CHAPTER III

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

IT HAS already been recorded in this narrative that at the close of the inauguration services Mr. Buchanan rode back with the president along Pennsylvania Avenue, saw him safely across the White House threshold, bade him a dignified farewell and took his departure. Other carriages promptly dropped the remaining members of the president's family at the White House door. There stood "Old Edward" who had served as doorkeeper through many administrations. With becoming dignity he opened the door and in walked Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln and family followed promptly.

Seventeen persons sat down to dinner in the White House that day, and they were ready for it. An unpublished account of the dinner exists in the handwriting of Mrs. Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, Mrs. Lincoln's cousin. Viewing the arrangements with feminine, eye, she pronounced them perfect. Miss Harriet Lane, President Buchanan's niece and housekeeper, had organized a good group of servants, with chef and butler, and the White House was in thorough order. The dinner which Miss Lane had caused to be prepared was all that could have been desired. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and the boys and Mrs. Lincoln's relatives and the few personal friends who joined them ate with hearty appetite. Then the party separated, the women scattering to the rooms assigned, and preparing for the inauguration ball. Willie and Tad inspected the house from the top floor to the basement, and within a few hours had interviewed every servant and watchman about the building.

A more careful inspection of the executive mansion by the women of the party revealed the public rooms in good condition, but the family apartments more or less shabby. The furniture was as unattractive as that in the home at Springfield, and lacked the simple comfort which that home had possessed.

It might have been hoped that the few remaining hours of Lincoln's first day in the White House would have been free from the encroachments of office-seekers. But not only the president, but every member of the family, male or female, suffered that intrusion. Every member of the family had visits that afternoon from total strangers, beseeching him or her to use his or her influence with the president on behalf of some applicant for office. Mrs. Grimsley says:

The day was not half spent before the house was full of officeseekers. Halls, corridors, offices and even private apartments were invaded. This throng continued and increased for weeks, intercepting the President on his way to meals; and, strange to say, every tenth man claimed the honor of having raised Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency; until he was fain to exclaim, "Save me from my friends!"

The ladies of the family were not exempt from marked attention and flattery; but they soon had their eyes open to the fact that almost every stranger that approached us "hoped we would use our influence with the President in his behalf." And it was a hard matter to persuade them that they would stand a better chance without interference, we, to quote Mr. Lincoln, having no influence with this administration.*

The family was not long in learning that one of the occupants of the White House was in the employ of the press, and that even their most unguarded actions and utterances were liable to appear in print. What they spoke to each other in the ear was shouted from the housetop; and it was some time before they understood it. A new order of journalism then known as “Jen

*Mr. H. E. Barker, of Springfield, permits me the use of this very interesting manuscript.

kinism" was in vogue. It dealt with kitchen-gossip and backdoor rumor; and its representatives were securely berthed in the White House from the day of Lincoln's arrival.

The first Sunday in the White House the family attended the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the Reverend Doctor Phineas D. Gurley, pastor, and this continued to be the church home of the president and his family throughout their stay in Washington. Robert returned to Harvard, but Willie and Tad were regular members of the New York Avenue Sunday-school.

Ralph Waldo Emerson believed in the law of compensation as applicable to all human life. "The President pays well for his White House," said the learned sage. Lincoln began to pay high rental from the moment of his occupancy. Brief, indeed, was the period which the Lincoln family and their immediate guests had for the curious and happy inspection of their new home. Andrew Jackson is credited with the doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils," but it was accepted as a good political doctrine in Lincoln's time. The changes at the beginning of Lincoln's administration were greater than at the beginning of Jackson's régime.*

The first social clash was between Mrs. Lincoln and Mr. Seward. The latter indicated that he thought it proper for the secretary of state to give the first official reception of the new administration. He failed to reckon with the ambition of Mrs. Lincoln. The first official reception was given on Friday evening, March eighth, at the White House. It was a jam. Long before it was over the president and his official family were weary, and it was a relief when the Marine Band played Yankee Doodle as a signal that it was to end.

The first state dinner, given March twenty-eighth, was not a very gay affair. Few of the Cabinet ladies were in Washington. Secretary Seward's home was presided over by his daughter-in

*Claude G. Bowers says of Jackson's political changes, "There was no such massacre as followed the election of Lincoln." Party Battles of the Jackson Period, p. 72.

law; Secretary Chase's brilliant daughter, Kate, afterward the wife of Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, was not yet in Washington, and some of the other Cabinet members had not yet brought their families. The men were stiff and formal and unused to one another.

The first diplomatic reception was distinctly cold. The foreign legations were not out in full force, nor did they come in a body as their custom had been, nor were they any too cordial. Lord Lyons of England was dignified and distant, and the French minister, Mercier, stayed away altogether.

Washington was in a state of social disintegration. The oldest, proudest families were daily departing; and among those who remained there was an atmosphere of suspicion and uncertainty. No one knew whom to trust. No one knew who next would be missing. Some of Mrs. Lincoln's relatives called for a none too cordial farewell before they left Washington to join the Confederacy. Deserted, misrepresented, and thrust into a situation for which she had no adequate training, it is little wonder that Mrs. Lincoln was not always at her best.

Among the residents of the White House in those early days was John Hay. He kept a diary portions of which have been printed but not published, and in which as printed important names are thinly disguised by the use of initials. His pet names for Lincoln were the "Chief," the "Ancient," the "Tycoon." He describes the president sitting in most undignified attire, loafing and lounging in his hours of ease, and sometimes rising in the night to walk around the offices and hunt up a paper, wearing a costume consisting only of a shirt, or in colder weather of an overcoat slipped on over his shirt. He tells of Lincoln's rising from bed and coming in at night where his secretaries were still sitting up, and reading with great gusto to them an amusing paragraph. His descriptions bear upon their faces the indisputable evidence of accuracy. But while Hay exhibits these intimate snapshots of the president at close range, it is interesting to note how his reverence for Lincoln grew, and his

appreciation of Lincoln's real greatness was unmarred by his sense of the ludicrous in much that Lincoln said and did.

In 1866, Mr. Hay, then a member of the United States Legation in Paris, wrote this account of Lincoln's life in the White House:*

Lincoln went to bed ordinarily from ten to eleven o'clock, unless he happened to be kept up by important news, in which case he would frequently remain at the War Department until one or two. He rose early. When he lived in the country at the Soldiers' Home he would be up and dressed, eat his breakfast (which was extremely frugal, an egg, a piece of toast, coffee, etc.), and ride into Washington, all before eight o'clock. In the winter, at the White House, he was not quite so early. He did not sleep well, but spent a good while in bed. Tad usually slept with him. He would lie around the office until he fell asleep, and Lincoln would shoulder him and take him off to bed. He pretended to begin business at ten o'clock in the morning, but in reality the ante-rooms and halls were full long before that hour -people anxious to get the first axe ground. He was extremely unmethodical; it was a four years struggle on Nicolay's part and mine to get him to adopt some systematic rules. He would break through every regulation as fast as it was made. Anything that kept the people away from him he disapproved, although they nearly annoyed the life out of him by unreasonable complaints and requests. He wrote very few letters and did not read one in fifty that he received. At first we tried to bring them to his notice, but at last he gave the whole thing over to me, and signed, without reading them, the letters I wrote in his name. He wrote perhaps half a dozen a week himself-not

more.

Nicolay received Members of Congress and other visitors who had business with the Executive Office, communicated to the Senate and House the messages of the President, and exercised a general supervision over the business. I opened and read the letters, answered them, looked over the newspapers, supervised the clerks who kept the records, and in Nicolay's absence did his work also. When the President had any rather delicate matter to manage at a distance from Washington, he rarely wrote, but

*Herndon's Lincoln, iii, pp. 514-517.