Mrs. Lincoln's Rival

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Following established tradition as well as their own preferences, the Chases left the White House before the doors opened to the general public at noon and a crush of eight thousand eager citizens packed the reception rooms. Later that afternoon they hosted their own New Year’s gala, welcoming particular friends and colleagues and potential allies to an elegant, lively affair graced by excellent music, delicious food and drink, and sparkling conversation. Kate presided over everything with her usual grace and charm, but although she knew her guests were enjoying themselves thoroughly and no one would have guessed that anything was amiss, she felt her husband’s absence keenly. She wished he were by her side so that they could greet the New Year properly, together as husband and wife.

  Soon thereafter, William wrote to tell her he would return by the end of the first week of January. On the day of his arrival, she fussed and prepared as if Father were entertaining foreign diplomats with an important trade agreement hanging in the balance.

  She did not know what to expect from him—until the moment he crossed the threshold, eagerly called her name, and swept her into his arms when she came running to meet him. It was her own dear, loving William who had come home to her, and when he kissed her tenderly she felt as if she would melt into him. She was so relieved and happy to have her beloved husband restored to her that she could almost forget the other William existed.

  • • •

  She was doubly thankful to have her darling husband home again because of the sudden surge in political intrigue that swept through the capital that month. Winter’s cold had held the two armies almost to a standstill except for minor raids and skirmishes, and with the Union army camped firmly between Washington and the rebels, the people of Washington felt safer, if no closer to the end of the war. With the threat of invasion quite remote, and with the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg indicating that the end of the war was near, they were free to turn their attention to politics and the upcoming election.

  No one knew what candidate the Peace Democrats or the Whigs might put forth in the race for the presidency, although General McClellan was occasionally whispered about as a possibility. But within Republican circles, it was generally understood that moderates and conservatives would cleave loyally to Mr. Lincoln, while Radical Republicans would rally around Father. After the Emancipation Proclamation had rendered it impossible for Father to distinguish himself from Mr. Lincoln by his stronger stance on abolition, Father chose Reconstruction as his new great cause. He believed, and he was confident voters would agree, that his experience leading the Treasury through its wartime crises made him better suited than the wartime president for the great endeavor of putting the divided nation back together.

  While Father wished to remain above the fray, he did not discourage his supporters among the Radical Republicans from promoting his cause. Several friends, including the wealthy banker Jay Cooke, who had helped look after Nettie when she had been afflicted with scarlet fever two years before, paid thousands of dollars to the publisher of the Philadelphia magazine American Exchange and Review to produce a brief, laudatory biography of Father. Mr. Lincoln usually ignored such politicking, but to Kate’s surprise, the president questioned Father about the pamphlet, as well as Mr. Cooke’s role in its publication, which had an unseemly appearance since Mr. Cooke and his brother were official agents for selling government bonds. Father wrote Mr. Lincoln a lengthy, heartfelt letter disavowing any wrongdoing, and as far as Kate knew Mr. Lincoln accepted his explanation and the matter was forgotten.

  The president’s tolerance did nothing to discourage Father from continuing to cultivate support, however, and he soon commenced writing a series of twenty-five long letters to the Boston author Mr. John Trowbridge, who intended to write a small, inspirational book about Father’s life to place him more favorably before the public. Father wrote many private letters too, corresponding vigorously with friends and allies throughout the North, but it was his more public efforts that raised the ire of Mr. Lincoln’s staunch supporters. No one disputed Father’s right to criticize President Lincoln and to pursue his own presidential ambitions, but to do so from within the cabinet rather than honorably resigning and challenging Mr. Lincoln openly struck many observers as duplicitous and unethical.

  No one was more outraged by Father’s preludes to a campaign than Mrs. Lincoln. John Hay, who did not call on Kate as often as he once had but remained her confidant, told her that the Hellcat had resolved to do nothing that might promote the ambitious Secretary Chase. “You’re aware she’s preparing for the first state dinner of the year,” John said.

  “Yes, for the evening of the twenty-first. Father, William, and I plan to attend.”

  “Well, you almost weren’t invited.”

  “What?” Kate exclaimed. By well-established tradition, the first state dinner of the year was held for members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, and their families, a group in which Father ranked among the highest. “An innocent oversight, I dare hope?”

  “Not at all. John Nicolay is always involved in planning these affairs, and he composed the appropriate guest list as usual. He told me that Her Satanic Majesty demanded that your names be struck. Naturally, Nicolay told her that he couldn’t possibly exclude one of the secretaries, not only because it went against custom, but also because it would make the president appear spiteful and overly wary of a potential rival.”

  “And, of course, Mr. Lincoln is neither of those things.”

  “He isn’t,” said John emphatically, “although I wish he were the latter. So Mrs. Lincoln insisted, and Nicolay refused, and back and forth the argument went, off and on for days. Finally the Tycoon caught wind of the conflict, and he settled it by ordering Nicolay to invite you three and telling his wife to drop the matter.”

  “I’m sure that pleased her immensely.”

  “You have no idea. The Hellcat went on quite a rampage, and she banished Nicolay not only from her little planning committee but from the dinner itself. Nicolay took his revenge, though. He ordered William Stoddard not to help her, and I have no intention of volunteering, so she’s going to have to flounder about on her own.”

  “This should make for an interesting evening,” Kate mused, smiling.

  “Never fear. I expect her to come down with a serious case of contrition soon, and go humbly back to Nicolay to beg for his help.”

  “Will he give it?”

  “Yes, but for the president’s sake, not hers.”

  It did indeed come to pass as John had predicted, as he told Kate later. On the afternoon of the dinner, after two sleepless, worrisome nights, Mrs. Lincoln sent Mr. Nicolay a contrite note of apology through the White House doorman and requested his help, which he dutifully provided. Kate was expecting utter disarray when she, Father, and William arrived at the White House on the evening of January 21, but the dinner was actually quite pleasant, except for some stiffness between various bickering members of the cabinet. They also patiently endured constant dour looks from the prolifically bearded Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who could not bring himself to partake of the renewed enjoyment of parties, receptions, and fairs that had infused the capital that winter. “It’s like merrymaking at a funeral,” Kate overheard him grumble to his wife.

  There were moments when Kate felt as Secretary Welles did, but she knew that policies were created over dinners and alliances forged in drawing rooms as often as in the halls of Congress or the White House, and that the art of masterful entertaining contributed as much to the machinery of government as the press and the lecture hall.

  • • •

  Kate had never been happier than she was that winter. Father was actively pursuing his great ambition and had allowed his romantic correspondence with several lady friends to diminish. William was attentive and loving, and after he settled back into the routine of the Senate he only rarely complained to her that he ought to be back i
n Rhode Island overseeing his business empire instead. Kate often watched the proceedings from the Senate gallery, proud to see her husband in his official chair, although she wished he would take the floor more often to introduce new legislation or participate in debate. Privately she encouraged him to make his mark, and although he seemed to be in no hurry, he assured her he would do when the time was right. She realized that he was somewhat intimidated by the great political minds all around him, but she was impatient for him to gain confidence before his colleagues decided he was a man of no consequence. Several sneering articles had already appeared in the papers mocking his absences and inactivity, and Kate knew that sort of nonsense had to be uprooted before it dug itself into the bedrock.

  Kate had been preoccupied with her wedding and honeymoon—and then with William’s heartbreaking absence—to pay much attention at the time, but late in the previous year, a Kansas senator named Samuel Pomeroy had launched a clandestine “Chase for President” movement even as he publicly pledged his loyalty to Mr. Lincoln. John Hay had heard rumors of the campaign and had questioned Kate about it, but she had been able to tell him in all honesty that she was unaware of anything Mr. Pomeroy might be doing outside of the Senate, and that her father had not endorsed any campaign organization. By early February, if John had asked, Kate would have had to confess an entirely different answer. A few days after the Lincolns’ state dinner, Father and William together informed Kate that Senator Pomeroy had indeed formed a campaign committee, and that William and Mr. Cooke were its most generous contributors.

  Kate was at first startled to discover that her father and her husband had collaborated on a political scheme without including her, but the feeling soon gave way to dismay when they informed her that the committee intended to publish an anonymous pamphlet titled “The Next Presidential Election.” Without mentioning Father by name, it painted Mr. Lincoln as an uncertain, ineffective administrator who wrongly arrested innocent citizens, and it argued that he must be replaced on the Republican ticket at the convention in June. While the pamphlet accurately expressed Father’s opinions about President Lincoln’s shortcomings, it did so in harsher terms than Kate had ever heard him use.

  Father and William had confided in Kate, they explained, because the pamphlet was already in the mail, on its way to hundreds of newspaper editors and other influential personages throughout the North, and they wanted her to know about it before anyone else. The admission rendered Kate speechless for a moment, but when she composed herself, she told them heatedly that she wished they had confided in her sooner, for she never would have allowed such a diatribe to be published. “At least Senator Pomeroy had the good sense to leave your name off of it,” she snapped. “Vitriol of this nature often damages the reputation of the author more than the subject. I hope you’ll advise them not to repeat this experiment.” Startled by her fierce indignation, Father and William somewhat meekly concurred.

  Thankfully, the pamphlet garnered little attention and no one publicly linked it to Father, but Kate’s relief was short-lived. In the second week of February, Republican circles buzzed with rumors that a confidential circular issued in Senator Pomeroy’s name had been distributed to one hundred prominent Republicans throughout the North. The Pomeroy Circular, as it became known, sharply criticized President Lincoln, predicted that his second-term policies would be even more disastrous than those of his first term, and declared that “even were the reelection of Mr. Lincoln desirable, it is practically impossible.” Salmon P. Chase, in contrast, was “a statesman of rare ability, and an administrator of the highest order” who possessed “more of the qualities needed in a President during the next four years, than are combined in any other available candidate.” The only way to avoid the disaster of a Peace Democrat victory in November, it asserted, would be for all loyal Republicans to make certain that Salmon P. Chase won the nomination in June.

  Father acquired a copy of the circular soon after the rumors began, and when Kate read it, her heart plummeted. She dared not ask her father or William if they had known about the document before it was distributed, for she was afraid of the answer. “I can’t imagine how Senator Pomeroy expects to keep such a volatile document confidential,” she said instead, “or what good he expects to come of it.”

  Leaving the offensive pamphlet on her father’s desk, she swept from his study, trembling with suppressed anger. Her father’s presidential aspirations were her life’s work, and it grieved her to watch others bungle his campaign so badly while she was inexplicably left out. From the time she was sixteen her father had consulted her in nearly everything regarding his political aspirations, and she did not understand why he was apparently excluding her now.

  To make matters worse, her remarks about Senator Pomeroy’s foolhardy expectations of confidentiality proved prescient. On February 11, the National Intelligencer printed the Pomeroy Circular in its entirety, and a few days later the Constitutional Union did as well, and soon thereafter it was reprinted in papers through the North. The effect on public opinion was swift and explosive. Outraged Lincoln loyalists who received the memo by mail in envelopes marked with the congressional frank of Father’s supporters forwarded their copies to the White House, often including personal notes expressing their disgust with Father and their steadfast allegiance to the president. Mr. Lincoln’s friends denounced Father and Senator Pomeroy, and Democrats gleefully celebrated the division within the Republican Party.

  It was the worst political disaster of Father’s entire career, and neither he nor Kate nor William knew how to stop it from hurtling out of control.

  Frantic, Father wrote to the curiously silent president to disavow any knowledge of the Pomeroy Circular until it was published in the papers, a claim Kate knew to be not entirely accurate. Father insisted that although ambitious friends had asked to use his name in the upcoming election, he had not authorized the formation of the Pomeroy Committee and he did not know which gentlemen comprised it. This too Kate knew to be only partially true. “I have thought this explanation due to you as well as to myself,” Father wrote. “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.” He concluded the letter by emphasizing that their differences of opinion had never diminished his strong personal feelings for Mr. Lincoln. “For yourself I cherish sincere respect and esteem; and, permit me to add, affection,” he asserted, adding hopefully, “You are not responsible for acts not your own; nor will you hold me responsible except for what I do or say myself.”

  Father sent off the letter with dim hopes that it would be well received, and the entire household seemed to hold its breath until a reply came the following day.

  Executive Mansion,

  Washington,

  Feb. 23. 1864.

  Hon. Sec. of Treasury

  My dear Sir:

  Yours of yesterday in relation to the paper issued by Senator Pomeroy was duly received; and I write this note merely to say I will answer a little more fully when I can find time to do so.

  Yours truly,

  A. LINCOLN

  Kate never would have expected such a dispassionate reply, even from the preternaturally tolerant Mr. Lincoln, nor such a calculated maneuver. The president clearly meant to keep Father suffering in suspense, deferring his response until he could take his measure of the people’s reaction to the Pomeroy Circular. Then and only then would he decide what to do.

  The response of the people was unmistakably the opposite of what Senator Pomeroy had intended, for throughout the North, the circular roused Mr. Lincoln’s supporters from their complacency. Opposing circulars were published denouncing Father and his political machinations, and in one state after another, Republicans met and passed unanimous resolutions calling for Mr. Lincoln’s renomination. Even the usually sympathetic
New York Times declared that the circular was unworthy of the party, proclaiming, “We protest against the spirit of this movement.”

  Following the unfolding nightmare in the press, Kate absorbed each devastating blow with outward stoicism and secret despair. All that she and Father and even William had worked for seemed to be crumbling to ruin all around them. The worst moment came when Father’s friends in the Union caucus of the Ohio state legislature, who had previously blocked efforts to endorse Mr. Lincoln’s reelection, repudiated their support, allowing a resolution in favor of the president to pass unanimously.

  As in 1860, her father’s chances to win the Republican nomination depended upon strong support from his home state of Ohio. For Father, the resolution meant that he had lost the election before it had truly begun.

  On the last day of February, Father at last received Mr. Lincoln’s response.

  Executive Mansion,

  Washington,

  February 29. 1864.

  Hon. Secretary of the Treasury

  My dear Sir:

  I would have taken time to answer yours of the 22d sooner, only that I did not suppose any evil could result from the delay, especially as, by a note, I promptly acknowledged the receipt of yours, and promised a fuller answer. Now, on consideration I find there is really very little to say. My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote, but I had, in spite of myself, known of its existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter, because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s committee and of secret issues which, I supposed, came from it and of secret agents who, I supposed, were sent out by it, for several weeks. I have known just as little of these things as my friends have allowed me to know. They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them; they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more. 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.