Rise to Greatness Read Online Free Page A

with at least seven other people. Faced with the constant distractions of the wartime White House, he made good use of the powers of concentration he had developed in his youth, though to outsiders he often appeared to be lost in a daydream or deep in a trance. Lincoln also took advantage of his insomnia: “While others are asleep, I think,” he explained. “Night is the only time I have to think.” He often sought refuge beyond the White House walls. Lincoln had a way of suddenly turning up in offices and parlors around the capital, having walked or ridden over without fanfare. His tendency to drop in without warning was an irritant to stuffy characters like McClellan, an endearing quality to many others, and a source of worry among friends who feared for Lincoln’s safety as he strolled the streets or rode around on horseback and in open carriages.
    The stifling atmosphere of the White House was made heavier by the blanket of grief spread by the growing conflict. Already, the war had touched Lincoln intimately: in fact, the first Union soldier killed in action was one of his former law clerks, a dashing young man named Elmer Ellsworth. On hearing the news, Lincoln burst into tears. The soldier’s body was brought to the White House for a hero’s funeral. A few months later, Senator Edward Baker—a friend so close that Lincoln had named his second son for him—was killed in the fiasco at Ball’s Bluff. Lincoln “loved him like a brother,” and would say that Baker’s death was the “keenest blow” he suffered during the war. With his friends dying and his family torn in two (David Todd was one of several Lincoln in-laws fighting for the Confederacy), the president was one of the first Americans to learn just how bitter and painful this war of brothers would be.
    As Lincoln welcomed visitors on New Year’s Day, he finally had reason to hope that Mary’s troubles were in capable hands, thanks to the man standing beside them in the reception line. A veteran bureaucrat of enormous charm and discretion, Benjamin French had mastered Washington protocol and grown wise to its snares. He was an ideal choice to serve as unofficial adviser, confidant, and minder; he would protect the first lady, as much as possible, from her own worst tendencies. French had made a strongly favorable impression on the Lincolns during a memorable evening at the White House a few weeks earlier. The occasion was a performance by “Herr Hermann,” a famous sleight-of-hand artist, who consented to do a few of his tricks very slowly, so that the invited audience could see how the magic was accomplished. (At one point, Hermann asked the president for his handkerchief. “You’ve got me now,” Lincoln replied. “I ain’t got any!” The well-bred George McClellan, in attendance that night, was appalled by the president’s uncouth response.) The Lincolns met French during the reception before the performance; the courtier immediately found much to admire in the first lady. She “looked remarkably well & would be taken for a young lady at a short distance,” he thought. “She seemed much at her ease & strove to be very agreeable.” French saw Mary as she wished to be seen, and he was the soul of discretion. Though he came to know her uncomfortably well (“I always felt as if the eyes of a hyena were upon me”), French would not list her offenses even in the confessional of his own diary: “It is not proper that I should write down, even here, all that I know!”
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    After reaching the end of the receiving line, Attorney General Bates turned to watch the arrival of the diplomatic corps—“a gawdy show,” he thought of the exotic figures in their varied national costumes. This attitude would undoubtedly have been shared by many of his countrymen. Bates was a practical lawyer from St. Louis, crossroads of the frontier, where minds were trained on the new world, not the old. Lincoln, too, had probably taken a provincial