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of his days in the mountains. Very different in temperament, Lincoln and his eldest son never seemed to develop a close relationship. During Robert’s childhood, Lincoln had been absent for months at a time, traveling the circuits of both politics and law. At sixteen, Robert entered boarding school in New Hampshire, and he was a student at Harvard when his father became president. “Thenceforth,” Robert noted sadly, “any great intimacy between us became impossible. I scarcely even had ten minutes quiet talk with him during his Presidency, on account of his constant devotion to business.”

For Lincoln, it was enough to know that his wife and sons were happily ensconced at the Equinox House in Manchester, Vermont, then considered “a primary summer resort,” providing access to fishing, nature walks, gardens, swimming holes, concerts, croquet, archery, and excellent dining facilities. During the visit, Mary climbed a mountain, socialized with General Doubleday and his wife, and enjoyed the clear, refreshing air.

KATE CHASE WOULD REMEMBER the summer of 1863 less for its record-breaking heat than for her rekindled romance with William Sprague, elected earlier in the year to the U.S. Senate. When the young millionaire came to Washington to take his seat, he called on Kate, and their troubled past was soon forgotten. “We did again join hands, and again join fortunes,” Sprague later said. In early May, Sprague invited Kate to visit his estate in Providence, Rhode Island, so that she would meet his family and see his immense manufacturing company. Running at full tilt, the company’s 10,000 employees could turn out “35,000 pieces of print-cloth” weekly, with the 280,000 spindles and 28 printing machines in the factories. “I want to show you how to make calico from cotton,” he told Kate. “You are a statesman’s daughter, will doubtless be a statesman’s wife, and who if not you, should know how things are done, not how only they are undone or destroyed.”

Shortly after they returned to Washington, Sprague asked Chase for Kate’s hand in marriage. “The Gov and Miss Kate have consented to take me into their fold,” Sprague proudly reported to a friend in New York. Sprague’s adoration for Kate is clear from the flood of letters he wrote during the first months of their engagement. “The business which takes my time, my attention, my heart, my all,” he wrote, “is of a certain young lady who has become so entwined in every pulsation, that my former self has lost its identity.” Without her, he confessed, his life seemed “a wilderness, a blank.” He kept her miniature by his side and waited for her return letters “as a drowning man [seizing] at anything to sustain him.” A five-day separation seemed “an age” to him, so “strong a hold” had she gained upon his heart. Even when they were both in Washington, he sent her loving notes from his room at the Willard Hotel. “I am my darling up & in sympathy with the sunshine,” he wrote early one morning. And another morning, “I hope my darling you are up feeling fresh and happy. Knowing that you are so is happiness to me. I kiss you good morning and adieu.”

Kate’s attachment to Sprague, however, did not indicate a readiness to leave her father. Nor was Chase, despite his claims, prepared to relinquish his hold on Kate. The impending marriage set in motion a curious series of machinations as to where the young couple should reside. Still harboring the illusory hope that closer proximity to Lincoln would beget greater influence, Chase opened the discussion by suggesting that Kate and William “take the house just as it is and let me find a place suited to my purpose nearer the Presidents.” He assured Sprague that he was not among those fathers “who wish to retain the love & duty of daughters even in larger measure that they are given to their husbands.” On the contrary, he wrote, “I want to have Katie honor & love you with an honor & love far exceeding any due to me.”

Kate, however, was not persuaded by such protestations. She thought her father would be lost without her daily devotions and her consummate