Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  The public also looked askance at Mrs. Lincoln’s friendship with Daniel Sickles, yet another acquaintance whose reputation was none too savory. When the president nominated him for a generalship, that gesture was thought to reflect Lincoln’s “desire to confer on him respectability because his wife condescended to be attended by Sickles at a Review in public when no other women in the country of unsullied character would have done such a thing.” A New Yorker reported that, because of her indiscretions, “Mrs. Lincoln is seen in society at the North to be the worst enemy” of her husband.192 A matron in the Empire State, Maria Lydig Daly, thought the First Lady “behaves in the most undignified manner possible, associating with Wyckoff and Sickles, with whom no lady would deign to speak; but she seems to be easily flattered. She is not a young woman by any means, but dresses like one.”193 Senator William P. Fessenden told his cousin that the First Lady “by common consent, is making both herself & her husband very ridiculous.”194 Philo S. Shelton, a Boston merchant and speculator, indignantly remarked that Lincoln “is a humbug & his wife worse [—] only think of such men as Wikoff & Gordon Bennett & Mrs. B[ennett] being the special guests of Mrs. Lincoln & of men placed in office thro[ugh] such influences.”195

  The president intervened when warned of scandal by Matthew Hale Smith, New York correspondent for the Boston Journal. Shortly after the Civil War, Smith revealed the full story: Wikoff, “with whom no reputable woman would willingly be seen on Broadway,” had been “very officious in his attention to … Mrs. Lincoln. … His frequent visits to Washington, and his receptions at the White House, were noticed by the friends of the President. At all of the receptions of Mrs. Lincoln he was an early and constant visitor. At the informal receptions he was found. No one went so early but this person could be seen cosily seated in a chair as if at home, talking to the ladies of the White House. None called so late but they found him still there.” Wikoff was often “seen riding in the President’s coach, with the ladies, through Pennsylvania Avenue. Frequently he was found lounging in the conservatory, or smoking in the grounds, very much at home, and not at all anxious to hide his presence.” Wikoff’s frequent visits embarrassed the White House staff, and the press began to comment unfavorably.

  Friends of the president, suspicious of Wikoff, investigated his background and discovered that he had been hired “by some parties in New York, who were using him as their tool.” These men had “furnished him with money and instructions. He was to go to Washington, make himself agreeable to the ladies, insinuate himself into the White House, attend levees, show that he had the power to come and go, and, if possible, open a correspondence with the ladies of the mansion.” Once he became known as an insider, he would be able to wield influence that his backers might find useful in time. (According to Charles A. Dana, Wikoff “made about $20,000 by contracts” which Mary Lincoln “knew how to help him to.”)

  Wikoff carried out his assignment well. Lincoln’s friends “considered that the President should be made acquainted with this plot against his honor” and dispatched Smith to do so. Accompanied by a U.S. senator, Smith visited the White House one evening. As the journalist later recalled, Lincoln “took me by the hand, led me into the office of his private secretary, whom he drove out, and locked the door.” When Smith showed him documents revealing the purposes of Wikoff, who at that moment was downstairs in the White House, the president said, “Give me those papers and sit here till I return.” Lincoln “started out of the room with strides that showed an energy of purpose.” He soon came back, shook Smith’s hand, and had Wikoff “driven from the mansion that night.”196 According to another source, Lincoln “became jealous” of Wikoff and “taxed” his wife. The Chevalier then “volunteered an explanation,” telling “the wounded & incensed” president that “he was only teaching the madame a little European Court Etiquette.”197 Wikoff was thereafter forbidden to enter the Executive Mansion.198

  John Watt, who was made to take the blame for Mrs. Lincoln’s indiscretion in leaking her husband’s annual message to Congress, was also denied access to the White House. A native of Scotland who had been residing in Washington for over a decade by 1861, Watt had served as the presidential gardener since the early 1850s. In January 1861, the 37-year-old Watt became a major in the Washington, D.C., militia. On September 9, he was appointed first lieutenant in the Sixteenth U.S. Infantry, but the senate revoked his commission on February 3, 1862. (His appointment, according to George Gibbs, was made “at Mrs Lincoln’s demand.”)199 Watt later told authorities that he “was commissioned by President Lincoln and detailed for special duty at [the] White House and never served with his Regiment,” and that he “also acted as recruiting officer at Washington D.C.” A congressional report stated that he served as “one of the commanders of the bodyguard of President Lincoln” and “one of his personal aids and attendants.” In March 1862, he was appointed to visit Europe on behalf of the Interior Department’s Patent Division to inspect seeds. Returning the following year, on August 12 he enlisted in the Thirteenth New York Artillery as a private, rose to the rank of corporal, and in 1865 accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the Thirty-eighth U.S. Colored Troops, serving until 1867.200

  Before the Lincolns entered the White House, Watt had acquired an unenviable reputation. As Executive Mansion gardener during the Buchanan administration, he had been chastised by the commissioner of public buildings, John B. Blake, for submitting unreasonable bills. Blake, “astonished” at a seed bill, told Watt in 1859, “You must raise your own seed hereafter.” Blake also protested against an “enormous” bill “for making and sharpening tools.” The commissioner sternly warned Watt not to “incur the smallest debt without first consulting the public gardener or myself.”201

  Early in Lincoln’s first term, Watt continued to attract unfavorable attention. John F. Potter, chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the loyalty of government employees, informed the president in September 1861 of damning testimony about Watt’s pro-Confederate sympathies. Two independent witnesses confirmed that the gardener, shortly after the first battle of Bull Run, had proclaimed that the South could not be defeated and that the Union army consisted of human trash.202 Mary Lincoln, who was “determined that he should be retained,” vehemently denied those allegations, much to Potter’s annoyance.203 The congressman forwarded the documents about Watt to the president, who did not dismiss the gardener. Instead, according to Charles A. Dana, Mary Lincoln accosted Cameron and “after a good deal of bullying on her part & resistance on his, actually gets him appointed a lieutenant in the army with orders to report for duty not to the colonel of his regiment, but to the President.”204 When Potter’s committee issued its report in January, it expressed “surprise that, in the face of such testimony, a man clearly disloyal, instead of being instantly removed, should have been elevated to a higher and more responsible position.” Lincoln had committed a “blunder,” said the National Anti-Slavery Standard, for during “such times as these, no man against whom a respectable suspicion can lie should be kept in place under the government.”205 The journalist D. W. Bartlett explained that Lincoln “clings to the men around him. Not even the menials about the White House, some of whom have been proven before Potter’s investigation committee to be guilty of indulging secession sentiments, have been dismissed, because Mr. Lincoln good-naturedly says he can’t believe them to be guilty.”206

  Watt was the gentleman who, according to the White House servant Thomas Stackpole, “had in the beginning of the Administration suggested to Mrs. Lincoln the making of false bills so as to get pay for private expenses out of the public treasury and had aided her in doing so.”207 It is not clear just when Watt and the First Lady began conspiring to defraud the government. John P. Usher, assistant secretary of the interior, informed Browning in late July 1861 of scandals involving Mrs. Lincoln. The first known example of her padding bills occurred the following month, when she tried to charge a state dinner for Prince Napoleon to the
manure fund (paid by Congress), but Watt charged it to his account.208 He billed the Interior Department $900, but the secretary of that department, Caleb B. Smith, rejected the claim. Finding the cost exorbitant, Smith consulted with Secretary of State Seward, who had also given a dinner for the prince, involving an equal number of guests, and providing the same meal that had been served at the White House. Both dinners had been catered by the same restaurant, which charged Seward $300. Mrs. Lincoln asked for a $900 reimbursement. Thwarted by Smith’s refusal, the First Lady then instructed Watt to prepare a bill for plants, flowers, pots, and other gardening expenses totaling $900. She vouched for it herself and received the money. This legerdemain created a scandal.209

  Use of the gardener’s account to hide the cost overrun was described by a White House gatekeeper, James H. Upperman, who complained to Interior Secretary Smith in October 1861 about “sundry petit, but flagrant frauds on the public treasury,” the products of “deliberate col[l]usion.” According to Upperman, in mid-September Watt had authorized payments to Alexander McKerichar, a laborer on the White House grounds, for flowers ($700.75) and for 215 loads of manure ($107.50) as well as hire of a horse and cart for twenty-seven days in August to haul it to the Executive Mansion ($47.25). These bills were for goods and services apparently not provided. Another gentleman, Charles F. Cone, was paid $33.75 for working at the White House for twenty-seven days in August and $47.25 for the hire of horse cart and driver, even though, Upperman testified, “this individual is no labourer and has rendered no such service as charged for as can be proved by sundry persons, that he does not work at any kind of labour and was at the time refer[r]ed to, and can yet be found in a certain locality on P[ennsylvani]a Avenue anytime during working hours.” As for Cone’s delivery charges, Upperman contended that “it can be proved that no such horse cart or driver rendered any such service in said grounds.” Moreover, Upperman claimed, William Johnson was paid $155 for loads of manure that were never delivered. “I imagine his whereabouts to be doubtful as nobody knows him.” Augustus Jullien, a French cook employed in the White House kitchen, received $67.50 for work done on the grounds in July and August, although he “has at no time rendered any such service.” Similarly, Francis P. Burke, a presidential coachman, was paid $33.75 for labor on the grounds for August, as was White House butler Peter Vermeren.210

  In late October 1861, Mary Lincoln, through Watt, begged Secretary Smith to see the president, evidently about these embarrassing revelations made by the White House gatekeeper. In response to a query from Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin Brown French, Lincoln on October 26 said he would “determine in a few days what he would do.” Watt insisted that “the arrangement of the accounts was made by [William S.] Wood & that he assured Mrs L[incoln] that the transaction was right & legal and that she had no idea that anything was done which was not authorized by law.” Secretary Smith told his cabinet colleague William Henry Seward that he “would be glad to have her relieved from the anxiety under which she is suffering.”211

  Smith provided such relief by covering the scandal up. After interviewing Watt, McKerichar, and Benjamin Brown French about the $700 flower bill, Smith concluded “that the voucher was correct, and that it had been rightfully paid by Mr. French,” and therefore he “pursued the matter no further.”212 He did not consult Upperman, Burke, Jullien, Johnson, Vermeren, Cone, or others knowledgeable about the affair. Gatekeeper Upperman then protested to Solomon Foot, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, citing as his sources Burke, Jullien, and Vermeren, as well as the former public gardener, Thomas J. Sutter, and George W. Dant, a messenger and clerk to the commissioner of public buildings.213 Nothing came of his complaint. According to Thurlow Weed, the Interior Department and Congress “measurably suppressed” this story out of “respect for Mr. Lincoln.”214 Congressman Benjamin M. Boyer confirmed this story, adding that the president paid the bill himself and withdrew the government check.215 (In the fall of 1861, Lincoln gave Benjamin Brown French $270 out of his own pocket to reimburse the government for “Accounts erroneously paid.” They included $33.75 paid to Burke, Vermeren, and Jul-lien for work they allegedly performed in August 1861 as well as similar sums to those gentlemen for labor purportedly done on the President’s Square in July and September 1861.)216 A congressional committee was made aware of this scandal, but it was agreed to hush it up for fear of appearing unchivalrous.

  On March 11, 1862, the president asked the “watchdog of the Treasury Department,” First Comptroller Elisha Whittlesey, to help him stop the padding of bills: “Once or twice since I have been in this House, accounts have been presented at your Bureau, which were incorrect—I shall be personally and greatly obliged to you if you will carefully scan every account which comes from here; and if in any there shall appear the least semblance wrong, make it known to me directly.”217

  Later, Watt threatened to blackmail the First Lady. To keep him quiet, he was given a commission in the army, but when Henry Wilson, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, learned of it, he blocked the nomination. Watt then demanded to be taken care of or else he would reveal all he knew. Terrified, Mary Lincoln appealed to Isaac Newton, head of the agriculture division of the Interior Department, to give Watt a clerkship. Newton refused, for he dreaded the wrath of Senator Wilson.218 According to Newton, the gardener “entered into a conspiracy to extort [$]20,000 from the President by using three letters of Mrs. Lincoln.”219 In those documents the First Lady apparently asked Watt to defraud the government through forgery and perjury.220 In 1867, Watt offered to sell a journalist an account of his relations with Mary Lincoln; it contained “a note to Watt signed by Mrs. L. (which is genuine) proposing to cover up their schemes etc.”221 Simeon Draper, a New York politico who in 1864 paid Mary Lincoln $20,000 for her help in obtaining his position as agent for selling cotton seized in Savannah, called on Watt and, “with much bluster & great oaths,” threatened to have him imprisoned. Watt then “fell on his literal marrow bones & begged, & gave up the letters & the conspiracy got demoralized & came down, down, to 1500 dollars which was paid, and the whole thing [was] settled.”222 The money came in the form of a sinecure; in March 1862, Watt was named special agent for Newton’s agriculture division to purchase seeds in Europe, at an annual salary of $1,500, plus travel costs.223 (Thomas Stackpole urged Browning “to get the President to give Watt the appointment of public gardener, or agent to buy seeds for [the] patent office.”) After failing to be paid for his services in Europe, Watt in 1863 billed the president $736 to compensate him for Mary Lincoln’s hotel bills, cash advances, and “Commissary stores.” The vouchers for these payments and advances from Watt to the First Lady were held by Simeon Draper.224 Watt told Simon Cameron: “You know very well what difficulties I had to contend with in regard to Mrs. Lincoln. … I paid about $700.00 for Mrs. Lincoln on one trip to Cambridge, Mass.”225

  The Watt affair became the talk of the capital. David Davis wrote his wife in February 1862 that “I got a letter from Washington & the gossip is still about Mrs. Lincoln and the gardener Watt.” Such gossip was “horrid, about money speculation, etc. etc.”226 The press reported that Watt, at Mary Lincoln’s instigation, bought two cows “and charged them to the manure fund—that is, a fund voted in one of the general appropriation bills to provide manure for the public lands.” This bill was rejected, probably by Interior Secretary Smith. Watt facilitated the sale of a White House rug to a Washington photographer to pay an outstanding bill; the carpet was replaced at public expense.227

  Mary Lincoln suggested to a New York merchant that he provide the White House with a $500 chandelier and charge $1,000 for it, thus allowing her to conceal $500 worth of jewelry purchases. The businessman refused to cooperate and apparently lost the sale of the chandelier.228 Rumor had it that Mary Lincoln “appropriated the manure piles which had always been the perquisites of the gardener” and used the funds from the sale of that commodity for her own purposes.2
29 Horace Greeley alleged that in September 1861, the First Lady purchased a $600 carriage and charged it to the contingency fund.230

  The First Lady also exasperated her husband by overspending the $25,000 earmarked by Congress in 1861 for refurbishing the White House.231 When she realized that a supplemental appropriation would be necessary to cover her redecorating expenses, she desperately appealed to Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin Brown French.

  “I have sent for you to get me out of trouble,” she pleaded on December 14; “if you will do it, I will never get into such a difficulty again.” She confessed that the contractor’s bill exceeded the original congressional authorization by $6,700. “Mr. Lincoln will not approve it,” she lamented. “I want you to see him and tell him that it is common to overrun appropriations—tell him how much it costs to refurnish, he does not know much about it, he says he will pay it out of his own pocket.” She wept as she begged French’s help: “Major, he cannot afford that, he ought not to do it. Major you must get me out of this difficulty[;] it is the last, I will always be governed by you, henceforth, I will not spend a cent without consulting you, now do go to Mr. Lincoln and try to persuade him to approve the bill. Do Major for my sake, but do not let him know that you have seen me.” She gave the commissioner the bill with her annotation, dated December 13: “This bill is correct. Mr Lincoln will please have it settled—this closes the house furnishing.”232

  When French, whose position made him a virtual member of the presidential household, complied with her request, he found the president “inexorable.” The commissioner explained that “a Mr. Carryl has presented a bill of some $7000 over the appropriation, for furnishing this house, and, before I can ask for an appropriation to pay it, it must have your approval.”