After suffering the bitterest loss of his political career, Abe “picked up my lost crumbs of last year,” as he ruefully put it, and committed himself to his law practice. His prospects and earnings rose as his career flourished, and in April 1856, Mary arranged for significant expansions and renovations to the Lincoln cottage. An entire second story was added, with additional bedrooms for the family, a guest room, a maid’s room, and a servants’ staircase in the back. The first floor was thoroughly redone as well. The front entrance opened into a wide stair-hall, with a formal parlor on the left and an informal sitting room for the family on the right. Double sliding doors led from the parlor into Abe’s library and study, across the hall from an elegant, spacious dining room where Mary could at last entertain in fine style. Every room was also lavishly redecorated with floral carpets, luxurious floor-to-ceiling drapes with heavy swags, and ornate wallpaper.
How Mary relished shopping and decorating, and how immeasurably pleased with herself she had been on the evening she celebrated the completion of the project with a party for three hundred! As they toured the house among a throng of friends, family, and distant acquaintances who had somehow finagled invitations, Frances and her sisters admired Mary’s work and agreed that the renovations had been beautifully and tastefully done. The Edwards residence remained the larger of the two and, in Frances’s opinion, the more elegant, but in the interest of family harmony, she did not share her observations.
The first visitor to use the new guest bedroom on the second floor was, quite unexpectedly, Benjamin Hardin Helm, who had come to Springfield from Kentucky on business for his law firm. Mary and Abe were eager to meet the husband of their beloved Little Sister, and upon learning that he had taken a room in a boardinghouse for the week, they insisted he stay with them instead. As Mary told Frances afterward, although they were twenty-three years apart in age, Abe and Ben immediately became close friends, with a bond of affection as strong as between brothers. Ben admired Abe’s kindhearted nature, eloquence, intelligence, and wit, while Abe appreciated Ben’s thoughtful and scholarly demeanor. They were both sorry when Ben’s business concluded and he returned home to Kentucky, but he promised to return with Emilie for a longer visit after their baby was born.
Emilie would have been pleased to see brother Abe undaunted by the painful defeat she and Mary had witnessed from the statehouse gallery two years before. Just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act had inspired him to reenter politics in 1854, so did the Dred Scott decision and the election of James Buchanan as president compel him to strengthen his commitment to the burgeoning Republican Party. He decided to challenge the incumbent US senator, his old rival Stephen Douglas, and in June 1858 he received the unanimous support of the Republican Party.
Frances, Elizabeth, and Ann joined Mary in the gallery of the Hall of Representatives to observe Abe make his acceptance speech to the more than one thousand delegates who had met for the Republican State Convention. Ninian and other friends had warned Abe that the speech was too radical—his law partner, William Herndon, declared that he was being morally courageous but politically imprudent—but Abe decided to deliver it as written.
And what a speech it was—meaningful, prophetic, logical, and profound, a warning about the steadily rising tensions between slave states and free that transfixed Frances the way no other oratory on the subject had before. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Abe declared in the early moments of his address. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
From August through October, Abe and Mr. Douglas traveled throughout the state together for a series of debates. A throng of newspapermen from around the country accompanied them, so their speeches were often printed verbatim in cities throughout the land. Not only did the debates allow Illinois voters to understand the candidates’ opinions thoroughly, but they also brought the controversy about the expansion of slavery to the attention of a national audience. Frances and William agreed that the national attention made Abe familiar to that same vast audience, which included powerful political groups in the East. Most resided outside of Illinois and would not be able to vote for him this time, but Abe was sowing seeds to harvest in the future.
Frances and her sisters followed the debates in the press, excited, hopeful, and apprehensive. On November 2, 1858, Abe won the popular election by four thousand votes—but in Illinois the state legislature chose the US senators, and although they were supposed to be guided by the citizens’ vote, they were not bound to it.
Unfortunately for Abe and the Republicans, the Democrats held a majority, and they promptly reelected Stephen Douglas to a second term.
Perhaps it was a foreseeable defeat, but as Frances and William had noted months before, Abe remained very influential in his home state, and now the rest of the country knew his name too. He continued to make speeches and to support other Republican candidates, and by early 1860, he was being spoken of as a candidate for president in the same breath as the renowned statesmen William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates. While Mary reveled in the possibilities, Frances was amazed to think that her younger sister’s childhood wish might be on the verge of coming true.
In April, the city of Springfield officially declared that Abraham Lincoln was their first choice for president of the United States. “We deem ourselves honored to be permitted to testify,” the proclamation read, “our personal knowledge in everyday life as friends and neighbors of his inestimable worth as a private citizen, his faithful and able discharge of every public trust committed to his care, and the extraordinary gifts and brilliant attainments which have not only made his name a household word in the Prairie State, but also made him the proud peer of the ablest jurists, the wisest statesmen, and the most eloquent orators in the Union.”
Mary fairly swooned with delight.
In the second week of May, the delegates at the Illinois Republican Convention in Decatur not only nominated Abe—dubbing him the “rail candidate for president” and with great fanfare carrying into the hall two fence rails he had supposedly split as a youth—but also passed a resolution stating that “the delegates from this State are instructed to use all honorable means to secure his nomination by the Chicago Convention, and to vote as a unit for him.”
“I cannot emphasize enough how essential this is to his success,” Mary told her sisters over tea a few days later. “Abe knows he cannot win the nomination on the first vote. William Seward is the front-runner, and his lead is substantial. However, the senator of New York is not universally beloved. If Abe survives the first ballot, delegates from other states might rally to him as an alternative to Mr. Seward.”
On May 16, the Republican Convention opened in Chicago. As Abe intended to follow the established custom of not attending in person, he and Mary and the rest of the extended family were obliged to wait for news to reach Springfield by telegraph.
Other relevant party business took up the first two days. When the floor was opened to nominations on the third day, Abe was nominated and seconded, along with Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase, and several other worthy gentlemen.
Then the voting began.
Knowing that Mary was likely to be nervous and excitable throughout what was expected to be a long day with multiple rounds of balloting, her sisters took turns keeping her company. Frances was home with the children when word of the first ballot came through: Seward 1731/2, Lincoln 102, Cameron 501/2, Chase 49, Bates 48, McLean 12, Collamer 10, Wade 3, Sumner 1, Fremont 1.
“Uncle Abe is second only to Mr. Seward,” Mary Jane marveled, shaking her head prettily. “All those important men, and he beat them all.”
“Loyalties will shift now,” Frances explained. “If defeat seems inevitable, a candidate’s supporters may vote for someone else in the next round.”
Later, it was Ninian who came by with news of the second ballot: Seward 1841/2, Lincoln 181, Chase 421/2, Bates 35, Dayton 10, McLean 8, Cameron 2, Clay 2. “Abe gained ground, but so did Seward,” Ninian remarked.
“Yes, but observe how much Abe narrowed the gap,” Frances exclaimed. “He may overtake Seward yet.”
“The third round will decide it,” said Ninian. “The other nominees are too far behind. Their supporters will surely choose between the two leaders with their next ballot. The question remains, which of them will reach 231 votes first, Abe or Seward?”
Soon thereafter, Frances went to Mary’s house to attend her until word of the final balloting arrived. Frances found her sister alone, except for the children and servants, for Abe had spent the day in the telegraph office awaiting news and election returns. The hour grew quite late. They chatted and kept their hands busy with sewing or knitting until their eyes grew tired from the strain of working by lamplight. The children were put to bed, the house grew silent, but in the lovely sitting room of the Lincoln home, Mary and Frances were wide awake, listening for the sound of Abe’s arrival and trying not to watch the clock.
It was nearly nine o’clock when Mary sat up in her chair, suddenly alert. “Do you hear that?” she asked.
Frances listened carefully until a faint melody drifted to her ear. “Music?”
Pressing a hand to her heart, Mary nodded and bolted to her feet. Frances followed her to the front entry, where her sister paced back and forth, wringing her hands and smiling tremulously, until they heard Abe’s distinct tread on the front porch.
Mary flung open the door, and there stood her husband, eyes beaming, a faint, melancholic smile on his face. “I told the fellows waiting outside the telegraph office that there was a little woman at home who was probably more interested in this dispatch than I was.” He held out a telegram.
Mary gasped and snatched it from his hand, and Frances read over her shoulder the results of the third ballot: Lincoln 2311/2, Seward 180, and Chase 241/2, with the remaining few votes distributed sparsely among the others. Then, once Abe had won the majority, all of the delegates immediately switched their votes so the choice would be unanimous.
Abraham Lincoln had won the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States.
As Frances marveled and Mary cried for joy and embraced her husband, the faint music they had heard from afar swelled as an impromptu marching band approached the house, playing jubilant, patriotic tunes. A vast crowd soon gathered, and Abe stepped outside to address them, accepting the honor of their visit, which he assumed was not so much for himself as for the representative of their great party. After a loud burst of applause, Abe thanked them again and remarked, “I would invite you all into the house if I thought it were large enough to hold you.”
“We will give you a larger house on the fourth of next March,” a man called out. The crowd laughed and cheered and clapped.
“As my current home could not contain more than a fraction of you,” Abe continued, “I will merely invite in as many as can find room.”
Immediately a shout went up and there was a rush for the door. Frances and Mary had a moment to exchange a look of panicked dismay before they hastened to welcome the unexpected guests.
By the time the last well-wisher drifted away, it was too late for Frances to return home, so she stayed overnight in the guest room, her head still buzzing from wonder and excitement. The next morning she and Mary slept late. After waking, they chatted happily over a leisurely breakfast—the last leisurely morning her sister was likely to have for a while, Frances supposed. She returned home after breakfast, so she was not present when the official delegation from Chicago arrived to formally inform Abe that the Republican Convention had selected him as their candidate for the presidential election. Soon thereafter, Abe formally accepted.
Republicans across the land reveled, virtually all of Springfield rejoiced, and Frances thought Mary should too. The Todd sisters read in the papers how the delegates in Chicago had celebrated after nominating Abe, how cannons had been fired and nearly thirty thousand people had filled the streets, shouting and cheering, how the Press and Tribune buildings had been illuminated from foundation to rooftop, and how bands had played triumphant marches as Republicans paraded through the streets with fence rails on their shoulders in a nod to Abe’s humble origins.
Soon thereafter, the press shifted its focus to Springfield. Reporters raced to learn more about the Western lawyer who had astounded the country by defeating the presumptive nominee. Mary well understood how important it was that her husband make an excellent impression on the writers who would soon describe him for millions of curious and skeptical readers. Treating them as honored guests, Mary graciously entertained the journalists who crossed their threshold, making them comfortable in her beautifully decorated home, offering them delicious food and drink, impressing them with her grace, knowledge, and charm, and quickly dispelling the notion that the Lincolns were country bumpkins. Most of the subsequent articles praised her lovely manners and stylish appearance, but one earned her eternal enmity by describing her as “squatty,” and a few others indignantly noted that she was too free with her opinions and had an “unwomanly” interest in politics.
Others who descended on Springfield to meet their nominee included politicians, party leaders, and other prominent Republicans who held no official office but were respected for their ability to make or break a candidate. Despite the publicity of the Lincoln-Douglas debates two years before, Abe remained a stranger to a vast number of men he urgently needed to vote for him. He was so little known even within his own party that after the convention there had been some confusion within the Republican press about whether his given name was Abraham or Abram.
Most of these political men requested a private meeting with Abe and came away impressed with his intelligence and astute grasp of the rising tensions between the North and South, as well as the dwindling number of options to resolve the conflict peacefully. Dozens more came to introduce themselves and to pledge their loyalty, some out of a sincere belief that he was the best man to bear the standard of the Republican Party, others in the hope of receiving a patronage position after he took office. The majority left Springfield with a favorable opinion of the candidate and his wife, but some looked askance when Mary listed her ideal choices for cabinet positions or queried leaders about campaign strategy. Their pointed looks conveyed as emphatically as words that her role was to be the devoted, selfless angel of her husband’s household, not his political adviser.
Frances was aware that Mary was working tirelessly to support Abe by winning over the press and the Republican establishment. This was the role Mary had prepared for all her life, and she embraced it with great enthusiasm. But in the weeks following the convention, Mary’s great endeavor receded into the background for Frances as other concerns occupied her thoughts. Ann’s ten-year-old son Lincoln had fallen ill from typhoid, and for many long days he suffered from burning fevers, headaches, lethargy, and terrible stomach pains. William attended him several times a day, examining him carefully and offering him the best remedies known to medical science. Frances did all she could to assist her husband, while Elizabeth visited daily to take Ann’s place at Lincoln’s bedside so she could steal a few hours of sleep. When the boy’s symptoms precipitously worsened, Elizabeth moved into the Smiths’ guest room and managed the household so her sister could devote herself to nursing her son. But despite their vigilant care and William’s renowned skill, Lincoln grew weaker day by day. On June 12, he died as his weeping parents clasped his hands and prayed until all hope was lost.
Frances knew that nothing she could say would ease her devastated sister’s pain. What else could she do but embrace Ann and let her weep in her arms until exhaustion overcame her and she was able to sleep?
Mary, who knew too well how Ann suffered, came by every day to sit with her when Ann could do no more than recline in a darkened room and grieve. On better days, if Ann responded to her coaxing, Mary escorted her on slow, quiet walks in the sunshine to keep up her strength. Elizabeth and Julia looked after the household and the younger children, while William and Frances saw to the funeral arrangements. Even Abe’s crucial political activities came to an abrupt halt while the family mourned.
On the day of the burial, Frances sought comfort in the words of scripture the minister intoned, and she tried to take heart from observing how the family had come together to show their deep and abiding love and support for the grieving parents. But as the small coffin was lowered into the ground, a strange, grim premonition came over her that one day all of Springfield would be clad in mourning black and the Todd sisters would grieve anew—not together, but separated by immeasurable distances.
The presidential race would not pause for the family’s mourning. In keeping with established custom, Abe did not campaign for himself. Instead, other prominent Republicans stumped for him—Charles Sumner and Cassius Clay, as well as his erstwhile rivals for the nomination, Salmon Chase, Frank P. Blair, and William Seward. Restrained from using his most powerful means of persuasion—his own extraordinary oratorical skills—Abe knew he needed help if he was to win the national election.
Some help came to him from an unlikely quarter—the Democratic Party. Their national convention in Charleston had ended in shambles in April, when outraged Southern delegates had walked out after a heated dispute over the party’s official platform regarding slavery. When the Democrats officially reconvened in Baltimore on June 18, the disgruntled delegates’ states had replaced them with more cooperative men. To no one’s surprise, Mr. Douglas was chosen as the party’s nominee. Five days later, the excluded Southern delegates defiantly held their own convention elsewhere in the city and nominated former congressman and current vice president John C. Breckinridge, a Kentuckian who adamantly insisted that the Constitution permitted slavery throughout the states and new territories. Further crowding the slate of presidential candidates was Mr. John Bell of Tennessee, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, an alliance of conservative Know-Nothings and Whigs whose simple platform suggested that their approach to the slavery question was to ignore it altogether. With the Democrats splintered, the outlook for a Republican victory in November seemed promising, but Ninian, who had remained a Democrat even though switching parties in 1851 had failed to win him a seat in Congress, held out hope for the Democrats. He believed that the battle for electoral votes would break along geographic lines, with Abe battling Mr. Douglas for the Northern states and Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Bell splitting those in the South. “Douglas has trounced Abe before,” Ninian said, more cheerfully than Frances thought polite. “The Republicans should take nothing for granted.”
Even with the Democrats splintering into factions, Frances and Elizabeth privately agreed that Abe had his work cut out for him. According to the press, news of his nomination had met with incredulity in Washington, and Democratic newspapers gleefully ridiculed his humble origins, calling him a “third-rate Western lawyer” and a “fourth-rate lecturer who cannot speak good grammar” and whose illiterate speeches were “interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes”—a claim that anyone who had ever heard him speak would recognize as patently untrue. Not surprisingly, the Southern press provided the most blistering vitriol, mocking not only Abe’s intellect, which they wrongly assumed to be quite insignificant, but also his appearance. “Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame,” the Houston Telegraph declared with fascinated horror. “He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly.” Remarking upon Abe’s image in Harper’s Weekly, the Charleston Mercury proclaimed, “A horrid looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man, a creature fit evidently for petty treason, small stratagems, and all sorts of spoils.” Elizabeth knew Mary took great offense at such depictions, and she too found the lurid prose utterly unfair. Abe might not be what most people would consider handsome, but he was not the grotesquerie depicted in the papers either. And what did his looks have to do with his ability to govern?
Unfortunately, petty mockery of Abe’s appearance proved to be one of the more benign aspects of press coverage in the South. Editorials in papers in nearly every Southern city warned of the dreadful consequences that would befall the nation if he were elected, not the mere policy disputes of bygone days, but violent confrontations in the halls of government and cataclysmic upheaval in Southern towns and homes. Although Frances could not prove it, she was sure the fearmongering in the press was what inspired the malicious, cowardly death threats that began arriving at Abe’s law office and the Lincoln family home. Her heart went out to poor Mary, who daily swung between elation and terror, depending upon the papers and the post.
As November approached, the results of early fall elections boded well for Abe, with sweeping Republican victories in local and state elections in Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Then, at long last and yet before Frances felt quite prepared for it, election day arrived. The morning dawned lovely and clear, and to Frances the crisp autumn air seemed to hum with tension and expectation. Mary had told her sisters that Abe planned to spend the day with his friends and supporters in a room reserved for him at the statehouse, and that the first returns were not expected until after seven o’clock in the evening. Knowing that Mary would fret and worry at home alone with only the children for company, Frances and Elizabeth promised to join her there after supper and to remain with her until the end.
Not long after they settled down in Mary’s sitting room, preparing themselves for a long, anxious wait, a messenger boy arrived with word from Abe, who had left the raucous statehouse for the telegraph office to await the national returns in relative quiet. He had won the New England states and Pennsylvania, the boy reported; a few hours later, he returned to announce that Abe had won the Northwest and Indiana. He had not taken a single Southern state, nor was he likely to, for several had left his name off the ballot altogether.
Frances silently tallied the electoral votes, and when her eyes met Mary’s, she knew they had been struck by the same dreadful thought: Abe must win New York, for without the state’s precious thirty-five electoral votes, he would fall seven short of a majority.
The hours passed slowly, fatigue and tension draining them of the desire to chat. Then, around two o’clock in the morning, the sisters heard a brass band approaching, heedless of the late hour and slumbering neighbors likely to be startled awake by the rousing, cheerful march.
It was then the sisters knew that Abe had taken New York, and therefore the entire election.
Soon thereafter, the front door opened and Abe strolled in. Hurrying to meet him, Mary threw herself into his arms in a passion of tears. “Why, Mary,” said Abe, patting her shoulder and smiling over her head at Frances and Elizabeth, “I thought you wanted me to be president.”
“I do,” said Mary, smiling up through her tears, “and I am very happy—that is why I am crying.”
As she and Elizabeth congratulated Abe and bade the couple good-night, Frances thought that, despite his smile, her brother-in-law seemed as somber as she had ever seen him.
From the moment dawn broke, Springfield was filled with celebration—marching bands, impromptu parades, speeches at the statehouse. Frances joined in some of the festivities, but for the most part she spent the day at home, overjoyed for Mary and Abe but exhausted from excitement and dazed from the sudden release of tension. The next morning, feeling better rested, she called on Mary to find her sister shaken and drawn, her abundant joy of the previous few days utterly gone. “What’s wrong?” Frances asked, placing her hands on her sister’s shoulders and looking her over. “Are you ill? Should I fetch William? Have you received bad news?”
Mary tried to smile, but grimaced instead. “You will think it’s all nonsense.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Mary sighed and led her to the sitting room. “Last night, Abe lay down to rest on the lounge in his office.” She seated herself on the sofa and, with a gesture, invited Frances to sit beside her. “He saw his image reflected in the mirror, but with two faces, one much paler than the other. The sight unsettled him, and he told me so.”
“It was a trick of the light, or a badly formed mirror. What is so upsetting about that?”
“I think it was a vision,” said Mary. “A prophetic sign that he will be elected twice, but will not live out his second term.”
“Oh, Mary.” Frances reached out to clasp Mary’s hand, cold and trembling, in both of her own. “It is no such thing. Abe was tired. He glimpsed himself in the mirror from an odd angle. You’re giving it too much meaning.”
“I’ve had prophetic visions before.”
“This isn’t one of them,” said Frances firmly. “This wasn’t even your vision, but Abe’s. Why spoil this triumphant moment with false fears? Don’t you have enough to worry about, what with preparing to move to Washington and become mistress of the White House?”
Mary smiled wanly and acknowledged that Frances made a fair point.
In the country beyond Springfield, the response of the press to Abe’s election was swift and unambiguous, whether for good or ill. One Kansas paper referred to the news of his victory as “glorious tidings,” while the Richmond Dispatch gloomily intoned, “The event is the most deplorable one that has happened in the history of the country.” The Courier of New Orleans agreed, warning that the election had “awakened throughout the South a spirit of stubborn resistance which it will be found is impossible to quell.” The New York Enquirer paid homage to the spirit of democracy and took a conciliatory approach, proclaiming, “Stretching out our hands to the South over this victory, we have no word of taunt to utter for the threats of disunion which were raised for our defeat. Let those threats be buried in oblivion.” The editor of the Semi-Weekly Mississippian would have none of that, and beneath a headline declaring, “The Deed’s Done—Disunion the Remedy,” he called Abe and the vice president–elect, Hannibal Hamlin, “both bigoted, unscrupulous and cold-blooded enemies of the peace and equality of the slaveholding states, and one of the pair strongly marked with the blood of his negro ancestry.” More upsetting was the editor’s conclusion that since the election proved the intention of the Northern states “to wield the vast machinery of the federal Government to destroy the liberties of the slaveholding states, it becomes their duty to dissolve their connection and establish a separate and independent government of their own.”
Frances knew that the South had been threatening to secede for decades, and that a certain amount of heightened agitation and a frenzied clamor for secession could be expected in the aftermath of such a hard-fought election. She wanted to dismiss these fiery diatribes as more empty threats—and yet they seemed to represent a new mood in the nation, a strange distemper that threatened an untenable peace.
In late November, Frances was at Mary’s home helping her send out invitations for a dinner party when a parcel arrived. “Another unexpected gift,” Mary said, pleased, as they carried the flat, rectangular parcel into the sitting room, where Mary took scissors from her sewing basket and began to cut the twine and brown paper wrappings. “This one is from South Carolina, of all places. Since the election, gifts have been arriving from all across the country—”
Her voice choked off as the paper fell away to reveal a painting on canvas—a crude likeness of Abe, tarred and feathered, a rope around his neck and chains binding his feet.
Frances gasped. Blanching, Mary dropped the painting and drew back in horror, a hand pressed to her heart. “Who would paint such a monstrous thing?” she exclaimed, voice shaking, tears in her eyes. “Who would send it here—here, where his wife and children—”
“Don’t look at it,” Frances said, snatching up the horrid painting and carrying it from the room. “Never think of it again.”
But she knew the dreadful image would be forever seared into her sister’s memory, as would the malevolent threat it implied.