Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [329]
In February, Mary was delighted and surprised by Lincoln’s impulsive agreement to attend a séance in Georgetown featuring a celebrated medium, Nettie Colburn. The good-looking young woman’s sessions attracted many distinguished people, including Joshua Speed, who described Nettie and a fellow medium to Lincoln as “very choice spirits, themselves. It will I am sure be some relief from the tedious round of office seekers to see two such agreeable ladies.” When the president and first lady arrived, the host said: “Welcome, Mr. Lincoln…you were expected.” Lincoln stopped short. “Expected! Why, it is only five minutes since I knew that I was coming.” The guests settled into chairs for the presentation, which, according to the Philadelphia banker S. P. Kase, included a piano that “began to move up and down in accord with the rise and fall of the music.” Intrigued by the mechanics behind such spectacles, Lincoln told one of the soldiers present to sit on the piano to weigh it down. When it continued to move, the president himself “stepped to the end of the piano and added his weight to that of the soldiers.” When the rise and fall of the piano persisted, Lincoln “resumed his seat in one of the large horse hair easy chairs of the day.”
At this juncture, Nettie Colburn entered the room, and Lincoln addressed her cheerfully: “Well, Miss Nettie, do you think you have anything to say to me to-night?” There is no evidence that Lincoln believed in spiritualism. On the contrary, after hearing the mysterious clicking sounds in the presence of another medium the previous summer, he had asked the head of the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry, to discover how the noises were produced. Henry interviewed the medium, Lord Colchester, who, unsurprisingly, revealed nothing. Not long afterward, Henry happened to be seated on a train beside a young man who revealed that he manufactured telegraphic devices for spiritualists. Placed around the biceps, the instrument produced telegraphic clicks when the medium stretched his muscle. Asked if he had sold one to Lord Colchester, the young man said yes. Lincoln was reportedly “pleased to learn the secret.”
Lincoln’s lack of belief did not prevent him, however, from enjoying the evening’s entertainment. Nettie was an accomplished actress, ably mimicking the booming baritone of Daniel Webster or the frail voice of an Indian maiden. She spoke for an hour, channeling one voice and then another as she related historical episodes from the landing of the Pilgrims to the current war. Her oration, which carried a passionate abolitionist message, seemed to S. P. Kase “the grandest” he had ever heard. When the spirits left her, she departed as abruptly as she had arrived. All was silent for a while, then “the President turned in his seat, threw his long right leg over the arm of his chair,” and exclaimed, “Was not this wonderful?” He seemed to have viewed Nettie’s performance with the same pleasure he derived from the theater—respite from the cares of the day.
CHASE, UNLIKE LINCOLN, was never able to forgo his statesmanlike persona and simply enjoy conversations and lighter amusements. He was inclined to let things fester, brooding over perceived slights and restlessly calculating the effect of every incident on his own standing. Weeks after the cabinet crisis had been resolved, he questioned his own decision to stay on board. “I have neither love nor taste for the position I occupy,” he told Horace Greeley, “and have only two great regrets connected with it—one, that I ever took it; the other, that having resigned it I yielded to the counsels of those who said I must resume it.”
Chase became physically ill during the tumultuous debate on Capitol Hill over his banking bill, terrified that the measures necessary to finance the war would not make it through. When the bills passed and the new greenbacks were ready for distribution, he momentarily basked in the knowledge that the Treasury was full