Since leaving Montgomery before the war, Maggie had had a rough time. Word about her singing the “Southern Marseillaise” had incensed many in the North. Newspapers demanded she say something about her disloyalty and about parading on stage with Alabama’s secessionist flag. Denunciations intensified and were multiplied. Singing and parading with a secessionist flag spiraled into stomping on the Stars and Stripes. Northern newspapers demanded she explain her actions.1 Vilifications of the “little petticoated rebel”2 boiled over in December 1861 when Maggie appeared in Pittsburg, a city feverish with patriotism.
Days before Maggie’s arrival, Captain Walter Braun, a dedicated boozer and habitual rabble rouser, became incensed his city was welcoming a “Secesh” (Northern slang for a secessionist). Ranting that a turncoat was in their midst, he cajoled several of his fellow tipplers to go to the theatre, demand Maggie explain her disloyalty, and, if they didn’t get a satisfactory answer, burn down the theatre. Hearing rumors of a pending riot, Mayor George Wilson alerted theatre manager Bill Henderson and said he would post police in the aisles, but he warned Henderson they might not be able to control the situation.
As soon as Maggie appeared on stage, Braun and his minions started hissing from their seats in the front balcony row. Police immediately converged on Braun and hauled him off to Mayor Wilson’s office. Wilson fined Braun for creating a disturbance, thinking that would cool him off, and then let him go. As soon as he was free, Braun headed back to the theatre, arriving just as the play ended.
As the curtain fell there was no applause or curtain call. After suffering through the audience’s palpable hostility, Maggie was relieved to be done for the night. Moments after reaching her dressing room, however, she heard shouts for her to “come out!” Henderson hurried to her door and told her he would stand with her on stage to answer the audience. As soon as she stepped back out on the stage, Braun bellowed, “Explanation! An explanation is what we want.”
“You’ll get it,” Henderson answered. But Maggie was too agitated to reply. Henderson led her back off stage, promising the explanation they demanded. When he reappeared, he told the rabble-rousers they’d been misinformed. Maggie and two other well-known members of Henderson’s company, who had played with her in New Orleans, denied she had torn down an American flag and trampled it onstage. If Braun had seen her pulling down a flag and trampling on it, it would not have been the Stars and Stripes, it would have been the red, white, and blue French flag in The French Spy. Doubtless, that was what a drunken Braun must have seen if he had really been there at all.
The audience had no difficulty believing Henderson. They all knew Braun was a loudmouth drunk. Humiliated, Braun beat a hasty retreat from the theatre amid a loud chorus of jeers and hisses. After the ruckus, a number of newsmen met with Henderson in his office. By taking on Braun about the flag accusation, one of the newsmen pointed out, he had sidestepped the allegation about Maggie singing the secessionist “Southern Marseillaise.” He had defused the accusation of her hauling down the American flag, but he had not denied her alleged singing the “Marseillaise.”3
The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer had a blithe reaction to the brouhaha, saying Captain Braun “was voted an ass for his pains.”4
Maggie thought the scandal was over when she left Pittsburg, but there was more to come. In its March 8, 1862, issue, the New York Clipper reported it had received a copy of the playbill from the Montgomery Theatre for December 14, 1860. There in big block letters was the announcement that Maggie Mitchell would “chaunt the Southern Marseillaise Hymn! Assisted by the entire company. . . . Here we have it in black and white.”5
After it printed proof of Maggie’s singing the “Marseillaise,” the New York Clipper reported it had received an anonymous letter from someone calling himself “Non-Professional,” accusing her of a litany of traitorous misdeeds. She had “chaunted” the song, he said, not only in Montgomery but also in other Southern cities, she had trampled the American flag, she had been on the rostrum at the state house in Montgomery when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as Provisional President of the Confederacy, and she was still supporting the South because she had two brothers in the Confederate army.
Maggie was forced to admit she sang the “Southern Marseillaise” in Montgomery. She apologized in the New York Clipper for her misdeed, but she denied singing it in any other city and denied all the other allegations. She did have a brother living in Memphis but didn’t know if he was in the Confederate army and doubted it. He was deaf and couldn’t serve even if he had wanted to.6
The New York Clipper accepted her apology and asked “Non-Professional” to send proof of the other allegations. When none came, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, always partisan toward Maggie (“in no city is she more admired and respected than in Brooklyn”7), gloated that Maggie had been vindicated. “Maggie Mitchell Not ‘Secesh,’” it trumpeted.8
The accusations were settled for good in May 1862 after the New York Clipper published a letter from actor R. Y. McClannin, stating he felt obliged to “speak out like a man” about “Non-Professional’s” lies. McClannin said he had been one of the actors at the St. Charles Theater in New Orleans when Maggie was in The French Spy. Maggie’s trampling the Stars and Stripes was nonsense, he said. It “could only have originated in the noodle of ‘Non Professional’ as no sensible manager would have allowed it.” McClannin added he had known Maggie for many years and had no doubt of her loyalty to the Union. Other than the newspapers and a few misanthropes like Captain Braun and Non-Professional, who were possibly one and the same, the accusations of Maggie’s disloyalty waned in the ensuing months.
By September 1862, John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretary, seems not to have heard any talk of Maggie’s disloyalty and was as taken as everyone else by her onstage acting when she appeared at Ford’s Theatre. “[In] Miss Maggie Mitchell, whose name has been for a few years well known to theatre goers, as that of a bright, vivacious, and dashing, young girl, with fine eyes and a pretty mouth, great aplomb, and a perfect knowledge of stage business. . .we see the promise of a better day for American comedy.”9
The theater critic for De Bow’s Review was just as effusive. Maggie, he said, was drawing crowded houses and turning “the heads of half the spoony shoulder-straps (i.e., officers) in Washington. Nightly the stage is flooded with bouquets, and frequently with more substantial evidences of admiration until the green houses of Washington and the pockets of her admirers are about equally empty.”10
One of those “spoony shoulder-strapped officers,” General James A. Garfield, future U.S. president, saw Maggie several times at Ford’s Theatre. “The little woman” had a strong hold on her audience, he said.11 President Lincoln and his wife were just as impressed and sent her an invitation to have tea at the White House. Had there been any believable blather about Maggie’s trampling on the flag, Lincoln would have been crucified in the papers for sipping tea with a “petticoated rebel.”12
When Maggie opened at the Boston Theatre on May 16, 1864, for her own four-week engagement starting with Fanchon,13 John was at the nearby Boston Museum. Although they were competing for audiences, when the curtain came down, the two spent their nights together at Amelia Fisher’s boarding house.14
Sunday nights John and Maggie had tea together with Maggie’s mother, who was still accompanying her on her tours. Other times, they went out riding together. “He rode with ease and grace. . . .I was often out with him on horseback,” she said.15
Maggie never hid her feelings about John. After the assassination she was asked by a reporter what she thought about him.
“He was a delightful companion,” she answered.
“Was he handsome?” the reporter asked.
“Oh, very. Indeed,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.16