Finally, in New York City, a newspaper reports a full menu! And what a menu it was. The Lincoln party spent the nights of February 19 and 20 lodging at the famed Astor House, a six-story hotel on the west side of Broadway in the Wall Street area, between Vesey and Barclay Streets. Lincoln had stayed in the hotel just a year before as he prepared to give his address at the Cooper Union. Then, he walked from the station to the hotel and checked into a small, first-floor room. This time, the presidential party rode in eleven carriages from 30th Street Station to the hotel, where they stayed in a suite of rooms. Lincoln rode in an open carriage with a military aide, Colonel Edward Sumner, city alderman Charles Cornell, and Illinois friend Judge David Davis. The Baltimore Sun reported that there was no band or military company in this procession as there had been at some of the other overnight stops.
The New York agenda was full. Lincoln met with a constant stream of politicians, friends, and business leaders. Two competing hat manufacturers each presented him with a top hat. When asked their relative value, Lincoln tactfully replied, “They mutually surpassed each other.” The Lincoln family did find time for sightseeing. President-elect Lincoln attended the opera at the Academy of Music. Mrs. Lincoln and the boys accepted P. T. Barnum’s invitation to see the wonders at his museum.
The Astor House was the leading hotel of the day. Its 309 rooms surrounded a central courtyard covered by a cast-iron and glass roof. Many of its staff lived in the hotel, ready to provide top-level service. The presidential party dined in their suite both nights of their stay. The New York Herald published the details of the elegant “reception” dinner on the first night. The party of ten was seated at a round table with a nosegay of flowers at each place. The oval menu card was printed in black ink with a gold border, and “pink and other soft colors” formed the outer decorative edge. Although the menu reprinted in the newspaper lists the meal being served in five courses, the statement that “the buffet carried a handsome new silver service, never used before,” and the number of entrée choices, suggest the meal was presented as a buffet or, perhaps, family style, with the Lincolns helping themselves to the rich foods.
As printed in the Herald, there was a first course of a light soup of julienned vegetables in broth, then a fish course of boiled salmon with anchovy sauce. Two cold dishes followed: tureen of goose liver and boned turkey with jelly. Next, the main course offered six choices: larded fillet of beef with green peas, larded sweetbreads with tomato sauce, fillet of chicken with truffle sauce, Shrewsbury oysters baked in their shells, roast canvasback duck, and roast stuffed quail. Sturdy vegetables rounded out the main course choices: potatoes—boiled or mashed—turnips in cream sauce, beets, lettuce, and celery. For dessert the Lincoln party could select fresh seasonal fruits, ice cream, champagne jelly, claret jelly—think wine Jell-O—or a variety of pastries: Charlotte Russe, cream cakes, cupcakes, ladies’ fingers, and kisses—a meringue cookie.
The next evening Vice President-elect Hannibal Hamlin and his wife, Ellen, joined the Lincoln family group. The newspaper published this menu in French. The translated dishes included raw oysters in the shell, brunoise soup with poached egg—like the julienne soup the previous evening, only the vegetables are diced instead of thinly sliced—stuffed shad, stuffed quail, lamb chops with mushrooms and small potatoes fried in butter, chicken timbale—minced chicken molded with decorative pieces of beef tongue and black truffles—and partridge. The canvasback duck made a repeat appearance. Many of the same vegetables were served, too: boiled potatoes, potatoes au gratin, spinach with eggs, small peas French style, turnips in cream sauce, beets, celery, and lettuce. Champagne and Bordeaux jellies, Charlotte Russe, Swiss meringue, almond macaroons, and vanilla ice cream completed the meal.
But we have more than a menu from the Astor House. Thanks to the efforts of a New York Times reporter, we have a sense of the hotel’s service standard and food quality. In 1859 the “Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times,” as his articles were by-lined, embarked on a series of restaurant reviews from one end of New York to the other, from the swanky “Astor House restaurant to the smallest description of a dining saloon in the City.” Of the Astor House he wrote: “The waiter who would permit himself to call out to another or in any way to disturb ‘the harmony of the meeting,’ would be—well, I should not like to state publicly what they really do with waiters at that establishment under such circumstances—but they do it immediately. The meats are all cooked in perfection and served in perfection, and the bread!—I am ready at any moment to go before a Justice of the Peace and affirm … that it is the best bread in the Universe.”
On February 21 the Lincolns left New York heading to Pennsylvania, stopping in the state capital, Harrisburg. On the 23rd, as the route continued southward, traveling through Philadelphia and Baltimore to Washington, the risk to President-elect Lincoln increased. There were rumors of a plot to assassinate Lincoln when he passed through Baltimore. To thwart the attack, Lincoln, friend Ward Lamon, and detective Alan Pinkerton with his female operative Kate Worne boarded a middle-of-the-night train from Philadelphia into Washington, arriving without incident at six in the morning. Mrs. Lincoln and the rest of the presidential party followed on the scheduled train, arriving at four in the afternoon. The Lincolns, their family, and small staff checked into the Willard Hotel, Washington’s leading hotel, for the ten days until the inauguration and their move into the White House.
And now we come to the food puzzle during the first hours of the Lincoln administration, what I call the “Great Lincoln Inaugural Corned Beef and Cabbage Mystery.” According to Willard Hotel oral history, Lincoln, after taking the oath of office, enjoyed an inaugural meal at the hotel consisting of mock turtle soup, corned beef and cabbage, parsley potatoes, and blackberry pie. Some print and Internet sources suggest that after the swearing-in ceremony and his inaugural address, Lincoln actually walked back to the Willard where he ate the corned beef meal, watched the inaugural parade, and then somehow got to the White House just a couple of blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Much more reliable sources, including the benchmark Day by Day, an authoritative collection from primary sources, present a more realistic description of the full day’s events. Outgoing President James Buchanan picked Abraham Lincoln up at the Willard shortly after noon. They rode to the Capitol in an open carriage. The family followed in another carriage along with the rest of the “procession.” Sixteen-year-old Julia Taft watched from a window above Pennsylvania Avenue. “Troops lined the avenue and at every corner there was a mounted orderly. The usual applause was lacking as the President’s carriage, surrounded by a close guard of cavalry, passed and an ugly murmur punctuated by some abusive remarks followed it down the avenue.”
At about one o’clock from the East Portico, Lincoln began his inaugural address and, after speaking for about a half hour, he then took the oath of office. In his speech, Lincoln reached out to the Southern states considering secession: “We are not enemies, but friends.” He closed with a call to unified patriotism. “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
After the ceremonies Lincoln got back into the carriage with now former President Buchanan and drove, again in a celebratory procession, “the parade,” to the White House.
The Lincolns’ first meal in the executive mansion was an “elegant dinner” arranged by Miss Harriet Lane, President Buchanan’s niece and official hostess, as reported by Mary Lincoln’s cousin Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, one of the relatives who traveled from Springfield for the inauguration. Mrs. Grimsley stayed with the Lincolns for six months and described the settling-in process. She wrote that at the end of the ceremonies former President Buchanan escorted President Lincoln to the vestibule of the Executive Mansion, “where, after courteous words of welcome, he left him.”
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Mrs. Grimsley explained that the White House was “in a perfect state of readiness for the incomers—A competent chef with efficient butler and waiters under the direction of Miss Lane had an elegant dinner prepared.” Seventeen people sat down to dinner, including Mary’s sister Elizabeth Edwards and her two daughters. Alas, Mrs. Grimsley neglected to provide the menu. The only food she mentioned on public or family tables during her whole six-month stay was Potomac shad. After eating it, everyone in the family took ill. Some suspected poisoning, but the reason she gave was simply overconsumption of a food “new to Western palates.”
So, what about the corned beef and cabbage back at the Willard? On March 3, the evening before he was inaugurated, Lincoln hosted a dinner at the hotel for his incoming cabinet secretaries, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Gideon Wells, Montgomery Blair, Simon Cameron, Caleb Smith, and Edwards Bates. It seems to me there were two meals that could be considered “inaugural dinners”: the elegant one served in the White House and this homey, welcoming meal Abraham Lincoln requested the day before for the men who would stand by him during the challenges to come.
Although we don’t know the menu at the first White House dinner, Mrs. Grimsley’s characterization does give us a clue. I would suggest that the “elegant” meal is similar to the ones served to the Lincoln party in New York, a Frenchified repast rich with choices and sauces. The Lincolns held their first official state dinner two weeks later. They hosted the members of the cabinet and a visiting reporter, William Russell of the London Times. He described the atmosphere and cuisine of the event but, again, not the menu. The state dinner “was not remarkable for ostentation. No liveried servants, no Persie splendor of ancient plate or chefs d’oeuvre of art glittered round the board. Vases of flowers decorated the table, combined with dishes in what may be called the ‘Gallo-American’ style, with wines which owed their parentage to France and their rearing and education to the United States, which abounds in stunning nurseries for such productions.”
This style of food was not all that uncommon across America during the 1850s. Even in Minnesota at the western edge of the settled country, French-American dishes made their way onto tables, at least for special occasions. I’ve seen menus from those years in early St. Paul, Minnesota—when people had cows in their backyards and Native Americans walked the streets in tribal dress—menus with the same kinds of dishes that the chefs at the Astor House prepared for the Lincolns’ stay. At a banquet for the Minnesota Historical Society on June 24, 1856, the chefs of the Winslow House Hotel prepared a rich and varied array including real turtle soup, oyster soup, boiled shad with “anchovia sauce,” several roasted and boiled meat dishes, and a dozen entrées, all with Gallo-American flair: veal cutlets à la Florentine, calves feet à la tortune, fricandeau veal à la toulauce, and boiled beef à la Parisienne, to name a few. The twenty dessert selections included champagne jelly, Victoria and Albert pudding, and lemon ice cream.
Although there aren’t any surviving Springfield restaurant menus from the era, display advertisements in the 1850s city directories certainly give the suggestion of similar fare. Springfield’s fancy foods could have filled the bill. In 1857 Edmund Duchamel advertised his “French Restaurant” serving up “every delicacy in season … in the most superior style and shortest notice.” James Busher was serving “Persian Sherbet and root beer” from his brewery and malt house at the west end of Jefferson Street. In January 1858 editions of the Springfield newspaper, Edouard Doul of the St. Louis restaurant advertised that he had received, “from Paris (France) of his own importation the delicacies … Pates du Fois gras (Strasborg) and Pates du Poulard.” He offered them “cheap for cash.”
We don’t know if any of these fancy foods made their way onto the Lincolns’ table. They “often entertained small numbers of friends at dinner and somewhat larger numbers at evening parties.” Although that unnamed writer says these were held in a “simple way,” that doesn’t mean a few bits of fancy foods couldn’t have been served. Young Mary Lincoln did, after all, attend a French boarding school in Lexington and grew up in a home where her family entertained leading politicians and businessmen. These are just hints at the sophisticated foods and beverages the Lincolns left behind in Illinois.
The Lincoln family left more than familiar foods and shops behind. They left behind family and friends and the certainty of their place in society. One of the first things Mary did as the family settled into the White House was to seek playmates for Willie and Tad, and the Taft boys fit the bill perfectly. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Taft had met at a reception and on learning Bud was twelve and Holly eight, near enough in age to the Lincoln boys who were ten and almost eight, Mrs. Lincoln asked that they come to play. Older sister Julia described the first time they came to call at Mrs. Lincoln’s request. “We went into the conservatory and there stood the boys by the water-lily tank watching the goldfish. Such nice, quiet, shy boys, I thought. In five minutes the four boys had disappeared and I saw them no more that day.” The Taft boys returned home filthy dirty at dark and reported that they “had the best time and had been all over the White House. Mrs. Lincoln said we must come every day and bring Julia … Mr. Lincoln jounced us on his lap and told us stories.”
The boys did eat hard-boiled eggs, at least once. On Easter Monday, April 1, the Lincoln and Taft boys took part in the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn. The activity was new to Willie and Tad, and Julia reported they “enjoyed it immensely.” Each of the four boys had a basket filled with the brightly colored eggs. “The players stand at the top of the hill and watch their eggs race to the bottom. The one which first arrives is the winner; the cracked or broken ones go to the victor who eats them or is expected to.”
The children and their raucous activities were an important escape for President Lincoln. Mary Lincoln invited adult guests, too, for breakfast, tea, and dinner in an attempt to relieve the stresses of office. But Willie, Tad, Bud, and Holly had the run of the place. Once, Julia walked in on them wrestling Lincoln to the ground. Another time, Tad fired a toy cannon into the Cabinet Room while the cabinet was meeting, and there were countless other adventures involving dolls that needed pardoning and animals that needed rescuing. It was the boys’ attic theatrical event, which all the staff and soldiers who had five cents could come and watch, that caused Lincoln to throw back his head and laugh heartily. Julia recounted that it was the “only time I ever saw Mr. Lincoln really laugh all over.”
When Lincoln first took office, he was besieged at all hours by people who wanted to be appointed to office in the new Republican government. In 1861 the city was smaller than it is today and so was the White House. The Oval Office wasn’t added until the twentieth century, when the wings on either side were expanded. Today the second floor of the White House is private. In 1861 there were public and private rooms on both the first and second floors. Even the president’s office was upstairs. The White House was seemingly as open as the streets. Reporter Noah Brooks described the daily access: “Let us go to the Executive Mansion, there is nobody to bar our passage, and the multitude washed or unwashed always has free ingress and egress.… The right or west wing of the house is occupied by the President’s family, the center by the state parlors and the east wing has below stairs the famous East Room and upstairs the offices of the President and his secretaries.”
During this time, Lincoln was trying to manage conditions to avoid the looming war. He said of those days that he was “like a man so busy renting rooms at one end of his house that he has no time to put out a fire burning in the other.” Concerned for her husband’s health, Mary Lincoln instituted a daily carriage ride to “induce him to take the fresh air.”
The crush of presidential social obligations was seemingly equal to the besiegements of office seekers and petitioners. The president was to hold a kind of open house, a levee, on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons when Congress was in session. These events were essentially receiving lines. The Marine Band played
and President and Mrs. Lincoln greeted all the guests, the president shaking each person’s hand and Mrs. Lincoln simply speaking with them. After all guests had been greeted, the Lincolns would mingle a bit. There weren’t any refreshments served. It was also expected “that during each winter he will entertain at dinner all the members of both Houses of Congress and the Diplomatic Corps so that official dinners have to be given by him as often as twice a week.”
On March 12, 1861, President and Mrs. Lincoln held a party with “music and dancing,” according to a letter sent by John Nicolay. On June 7, 1861, Mrs. Grimsley quoted the Washington Star report of the first formal dinner the Lincolns hosted for the diplomatic corps: “The dinner was served in a style to indicate Mrs. Lincoln’s good taste and good judgment had exercised supervision.”
Lincoln hoped with his inaugural address and policies that he could buy time to solve the problems with the rebelling states, but when he first entered his office on March 5, 1861, he received a letter from Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, stating that the garrison would run out of supplies in a month or six weeks. Lincoln said later, “Of all the trials I have had since I came here, none begin to compare with those I had between the inauguration and the [April 13] fall of Fort Sumter.”
After the South Carolina troops turned back a supply ship and fired on Fort Sumter, Southern states continued to secede from the Union. Topographically, Washington sits in a bowl, and when Lincoln took office, the militarily advantageous “high ground” surrounding it was in opposition control. Baltimore, just forty miles north of the capital city, had strong Southern sympathies. Richmond, Virginia, soon to become the capital of the Confederate States, was just a hundred miles south.
Washington became isolated. As Julia Taft described, “There was one Sunday [in April] when Washington realized that it was entirely cut off from the North. Wires were down and rails torn up and the city shivered in fear of a mob of Baltimore ‘pug-uglies’ that were reported on the way to burn and pillage.”
Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen Page 23
