Charles Bracelen Flood - 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History

O n the morning of January 1, 1864, 8,000 people waited in line on the frozen sunlit lawns of the White House, eager to greet President Abraham Lincoln at the traditional New Years Day reception.

At noon, they poured into the mansion. Ushers pointed the way to the East Room, brightly lit by massive gas-burning crystal chandeliers. The Marine Band, splendid in scarlet tunics, played lively tunes. Official Washington had already passed through the receiving line: ambassadors and their wives, the justices of the Supreme Court, members of the cabinet, senators and congressmen with their families. Following them came officers of the Union Army and the United States Navy, veterans of the thirty-three months of fighting that had taken place thus far in the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln towered above the crowd pressing around him, his rawboned body, just under 6 feet 4 and weighing 180 pounds, clad in an ill-fitting black suit. A man of great strength and stooped posture, he moved awkwardly and had a rumpled, untidy appearance. Despite his efforts to comb and brush what he called his coarse black hair, he said it always looked like a birds nest. On formal occasions like this, he slipped his large hands into white kid gloves, giving them the appearance, Lincoln thought, of canvassed hams. Beside him stood his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, 5 feet 2 and plump, who came down from the family quarters late in the morning, ninety minutes after Lincoln began to shake hands with their guests. She wore what a newspaper account described as a purple velvet dress, decorated with white satin flutings that had an immense train. A headdress with a large white plume topped off her costume. (In this era when most fashionable ladies wore hoopskirts, a heavyset short woman looked as if her top half had emerged from a dome.)

Aides kept trying to push the well-wishers past the president as soon as they shook his hand. One of the young men who served as his private secretary calculated that Lincoln could shake hands and say a word of greeting once every four or five seconds, but many of those who came to see the president stood rooted to the spot, as if they gained strength by staying near him.

Lincoln kept shaking hands, occasionally using his left hand while he rested his right, nodding encouragingly as he exchanged brief pleasantries. Sometimes his craggy, bearded face would break into a smile; answering a remark in his high-pitched voice, the man who had delivered the Gettysburg Address six weeks before occasionally slipped into the rustic terms I reckon or By jings! At other moments, he might greet a friend with a hearty Howdy! Lincoln pronounced chair as cheerMister Cheermanand when he laughed, it reminded one listener of the neighing of a wild horse.

At times, his mind seemed elsewhere. During public receptions, he tried to greet everyone in a cheerful and confident manner, but few imagined not only the mental numbness but also the physical exertion and discomfort involved in shaking thousands of hands. As the crowd kept coming through, people jammed together so closely that one of them said the crushing of bonnets and things was fearful. Some citizens acquired souvenirs by plucking buttons from embroidered furniture, and others surreptitiously used scissors to cut little squares from curtains. After these long sessions, when Lincoln took off his white gloves, his secretaries could see that his right hand was swollen, bruised, and sometimes bloody.