“Gone to the country”

Abstract

Abstract On A Friday Afternoon Near The End Of May 1862, Mary Lincoln Received a note from a young White House aide that she considered inappropriate. John Hay, a twenty-three-year-old presidential assistant, was casually inquiring if the Marine Band might once again begin its summer concerts on the White House lawn. It was just a few months after the death of her second son, and the first lady was emphatic in response. “It is our especial desire,” she wrote, “that the Band, does not play in these grounds, this Summer,” adding firmly, “We expect our wishes to be complied with.” Hay had clashed with the president’s wife before. Not far removed from his college days at Brown University, the handsome Illinois native had a bachelor’s impatience with assertive women. Meanwhile, Mary Lincoln had been determined in the first year of her husband’s administration to establish herself as mistress of the nation’s house. Their competing interests and insecurities made for some explosive moments. Although the two figures eventually forged a workable truce, during this period the sniping was fairly constant. “The Hell- cat is getting more Hell-cattail day by day,” the young attorney had confided to a fellow aide only a month earlier.