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By Root 6255 0

ladies of Washington made the rounds, visiting in turn each cabinet member’s home. “First to Mrs. Seward’s,” columnist Cara Kasson reported, where Anna Seward officiated in the absence of Frances. A black doorman delivered their card to yet another servant, “who places it in the silver-card receiver, at the same moment ushering us in (names clearly pronounced), to the presence of Mrs. Seward.” Greetings were exchanged and refreshments served, before proceeding to the next reception at Mrs. Caleb Smith’s. There they found “an elegantly set table, salads and all good things.” After visiting Mrs. Welles, who always entertained “in her friendly manner,” the ladies would “take a glass of wine at Mrs. Blair’s, admire the queenly dignity of Miss Chase, enjoy a delightful talk with the kindly family of Mrs. Bates, and then drive on to pay our respects to Mrs. McClellan and Mrs. Stanton.”

While Kate hosted the weekly cabinet receptions with elegance and grace, she devoted her greatest efforts to the celebrated candlelight dinners she held each Wednesday evening. With exacting care, she drew up the guest lists, prepared the menus, and arranged seating. With her father occupying the head of the table, she would help maintain lively, entertaining conversation from her place at the other end. After dinner, a band would play and dancing would begin. “Diplomats and statesmen felt it an honor to be her guests, and men of letters found that they needed their keenest wits to be her match in conversation,” one reporter noted. “Her drawing-room was a salon, and it has been paralleled only in the ante-revolutionary days of the French monarchy, when women ruled the empire of the Bourbons.”

Over time, the Chase home increasingly became a forum for critics of the Lincoln administration. In the relaxed atmosphere of Kate’s private dinner parties, William Fessenden could freely condemn Lincoln’s reluctance to confront the emancipation question. The members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War could censure General McClellan more harshly than public statement would safely allow. Over coffee and dessert in the parlor, the women could spread disdainful gossip about Mary Lincoln. Kate clearly understood the role that “parlor politics” could play in cementing alliances and consolidating power in furtherance of her father’s irrepressible political ambitions. She was determined to create nothing less than a “rival court” to the White House that could help catapult Chase to the presidency. In the spring of 1862, she reigned supreme.

The most compelling conversations in the Chase drawing room that balmy spring swirled around the proclamation of General David Hunter, an old friend of Lincoln’s who commanded the Department of the South, which encompassed South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. In early May, acting without prior approval from the White House, Hunter had issued an official order declaring “forever free” all slaves in the three states under his jurisdiction. Chase’s circle was exultant, for Hunter’s proclamation went beyond even General Frémont’s attempt of the previous August. “It seems to me of the highest importance,” Chase wrote to Lincoln, “that this order not be revoked…. It will be cordially approved, I am sure, by more than nine tenths of the people on whom you must rely for support of your Administration.” Lincoln’s reply to Chase was swift and blunt: “No commanding general shall do such a thing, upon my responsibility, without consulting me.”

By repudiating Hunter’s proclamation, Lincoln understood that he would give “dissatisfaction, if not offence, to many whose support the country can not afford to lose.” He firmly believed, however, that any such proclamation must come from the commander in chief, not from a general in the field. “Gen. Hunter is an honest man,” Lincoln told a delegation after officially revoking Hunter’s order. “He was, and I hope, still is, my friend…. He expected more good, and less harm from the measure, than I could believe would follow.”

While Seward and Stanton supported Lincoln’s decision, Chase publicly