The First Ladies (6 page)

FIRST LADY: 1869–77

Rock Solid to the Core

Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age, an opulent economic phoenix rising from the ashes of a shattered country. Over-the-top elegance, splendor, and whatever money could buy was considered the key to good living. The Grants, unpretentious at heart but willing to learn, would become the most popular presidential couple since George and Martha Washington. After the war-torn Lincoln administration with a disliked Mary, followed by an equally disliked Andrew Johnson and his tubercular wife, Eliza, it was not difficult to be popular.

Julia Dent was born outside of St. Louis, Missouri, to a
comfortably middle-class slaveholding family. Her education was mediocre. She went to boarding school in town, but she was never considered a scholar. Stocky and plain with a crossed-eye condition, she nevertheless possessed a pleasant and accommodating personality. Throughout her life, she would make friends wherever she went.

She married Bvt. Capt. Ulysses S. Grant, her brother’s West Point classmate, when she was twenty-two, after a four-year secret engagement by correspondence. The marriage would be one of the happiest among first families. She provided her taciturn and generally undistinguished husband with the loyal, uncomplaining support and devotion that was imperative to his well-being.

Four years into their marriage, Grant resigned from the army after a bad bout of homesickness and alcohol threatened his career. Then ten years of bad-to-worse luck followed with little prospects of success. Julia was doing her own housework and cooking, raising four children, and foregoing any luxuries. But she never reproved her husband—not even by a silent look. She believed in his inherent greatness. She was probably the only one who did, and hers was a true love.

When the Civil War began, Grant was a lowly clerk at his father’s tannery in Galena, Illinois. Reinstated in the Union army shortly after the surrender of Fort Sumter, his rise was an up-and-down progression of victories and inactivity, loyally accompanied by Julia and the kids, who joined him whenever and wherever possible. They traveled by wagon, stagecoach, carriage, train, and steamboat. They stayed in hotels, boardinghouses, with friends, and in Grant’s camp tents. Once Vicksburg was safely in Union hands, General Grant found himself in the hero business. Following Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, he was
the
hero, arguably the most famous man in the country.

Gifts for the Great General and Mrs. Grant started pouring in from a grateful nation even before the war’s end, and not merely wagonloads of cigars and flowers. They received elegant carriages and thoroughbred horses, jeweled swords, gold trays, enough silver to rival the Comstock lode, and most important, an unending stream of invitations from the rich and powerful, all of whom were anxious to host and befriend the hero. Private citizen and Mrs. Grant were happy to accept all of the above, sincerely believing that it would be rude and ungracious to decline such hospitality and generosity, even from those industrialists who were being derided as robber barons. (It could also be conjectured that Grant was thrilled to finally give his wife all the things he couldn’t afford to give her before.) They would be given a house in Philadelphia (because they had once considered living there), a house in Galena (which claimed Grant as its own), a house in Washington where they actually lived for a while, and even a summer cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey (deeded to Julia when Grant declined it as being excessive). The culmination of course, was the best house the country could offer: the White House.

The country was delighted with the forty-three-year-old Julia Grant. Still plain and even dowdy in comparison to just
about everybody, she appreciated the cosmopolitan socialites who offered to befriend her and put her fashionable new gowns on their personal accounts. Congress gave her tantamount to a blank check for elaborate redecorating according to Gilded Age standards, and the Grant White House was thrown open for entertaining. Their receptions and dinners were elegant, happy affairs, all the more charming since President Grant always retained his innate understated modesty and Julia her essential niceness. She would learn to put on airs with the best of them, but they would always be airs of her acquired status and never of personal snobbishness. Everyone seemed to be comfortable in her company.

The pinnacle of the gifts and airs turned out to be the White House wedding of their seventeen-year-old daughter Nellie to a titled (albeit alcoholic) Englishman. It was the first White House wedding in decades, and presents poured in from all over the world, including, it is said, a handkerchief valued at more than $500 in Gilded Age pre-tax money.

After their White House tenancy, Julia and her hero spent two years touring the world. Now they would be wined, dined, and gifted by kings, queens, emperors, kaisers, tsars, and even the mikado of Japan. But gifts are not money, and when Grant’s money ran out, they came home. Bowing to the advice of his supporters, Grant halfheartedly sought a third presidential term, but it fizzled. Julia, who truly wanted a return White House engagement, was disappointed.

Once more, their finest days were when bad-and-worse luck was upon them. Needing a steady income, and guilty only of
naiveté and poor business judgment, Grant was seduced into a financial brokerage venture. His partner was a total scoundrel who devised a Ponzi scheme, absconded with several hundred thousand dollars, and left Grant holding the bag. The Great General, whose personal integrity was never in question, insisted that all the debts would be paid. Shortly after that fiasco, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the throat.

Julia never left his side, nor did she ever weep in his presence. To repay the brokerage debts, all the Grant houses were
sold, including Julia’s childhood home that they had inherited after her father died. The swords, trays, gifts from foreign dignitaries, and even his Civil War memorabilia were assigned to his creditors. Finally, in an effort to keep Julia from want and his children from obligation, Grant began writing his war memoirs. A week after the galleys were completed, he died.

Unlike Mary Lincoln, Julia Grant would be a very rich widow. Grant’s book earned more than $300,000 in the first year alone. She outlived her husband by seventeen years and even wrote her
own
memoirs, the first First Lady ever to do so. The handwritten manuscript was not discovered until seventy-five years after her death, locked in a trunk in a granddaughter’s attic.

FIRST LADY: 1877–81

The Old-Fashioned New Woman

Lucy Webb was the quintessential old-fashioned girl from Ohio. Left fatherless as a baby, she was raised by a mother who was decidedly
not
old-fashioned. Mrs. Webb was a staunch admirer of feminist educator Mary Lyon and believed strongly that women should receive “higher learning.” Lucy, whether she wanted to or not, did not go to a traditional finishing school for girls, but an academic female seminary that is now connected with Ohio Wesleyan. There she learned the classics, Greek and Latin, geometry, science, history, and philosophy, at a time when teaching such advanced subjects
to women was controversial and even ridiculed. She was an apt student, but she had no ambitions.

At twenty, Lucy married Rutherford B. Hayes, who was ten years her senior. Also raised by a widowed mother, he had become a lawyer, thanks in large part to the generosity and mentoring of his uncle Sardis Birchard. The Hayeses’ marriage would be conventional, happy, and fruitful. Five of their eight children would survive to adulthood.

“Rud” Hayes was past forty and their family well underway when the Civil War began, but like many others at the time, he enlisted immediately and would rise to become a brevet
major general. His was not merely a political or administrative command; Hayes served in the field and was wounded four times, once seriously. With Hayes’s wealthy and benevolent Uncle Sardis acting as surrogate grandfather, Lucy was free to join her husband in camp as often as possible, especially when he had been wounded. Her personal care freed other nurses to tend to other casualties. The soldiers and fellow officers alike grew to love the gentle lady who was happy to mother them and mend their uniforms. Rutherford and Lucy Hayes would always be beloved among the soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Infantry and would remain active in veteran affairs until they died.

Multi-wounded generals, especially lawyers and Republicans, were prime candidates for public office at the end of the Civil War, and Ohio Republicans duly elected Hayes to Congress and later made him governor of Ohio.

By the time Hayes was nominated for the presidency in 1876, Lucy was forty-six and past childbearing. Always a devout Methodist, she was proud that she had remained the old-fashioned girl of her youth. Her hairstyle never changed: parted in the center and pulled back into a bun. Her dresses remained modest: high-necked and long-sleeved. Her attitude toward home and family was anything but modern (higher education notwithstanding). Both Hayeses made every effort to provide a traditional White House, all the more so since the 1876 election was rancorous and disputed. Barely elected and tainted with the epithet “His Fraudulency,” Hayes and his wife strove to remain personally above reproach.

Despite Lucy’s sincere backseat temperament, she was hijacked twice. First, by Mary Clemmer Ames, a female reporter who proclaimed the First Lady to be the “New Woman.” It is unclear exactly what characteristics Lucy had to warrant that claim other than a broad academic education. Nevertheless, Ames followed First Lady Hayes like a puppy dog, singing her New Woman praises. Lucy considered herself to be shy and denied being anything other than old-fashioned and a devoted family woman. But even after eight pregnancies, she was still attractive with a shapely albeit buxom figure. Compared to the homely Julia Grant and pouty-looking Mary Lincoln, Lucy was downright pretty.

Always a teetotaler by personal inclination, she had encouraged her husband to “take the pledge” early in their marriage. (The youthful Rutherford had been known to enjoy an occasional whiskey with his equally youthful companions.) The declaration that the White House would serve no wine, whiskey, or brandy became a cause célèbre, inviting more than a century of scholars to cast blame or praise wherever they chose. Did
Lucy
insist on the dry house? Or did
Rutherford
institute the policy as a popular issue to diffuse the questionable election and related political problems? Scholars have proposed different viewpoints. Lucy always claimed she was in favor of temperance rather than abstinence, and it was not in her character to impose her will on others. It may well be that her husband suggested that she take responsibility for the decision, since good manners would protect the First Lady from undue criticism (at least then). Besides, how could
anyone condemn a first couple for opposing drunkenness? There will probably never be a definitive answer.

The dry dictum, however, was the impetus of Lucy’s second hijacking, this time by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization that was quickly becoming a formidable force in the country. Mostly comprised of prim, unappealing old biddies, the WCTU declared the First Lady to be their “ideal woman” and began singing an entire chorale of her praises from the rooftops. Their publications were continually filled with Lucy Hayes stories and tributes. She was embarrassed by the unsolicited publicity, but her lawyer husband advised her to let it slide unless people said something untrue or slanderous. Lucy herself never joined the WCTU either as First Lady or in her retirement. But she did accept the beautiful portrait of her they had commissioned.

One story that seems to have withstood scrutiny is how the devout Hayes family would invite selected guests to join them at the White House for coffee, cake, and hymn singing after church services on Sunday. The only people who criticized that benign ritual were the ribald politicians who remembered the less-pious, more-glamorous Grants with more affection than they had for Lemonade Lucy and her equally boring husband.