Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [389]
Indeed, by early 1864, Chase’s presidential ambitions were widely known and frequently discussed in political circles. Mary’s anger toward Chase grew “very bitter,” Elizabeth Keckley recalled: she “warned Mr. Lincoln not to trust him,” but Lincoln continued to insist that Chase was “a patriot.” As Mary planned for her first state dinner of the year, traditionally held for the members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, and their families, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She perused the guest list compiled by John Nicolay, and crossed out the names of Kate Chase and William Sprague. Certain the “snub” would become public and reflect badly on Lincoln, Nicolay appealed to his boss to reinstate the Spragues. Lincoln immediately agreed, sending Mary into a rage.
“There soon arose such a rampage as the House hasn’t seen for a year,” Nicolay confided to an absent Hay, “and I am again taboo. How the thing is to end is yet as dark a problem as the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty.” Mary directed her wrath toward Nicolay, banishing him from the dinner and eschewing his customary help with the arrangements. “Things ran on thus till the afternoon of the dinner,” Nicolay reported, when Mary “backed down, requested my presence and assistance—apologizing, and explaining that the affair had worried her so she hadn’t slept for a night or two.”
The dinner “was pleasant,” Welles recorded in his diary. “A little stiff and awkward on the part of the some of the guests [perhaps referring to Chase], but passed off very well.” Welles, however, was unable to share the capital’s renewed delight in parties, receptions, and fairs. It all seemed inappropriate, “like merry-making at a funeral,” he wrote his son Edgar.
Not every occasion was merely a frivolous distraction. The hosts and partygoers did not forget the imperiled men in the armed forces. Where once “the old secession or semi-secesh element” reigned in Washington society, injured soldiers and sailors became the stars of every occasion. Admiral Dahlgren’s twenty-one-year-old son, Ulric, had lost a leg at Gettysburg. When he appeared at a Washington party, he was surrounded by pretty girls. They stayed by his side all night, refusing to dance, in tribute to the handsome colonel who had been known as an expert waltzer.
In late January, Copperhead congressman Fernando Wood of New York, who had often and bitterly denounced the Republican administration and the war, threw a great party to which he invited Republicans as well as fellow Democrats. Republicans were expected to stay away, but many actually attended, as did “Abolitionists of the most ultra stripe.” Stoddard found it “one of the charming features of life in Washington” that “political animosities” were not carried “into social life,” that people who publicly savaged one another could still be “commendably cordial and friendly in all personal intercourse.”
In keeping with that tradition, Mary Lincoln sent a bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Wood. The Woods exaggerated the courtesy by placing cards that read: “Compliments of Mrs. A. Lincoln” beside all the many flower vases, making it appear that Mary had supplied the entire array. Newspapers played up the story, citing the supposedly lavish display as evidence of Mary’s Southern sympathies. Stung by the criticism, Mary wrote her influential friend General Sickles: “I am pleased to announce to you my entire innocence…. With the exception of two political public receptions, they[the Woods] have not entered the [White] house—all of my, friends, who know my detestation of disloyal persons will discredit the rumor—You know me too well to believe it.”
Still, slander against the president and first lady continued to fill the columns of opposition papers. In December, when Emilie Todd Helm had come through Union lines after her husband’s death, she had been accompanied north by another sister, Martha Todd White. After Emilie left the White House, Lincoln issued a pass to Martha, allowing her to return to the Confederacy. Such passes were not unusual, but