CHAPTER 57
Tidying up Some Civilian Problems
pages 1167 - 1169
|
page 1167
wife: "Be as quiet as you can."137 She was beginning to think,
she said, that the government was merely keeping him in the South until
after the fall elections and then would let him leave the
service.138 His return to
the North on leave before the elections would disprove part of her
predictions.139
Being no longer socially in demand, a chance
encounter with Lincoln's secretary, John Hay, was all Mary had to report
from New York. He was "very pleasant but no character," Mary
observed.140
Another of Mary’s contacts in New York was
strange indeed, and there was no need to mention his character problems.
Daniel Edgar Sickles was actually one of the most notorious
rakes in American history.
Sickles had spoken that year in New Orleans
at the July 4 celebration. A former congressman, he
became a general by rushing his Excelsior brigade to Virginia from New
York when the nation's capital was threatened.
Nathaniel's brother and General William Dwight both served under Sickles
in Virginia. He had become one of the important figures
at Gettysburg when he pushed his corps forward into an unsupported
position out from Cemetery Ridge. The West Point officers
howled at his incompetence, but Sickles's odd position also fortuitously
broke up the Confederate charge on the second day of that
battle. Sickles lost a leg there. Because of
this, Lincoln sent the recuperating general on a tour of the
Union-occupied South in 1864, an itinerary that included New
Orleans.141
Congressman Sickles had first come to
national attention in the 1850s when he shot his wife's lover to death on
the streets of Washington. A lawyer named Edwin Stanton,
later the secretary of war, persuaded the jury that Sickles acted from
"temporary insanity."
Initially cheered by a society in which the
double standard ruled, he was shunned after he reconciled with his
wife.142 Sickles's
wartime success, and especially his wounding, had made him acceptable in
society again. The now limping general had been the
politician most responsible for the creation of
137. N. P. Banks to
Mary Banks, Aug. 23, 1864, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 5.
138. Mary T. Banks to N. P. Banks, Aug. 20, 1864, N. P. Banks
paper, LOC, box 4.
139. OR, I, 41, pt. I:
297
140. Mary T. Banks to N. P. Banks, Aug.
17, 1864, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 3. The boyish-looking Hay
tended to be distantly flirtatious with the ladies and could be somewhat
vain. See Burlingame, Lincoln's Journalist, pp.
xxiv-xxvii.
141. Keneally, American
Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles,
pp. 275-342; Pfanz, Gettysburg: The Second Day, pp. 90-91, 102-03,
334, 437, 555-56; OR, III, 3: 133.
142. His
wife's ostracism never ended, and she lived out her declining life in poor
health in a home in midtown Manhattan during the
war. |
|
page 1168
Central Park, not far from their midtown home.
He also had found admittance under his pet nickname of "Cap"
to Mary Lincoln's private socials and séances at the White House and was
seen at times in the president's box at the Washington theaters.143
In 1864, unfinished Central Park contained
many army tents. Sickles's daughter Laura was known at
times to have no playmates in midtown because her mother Teresa was
considered a pariah.144
All this did not prevent Mary from encountering Sickles at least twice in
August and from his taking Mary's children out to ride in the
park.145 "Genl. Sickles
has been true to you and your cause," Mary reported—whatever that was
supposed to mean.146 Mark
Twain once described the peg-leg general as a "sweetly and winningly
childlike" charmer. But it does not seem likely Mary was
one of his many conquests. Her husband did not seem alarmed
by her socializing with Sickles.147
The receipts in the Banks papers indicate
the Massachusetts general spent most of October at the Astor House in New
York City and a few days at the Tremont Hotel in Boston.148 The question of a residence was
always a problem during the war because his house in Waltham was
rented. By October 8, Banks and his wife were in
Washington. The president's secretary, John Hay, visited
them at Willard's Hotel on that date.149 Banks and Ohio's governor,
William Dennison, visited Hay the next day.150
On the 11th, Banks and his wife were dining
with Secretary of State Seward, John Hay (again) and Seward's friend,
Colonel John S. Clark.151
On October 15, Banks visited the navy department, apparently trying
to find out what accusations Admiral Porter had made.
The navy secretary was apparently uncooperative.152
In late October, the citizens of Boston
welcomed General and Mrs. Banks
143. Keneally, Ibid.,
pp. 23-26, 47-54, 132-49, 159-200, 204, 254-56, 300-01, 310.
144. Ibid., p. 311.
145. Sickles's wife had been convent-educated, and the Banks
girls' attendance at a convent in New York City may have created some
common link.
146. Mary T. Banks to N. P.
Banks, Aug. 19, 24, 1864, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 3.
147. Sickles would attract Spain's Queen Isabella II and many
other women to his boudoir over the next few decades. (Keneally, Ibid.,
pp. 23, 334-39, 347-8.)
148. Accounts, N. P.
Banks papers, LOC, box 75.
149. Burlingame
and Turner, Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary
of John Hay, p. 236.
150. Burlingame and
Turner, Ibid., p. 236.
151. Ibid., p.
239.
152. Beale, Diary of Gideon
Welles, vol. II, pp. 177-78, entry of Oct. 15,
1864. |
|
page 1169
at Faneuil Hall, following a similar reception in
Waltham.153 Banks asked
those assembled to support the reelection of President
Lincoln. He also argued on the occasion that Louisiana
voters had come farther in their voting than the citizens of Massachusetts
would have done under similar circumstances.154 The general's schedule was
apparently heavy. He even had to decline a dinner
invitation from the wife of influential editor John Bigelow.155
Banks had already quietly given Lincoln and
the Republicans additional help in winning their fall
contests. Some states would not allow soldiers to cast
absentee ballots, but the soldiers overwhelmingly voted for Lincoln's
National Union party when allowed to do so. Of
particular concern in the Department of the Gulf were the votes of the
46th and 49th Indiana Regiments. Charles Kimball, the
Indiana military agent, corresponded with the Waltham general, and Banks
arranged for the reassignment of these regiments to Indiana
during the fall for "special duty."156
General Sherman in Georgia and General Grant in Virginia and
General Thomas in Tennessee also did their parts in getting
disenfranchised soldiers back to their home states for the
elections. The soldier vote made a definite contribution to
the victories of prowar politicians like Lincoln.
153. Unidentified
newspaper clipping, scrapbook, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 104.
154. The Era, Nov. 21, 1864; Boston Morning
Journal, Oct. 31, 1864.
155. Banks to Mrs.
Bigelow, Nov. 4, 1864, N. P. Banks papers, Rare Books and Special
Collections, Univ. of Rochester Library..
156.
Kimball to Banks, Aug. 25, Sep. 1, 7, 1864, Natl. Archives, RG 393, pt. I,
entry 1756, Dept. Gulf, Letters Received, box 8. |
