Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

Author:Jennifer Chiaverini
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Published: 2013-01-15T06:00:00+00:00

A few days later, General Sherman captured Atlanta.

The news came to Mr. Lincoln by telegram on September 2. Exultant, the president commanded every arsenal and navy yard to fire a one-hundred-gun salute in General Sherman’s honor, and at Petersburg, General Grant saluted his brother in arms by ordering all of his batteries to fire live rounds at the enemy, which they did within the hour, with much rejoicing.

The people of the North were jubilant. After a dismal summer full of stalemate, discouragement, and defeat, the Union Army suddenly surged toward victory—and so too did Mr. Lincoln. Overnight he had become a victorious commander in chief, and in the transformed political environment, the radical Republican effort to replace him seemed dangerously unwise. The possibility that the Republican electorate would divide their votes between Mr. Lincoln and General Frémont, and thereby allow the Democrats to seize the presidency, began to worry members of the new National Union and Radical Democracy parties. In September, President Lincoln asked for the resignation of Postmaster General Blair, who among all the members of his cabinet particularly infuriated the radical Republican faction. In the meantime, though no one would claim or could prove a connection, General Frémont withdrew from the race.

The political distinction between the two remaining candidates could not have been more clear—President Lincoln, leader of a victorious army and savior of the Union, and General McClellan, a once-popular and perpetually hesitant military leader whose party insisted upon a peace platform he himself did not advocate.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton made sure that soldiers were given absentee ballots, if the laws of their states permitted, or furloughs so they could travel home to vote. President Lincoln himself wrote to several of his generals asking them to grant leave to soldiers from states where the election would likely be a close call—Indiana, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and New York—assuming that the Union soldiers would overwhelmingly support the Republican ticket as they had in the off-year elections. Even the former secretary Salmon Chase, still stinging from his abrupt dismissal from the Department of the Treasury, began praising President Lincoln in public and then campaigning for him in crucial Midwestern states. His support was no less beneficial for all that he was obviously angling for the newly vacated position of chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Although the outcome of the election had never looked brighter for Mr. Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln had her own campaigns to wage to help ensure his victory. She had come to trust Elizabeth’s taste and judgment, so she had asked Elizabeth to accompany her to New York for one last autumn shopping trip. When Mrs. Lincoln needed to return to Washington in time for the election, Elizabeth remained in New York to attend to her business there—making purchases on her behalf, obtaining estimates for fabrics, placing or canceling orders, paying or deferring bills, and carrying on the First Lady’s business affairs as directed, sending telegrams back and forth, often several times a day.

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