After Willie died, his mother lost interest in entertaining. (Francis B. Carpenter, who spent several months at the White House in 1864, said “she was less hospitable” than any previous First Lady.)65 For months thereafter she forbade the Marine Band to hold its traditional and very popular weekly concerts on the south lawn of the White House. When this ban persisted, the public grew restive. Gideon Welles suggested that the concerts be given in Lafayette Park across the street, but she also refused permission in her imperious manner, employing the royal we: “It is our especial desire that the Band, does not play in these grounds, this summer. We expect our wishes to be complied with.”66
The Lincolns’ Children
During Lincoln’s first year in office, the solemn atmosphere in the White House was somewhat relieved by his two sons, the studious and lovable Willie (born in 1850) and the irrepressible and equally lovable Tad (born in 1853). Their older brother Robert was attending Harvard and spent little time in Washington. The young boys, Hay recorded, “kept the house in an uproar. They drove their tutor wild with their good natured disobedience; … they made acquaintance with the office seekers and became the hot champions of the distressed.” Willie, “with all his boyish frolic,” was nonetheless “a child of great promise, capable of close application and study. He had a fancy for drawing up railway time tables, and would conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision. He wrote childish verses, which sometimes attained the unmerited honors of print.”
Tad, on the other hand, “was a merry, warm-blooded, kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and inventions, the ‘chartered libertine’ of the Executive Mansion. He ran continually in and out of his father’s cabinet, interrupting his gravest labors and conversations with his bright, rapid and very imperfect speech—for he had an impediment which made his articulation almost unintelligible, until he was nearly grown. He would perch upon his father’s knee and sometimes even on his shoulder while the most weighty conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities, he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up and carry him tenderly to bed.”67 Tad’s appearance as well as his speech was unusual; a journalist deemed him a “rather a grotesque looking little fellow.”68 He suffered from learning disabilities and took an inordinately long time to master the art of reading. Lincoln did not mind, for as John Hay noted, he “took infinite comfort in the child’s rude health, fresh fun, and uncontrollable boisterousness. He was pleased to see him growing up in ignorance of books, but with singularly accurate ideas of practical matters. … ‘Let him run,’ the easy-going President would say; ‘he has time enough left to learn his letters and get pokey. Bob was just such a little rascal, and now he is a very decent boy.’ ”69 The Lincolns hired a tutor for the boys, one Alexander Williamson. The children had ponies, which they loved to ride. In February, 1864, a fire burned down the stables, killing all the steeds. Upon observing the flames, Lincoln ran toward the building, vaulted over a hedge, and asked the guards if the horses had been removed. When told they had not, he asked impatiently why and threw open the doors. Then he realized that none of the animals within could survive. Concerned for his safety, the guards hustled him back into the White House, where he wept, for Willie’s pony was among the animals killed.
Among the White House menagerie on the south lawn were donkeys, horses, and a pair of goats, Nanny and Nanko. Tad would hitch the goats to a chair, which he used as a cart, and would drive pell-mell through the White House during a reception, to the consternation of many guests. One day the pun-loving president observed a goat gamboling on the lawn and remarked: “He feeds on my bounty, and jumps with joy. Do you think we could call him a bounty-jumper?”70 In the spring of 1864, when Tad and the First Lady were away on one of their many trips, Lincoln sent her a telegram: “Tell Tad the goats and father are very well especially the goats.”71
Lincoln was fond of the cats that Seward gave to the boys. In April 1862, a dinner guest observed one of the felines perched on a chair next to the president. As he fed it with Executive Mansion cutlery, the First Lady asked: “Don’t you think it is shameful for Mr. Lincoln to feed tabby with a gold fork?” Her husband replied: “If the gold fork was good enough for Buchanan I think it is good enough for Tabby” and continued feeding the cat.72
Willie and Tad were prankish. One day they commandeered the spring-bell system used to summon servants. Discovering in the attic the node where the cords to the various bells were gathered, they pulled all of them, sending servants scurrying madly from room to room. On another occasion Tad, dressed in a lieutenant’s uniform (Stanton had appointed him to that rank), dismissed the regular guards and assigned the White House staff to protect the house. When his stuffy brother Robert observed what Tad had done, he indignantly protested to Lincoln, who laughed it off and refused to take any disciplinary action. Late one night, when the servants complained that they could not get Tad into bed, Lincoln excused himself, saying to his guests: “I must go and suppress Tad.” Upon his return, he remarked: “I don’t know but I may succeed in governing the nation, but I do believe I shall fail in ruling my own house hold.”73 The public delighted in reading of the boys’ antics, for they were only the second youngsters in the nation’s history to inhabit the White House (the first youth being John Tyler’s 10-year-old son).
The Lincoln boys had two playmates, the young sons of a Patent Office examiner, Horatio Nelson Taft: 8-year-old “Holly” (Halsey Cook) and 11-year-old “Bud” (Horatio Nelson, Jr.). The Taft boys frequently visited the White House, escorted by their 16-year-old sister Julia, and the First Sons often played at the nearby Taft home. The White House roof became the lads’ favorite playground. On it they erected a fort bristling with a log cannon and some condemned muskets, and on occasion they pretended that the roof was the deck of a man-o’-war. The attic became a playhouse for the youngsters, who put on a minstrel show there with Tad in blackface and Willie in drag, much to the amusement of a small crowd of sentinels and White House staff who gladly paid the admission charge of 5 cents. The attic was also the scene of “blizzards” that Tad created with hundreds of calling cards that had been left by White House visitors. One day Tad took his toy cannon and pretended to fire at the room where the cabinet was in session. During the bombardment, Holly Taft pinched his finger and cried out, prompting Lincoln to interrupt the meeting to see what was wrong. The president and his wife indulgently smiled on such shenanigans. Lincoln told stories to the four boys, who especially relished tales of bloody conflict between Indians and frontiersmen. He also played on the floor with them. One day Julie Taft found Lincoln pinned down by the youngsters; when she entered the room, Tad instructed her to sit on the presidential stomach.
Tad once enraged John Watt, the White House gardener, by eating all the strawberries he was growing for a formal dinner party. Watt called the boy a “wildcat.” Watt also disapproved of Tad’s goat Nannie, who ate flowers promiscuously. One day the animal escaped from the White House grounds—probably with the assistance of Watt. The gardener was doubtless perturbed when Tad dug up the rose bushes to make a grave for a Zouave doll named Jack who had fallen asleep on sentry duty (or deserted, or had acted as an enemy spy) and was executed by a firing squad armed with the lad’s toy cannon. They performed this funeral several times until Watt hinted that the president might pardon Jack. Inspired by that suggestion, Tad appealed to his father for mercy. After a formal hearing, Lincoln granted the request. One day Tad accidentally broke a large mirror while playing with a ball indoors. Warned that it meant seven years of bad luck unless he threw salt over his left shoulder, he promptly dashed to the kitchen and returned with some sodium chloride, which he tossed onto the carpet in accordance with the prescribed ritual. The boys formed a military company dubbed “Mrs. Lincoln’s Zouaves,” with Willie as the colonel, Bud the major, Holly the captain, and Tad the “d
rum major” (at his insistence). Lincoln reviewed the unit ceremoniously. Tad wanted a pistol and finally got one after nagging his parents repeatedly. When the First Lady and the boys were away in June 1863, Lincoln wired her: “Think you better put ‘Tad’s’ pistol away. I had an ugly dream about him.”74
The boys’ fun came to an end with Willie’s death in February 1862. Thereafter, Mary Lincoln forbade the Tafts’ sons to enter the White House, for their presence conjured up memories too painful for her to bear.
The First Lady
In 1864, after calling at the White House, a Quaker wrote Mary Lincoln explaining how she could help the president: “Thou hast it in thy power to strengthen his hands in the great work in which he is engaged, to encourage him in seasons of deep discouragement; to soothe & cheer him in times of depression; to divert his attention in seasons of relaxation, from the heavy pressure of care & the weight of Government; to train his sons to honor their father & their father’s God, to shield him from all little cares & annoyances in his home.”75 Instead of performing those functions, Mrs. Lincoln was a constant source of anxiety and embarrassment to her husband, who often talked to Orville H. Browning “about his domestic troubles.” As Browning reported, the president “several times told me there [in the White House] that he was constantly under great apprehension lest his wife should do something which would bring him into disgrace.” David Davis also worried that Mary Lincoln “will disgrace her husband.”76 They had good reason to be apprehensive. As if Lincoln did not have enough trouble dealing with recalcitrant generals, editors, senators, governors, congressmen, office seekers, and cabinet members—not to mention Confederates—the First Lady added immeasurably to his woes.
Among other things, she meddled in patronage matters, forcing her husband “to do things which he knew were out of place in order to keep his wife’s fingers out of his hair,” as Herndon put it.77 In June 1861, the journalist Murat Halstead wrote that some of Lincoln’s “most unfortunate appointments have been made to please his wife who is anxious to be thought the power behind the throne and who is vulgar and pestiferous beyond description.” He added that Mary Lincoln was “a fool—the laughing stock of the town, her vulgarity only the more conspicuous in consequence of her fine carriage and horses and servants in livery and fine dresses, and her damnable airs.”78 She herself told James Gordon Bennett in 1862 that although she had “a great terror of strong minded Ladies,” she nonetheless believed that “a word fitly spoken and in due season” might induce her husband to make some changes in his cabinet.79
Mary Lincoln thought of herself as a kind of assistant president and as such had tried to influence the initial cabinet selections. From New York, where she went to shop in January 1861, she predicted that Norman B. Judd “would cause trouble & dissatisfaction,” and noted that Wall Streeters testified that “his business transactions, have not always borne inspection.” People in New York, she reported, “were laughing at the idea of Judd, being any way, connected with the Cabinet in these times, when honesty in high places is so important.” She asked David Davis to use his influence to block Judd, who complained that his opponents were using every possible tactic to defeat him, “including female influence.”80 (Nine years later, Mary Lincoln obsequiously and fawningly appealed to Judd to help her win a pension from Congress.) Some believed Mrs. Lincoln deserved credit for blocking Judd, but that seems unlikely. Upon hearing complaints that his wife was meddling in the selection of cabinet members, Lincoln replied: “Tell the gentlemen not to be alarmed, for I myself manage all important matters.”81
In Washington, Mary Lincoln’s shopping trip to New York was judged to be wildly inappropriate. Her buying sprees involved extravagant purchases, including shawls costing $650 and $1,000 as well as expensive china and silver plate. Also criticized were her indiscreet public remarks. “The idea of the President[’]s wife kiting about the country and holding levees at which she indulges in a multitude of silly speeches is looked upon as very shocking,” wrote Herman Kreismann from the capital in January 1861. “Among other interesting speeches of Mrs L. reported here is that she says her husband had to give Mr Seward a place. The pressure was so great; but he did it very reluctantly.”82 Mary Lincoln did not like Seward and let her feelings be known to visitors. When her spouse indicated to a caller that he would appoint the New Yorker secretary of state, she interrupted: “Never! Never! Seward in the Cabinet! Never. If all things should go on all right—the credit would go to Seward—if they went wrong—the blame would fall upon my husband. Seward in the Cabinet! Never!”83 Two weeks after the election, she told guests at her home, “The country will find how we regard that Abolition sneak Seward.”84 Later, when Mrs. Lincoln told the president that Seward lacked principles and was “worse than Chase,” he replied: “Mother, you are mistaken; your prejudices are so violent that you do not stop to reason. Seward is an able man, and the country as well as myself can trust him.”
She retorted: “Father, you are too honest for this world! You should have been born a saint. You will generally find it a safe rule to distrust a disappointed, ambitious politician. It makes me mad to see you sit still and let that hypocrite, Seward, twine you around his finger as if you were a skein of thread.”85
In 1863, Mary Lincoln told Francis P. Blair, Sr., “that there was not a member of the Cabinet who did not stab her husband & the Country daily” except his son Montgomery. The First Lady qualified her observation by admitting that “she did not know anything about Politics—but her instincts told her that much.”86 She also believed that Seward spread unflattering tales about her.
In October 1861, the journalist D. W. Bartlett alleged that Mary Lincoln had “made and unmade the political fortunes of men. She is said to be much in conversation with cabinet members, and has … held correspondence with them on political topics. Some go so far as to suggest that the president is indebted to her for some of his ideas and projects.” Her “friends compare Mrs Lincoln to Queen Elizabeth in her statesmanlike tastes and capabilities.”87 In Massachusetts, Mrs. Lincoln’s political influence was the topic of conversation among those who had visited Washington. A former congressman from Indiana thought the First Lady “a corrupt woman who controles her husband.”88 Her influence reportedly led to “some very curious appointments, more curious than suitable.”89
A dramatic case in point was Mary Lincoln’s effective campaign to have Isaac Henderson, publisher of the New York Evening Post, named to a lucrative post in the New York customhouse. On February 11, as Lincoln was about to board the train for Washington, she threw a tantrum that may have led to the decision to leave her behind that day. Henry Villard recalled that Lincoln at that time appeared “so careworn as to excite one’s compassion” in part because of “the inordinate greed, coupled with an utter lack of sense of propriety, on the part of Mrs. Lincoln,” who “allowed herself to be persuaded, at an early date, to accept presents for the use of her influence with her husband in support of the aspirations of office seekers.”90 (Others at that time reported that Lincoln’s expression was as “care worn, or rather thought worn as the face of old Dante,” and that he looked “thinner than usual.”)91 One such bribe was extended by Isaac Henderson, an unsavory self-made man who had sent Mary Lincoln diamond jewelry to enlist her aid in his quest for office. When Lincoln balked, she carried on in hysterics at the hotel suite where they were staying during their final days in Springfield. Her antics caused Lincoln to miss an appointment with Norman B. Judd and Herman Kreismann, a Republican operative. Curious about the president-elect’s tardiness, Kreismann called at the hotel and was shocked to find Mrs. Lincoln in the throes of a fit. Lincoln told him: “she will not let me go until I promise her an office for one of her friends.” The president-elect eventually acceded to her demand, nominating Henderson to the post he wanted.92 (Three years later, Henderson was dismissed after being indicted for corruption. He allegedly demanded kickbacks from contractors doing business with the Brooklyn Navy Yard; by one
estimate, he extorted $70,000. Although eventually acquitted by a court in 1865, Henderson was believed guilty by Parke Godwin and other knowledgeable observers.)
The son of Gideon Welles recalled a similar episode. As a young boy, on one occasion he was standing outside a shop on Pennsylvania Avenue and overheard Mrs. Lincoln tell her husband that if he did not appoint a man of her choice to an office, she would descend from their carriage and roll about on the sidewalk. Lincoln, according to Welles, gave in.93
Bribes given to Mary Lincoln also helped pave the way for the strange appointment of George Denison as naval agent in the New York customhouse. Denison was a partner of William Henry Marston, son-in-law of Lincoln’s friend and banker, Robert Irwin, who urged the appointment. (Irwin’s daughter Eliza married Marston in 1859. She was a friend of Mary Lincoln, accompanying her on a tour of New York harbor in July 1861.)94 The president hesitated to comply because, as he told Irwin: “I am scared about your friend Dennison. The place is so fiercely sought by, and for, others, while … his name is not mentioned at all, that I fear appointing him will appear too arbitrary on my part.”95 In May 1861, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase strongly objected to Denison: “A friend sometimes best proves his friendship by speaking when selfishness counsels silence. Agreeably to your direction I send a Commission for Mr. Dennison; but I shall not fulfill my duty to you if I do not say that I fear, if you make this appointment, you will regret it. When it was first proposed I had heard so little expression either way that I did not feel myself called upon,—though I felt that setting aside so many prominent men for a gentleman so little known in political or financial circles was of questionable expediency,—to say anything against it. But during the time which has since elapsed many of the most eminent and influential gentlemen of New York have expressed to me such unfavorable opinions of Mr. D—and such strong convictions that his appointment to so high an office will affect the Administration injuriously in quarters whose good opinion is most valuable that I feel myself constrained to say that were the responsibility of decision mine, I should not put my name to the commission.”
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2 Page 47
