One Glorious Ambition Read online

  “There’s an amendment attached to your bill,” Mann told her during a session break. “But I think it will pass anyway. It resolves the question of the distribution so the western states are satisfied.”

  “You know how I feel about making any concessions that might weaken the overall resources for the national asylum centers,” Dorothea said.

  “For once, I trust you will let practical politics prevail.”

  She ran a cleaning rag around the ink bottle on her desk. She wiped errant sand into the palm of her hand and returned it to the sandbox. “I won’t protest the amendment, but I will have an ache in my heart always if it passes.”

  The bill passed the House with the amendment intact. Since it had passed the Senate previously, and the changes would only appease not distress the Democrats there, Dorothea waited hopefully for word that in August 1852 she would at last see her dream accomplished.

  Instead, the Senate refused to vote on the bill because of the railroad amendments attached to it.

  “But the railroad amendment was supposed to further the bill along.” Dorothea stood before the president in his office. Aides hovered in the background.

  “Things happen. But you will be back,” Fillmore told her. “Next session for certain.”

  “Like lemmings to the sea, you mean? Yes, I imagine I will come back. And you, will you be back?”

  The president harrumphed. “I am hopeful. I would like to be elected for my own full term. I know my signing of the Fugitive Slave Act has distanced my northern Whig friends, and my position on the Caribbean invasion has disgruntled my southern Whig friends.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you will outlast me, Dolly.”

  “I need you.”

  “And I will try to be of service.” He nodded to her and an aide touched her elbow to usher her out. The president was a busy man, and only friendship had allowed these few minutes for him to offer his time to a passionate woman who had again failed in her attempt to promote a piece of legislation.

  Amazingly, the federal hospital in Washington that she had declined to assist was approved, and while Dorothea had not championed it during the session, she saw the authorization of the hospital as a first step in recognizing the federal government’s role in treating the mentally ill. She decided to remain in the city and see what she could do to support “my district hospital.” She had a cause for the summer and the fall, until once again she would champion her bill and hopefully Millard Fillmore, as the newly elected president in his own right, would sign it.

  In 1852 the Whigs did not nominate Fillmore for a run at the presidency. And the Democrat nominee, Franklin Pierce, won the presidential election.

  “Perhaps we can still get the measure through both houses in the lame duck session that I might sign it before leaving office,” Fillmore told Dorothea. He did not appear all that disappointed that he had not won his own term in office. She commented to him about that, and he nodded. “I have done what I could do to serve my country. I will go home to New York now, with my dear Abigail and Abby, and when this session is over, I shall become a country squire again.”

  “You shall always be involved in public life.” Dorothea smiled as he poured her a cup of tea.

  “Perhaps. But it would please me to see your bill through, Dolly. It would be a solid and memorable period on the sentence of my presidency.”

  She smiled, and for a moment she thought his look was one of endearment, perhaps more deeply than merely as a friend. She felt her face grow warm. He cleared his throat and backed away. Admiration as a colleague, she decided. That was what had passed between them.

  To the end of having him be the president who would sign her bill into law, she lobbied daily, buttonhooking legislators. She was doing it for the country’s insane but also for her friend the president. In both houses, the bill languished, however. Other bills were attached to it, or it was moved to be attached to some other issue related to land. It was squeezed into discussions that seemed unrelated, though championed by some senators as a pet project. Nothing, absolutely nothing, moved closer to resolution. Still, in the wee hours of the last day of the session of March 3–4, 1853, a final effort was made to pass the bill so Millard Fillmore could sign it.

  Dorothea knew the president had spoken to many congressmen on her behalf. She had agreed to changes related to the western states, and Dorothea was still there in her office in the Library of Congress as the voices of debate droned on, hopeful that this tiny bit of compromise would be the ticket to the railroad of hope she had been riding these past few years.

  She waited for the final vote. The clock ticked. She stared out a window, urging spring forward.

  The last act of the Thirty-Second Congress, however, was a vote to kill Dorothea’s bill.

  Thirty-Three

  Lessons of Loss

  She kept a smile on her face at the inauguration of Franklin Pierce, watching as the Fillmores took their seats on March 4, 1853, a very cold day in Washington. Inside, Dorothea burned. She had to be optimistic, had to assume these small wins and defeats were part of some larger plan. She could not make enemies of the new administration. So she nodded her feathered hat toward the new president and his wife, smiled, then slipped in next to the Fillmores in the seat they had reserved for her.

  Snow spit over them, driven by a relentless east wind. The canopy erected to shelter the dignitaries did little against the icy cold, however.

  Dorothea had dressed warmly, with a winter muffler close around her neck. Even though March often announced the coming of spring in the city, today it spoke of a winter unwilling to leave.

  “I may as well attach this handkerchief to my nose,” she told Abigail.

  “Like a grain bag for a horse.”

  “Exactly.”

  Abigail shivered and coughed, her auburn sausage curls bobbing as she huddled on the dais as required of the former first lady. The speeches dragged on, and then the parade began. Even the horses looked chilled. Was that frost forming on their noses?

  “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m going where it’s warm,” Dorothea said through chattering teeth. There were hours of festivities left to come, many of them outdoors.

  “I would if I could,” Abigail said and sneezed.

  Dorothea wrapped her knitted muffler around Abigail’s neck, patted her arm, and said she would see all of them later in the week. At her boardinghouse, she took tea before a warm fire and added a splash of brandy for inner warmth. She considered her strategy. Her friend Horace Mann and a few other supporters had left Congress with the last election.

  Senator Bell had cooled toward her too, though she did not know why. Maybe because she had given in on the amendment that had doomed the bill. Or perhaps he was beginning to see all northerners as abolitionists. Now that they lived in different boardinghouses, she had not seen much of Jane Bell either, and she missed that but did not have the time to change it. Her bill held her hostage.

  As she placed another coal on the fire, she realized she was tired. Tired of the effort, the wrangling, the uncertainty. She had other choices. Maybe the legislative defeat in the last session was a message for her to stop this compassionate crusade. Maybe God had something else in store for her. Her eye caught Madeleine’s carving. She lifted it and sighed. She had other choices to make, but the Madeleines of the world did not.

  She was just sad that her friends the Fillmores would soon be leaving Washington. She would miss them. They were like family, each one.

  Dorothea spent the next few days going over the congressional committee assignments, deciding which legislators to invite to tea when she began her next charm campaign. She still had an office in the library, but her franking privileges had left with Horace Mann. President Pierce already had made his cabinet appointments, which gave her cause for some optimism. John A. Dix, her faux brother, had been chosen along with an old friend, Senator James C. Dobbin, who was named secretary of the navy. He might not have much influence on her land bill, but he was
a voice inside the cabinet at least.

  Suddenly, however, former senator Dix was asked to take a subordinate position to appease a faction, so he wouldn’t be in the cabinet after all. Worse, her states’ rights nemesis, Jefferson Davis, was appointed secretary of war. Sitting next to the new president, Davis would have a strong and ready voice against her land bill.

  Still, Dobbin and the Bells cared about the mentally ill, she was certain. She would find more legislators and charm them into polishing their souls through caring for the unfortunate. She opened a letter from Nova Scotia and read a plea for her to explore a site for a new mental hospital. Imagine, another country she might assist. Maybe after this congressional session ended. It was good to have somewhere to go and be restored.

  “Letter for you, Miss Dix,” the landlady announced as she knocked at her door. It was three days after the inauguration, and Dorothea opened the door, anticipating an invitation from Abigail. But the letter wasn’t from the vice president or Abigail. Instead, Abby’s hand informed her, “Mother has taken ill. You must come to the Willard Hotel where we’re staying until Mama improves.”

  The wretched inaugural day weather! The requirement that former first ladies remain in the outdoors while subject to freezing weather. Propriety overruled common sense sometimes. Decorum also had prevented her from testifying to Congress, when her words could have brought insight to the otherwise uninformed. She grabbed her heavy wool cape and hailed a cab.

  Her quick trip out of the boardinghouse began a vigil. Dorothea visited daily, tending to her friend whose color was as pale as old teeth. The effort of her breathing brought tears to Dorothea’s eyes. She would shoo Abby out to give the girl some relief, and she told Millard to do likewise. Abby would sometimes leave, but Millard sat across from her and held Abigail’s hand, his eyes deep sockets in his caring face.

  As Abigail’s breathing rattled and slowed, lines of suffering grew on Millard’s face. Dorothea prayed for his comfort, prayed Abigail would recover.

  “Maybe you should get some rest yourself,” Millard told Dorothea after several days of tending. “Congress is in session. You do not want to lose out on the debates.”

  Dorothea shook her head. “You know as well as I do they will not be taking up our bill anytime soon. And besides, caring for a friend is a higher calling. You have been like family to me. I could never desert you now.”

  Millard nodded. “It’s good of you.”

  Abigail had not spoken since Dorothea’s arrival, and her glassy eyes no longer followed her around the room. Together, Millard and Dorothea listened to her labored breathing. Dorothea read psalms now to comfort Millard and Abby more than Abigail. Doctors whispered about pneumonia and a high fever while Dorothea wiped her friend’s hot forehead with a cool cloth.

  In the evening of March 29 she returned to the boardinghouse to freshen up. When she returned to Willard Hotel, Abby sobbed as she opened the door and clung to Dorothea like a frightened baby to its mother. Her friend Abigail had died. Dorothea simply held Abigail’s child.

  On March 30, both houses of Congress adjourned and public buildings closed in Abigail’s honor. Abby allowed Dorothea to wrap her arms around her as they sat in a pew. Oh, such a terrible grief to lose so loving a mother. Dorothea allowed Millard and Abby’s sorrow to mingle with her own, blessed the days she had known Abigail as a friend, and tried not to question the why of things. That evening, alone, she read Shakespeare: “Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers to the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” She would urge her friends to speak their grief, and she would write down her own, mingling Abigail’s passing with her mother’s.

  Dorothea traveled with the Fillmores to Buffalo, where Abigail was buried and where the decimated Fillmores would remain.

  “Your presence has been a gift,” Millard told her as she prepared to leave. “Maybe you should go to Nova Scotia now, become restored by doing something constructive rather than return to the vagaries of national politics. Maybe the halls of Congress are not a place for women, after all.”

  “It’s been my honor to be allowed to share in your family’s joys … and grief. If there is ever anything I can do, please, call on me.”

  Millard nodded. He had lost weight in the days since Abigail’s death; his collar was no longer tight against his throat. He held her hands in his. “Be well, Dolly. Think of us when you can.” He looked away and Dorothea watched as he struggled not to weep, uncertain how to comfort him. He cleared his throat. “I will later help as I can with the bill.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Go now. Do the good you always do.”

  If only she could.

  Dorothea did leave for Nova Scotia. She needed to see the faces of the mentally ill and to confer with those on the front lines of this war, which was how she thought of it. She needed to speak with superintendents and physicians and let the hands of the insane touch her soul.

  Unexpectedly, on Sable Island, off the Nova Scotia coast, she found horses and felt the sting of sand and sea as she raced one against the lifting of the morning fog. Feral horses dotted ponds as she rode by. She had never ridden in surf, and something about the ocean and the equine beasts with manes waving in the wind restored her. She recognized that the stable boy who helped her was a mongoloid from the nearby asylum. They practiced a kind of moral treatment on Sable Island, and Dorothea saw once again that what she hoped for in her country was worthy of her efforts.

  “The new president will hope both houses defeat your bill so he won’t have to veto it,” Millard Fillmore said. Abby served tea and sat quietly, dark circles beneath her eyes signaled her ongoing grief over her mother’s death. John Dix visited as well. Dorothea had stopped to visit on her way back to Washington. “I fear for the fate of your bill.”

  “You think he would veto if we got that far?” Dorothea frowned.

  “Davis will push the constitutionality issue,” Dix told her. “Pierce is … a weak president, elected without full party support, so he has to appease everyone. That’s why he withdrew my cabinet nomination.”

  “At least you’ll have his ear. He must respect your judgment, dear brother.”

  Dix nodded but offered no other encouragement.

  “As a distinguished woman of benevolence, you’ll be received at the mansion, so you might diplomatically gauge his level of support.” Millard scraped sugar into his tea and blew on it to let it cool.

  “They’ve remodeled the mansion,” Abby said. They all turned to her, the tone of her voice so flat.

  “Yes, that’s right. It will be different for you when you visit. But the doormen are the same. They’ll remember you,” Dix said.

  “Would you like to visit with me?” Dorothea turned to Abby. “We could stay together for a few weeks.”

  Abby shook her head. “Father has need of me here.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s become involved in a new party formed by the Whigs who have been devastated,” Abby added. “I’m sure he’ll keep busy. I fill in for Mama—” Her voice cracked.

  “As you did at the President’s House.” Dorothea sat beside her and held the young woman’s pale hand, the lace of her sleeve limp against her wrist. She was not starching her lace. Maybe I should remain here, help Abby through her sorrow. “You are his greatest friend, Abby, and deepest comfort.”

  “That she is.” Millard smiled at his daughter, pain still raw inside his eyes. “We will be all right, Dolly, knowing you keep us in your prayers. And you have work to do, my friend.”

  Dorothea spent a week at Trenton, writing and gazing out the window at the Delaware River. She thought of the losses in her life as a train chugged past fields and lakes. Ducks made V shapes as they paddled to the far side of the water. Nothing remained the same. Everything changed, and yet she could not get this one change through Congress. Am I doing something wrong? Are you still in this, God? Had she misread what she had been called to do? Had she failed to heed
another way to relieve the suffering of so many? But to stop now would be an amputation of her spirit. She had to go on.

  The doorman at the Executive Mansion remembered Dorothea on the day she had arranged to meet with the president.

  “I hope your day goes well, Mr. Samuel.”

  He welcomed her with a wide smile in his dark face and ushered her toward the aides who would take her to the president’s office.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Dix?” Franklin Pierce stood behind his desk—a desk Millard Fillmore had left behind.

  “I would be so grateful if you might encourage your congressional supporters to assist in the passage of my land bill for the mentally ill.”

  “I sincerely regret that it did not pass in the last session.” The president stared at her and did not offer a chair. “I shall be glad if it passes now.”

  “I … that is such good news, Mr. President.” She could not contain the joy in her voice. “I’m sure—”

  “But I really have not gone much into the matter.”

  He looked at his watch and moved from behind his desk as a sign of his dismissing her. “I have a busy schedule, as you might imagine.”

  She found herself escorted out. He had given her less than two minutes, had not even invited her to sit while he remained standing. She did not see how he would ever go “into the matter” when he declined information about the bill from a firsthand, passionate source. She thought back to her New York visit. Her friends had sounded despondent as they spoke of the hope of her bill with this new Congress; now she realized they were being optimistic. Still, the president had said he wished it had passed the previous term. Political speech was its own language, and one had to translate intent. She took his words as a sign of support and would relay that support to her congressional supporters. She may well get this bill signed after all.