Mrs. Lincoln's Rival Read Online Free PDF Page B

and instead turned to the family memoranda her father recorded in the blank pages bound in at the end. She had read the passage noting the day of her birth so often that the book fell open readily at the proper place, and almost involuntarily, she read again the lines that were forever engraved upon her memory.
    “The babe is pronounced pretty,” her father had written mere hours after she had taken her first breath. “I think it quite otherwise. It is, however, well formed, and I am thankful. May God give the child a good understanding that she may know and keep his commandments.”
    It had not taken her long to disappoint him, Kate reflected, and she had spent nearly every day afterward trying to make up for it. Someday, perhaps, she would.
    Gently she closed the Bible and returned it to the shelf.

Chapter Two
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    M ARCH –A PRIL 1860
    I
n the months that followed, Kate redoubled her efforts to make herself indispensable to her father, and when she proved to be efficient, intelligent, and more devoted to him than any clerk or secretary he could ever hire, he entrusted her with more, and more important, duties. She managed his correspondence, scheduled appointments, attended official functions, and offered a willing ear when he needed to privately air his grievances with the legislature or party politics, or when he practiced a speech. Though in writing he was an eloquent rhetorician with moments of brilliance, he was less confident in speechmaking. His handsome face and tall, powerful form gave him a majestic presence when he stood before an audience, but he spoke with a slight though unmistakable lisp and his voice had a deep, throaty quality that rendered him too self-conscious to achieve the air of effortless eloquence. Diligent practice helped, and so did Kate’s tactful reviews.
    Kate relished the role of his official hostess, which her more reserved Aunt Alice gladly ceded to her. Dressed in flattering gowns, her hair parted in the center and gathered in a simple, elegant knot at the base of her graceful neck, she presided over receptions and dinners and teas for legislators, political friends, potential allies, and influential businessmen and editors traveling through Ohio. Gatherings at her father’s house became renowned for their elegant surroundings, convivial atmosphere, and stimulating conversation, and the consensus was that the governor owed all due credit to his eldest daughter. She was confident and outgoing where her father could seem aloof, and she wielded tact and charm with the skill of an experienced diplomat in fraught situations where her father tended to trample unwittingly over other people’s feelings. Though her father still dispensed criticism freely but held on as tightly to praise as a miser did coin, she knew he appreciated her efforts, and she glowed with happiness when she saw how puffed up with pride he became whenever his colleagues commended her to him.
    Kate became the lady of the house in fact as well as practice in the sorrowful aftermath of Aunt Alice’s death.
    On a frosty evening in mid-February 1859, she and her father were in his study, contemplating his political future over a game of chess. A month before, he had received a discouraging letter from a longtime friend and trusted political ally, Mr. Gamaliel Bailey, former editor of Cincinnati’s abolitionist paper the
Philanthropist
turned publisher of the
National Era
in Washington. After observing the ebb and flow of public opinion and studying the signs of the times, Mr. Bailey had concluded that although there was no man he would rather see in the presidential chair than Salmon P. Chase, he thought it best to support New York senator William H. Seward for the presidency in 1860.
    “Bailey himself admits that Seward and I are the two most prominent men of the Republican Party,” her father said mournfully, still brooding over the letter, which lay unfolded on the table beside the chessboard. “But Seward is