In July 1861, Charlotte came to America for a brief tour and stayed with William Seward and his family in Washington. Seward took her to the White House to introduce her to the newly elected President Lincoln. He led her to Lincoln’s office on the second floor, where the President rose to greet her, lanky and in his serious black suit. He dressed like someone for whom clothes were a regrettable necessity, but his personality was warm and welcoming: “Standing beside the flag in front of his marble fireplace, tilting back in his black leather chair, Lincoln drawled his eager references to the theatre, especially Shakespeare, to plays he had seen recently when he had slipped unannounced into a box.” He had not seen Charlotte onstage, but he made her promise not to retire before he had seen her in Macbeth, his favorite play.
After Charlotte returned to Rome, the war continued to escalate. Thousands of volunteers joined the Union and Confederate armies, including many immigrants and free black men. Few had any military training. The Union Army was defeated at the Battle of Manassas (later known as the Battle of Bull Run) on July 21. More than 4,500 men died in that battle alone, though this was just the beginning; more than half a million more would die before the war’s end.
By 1863 it was clear that there was more war to come than had already passed. In Rome, Charlotte read about the war with growing fear for her American friends and her homeland, “so heart sick that I hardly know how to talk or write about it.”
Determined to help, she decided to return to America to raise money for the Union Army’s Sanitary Commission, an organization that provided medical equipment and support to doctors and nurses on the battlefield. She knew that the more star power she could muster the more money she could raise, so she wrote to her old friend and former costar Edwin Booth about playing opposite her in Macbeth. Edwin, however, was in deep mourning for his wife, Mary, who had died suddenly of pneumonia in February, leaving Edwin to raise their daughter Edwina alone. Charlotte urged Edwin to say yes to her offer and do his part nevertheless.
Edwin agreed to do it, though he tried to talk her out of doing Macbeth. He had a small, lithe physique and his acting style tended to be meditative, while Charlotte was often described in terms of natural disasters like a “whirlwind” or wild animals like a “python” or “pantheress.” It could also be argued that the nation’s mood was not right for such a dark, morally difficult play. But Charlotte had a promise to keep.
In June of 1863 she sailed for America from England on a Cunard steamer. The passengers were divided according to their Northern or Southern sympathies and during the entire voyage the two groups refused to socialize with one another. Charlotte tried to stay on deck as much as possible, pacing the boards of the ship talking with the other passengers, including a merchant named Henry Swift. Swift was a seasoned traveler who imported goods from South America. He loved the theatre, and felt his children’s education would not be complete until they had seen Edwin Booth and Charlotte Cushman onstage.
After many weeks at sea, recalled Swift, a call rang out for land. Though they were still a long way off, the horizon came into view as a few pilot boats raced toward the ship. Charlotte and the other “faithful ones” commandeered the gangway, “so they would be the first to hear the news the little boats carried.” The first man climbed from his boat and the crowd “gave three rousing cheers and a Tiger.” (A nautical saying: Mark Twain describes a “tiger” as three cheers followed by a loud growl.) “What news?” asked Charlotte and the others, their hands on their hats, ready to throw them up if it was good. The news was bad, the confederacy had rallied and won another victory. Union supporters dropped their heads. Suddenly, according to Swift, “Miss Cushman’s little foot resounded on the deck with a positive protest and she said ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ turned upon her heel and marched away with the tread of a Spanish Cavalier.” Nearby, Swift turned to a friend and said, “Three cheers for Charlotte Cushman.”
When she arrived in Washington on October 9, 1863, Charlotte again stayed with the Sewards, whose house had become a social hub of Washington society. It was a large, two-story red brick building just northeast of the Capitol, with trees that grew so thickly that you could hardly see a visitor coming up the walk. William Seward was elegant and handsome and his wife, Frances, was beautiful and intellectual. Both were committed abolitionists. Their nineteen-year-old daughter, Fanny, was as brilliant as her parents and hoped to be a writer. She was used to the comings and goings of great artists, thinkers, and politicians, but Charlotte was special. She had made a lasting impression on Fanny during her visit two years earlier. To Fanny, Charlotte was proof that an unmarried woman could be happy and successful—a model for the single life she planned to lead.
During this visit, Fanny studied every detail of Charlotte’s speech and appearance and made extensive notes about her in her diary. Fanny meant these notes to be a script for her future life. When Charlotte arrived, Fanny noted that she dressed almost in a military fashion, with a “drab traveling duster” and a dress of the same fabric. Under those serious traveling clothes, she sometimes also wore a pin-striped skirt and linen pin-striped shirt,
