[CHAPTER XVIII]
[DIPLOMACY]
In the whirlwind of passion, intrigue, slander and hate which had circled the head of the new President since the day of his Inauguration, the mother of his children had not been spared.
The First Lady of the Land had found her position as difficult in its way as her husband had found his. She had met the cynical criticism at first with dignity, reserve, and contempt. But as it increased in violence and virulence she had more than once lost her temper. She had never been blessed with the serenity of spirit that with Lincoln in his trying hours touched the heights of genius.
She was just a human little woman who loved her husband devotedly and hated every man and woman who hated him. And when her patience was exhausted she said things as she thought them, with a contempt for consequences as sublime as it was dangerous.
From the moment of the opening of the war she hated the South, not only because the Southern people had flung the shadow of death over her splendid social career and blighted the brightest dream of her life by war, but she had a more intimate and personal reason for this hatred. Her own flesh and blood had gone into the struggle against her and the husband she loved. Both her brothers born in the South, were in the Confederate army fighting to tear the house down over her head. One of these brothers had been made the Commandant of Libby Prison in Richmond. The woman in her could never forgive them.
And yet men in the North who sought the destruction of her husband saw how they might use the fact of her Southern kin to their own gain, and did it with the most cruel and bitter malignity.
One thing she was determined to do—maintain her position in a way to put it beyond the reach of petty spite and gossip. She had always resented the imputation of boorishness and lack of culture his enemies had made against the man she loved. She held it her first duty, therefore, to maintain her place as the First Lady of the Land in a way that would still those slanderous tongues. For this reason her dresses had been the most elaborate and expensive the wife of any Chief Magistrate of the Republic had ever worn. Her big-hearted, careless husband had no more idea of the cost of such things than a new-born babe.
Lizzie Garland, the negro dressmaker, to whom she had given her patronage, practically spent her entire time with the President's wife, who finally became so contemptuous of unreasonable public criticism in Washington that she was often seen going to Lizzie Garland's house to be fitted.