Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [234]
Ten years Kate’s senior, William Sprague had assumed 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 passed 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 multitude 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 shirt 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.” Washingtonians 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 courtship days. “Do you remember the hesitating kiss I stole, and the glowing, blushing 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 anticipated,” Sprague’s cocksure attitude 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