Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [249]
Another flamboyant figure at Mary’s salons was Henry Wikoff, who had published an account of his picaresque adventures in Europe. He had been a spy for Britain and had spent time in jail for kidnapping and seducing a young woman. Mary enjoyed people with scandalous backgrounds, and delighted in the lively conversation, which ranged from “love, law, literature, and war” to “gossip of courts and cabinets, of the boudoir and the salon, of commerce and the Church, of the peer and the pauper, of Dickens and Thackeray.”
While Mary charmed guests in her evening salons, she gained respect for the energy and aplomb with which she hosted the traditional White House receptions for the public. She believed that these social gatherings helped to sustain morale. Most important, her husband was proud of both her social skills and her appearance. “My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl,” he said at one White House levee, “and I a poor nobody then, fell in love with her and once more, have never fallen out.”
When Prince Napoleon, the cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte III, visited Washington in early August, Mary organized an elaborate dinner party. She found the task of entertaining much simpler than it had been in Springfield days. “We only have to give our orders for the dinner, and dress in proper season,” she wrote her friend Hannah Shearer. Having learned French when she was young, she conversed easily with the prince. It was a “beautiful dinner,” Lizzie Grimsley recalled, “beautifully served, gay conversation in which the French tongue predominated.” Two days later, her interest in French literature apparently renewed, Mary requested Volume 9 of the Oeuvres de Victor Hugo from the Library of Congress.
Nor did Mary Lincoln confine her abundant energies to social ventures. A month after the French dinner, she strenuously pressured her husband on a matter of state—the pending execution of William Scott. A soldier from Vermont, Scott had fallen asleep during picket duty. His dereliction of duty had occurred during the predawn hours of his second straight night of standing guard. As the story was told, he had volunteered the first night to replace a sick friend, and then was called to duty the next night on his own. According to Lizzie Grimsley, the severity of the soldier’s sentence distressed both Tad and his mother. “Think,” Tad entreated, “if it was your own little boy who was just tired after fighting, and marching all day, that he could not keep awake, much as he tried to.” Mary joined in, begging her husband to show mercy to the young soldier. The situation was not easy for Lincoln. While he understood the human circumstances that led to the soldier’s lapse, he also recognized that his intervention might undermine military discipline. In the end, Mary’s arguments apparently swayed him.
The day before the scheduled execution, Lincoln walked over to McClellan’s office and asked him to issue a pardon, “suggesting,” the general recollected, “that I could give as a reason in the order that it was by request of the ‘Lady President.’” Vermont senator Lucius Chittenden, who had also interceded on young Scott’s behalf, apologized for the imposition, recognizing “that it was asking too much of the President” to intervene “in behalf of a private soldier.” Lincoln put Chittenden’s mind at ease, assuring him that “Scott’s life is as valuable to him as that of any person in the land. You remember the remark of a Scotchman about the head of a nobleman who was decapitated. ‘It was a small matter of a head, but it was valuable to him, poor fellow, for it was the only one he had.’”
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