Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  The town had its aristocracy. It was, said the New York Herald, “the abode of a very slow and respectable people, who cool themselves during the hot weather by the delightful remembrance that they are of gentle blood.” Prominent residents were allied to the statesmen of the South through family connections in Maryland and Virginia, and during the Pierce administration the official society was Southern in tone. In its inner circle were included the members of the diplomatic set, as well as Northern Democrats who had shown themselves tolerant of slavery. Other notable gentlemen from the free States were courteously, if formally received.

  It was a society which permitted an unusual freedom to ladies. Moving breathlessly and without privacy in a shower of white kid gloves and calling cards, they had a role to play in the parlors; and might still enjoy homage at an age when in other American cities they would have been relegated to knitting by the fireside. The galleries of the “sacred” Capitol were bright with their bonnets. They thronged its corridors, sending in their cards to summon acquaintances from the floor of Senate and House. If her husband were occupied, it was considered correct for a lady to be escorted to a levee by one of his friends. Failing a female companion for a tour of the public buildings, she might with decorum accept the attendance of a child. In the H Street mansion of Mr. W. W. Corcoran, there was an octagonal alcove, hung with red velvet, where the famous statue of the Greek Slave stood, protected by a gilded chain. It was nakedness, but it was art, and even ladies looked and admired.

  The social season opened on New Year’s, which throughout the country had become a day of great jollification, of paying calls and making presents and drinking eggnogs and hot punch. In Washington, the hospitable custom of keeping open house prevailed in official as well as private circles, and on New Year’s Day was held the first of the winter receptions at the Executive Mansion. No refreshments were offered at these functions, but the general public—or at least the part of it that was white and respectably dressed—circulated freely in the mansion, and shook the President’s hand.

  After the first of January, the round of entertainment began. The morning and afternoon levees, the “at homes” and dinners and musicales were but preludes to the splendor of the balls and the big evening parties with music and supper. By night, gloomy streets resounded with the restless stamping of horses, the crack of whips and the shouts of coachmen, as the carriages moved slowly into line, and before some lighted residence discharged their freights of ladies, shaped like great bells. The fragile, low-cut evening dresses of the 1850’s were fashioned of gauze and illusion, and garlanded with roses, white clematis, water lilies, violets or scarlet honeysuckle; and head-dresses matched the blossoms that swelled on the corsage and trailed on the distended skirts.

  Save for a few old-fashioned fellows, invulnerable to the new craze for mustaches, almost all the gentlemen had ceased to shave their upper lips. Southerners wore their hair in long, flowing locks. American men made as yet no strict distinction between daytime and evening dress, wearing impartially their best black or blue broadcloth swallowfails with bright buttons. Many of them, even in the exclusive circles of Washington society, were not yet aware that in London a white neckcloth was considered indispensable for evening, and sported large colored cravats above their brocaded and embroidered waistcoats. The foreign ministers were resplendent in court costumes, trimmed with gold and silver lace and sparkling with orders. In the radiance of the gaslight from cut-glass chandeliers, ladies and gentlemen promenaded arm in arm, danced vivacious quadrilles and waltzes and germans, and partook heartily of the supper supplied by the fashionable French caterer, Gautier. There were oysters and lobster and terrapin, wild turkey and partridge and quail; and Gautier excelled in satisfying the eye as well as the appetite by his table decorations of confectionery towers, castles, pyramids and pagodas.

  By 1856, the halls of Congress were noisy with angry debates over the admission of the territory of Kansas. Free-Soil and slavery men were aligned in violent opposition; but the controversies were still blandly ignored in the parlors. Through the pretense of polite oblivion sounded the thwacks of Preston Brooks’s cane, raining blows on the head of Senator Sumner, as he sat writing at his desk in the Senate Chamber. Sumner, a moralistic anti-slavery crusader, had made an intemperate speech on the jangling question of Kansas. Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina, took it upon himself to reply by breaking Sumner’s head. Washington society was well acquainted with the handsome, cultured and priggish senator from Massachusetts. He had been fond of earnestly discoursing to Southern ladies on suitable subjects—laces, intaglios and the history of dancing. All his courtesy and erudition had been of no avail. Preston Brooks was the great hero of the Southern chivalry. Northerners, on the other hand, were indignant over the assault, which critically injured Sumner’s spine, and kept him for three and a half years from active duty in the Senate.

  Less than a year after Brooks made his attack, Washington welcomed Mr. Buchanan of Pennsylvania with open arms. The new President, though tall, ruddy and silver-haired, had one badly squinting eye, which he kept habitually closed, and he held his head stiffly inclined toward his left shoulder. Old Buck’s head, said Major B. B. French, a prominent Washington Republican, was “all askew like a cow with the horn-ail.” His admirers, however, thought that Mr. Buchanan had a fine presence. His political views were congenial to the best people of the capital, and he was very fond of society.

  The President’s habits, like those of Washington, were simple. As though he had not recently returned from the court circles of England, where he had served as United States minister, he walked every day for an hour on Pennsylvania Avenue, affably greeting his acquaintances. In summer, for the sake of his health, Mr. Buchanan accepted the use of a modest stone cottage at the Soldiers’ Home, but he did not otherwise use his coach and horses a dozen times a year. On Saturday afternoons, when Scala’s Marine Band played in the President’s Park, he mingled with the populace on the lawn. He invited friends to sit for a neighborly afternoon at the Executive Mansion, and often at small dinners carved the roast himself. He always wore a big old-fashioned standing collar with a starched white choker, like a poultice around his neck.

  Buchanan was a bachelor. His niece, who had been with him in London, presided over the Executive Mansion. Though youthful, Miss Harriet Lane had poise and social experience, and she was vastly admired. Lace berthas became the fashion because she wore them, a revenue cutter was given her name, and a new song, “Listen to the Mocking Bird,” was dedicated to her. Tactful, correct and violet-eyed, Miss Lane had strict ideas of etiquette. Dinner guests at the mansion were formally presented before moving to the dining-room. In spite of the French cooking and the nutty old Madeira, the President’s parties were stiff. Mr. Buchanan was anecdotal, but cold. Miss Lane’s “gracious chill” added the last austerity to appointments which were considered far from lavish. No flowers ornamented the dinner table, there were no bouquets at the covers. Indeed, there were so few flowers in the house that a stand of potted plants and a small palm rose conspicuously out of a circular divan in the Blue Room. Jefferson Davis is said to have compared Mr. Buchanan’s administration to an elegant republican court, and a colonial bleakness breathes from the admiring phrase.

  The President was not niggardly. To pay his household expenses, he was obliged to supplement his salary of twenty-five thousand dollars by drawing on his private purse. Washington society, however, was growing increasingly competitive in extravagant entertainment, and its leaders were immensely rich. William M. Gwin, the proslavery senator from California, was believed to be spending seventy-five thousand dollars a year on the maintenance of his mansion at Nineteenth and I Streets; and two Cabinet members lived on the same scale—Mr. Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, and Mr. Aaron Brown of Tennessee, who was Postmaster General during the first years of the administration. One of the wealthiest Washington residents was the banker, Mr. Corcoran. His palatial residence on H Street contained an art g
allery whose treasures were destined for the public in the building which he was erecting at Seventeenth Street and the Avenue. Mr. Corcoran was famous for his hospitality and his Johannisberg, and there were also splendid parties at the homes of other Washingtonians, the Riggses, the Parkers and the Tayloes. Their friends, Secretary Cobb, Mr. Justice Campbell of the Supreme Court and Senator Slidell of Louisiana all entertained handsomely. The wife of the senator from Georgia, Mrs. Toombs, though she was a sober lady with but one daughter, spent twenty-one thousand dollars a year.

  In an unimproved section, I Street west of New Jersey Avenue, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the popular Democratic leader of the free States, had built one of the finest houses in the capital. Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and Senator Henry M. Rice of Minnesota built on adjoining lots, and the three new houses were known as Minnesota Row. Douglas had made his residence, with its elegantly furnished parlors and steam-heated greenhouse, a suitable background for the loveliness of his young bride, who had been Adele Cutts, a famous Washington belle. With her favorite japonicas in her hair and in huge bouquets, Mrs. Douglas gave many levees, which were thronged by the fashionable company of the capital. The pressure of their social engagements was quite exhausting to the ladies of Washington. To prepare herself for the evening, after a strenuous day, pretty Mrs. Clement C. Clay was refreshed by charges from an electrical apparatus, operated by her capable maid, for whom the senator from Alabama had paid sixteen hundred dollars.

  In an atmosphere of unremitting gaiety, the intercourse between Southerners and all but a few Northerners became increasingly ceremonious. At the very outset of Mr. Buchanan’s term, the agitation over slavery had been doubled by the opinion of the predominantly Southern Supreme Court in the case of the slave, Dred Scott. The aged Marylander, Chief Justice Taney, had taken this occasion to affirm that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, and Free-Soil men roared a protest at the subservience of the Federal judiciary to the slaveholders. Insulting and inflammatory speeches were made on both sides, as Congress continued to be rocked by partisan struggles for the control of “bleeding Kansas.” In the city, the political lines were drawn through neighborhoods, churches and families. Senator Douglas broke with Buchanan’s pro-slavery administration, and was henceforth regarded by the chivalry as little better than a Black Republican.

  In the autumn of 1859, John Brown’s raid on the United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry jarred the South like an explosion, and raised the cry that Republicans were instigators of lawlessness and murder. The Virginia town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac was only fifty-five miles from Washington, and the slaveholding community shared the alarms of its neighboring State. Even after the insignificance of the old fanatic’s force was realized and the fear of attack had passed, there was dread of a Negro uprising in the capital. Typical of Washington’s Southern viewpoint was the apprehension with which the city regarded its colored population. As a result of anti-Negro riots fourteen years before, an effort had been made to revive the District militia, but in 1859 only four small companies were in existence. The United States military force in the District, one hundred and six marines, had been rushed to Harper’s Ferry, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. The mayor secured arms from the War Department, and stationed mounted men on the roads leading into the city. Colored people were forbidden to congregate while the excitement lasted. Washington, sharply aware of its defenseless condition, made another effort to build up its militia. A number of recruits came forward, but soldiering was never popular with the citizens.

  When Congress opened that winter, the Capitol rang with the name of John Brown. In the Senate, the discussion was all of the irrepressible conflict and the impending crisis. Southern hotspurs were shouting for State sovereignty and disunion, and the taunt was often heard that Northern men were cowards and would not fight. Political differences had led to rancorous personal animosities. Charles Sumner, returning to his seat after his long illness, was welcomed by no Democratic senator. In the House, there were violent quarrels in which blows were barely averted. Many Republicans buckled revolvers under their coats, and escorted less bellicose colleagues to and from the Capitol, to protect them from assault. Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan took muscular exercise and practiced marksmanship. The story was told that Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio carried a brace of horse pistols into the Senate, and laid them on the lid of his desk, looking around with his sharp little eyes and his grim smile until he was sure they had been noticed.

  In any mixed social gathering, politics had become a forbidden subject. With doubt and bitterness in their hearts, people conversed on neutral topics: the disturbances in Italy, or the figure of Armed Freedom which the late Thomas Crawford had modeled for the Capitol dome; Tennyson’s poems, or Thackeray’s new book, The Virginians, or Adam Bede by the young Englishman, George Eliot, whose novels were the latest literary discovery. The friends of the administration, the Slidells, the Toombses, the Gwins, the Clays and the Jefferson Davises formed a tight little clique. Small parties had become strictly sectional. Foreign ministers consulted the map of the United States in making up their dinners.

  Among the impassioned Southern ladies, there was one who continued to receive Republicans. This was Mrs. Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a native of Maryland and the aunt of Mrs. Stephen Douglas. As the wife of a scholarly Virginian, Robert Greenhow, she had long been a leader in the society of the capital. Since his death, she had lived with her daughters in a small house on the corner of Sixteenth Street, across from St. John’s Church. Mrs. Greenhow was no longer young, but she had the reputation of being the most persuasive woman in Washington. To her cosy parlors, divided by a red gauze, came many important personages, and she was on intimate terms with the President himself. A few weeks after John Brown was hanged, Mrs. Greenhow had the temerity to invite Senator Seward of New York and Congressman and Mrs. Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts to a dinner party otherwise composed of Southerners. Mrs. Adams was tactless enough to speak in praise of John Brown, and her hostess answered her with emphasis and heat. Mrs. Greenhow decided that she would not mix her dinner parties again; but she continued to see much of Senator Seward, and also of another Republican whose antislavery views had made him highly offensive to Southerners, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts.

  In the spring of 1860, Scott’s military secretary, Colonel Keyes, accompanied the General on a visit to Washington, and attended a number of dinner parties, at which he heard much talk about the national crisis. One night he sat next the Detroit merchant, Zach Chandler, “full of war and blood—in a whisper.” On other occasions, flirtatious Southern ladies disturbed him by “the incandescence of their treason.” Mrs. Greenhow tried to discourage Keyes from taking any part in the coming war by arguing that the Southern coasts were sickly in the summer. He felt that she showed her woman’s weakness by prescribing remedies against the miasmas. Keyes was a strong Union man, but he was a romantic widower of fifty. He confessed that, though he was never diverted from his loyalty to his country, the blandishments of the ladies from the slave States often lured him “to the brink of the precipice.”

  The exciting prospect of secession preoccupied the society of the capital. Southerners realistically faced the possibility that it might lead to civil war; but they were convinced that the cowardly Yankees would soon be beaten. Soldiers were drilling and arming in the slave States, and Washington belles discussed the military preparations and the forts at dinners and balls and supper parties. Festivities were touched with the exotic splendor of the Orient, when the Japanese ambassadors visited Washington with a large suite. The representatives of the Tycoon, with their fantastically dressed hair, their fans and their richly embroidered robes, girt by two swords, made a great stir in the capital. Everyone turned out to see them received with ceremony at the Executive Mansion, and they were entertained at private parties. Even the recess of Congress in the summer of 1860 was not without var
iety. The corps of Chicago Zouaves came to Washington in August in gaudy Algerian uniforms which appeared almost as outlandish as the costumes of the Japanese. Young Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, who had drilled them and taken them on tour, had awakened enthusiasm for the formation of Zouave companies throughout the country. By invitation, the Chicago Zouaves performed their eccentric drill on the White House lawn in the presence of Mr. Buchanan and Miss Lane.

  The social season opened with unwonted earliness that year, for in October Mr. Buchanan was host to Baron Renfrew, the name assumed on his travels by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. This “peachy-cheeked, beardless boy” was already a model for diplomats. At a reception, he immediately removed his gloves when he saw that the President wore none. On observing that Mr. Buchanan shook hands with those who were presented, the Prince hastened to shake hands, too. Conducted on the revenue cutter, Harriet Lane, to the ruinous house at Mount Vernon, he stood uncovered before George Washington’s tomb, and obligingly planted a small tree in its vicinity. Mr. Buchanan was able to write the Queen that her son had made an excellent impression on “a sensitive and discriminating people.”

  The cloud of the Presidential election hung heavy over the capital. Out on Minnesota Row were domiciled two of the candidates: Douglas, standard-bearer of the Northern Democrats, and Breckinridge, who was the choice of the South. Though the people of the District wanted a voice in the national decision, they were energetic in forming partisan associations. Clubs had been organized to support the leaders of both the Democratic factions, as well as the candidate of the conservatives, John Bell, and the Black Republican, Abraham Lincoln. The National Volunteers, a Democratic organization which stood for Southern rights, competed in their parades with Republican Wide Awakes, wearing glazed caps and capes, and brandishing torches. Feeling ran high, and on the night of Lincoln’s election a mob attacked the local Republican wigwam, and partially wrecked the building before being dispersed by the police.