Edwin, newly sensitive to the danger Adam is in, writes back that he’s praying for the God of Battles to spare his Ad. He consults with Julia Ward Howe as to what he can do for the war effort and she proposes charity performances, the proceeds going to medical supplies or to the Union’s indigent widows and orphans. He does several of these.
He can’t seem to go to sleep at night and he can’t wake up in the morning. Mary often brings Edwina, freshly bathed, to do the deed, so his day can begin with the pressure of her tiny hands, levering herself up and over the rumpled bedclothes, up and over his body. He opens his eyes and she’s inches away, staring intently into them, her sparse hair haloing her head. When she sees him looking back, she grabs for his nose. She smells of milk and powder. He holds her, kicking and laughing above his head. It’s so easy to make her happy. It’s all he wants to do.
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing. Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1862
Abraham Lincoln writes a short statement threatening to free the slaves in the Rebel States. He reads it to his cabinet. Some in the room have been waiting years for these words. Still they are stunned to actually hear them. This will change everything. The war will no longer be fought to restore the old Union, but to establish a new one. The end of slavery will be, henceforth, the primary purpose of the Union forces.
William Seward, once his rival for the Republican nomination, now Lincoln’s Secretary of State, advises him. A move so momentous must not be seen as an act of desperation, a last throw of the dice by a losing army. Lincoln should announce it only after the Union has won some substantial victory.
Lincoln agrees. He waits.
The Battle of Antietam is a horror. More men are killed on this single day than the fatalities in all of America’s other nineteenth-century wars combined. The dead cover the ground like grass. The mud turns red.
Nevertheless, it is a victory. Lee has been driven back out of Maryland. Five days later, Lincoln issues his ultimatum. He gives the Confederacy until January to return to the Union. If they refuse, he will free every slave in the rebelling states. He tells his cabinet that he’d promised this to God if He delivered a great victory. “God has decided this question in favor of the slaves,” Lincoln says.
Lincoln and the Dakota War
You have asked for my advice. I really am not capable of advising you whether, in the providence of the Great Spirit, who is the great Father of us all, it is best for you to maintain the habits and customs of your race, or adopt a new mode of life. I can only say that I can see no way in which your race is to become as numerous and prosperous as the white race except by living as they do . . .
—Abraham Lincoln addressing the fourteen chiefs in Washington, DC, March 1863
In September of 1862, at the very same moment as his ultimatum to the South, Lincoln is also warring with the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota. When Sioux leader Taoyateduta agreed to the sale of land in northern Minnesota, he believed the deal he’d made meant his people would never again be poor. But the monies promised did not arrive and the Sioux began to starve. Taoyateduta made the following entreaty:
We have waited a long time. The money is ours, but we cannot get it. We have no food, but here are these stores, filled with food. We ask that you, the agent, make some arrangement by which we can get food from the stores, or else we may take our own way to keep ourselves from starving. When men are hungry they help themselves.
The response was to suggest that the Sioux eat grass or their own dung. Defrauded of, at one estimate, nearly one hundred thousand dollars by dishonest agents and officials, and facing starvation, warriors attacked numerous settlements throughout the Minnesota River Valley. The surviving settlers spoke of unimaginable tortures and cruelties. Preoccupied by his other war, Lincoln did not send federal forces until early September.
The Dakota Sioux surrendered in late September after their defeat at the Battle of Wood Lake. The uprising was then criminalized. Military tribunals conducted hasty trials with none of the niceties of due process or legal representation. Three hundred and three men were sentenced to death.
Lincoln reviews these case by case, weeding out those who participated in the massacres from those who fought as soldiers. In this way, he commutes the sentences of two hundred and sixty-five. The remaining thirty-eight are hanged together on December 26th. They go to the gallows singing.
This remains the largest act of presidential clemency in United States history. Also the largest mass execution.
* * *
iv
Through a friend they met in London, Mary and Edwin become acquainted with Elizabeth and Richard Stoddard. Richard is a poet and critic. Elizabeth has recently published a successful novel, The Morgesons. The Stoddards run a literary salon in New York and they come to meet the Booths for the first time in the library of the Booths’ hotel. The room is elegant—high windows with the light streaming in, tall bookshelves with a ladder to reach them, gleaming silver plates and candlesticks, the tapers gold, and an enormous mirror above the mantel from which, at certain angles, the sunlight flares.
Edwin feels an instant electric connection to Elizabeth. She’s about ten years his elder, dressed rather drably, a small brown bonnet encircling her face. The furrow between her nose and lip is unusually deep, as if God ran His finger down it. “Elizabeth,” he says, taking her hands, which are warm and soft.
“Edwin,” she answers. Everyone in the room turns to watch. Everyone in the room feels suddenly invisible, as if a footlight has illuminated the couple and left the rest in darkness. Edwin drops her hands and slowly undoes the strings to her bonnet. He lifts it from the wings of her dark hair. He leads her to a chair. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. These are intimate gestures yet something about her makes him feel free to take them. Of course, she falls a little in love with him. How could she not?