Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [199]
Seward retained his equanimity amid the onslaught due largely to his belief that Lincoln not only endorsed but had covertly orchestrated his actions, for Lincoln himself had confidentially suggested several of the compromises that Seward had offered. Furthermore, in a private letter, Lincoln encouraged him: “Your recent speech is well received here; and, I think, is doing good all over the country.” Meeting in the Capitol with Charles Francis Adams a few weeks after the speech, Seward confided that “he had heard from Mr. Lincoln, who approved his course, but was so badgered at Springfield that he felt compelled to keep uncommitted on it at present.”
The president-elect was engaged in a more intricate game of political engineering than Seward realized. While undoubtedly pleased that Seward’s conciliatory tone had produced a calming effect on the border states, Lincoln knew that if he personally called for compromise, he would lose the support of an important wing of the Republican Party. Instead, he maintained firmness through silence while Seward absorbed the backlash for what might prove an advantageous posture of conciliation.
When Carl Schurz visited Lincoln in Springfield after Seward’s speech, Lincoln told the idealistic young man that “Seward made all his speeches without consulting him,” a technically accurate if undeniably misleading statement. “[Lincoln] is a whole man,” Schurz assured his wife, “firm as a stone wall and clear as crystal…. He himself will not hear of concessions and compromises, and says so openly.”
In the end, though Lincoln’s role was not fully recognized at the time, he was the one who kept his fractious party together when an open rupture might easily have destroyed his administration before it could even begin. By privately endorsing Seward’s spirit of compromise while projecting an unyielding public image, President-elect Lincoln retained an astonishing degree of control over an increasingly chaotic and potentially devastating situation.
CHAPTER 11
“I AM NOW PUBLIC PROPERTY”
AS THE CONFUSION and turmoil of secession swept Washington, the Lincolns made final preparations for their departure from Springfield. In early January 1861, Mary journeyed to New York, both to spend time with her son Robert, whom she had been “wild to see” since he had left for the East Coast a year earlier, and to shop for a wardrobe befitting a first lady. Staying at the Astor Hotel, she was fêted by merchants eager to sell her fancy bonnets, richly textured shawls, kid gloves, and bolts of the finest antique silk for fashionable dresses. The store owners happily extended her credit, encouraging an extravagant spree, the first of many. After years of making do on a limited budget, this woman who was raised in a wealthy household took great pleasure in acquiring everything she wanted, even to the point of outspending her wealthier sisters.
“Buying was an intoxication with her,” her biographer Ruth Randall writes, “it became an utterly irrational thing, an obsession.” Mary’s desire for elegant clothes reflected more than vanity, however. She was undoubtedly aware of the whispering comments about her plain looks and her husband’s lack of breeding: “Could he, with any honor, fill the Presidential Chair?” one guest at an elegant restaurant was overhead saying. “Would his western gaucherie disgrace the Nation?” Her fighting spirit stimulated, she was determined to show the world that the civility of the West was more than equal to that of the East.
Entranced by her experience in New York, Mary stayed three extra days without notifying her husband, who plunged vainly through sleet and snow three nights running to meet her train. When she did return, Mary was in the best of spirits, as was her handsome, well-dressed son, whose “outward appearance” was said to present “a striking contrast to the loose, careless, awkward rigging of his Presidential father.”
The Lincolns decided to rent