Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Upon re-reading this book I have increased my rating. The prior review is reprinted in full in quotations below and while those comments remain, upon re-appraisal it's clear that Ms. Lamphier's insights and theories are usually insightful and at times brilliant, always thoroughly documented, and well-reasoned as well, even when one does not necessarily agree with all of the conclusions she draws. In many ways a tour de force. Recommended.

"This is at least the 5th biography of the Civil War Northern Belle, Kate Chase (daughter of Lincoln's Treasury Secretary), and it takes good advantage of material not available to prior researchers. It continues the revisionist trend from the last bio ("Kate Chase for the Defense", by Sokoloff) of trying to humanize this ambitious woman and portrary her in a more sympathetic light than the first several books. The author makes as good a case as one can for her point of view, and candidly admits to favoritism (she announces in the prologue that she will ever be a Kate supporter, and discloses an unmitigated hatred of Kate's husband William Sprague). But the gender politics angle grows tiresome after a while and detracts from the story. One wishes the book were told in a more dramatic manner; there is certainly more than enough raw material for that.

The best new stuff here concerns the hitherto unknown extent to which the Roscoe Conkling-Kate Chase relationship continued well after the famous "shotgun" incident in which the cuckolded Sprague threatened to blow Conkling's head off, setting off a national scandal. I was particularly intrigued by materials indicating that Kate continued to press the case for Conkling to President Chester Alan Arthur, urging Arthur to give her lover a high-level position in his administration at a time when it should have been obvious that this was not in the cards. Indeed, much of the new research material merely bolsters the picture of Kate Chase as a ceaselessly calculating individual, almost oblivious to what others thought of her. The author is not averse to calling her subject on a number of things, particularly her public prevarication following the shotgun incident, but the sense is that Kate is let off a bit too lightly on this and other matters. And the effort to explain much of Kate's behavior as stemming from a serious, substantive concern for liberal Republican values is not terribly convincing; there is little hard evidence that Kate's political activity was based on anything other than a desire to see her and her loved ones (her father, Conkling, even Sprague) attain positions of personal and political power. That is how virtually all of her contemporaries who knew her saw her (even friends such as John Hay), and the modern biographer bears a heavy burden in trying to impeach that conventional view. (the one vignette I wish the author had included is Hay's diary account of how Kate virtually pleaded with him to dine with her and Conkling a few years after the scandal; Hay made up an excuse for declining).

While early biographers went too far in painting Kate Chase as a cold, ambitious, cutthroat personality, this book tilts a bit too far in the other direction. We could now use a full-bodied, objective bio of this fascinating woman which makes use of the wealth of new material that seems to keep turning up and does not lose sight of the powerful drama that attended her life and times."

I've read every biography on Kate Chase Sprague that's around today, and this one, by far, is the best. Peg Lamphier combines the historical background with the characters of Kate and William, and masterfully brings both of them to life in a way I have yet to see in other books. I was so impressed that I've read this book more than once, and each time I find something that makes me remember, Kate was a real person, and a "glorious girl", and what happened to her could happen to anyone.

Kate's life is one that makes me want to go back in time and shake her, but then, we all have to live our lives and do the best that we can with our choices and paths we take.

This biography is well-written, well-researched, and extremely interesting. The author comes across as being much more sympathetic towards Kate than some I've read do, but that's okay. It fits in this book. This is definitely not a novel and not easy reading at times, but I highly recommend it for any serious student of Kate Chase, her marriage to William Sprague, and for those curious about gender and gender differences during the Victorian Era.

Cindy Obermier

An excellent book! The author really knows her subject and makes this history book as readable as a romance novel. An amazing amount of history that a lot of us might have skipped over in another book. Once I started this book I couldn't put it down.

Peg Lamphier succeeds in describing Kate Chase, the belle of Civil War-era Washington, as a vibrant and charismatic person. And husband William Sprague comes across convincingly as the villain of the piece. But the author stumbles when she attempts to portray the couple as exemplars of contemporary culture. I found myself pencilling BS in the margins to note passages such as these:
--"Kate's need for love reflected the high value American culture placed on affection." (page 86)
--"American men defined themselves in adversarial relationships with other men.... Masculinity maintained itself as a 'homosocial enactment,' that is, a man knew he was a 'man' when he acted a certain way in front of other men." (page 165)
--"Abused women most often lack strong female support.... Conversely, male abusers most commonly have well-developed male alliances." (page 182)
--"Kate's inability to make William conform to her vision of manhood not only exacerbated his vast insecurity but signified a certain clumsiness on her part when handling such a potentially explosive substance as William Sprague. This is not to suggest in any way that it was Kate's fault...." (page 229)
-- "When Kate manipulated political and social systems to her own ends, she engaged in a self-empowering act." (page 248)
-- "....Viewing Kate's divorce as a political act opens the door to numerous other women who did not have access to politically powerful men... yet were political women." (page 215, in the book's concluding paragraph)

The book fails to support the thesis that Kate's romances were political manoeuvres, and this claim also works against the author's portrait of her subject as a compassionate lover and selfless mother. Kate Chase deserves another biography.

I was inspired to learm more about Kate Chase after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals". This biography more than satisfied me. It is well written and provides good insight into this Washington Hostess of the Lincoln era and beyond. The reader learns that Kate Chase was QUITE A LADY. I recommend this book highly for the knowledge available into this relatively obscure, yet important, person.