Part 46 (1/2)

Lincoln was particularly concerned about Ohio, where Democrats had chosen Copperhead Clement Vallandigham as their gubernatorial candidate against the pro-Union John Brough. Conducting his campaign from exile in Canada, Vallandigham was running on a platform condemning the war as a failure and calling for ”peace at any price”-even if slavery was maintained and the Union divided. Lincoln was disheartened that the historic Democratic Party had selected ”a man [such] as Vallandigham” for ”their representative man.” Whatever votes he received would be ”a discredit to the country.”

In Pennsylvania, the Democrats were running George Woodward, an archly conservative judge, against Republican governor Andrew Curtin. Though not as incendiary as Vallandigham's, Woodward's opinions were well known. ”Slavery,” he had once said, ”was intended as a special blessing to the people of the United States.” The contest tightened when the Woodward campaign received a welcome letter of support from George McClellan, written from his residence in New Jersey. If he were voting in Pennsylvania, McClellan wrote, he would ”give to Judge Woodward my voice & my vote.”

Lincoln, however, had learned from the bitter election of the previous year and took steps to ensure better results. Any government clerk from Ohio or Pennsylvania who wanted to go home to vote was given a fifteenday leave and provided with a free railroad pa.s.s for the trip. Recognizing that the absence of the army vote had been devastating to Republicans in 1862, the president also arranged for soldiers in the field to receive furloughs to return home to vote.

A week before the election, Chase called on Lincoln with a suggestion. If the president granted him a leave of absence from the Treasury, he, like his clerks, would go home to vote the Union ticket. Lincoln had no doubt that Chase would use the campaign trip to bolster his own drive for the presidency. Nevertheless, Chase's presence in Ohio might well help the Union ticket.

To ensure publicity, Chase invited the journalist Whitelaw Reid to accompany him on the train to Columbus and write regular dispatches for the Cincinnati Gazette and the a.s.sociated Press as they traveled around the state. Advance word of the train's arrival was circulated, and an enormous crowd greeted Chase in Columbus at 2 a.m. The delighted secretary was met with ”prolonged cheering, and shouts of 'Hurrah for our old Governor,' 'How are you, old Greenbacks?' 'Glad to see you home again.'” Chase indicated his grat.i.tude for this ”most unexpected welcome,” and proceeded to give a speech that ostensibly praised the president as a man who ”is honestly and earnestly doing his best,” even though the war was not being prosecuted ”so fast as it ought.” With a different leader, he hinted, ”some mistakes might have been avoided-some misfortunes averted.”

At each stop in his swing through Ohio, Chase encountered huge crowds of supporters. ”I come not to speak, but to vote,” he insisted, before launching into a series of self-promoting speeches laced with subtle denigration of Lincoln. Military bands followed him through the streets, creating a festival-like atmosphere. In Cincinnati, a long procession and a military escort accompanied Chase, seated in a carriage drawn by six white horses, to the Burnet House, the site of Lincoln's unpleasant encounter with Stanton during the Reaper trial. From the balcony of the elegant hotel, he delivered a few words, followed by a lengthy address that evening before a packed audience at Mozart Hall. With slavery and Reconstruction as his themes, he once again covertly criticized the president. He acknowledged that the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was ”the great feature of the war,” without which ”we could not achieve success,” but hastened to add that ”it would have been even more right, had it been earlier, and without exceptions.”

Lincoln had calculated correctly by giving Chase permission for the trip. His tour helped draw record numbers of pro-Union supporters to the polls. In public squares lit by bonfires and torchlights, the former governor called upon his fellow Ohioans to regard the election as ”the day of trial for our Country. All eyes turn to Ohio.” On the Monday before the voting, he begged his audiences ”to remember that to-morrow is the most important of all the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year.”

On Election Day, Lincoln took up his usual post in the crowded telegraph office. By midnight, everything indicated good results in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. Still, the president refused to retire until he was certain. At 1:20 a.m., a welcome telegram arrived from Chase: ”The victory is complete, beyond all hopes.” Chase predicted that Brough's margin over Vallandigham would be at least 50,000, and would rise higher still when the soldiers' vote was counted. By 5 a.m., Brough's margin had widened to 100,000. ”Glory to G.o.d in the highest,” Lincoln wired to the victorious governor-elect. ”Ohio has saved the Nation.” The results from Pennsylvania, where Governor Curtin defeated his antiwar challenger, produced another jubilant outburst in the telegraph office. ”All honor to the Keystone State!” Stanton wired to John Forney. In July, he wrote, the state ”drove rebel invaders from her soil; and, now, in October, she has again rallied for the Union, and overwhelmed the foe at the ballot-box.”

When Welles called on the president to congratulate him, he found him ”in good spirits.” Republicans had crushed Copperheads in the two bellwether states, boding well for the congressional elections the following month. Chase had been instrumental in achieving these signal victories. If his journey home to Ohio had also advanced the secretary's presidential aspirations, so be it. Lincoln understood Chase's thirst for the presidency. ”No man knows what that gnawing is till he has had it,” he said. Should Chase become president, he told Hay, ”all right. I hope we may never have a worse man.”

Lincoln might ”shut his eyes” to Chase's stratagems so long as Chase remained a good secretary, but members of his cabinet possessed less tolerance. ”I'm afraid Mr. Chase's head is turned by his eagerness in pursuit of the presidency,” Bates recorded in his diary. ”That visit to the west is generally understood as [his] opening campaign.” Perusing newspaper accounts of Chase's speeches, the Attorney General noted derisively that his colleague had attributed ”the salvation of the country to his own admirable financial system”-much as Cicero had sworn, ”By the immortal G.o.ds, I have saved my country.” Chase ought to have focused solely on his cabinet position, Bates observed, but ”it is of the nature of ambition to grow prurient, and run off with its victim.” Like Bates, Welles believed that Chase's presidential aspirations had ”warped” his judgment, leading him to divisively exploit the Reconstruction issue to consolidate the radical wing of the party behind him. Yet these critiques were moderate compared to the scathing indictments the Blairs poured forth in daily correspondence to their friends.

Chase remained oblivious to the ire of his colleagues. He had found the trip immensely gratifying. ”I little imagined the reception that awaited me,” he proudly told a friend. ”Such appreciation & such manifestation of warm personal esteem-moved me deeply.” Chase apparently never considered that he owed a good part of his tremendous reception to the president he represented and to the victories of the Union armies at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. All personal praise and flattering letters he accepted as his just due. ”The late election in this City & State, to you, more than to any other living man was a personal triumph,” he was told by James Baker, stationed in St. Louis. ”I feel hopeful now for you in the contest of '64.” After a few more fawning remarks, Baker proceeded to request a job as a collector, explaining that months ”in the saddle” had produced a bad case of hemorrhoids, leaving him unfit for active duty.

Chase also basked in the extravagant praise from the radical press. ”To him, more than any other man in the cabinet,” the Liberator wrote, ”are we indebted for the Presidents' proclamation, and the other executive acts which have struck the diabolical system of slavery.” The Liberator supposed Chase's victory over Seward's influence had finally allowed the proclamation to be issued. ”If in any one month of Mr. Seward's administration, he had chosen strenuously to urge upon Abraham Lincoln the abolition of slavery throughout the country on the ground that the conflict is irrepressible,” the Liberator maintained, then ”the war would have ended in our victory within six months thereafter.” The public should carefully consider ”whether a vote for old Abe will not choose Seward to be again acting President.”

NO ONE UNDERSTOOD BETTER than Seward the absurdity of the claim that he was the acting president. By the fall of 1863, he had both accepted and respected Lincoln's consummate control of his cabinet, and the relations.h.i.+p between the two men ”had grown very close and unreserved,” Fred Seward observed. ”Thrown into daily companions.h.i.+p, they found, not only cordial accord in most of their political opinions but a trait in common not shared by all their contemporaries. That was their disposition to take a genial, philosophical view of human nature, and of national destiny.” Such intimate cooperation benefited not only both men but the country at large.

”As they sat together by the fireside, or in the carriage,” Seward's son continued, ”the conversation between them, however it began, always drifted back into the same channel-the progress of the great national struggle. Both loved humor, and however trite the theme, Lincoln always found some quaint ill.u.s.tration from his western life, and Seward some case in point, in his long public career, that gave it new light.”

Fred Seward recounted the events of one morning in October 1863 when his father called on Lincoln. ”They say, Mr. President, that we are stealing away the rights of the States. So I have come to-day to advise you, that there is another State right I think we ought to steal.” Raising his head from his pile of papers, Lincoln asked, ”Well, Governor, what do you want to steal now?” Seward replied, ”The right to name Thanksgiving Day!” He explained that at present, Thanksgiving was celebrated on different days at the discretion of each state's governor. Why not make it a national holiday? Lincoln immediately responded that he supposed a president ”had as good a right to thank G.o.d as a Governor.”

Seward then presented Lincoln with a proclamation that invited citizens ”in every part of the United States,” at sea, or abroad, ”to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November” to give thanks to ”our beneficent Father.” The proclamation also commended to G.o.d's care ”all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers,” and called on Him ”to heal the wounds of the nation” and restore it to ”peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.” These sentiments would reappear in Lincoln's second inaugural, where once again, as with Seward's ”mystic chords” in his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln would transform Seward's language into a powerfully resonant poetry.

Their mutual faith in each other helped sustain both Lincoln and Seward through the continuing attacks of radicals and conservatives. Under political fire, both men remained remarkably calm. Lincoln told Nicolay that before his meeting with the Missouri radicals, Seward had asked him to prepare his response without saying ”a word to him on the subject,” lest anyone claim he had influenced the president on the controversial matter. Despite their precautions, said Lincoln, Wendell Phillips gave a pa.s.sionate speech decrying the White House response and stating ”that Seward had written the whole of that letter.”

As the November congressional elections approached, both men hoped that the North would overwhelmingly support the administration, the Union, and the war. They knew that these elections would set the stage for the presidential contest the following year. In one of their fireside conversations, Seward a.s.sured Lincoln that his own hopes for the presidency were ”all past and ended.” He desired only that Lincoln be his ”own successor,” for when the rebels ”find the people reaffirming their decision to have you President, I think the rebellion will collapse.”

Two days before the November 3 elections, Seward left for Auburn. He had worried for weeks about the condition of his son Will, who had returned home on convalescent leave after contracting typhoid in the army. Will suffered fever and terrible stomach pains. As the illness progressed, he had to be carried from his bed to a chair where he could sit up for only short periods of time. The elections offered Seward a chance to attend to his son and rally support among New York voters as well.

Lincoln, too, was concerned about young Will, whom he had come to like and respect. The previous spring, he had ordered Will, then stationed with the army in Virginia, to report to the White House for a special a.s.signment. As Will later recalled, the road to the capital was ”exceedingly muddy” that day. He appeared at the president's door ”covered with mud” and looking ”more like a tramp than a soldier.” He was ”well known to the old porter at the door,” however, and was quickly ushered into the president's library. Lincoln greeted him warmly, handing him a secret dispatch for delivery to General Banks in Louisiana. He would have to travel through ”hostile” areas, Lincoln warned, so he would ”have to take the chances of riding alone.” The dispatch was ”of great importance and must not fall into the enemy's hands,” so he should commit it to memory. Will left that night and delivered his intelligence safely.

Seward arrived at home to find Will in stable condition. On election eve, he delivered a speech to the citizens of Auburn. He began with the sanguine prediction that the rebellion ”will perish...and slavery will perish with it.” While his optimism might provoke criticism in some quarters, he explained, ”as in religion, so in politics, it is faith, and not despondency, that overcomes mountains and scales the heavens.” His faith, he predicted, would be confirmed by the Unionist triumph in the coming elections. ”The object of this election,” he said, ”is the object of the war. It is to make Abraham Lincoln President de facto” in the South as he is in the North. ”There can be no peace and quiet, until Abraham Lincoln is President of the whole United States.” Then, arousing the wrath of radicals, Seward extended his hand to the South, saying, ”I am willing that the prodigal son shall return. The doors, as far as I am concerned, shall always be open to him.”

As the voters went to the polls on Tuesday, Lincoln telegraphed Seward. ”How is your son?” he inquired. ”Thanks. William is better,” Seward replied. ”Our friends reckon on (25,000) majority in the state.” New York did even better than that, reversing the losses of the previous year to give a 30,000 majority to the administration. In every state with the exception of New Jersey, Seward reported, ”the Copperhead spirit is crushed and humbled.”

A FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE enveloped the nation's capital after the elections as official Was.h.i.+ngton prepared for the social event of the decade: the wedding of Kate Chase and William Sprague. Fifty guests, including the president, the entire cabinet, and selected congressmen, senators, and generals, were invited to the wedding ceremony on Thursday evening, November 12, in the parlor of the Chase mansion. Five hundred additional invitations had been delivered for the reception immediately following the exchange of vows.

For weeks, the newspapers were filled with gossip about the wedding. It was said that Sprague had given Kate a diamond tiara worth $50,000. Women readers relished details ”about the bridal trousseau-the robes, the pearls, the diamonds, the lace, the silver, and all the magnificent gifts of this Millionaire Wedding.” Curiosity seekers noted the arrival of eminent guests at the Willard Hotel. The spectacle offered a brief respite from the endless sorrows of the war-the casualty reports, the scenes of suffering in the hospitals, the rumors of impending military engagements.

For Salmon Chase, the imminent marriage brought a welter of conflicting emotions. Writing frankly to Sprague thirteen days before the wedding, he acknowledged that he was beginning ”to realize how changed every thing will be when she is gone.” His life had long been occupied with ”the solicitous care” of his beloved daughter, who had ”constantly become more thoughtful, more affectionate, more loving; and, at this hour, is dearer than ever.” Though they would share the same Was.h.i.+ngton household, Chase understood that he would no longer enjoy Kate's undivided attention. By return mail, Sprague rea.s.sured Chase that he fully appreciated their ”high & holy relation” and would ”never be happier than when contributing to continue the same relations between father & daughter-that has heretofore existed.” Referring most likely to his drinking problem, Sprague admitted that in the past he had ”neglected both mind & body,” but promised henceforth to take care of himself, and ”with good health and a proper exercise of the talent G.o.d has been pleased to give me, I hope to do something usefull for my day and generation.”

Those close to Kate remarked that her emotions ran high as the marriage drew near. John Hay recounted that she cried ”like a baby” just weeks before the wedding when he took her to see Maggie Mitch.e.l.l in The Pearl of Savoy. The play revolves around the romantic travails of Marie, a peasant girl whose innocent love for a peasant boy is thwarted by a lecherous aristocrat determined to possess the lovely young girl. Through the wealthy suitor's machinations, Marie's family stand to lose their farm unless she gives herself to him. Torn between her devotion to her n.o.ble father and her love for the young peasant boy, Marie goes mad. Perhaps Kate shed so many tears over the melodrama because she identified with the tormented heroine's devotion to her father.