Old City Hall
inordinately tall, but for some reason—possibly because the legs of royalty were supposed to need more space than those of common folk—the old bedstead in the President’s room was replaced by one of extra length. Society in Washington was agog over the Prince’s advent, and the reigning belles insisted that his entertainment must include a ball at least as brilliant as that given in his honor in New York; but Mr. Buchanan, whose ideas on certain subjects were rigid, would not listen to the suggestion of dancing in the White House, and the ball was turned over to the British legation. Miss Harriet Lane, the President’s niece, who managed his household affairs, gave instead a large musicale, at which was performed for the first time the once favorite song, “The Mocking Bird,” its composer having dedicated it to her.
Trained as attorney, diplomatist, and politician, to regard the letter of the law rather than its spirit, Buchanan found himself in an unhappy situation when the preliminary mutterings of sectional warfare grew loud. In January, 1861, he was urged by some of the Cabinet to recall Major Robert Anderson from Charleston Harbor as a rebuke for having removed the Fort Moultrie garrison to the stronger Fort Sumter without orders from Washington, and he was holding the matter under advisement when Justice McLean of the Supreme Court came to dine with him one evening. After the ladies had left the table, the Justice drew the President aside and inquired what was going to be done about the Major. “Anderson has exceeded his instructions,” answered Buchanan, “and must be disciplined.” McLean raised his hand and fairly shook it in the President’s face as he ejaculated: “You dare not do it, sir! You dare not do it!” This unique defiance of the executive by the judiciary had an immediate effect: Major Anderson was left undisturbed, to become within a few weeks the first hero of the Civil War.
General Scott, who filled a large place in national affairs from Polk’s administration till the autumn of 1861, was a good officer and a pure patriot but full of eccentricities. His love for military forms gave him the nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers,” and a letter he wrote during the Mexican war, excusing his absence from his headquarters when the Secretary of War called there, on the plea that he had just stepped out to get “a hasty plate of soup,” had won for him the punning title “Marshal Turenne.” He was a good deal of a gourmet and did his family marketing himself, especially delighting in the delicacy which he persisted in calling “tarrapin,” and ordering his oysters by the barrel. One of his favorite dishes was pork jowl, and once he told of having eaten sauerkraut “with tears in his eyes.” He was a keen stickler for the dignity due him on all occasions. Just after Taylor had been inaugurated President, the two men met in Washington for the first time since a somewhat acrimonious parting in Mexico. Taylor, passing over old animosities, invited Scott to call. Scott did so the next day, and Taylor, who was engaged with some other gentlemen in his office, sent word that he would be down in a moment. Five minutes later, having cut his business short, the President descended to the parlor, to find his visitor already gone: Scott had waited two minutes by the clock and then stalked in high dudgeon out of the door, not to come back again.
The drama of the Lincoln administration, on which the curtain rose to a bugle-blast and fell to the beat of muffled drums, deserves a volume to itself; but in my limited space I have been able to outline only some of its features directly related to the capital city. Lincoln’s first levee was held not in the White House but at Willard’s Hotel, some days before the inauguration. The higher public functionaries and their wives, and a number of private citizens of prominence, had been notified rather than invited to come to the hotel on a certain evening for a first glimpse of the new chief magistrate. Into this presence stalked the lank, loose-jointed, oddly clad “Old Abe,” with his little, simple, white-shawled wife at his elbow, and the never failing jest on his lips as he made his own announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you the long and the short of the Presidency!”
The Lincolns received several social courtesies from members of Congress and others before the fourth of March, and on the evening of that day the usual inaugural ball was given in their honor. It was plain from the start that they had not made a favorable impression in their new setting, for the ball was a failure in point of attendance; few ladies wore fine costumes, and of the men the majority came in their business clothes. As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lincoln knew how to dance, or felt enough confidence even to walk through a quadrille, the early part of the evening was devoted to a handshaking performance which threw a chill upon the rest. Mrs. Lincoln’s feminine instinct had led her to exchange the stuffy frock and shawl of her first reception for a blue silk gown. Mr. Buchanan had been expected but sent belated regrets; and Stephen A. Douglas, the “Little Giant” who always became a big one in an emergency, stepped into the breach as representative of the abdicating party, and established himself as the personal escort and knight-in-waiting of Mrs. Lincoln.
In the White House, Lincoln took for his office the large square room in the second story next the southeast corner, from the windows of which he could look over at the Virginia hills. The room adjoining on the west was assigned to his clerks and to visitors waiting for an interview. To secure him a little privacy in passing between his office and the oval library, a wooden screen was run across the south end of the waiting room, and behind this he used to make the transit in fancied invisibility, to the delight of the people sitting on the other side, to whom, owing to his extraordinary height, the top locks of his hair and a bit of his forehead were exposed above the partition. He was persistently hounded by candidates for appointment to office; and it is recalled that in one instance, where two competitors for a single place had worn him out with their importunities, he sent for a pair of scales, weighing all the petitions in favor of one candidate and then those of the other, and giving the appointment to the man whose budget weighed three-quarters of a pound more than his rival’s.
Visitors admitted to his office usually found him very kind in manner, though now and then a satirical impulse would give an edge to his humor. When an irate citizen with a grievance called and poured it out upon him, accompanied by a variegated assortment of profanity, Lincoln waited patiently till the speaker halted to take breath, and then inquired: “You’re an Episcopalian, aren’t you?”
“Why do you ask that?” demanded the visitor, momentarily forgetting his anger in his surprise.
“Because,” answered Lincoln, “Seward’s an Episcopalian, and you swear just like him.”