war.”

  Elizabeth was taken aback by the lack of emotion in her words. “I also heard the same, but I hesitated to speak of it, for fear the subject would be a painful one to you.”

  “You need not hesitate.” Mrs. Lincoln attempted a matter-of-fact smile, but her lips trembled. “Of course, it is but natural that I should feel for one so nearly related to me, but not to the extent that you suppose.”

  Elizabeth did not know what to say. “Indeed?”

  Mrs. Lincoln clasped her hands in her lap and studied them. “Aleck made his choice long ago. He decided against my husband, and through him against me. He has been fighting against us, and since he chose to be our deadly enemy, I see no special reason why I should bitterly mourn his death.”

  “I suppose not,” Elizabeth replied slowly, torn between relief and regret. She was thankful that Mrs. Lincoln did not appear possessed by the same madness of despair that had seized her after Willie’s death, but she knew Mrs. Lincoln felt deep sorrow over the loss of her kin, rebel or otherwise, all the same. To feign indifference was an act for her critics, for the spiteful masses who eagerly snatched up any crumb of proof, however tenuous, of the First Lady’s disloyalty. It was not a pretense she needed to maintain in front of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was very sorry that her patron and friend could not be perfectly honest with her so that she
could offer her the comfort her broken heart surely needed.

  Months earlier, in springtime, Mrs. Lincoln’s longtime social rival Miss Kate Chase had become engaged to the wealthy former Rhode Island governor and current United States senator William Sprague IV, and their November wedding in the parlor of the Chase mansion was anticipated to be the social event of the season. Fifty guests, including President and Mrs. Lincoln, the cabinet secretaries and their wives, and certain senators, congressmen, and generals had been invited to the ceremony, and five hundred more would join them at the reception. When Elizabeth mentioned to Mrs. Lincoln that she would be sure to keep that afternoon open so she would be available to dress her for the occasion, Mrs. Lincoln told her that would not be necessary. “I believe I will have a terrible headache that day,” she said lightly.

  “But, Mrs. Lincoln,” protested Elizabeth, “aren’t you worried about how it will look if you don’t attend? Everyone of quality in Washington will be there.”

  “I rather worry what it would say if I did attend,” Mrs. Lincoln retorted. “You know those Chases, father and daughter alike, have always believed that they belong in the White House rather than us. Mr. Chase has spent the last three years in the high office my husband bestowed upon him making friends and setting himself up as an alternative candidate, and he would be all too delighted to snatch the Republican nomination away from Mr. Lincoln. I absolutely refuse to promote the daughter through any political favor to the father, nor will I promote the father by offering social preference to the daughter. They are my husband’s rivals, Elizabeth, and therefore also mine.”