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?
Fortunately she falls a little in love with Mary, too. Like calls to like, Mary says. Edwin and Elizabeth have very similar personalities—volatile, passionate. She and Richard provide the ballast. Soon the Stoddards are their most intimate friends.
Adam Badeau provided Edwin’s first entrée into New York’s literati, but what the Stoddards can offer is a cut above. He’s the only actor included in their salons, marking him out as an artist first and foremost. Critics begin to note the intelligence and sophistication of Edwin’s audience. Now when he’s onstage, he’s continually aware of the Stoddards sitting with Mary in her private box. He knows that when the applause dies away, he’ll be headed to some gathering where the adulation will continue, where his performance will be discussed in admiring detail. The trip to England was a disappointment, but not a waste. New York’s critics see a new maturity in his work that they credit to his time abroad. It’s a strange thing, to be enjoying such heady success while his country is swimming in blood. He doesn’t quite know how to feel about it. His mood changes moment to moment.
Then there is Mary. It seems to Edwin that she’s been a little sick ever since Edwina was born and is now a little sicker. She still comes to every play and she makes it through the late nights after, but he can see that she’s exhausted. She talks more to Elizabeth about her symptoms than she does to him. All Edwin knows is that she’s suffering in the places where women suffer, that there is an unnatural heat in her abdomen, and no diagnosis.
He’s well aware that the reason Mary pushes herself to accompany him everywhere is to keep an eye on his drinking. He’d promised her when they married to control it. But he can’t perform, not at his best, without. He sweats and shakes; his thoughts muddle. He feels desperate for a way out of his own skin. He can’t remember his lines and all this is put instantly right with just one drink or maybe two. All he needs is enough liquor to get through his performances.
And maybe a glass or two after to calm him down. He begins to dislike the pressure of her hand on his arm as she steers him away from the bottles and glasses. She fails to keep him sober as often as she succeeds.
Asia notes that Mary’s influence over him seems to have waned. The rest of the family might choose to believe that love is stronger than liquor. As to herself, Asia’s never doubted the outcome.
* * *
—
Edwin, Mary, and Elizabeth Stoddard travel to Boston, where Edwin performs for a week. While there, they hear of a brilliant physician who treats women for women’s problems, a Dr. Erasmus D. Miller. Miller’s practice is in Dorchester, so if Mary is to be among his patients, Dorchester is where she must live.
Edwin buys a house on Washington Street, a cozy nook with windows in the back overlooking the slope down to Dorchester Bay. Edwin likes the house better than Mary does. He can sit for hours, smoking his pipe and watching the light play over the water, turn it silver or green or black with the moonlight spreading its shining road. Two trees in the yard go a vivid yellow, blazing like candles.
He pulls Mary into his lap, her head against his chest. Her hair falls from its knot. He combs his fingers through it. “When the snow comes,” he says, “we’ll take a sleigh ride in the dark. I’ll hold you just this way. Your hair will catch the starlight.” He imagines her ruddy with cold, a red scarf around her neck.