Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [350]
THE SUMMER OF 1863 brought the hottest weather Washington had suffered in many years. “Men and horses dropping dead in the streets every day,” Hay reported to Nicolay, who had escaped to the Rocky Mountains. “The garments cling to the skin,” one resident observed, “shirt collars are laid low; moisture oozes from every object, standing in clammy exudation upon iron, marble, wood, and human flesh; the air is pervaded with a faint odor as of withered bouquets and dead mint juleps, and the warm steam of a home washing day is over everything.”
Stanton found the “hot, dusty weather, the most disagreeable” he had ever experienced. “Burning sun all day, sultry at night.” Ellen Stanton had escaped with her children for the summer, leaving her husband alone in Washington. Writing to her at a mountain retreat in Bedford, Pennsylvania, Stanton acknowledged that “all is silent and lonely, but there is consolation in knowing that you and the children are free from the oppressive heat and discomfort of Washington.”
“Nearly everybody except the members of the unfortunate Can’t-getaway Club has gone to the seaside or countryside,” Noah Brooks reported. “Truly the season is one of languor, lassitude, and laziness,” and even “the reporters have nearly all followed the example of better men and have likewise skeddadled from the heat.”
As soon as Mary felt well enough to travel, she, too, fled the capital with both Tad and Robert, commencing a two-month sojourn in New York, Philadelphia, and the White and Green Mountains. The cool breezes of New Hampshire and Vermont would prove beneficial to young Tad, whose health remained fragile, while the lure of a resort hotel in the mountains kept Robert by her side through most of August. A correspondent who caught up with her at “Tiptop,” Mount Washington, was delighted with her “very easy, agreeable” manner and her “very fair, cheerful, smiling face.”
Only a dozen short telegrams between the Lincolns remain from that summer. In these brief communications, Lincoln talked about the heat, shared news of the Kentucky elections, and asked her to let “dear Tad” know that his nanny goat had run away and left his father “in distress about it.” Only in mid-September, as the time drew near for Mary’s return, did Lincoln admit that he had missed her, repeating in two separate telegrams his eagerness to be reunited with her and with Tad. Mary understood that he was “not given to letter writing,” and so long as she was assured of his good health, she remained content.
The Lincolns’ undemonstrative communications stand in marked contrast to the effusive letters the Sewards exchanged all summer, openly sharing their feelings about the family, the war, and the country. “I wish I could gain from some other source the confidence with which you inspire me when I am with you,” Frances told her husband. “I need it in these disastrous times…. The loyalty of the people is now to be put to the test.” Seward urged her to be calm and confident: “Every day since the war broke out we have drawn on the people for a thousand men, and they have gone to the field.” To her husband, Frances acknowledged that while the country rejoiced over the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, she despaired when she “read the lists of killed & wounded.” Only with Frances could the stalwart Seward reveal his own distress, confusion, and exhaustion.
While Lincoln spent hours writing letters to keep generals and politicians on an even keel, he apparently never found the solace Seward and Chase took in their extensive family correspondence. Nor did his wife and children write regularly. Tad, a slow learner, may not have developed the skill to easily compose letters. Robert, then entering his junior year at Harvard, surely was capable of penning descriptions