Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage (review)

Although Kate Chase has not been entirely neglected by biographers, she has received somewhat less than full justice. Biographies have represented her as overwrought with ambition, aggressive, and self-absorbed. Peg Lamphier reinterprets this conventional view in three ways. First, she argues that Kate must be regarded as a political actor as the daughter and wife of politicians. Like other feminist scholars, Lamphier believes that too much women's political history has concentrated solely on women's rights and allied movements. She argues that historians must broaden their understanding of mid-nineteenth century politics to include both formal and informal kinds of influence and authority as the basis for political power. When the parameters of "political" are changed, it becomes apparent that Kate was a committed and passionate partisan woman who "placed her imprint directly upon the manly form of traditional politics" (5).

Lamphier's second, and more problematic claim, is that it was Kate's search for love and acceptance that consumed her life and motivated her political involvement. Curiously leaning on the findings of modern psychiatry, Lamphier writes, "Politics functioned as a way to gain approval from her father, and when she found she had great talent for governmental intrigue, politics set her apart from other women, made her special and notable…. Her union with William . . . did not fail because she did not love him, but because she loved him too well. . . . The tragedy of Kate's life is not that it ended in poverty and obscurity but that Kate suffered from too little love in her life" (241, 243). Finally, the book interprets Kate's life in the context of her marriage with William Sprague. It traces the tension between the ideals and realities of their marriage and how these tensions destroyed their union. The result is engaging but sobering, as the reader is forced to confront the tragedy of abuse, scandal, and broken relationships.

Lamphier begins with a discussion of the details of Kate and William's years before they met, noting that "the first decades of Kate's and William's lives created young adults eminently suited to each other" (41). William was on the cusp of fame, politically ambitious and economically successful. Kate was equipped with the tools of brilliance and beauty, and was the social hostess and political confidant of Salmon Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the treasury and her father. It was not long before a budding romance blossomed into engagement and marriage. Lamphier's discussion of their courtship centers on the wealth of letters from William wherein he negotiated the tenets of romantic love. Her point here is to show how William and Kate were part of the larger cultural transition toward a new ethos of romantic love that placed new demands upon their relationship, including high expectations of intimacy and companionship. According to Lamphier, rather than empower women by displacing domestic patriarchy, as some historians have argued, in the Chase-Sprague marriage the companionate ideal actually limited Kate's power. This is because theirs was a disharmonious marriage. "The companionate model . . . encouraged mutual affection as a replacement for male authority. . . . But what of Kate and William's relationship, where marital affection consistently failed" (86)? The answer, according to Lamphier, is that Kate found that she had no real power to influence meaningful change or to procure what she yearned for most in life: William's love.

At the same time, Lamphier shows that while Kate had little influence in her marriage she possessed political sway with the Washington elite. As the daughter of a leading Radical Republican and the wife of a governor and senator, Kate embraced the ideology of the party and became a female party regular who acted with and upon other members of the partisan community. She acted as hostess to the Washington's notable men and women who called on a regular basis. She...