Springfield, Illinois, December 23, 1861
“Thank you for this trip home, Father,” said Mary Lincoln to her husband. “It did me a world of good to get away from that mare’s nest in Cleveland. I think it has done you a lot of good too.”
“It has,” replied Mr. Lincoln. “It’s cleared my head so that I can concentrate on what I want to tell the country in my Message to Congress. I plan on addressing a portion of the speech to the people of the towns we pass through on our return to Cleveland.”
“Have you decided what to say?”
“I’ll begin by recounting the successes we’ve recently had in the field. Sherman is giving the Confederates fits around Providence. He lifted the siege long enough to run some food and ammunition into the city. The people are vowing not to surrender as long as they have strength to lift their rifles and ammunition to fire them. In Indiana General Mitchel has extracted most of his men from the Confederate envelopment. He had to abandon his trains and leave about a thousand of his sick and wounded behind at Lawrenceburg. But the bulk of his army has safely returned to our lines.”
“Those Confederates aren’t finding easy pickings anywhere, are they?”
“No, they are not, Mother. The war is costing them more than they expected. I want to make clear in my speech that more and more of their people are questioning whether their war to force us back into their Confederate Union is worth the cost. Then I want to conclude with inspiring words like those I delivered at Gettysburg and Columbus. I brought along the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. By studying their words that inspired us during our first war for independence, I shall try to come up with the right words to inspire our people in our second war.”
“I’m sure you’ll find the right words, Father.” Mrs. Lincoln smiled. “Your speeches are always well received.”
Mr. Lincoln leaned back in his chair in the parlor of their Springfield home and spread his long legs over the footstool. He enjoyed the glow from the fireplace that warmed his stocking feet and face. Outside the snow swirled past the window in the winter’s early dusk. Robert Lincoln, having evacuated from Harvard when Boston fell to the Confederates, was busy outside guiding a horse-drawn sled that carried Tad and Willie up and down Eight Street. Mrs. Lincoln, sitting on a chair across from the President, was absentmindedly mending a tear on one of her shawls. The familiar sight made Mr. Lincoln wonder for a moment if he had ever left this house. Is my memory of the last seven months in Cleveland just a dream?
“There is something about home that revives the spirit,” he said. “I’m so glad you talked me into taking these few days to get away from Cleveland. The fronts are quiet at the moment. They will not stay that way for long. Who knows when we will be able to come back?”
“Perhaps we can come back again in spring,” suggested Mrs. Lincoln. “Cleveland is barely more than a day’s train ride away.”
“Yes, the trip is easy now that our railroads are back in service. Cleveland is a well-chosen capital, central to all the Free States east of the Mississippi.” He picked up the book of Thomas Jefferson’s writings. “Mr. Jefferson felt the United States should have its capital in the Northwest, somewhere near Cleveland. He felt that the Northwest was destined become the center around which the rest of the country orbits.”
“Then Springfield is the center of the center,” replied Mrs. Lincoln. “You and Stephen Douglas and I met right here in this little town when we were just starting out in life. Imagine that, two presidents making their lives in such an out of the way place as this! And both of you wanted to marry me!”
Lincoln howled with laughter. “Why, Mother, you never told me that Judge Douglas proposed to you!”
“He didn’t, but he would have if I hadn’t dropped hints that proposing would be a waste of his time.”
“How do you know he would have proposed?”
“A woman knows!”
“Well, I do know for certain that without you I could not have become President. You refined this crude backwoods Illinois ‘Sucker’ into a passable dandy, fit to be seen in public!”
“At the very least I taught you not to eat peas with your knife.”
“Good that you did, Mother. Wouldn’t it have been the perfect scandal if I had used a knife instead of a spoon during our dinner with the Queen’s men during last week’s reception?”
“Stephen Douglas was worse than you. Everywhere he went he spit tobacco juice. I remember him spitting it on the dance hall floor and we ladies had to raise our skirts! I should think that wild Indians have better manners.” She wrinkled her nose. “And he smelled like a polecat. I don’t know how his wives put up with him.”
“You were meant to be a President’s wife,” replied Mr. Lincoln with a smile. “Luckily you picked the right President to wed.”
“That was my destiny,” answered Mrs. Lincoln knowingly. “When we were little boys and girls my mother taught us that the most powerful engine is the human mind. If we want something badly enough our minds will show us how to acquire it. My first wish was to be a president’s wife. That desire brought me to Springfield where I was courted by you and Mr. Douglas.” Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “Of course neither of you bedraggled ragamuffins looked like you would ever amount to anything when I first met you. Neither had a penny to your name and yet….”
“And yet destiny found us,” Mr. Lincoln completed the thought. “Stephen Douglas was twenty-one when he arrived here from Vermont without a proverbial pot to pee in. Five years later he was Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. Five years after that he was the most powerful man in his party. And I had my destiny too. The first book I ever read was The Life of Washington. When I was consumed by the drudgery of doing chores on my father’s little farm I used to dream of becoming a great President like Washington. That seed has stayed in my mind all these years and has propelled me, with you at my side, into restoring, in the United States of Free America, the country that Washington created.”
Mrs. Lincoln put down her knitting. “Something told me way back when that you would become President when the right time came. I only wanted to do my part of making you presentable to the world.”
“You have surely done your part in organizing the social functions that are every bit as necessary to making our new government respected as are its political functions. Do you know, Seward informed me that Colonel Cochrane from the British delegation told him that he couldn’t have believed that such a fine reception could be staged in a Rebel Province of America!”
“Rebel Province?” Mrs. Lincoln laughed. “Well, perhaps they consider us to be Rebels twice removed. We removed ourselves from their empire in George Washington’s time and now we have removed ourselves from the Confederate empire. The British must think of us as prodigal sons returning to the fold.”
“They do see us that way,” said Mr. Lincoln, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “If we succeed in securing our independence it will further their interests in North America. Seward tells me that he doesn’t think the British cherish the Canadas. Their small and scattered populations add little value to the Empire and are difficult to defend. They will let those Provinces have self-determination inside or outside the Empire as they may choose. But they will not permit the Confederate Union to chase them out of North America and seize the Canadas by force. They would much prefer to have us as friendly neighbors who prosper Britain and its North American Provinces by commerce.”
Mary continued her knitting.
“And there is also the question of suppressing the slave trade,” added Mr. Lincoln. “If we remain independent we will honor the treaties between the former United States and Great Britain to jointly patrol the African coast. If the Confederates conquer us, the slave trade might well be reopened.”