CHRISTMAS FOR TAD
A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln
BY
HELEN TOPPING MILLER
LONGMANS, GREEN AND COMPANY
NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO
1956
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC.
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 3
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Ltd.
6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16
CHRISTMAS FOR TAD
COPYRIGHT · 1956
BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY
PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM
PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO
FIRST EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 56-10108
Printed in the United States of America
1
The package was very tightly sealed.
There was a heavy cord around it fastened with thick blobs of wax and
Tad Lincoln, who had been christened Thomas, stood fidgeting while his
father worked at it patiently, with the old horn-handled knife that
opened and shut with a sharp click.
Outside was the gloom of late December. That December of 1863, when the
fortunes of the Federal armies had taken a little swing upward, but when
war still lay like a poisonous, tragic, and heartbreaking shadow over a
whole country. But to Tad Lincoln December meant Christmas, and packages
meant surprises, important to a ten-year-old boy.
Tad stood first on one foot, then the other, impatiently, because Papa
was so slow in opening this package. A round-faced boy, with his
mother’s brown eyes and hair, he was a sturdy figure in the miniature
uniform of a Union colonel that his father had had made for him. The
coat fitted him jauntily, all the brass buttons fastened up in
regulation fashion; there were epaulets and braid and long trousers
lying properly over his toes, so that the copper toes of his boots
showed. He had a belt and a sword, but he was not wearing them now.
Swords were for engagements, reviews, and parades, the officers of
Company K had instructed him. Among friends indoors an officer took off
his belt and hung it in a safe place.
His father’s fingers were mighty long and bony, Tad was thinking, and
awkward, too. One thumbnail was thicker and darker than the other nails
and Tad touched it gently with his forefinger.
“What makes your thumb like that, Papa?” he asked.
The long yellowed hand put down the knife and the deep-set, steel-gray
eyes of Abraham Lincoln studied the thumb intently as though he had
never seen it before.
“Once there was an ax, Tad,” he drawled, his heavy eyebrows flicking up
and down, his long mouth quirked up at one corner. “It didn’t want to go
where I aimed it, so I said, says I, now who is boss here, Mister Ax,
you or Abe Lincoln? You chop where I aim for you to chop, Mister Ax. So
I made it hit where I wanted it to hit but it jumped back and took a
whack at me just to show me that it could be the boss if it wanted to.”
“It might have cut your hand off,” worried Tad, still rubbing the dark
nail.
“It might—but it didn’t. It was a well-meaning ax. Just independent,
like a lot of people.”
“People take whacks at you, don’t they? I hear about it,” Tad said.
“Yes, some of ’em do.” Lincoln picked up the knife again, poked at the
stubborn seals. “But mostly afterwards they cooperate.”
“Those people in New York didn’t,” insisted Tad. “Mother was scared to
death when those draft riots were on and people yelled at her in that
store. The police had to stand all around us with guns and you know
something? Bob was scared but I wasn’t. Ole Bob was plumb scared green.”
“That was a bad time, son.” A seal came loose at last and fell in
scarlet fragments to the rug. He attacked a second one, gripping the
knife, the skin stretched tight over his fleshless knuckles. “It was bad
because people weren’t mad at you. They were mad at me, not at Bob or
your mother. They didn’t want to be drafted to fight in this war and I
said they had to be drafted.”
“Well, golly, you’ve got to have soldiers! General Grant and General
Rosecrans and everybody are yelling for more troops. You have to get
’em, you can’t make ’em out of air. Hurry and open it, Papa. Don’t you
want to see what’s in it?”
“I think I know what’s in it. Yes, Tad,” he went on musingly, as though
he talked to himself. “I’m supposed to make soldiers out of air; anyway
the New York newspapers seemed to think so. Make ’em out of air and feed
’em on air and give ’em air to shoot with.”
“And then if General Lee licks us you’re to blame!” cried Tad. “Oh, I
know, John Hay and Mr. Nicolay hide the papers but I find ’em. Papa, I
read where one New York paper called you a gorilla.”
“What do you think, Tad? Don’t I look like one a little?” Lincoln
dropped the knife, shambled bent across the room, his long arms
dangling, his hands almost touching the floor. As the boy drew back
aghast he bared his long teeth and snarled and Tad began to cry
suddenly.
“No—no! Don’t do it!”
Lincoln laughed loudly, lifted him, setting the lad on his knee, holding
him close. “For a man wearing the Union uniform, you scare easy,
Colonel,” he teased. “Remember this, Tad. Names never hurt anybody. And
the gorilla is one beast that’s never been tamed and only a heavy chain
can master him.”
“Open the box,” gulped Tad, scrubbing his eyes with the cuff of his blue
Union coat. “If anybody sent me a Christmas present, I’d want to know
what it was.”
Lincoln dug the last seal away, cut the cord, and tore off the heavy
paper. “Now, John Hay would say I’m a fool to open this,” he remarked.
“He’ll say there could be something in it to blind or cripple me.”
“Maybe you’d better not, Papa,” Tad cried anxiously. “Let me call
somebody.”
“No, Tad. I trust the man who brought it and I know what’s in it. It
isn’t a Christmas present exactly. I earned it in a kind of a way.
Look!” He opened the heavy box and the smaller one inside that was
covered with gold-colored plush.
“A watch!” exclaimed the boy.
“A solid gold watch.” Lincoln held it out carefully on his big palm.
“From Mr. James Hoes, Esquire, of Chicago. I won it, Tad. Mr. Hoes
offered the watch as a prize for the one making the biggest contribution
of funds to their Sanitary Commission fair. I sent them a copy of the
Emancipation Proclamation and they auctioned it off for three thousand
dollars, so I won the watch.”
“You’ve already got a watch, Papa, but I haven’t got one,” said Tad
eagerly.
Lincoln drew his old watch from his pocket, loosed it from the chain and
seals. “I don’t have a solid gold watch. This old turnip is sort of
worn. I guess I timed too many speeches and juries with it. But you’re
not big enough for a watch, Tad. Not till you can wear a vest and have
enough stomach to hold up a chain.”
“Willie had a vest and he wasn’t so very much bigger than me,” argued
Tad.
A shadow of pain ran over his father’s gaunt face and the tears, always
quick when any emotion stirred him, were bright in his sunken eyes. The
agony of Willie’s untimely death was still raw and aching in his heart.
“Willie was twelve years old, Tad. When you are twelve you can have a
vest.”
“And a watch?”
“And a watch. Not this one.” Lincoln clicked the fastening of the bright
new timepiece and dropped it into his pocket, along with the key that
wound it. “I guess Bob will have to have this old one. Bob’s a man now
and a man needs a watch.”
“He thinks he’s a man just because he can shave,” Tad scoffed. He
studied his father’s face for a moment. “Why did you grow a beard, Papa?
You didn’t have a beard when I was a little boy.”
“You’re still a little boy, fellow.” Lincoln gave him a poke in ribs.
“Maybe I raised these whiskers because a little girl in New York asked
me to. Maybe I just did it to keep my chin warm.”
“All Bob has is little patches in front of his ears. They look silly.”
Lincoln lifted his long body erect and walked to the window.
“You’d better be respectful to your big brother, Tad,” he said dryly.
“Some of the newspapers that don’t like me are printing that Bob Lincoln
has made a million dollars out of this war. For a young fellow still in
Harvard only twenty years old, I’d say he had uncanny perspicacity.”
Tad frowned thoughtfully. “It’s a lie, ain’t it, Papa?” In his agitation
the boy’s tricky palate betrayed him as it often did. “It’s big, dirty
_rie_!”
Lincoln’s bony shoulders twitched upward, sagged with resignation. “Son,
if all the lies that have been printed about the Lincolns were piled up
in a heap, they’d reach near to the top of that monument out yonder.”
Tad came to stand beside him and looked out of the half-finished shaft
that would some day honor Washington. Now it was only a beginning, lost
in a spidery web of scaffolding.
“Be plenty tall,” he observed. “If Bob had all that money, would it
reach to the top, Papa? He could buy everything he wanted, couldn’t he?
Horses and carriages and gold watches and everything. Can’t you put
people in jail for telling such lies? You’re the president.”
Lincoln stood still, looking down on the trampled mall where a herd of
cattle pastured, beef animals gathered to feed the Army of the Potomac.
His eyes took on the faraway inscrutable look that so often baffled his
intimates and infuriated his enemies; the look that lost itself on the
horizon of a great land torn by hate and drenched in an anguish of blood
and fire. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, had deepened that hurt in
his eyes and cut new lines about his mouth and brooding brows. Three
years of war, and in the nation there seethed a dozen angry factions.
Copperheads, only by a miracle defeated in Ohio; furious mobs resisting
conscription in the cities; even in the Congress, oppositionists,
critics, outright enemies.
Only a few weeks since, he had stood facing that raw November wind on
the Gettysburg hill, speaking that little piece that now he was
embarrassed to remember, the speech that the papers had dismissed as
insignificant, dedicating the ground where slept more than sixty
thousand Union and Confederate dead. The dull ache in Abraham Lincoln’s
heart turned bitter as he thought of his own son, who should be in
uniform and who was growing restless and unhappy at being the one young
man of army age who was not permitted to fight for his country. Yet he
dared not let Robert enlist. The President’s son would be a prime
hostage should he be captured, and used no doubt to wring concessions
from his father.
“Let’s go show Mama the watch.” He shook off his dismal musings and
scrubbed Tad’s brown head with the flat of his palm, straightening the
collar of the uniform that was Tad’s pride and glory.
Tad looked up confidingly. “You know what Mama is worrying about, Papa?
She owes an awful lot of money in New York. She’s afraid you’ll find it
out. She said on the train when we came home that I mustn’t tell you all
the things she bought because you had troubles enough to kill three
men.”
Lincoln hunched a shoulder, stretching his lips into a dry smile. “See
how my back is breaking down, Tad? That’s General Rosecrans. And this
side is General McClellan and General Meade made it worse when he let
Lee get away across the river.”
“You cried then, I remember. Men don’t cry.”
Strong men had wept enough tears to put the Potomac in flood these last
years, Lincoln was thinking. “When will it end?” he said aloud, with a
groan. John Hay, his faithful secretary, looked up quickly from his desk
in the outer room.
“When we’ve killed all the Rebs, I reckon,” said Tad complacently. “But
if we killed ’em all I’d have a lot of uncles killed, wouldn’t I? I had
one killed at Chickamauga already, my uncle Helm.—He was a general,” he
told John Hay.
“It’s happened in a good many families, Tad,” Hay said. “That’s because
we’re all Americans.”
“Well, my mother was Southern to begin with,” declared Tad, “so I’m kind
of half Southern but I got over it.”
“Southerners are good folks, son,” Lincoln admonished him. “Fine people
most of them. Just mistaken, that’s all—just mistaken.”
“They fight good,” was Tad’s comment, as they went down the hall.
Abraham Lincoln always stepped carefully and quietly in this big house.
He had never been at home in the White House. He always had a secret,
haunting feeling of guilt as though he were a guest and a strange,
uneasy, even an unworthy, guest. Mary, his wife, had no such
inhibitions. She loved to sweep down the wide stairway, her widely
flounced skirts moving elegantly over her hoops, her tight small bosom,
her round white arms and her round white chin held proudly and
complacently. All this was her due, her manner said, and her husband’s
humility and trick of effacing himself occasionally irked and angered
her.
She was writing a letter at a desk when they entered her sitting room.
The intent creases in her brow softened as the boy ran to her.
“Look Mama—look at Papa’s new solid gold watch! He got it for the
’Mancipation Proclamation.”
Lincoln pulled out the watch, grinning boyishly. Mary’s eyes brightened
as she fingered the handsomely engraved case.
“Why, it must be terribly expensive,” she approved. “What does Tad mean
about the Proclamation?”
“I sent a copy to Chicago. They auctioned it off.”
“For three thousand dollars,” added Tad.
“My Heaven, you mean they got three thousand dollars just for that piece
of paper?” exclaimed Mary.
“It was a pretty important paper, Mary, to a million or so poor black
people anyway. A copy would be a historic memento a hundred years from
now. Understand—” he fended off the small glint of avidity that so often
troubled him in Mary Lincoln’s pale gray eyes “—this was a charity
thing. For their fair out there in Chicago.”
“You only made one copy?” She turned the watch in her small, plumb
fingers.
He hedged uneasily sensing the trend of her thinking. “I made one or two
for old friends. No—” he raised a hand “—I’m not making any more, so put
that idea out of your mind.”
She flared. “Why do you always accuse me of things I’m not even
thinking?” she cried angrily.
“Maybe because I know you better than you know yourself, my dear,” he
said gently. “You were thinking that this is a nice watch but that three
thousand dollars is three thousand dollars.”
“Well, it is a nice watch but it never cost that much money,” she
admitted grudgingly.
“Mary, this watch was a prize. It was competition. Anybody else could
have won it, anybody who contributed more to their fair than I did.” He
took the watch from her hands and slid it back to his pocket. “Here—” he
handed her the old one—“put this away. You can give it to Bob when he
comes home. Run along now, Tad, I’ve got work to do.”
Tad slipped out of the room a bit disconcerted. Mama ought not to have
got mad. She was trying not to get mad so often, his father assured him.
They had to help her, be careful not to provoke her. Tad skittered down
the long stairs almost colliding with a workman who carried a
stepladder, with a long wreath of greenery hung over his shoulder.
“What’s that for?” the boy demanded.
“For the Christmas receptions and things. Decorations. Don’t know how
I’ll get it hung. Can’t drive no nails in this wall. Hard as rock. Nails
just bends double.”
“You could glue it,” suggested Tad helpfully.
“Yah!” scorned the workman. “Get along out of my way, boy.”
“My father is the President!” stated Tad, sternly, drawing himself up in
his uniform.
“He is that, but you ain’t—nor no colonel either.”
“I am so. I’m an honorary colonel.”
“Call it ornery and I’ll agree. Now quit bothering me. I’ve got to
figure where to put up two Christmas trees.”
“Two?” Tad’s eyes widened.
“One down here and one up yonder—private, for you I reckon. So everybody
wants to get a favor out of your Pa can send you a present.”
“All I want,” sighed Tad, backing off to watch the man ascend the
ladder, “is my nanny goat back.”
“Your nanny goat has likely been made into stew by this time. You won’t
be driving a goat team through this house any more, busting up things
and ruinin’ the floors.”
“I bet I get her back,” bragged Tad. “All Company K is helping me look
for her.”
“Soldiers have got more important things to do than hunt goats,” stated
the man from his perch. “They got to find out who put that bullet
through your old man’s hat.”
Tad was galvanized with excitement. “Hey! He never told me.” He tore
back up the stairs.
Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, was just coming out of his father’s
office. Tad backed off and flattened himself against the wall. Mr.
Stanton was running the war; he was tall and grim with a long gray beard
but no mustache to soften a stern mouth, and his eyes could look very
hard and coldly at a boy through his round spectacles. Behind Stanton
marched Senator Sumner and Tad knew him too. Senator Sumner was always
mad about something and now, as he strode past the boy, Tad heard him
mutter angrily, “Amnesty! Amnesty! I’d give North Carolina amnesty at
the end of a rope!”
Tad wriggled behind the visitor and slipped in before anyone closed the
door. He marched straight to the desk where John Hay was putting papers
in envelopes and licking the flaps.
“Who shot a bullet through my father’s hat?” he demanded.
Hay pressed down the flap with a fist. “Who told you that, Colonel
Thomas Lincoln?” he inquired with careful unconcern.
“You never told me,” stormed Tad, “nor my father—nor Mama.”
“Your mother doesn’t know about it. We hope she’ll never know. Also we
hope your father won’t ride alone out there at the Soldier’s Home any
more.”
“Cavalry ride with him. With drawn sabers.”
“Now they do. But he rode alone out there and somebody shot a bullet
through the top of his high silk hat. He doesn’t want his family or
anybody worried about it, so I wouldn’t mention it if I were you,
Colonel.”
“I won’t.” Tad was flattered by being addressed as colonel, and he liked
his father’s grave secretary. He obeyed John Hay more readily than any
one else. “But I want to see the hat.”
“We burned the hat. Too bad—it was a good eight-dollar hat.” Hay folded
another sheet after verifying the scrawled signature: _A. Lincoln_. “We
burned it by order of the President.”
Tad looked a trifle shaken. He came close and leaned on the desk. “Why
do people want to kill my father, Mr. Hay? They do. I know. That’s why
we have Company K here in the house and all over the yard.”
John Hay shook his head. “This is war, Tad. You could ask, why is there
a war? Why are there millions of people over there across the river
who’d liked to blow up this town and kill everybody in it? Everybody who
stands for the Union. Give me an answer to that and I’ll answer your
why. It’s a black cloud of hate, Colonel, smothering everything decent
in the country. Maybe it will lift some day. Meanwhile there’s not much
sense to it.”
“Maybe some of those mean Secesh over there stole my nanny goat! I have
to go out and see if the boys have heard anything about her. She was a
nice goat. She liked me; she licked my fingers. She wouldn’t just run
off like Papa said.”
“Maybe,” remarked Hay, “she went over to see why General Meade let Lee’s
army get away from him. Go hunt your goat and don’t bother your father.
He’s had people swarming in there for the last hour.”
“All the women,” observed Tad, wise beyond his years, “have got a boy
they want to be a colonel or a captain. And all the men want to know why
Papa doesn’t take Richmond.”
“Get on out of here, Tad, or I won’t give you any Christmas present.”
“You know what I want,” stated Tad at the door. “My nanny goat back.”
2
The man in the armchair across the desk looked formidable and expensive.
Abraham Lincoln looked down at his own long, dusty, and wrinkled black
breeches and unconsciously gave a hitch to his sagging coat, to his
crooked black satin tie that had a perverse tendency to sidle around
under his ear.
The visitor’s swallow-tailed coat was pressed and elegant; his shirt was
crisp with ruffles, his heavy watch chain held a jeweled seal. He rested
plump white hands, covered with yellow gloves, on the gold head of a
cane. His homely face was cold-eyed and stern. He had refused to state
his errand to the people in the outer office and Lincoln knew how
thoroughly they deplored his stubborn insistence on seeing as many who
called as possible.
“Some day,” prophesied Nicolay gloomily, “you’re going to admit the man
with the little derringer hid inside a boot, Mr. President.”
“With the fences down all around, Nicolay, why put a bar over the one
door,” Lincoln had argued calmly. “If they want to kill me they will
unless you bolt me inside an iron box. I’m the people’s hired man. They
put me here. I must listen to what they want to say.”
But obviously the portly stranger in the flamboyant apparel had little
to say. He remarked about the weather, the unfinished Capitol dome, and
the trampled mall where army beef grazed. His chilly visage did not
soften or show animation or interest. Momentarily Lincoln expected him
to announce icily, as had happened before, “Mr. Lincoln, your wife owes
me a large account on which no payment has been made for some time.”
If this visitor’s errand was financial he made no mention of it. He
stated that he was a friend of Secretary Seward and that he had attended
the Convention at which Lincoln had been nominated.
“But I did not vote for you, sir,” he added.
“Your privilege and right, sir.” Lincoln filled a little following
silence by pulling out the gold watch. “A gift I had today. From the
Chicago Fair. Sort of a Christmas gift, I guess you’d call it.” He felt
as young as Tad under those coldly scrutinizing eyes, and as naïve and
awkward.
“Very fitting and well deserved, Mr. President. Now I must tell you that
I have no business here whatsoever. I merely came here to tell you that
I believe you are doing all for the good of the country that it is in
the power of man to do. And I want to say to you, Mr. President—go
ahead, do as you darned well please and I will support you.”
Lincoln’s rare laughter whooped. He sprang up and pumped the hand of the
startled stranger. John Hay put an inquiring head in at the door.
“This man,” chortled the President, “came here deliberately and on
purpose to tell me that I was running this country right—and all the
while I thought he’d come to tell me how to take Richmond. Sit down,
sir, sit down! I have not seen enough of you.”
“My dear Mr. President,” protested the visitor, “are words of approval
so rare and exciting to the President of the United States?”
“Rare?” Lincoln dropped back to his chair, his face collapsing into a
sudden, melancholy mask. “John, show this man that copy of the New York
_Herald_—the one where they call me a fiend and a disgrace to humanity
because I set human beings free from slavery.”
“I destroyed it, Mr. President,” Hay said. “I was afraid that the
infamous thing might be seen by some of your family.”
“Useless precaution, Johnny. I have a son in Boston, and I suspect that
he keeps his mother supplied with interesting clippings. My friend, if
to be the big boss of Hell is as tough as what I have to undergo here, I
can feel mighty sorry for Satan. Come along and have lunch with me, if
you will, sir. I reckon they’ve put the big pot in the little one by
this time. John, will you see if Mrs. Lincoln is ready for lunch?”
“I believe Mrs. Lincoln went out, Mr. President. Mr. Nicolay ordered out
the carriage and the black team.”
“And an escort?”
“Oh, yes, sir—the lieutenant arranged an escort.”
Mary would like that, Abraham Lincoln was thinking as they went down the
chilly stairs. Fires burned in all the rooms but the ceilings were high
and the walls cold and this was a bleak day with the lowering chill of
late December. A few snowflakes timidly rode down the icy air, but Mary
would wrap herself in rich furs, her round pink face nestled in a deep
collar, a stylish bonnet perched on her smooth dark hair.
With white-gloved hands—smooth now, but once they had known a time of
rough domestic toil—she would wave brief salutes to the people in the
street. He hoped she wouldn’t be haughty about it. He knew her shyness
and uncertainty, her feeling of insecurity in a high place for which she
had had so little training, and that too often she hid this uncertainty
behind a too glib, too tart attitude of arrogance. To Abraham Lincoln’s
eyes, to his sensitive insight, it was like seeing a nervous little hen
strut and bridle surrounded by the cold angry eyes of foxes and the
sharp talons of hawks. There were, unhappily, too many people who
misunderstood Mary Todd Lincoln.
Even John Hay had little sympathy for the President’s wife. There had
been a scrap of paper that Lincoln had found once, part of a letter Hay
had begun and discarded calling Mary a “Hellcat” and adding dryly that
she was lately more “hellcatical” than usual.
Too bad Mary occasionally indulged in temper tantrums in the executive
offices. Her small explosions, her husband knew, were a form of relief
for the eternally seething doubts of herself that tormented her. She
adored her husband and the two boys that had been spared to them, but
this love was fiercely jealous and possessive and not always wise or
controlled.
Christmas would be a sad time for Mary. Last year Willie had been here,
the gentle, quiet brown-haired boy who spent so many hours curled up in
a chair with a book. Willie had known every railroad line, every station
on every line. He had learned timetables by heart and drawn up schedules
of his own. It had been just such a raw, dreary day as this last
February when Willie had gone riding out on his pony. He had come home
soaked and chilled and the nightmare of those next days would haunt
Abraham Lincoln as long as he lived—Willie, burning with fever, babbling
incoherencies; Mary sobbing and moaning, pacing the floor, her hands in
taut, agonized fists, her smooth hair wild over her tear-streaked
cheeks; and that ghastly night of the White House ball, with the Marine
Band playing, he himself having to shake hands endlessly at the door of
the East Room while Willie fought for breath upstairs.
After that, the end. The blue eyes closed and sunken, fading flowers
pressed by Mary into the small cold hands, senators, generals, foreign
ministers, pressing the numb hand of the President of the United States,
while upstairs on her bed Mary writhed and wailed in uncontrolled grief.
Now Christmas would bring it all back. He was glad that Mary could
forget for a little while, shopping, buying gifts for Tad who had too
much already, who was in a fair way to be badly spoiled.
Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the
land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a grim hand
pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the
White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining
room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to
wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous.
“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach
between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president
of this so-called Confederacy?”
“That,” said Lincoln, “turned out not too well. Gilmore, of the New York
_Tribune_, wrote too much and prematurely. Those fellows across the
river got riled up and a Georgia regiment started a riot in Raleigh in
September and burned the Raleigh _Standard_. So the citizens of Raleigh
who didn’t have faith in Jeff Davis rose up and burned the Confederate
newspaper, the _State Journal_. That widened the breach and Vance has
already told Jeff Davis that he would welcome reunion with the Union
states and any peace compatible with honor.”
He caught John Hay’s warning look then and said no more. He would not
reveal that his agents has just brought in a letter sent by the Governor
of North Carolina to Jefferson Davis—a bold and open plea for
negotiation with the enemy.
“If North Carolina would make the break it would be a long step toward
peace,” said his guest.
“It could also mean anarchy, outrages, and destruction in that state,
calling for more Union troops,” Hay reminded them. “So far we have
pushed back the borders of this rebellion, opened the Mississippi, and
our Navy has tightened the blockade of all the Southern ports.”
“You will not, even under pressure, revoke the Emancipation
Proclamation, Mr. President?” The visitor was anxious.
“I shall never revoke that Proclamation, sir.”
When the meal ended and the guest had taken an obsequious departure,
Lincoln stopped at Hay’s desk.
“What was that fellow sent here to find out, Johnny? Was he sent by
Sumner, you think, to put in a word against my idea of amnesty for any
Southern state that wants to come back into the Union? Sumner wants ’em
all hung down there and he has some powerful newspapers behind him. Some
of ’em are saying I’m having my salary raised to a hundred thousand
dollars a year, that I’m drawing it in gold while the Army gets paid in
greenbacks, and that I’ve cooked up a scheme to have Congress declare me
perpetual president for the rest of my life.”
“Why do you let such fantastic rumors disturb you, Mr. Lincoln?” Hay
protested. “That New York _World_ editorial saying you’ve done a fine
job and that your death would only prolong the war has been reprinted
all over the country.”
“If my death would end this war, John, I’d give my life gladly,” Lincoln
declared solemnly. “That would be a fine Christmas gift for this
country.”
3
The soldiers of Company K One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania
Volunteers had become practically a part of the White House family.
Abraham Lincoln treated them as though they were his own sons, called
most of them by their first names, personally arranged for their passes
and furloughs.
So when Mary Todd Lincoln had all her shopping purchases carried up to
the family sitting room and displayed, Lincoln’s face wore a sober look
of disappointment. Mary was tired and on edge but she excitedly showed
him, one after another, the toys she had bought for Tad, the gifts for
Robert, and a few items for members of the household staff.
“Look, Abraham, this gun—it fires like a real cannon! With smoke.”
“Nothing for the boys?” he asked, rubbing his long hands over his knees,
a characteristic nervous gesture.
“Why, I’ve just showed you—the wallet and cuff buttons for Bob and all
these—”
“I mean _my_ boys. The Company K boys.”
Mary stared incredulously. “Good Heavens—you can’t give Christmas
presents to a whole company of soldiers! There must be a hundred of
them.”
“I wish there were,” he said heavily. “I wish every company in our army
was full strength but unfortunately they’re far short in numbers. There
are less than forty of those boys and they’re far from home and
Christmas is a bad time to be homesick.”
“They could be worse off,” she snapped. “They could be out there along
the Rappahannock or down in those marshes of Mississippi. Pennsylvania’s
not so far. Lord knows you’re always fixing up furloughs for them so
they can go home. Why, it would cost a fortune to give gifts to all that
company—and anyway, what can you give a soldier?”
“Some warm socks might come in good. That ground’s frozen out there and
it’s likely to snow hard any day now.”
“The commissary should keep them in socks.” She was testy as always in
the face of criticism. “Don’t I do enough—going out to those horrid
hospitals twice a week—carrying things—this house is practically
stripped of bed linen, all torn up for bandages.” She fluttered about
her purchases, flushed and breathless, her hands making little snatching
gestures, picking up things, putting them down again, twisting string
around her fingers.
“Very noble of you, indeed,” he approved. “I’m proud of what you do but
I’m still thinking about Joe and Nate and those other boys. They curry
horses and clean harness and saddles; they look after Tad and his
goat—and of course they’re always on guard for fear I’ll get shot,
though I can’t figure any place where I could be where nobody could get
at me, unless they buried me.”
“That man, that one-eyed man, you’re crazy to let him come here!” Mary
cried. “Mr. Nicolay says so.”
“Gurowski? I know.” He smiled patiently. “If anybody does the Democrats
a favor by putting a bullet in my head it might very well be Gurowski.
He croaks that the country is marching to it’s tomb and that Seward and
McClellan and I are the gravediggers.”
“They’ll be digging your grave if you don’t have a care for yourself!”
Her volatile mood had shifted; she was almost in tears. “That horrible
creature with those old green goggles, that silly red vest and that big
hat and cape—he looks like Satan himself, yet you listen to him!”
“I’m his hired man, Mary,” Lincoln repeated. “The bald-headed old
buzzard is smart enough. He had a good job working under Horace Greeley
on the _Tribune_, but they had to let him go because he couldn’t
distinguish truth from slander. Then Seward put him in the State
Department as a translator but he published so many slurs about Seward
and me that they dismissed him from that job. He started as a
revolutionary in Europe; now he thinks he can save this nation. Maybe by
eliminating me. He’s written down now as a dangerous character. He won’t
be allowed in here again, so don’t worry.”
Mary would never worry long, he knew. She was too mercurial, too easily
diverted by trifles. What troubled Lincoln most was her impulsive
inclination to meddle. She took a hand in decisions, was always writing
indiscreet letters to newspaper editors, discussing national affairs too
brashly; she interfered in decisions over post offices and appointments
to military academies. When New York papers printed long items about her
travels, her clothes, her bonnets and baggage, she was flattered and
excited, unaware that her husband was unhappily reading into some of
these accounts an amused note of criticism and contempt. She was as much
a child as Tad, he told himself often, but unlike Tad she could not be
controlled.
All through the evening she busied herself happily over her gifts,
wrapping them in white paper, fetching bits of ribbon from her dozens of
bandboxes for bows and decorations. Abraham Lincoln slipped off his
elastic-sided shoes and stretched his bony feet to the fire. He dozed a
little and had to be warned sharply by Mary when his gray wool socks
began to smoke a little.
“I declare, Abraham, you’d burn yourself to a cinder if I didn’t look
after you! You’ve even scorched your pantaloons. Yes, you have. I can
see where the broadcloth is singed on that right leg. It’s like putting
ribbons on a pig to try to dress you up decently. Sometimes I despair of
ever making you into a real gentleman!”
Lincoln smacked absently at the hot fabric of his breeches. “In this
town, Mary, gentlemen are as thick as fleas in a dog pound. Take credit
for making me into a man but let the fashionable aspect go.”
“People can’t see how much you know,” she argued. “All they see is how
you look. No wonder that New York paper called you a ‘pathetic,
disheveled figure’ when you made that speech at Gettysburg. I suppose
your cravat was crooked and your socks falling down.”
“They’ve called me worse things. Names don’t stick unless your hide is
soft. I got toughened up back yonder.”
“I notice you act kind of flattered when they call you a
railsplitter—and a yokel.”
“Well, I know I was a good railsplitter. If they called me a sorry
railsplitter I’d resent it.” He was unperturbed. “What is a yokel? A
fellow from the country. So I must be a yokel for I sprung from about as
deep in the country as you can get air to breathe, so deep there wasn’t
even a road there, just an old trace that meandered up the bed of the
crick part of the way. America’s made of yokels. Our side, anyway. Your
friends down South have got a few stylish gentlemen but a lot of them
lost their sashes and their plumes up at Gettysburg and they got buried
right alongside the yokels. Humiliating to them, I reckon.”
She had to laugh. “You’re hopeless, Abe Lincoln.”
“Well, I know you’d admire me a heap more if I could go around like Jim
Buchanan. Long-tailed coat and white vest and my head cocked to one side
like a tom turkey admiring all the gals. He brought plenty of elegance
to this office but if he’d had a little yokel grit in his gizzard the
country wouldn’t be in this mess, maybe. One thing I know, you wouldn’t
want me sashaying around the gals like Buchanan. You’d spit fire if I
commenced that. Go on and fuss at me, Mary; it don’t bother me and I can
still lick salt off the top of your head.”
She pulled the cord of the little toy cannon and aimed it at him. The
cork that was fired from it hit him in the stomach and he bent over,
pretending to be mortally wounded, uttering grotesque groans. She
clutched at him abruptly, holding both his arms.
“Don’t do that!” she wailed. “It’s like my dream.”
He put his arms around her, pressed her head against his chest. “You
having dreams again? I thought you’d quit that foolishness.”
“I’ve had the same one, over and over. I can’t see you but I can hear
you groaning—like that. And I wake up in a cold sweat feeling something
warm on my hands—like blood!” she moaned shuddering.
He patted her head soberly. “You eat too many cakes at parties. Too much
syllabub. Getting fat, too.” He pinched her playfully. “Me now, I’m one
of Pharaoh’s lean kine. More bones than a shad and they all poke out and
rattle. You should have married a pretty little feller, somebody like
Steve Douglas.”
“I didn’t want him. I wanted you.”
“Well, you got me, Mary, not anything extra of a bargain but I did set
you up so high you couldn’t go higher unless you got made queen of some
place. You’re a queen now, queen of a torn and divided country all
drowned in sorrow and hate and woe. But it won’t always be like that.—I
wish to the Lord I knew what to do about that little man, Ulysses S.
Grant! I reckon I’ll just have to give him command of the army.” He put
her gently aside, letting care return to possess him.
“He may be a fine soldier but he’s a dirty, drunken little man,” sniffed
Mary, “and I don’t like his wife either.”
“He fights better, dirty and drunk, than a lot of elegant fellers I’ve
got in commands. If he can win battles he can go dirty as a hog and it
won’t degrade him any in my estimation,” Lincoln declared. “As for his
wife, you’ve got a bad habit of not liking wives, Mary.”
“That’s not true. I like some of their wives—when they’re not cold and
distant and look down their noses. It’s because I know how to buy pretty
clothes and my bonnets become me. I do look nice when I’m dressed up,
Abe Lincoln. And I know how to behave in company. After all there is a
little respect due to my position,” she stated, complacently.
He gave her a comradely pat and went back to his chair and the stack of
papers he had put aside. “All right, Mama, you do the peacocking for
this office and I’ll try to win the war,” he said, withdrawing into that
remoteness that always baffled her.
4
Desperately she wanted to be liked and admired. She did not even know
that this desire tormented her like a hidden thorn. It was lost under
the surface imperiousness that she had put on defensively, as a child
might dress up in a trailing robe and play at being queen. She had no
talent for adjustment or reconciliation and her husband’s propensity for
seeing the best in people, even his bitterest enemies, puzzled and
irritated her. In her mind she put this down as weakness. When she
disliked anyone, it was done with vigor and she made no secret of it.
When she was displeased she let the whole world know, yet she could not
understand why it was that she felt always alone.
The Christmas party at the White House had to be important, if not gay.
State Department people, Supreme Court people, senators, generals and
their wives, would not expect hilarity. Not with Lee’s menacing army so
near, the carnage of Chickamauga so recent, all the factional strife in
New York and Missouri and Ohio only temporarily lulled, and definitely,
Mary suspected, not defeated.
She had two dresses spread out on her bed, and Elizabeth Heckley, the
mulatto seamstress, pinned bits of lace and ribbon bows here and there
over the voluminous folds of coral-colored satin and purple velvet. The
satin had wide bands of heavy embroidery touched with gold around the
skirt and the folds that draped low over the shoulders. Elizabeth
fastened a garland of roses at the bosom of that dress and let it trail
down the side of the skirt.
“Needs a gold breastpin right there,” she indicated the fastening place
of the flowers. “What Mrs. President goin’ to wear on her head?”
“A turban, Lizzie, of this same satin with some pale blue feathers in
front and the roses hanging down over my chignon. This dress will have
to be for the Christmas party and I know it’s too gay and likely I’ll be
criticized for putting off my mourning for poor little Willie. Good
gracious, down home where I was raised, I’d wear black for three solid
years for a child and for a husband it was forever. But I look awful in
black and I know it. It makes me dumpy and sallow and I do owe something
to the people. There’s too much crepe already in Washington. It
depresses people and hurts the war.”
“This other one would look mighty fine on you, Mrs. President.” The
seamstress lovingly stroked the folds of violet velvet. “This dress look
like it was made for a queen.” There were bands of embroidery on this
gown too, but the embroidery was all gold cord and beads and there was a
light overskirt of draped tulle in shades of lilac, lavender, and
purple, caught up with little knots of gold leaves.
A queen! Abraham had called her a queen. Mary could see herself trailing
a long robe of crimson with a border of gold and ermine. Too bad
democracies did not favor such ornate display by their rulers—but the
purple velvet did have a regal look. She would wear plumes in her
headdress, three of them in the three shades of the overskirt.
“I’ll wear this at the New Years’ reception, though it is a pity to
waste anything so handsome on a company of just anybody. See about some
feathers and gold trimmings for my headdress, Lizzie, and plenty of
white gloves. Last year I ruined four pairs.”
She must see to it that Abraham had plenty of gloves, too. He hated
them; he was always pulling them off and stuffing them untidily into a
pocket. He was always bursting them, too, and she kept spare pairs
handy. His hands had a tendency to swell from prolonged handshaking and
inevitably the buttons popped off or the seams split. A pair would be
soiled in half an hour too from all those hands, some calloused, some
grimy, some too hot and eager.
The New Year’s reception was a great nuisance in Mary’s book—those
tramping feet scuffing the floors and the carpets and almost invariably
it snowed. And in spite of the vigilance of the guards she knew there
was danger. Lately danger had become a haunting oppression to Mary Todd
Lincoln.
The election of 1864 was coming up and even in the Union states there
was radical opposition so bold it verged on treason, not to overlook the
vicious attacks of the newspapers to the South. On those pages Abraham
Lincoln was called everything from a degraded idiot to Mephistopheles
reincarnate. The South, as Southern-bred Mary Lincoln knew well, was
full of impetuous hotheads ready to dare or to do anything for their
sacred Cause. There was that O’Neale Greenhow woman, arrested right here
in sight of the White House—and even the Mayor of Washington temporarily
lodged in jail. And they said that people right in the Provost Office
had supplied the Greenhow woman with information that had brought on so
many Union defeats at Manassas and other battles. Mary remembered having
once met Rose O’Neale Greenhow at a tea somewhere. A handsome and
arrogant woman, too friendly with men. She was banished South of the
lines now, but women like that always had impetuous friends.
“Get me out something plain, Lizzie,” she ordered now. “I have to shop
again this afternoon. The President thinks every soldier in Company K
must have a Christmas gift, and where I’ll find things the Lord only
knows! ‘Socks,’ he said, ‘Wool socks.’ I doubt if any can be found, and
they’d be two dollars a pair if there are any. Anyway, cakes and candy
and tobacco—and all those getting harder and harder to get. The crowds
in the streets are getting so rough, too, with all these soldiers coming
in.”
“I could go, Mrs. Lincoln,” offered Elizabeth, “if you’d tell me what to
buy and give me an order to have it charged—and send somebody to help
carry.”
“Would you, Lizzie?” Mary was eager with relief. “I’ll send you in a
carriage and a boy with you. I have to make a list. I think we’ll forget
the socks—there might not be any and anyway their mothers ought to knit
socks for them. We wouldn’t know sizes anyway.” Mary fluttered, hunting
pen and paper, sending a maid to order the carriage, getting out a heavy
cape of her own to keep the sewing woman warm. “You go down to the
market, Lizzie, away down on D Street. Things will be cheaper there.
There are thirty-three of those men. Just so each one had some little
remembrance the President will be satisfied.”
She was grateful not to have to brave again the streets of Washington
that were becoming more horrible every day. Deep mud, which Army wagons
were churning up, caissons pounding by, cavalry splashing everybody, and
soldiers crowding everywhere. The shops were always crowded with the
impatient, pushing military and Negroes, and more colored people were
thronging into the capital every day, homeless and bewildered. Some of
the Negro men were being integrated into the Army but most were a
problem that the provosts and police were coping with in desperate
confusion.
It all made for discomfort and danger. No real indignity had as yet been
offered to her personally since those grim days in New York in July,
when she had been hooted in the streets and followed into a shop by a
jeering mob of ruffians. Here in Washington her greatest cross was the
thinly veiled contempt of the women, formerly socially important, the
women the President called “those Secesh dames.” Very boldly they let it
be known that their sympathies were with the South.
Washington, Mr. Seward said, and Mr. Stanton agreed with him, was a nest
of spies. In spite of imprisonment, grim guards, and ceaseless
precautions, messages still went through the lines to Robert E. Lee and
Jefferson Davis. It was said that Fontaine Maury, the Confederate
admiral, had a direct pipeline into the very heart of the Capitol.
Suspicion and distrust were rampant, and Mary harbored a constant,
nervous fear that either she or Tad might be kidnapped by the Rebels and
held as hostages.
She had wondered sometimes in moments of private bitterness just how
much Abraham Lincoln would surrender to get his wife back, but Tad was
the key to his heart. Lately Company K had had orders to keep close
surveillance over the boy but Tad was quick and mobile as a flea. Less
than a month before he had been brought back, shouting protests and
struggling, from climbing the scaffolding of the half-finished
Washington Monument.
She must go out and appear at the receptions and teas planned by wives
of officials, but with Christmas at hand now there would be a hiatus in
festivities until after the New Year reception at the White House. There
was that tiresome affair to plan for, then this Christmas party; it was
all hard work and expensive too, and that aspect practical Mary Lincoln
always considered seriously. She never saw an elaborate collation spread
without secretly adding up in her mind how many bonnets, bracelets, and
yards of silk could have been bought with the money.
The Christmas tree in the private sitting room upstairs had been set up
and Tad put to work stringing popcorn and bits of bright metal for
decorations. A corporal had brought in a sackful of scraps of brass
discarded by a cartridge manufacturer and these Tad was tying to lengths
of his mother’s red wool. He insisted on doing all this in his father’s
office, stepped over by the endless streams of officials and callers,
and Mary found him there, squatting behind Lincoln’s desk, surrounded by
the litter of his festive preparations.
She entered as usual without knocking, made a brief stiff bow to Noah
Brooks, the correspondent from the West Coast, and puckered her brows at
the small woman with curling grayish hair and unfashionable bonnet who
occupied the one comfortable chair in the room.
The President unlimbered his long legs and jumped up, as did Brooks.
“Come in, come in, my dear!” he greeted his wife. “You know Mr.
Brooks—and Mary, this is Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little woman
who wrote the book that started a big war.”
Mrs. Stowe held out a gloved hand. “I am happy to be privileged to meet
Mrs. Lincoln.”