Mrs. Lincoln's Rival by Jennifer Chiaverini

Author:Jennifer Chiaverini [Chiaverini, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Literary, Retail
ISBN: 9780525954286
Google: 8fj8AAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0525954287
Barnesnoble: 0525954287
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2014-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

* * *

FEBRUARY–SEPTEMBER 1862

T

he date Mr. Lincoln had established for the Union army’s advance upon the rebels, February 22, came and went, with the president too deeply preoccupied with Willie’s death and Tad’s lingering illness to condemn his general in chief for his perpetual immobility. Discouraged and indignant, Secretary of War Stanton called on Father at home to vent his frustration. “There is no more sign of movement on the Potomac today than there has been for the past three months,” he complained, pacing in Father’s study.

“Perhaps General McClellan is waiting for fair weather,” Father suggested wearily. He had grown tired of defending the general, who, as far as Kate could see, had done little to earn her father’s faith and loyalty in the first place and had squandered all his goodwill.

“The army has to fight or run away,” Stanton declared, “and while men are striving nobly in the West, McClellan’s champagne-and-oyster suppers on the Potomac must be stopped.”

Father and Kate agreed, and she trusted that Secretary Stanton, who had scoured the Department of War free of corruption, possessed both the moral and political authority to reform General McClellan. Before long he made significant progress by moving the telegraph office from General McClellan’s headquarters on Fifteenth Street to an old library room adjoining his own office on the second floor of the War Department. General McClellan was reportedly furious at the change, for not only had Secretary Stanton seized control over military communications, but he had also ensured that President Lincoln would thereafter spend many hours every day with his secretary of war rather than his general in chief.

Three days after General McClellan disregarded his deadline, President Lincoln signed the Legal Tender Act, which provided for the issuing of United States notes as legal tender. Father, an inveterate hard-money man, had accepted the necessity of legal tender only reluctantly, but once he had, he had worked vigorously to ensure that a legal tender clause would be included in the pending finance bill. Debate had raged for weeks as opponents argued that printing the so-called greenbacks would be an unconstitutional exercise of power that would lead to the collapse of the economy and the mass defrauding of the people. Father had labored incessantly to push the bill through, wheedling recalcitrant congressmen and arranging for meetings between concerned bankers and members of the House and Senate finance committees. It was only after the legal tender clause was separated from the overall finance bill that it passed both houses, and the day it was signed into law marked a personal and political victory for Father. The notes were swiftly engraved, printed, and put into circulation, and the troops, who had gone without pay for months while the debate wore on and the value of old Demand Notes deteriorated, at last received what was owed them.

Less than two weeks later, General McClellan finally ordered his massive Army of the Potomac to break camp. Kate and Father speculated whether pressure from Secretary Stanton, jealousy

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