Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [387]
“History does not furnish a year’s victories by the armies of any country in any war that will excel these,” the National Republican boasted. “We have a right to be somewhat gay and festive here at the national metropolis. No one wishes to deny that we have had a rebellious storm, and that the political horizon is still somewhat muggy; but our gallant old ship of State, with Abraham Lincoln at the helm, has weathered the gale.” William Stoddard echoed these sentiments in a published dispatch. “The instinct of all, rather than the reasoning, teaches us, as it has the rest of the country, that once and for all the danger is over.”
At 10 a.m., official Washington began arriving at the White House for the traditional New Year’s reception. At noon, when the gates opened to the general public, eight thousand people streamed in—“a human kaleidescope, constantly changing,” of “diplomats and dragoons, exquisites from the Atlantic cities and hardy backwoodsmen, contented contractors and shoddy swindlers, ingenious patentees and persevering petitioners.”
Lincoln considered his meetings with the general public his “public-opinion baths.” They “serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung,” he told a visitor, “and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty.”
“European democrats go into ecstasies over so palpable a sign of our universal equality,” Stoddard noted, while “European aristocrats, attaches of legations, tourists, and the like, turn up their noses somewhat scornfully at so singularly American a custom.” Visitors noted that Lincoln “appeared to be in excellent health and spirits, and whatever perplexities his generals may give him, he possesses the happy faculty of leaving them in his office upstairs, when he comes down to receive the salutations of the people. His clear eyes beamed with good humor, and he not only cordially returned the pressure of each offered hand, but generally said a pleasant word or two.” Noah Brooks noted that Mary Lincoln “never looked better,” having replaced her black “mourning garb” with a rich purple velvet dress.
“We seem to have reached a new stage in the war,” Fred Seward wrote home. “Gayety has become as epidemic in Washington this winter, as gloom was last winter. There is a lull in political discussions; and people are inclined to eat, drink, and be merry. The newspapers can furnish nothing more interesting to their readers, than accounts of parties, balls and theaters, like so many Court Journals. Questions of etiquette are debated with gravity. People talk of ‘society,’ who never before knew or cared about it.”
The winter social calendar followed a prescribed order. The president’s receptions were on Tuesday evenings, the first lady’s matinées on Saturday afternoons, the soirées of the Speaker of the House on Friday nights. No cards of invitation were required for these events. Since the president and speaker held their offices at the will of the people, their homes were open to the public at large. In contrast, invitations were necessary, and highly coveted, for the elegant parties at the dwellings of cabinet officers. Access to the drawing rooms of Seward and Chase were prized most of all.
Social columnists attributed the legendary success of the parties held by the secretary of state to both his genial wit and the “grace and elegance” of his daughter-in-law, Anna, “who with such rare art groups those of congenial tastes, and makes all truly ‘at home.’” For young belles, there was added mystique in the presence of the diplomatic corps, which held out the titillating prospect