Team Of Rivals Part 29

That night, Emilie Helm later recalled, her husband was unable to sleep. The next day, he returned to the White House. "I am going home," he told Lincoln. "I will answer you from there. The position you offer me is beyond what I had expected, even in my most hopeful dreams. You have been very generous to me, Mr. Lincoln, generous beyond anything I have ever known. I had no claim upon you, for I opposed your candidacy, and did what I could to prevent your election.... Don't let this offer be made public yet. I will send you my answer in a few days." When Helm reached Kentucky and spoke with General Simon Bolivar Buckner and his friends, he realized he must decline Lincoln's offer and "cast his destinies with his native southland." The time spent in drafting his reply to Lincoln proved to be, he told a friend, "the most painful hour of his life." Soon after, he received a commission in the Confederate Army, where he eventually became a brigadier general.

EACH DAY BROUGHT NEW conflicts and decisions as Lincoln struggled to stabilize the beleaguered Union. In a contentious cabinet meeting, Seward argued that a blockade of Southern ports should be inst.i.tuted at once. Recognized by the law of nations, the blockade would grant the Union the power to search and seize vessels. Gideon Welles countered that to proclaim a blockade would mistakenly acknowledge that the Union was engaged in a war with the South and encourage foreign powers to extend belligerent rights to the Confederacy. Better to simply close the ports against the insurrection and use the policing powers of munic.i.p.al law to seize entering or exiting s.h.i.+ps. The cabinet split down the middle. Chase, Blair, and Bates backed Welles, while Smith and Cameron sided with Seward. Lincoln concluded that Seward's position was stronger and issued his formal blockade proclamation on April 19. Welles, despite his initial hesitation, would execute the blockade with great energy and skill.

The commencement of war found Welles and the Navy Department in a grave situation. Southerners, who had made up the majority of navy officers in peacetime, resigned in droves every day. Treason was rampant. Early in April, Lincoln had graciously attended a wedding celebration for the daughter of Captain Frank Buchanan, the commandant of the Navy Yard in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Two weeks later, expecting that his home state of Maryland "would soon secede and join the Confederacy," Buchanan resigned his commission, vowing that he would "not take any part in the defence of this Yard from this date."

Meanwhile, the secession of Virginia jeopardized the Norfolk Navy Yard. With its strategic location, immense dry dock, great supply of cannons and guns, and premier vessel, the Merrimac, the Norfolk yard was indispensable to both sides. Welles had encouraged Lincoln to reinforce the yard before Sumter fell, but Lincoln had resisted any action that would provoke Virginia. This decision would seriously compromise the Union's naval strength. By the time Welles received orders to send troops to Norfolk, it was too late. The Confederates had secured control of the Navy Yard. The calamitous news, Charles Francis Adams recorded in his diary, sent him into a state of "extreme uneasiness" about the future of the Union. "We the children of the third and fourth generations are doomed to pay the penalties of the compromises made by the first."

The first casualties of the war came on April 19, 1861, the same day the blockade was announced. When the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment reached Baltimore by rail en route to defend Was.h.i.+ngton, the men were attacked by a secessionist mob. "The scene while the troops were changing cars was indescribably fearful," the Baltimore Sun reported. The enraged crowd, branding the troops "n.i.g.g.e.r thieves," a.s.saulted them with knives and revolvers. Four soldiers and nine civilians were killed. As George Templeton Strong noted in his diary: "It's a notable coincidence that the first blood in this great struggle is drawn by Ma.s.sachusetts men on the anniversary" of the battles of Lexington and Concord that touched off the Revolutionary War.

The president immediately summoned the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland to the White House. Still hoping to keep Maryland in the Union, Lincoln agreed to "make no point of bringing [further troops] through Baltimore" where strident secessionists were concentrated, but insisted that the troops must be allowed to go "around Baltimore." Shortly after midnight, an angry committee of delegates from Baltimore arrived at the White House to confront Lincoln. John Hay took them to see Cameron, but kept them from the president until morning. The delegation demanded that troops be kept not only out of Baltimore but out of the entire state of Maryland. Lincoln adamantly refused to comply. "I must have troops to defend this Capital," he replied. "Geographically it lies surrounded by the soil of Maryland.... Our men are not moles, and can't dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can't fly through the air. There is no way but to march across, and that they must do."

The day the war claimed its first casualties was also the day when "the censors.h.i.+p of the press was exercised for the first time at the telegraph office," a veteran journalist recalled. "When correspondents wished to telegraph the lists of the dead and wounded of the Ma.s.sachusetts Sixth they found a squad of the National Rifles in possession of the office, with orders to permit the transmission of no messages." Infuriated, the correspondents rode to Seward's house to complain. The secretary of state argued that if they sent "accounts of the killed and wounded," they "would only influence public sentiment, and be an obstacle in the path of reconciliation." The issue became moot when reporters learned that secessionists had cut all the telegraph wires in Baltimore and demolished all the railroad bridges surrounding the city. Was.h.i.+ngton was isolated from all communication with the North.

For the next week, with wires cut and mails stopped, the residents of Was.h.i.+ngton lived in a state of constant fear. Visitors abandoned the great hotels. Stores closed. Windows and doors were barricaded. "Literally," Villard noted, "it was as though the government of a great nation had been suddenly removed to an island in mid-ocean in a state of entire isolation." Anxious citizens crowded the train station every day, hopeful to greet an influx of the Northern troops needed to protect the vulnerable city. Rumors spread quickly. Across the Potomac, the campfires of the Confederate soldiers were visible. It appeared they were ready to lay siege to Was.h.i.+ngton. Waiting for the attack, War Secretary Cameron slept in his office. "Here we were in this city," Nicolay wrote his fiancee, "in charge of all the public buildings, property and archives, with only about 2000 reliable men to defend it."

Elsewhere in the North, anxiety was nearly as great. "No despatches from Was.h.i.+ngton," Strong reported from New York. "People talked darkly of its being attacked before our reinforcements come to the rescue, and everyone said we must not be surprised by news that Lincoln and Seward and all the Administration are prisoners." Kate and Nettie Chase were in New York visiting Chase's wealthy friend Hiram Barney, who had received the powerful post of collector of customs in New York. Reflecting a general fear that the "rebels are at Was.h.i.+ngton or near it," Barney insisted that the girls stay in New York until the capital was out of danger. For Kate, so pa.s.sionately attached to her father, these were difficult hours. "I can see that K. is anxious for her father," Barney wrote Chase; "it may be seen in many ways-in spite of her efforts to be calm & conceal it." Kate leaped at the chance to accompany Major Robert Anderson, who had just arrived in New York from Fort Sumter and was heading to Was.h.i.+ngton to report to the president.

The little party made its way to Philadelphia and then caught a steamer from Perryville to Annapolis, bypa.s.sing the blocked railroad tracks in Baltimore. En route, however, they were approached by an enemy vessel, which fired a warning shot. Fearing that the Confederates had intelligence that Anderson was on board and were intending to capture him, the captain placed a cannon in position and "crowded on steam." While Kate and Nettie remained below with the hatches closed, the steamer churned ahead, eventually gaining enough ground that its adversary "ran up a black flag, changed her course, and was soon out of sight." From Annapolis, they reached Was.h.i.+ngton and were reunited with their relieved father.

These "were terrible days of suspense" for the Seward family in Auburn as well. Young Will Seward, now twenty-two, made nightly forays to the local telegraph office, hoping in vain for news from his father. In daily letters, Frances entreated her husband to let her join him. "It is hard to be so far from you when your life is in danger," she pleaded. No reply came to her appeal.

In public, Lincoln maintained his calm, but the growing desperation of the government's position filled him with dread. Late one night, after "a day of gloom and doubt," John Hay saw him staring out the window in futile expectation of the troops promised by various Northern states, including New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. "Why don't they come!" he asked. "Why don't they come!" The next day, visiting the injured men of the Ma.s.sachusetts Sixth, he was heard to say: "I don't believe there is any North. The Seventh Regiment [from New York] is a myth. R. Island is not known in our geography any longer. You [Ma.s.sachusetts men] are the only Northern realities."

For days, the rioting in Baltimore continued. Fears multiplied that the Maryland legislature, which had convened in Annapolis, was intending to vote for secession. The cabinet debated whether the president should bring in the army "to arrest, or disperse the members of that body." Lincoln decided that "it would not be justifiable." It was a wise determination, for in the end, though secessionist mobs continued to disrupt the peace of Maryland for weeks, the state never joined the Confederacy, and eventually became, as Lincoln predicted, "the first of the redeemed."

Receiving word that the mobs intended to destroy the train tracks between Annapolis and Philadelphia in order to prevent the long-awaited troops from reaching the beleaguered capital, Lincoln made a controversial decision. If resistance along the military line between Was.h.i.+ngton and Philadelphia made it "necessary to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus for the public safety," Lincoln authorized General Scott to do so. In Lincoln's words, General Scott could "arrest, and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety." Seward later claimed that he had urged a wavering Lincoln to take this step, convincing him that "perdition was the sure penalty of further hesitation." There may be truth in this, for Seward was initially put in charge of administering the program.

Lincoln had not issued a sweeping order but a directive confined to this single route. Still, by rescinding the basic const.i.tutional protection against arbitrary arrest, he aroused the wrath of Chief Justice Taney, who was on circuit duty in Maryland at the time. Ruling in favor of one of the prisoners, John Merryman, Taney blasted Lincoln and maintained that only Congress could suspend the writ.

Attorney General Bates, though reluctant to oppose Taney, upheld Lincoln's suspension. Over a period of weeks, he drafted a twenty-six-page opinion, arguing that "in a time like the present, when the very existence of the Nation is a.s.sailed, by a great and dangerous insurrection, the President has the lawful discretionary power to arrest and hold in custody, persons known to have criminal intercourse with the insurgents."

Lincoln later defended his decision in his first message to Congress. As chief executive, he was responsible for ensuring "that the laws be faithfully executed." An insurrection "in nearly one-third of the States" had subverted the "whole of the laws...are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" His logic was unanswerable, but as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued in another context many years later, the "grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when const.i.tutional rights seem too extravagant to endure." Welles seemed to understand the complex balancing act, correctly predicting to his wife that the "government will, doubtless, be stronger after the conflict is over than it ever has been, and there will be less liberty."

Finally, after a week of mounting uneasiness, the Seventh Regiment of New York arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton. The New York Times reported that the "steps and balconies of the hotels, the windows of the private houses, the doorways of the stores, and even the roofs of many houses were crowded with men, women and children, shouting, and waving handkerchiefs and flags." In the days that followed, more regiments arrived. Mary and her friends watched the regimental parades from a window in the mansion. The presence of the troops considerably lightened Lincoln's mood. He blithely told John Hay that in addition to a.s.suring the safety of the capital, he would eventually "go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing her." Hay was so happy to hear these words that he "felt like letting off an Illinois yell."

Frances Seward was greatly relieved when she received a letter from her husband confirming that more than eight thousand troops were in Was.h.i.+ngton. He did not, however, grant her request to join him there. His daughter-in-law, Anna, had almost completed decorating their new house on Lafayette Square. The carpets were down, and hundreds of books already lined the library shelves. They would move in at the end of April. Unlike Frances, Anna loved the bustle of Seward's life. "For six or eight nights we had visitors at all hours," she cheerfully reported. Perhaps Seward, antic.i.p.ating the trials such a hectic environment would cause his wife, deemed it better for her to stay in their tranquil house in Auburn.

Furthermore, he knew they would argue about the purpose of the war. Frances, unlike her husband, had already decided that the princ.i.p.al goal was to end slavery. She recognized that the war might last years and entail "immense sacrifice of human life," but the eradication of slavery justified it all. "The true, strong, glorious North is at last fairly roused," she wrote her husband, "the enthusiasm of the people-high & low rich & poor...all enlisted at last in the cause of human rights. No concession from the South now will avail to stem the torrent.-No compromise will be made with slavery of black or white. G.o.d has heard the prayer of the oppressed and a fearful retribution awaits the oppressors."

In her all-embracing vision of the war, Frances stood at this point in opposition not only to her husband but to most of the cabinet and a substantial majority of Northerners. Still certain it would be a quick war with an easy reconciliation, Seward told a friend, "there would be no serious fighting after all; the South would collapse and everything be serenely adjusted." Bates wanted a limited war so as "to disturb as little as possible the accustomed occupations of the people," including Southern slaveholding. Blair agreed, counseling Lincoln that it would be a "fatal error" if the contest became "one between the whole people of the South and the people of the North."

To Lincoln's mind, the battle to save the Union contained an even larger purpose than ending slavery, which was after all sanctioned by the very Const.i.tution he was sworn to uphold. "I consider the central idea pervading this struggle," he told Hay in early May, "is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves."

The philosopher John Stuart Mill shared Lincoln's s.p.a.cious understanding of the sectional crisis, predicting that a Southern victory "would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world." From the opposite point of view, a member of the British n.o.bility expressed the hope that with "the dissolution of the Union," men would "live to see an aristocracy established in America."

In his Farewell Address, George Was.h.i.+ngton had given voice to this transcendent idea of Union. "It is of infinite moment," George Was.h.i.+ngton said, "that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity." Foreseeing the potential for dissension, Was.h.i.+ngton advised vigilance against "the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."

It was this mystical idea of popular government and democracy that propelled Abraham Lincoln to call forth the thousands of soldiers who would rise up to defend the sacred Union created by the Founding Fathers.

IN THE DAYS BEFORE the troops arrived, rumors spread that the White House would be targeted for a direct attack. Late one evening, an agitated visitor arrived to inform the president that "a mortar battery has been planted on the Virginia heights commanding the town." John Hay recorded in his diary that he "had to do some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the a.s.sa.s.sination suspicion." Only when troops appeared in force was she able to relax. "Thousands of soldiers are guarding us," she wrote a friend in Springfield, "and if there is safety in numbers, we have every reason, to feel secure." Mary's cousin Elizabeth Grimsley was equally relieved. "The intense excitement has blown over," she told a friend. "Was.h.i.+ngton is very quiet and pleasant. We enjoy the beautiful drives around the city."

With little understanding of the peril threatening the city and their well-being, Willie and Tad found the period of Was.h.i.+ngton's isolation exhilarating. Tad boasted at Sunday School that he had no fear of the "pluguglies," as the rowdy secessionists in Baltimore were called. "You ought to see the fort we've got on the roof of our house. Let 'em come. Willie and I are ready for 'em." Though the fort consisted of only "a small log" symbolizing a cannon and several decommissioned rifles, the Lincoln boys developed elaborate plans to defend the White House from the roof. And they loved visiting the troops quartered in the East Room of the White House and in the Capitol, where Hay noted the contrast "between the grey haired dignity" that had previously prevailed in the Senate and the young soldiers, "scattered over the desks chairs and galleries some loafing, many writing letters, slowly and with plough hardened hands."

The Taft boys and their sixteen-year-old sister, Julia, were now almost daily guests at the White House. Like Willie, Bud was "rather pale and languid, not very robust," but a "pretty good" student. Holly, as described by his father, Judge Taft, resembled Tad-"all motion and activity, never idle, impatient of restraint, quick to learn when he tries, impetuous, all 'go ahead.'" In Bud and Holly, Willie and Tad each found a best friend. Julia, meanwhile, formed a friends.h.i.+p with Mary Lincoln. For the rest of her life, Julia retained warm memories of both the first lady and the president. "More than once," she recalled, Mary had said to her: "I wish I had a little girl like you, Julia." Mary even shared her memories of the death of her son Edward, and they "wept together." In the evenings, when the president unwound in the family sitting room, the four boys would beg him to tell a story. Julia long remembered the scene, as the president launched into one of his amusing tales: "Tad perched precariously on the back of the big chair, Willie on one knee, Bud on the other, both leaning against him," while Holly sat "on the arm of the chair."

As a proper young lady, Julia was appalled by some of the boys' antics. She refused to join in when she found the four of them sitting on the president, attempting to pin him to the floor. She was embarra.s.sed when they interrupted cabinet meetings to invite members and the president to attend one of their theatrical performances in the attic. Though Lincoln himself never seemed to mind, taking great pleasure in their fun, Julia felt she was responsible for curbing their youthful exuberance. Sometimes Willie would help to restore order. He was, Julia wrote, "the most lovable boy" she had ever known, "bright, sensible, sweet-tempered and gentle-mannered." More often he would simply retreat to his mother's room, where he loved to read poetry and write verses.

Despite Julia's great affection for Mary, she was stunned by the first lady's overbearing need to get "what she wanted when she wanted it," regardless of how others might be hurt or inconvenienced. A curious example of such behavior took place when Julia's mother attended a White House concert, decked out in one of her fas.h.i.+onable bonnets. When Mary greeted her, she looked closely at the beautiful purple strings on the bonnet and then took Mrs. Taft aside. Watching the scene, Julia was "puzzled at the look of amazement" on her mother's face, not fathoming why she "should look so surprised at a pa.s.sing compliment." It turned out that Mary's milliner had created a purple-trimmed bonnet but lacked sufficient purple ribbon for the strings. Mary hoped to acquire Mrs. Taft's purple strings!

Few recognized the insecurity behind Mary's outlandish behavior, the terrible needs behind the ostentation and apparent abrasiveness. While initially thrilled to move into the White House, Mary soon found herself in the compromising situation of having one full brother, three half brothers, and three brothers-in-law in the Confederate Army. From the start, she was not fully trusted in the North. As the wife of President Lincoln, she was vilified in the South. As a Westerner, she did not meet the standards of Eastern society. Feeling pressure on all sides, she was determined to present herself as an accomplished and sophisticated woman; in short, the most elegant and admired lady in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Driven by the need to prove herself to society, Mary Lincoln became obsessed with recasting her own image and renovating that of her new home, the White House. Unattended for years, the White House had come to look like "an old and unsuccessful hotel." Elizabeth Grimsley was stunned to find that "the family apartments were in a deplorably shabby condition as to furniture, (which looked as if it has been brought in by the first President)." The public rooms, too, were in poor shape, with threadbare, tobacco-stained rugs, torn curtains, and broken chairs.

The sorry condition of the White House provided the energetic Mary with a worthy ambition. She would restore the people's home to its former elegance as a symbol of her husband's strength and the Union's power. In another era, this ambition might have been applauded, but in the midst of a civil war, it was regarded as frivolous.

In the middle of May, Mary went on a shopping trip to Philadelphia and New York, taking along her cousin Elizabeth Grimsley and William Wood, the commissioner of public buildings. Having discovered that each president was allotted a $20,000 allowance to maintain the White House, she bought new furniture, elegant curtains, and expensive carpets for the public rooms to replace their worn predecessors. For the state guest room, she purchased what later became known as the "Lincoln bed," an eight-foot-long rosewood bedstead with an ornate headboard carved with "exotic birds, grapevines and cl.u.s.ters of grapes." Again, merchants at the clothing stores were more than willing to extend the first lady credit. The press exaggerated her shopping spree, claiming she had purchased thousands of dollars of merchandise in stores she had never even visited. Exaggeration notwithstanding, when she returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, the bills added up. She received a $7,500 invoice for curtain materials and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and owed $900 for a new carriage. And the redecorating process to make the nation's house a fit emblem for the country and for herself had just begun.

Never one to be outdone, Kate Chase was hard at work decorating her father's new home-a large three-story brick mansion at Sixth and E Street NW. Though the secretary of the treasury worried constantly about money, he understood the importance of having an elegant home with expansive public rooms appropriate for entertaining senators, congressmen, diplomats, and generals. In the years ahead, he intended to gather friends and a.s.sociates who would be ready to back him when the time came for the next presidential election. The lease on the house came to $1,200 a year; when the furnis.h.i.+ng costs were added on, Chase found himself in debt. Unable to sell off his Cincinnati and Columbus properties in the depressed real estate market that prevailed in Ohio, he was forced to borrow $10,000 from his old friend Hiram Barney. It must have been painfully awkward for the straitlaced model of probity to request the loan, particularly since Barney, as collector of customs in New York, was technically his subordinate. Nevertheless, Chase persuaded himself that a person in his position, who had given so much to the public for so many years, deserved to live in a distinguished home.

So, like Mary Lincoln, Kate traveled to New York and Philadelphia to purchase carpets, draperies, and furniture. The house, complete with six servants, would prove perfect for entertaining, although Chase later complained that the distance from the White House, in comparison with Seward's new lodgings at Lafayette Square, denied him an equal intimacy with the president. He apparently never considered that Lincoln might simply find Seward more lively and amiable company.

None of her father's social demeanor or leaden eminence hindered Kate. As the mistress of his Was.h.i.+ngton household, she managed "in a single season" to be "as much at home in the society of the national capital as if she had lived there for a lifetime." Dozens of young men paid court to her. A contemporary reporter noted that "no other maiden in Was.h.i.+ngton had more suitors at her feet." Yet, he continued, "it was early noticed that among all the young men who flocked to the Chase home, and who were eager to obey her slightest nod, there was not one who seemed to obtain even the remotest hold upon her affections"-until Rhode Island's young governor, William Sprague, came to Was.h.i.+ngton and drew her attention.

Kate had first met the fabulously wealthy Sprague, whose family owned one of the largest textile manufacturing establishments in the country, the previous September in Cleveland. Sprague had come to Ohio at the head of an official delegation to dedicate a statue of Rhode Island native Commodore Oliver Perry, which was to be placed in the public square. Introduced at the festive ball that followed the ceremony, the two immediately hit it off. "For the rest of the evening," one observer recalled, "whenever we saw one of them we were pretty sure to see the other."

For his part, Sprague would never forget his first sight of Kate, "dressed in that celebrated dress," when "you became my gaze and the gaze of all observers, and you left the house taking with you my admiration and my appreciation, but more than all my pulsations. I remember well how I was possessed that night and the following day." Years later, he a.s.sured her he could "recall the sensation better than if it was yesterday."

Ten years Kate's senior, William Sprague had a.s.sumed responsibility for the family business at an early age. When William was thirteen, his father, Amasa Sprague, was shot down on the street as he walked home from his cotton mill one evening. The elder Sprague had been involved in a nasty fight over the renewal of a liquor license. The owner of the gin mill shut down by Sprague was arrested and hanged for the murder. Control of the company pa.s.sed to William's uncle, who determined that young William should cut short his education to learn the business from the bottom up. "I was thrust into the counting-room, performing its lowest drudgeries, raising myself to all of its highest positions," he later recalled. When his uncle died of typhoid fever, William, at twenty-six, took over.

As the largest employer in Rhode Island, with more than ten thousand workers, young Sprague wielded enormous political influence. He capitalized on his resources when he ran for governor in 1860 and won on the Democratic ticket, spending over $100,000 of his own money. After the attack on Fort Sumter, Sprague organized the First Rhode Island Regiment, providing the state with "a loan of one hundred thousand dollars to outfit the troops," while his brother supplied the artillery battery with ninety-six horses. When the lavishly supplied volunteer regiment arrived in the threatened capital, the men were received as heroes. On April 29, the regiment was officially sworn in before the president and General Scott after a dress parade from its headquarters at the Patent Office to the White House. "The entire street was filled with spectators from Seventh to Ninth street," the Evening Star reported, "and many were the complimentary remarks made by the mult.i.tude upon the general appearance and movements of the regiment."

All the members of the cabinet were present at the ceremony, joining in the rousing greeting for the resplendent troops. Though Sprague stood only five feet six inches tall, his military uniform and his "yellow-plumed hat" undoubtedly increased his stature. John Hay commented after meeting the young man with brown wavy hair, gray eyes, and a thin mustache that while he appeared at first "a small, insignificant youth, who bought his place," he "is certainly all right now. He is very proud of his Company of its wealth and social standing." Hay, too, was impressed by the number of eminent young men in Sprague's regiment. "When men like these leave their horses, their women and their wine, harden their hands, eat crackers for dinner, wear a s.h.i.+rt for a week and never black their shoes,-all for a principle, it is hard to set any bounds to the possibilities of such an army." Was.h.i.+ngtonians nicknamed the First Rhode Island "the millionaires' regiment" and dubbed Sprague the most eligible bachelor in the city.

It was only a matter of days before Sprague called on Kate. Unlike earlier tentative suitors, intimidated perhaps by Kate's beauty and brains, Sprague moved confidently to establish a place in her heart, becoming "the first, the only man," she said afterward, "that had found a lodgment there." Years later, writing to Kate, Sprague vividly recalled their earlier courts.h.i.+p days. "Do you remember the hesitating kiss I stole, and the glowing, blus.h.i.+ng face that responded to the touch. I well remember it all. The step forward from the Cleveland meeting, and the enhanced poetical sensation, for it was poetry, if there ever is such in life."

For Kate, who acknowledged that she was "accustomed to command and be obeyed, to wish and be antic.i.p.ated," Sprague's c.o.c.ksure att.i.tude must have presented a welcome challenge. In the weeks that followed, the young couple saw each other frequently. By summer's end, Nettie Chase told Kate that she liked Sprague "very much" and hoped the two would marry. Nettie's hopes were put on hold, however, as the war continued to escalate, changing the course of countless lives throughout the fractured nation.

The tragedies of war came home to the Lincolns with the death of Elmer Ellsworth on May 24, 1861. Young Ellsworth had read law in Lincoln's office and had become so close to the family that he made the journey from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton with them, catching the measles from Willie and Tad along the way. Once in the capital, Ellsworth joined the war effort by organizing a group of New York firemen into a Zouave unit, distinguished by their exotic and colorful uniforms. After Virginia seceded from the Union, Ellsworth's Zouaves were among the first troops to cross the Potomac River into Alexandria, a town counting ardent secessionists among its residents, including the proprietor of the Marshall House. Spying a Confederate flag waving above the hotel, Ellsworth dashed up to the roof to confiscate it. Having captured the flag, Ellsworth met the armed hotel manager, secessionist James Jackson, on his way down the stairs. Jackson killed Ellsworth on the spot, only to be shot by Ellsworth's men.

Ellsworth's death, as one of the first casualties of the war, was national news and mourned across the country. The bereaved president wrote a personal note of condolence to Ellsworth's parents, praising the young man whose body lay in state in the East Room. Nicolay confessed that he had been "quite unable to keep the tears out of my eyes" whenever he thought of Ellsworth. After the funeral, Mary was presented with the bloodied flag for which Ellsworth had given his life; but the horrified first lady, not wanting to be reminded of the sad event, quickly had it packed away.

WITH MORE THAN ENOUGH TROUBLES to occupy him at home, Lincoln faced a tangled situation abroad. A member of the British Parliament had introduced a resolution urging England to accord the Southern Confederacy belligerent status. If pa.s.sed, the resolution would give Confederate s.h.i.+ps the same rights in neutral ports enjoyed by Federal s.h.i.+ps. Britain's textile economy depended on cotton furnished by Southern plantations. Unless the British broke the Union blockade to ensure a continuing supply of cotton, the great textile mills in Manchester and Leeds would be forced to cut back or come to a halt. Merchants would lose money, and thousands of workers would lose their jobs.

Seward feared that England would back the South simply to feed its own factories. While the "younger branch of the British stock" might support freedom, he told his wife, the aristocrats, concerned more with economics than morality, would become "the ally of the traitors." To prevent this from happening, he was "trying to get a bold remonstrance through the Cabinet, before it is too late." He hoped not only to halt further thoughts of recognition of the Confederacy but to ensure that the British would respect the Union blockade and refuse, even informally, to meet with the three Southern commissioners who had been sent to London to negotiate for the Confederacy. To achieve these goals, Seward was willing to wage war. "G.o.d d.a.m.n 'em, I'll give 'em h.e.l.l," he told Sumner, thrusting his foot in the air as he spoke.

On May 21, Seward brought Lincoln a surly letter drafted for Charles Francis Adams to read verbatim to Lord John Russell, Britain's foreign secretary. Lincoln recognized immediately that the tone was too abrasive for a diplomatic communication. While decisive action might be necessary to prevent Britain from any form of overt sympathy with the South, Lincoln had no intention of fighting two wars at once. All his life, he had taken care not to send letters written in anger. Now, to mitigate the harshness of the draft, he altered the tone of the letter at numerous points. Where Seward had claimed that the president was "surprised and grieved" that no protest had been made against unofficial meetings with the Southern commissioners, Lincoln wrote simply that the "President regrets." Where Seward threatened that "no one of these proceedings [informal or formal recognition, or breaking the blockade] will be borne," Lincoln s.h.i.+fted the phrase to "will pa.s.s unnoticed."

Most important, where Seward had indicated that the letter be read directly to the British foreign secretary, Lincoln insisted that it serve merely for Adams's guidance and should not "be read, or shown to any one." Still, the central message remained clear: a warning to Britain that if the vexing issues were not resolved, and Britain decided "to fraternize with our domestic enemy," then a war between the United States and Britain "may ensue," caused by "the action of Great Britain, not our own." In that event, Britain would forever lose "the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim."