In Washington our social life did not begin before New Year's Day. Among our first cards this winter was an invitation to the marriage of Mr. Bouligny, member from Louisiana, and Miss Parker, daughter of a wealthy Washington grocer. Rumors reached us of unusual plans for this wedding. Mr. Parker's large house was to be converted into a conservatory filled with blossoming roses and lilies. Fountains were to be introduced, new effects in lighting. The presents were to be magnificent, the bridal dress gorgeous.
Upon arriving at the house (I think it was an afternoon wedding) I found the President seated in an arm-chair at one end of the drawing-room, and the guests ranging themselves on either side. A crimson velvet curtain was stretched across the other end of the room. Presently the curtain parted, and the bridal tableau appeared in position behind it. After the ceremony the crowd waited until the President went forward to wish the bride and her husband "a great deal of happiness." Everybody remained standing until Mr. Buchanan returned to his seat. I stood behind his chair and observed that he had aged much since the summer.
He had had much to bear. Unable to please either party, he had been accused of cowardice, imbecility, and even insanity, by both parties. "The President is pale with fear," said General Cass. "He divides his time equally between praying and crying. Such an imbecile was never seen before," said another. A double-leaded editorial in the New York Tribune of December 17 suggested that he might be insane. On the day of the wedding, December 20, he stoutly denied that he was ill. "I never enjoyed better health nor a more tranquil spirit," said the hard-pressed President. "I have not lost an hour's sleep nor a single meal. I weigh well and prayerfully what course I ought to adopt," he had written on that day.
The crowd in the Parker drawing-room soon thinned as the guests found their way to the rooms in which the presents were displayed. The President kept his seat, and I stood behind him as one and another came forward to greet him. Presently he looked over his shoulder and said, "Madam, do you suppose the house is on fire? I hear an unusual commotion in the hall."
"I will inquire the cause, Mr. President," I said. I went out at the nearest door, and there in the entrance hall I found Mr. Lawrence Keitt, member from South Carolina, leaping in the air, shaking a paper over his head, and exclaiming, "Thank God! Oh, thank God!" I took hold of him and said: "Mr. Keitt, are you crazy? The President hears you, and wants to know what's the matter."
"Oh!" he cried, "South Carolina has seceded! Here's the telegram. I feel like a boy let out from school."
I returned and, bending over Mr. Buchanan's chair, said in a low voice: "It appears, Mr. President, that South Carolina has seceded from the Union. Mr. Keitt has a telegram." He looked at me, stunned for a moment. Falling back and grasping the arms of his chair, he whispered, "Madam, might I beg you to have my carriage called?" I met his secretary and sent him in without explanation, and myself saw that his carriage was at the door before I reëntered the room. I then found my husband, who was already cornered with Mr. Keitt, and we called our own carriage and drove to Judge Douglas's. There was no more thought of bride, bridegroom, wedding cake, or wedding breakfast.
This was the tremendous event which was to change all our lives—to give us poverty for riches, mutilation and wounds for strength and health, obscurity and degradation for honor and distinction, exile and loneliness for inherited homes and friends, pain and death for happiness and life.
The news was not known, except in official circles, until the evening. The night was dark. A drizzling rain was falling; the streets were almost impassable from mud.
At the house of a prominent South Carolina gentleman a crowd soon collected. The street was full of carriages, the house brilliantly lighted.