Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [377]
“Much anxiety was manifested for the appearance of President Lincoln,” the Chronicle reported. At 8:30 p.m., minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to start, Lincoln pulled up in his carriage, unescorted, and without Mrs. Lincoln by his side. As Mary later said, she refused to “bow in reverence” to the twin “Gods, Chase & daughter.” Predictably, Mary’s absence at the wedding was noticed by the press. Noah Brooks later reported that Lincoln “stayed two and half hours ‘to take the cuss off’ the meagerness of the presidential party.”
All eyes were on Kate, however, as she descended the staircase in “a gorgeous white velvet dress, with an extended train, and upon her head wore a rich lace veil,” encircled by her new pearl and diamond tiara. As the wedding party approached the Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island, the Marine Band played a march composed specifically for the occasion. When the vows were completed, “Chase was the first to kiss the newly made wife.” A lavish meal was served, followed by dancing in the dining room, which lasted until midnight.
John Hay thought it “a very brilliant” affair, noting that Kate “had lost all her old severity & formal stiffness of manner, & seemed to think she had arrived.” The young couple left the next morning for New York, where their presence at the Fifth Avenue Hotel drew crowds of women eager to see the young bride in person, having followed all the details of her wedding in the papers.
Marriage did not diminish the regular flow of letters between father and daughter. “Your letter—so full of sweet words and good thoughts—came yesterday,” Chase wrote Kate less than a week after the wedding, “and I need not tell you how welcome it was.” His new son-in-law, to Chase’s delight, also proved to be a good correspondent. “My heart is full of love for you both,” Chase replied to Sprague, “and I rejoice as I never expected to rejoice in the prospects of happiness opening before both of you. I feared some inequalities of temper—some too great love of the world, either of its possessions or its shows—something I hardly know about. But I find that you each trust the other fully…and above all that you both look to God for his blessing & guidance.”
Chase expressed but a single qualm: “I fear that Katie may be a little too anxious about my political future. She must not be so.” He insisted to Sprague that nothing could be “so uncertain as the political future of any man: and especially as the future which must be determined by popular preferences founded quite as much on sentiment as on reason.” While he suggested to his new son-in-law that the country needed a leader other than Lincoln, Chase ingenuously asserted that he would never allow himself “to be drawn into any hostile or unfriendly position as to Mr. Lincoln. His course towards me has always been so fair & kind; his progress towards entire agreement with me on the great question of slavery has been so constant, though rather slower than I wished for; and his general character is so marked by traits which command respect & affection; that I can never consent to anything, which he himself could or should consider as incompatible with perfect honor & good faith.”
AT A TUESDAY CABINET MEETING shortly after Kate’s wedding, Lincoln informed his colleagues that he would leave for Gettysburg that Thursday, November 19, 1863. He had been asked to say a few words to consecrate the cemetery grounds set aside so that the Union soldiers who had been interred near the battlefield and hospitals the previous July could be “properly buried.” Edward Everett, the noted orator and former president of Harvard, was scheduled to give the main address, after which the president would speak. Lincoln told his cabinet that he hoped they would accompany