Five months after declining the commission to serve as paymaster of the United States Army, Ben packed his kit and kissed Emilie and the girls good-bye. He lowered his head as if in prayer as he rested his hand upon Emilie’s abdomen, the slight rounding still unnoticeable beneath the layers of gown and petticoats. Then he set out for Bowling Green to join the Confederate Army. Upon his arrival, he accepted a commission as colonel with the First Kentucky Brigade under General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who had been his instructor at West Point and had become a good friend.
“This separation I sincerely hope will not continue long,” Ben wrote to her soon thereafter, “but dear Em, I have gone in for the war & if God spares my life I expect to battle to the end of it. I feel that I am fighting for civil liberty & in that cause I feel that all men capable of bearing arms should be in the service.”
Five months later, he was promoted to brigadier general, and three weeks after that, he was tasked to organize the Third Kentucky Brigade, in Breckinridge’s division. Less than a year had passed since he had declined Abe’s commission and the rank of major, knowing that such promising opportunities rarely came by twice in a lifetime. Now Ben had risen even higher than the post he had declined, and after the Confederate Army triumphed, Emilie could only imagine how much higher he might soar.
If Ben could commit his life to a cause, so could she—and her cause was her husband and children. Perhaps that was not as impressive as the struggle to create a new nation, but to her it was infinitely more precious. She and Ben had promised each other on their wedding day that they would not let his career separate them, so after she recovered from the birth of Benjamin Jr. in May 1862, she resolved to follow him into the South, joining the wives of other officers who moved from camp to camp as their husbands did.
Ma tearfully begged her not to go, and her younger sister Kitty was terribly afraid of what might befall her and the children, but Emilie would not be deterred. “I won’t be on the battlefield, but in the town nearest the brigade’s encampment,” she assured them. “The nearest safe town.”
After arranging for a wet nurse, Emilie kissed her precious baby good-bye and entrusted him to his loving grandmother and aunt at Buena Vista. Then she packed one trunk for herself, another for her daughters, and a third full of essential supplies that Ben had mentioned were sorely lacking in the South. They traveled by rail to Elodie’s home in Selma, Alabama, from whence Emilie intended to choose another safe destination closer to Ben.
Elodie was thrilled to see them. She had recently married, and her new husband, Colonel Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson, was away serving with the Fourth Alabama Infantry. Twice widowed, he had entrusted to Elodie’s care his two daughters, ages seven and two, one from each of her predecessors. Even with the help of a capable mammy, Elodie was feeling overwhelmed by her new responsibilities and was grateful for the companionship of a beloved elder sister who also happened to be a more experienced mother. A short ride away stood the charming Italianate cottage of Martha and her husband, Major Clement B. White of the Alabama State Guard. The three sisters spent many companionable hours watching the cousins play together, reminiscing about bygone days in Kentucky and Illinois before war split the family apart, and yearning for their absent husbands.
Emilie had been in Selma only a few weeks when a telegram from Louisiana brought dreadful news. On August 5, Ben’s regiment had been advancing on Baton Rouge when a band of Confederate irregulars had encountered pickets outside the Union lines. When the Yankees had fired upon them, the irregulars had fled, colliding into the approaching Confederate troops and setting off a barrage of friendly fire. In the chaos, Ben’s horse had fallen, pinning him to the ground. Though badly injured, he was expected to recover. The same could not be said for his aide-de-camp and brother-in-law, Alexander Todd, who had fallen to a Confederate bullet.
The three Todd sisters wept in one another’s arms—dear Aleck, only twenty-three, so handsome and courtly, so full of promise, and poor Ma, eight hundred miles from her cherished son, on the other side of enemy lines. Did she even know she had lost another son to this terrible, devouring war? First Sam, now Aleck—who would be the next Todd to fall? David, a sergeant with the Twenty-Seventh Louisiana Infantry? George, their elder half-brother serving the Confederacy as a regimental surgeon?
Emilie’s grief for her lost brother was compounded by worry for her husband. Even after he wrote to assure her that he was mending well, she desperately longed to be at his bedside, nursing him tenderly, with the tireless attention only a devoted wife could give. When Ben sent word that he had been reassigned to command the post in Chattanooga during his convalescence, she swiftly arranged to join him there and bade a sad farewell to her sisters, promising to write and praying they would meet again soon.
Emilie’s joy at being reunited with her beloved Ben was immeasurable. “My darling wife,” he murmured as he embraced her. “I hardly believe you’re here—an angel alighting on this wretched earth.” He looked years older than when they had parted in Kentucky, yet his blue eyes shone with affection as he swept his daughters into his arms, and when he teased them and made them giggle, his smile was as bright as she remembered. He had a hundred questions about his namesake, who was growing healthy and strong back at Buena Vista, but even as Emilie shared every detail she could remember, her heart ached from longing and regret. She had not cuddled her baby in her arms in months, and most of what she told Ben about him she had learned from Ma’s and Kitty’s letters.
Although they were in the same city, Ben’s days were consumed by the unrelenting demands of war and their hours together were few and far between. One day, after leaving Katherine and Ellie with another officer’s wife so she could explore Chattanooga, Emilie came upon a large number of wounded soldiers being carried into a school that had been made into a makeshift hospital. A few men reclined on desks that had been pushed together, but most lay on the bare floor, moaning in pain. Some clutched at her skirt as she passed, pleading for water, for medicine to assuage their fevers, for their mothers. Everywhere she looked she found brave young men with little food, no medicine, no beds, no blankets, nothing to provide them the least comfort. Deeply troubled, she visited the other public buildings that had hastily been transformed into hospital wards and saw that it was the same everywhere—scarce supplies, inadequate staffing, and appalling conditions that did almost nothing to foster healing and recovery.
Indignant, Emilie stormed to the quartermaster’s office, only to learn that the neglect was not the fault of anyone in Chattanooga: only half of the hospital supplies they had requisitioned had arrived. Desperate telegrams to Richmond had yielded nothing, for essential goods were becoming scarce throughout the Confederacy. “We got bolts of oilcloth and plenty of straw,” a sympathetic but harried clerk told her. “Might be you could spread the straw on the ground and lay the cloth on top of it. Beats a cold, hard floor anyway.”
Emilie thanked him, certain that they could do much better for their brave heroes than that. Haunted by the men’s anguish, she sought out her closest friends among the nomadic officers’ wives and asked them to bring other industrious ladies to a meeting at Ben’s office later that afternoon. When more than two dozen had assembled, she divided them into groups to sew the oilcloth into cots to fill with clean, fresh straw. “Let us resolve to have every one of our wounded men off the ground and into a cot within a fortnight,” she proclaimed. Her ladies applauded, then quickly took needles in hand and got to work.
By the time Ben was named commander of the Kentucky Brigade after General Hanson was killed at the Battle of Stones River, Emilie and her ladies had made more than twelve hundred cots and hundreds of blankets. No patient arriving in Chattanooga spent more than a few hours on the unforgiving ground, and that only when a vast number of wounded flooded the city all at once.
Unfortunately, Ben’s promotion brought their reunion to an end. As he prepared his troops to leave Chattanooga for Jackson, Mississippi, nearly 400 miles to the southwest, Emilie and the girls traveled 160 miles to the southeast to board with a distant acquaintance in Griffin, Georgia, until Ben established new headquarters. While he led the Kentucky Brigade to the reclaimed state capital, where they would join Major General Johnston’s stealthy advance upon the rear of General Grant’s forces surrounding Vicksburg, Emilie settled her daughters into their new lodgings, two small but pleasant rooms in a town of fewer than three thousand residents about forty miles due south of Atlanta.
Far from the front, Emilie and the girls were safe and well provided for. Their landlady was courteous, another tenant had children for Katherine and Ellie to play with, and although meat was scarce, meals were considerably improved by the summer bounty of the expansive kitchen garden. Emilie was relieved to be spared the scenes of suffering and death that had assaulted her senses in the military hospitals—the mangled bodies, the piteous moans, the stench of blood and rot and evacuated bowels—but she missed the useful work that had filled her hours and given her a sense of purpose. The ladies of Griffin organized their own projects for the war effort, and Emilie joined in where she was needed, but she was no longer energized by the thrill of urgency, of necessity. She knew she should be grateful to be restored to a quiet domestic life, and yet she awaited Ben’s summons with more resignation than contentment, her patience diminishing day by day.
The weeks passed slowly, dull and ordinary except when rumors of raging battles spread through the town. Then tension and fear simmered to a boil until at long last the telegraph lines crackled with news from the front, bringing relief to some households and despair to others.
In mid-September, the pattern of her days suddenly shifted when her landlady gave her one week’s notice to find other accommodations. They had not expected Emilie to stay so long, the landlady admitted somewhat abashedly, and another tenant needed the rooms for her children, who had been crowded four to one bedchamber too long. “I understand,” said Emilie, smiling to hide her distress. “I should have realized we had overstayed our welcome. I’ll make other arrangements immediately.”
After making inquiries and finding nothing suitable nearby, Emilie realized that nothing held her in Griffin. Any safe Southern city would do, as long as it had telegraph service so that Ben could summon her and a railroad station so that she and the girls could hurry back to him when his summons finally came. Longtime family friends from Kentucky residing in Madison, Georgia, had urged Emilie to bring her daughters and stay as long as she liked, and in every letter, Elodie and Martha prevailed upon her to return to Selma.
Given that she had so little time to decide, the pull of sisterly affection drew her back to Alabama. With a day to spare before her eviction, Emilie packed their trunks and telegraphed Ben in care of headquarters to inform him of their move, hoping against hope that her message would reach him in the field.
Perhaps out of guilt, Emilie’s erstwhile landlady escorted them to the train station and had her driver see to their luggage. The depot bustled with anxious travelers, and since their train was delayed, Emilie had ample time to study them: weary women, some with children like herself, many swathed in the black crepe of mourning; gentlemen too elderly to enlist, with fragile, white-haired wives on their arms; and soldiers, their uniforms in various stages of disrepair, some eager and cracking nervous jokes, others hollow-eyed and silent. The soldiers sat or sprawled wherever they could find room as they awaited transport, indifferent to propriety. One fellow lay on the floor almost at Emilie’s feet, so whenever she turned about to keep her restless daughters in sight, her skirt brushed against him, yet never once did he stir. As an hour dragged past, she felt increasingly unsettled until something in the angle of his head suddenly struck her as very wrong and she realized with absolute certainty that he was dead.
Heart plummeting, she took her girls by the hands and led them away. She searched for a station agent, but before she found one the train chugged up to the platform and she had to usher the girls aboard before every seat was taken. Once aboard, she told a conductor about the dead soldier, but he merely shrugged and moved on, as if this horror was nothing new.
After a long, uncomfortable, exhausting journey in the overcrowded train, with Katherine bored and Ellie tearful, both longing to run and play, they at last arrived in Selma. The sight of Elodie waiting for them on the platform, beaming with happiness, lifted her depressed spirits. “I’ve never been so happy to see you,” Emilie said fervently, nearly falling into her sister’s embrace. Elodie hugged her and promised that a tasty meal awaited them at her home, followed by a hot bath and a good night’s sleep, after which everything would look brighter.
Emilie had just finished dressing after her bath and was squeezing water from her thick, dark hair when a soft rap sounded on the door. Before she could respond, the door opened and Elodie stood before her, her face pale, her expression an unsettling mix of disbelief and misery.
“Yes?” Emilie stood, and her damp hair, unbraided, fell nearly to her waist. “What is it?”
Wordlessly her sister held out a telegram. Seized by a sudden chill, Emilie declined to take it, so Elodie placed it in her hand and closed her fingers around it.
Emilie forced herself to look. At first glance, she was confused; it appeared to be two days old, with one message appended to another, a note from General Bragg explaining the first part, which in stark letters said—
“Atlanta Ga, Mrs. General Helm in Griffin. Find her and send her up in train today. The general is dead.”
Then she could read no more. She collapsed upon the bed and the paper drifted to the floor. She felt her sister’s arms around her, felt her own tears wet on her cheeks and aching sobs tearing from her throat, but as if from a great distance, because she could not survive this blow if she were fully present for it in all its brutal clarity. The truth that her beloved Ben was gone forever was one she would have to half disbelieve if she were to take her next breath, and another one after that, and another.
She lost an hour to anguish, insensible from grief, until it finally broke through that Elodie had read the rest of the telegram and was telling her something vitally important—Ben would be laid to rest in Atlanta on September 23. “Tomorrow,” Elodie was saying. “I’ll accompany you if you wish to go, but we must leave now.”
“Of course,” Emilie murmured, sitting up, pushing her hair out of her face. “Yes. I must say good-bye.”
Martha was swiftly summoned to look after all the children. Elodie packed a satchel and replaced the few items Emilie had taken from her trunk, and before she quite knew what was happening, she was back at the station leaning heavily on her younger sister’s arm, too stunned and heartbroken to weep. She should have worn black, she realized distantly when they were an hour east of Selma. Black crepe was what widows wore, black dresses and heavy black veils, and here she was in navy blue with tiny brown flowers, wholly inappropriate. Ma would be scandalized.
Suddenly she longed for her mother and her infant son so desperately that she almost could not breathe.
The train was forced to make extended stops at several stations along the route owing to unspecified trouble farther down the tracks. They sat four or five hours outside of Auburn, the only sound an occasional distant rumble that could have been thunder or artillery. The steady thrum of insects in the darkness rose and fell as Emilie drifted in and out of sleep. The train started up again at dawn, jolting her awake to find her head resting on Elodie’s lap, her heart hollow, her face wet with tears.
The sisters arrived at the Citizens Graveyard just as Ben’s funeral was beginning, too late to see him in his coffin, too late to give him one last kiss. When she cried out in disappointment that a parting look had been denied her, Elodie murmured that it was better this way, it truly was, for Ben would want her to remember him as he had been when they parted in Chattanooga, not as he was now. “Keep that parting kiss in your memory always,” said Elodie, clasping her around the waist, keeping her on her feet.
Emilie closed her eyes and remembered.
After the funeral, Emilie and Elodie stayed for a week at the home of Colonel Dabney, who had taken charge of Ben’s remains before the funeral. “Come home with me,” Elodie urged, tears in her eyes. “You and the girls can stay with me until the war is won.”
“I want to go home,” Emilie said, voice breaking. “I just want to go home to Kentucky and Ma and little Ben.”
In the end, Emilie and her sisters agreed that it would be best if she and her daughters stayed in Madison with their longtime friends from Kentucky, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce, until they could return to Kentucky. She was told that her mother, her father-in-law, and several military colleagues of Ben’s were appealing to General Grant and President Lincoln to issue a pass so that she and her daughters could cross the lines. But communications between the enemy governments were fragmented and fraught with suspicion, so it was not until late November that Emilie learned that Abe himself had granted Ma a pass. At that very moment, she was on her way from Lexington, and when she arrived, Martha too would come to Madison and help escort them home.
Ma arrived in early December, determined but tremulous with grief and concern. When Ma took her in her arms, it was almost as if Ben had died a second time as Emilie’s pain and sorrow, tamped down over time by the effort to keep up a brave front for her devastated daughters, broke through to the surface again. Ma rested from her long journey for a day, but their yearning for home and the urgency to return before some unseen calamity rendered their pass invalid compelled them to depart the day after.
Escorted by Ma and Martha, Emilie and her daughters traveled by train and coach to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy; from there they took the flag-of-truce steamboat down the James River to Fort Monroe in occupied Virginia. The weather had been cold and damp for most of the voyage, and the bracing winds off the open sea chilled Emilie to the marrow as they gathered on the deck while federal officers came aboard to inspect the ship for contraband and to examine the passengers’ papers. The lieutenant who studied Ma’s pass shot her a look of pure astonishment upon discovering that it was affixed with the signature of the commander in chief himself.
“Everything is in order, sir,” said Ma, when the officer seemed to scrutinize their papers too long.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “There’s only one thing more. We have orders to require an oath of allegiance to the United States from everyone who wishes to come ashore.”
“May I request a parole on to Washington?” asked Emilie, taken aback. “I shall return if I am required to take the oath.”
“Beg your pardon, ma’am, but my orders say everyone is obliged to take the oath. I cannot parole you to Washington City or anywhere else without it.”
“I cannot do it,” said Emilie, shaking her head. “You cannot ask this of me.”
“Ma’am, I—”
“I have just left my late husband’s friends and brothers in arms, ill and poorly clad, with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their brave hearts for me over my great bereavement,” she said, tears gathering, a tremor of grief and fury in her voice. “They will believe that I have deserted them and that I was not true to the cause for which their beloved commander gave his life. I assure you, it is not from bravado that I refuse, but out of loyalty to my husband. To betray his memory, sir, would be treason.”
Another officer had joined them while she spoke, and the men kindly but firmly tried to persuade her, emphasizing that they could not make exceptions, not even for the sister-in-law of the president. Eventually the exasperated lieutenant declared, “I will have to telegraph the president your decision.”
He strode off. Forbidden to disembark, Emilie and her companions endeavored to make themselves comfortable on the deck, admiring the scenery, pointing out interesting sights to the girls in the harbor and on the shore, a tantalizing, forbidden land.
Hours passed before the officer returned, smiling and waving a telegram. “Here’s the president’s reply,” he said, handing the paper to Emilie.
She read it aloud. “‘Send her to me. A. Lincoln.’”
A wave of relief swept through her. Quickly it was decided that Emilie would take Katherine with her to the White House, while Ma, little Ellie, and Martha would find lodgings in Baltimore. As soon as arrangements could be made, Ma would take Ellie home to Kentucky, while Martha would remain in Baltimore until her pass expired, to visit friends and acquire necessities unavailable in the South.
They parted with embraces, thanks, and promises to write.
When Emilie arrived in Washington City, young Katherine by her side, she found the capital of the North utterly transformed since she had last seen it in April 1861. What had once resembled a military parade ground had become one vast hospital, filled with the stench and moans of sick, wounded, and dying soldiers, on a scale she could not have imagined despite her experience with the makeshift hospitals in Chattanooga.
Mary and Abe met Emilie and Katherine at the front door of the Executive Mansion, welcoming them with warm embraces and tears in their eyes. At first, the adults were too grief-stricken to speak; they had all suffered such terrible losses that for a long moment all they could do was to embrace one another in silence and tears. Emilie’s heart went out to her sister and brother-in-law to see how the burdens of his office had taken their toll on them both, but especially Abe, whose kind eyes and warm smile belied the lines that worry had etched on his face, his sunken cheekbones, his intensely melancholic aura.
Duty soon summoned Abe back to his office. While Katherine ran off to play with her cousin Tad, Mary led Emilie upstairs to the family’s private quarters, where they sat in the parlor and let their tears fall unheeded as they spoke of their children and of old friends in Springfield and Lexington. They said nothing of the pain and politics that divided them, nothing of the future, which seemed empty of anything but despair. Emilie chose her words carefully, loath to say anything that might inadvertently injure her sister’s battered heart. From the hesitant way Mary introduced new topics, Emilie knew she was picking her way through the same uncertain terrain.
They dined alone, and afterward Mary led her on a tour of the White House, which she had refurbished magnificently. The East, Green, and Blue Rooms were beautifully illuminated, and in the Red Room, Emilie admired the portrait of George Washington that Dolley Madison had cut out of the frame and carried off to save it from the British. “Dolley Madison’s first husband was a Todd,” Mary remarked, repeating a fact Emilie knew well.
Emilie was offered a lovely bedroom that had been redecorated for a visit from the Prince of Wales. Its purple draperies and wall hangings were rich and sumptuous, but to Emilie they seemed grim and funereal despite the bright yellow cords that bound them. Katherine had a smaller but much brighter room next door. Although Emilie had expected to rest uneasily in the Union capital, surrounded by Yankees, they both slept well and awoke refreshed, Katherine cheerful and lively, Emilie full of calm acceptance.
That calm remained with her throughout the day, but deserted her later that evening. At midmorning, Emilie and Mary were engrossed in conversation when a strikingly beautiful colored woman entered the room, a sewing basket on her arm. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly to see the two sisters seated together on the sofa, clutching hands and choking back tears.
“Ah, Mrs. Keckly,” said Mary, rising, her hand still in Emilie’s. “Allow me to present my dear sister, Mrs. Emilie Helm.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Helm,” said Mrs. Keckly cordially, with a polite bow of the head, but Emilie was too undone to do more than nod and press her lips together in a pained semblance of a smile.
Mary crossed the room, placed a hand on Mrs. Keckly’s elbow, and guided her back toward the door. “My sister and her daughter arrived only yesterday, and we have so much to discuss. Would you come back tomorrow—no, the day after? And would you please—” Her voice dropped to a murmur. “What I mean is, we would not like it whispered about that Little Sister is staying with us.”
Somewhat bemused, Mrs. Keckly agreed and bade them farewell. Thus did Emilie come to realize that while Abe and Mary would not deny that she was visiting, they did not want it widely known to the public. Though this made her uncomfortable, Emilie understood: many in Washington would look askance at a Confederate widow residing at the White House. She did not wish to make matters more difficult for the Lincolns, who had enough to contend with without troublesome relations stirring the pot.
As if to prove that they had no intention of hiding her away, when Abe went to bed early with a bad cold, Mary invited their cousin John Todd Stuart to join them for dinner. Emilie had not seen him since she was a belle of eighteen, and at first she dreaded to see how he would treat a rebel cousin. He was so kind and courteous, however, that she was quite at her ease by the time they retired to the Blue Room for coffee. Her wariness returned in an instant when a maid delivered cards from two callers and Mary agreed to receive them. Excusing herself, Emilie left the room and went to choose a book from Abe’s study, but a few minutes later Mary found her there and asked her to return. “Our visitors came especially to see you, Little Sister, to inquire about mutual friends in the South,” she cajoled. “Could you perhaps help ease their worries?”
Emilie was reluctant to accept—it was painful to see friends, and meeting strangers felt even worse—but she did, arranging her veil over her face as she followed her sister back to the Blue Room. There Mary introduced New York senator Ira Harris, father of one Union officer and stepfather of another. The second gentleman was General Daniel Sickles, a former US congressman from New York and founder of the famed Excelsior Brigade of the Army of the Potomac. Although he had lost a leg at Gettysburg, he remained on active duty, and rumor had it that he deeply resented General Grant for refusing to appoint him to a combat command.
“When I heard that you were at the White House, just arrived from the South,” said General Sickles, “I told Senator Harris that you could probably give him some news of his old friend General John Breckinridge.”
“I’m sorry, Senator,” said Emilie, turning to him, “but as I have not seen General Breckinridge for some time, I cannot give you any news of his health.”
“Thank you all the same, madam,” replied Senator Harris, bowing. He then proceeded to ask her several pointed questions about the Confederate government and military, its resources and general morale. Increasingly wary, she offered only polite, noncommittal answers, until in his vexation he declared, “Well, we have whipped the rebels at Chattanooga, and I hear, madam, that the scoundrels ran like scared rabbits.”
“It was the example, Senator Harris, that you set for them at Bull Run and Manassas,” she replied tightly.
A faint flush of embarrassment had risen in Mary’s cheeks. “Senator Harris,” she ventured, “I wonder if you have heard of the Contraband Relief Association. My dear friend, Mrs. Keckly, founded the organization to—”
“And you, madam,” Senator Harris interrupted, turning upon her. “One might well ask you why your son Robert isn’t in the army. He is old enough and strong enough to serve his country. He should have gone to the front some time ago.”
Mary blanched and bit her lip, steadying herself. “Robert is preparing even now to enter the army,” she replied. “He is not a shirker, as you seem to imply, Senator, for he has been anxious to go for a long time. If fault there be, it is mine, as I have insisted that he should stay in college a little longer. I believe an educated man can serve his country with more intelligent purpose than an ignoramus.”
The senator rose from his armchair, harrumphed, and pointed at Mary. “I have only one son and he is fighting for his country.” Fixing his glare upon Emilie, he added, “And, madam, if I had twenty sons, they should all be fighting rebels.”
“And if I had twenty sons, Senator Harris,” Emilie retorted, trembling, “they should all be opposing yours.”
Blinded by tears, heart pounding, she fled the room and stumbled away, desperate to reach the privacy of her room where she could weep unobserved, but Mary caught up to her and embraced her. Emilie felt her sister’s tears fall upon her head as she wept on Mary’s shoulder.
They said nothing more about the incident that night, but the next morning Mary told her that after she and Emilie had fled, General Sickles had gone to Abe’s bedchamber to harass him on his sickbed despite cousin John’s attempts to intervene. After the general indignantly reported what had unfolded in the Blue Room, Abe had grinned at John and said, “That child has a tongue like the rest of the Todds.”
Infuriated, General Sickles had slapped the table with his palm. “You should not have that rebel in your house.”
At that, Abe had drawn himself up, solemn and dignified in spite of his illness. “Excuse me, General Sickles, my wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests,” he had said, regarding the general with all the courtesy due him as a wounded veteran. “We do not need from our friends either advice or assistance in the matter. Besides, the little ‘rebel’ came because I ordered her to come, not of her own volition.”
Emilie was both touched and astonished to hear how courteously Abe had defended her. “Of course he did,” said Mary, surprised. “Union or Confederate, family must come first. If everyone felt this way, we might not have had any war at all. Oh, Little Sister, I could fill pages and pages if I listed all the families I know that have been divided by this war. I would start with our own and go on and on until it broke my heart.”
Abe was too noble, and Mary too defiant, not to defend her, but Emilie realized that every time they did so, their political enemies would use it against them.
Later that afternoon, Emilie and Mary were drinking tea in the family parlor while Tad and Katherine sat on the rug before the fire looking through a photograph album. “This is the president,” Tad said proudly, pointing to a portrait of Abe.
“No, that is not the president,” said Katherine, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Mr. Davis is president.”
Scowling, Tad shouted, “Hurrah for Abe Lincoln!”
“Hurrah for Jeff Davis,” Katherine shouted back defiantly.
Just as the mothers were about to intervene, a chuckle from the doorway alerted them to Abe’s presence. “Pa, you’re the president. Tell her,” Tad demanded, shooting his younger cousin a look of indignant fury.
Amused, Abe sat down on the sofa and drew a child onto each knee. “Well, Tad, you know who your president is,” he said reasonably, “and to your little cousin, I am Uncle Abe.” He chatted with them calmly until they stopped glaring at each other, but Emilie, chagrined, knew it would not be the last disagreement between the two.
In the days that followed, even as Emilie worried that she and Katherine were wearing out their welcome, Mary and Abe each took her aside privately to encourage her to stay. “I hope you can come up and spend the summer with us at the Soldiers’ Home,” Abe suggested once as they walked together in the conservatory. “You and Mary love each other, and it is good for her to have you with her.”
“Perhaps,” Emilie replied, although she thought it unlikely. “After being away from little Ben so long, I don’t know when I might be ready to travel again.”
Abe nodded, rueful. “I feel worried about Mary,” he confided. “Her nerves have gone to pieces. She cannot hide from me that the strain has been too much for her.”
“She does seem very nervous and excitable. I think she fears that other sorrows may be added to those we already have to bear.” Emilie hesitated before adding, “I believe if anything should happen to you or Robert or Tad, it would kill her.”
Abe shook his head, his sorrowful expression deepening. “If anything does happen to me or my boys, would you promise to look after Mary? This is a great favor, and perhaps too much to ask, but it would ease my mind.”
“Of course I promise,” said Emilie, “but nothing will happen to you, and you mustn’t think that way.”
He gave her a sad half-smile and thanked her.
That night, after Emilie had retired to her chamber and was preparing for bed, a knock sounded on the door. “Little Sister, may I come in?” Mary called softly.
Emilie quickly rose to let her enter, and when she did, Emilie saw that Mary was smiling though her eyes were full of tears. “I want to tell you, dear Emilie, that one may not be wholly without comfort when our loved ones leave us.”
Was she referring to the solace of prayer? “I’m not sure I understand.”
Mary drew closer, clasping and unclasping her hands. “When my noble little Willie was first taken from me, I felt that I had fallen into a deep pit of gloom and despair without a ray of light anywhere. Had it not been necessary to cheer Mr. Lincoln, whose grief was as great as my own, I could never have smiled again, and if Willie did not come to comfort me I would still be drowned in tears—”
“What?” Emilie broke in, startled. “Willie—”
“Yes, he comes to comfort me, and while I long to touch him, to hold him in my arms, and I still grieve that he has no future in this earthly realm—he lives, Emilie!” she cried, a strange, eerie thrill in her voice. “He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of my bed with the same sweet, adorable smile he always had. And he does not always come alone.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Little Eddie is sometimes with him, and twice he has come with our brother Aleck. He tells me he loves his Uncle Aleck and is with him most of the time.” Mary clasped her hands to her heart. “You cannot imagine the comfort this gives me. When I thought of my little son in the vastness of eternity, alone, without his mother to hold his little hand in loving guidance, it nearly broke my heart.”
Mary’s eyes were wide and shining, as if she were in the presence of the supernatural. Emilie shivered when Mary drew closer to kiss her cheek before bidding her good-night and leaving the room, the strange, unsettling smile still upon her lips.
The next morning Emilie remained so disturbed by Mary’s midnight revelations that she could not bear to repeat them, but she did warn Abe that Mary was nervous and overwrought from being under a tremendous strain. Abe again asked her to stay longer, but Emilie knew the time had come for her to take Katherine home, to reunite their little family and wait out the rest of the war.
On the morning of her departure, Abe provided her with a pass that allowed her to return to Kentucky, relieved her of all penalties and forfeitures, and restored her rights. “You know this only protects you from past transgressions,” he added wryly. “It will not safeguard you from crimes you may commit in the future.”
“I understand,” said Emilie, allowing a hint of a smile as she tucked the precious document into her reticule.
He studied her for a moment, his expression earnest and grave. “Little Sister, you know I tried to keep Ben with me. I hope you don’t feel any bitterness toward me, or believe that I am to blame for all this sorrow.”
Emilie took a deep, shaky breath. “Let neither of us blame the other. My husband loved you and was deeply grateful to you for the commission you so generously offered, but he had to follow his conscience. He had to side with his own people—and I had to side with him.”
They parted in forgiveness and gratitude, with fervent wishes to meet again in happier days, when the sorrows of the past would diminish beneath the bright hope of the future.