“THE SPIRIT OF GREAT EVENTS”
John Tyler, the first Vice-president to receive promotion to the
Presidency in mid-term, was at his home in Virginia when Harrison died.
He came to Washington at once and took lodgings at a hotel, where, two
days later, he was sworn in by Chief Judge Cranch of the Circuit Court
of the District. His administration was not picturesque in the usual
sense; the most it gave people to talk about was his narrow escape from
impeachment for deserting the party which elected him. But his
unpopularity bore valuable fruit for Washington. When the partisan
excitement was at its highest pitch, a company of local politicians went
to the White House one night and, drawn up in front of it, “groaned”
their disapproval of Tyler’s conduct. To protect the Presidential office
from further indignities of that sort, a bill was introduced in the
Senate to establish an “auxiliary guard” for the defense of the public
and private property against incendiaries, and “for the enforcement of
the police regulations of the city of Washington,” with an appropriation
of seven thousand dollars to equip a captain and fifteen men with the
proper implements to distinguish them in the discharge of their duty.
This was the foundation of the Metropolitan Police force, which now
numbers seventy-five officers and more than six hundred privates.
Life at the White House was simple in Tyler’s time. The President was in
the habit of rising with the sun, lighting a fire that had been laid
overnight in his study, and working at his desk till breakfast was
served at eight o’clock. At this meal he insisted on having the ladies
of his family appear in calico frocks. In the evening all the household
would gather in the green parlor and pass an hour or two in entertaining
any visitors who happened in, interspersing conversation with piano
music and old-fashioned songs. It was Tyler who introduced the custom of
periodical open-air concerts by the Marine Band; and on warm Saturday
afternoons the garden south of the White House was a favorite resort of
the best people of the city, while the President would sit with his
family and a few invited guests on the porch, listening to the music and
responding to the salutations of his acquaintances. Tyler is rarely
suspected of possessing a strong sense of humor; but he must have smiled
when he signed an official letter to the Emperor of China, in which he
described himself as “President of the United States of America, which
States are Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama,
Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan”--an array which so impressed the mind
of the Celestial despot that the envoy who presented the missive got
everything he asked for.
Tyler lost his wife soon after he entered the White House, and his
daughters presided over the domestic life there. He was fond of young
society, and one of the belles who appeared pretty regularly at his
parties was Miss Virginia Timberlake, daughter of the unfortunate naval
purser and the lady whose cause Jackson and Van Buren had championed.
Another was Miss Julia Gardiner of New York, who so captivated him that
at one of his receptions in the second year of his term he made her a
proposal of marriage. As she described it afterward, she was taken
wholly by surprise, and gave her “No, no, no!” such emphasis by shaking
her head that she whisked the tassel of her crimson Greek cap into his
face with every motion. The controlling reason for her refusal, she
explained, was her unwillingness to leave her father, to whom she was
devotedly attached; but an accident soon changed the whole face of
things.
Captain Stockton of the navy invited a party of about four hundred
ladies and gentlemen to inspect the sloop-of-war _Princeton_, then lying
in the Potomac. President Tyler, the members of his Cabinet and their
families, and a good many Congressmen were among the guests. The vessel
had dropped down the river to a point near Mount Vernon, when some of
the party importuned Stockton to fire his big gun, nicknamed “the
peacemaker.” This was just at the close of the luncheon, and the ladies
had lingered at table while most of the gentlemen went on deck. One
lady, fortunately, had detained Tyler as he was about to leave, by
inducing him to listen to a song; for the gun exploded, killing Mr.
Upshur, Secretary of State, Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy, Commander
Kennon of the navy, Virgil Maxey, lately American Minister at the Hague,
and David Gardiner of New York, the father of Miss Julia. A day of
merrymaking was thus turned into one of mourning, as the vessel slowly
moved up the stream again, bearing the bodies of the dead, for whom
funeral services were held at the White House. After an interval the
President renewed his suit and found Miss Gardiner more pliant. When he
[Illustration: _Soldiers’ Home_]
had composed in her honor a serenade beginning, “Sweet lady, awake!” she
agreed to marry him if her mother would consent. Her mother did not
approve of a union between a man of fifty-six and a girl of twenty, but,
as she did not actually forbid it, they had a very quiet wedding.
In spite of the enjoyment he took in social intercourse, Tyler was often
criticized for his frigid manners. A virulent type of influenza which
became epidemic during his administration received the name of “the
Tyler grip,” from the remark of a Boston man who fell ill a few hours
after being presented to him: “I probably caught cold from shaking hands
with the President.” A good deal was made of this in the campaign of
1844, and added point to John Quincy Adams’s denunciation of Tyler for
“performing with a young girl from New York the old fable of January and
May!” Tyler’s general unpopularity, and a deadlock between two other
prominent candidates, led the Democrats to nominate James K. Polk for
President. He was so little known to most of the voters that throughout
the campaign the Whigs, who were supporting Henry Clay, rang the changes
on the question, “Who _is_ James K. Polk?” thus contrasting his
obscurity with Clay’s eminence. The count of ballots showed that a
candidate of whom little was known might have certain advantages over
one long before the public eye; and as on inauguration day it rained
heavily, exultant Democrats kept themselves warm by hurling back at the
Whigs the familiar cry, “Who _is_ James K. Polk?” and then laughing
wildly at their own humor. It was on this occasion that the telegraph
first conveyed out of Washington the news that one President had retired
and another had come in--Professor Morse having set up an instrument at
the edge of the platform on which the President-elect stood, and ticked
off a report of the proceedings as they occurred.
Mrs. Polk being a devoted church-member, of a school which disapproved
of dancing, the inaugural ball that evening shrank into a mere promenade
concert till after she and her husband had quitted the hall. The social
activities of the Polks, through the four years which followed, were
consistent with this beginning, all the functions at the White House
being too sober to suit the diplomats or the younger element among the
resident population. On its practical side, Polk’s term was perhaps the
most notable in that generation, including as it did the war with
Mexico, which resulted in the annexation of California and the great
southwestern area afterward carved into the States of Utah, Nevada, and
Arizona and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. This war,
moreover, furnished the usual crop of Presidential candidates, chief
among them General Zachary Taylor, who had led the first army across the
Rio Grande, and General Winfield Scott, who had wound up the invasion by
capturing the city of Mexico.
Believing Taylor the easier to handle, the Whig managers fixed upon him,
although, having passed the larger part of his sixty-four years with the
army, he had never voted. Indeed, he had always expressed an aversion to
office-holding, and, when approached on the subject of the Presidency,
met the overture with frank disfavor, declaring that he had neither the
capacity nor the experience needed for such a position. But his
“availability” overcame the force of his protests, and the Whigs won
with him a sweeping victory at the polls. There is pathos in the story
of the break-up of the pleasant home in Baton Rouge, and the reluctant
removal of the family to Washington, taking with them only a faithful
negro servant, a favorite dog, and “Old Whitey,” the horse the General
had ridden through the Mexican war. Taylor was with difficulty dissuaded
from his purpose of imitating his military predecessors and riding “Old
Whitey” either to or from the Capitol on inauguration day. What his
friends most feared was his loss of dignity in the eyes of the crowd,
for his legs were so short that, in certain emergencies, an orderly had
to lift one of them over his horse’s flanks whenever he mounted or
dismounted.
Taylor was as simple a soul as Harrison. His unostentatious ways in the
army had led the soldiers to dub him “Old Rough and Ready,” and this
title stuck to him always afterward. One of his favorite amusements was
to walk about Washington, chatting informally with people he met and
watching whatever was going on in the streets. His love of comfort was
such that he could never be induced to wear clothes that fitted him, but
his suits were always a size or two larger than his measure, and these,
with a black silk hat set far back on his head, made him recognizable at
any distance. His message at the opening of Congress contained one
announcement as voluminous as his costume: “We are at peace with all the
nations of the world, and the rest of mankind.” The bull was discovered
too late to prevent its going out in the original print; but in a
revised edition the sentence was made to end: “And seek to maintain our
cherished relations of amity with them.”
The White House underwent another grand refurbishing while the Taylors
were in it. The east room was newly carpeted, its walls were decorated,
and gas replaced its candles and lamps. The ladies of the family were
good housekeepers--particularly the younger daughter, who made the old
place look actually homelike, and whom an appreciative guest described
as doing the honors “with the artlessness of a rustic belle and the
grace of a duchess.” But this pleasant picture was soon to be clouded
over. On the fourth of July, 1850, a patriotic meeting was held at the
base of the Washington National Monument, with long addresses by
prominent men. It lasted the whole of a very hot afternoon, and
President Taylor, as a guest of honor, felt bound to stay through it,
refreshing himself from time to time with copious drafts of ice-water.
He reached home in a state of some exhaustion and at once ate a
basketful of cherries and drank several glasses of iced milk. From a
party to which he had accepted an invitation for that evening he was
obliged to excuse himself at the last moment on the score of
indisposition. He was violently ill throughout the night, and five days
later he died.
Millard Fillmore of New York, fifty years old, of moderate political
views and fair ability, was Vice-president at the time. Unlike Tyler, he
went to the Capitol to be sworn in the presence of a committee of the
two houses, but made no inaugural address. Mrs. Fillmore, who had
formerly been a teacher, cared little for society. She was of studious
habits and soon converted the oval sitting room in the second story of
the White House into a library, personally selecting the books. Her
taste ran chiefly to standard historical and classical works; and, as
the editions then available were generally not very good specimens of
the typographic art, most of her collection has disappeared. In this
administration the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, and Fillmore, by
signing it, alienated the North so largely that the Whig party refused
to nominate him for another term. General Scott, to whom it turned, did
precisely what most of the politicians had predicted he would: made a
number of public utterances which ruined his chances and thus gave the
election to his Democratic competitor, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire.
During Fillmore’s term Louis Kossuth visited Washington. The country was
just passing through one of its occasional periods of revolutionary
fervor, and Kossuth’s stand for the rights of Hungary against Austria
had aroused much sympathy here. Our public men were divided in opinion
as to how far to go with their demonstrations in his favor, wishing to
win the support of the Hungarians in the United States and of immigrants
who had fled from other countries to escape oppression, yet hoping to
keep clear of entanglements with Austria. As Kossuth had left home to
escape death for high treason and taken refuge in Constantinople, one of
our men-of-war was sent to the Dardanelles to bring him to America. He
did not then care to go further than England, whence, after an agreeable
visit, he came over, in the expectation of inducing our Government to
take up arms for Hungarian liberty. Henry Clay, who was already stricken
with his last illness, promptly put a damper upon that scheme; but
Kossuth remained the guest of the nation for a time and was dined and
fêted prodigiously. He maintained the state of a royal personage,
keeping a uniformed and armed guard about the door of his suite of
apartments at what is now the Metropolitan Hotel, and a lot of carousing
young subalterns always in his anteroom. He never appeared in public
except in full military uniform, with his cavalry sword, in its steel
scabbard, clanking by his side. Mrs. Kossuth, who accompanied him on his
tour, was unable to overcome her distrust of American cooking, and used
to scandalize her neighbors at table by ostentatiously smelling of every
new dish before tasting it.
The inauguration of Pierce was marked by several innovations: he drove
to and from the Capitol standing up in his carriage, delivered his
address without notes, and made affirmation instead of taking the oath
of office. A tragic interest attaches itself to his administration,
because, just as he was preparing to remove to Washington, he lost his
only child, a boy of thirteen, in a railway accident. Mrs. Pierce, who
was an invalid, was terribly broken by this bereavement, and all social
festivities at the White House were abandoned till toward the close of
her stay there. The new Vice-president, William R. King, was not
inaugurated at the same time and place with the President. He had gone
to Cuba in January for his health, and, as he was not well enough to
come home, Congress passed a special act permitting him to take the oath
before the American Consul-general at Havana. Soon after his return to
the United States, in April, he died.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a college mate and intimate friend of
Pierce, was anxious to see something of Europe, but had not the means to
gratify his desire; so Pierce appointed him consul at Liverpool, where
he was able to live in comfort on his pay and save enough for a sojourn
on the Continent. To this experience American literature owes most of
his later work, including “The Marble Faun” and “Our Old Home.” In
Washington still linger stories of a visit Hawthorne paid the city about
the time of his appointment. Pierce tried to show him some informal
attentions; but Hawthorne’s shyness, which went to such an extreme that
he could not say anything to the lady next him at table without
trembling and blushing, prevented his making much headway socially.
All through Pierce’s term, political conditions were working up to the
point which caused the irruption of a few years later. The habit of
carrying deadly weapons on the person became so common in Washington,
especially in Congress, that scarcely an altercation occurred between
two men without the exposure, if not the use, of a pistol or a dirk. The
newspapers in their serious columns treated such incidents severely,
while the comic paragraphers satirized them; and Preston Brooks, a
Representative from South Carolina, in a half-earnest, half-cynical
vein, gave notice one day of his intention to offer this amendment to
the rules of the House: “Any member who shall bring into the House a
concealed weapon, shall be expelled by a vote of two-thirds. The
Sergeant-at-Arms shall cause a suitable rack to be erected in the
rotunda, where members who are addicted to carrying concealed weapons
shall be required to place them for the inspection of the curious, so
long as the owners are employed in legislation.”
Senator Sumner of Massachusetts having, a few days later, in a speech on
slavery, spoken disparagingly of a South Carolina Senator who was
absent, Brooks, on the twenty-second of May, 1856, entered the Senate
chamber when it was nearly deserted, and, with a heavy gutta-percha
cane, rained blows with all his strength upon the head of Sumner, who
was quietly writing at his desk. Sumner fell to the floor and for some
days thereafter hovered between life and death. He was three or four
years in recovering from the direct effects of the assault, and never
was entirely restored to health and strength. The incident excited
bitter feeling throughout both North and South. For denouncing the
assault as paralleling that of Cain upon Abel, Representative Anson
Burlingame of New York was challenged by Brooks; he accepted the
challenge, naming date, place, and weapons, but Brooks failed to appear
on the field.
The next President was James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, also a Democrat.
The two incidents in his term which most impressed Washington were the
first successful experiments with the Atlantic cable in August, 1858,
and the visit to the White House of the Prince of Wales, who later
became King Edward VII. Cyrus W. Field, after a struggle as soul-wearing
as Morse’s over the introduction of the telegraph, succeeded in making
his submarine cable work and induced Queen Victoria to send the first
despatch, a message of greeting to President Buchanan, who was requested
to answer it in kind. The skepticism of the day toward all scientific
novelties was reflected in Buchanan’s summoning a newspaper
correspondent whom he trusted and begging to be told frankly whether he
were not the victim of a hoax. At the White House all the members of the
Cabinet were gathered, earnestly debating the same question. The most
stubborn disbeliever was the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, who
jeered at the whole thing as a wild absurdity. In spite of Cobb’s
resistance, the correspondent persuaded the President to answer the
Queen’s message. As bad luck would have it, the cable parted in
mid-ocean soon thereafter and was not restored to working order for
several years; and in the interval the skeptics were appropriately
exultant.
Buchanan, who was our first bachelor President, was sometimes slangily
called “the O. P. F.,” having once referred to himself in a message as
an “old public functionary.” The image of him carried in the popular
mind is derived from contemporaneous pictures, which show him as a
stiff, precise, ministerial-looking old man, wearing a black coat, a
high choker collar, and a spotless white neckerchief. But this was the
style of the day in portraiture and must not be accepted too literally.
The late Frederick O. Prince of Boston used to tell of a morning call he
paid Buchanan, whom he had imagined a model of formality and elegance,
and of his astonishment when the President entered the room clad in a
greenish figured dressing-gown, woolen socks, and carpet slippers, and,
to put the standing visitors at their ease, called to a servant: “Jeems,
sit some cheers!”
When Buchanan came to Washington for his inauguration, attended by a
number of Pennsylvania friends, he took lodgings at the National Hotel,
where the whole party fell ill with symptoms which to-day we should
charge to ptomaine poisoning. One or two of the sufferers died. Buchanan
escaped with a comparatively light attack; but a rumor gained
circulation that the Free Soilers had tried to assassinate him because
of his conservative disposition toward slavery. For some time after he
entered the White House, therefore, the police kept a watch on his
movements, and one rough-looking Kansan was arrested on suspicion,
having bought an air-gun and engaged a room in a building which the
President was in the habit of passing every day when he went out for
exercise.
The domestic accommodations at the White House were already so limited
that, when the Prince of Wales visited it in 1860, the President had to
give up his bedchamber to his guest and sleep on a cot in the anteroom
of his office. As I recall the Prince he was not
[Illustration: _Old City Hall_]
inordinately tall, but for some reason--possibly because the legs of
royalty were supposed to need more space than those of common folk--the
old bedstead in the President’s room was replaced by one of extra
length. Society in Washington was agog over the Prince’s advent, and the
reigning belles insisted that his entertainment must include a ball at
least as brilliant as that given in his honor in New York; but Mr.
Buchanan, whose ideas on certain subjects were rigid, would not listen
to the suggestion of dancing in the White House, and the ball was turned
over to the British legation. Miss Harriet Lane, the President’s niece,
who managed his household affairs, gave instead a large musicale, at
which was performed for the first time the once favorite song, “The
Mocking Bird,” its composer having dedicated it to her.
Trained as attorney, diplomatist, and politician, to regard the letter
of the law rather than its spirit, Buchanan found himself in an unhappy
situation when the preliminary mutterings of sectional warfare grew
loud. In January, 1861, he was urged by some of the Cabinet to recall
Major Robert Anderson from Charleston Harbor as a rebuke for having
removed the Fort Moultrie garrison to the stronger Fort Sumter without
orders from Washington, and he was holding the matter under advisement
when Justice McLean of the Supreme Court came to dine with him one
evening. After the ladies had left the table, the Justice drew the
President aside and inquired what was going to be done about the Major.
“Anderson has exceeded his instructions,” answered Buchanan, “and must
be disciplined.” McLean raised his hand and fairly shook it in the
President’s face as he ejaculated: “You dare not do it, sir! You dare
not do it!” This unique defiance of the executive by the judiciary had
an immediate effect: Major Anderson was left undisturbed, to become
within a few weeks the first hero of the Civil War.
General Scott, who filled a large place in national affairs from Polk’s
administration till the autumn of 1861, was a good officer and a pure
patriot but full of eccentricities. His love for military forms gave him
the nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers,” and a letter he wrote during the
Mexican war, excusing his absence from his headquarters when the
Secretary of War called there, on the plea that he had just stepped out
to get “a hasty plate of soup,” had won for him the punning title
“Marshal Turenne.” He was a good deal of a gourmet and did his family
marketing himself, especially delighting in the delicacy which he
persisted in calling “tarrapin,” and ordering his oysters by the barrel.
One of his favorite dishes was pork jowl, and once he told of having
eaten sauerkraut “with tears in his eyes.” He was a keen stickler for
the dignity due him on all occasions. Just after Taylor had been
inaugurated President, the two men met in Washington for the first time
since a somewhat acrimonious parting in Mexico. Taylor, passing over old
animosities, invited Scott to call. Scott did so the next day, and
Taylor, who was engaged with some other gentlemen in his office, sent
word that he would be down in a moment. Five minutes later, having cut
his business short, the President descended to the parlor, to find his
visitor already gone: Scott had waited two minutes by the clock and then
stalked in high dudgeon out of the door, not to come back again.
The drama of the Lincoln administration, on which the curtain rose to a
bugle-blast and fell to the beat of muffled drums, deserves a volume to
itself; but in my limited space I have been able to outline only some of
its features directly related to the capital city. Lincoln’s first levee
was held not in the White House but at Willard’s Hotel, some days before
the inauguration. The higher public functionaries and their wives, and a
number of private citizens of prominence, had been notified rather than
invited to come to the hotel on a certain evening for a first glimpse of
the new chief magistrate. Into this presence stalked the lank,
loose-jointed, oddly clad “Old Abe,” with his little, simple,
white-shawled wife at his elbow, and the never failing jest on his lips
as he made his own announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, let me present
to you the long and the short of the Presidency!”
The Lincolns received several social courtesies from members of Congress
and others before the fourth of March, and on the evening of that day
the usual inaugural ball was given in their honor. It was plain from the
start that they had not made a favorable impression in their new
setting, for the ball was a failure in point of attendance; few ladies
wore fine costumes, and of the men the majority came in their business
clothes. As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lincoln knew how to dance, or felt
enough confidence even to walk through a quadrille, the early part of
the evening was devoted to a handshaking performance which threw a chill
upon the rest. Mrs. Lincoln’s feminine instinct had led her to exchange
the stuffy frock and shawl of her first reception for a blue silk gown.
Mr. Buchanan had been expected but sent belated regrets; and Stephen A.
Douglas, the “Little Giant” who always became a big one in an emergency,
stepped into the breach as representative of the abdicating party, and
established himself as the personal escort and knight-in-waiting of Mrs.
Lincoln.
In the White House, Lincoln took for his office the large square room in
the second story next the southeast corner, from the windows of which he
could look over at the Virginia hills. The room adjoining on the west
was assigned to his clerks and to visitors waiting for an interview. To
secure him a little privacy in passing between his office and the oval
library, a wooden screen was run across the south end of the waiting
room, and behind this he used to make the transit in fancied
invisibility, to the delight of the people sitting on the other side, to
whom, owing to his extraordinary height, the top locks of his hair and a
bit of his forehead were exposed above the partition. He was
persistently hounded by candidates for appointment to office; and it is
recalled that in one instance, where two competitors for a single place
had worn him out with their importunities, he sent for a pair of scales,
weighing all the petitions in favor of one candidate and then those of
the other, and giving the appointment to the man whose budget weighed
three-quarters of a pound more than his rival’s.
Visitors admitted to his office usually found him very kind in manner,
though now and then a satirical impulse would give an edge to his humor.
When an irate citizen with a grievance called and poured it out upon
him, accompanied by a variegated assortment of profanity, Lincoln
waited patiently till the speaker halted to take breath, and then
inquired: “You’re an Episcopalian, aren’t you?”
“Why do you ask that?” demanded the visitor, momentarily forgetting his
anger in his surprise.
“Because,” answered Lincoln, “Seward’s an Episcopalian, and you swear
just like him.”
The Reverend Doctor Bellows of New York, as chairman of the Sanitary
Commission, called once during the Civil War to tell Lincoln of a number
of things he ought to do. Lincoln listened with the most flattering
attention, slightly inclining his head in recognition of every separate
reminder of a duty left unperformed, and at the close of the catalogue
remained a minute or two in silent meditation. Then, throwing one of his
long legs over an arm of his chair, he looked up with a quizzical smile.
“Dominie,” said he, “how much will you take to swap jobs with me?”
He could not always keep his humor out of his official communications,
as in this despatch to General Hooker in Virginia: “If the head of Lee’s
army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be pretty slim
somewhere. Couldn’t you break him?”
Indeed, it was his instinctive discernment of the ridiculous side of
everything which, though it gave his enemies their chance to assail him
as a mountebank and a jester, undoubtedly served as a buffer to many a
heavy blow. Sometimes his laughs were at his own expense. About the
middle of the war a young man from a distant State procured an interview
with him, to expound a project for visiting Richmond in the disguise of
a wandering organ-grinder and making drawings of the defenses of the
city for the use of the Union commanders. Lincoln was so impressed that
he contributed one hundred and fifty dollars or more to purchase the
organ and pay other preliminary expenses. The young man disappeared for
some weeks and then returned with a thrilling account of his adventures,
and with plats and charts covering everything of military importance
around Richmond and at various points on the way thither. As a reward,
the President nominated him for a second lieutenancy in the army and
spurred some other patriot into sending him a brand new uniform and
sword. After a little, and by accident, it came out that the youth had
never been anywhere near Richmond, but had spent the President’s money
on a trip to his home, where, at his ease, he had prepared his
fictitious report and maps. Of course his nomination was at once
withdrawn; but Lincoln was so amused at his own childlike credulity
that he could not bring himself to punish the offense as it deserved.
The Cabinet were often annoyed at the obtrusion of the President’s taste
for a joke at what seemed to them inopportune moments--especially
Secretary Stanton, whose sense of humor was not keen. On September 22,
1862, they were peremptorily summoned to a meeting at the White House.
They found the President reading a book, from which he barely looked up
till all were in their seats. Then he said: “Gentlemen, did you ever
read anything from Artemus Ward? Let me read you a chapter which is very
funny.” When the reading was finished, he laughed heartily, looking
around the circle for a response, but nobody even smiled; if any
countenance revealed anything, it was irritation. “Well,” said he,
“let’s have another chapter;” and he suited action to word. Finding his
listeners no more sympathetic than before, he threw the book down with a
deep sigh and exclaimed: “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the
fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should
die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.” With that, he ran his
hand down into his tall hat, which sat on the table near him, and drew
forth a sheet of paper, from which he read aloud, with the most
impressive emphasis, the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.
“If any of you have any suggestions to make as to the form of this paper
or its composition,” said he, “I shall be glad to hear them. But”--and
the deliberateness with which he pronounced the next words left no doubt
that the die had already been cast--“this paper is to issue!”
The Lincolns brought two young children with them into the White House,
both boys. Of the elder, Willie, we hear little, except that he died
there, and that his loss added one more to the many lines which the war
had worn into the brow of his father. The younger boy, “Tad,” is better
known to the public through the exploitation of his juvenile pranks by
the newspapers and his appearance in some of the President’s portraits.
Many stories are told of his fondness for bringing ragged urchins from
the streets into the kitchen and feeding them, to the sore distress of
the cook and sometimes to the disturbance of the domestic routine in
other ways; but for whatever he wished to do in the charitable line he
found his father a faithful ally. There is a pretty tale of his having
espied in the lower corridor of the White House, one very rainy day, a
young man and woman, rather shabbily dressed, who seemed depressed in
spirits and anxious to consult with some one. Tad called his father’s
attention to them, and the President went up and asked them what they
wished. His sympathetic manner loosed their tongues and they told him
their story.
It appeared that the girl was from Virginia and had run away from home
to marry her lover, an honorably discharged soldier from Indiana. They
had met by arrangement in Washington, but they were strangers there and
very unsophisticated, and had little money to pay a minister or spend on
hotel accommodations; so they had been wandering about the city for
hours, not knowing where to go, and had taken refuge in the White House
from the storm. They had no idea that they were talking to the President
till he made himself known. With characteristic directness, he sent for
a clergyman of his acquaintance and had the nuptial knot tied in his
presence. Then he invited bride and groom to remain as his guests till
the next day, when the weather cleared and they went their way
rejoicing.
Although Mrs. Lincoln was the titular head of the President’s household,
the woman recognized as the social leader of the administration was Kate
Chase, daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. She was handsome,
accomplished, and, after her marriage with William Sprague, the young
War Governor of Rhode Island, rich as well. Mrs. Lincoln never liked
her, but the President’s gift for peacemaking came into action here,
and there was no public display of the coolness of feeling between them.
Mrs. Sprague had a strong taste for politics, and her chief ambition was
to see her father President; but Lincoln cut off that chance at the
critical moment by making him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Among
the young and rising Congressmen with whom Mrs. Sprague was brought into
contact during this period was Roscoe Conkling, a Representative from
New York, who later became a Senator. He was the pink of elegance in
person and attire, of stately and somewhat condescending manners, and
master of the arts of verbal expression. They formed a firm friendship
which lasted as long as both lived. Edgewood, the Chase home on the
northern border of the city, was for many years one of the show places
of Washington, and after Chase’s death Conkling procured from Congress
an act exempting it from taxation as a tribute to the public services of
its former owner. Another young Representative of whom Mrs. Sprague saw
almost as much as of Conkling, but liked less, was James G. Blaine of
Maine, a brilliant orator who in after years became Conkling’s most
powerful adversary.
A warm friend of Chase’s who used to drop in at Edgewood whenever he was
in Washington was Horace Greeley, editor of the _New York Tribune_. He
was a quaint character, who wore his clothes awry and his hair long and
always tousled. His face he kept clean shaven, but raised a heavy blond
beard under his chin and jaws; and this, with his ruddy cheeks, blue
eyes, beaming spectacles, and generally bland aspect, made him look like
the typical back-country farmer of theatrical tradition. He accentuated
the peculiarities of his appearance by affecting a large soft hat and
not spotless white overcoat, the pockets of the latter habitually
bulging with newspapers. His handwriting was as unconventional as his
attire, and compositors in the _Tribune_ office had to be specially
trained in deciphering it, for Mr. Greeley was often unable to read it
himself after the subject-matter had grown cold in his mind.
Greeley was an anti-slavery man, but not an aggressive abolitionist;
nevertheless he smiled benignantly upon the work of the Hutchinson
family and took some pains to introduce them in Washington wherever
their music would be likely to meet with a cordial reception. The
Hutchinsons were a Massachusetts family of sixteen brothers and sisters,
nearly all of them bearing Bible names given them by a deeply religious
mother. They learned as children to lead the singing in the Baptist
church attended by their parents, and, as their musical fame spread, one
of the
[Illustration: _The “Old Capitol”_]
brothers developed a talent as a versifier and began writing songs
adapted to their interpretation, breathing an earnest spirit of
patriotism and pleading for human freedom. From giving concerts in their
native town and neighborhood, they gradually essayed more and more
ambitious ventures, and with Greeley’s aid came under the favorable
notice of the administration. Lincoln, realizing the appeal their homely
entertainments would make to the Union volunteers, gave them a roving
commission to visit the camps of the Army of the Potomac and encouraged
them to take in the recruiting stations wherever they happened to be.
They mixed fun with their seriousness in such proportions as they
believed would please all classes in their audiences; and in their way
they did as much to keep the soldiers cheerful as Tom Paine had done
fourscore years before.
So accustomed is the public mind to associating Lincoln and Grant as
coworkers for the Union cause that few persons suspect that the two men
never met till the Civil War was three-fourths over. Then, Congress
having revived the grade of Lieutenant-general of the Army, Grant was
ordered to Washington to receive his promotion. Arriving early in March,
1864, he went at once to the White House, where the President happened
to be holding a reception in the east room. He held back till most of
the people had passed, when Lincoln, recognizing him from his portraits,
turned to him with hand outstretched, saying: “This is General Grant, is
it not?”
“It is, Mr. President,” answered Grant. And with this self-introduction,
fittingly simple, the two great figures of the war faced each other for
the first time.