Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  39. Ernest d’Hauterive, ed., “Voyage du Prince Napoleon aux Etats-Unis, 1861,” Revue de Paris 40 (1933):256.

  40. Dana diary, entries for 7, 4 Jan. 1862; Dana to his wife, Washington, 4 May 1864, Dana Papers, MHi.

  41. Russell, Diary, 22 (entry for 27 Mar. 1861).

  42. Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866 (Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1930, vol. IV; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933), 177 (entry for 8 Mar. 1861).

  43. Washington correspondence by Ben: Perely Poore, 9 Mar., Boston Evening Journal, 12 Mar. 1861.

  44. Charles Francis Adams diary, 8 Mar. 1861, Adams Family Papers, MHi.

  45. Washington correspondence by “A looker on,” 10 Mar., Philadelphia Press, 11 Mar. 1861; Washington Star, 9 Mar. 1861.

  46. Charles Francis Adams diary, 8 Mar. 1861, Adams Family Papers, MHi; diary of Benjamin Moran, secretary of the American legation in London, 16 Aug. 1865, DLC.

  47. Nicolay to Therena Bates, Washington, 10 Mar. 1861, Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House, 30.

  48. William O. Stoddard, “White House Sketches,” nos. 2 and 8, New York Citizen, 25 Aug., 6 Oct. 1866, Stoddard, Inside the White House, ed. Burlingame, 150, 179.

  49. Washington correspondence, 18 July, Baltimore Patriot, n.d. copied in the Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), 21 July 1861.

  50. Washington correspondence by Mary Clemmer Ames, 8 Jan., Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 11 Jan. 1862.

  51. Charles Henry Davis journal, 9 Mar. 1861, in Charles H. Davis, Life of Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral, 1807–1877 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 115.

  52. David D. Porter, “Journal of Occurrences during the War of the Rebellion,” vol. 1, pp. 56–58, Porter Papers, DLC.

  53. Herman Melville to Elizabeth Shaw Melville, Washington, 24–25 Mar. 1861, Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, eds., The Letters of Herman Melville (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960), 210.

  54. Washington correspondence by “Occasional,” 24 Mar., Philadelphia Press, 27 Mar. 1861.

  55. Fox to his wife, Washington, 27 Mar. 1861, Robert Means Thompson and Richard Wainwright, eds., Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1861–1865 (2 vols.; New York: Printed for the Naval History Society by the De Vinne Press, 1918–1919), 1:11.

  56. George Bancroft to his wife, Washington, 15, 18 Dec. 1861, Bancroft Papers, Cornell University.

  57. Motley to his wife, Washington, 20 June 1861, George William Curtis, ed., The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley (2 vols.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889), 1:387.

  58. Dana diary, entries for 7, 14 Jan. 1862; Dana to his wife, Washington, 4 May 1864, Dana Papers, MHi.

  59. Letter from Charles Strong to George Templeton Strong, paraphrased in Nevins and Thomas, eds., Strong Diary, 3:104 (entry for 27 Feb. 1861); entry for 11 Sept. 1862, ibid., 3:255.

  60. John Bigelow diary, New York Public Library (entry for 9 July 1861).

  61. Hay, “Life in the White House,” Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 135.

  62. Washington correspondence, 3 Jan., Sacramento Daily Union, 29 Jan. 1863, in Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 17.

  63. Unidentified reminiscence, Rochester Daily Democrat, 19 Apr. 1865.

  64. Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 418, 383, 463 (entries for 3 Mar. 1863, 18 Dec. 1861, 22 Jan. 1865).

  65. Francis B. Carpenter interviewed by Harrydele Hallmark, Los Angeles Times, 17 Feb. 1895.

  66. Mary Lincoln to John Hay, Washington, 22 May 1862, Hay Papers, DLC.

  67. Hay, “Life in the White House,” Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 135–136.

  68. “Howard Glyndon,” penname of Laura Catherine Redden Searing, “The Truth about Mrs. Lincoln,” The Independent (New York), 10 Aug. 1882, 4–5.

  69. John Hay, “Tad Lincoln,” New York Tribune, 19 July 1871, in Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 112.

  70. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1868), 180.

  71. CWL, 7:320.

  72. Reminiscences of Mary Miner Hill, 1923, SC 1985, IHi.

  73. John Hay, “Death of ‘Tad’ Lincoln,” unidentified clipping, scrapbook, Hay Papers, RPB.

  74. CWL, 6:256.

  75. Elizabeth L. Comstock to Mary Todd Lincoln, Baltimore, 26 Nov. 1864, AL MSS DLC.

  76. Browning, interview with Nicolay, Springfield, 17 June 1875, Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1996), 3; David Davis to his wife, St. Louis, 15 Dec. 1861, Davis Papers, IHi.

  77. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 5 Feb. 1891, H-W MSS DLC.

  78. Halstead to Timothy C. Day, Washington, 11, 8 June 1861, Sarah J. Day, The Man on a Hill Top (Philadelphia: Ware Brothers, 1931), 245, 243.

  79. Mary Todd Lincoln to James Gordon Bennett, Washington, 4 Oct. 1862, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 138.

  80. Mary Todd Lincoln to David Davis, New York, 17 Jan. 1861, ibid., 71; summary of a letter from William Butler, who had spoken with Lincoln, to Judd, n.p., n.d., in Judd to Lyman Trumbull, Chicago, 3 Jan. 1861, Trumbull Papers, DLC.

  81. Henry B. Stanton, Random Recollections (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887), 221.

  82. Herman Kreismann to Charles Henry Ray, Washington, 16 Jan. 1861, Ray Papers, CSmH.

  83. George B. Lincoln to Gideon Welles, Riverdale, NJ, 25 Apr. 1874, in “New Light on the Seward-Welles-Lincoln Controversy,” Lincoln Lore no. 1718 (Apr. 1981):2–3.

  84. Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (New York: Belford, Clarke, 1887), 31.

  85. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 131.

  86. Elizabeth Blair Lee to her husband, Silver Spring, MD, 14 Jan. [1863], Virginia Jeans Laas, ed., Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 231.

  87. Washington correspondence by Van [D. W. Bartlett], 8 Oct., Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 11 Oct. 1861.

  88. Gayle Thornbrough et al., eds., The Diary of Calvin Fletcher (7 vols.; Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1972–1981), 7:388 (entry for 2 Apr. 1862).

  89. Washington correspondence by I. C., Feb. 1862 (no day of the month indicated), Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, 22 Feb. 1862.

  90. Villard, Memoirs, 1:147–148.

  91. Thomas D. Jones to William Linn McMillen, Springfield, 11 Feb. 1861, Lincoln Collection, Lilly Library, InU. See also J. W. Shaffer to E. B. Washburne, Freeport, 29 Jan. 1861, Washburne Papers, DLC.

  92. This story is related in several sources cited in Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 272 note 18.

  93. Ellery Sedgwick, The Happy Profession (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946), 161–162.

  94. Wayne C. Temple, “Mary Todd Lincoln’s Travels,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 52 (1959):185–186.

  95. Lincoln to Irwin, Washington, 20 Mar. 1861, CWL, 4:296. To Lincoln, Irwin had made a special plea for his friend: “Enclosed find George Opdycke’s letter, endorsing my friend Denison This with the letters already in your hands will certainly satisfy you of his good moral character and capacity for the situation asked for—And now my friend I ask you for his appointment as the only one I have any interest in—I have been a consistent and warm political friend of yours from your first to your last race, and have at all times been for you against all others—Socially I shall not speak of—I ask this as a Republican, and for a working Republican, nor do I think you can have an applicant who will be more strongly recommended. I have arranged for the clerkship for Goudy, if Mr Denison is appointed—of which I will certainly not d
oubt.” Irwin to Lincoln, Springfield, 27 Feb, 1861, AL MSS DLC. Among the contestants for the post was Philip Dorsheimer, a prominent German leader. Francis P. Blair to Chase, Silver Spring, 26 Mar. 1861, Chase Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Denison was born in 1822 in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Marston was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, in 1832; at the age of 19 he began working for a New York bank, Belknap & James, and in 1854 became a partner in F. P. James & Co. In 1853, he had helped set up banks in Wisconsin and Illinois. He remained in the Midwest on and off for the next eight years. He was introduced to Springfield society in 1855. In 1862, he established a Wall Street firm, William H. Marston & Co. According to a biographical sketch of Marston, he was “recognized as the leader in the Stock Market and as one of the boldest and most successful operators that Wall Street had known at that period. During Mr. Marston’s residence in the West, his headquarters were at Springfield, Illinois, and Abraham Lincoln was his lawyer and friend. He was also intimate with General John A. Logan.” Biographical sketch of Marston, typescript marked “Will appear in the History of Prominent Families of New York, which will be published in Nov.”, Bunn Family Papers, Sangamon Valley Collection, Lincoln Public Library, Springfield; Mrs. John M. Palmer, “Remembrances of Two Springfield Weddings of the Olden Time,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 3 (1910):40. I am grateful to Linda Garvert for calling these items to my attention.

  96. Chase to Lincoln, Washington, 16 May 1861, AL MSS DLC; Lincoln to Chase, Washington, 18 May 1861, CWL, 4:373.

  97. James A. Briggs to Salmon P. Chase, Eaton, Ohio, 30 Sept. 1863, Chase Papers, DLC.

  98. Annotation by Briggs to an article from the Painesville Press and Advertiser, 13 Feb. 1861, in James A. Briggs Scrapbooks, vol. 1, p. 56, Western Reserve Historical Society.

  99. New York Daily News, 5 Apr. 1861; Oran Follett to Salmon P. Chase, Sandusky, Ohio, 12 Nov. 1862, Chase Papers, DLC; agreement between Marston and Denison, 15 Feb. 1861, Denison Papers, IHi. Follett’s informant was James A. Briggs.

  100. Arthur Harry Rice, “Henry B. Stanton as a Political Abolitionist” (E.D. dissertation, Columbia University Teachers College, 1968), 453–459.

  101. Samuel Hotaling to William P. Fessenden, New York, 4 July 1864, Fessenden Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society.

  102. Burlingame, “Mary Todd Lincoln’s Unethical Conduct as First Lady,” in Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 185–203.

  103. Diary of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., entry for 10 Mar. 1861, Adams Family Papers, MHi; Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Charles Francis Adams, 1835–1915: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 103.

  104. Franklin Brooks, “The Lincoln Years in the Papers of Amos and Edward Tuck,” Dartmouth College Library Bulletin 21 (1981): 64–69; Benjamin Brown French to Henry Flagg French, Washington, 14 Mar. 1861, French Family Papers, DLC.

  105. Mary Lincoln to Seward, Washington, 22 Mar. [1861], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 81.

  106. Manuscript diary of Orville H. Browning, 29 July 1861, IHi; Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 186.

  107. Hartford Courant, 8 Mar. 1861.

  108. Mary Lincoln to Ward Hill Lamon, [11] Apr. [1861], Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 83.

  109. Davis to Ward Hill Lamon, Bloomington, Illinois, 6 May 1861, and Clinton, Illinois, 31 May 1861, Lamon Papers, CSmH.

  110. “Union” to Lincoln, Washington, 26 June 1861, typed copy, IHi. A notation indicates that the original is in the Nicolay Papers, DLC. It was not there in 2008, though a card file in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, cataloguing all items in the Nicolay Papers, indicates that it once was.

  111. Colfax to John G. Nicolay, South Bend, Indiana, 17 July 1875, Nicolay Papers, DLC.

  112. The source of this story was Lincoln King, who claimed that he knew Mrs. Lincoln’s paramour “intimately” in New York in the late nineteenth century. The Sky Rocket (Primghar, Iowa), 15 Mar. 1929; King to William E. Barton, Primghar, Iowa, 9 Aug. 1930, Barton Papers, University of Chicago.

  113. Benjamin Brown French to his son Frank, Washington, 3 Sept. 1861, French Family Papers, DLC.

  114. James R. Doolittle to his wife Mary, Washington, 16 Feb. 1862, Doolittle Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

  115. George W. Adams to [David Goodman] Croly, Washington, 7 Oct. 1867, Manton Marble Papers, DLC; New York Tribune, 17 Oct. 1867.

  116. Z. Young to Lincoln, Washington, 9 Nov. 1864, AL MSS DLC.

  117. Oswald Garrison Villard to Isaac Markens, New York, 26 Mar. 1927, Lincoln Collection, RPB.

  118. Letter to Wakeman seen by Wakeman’s daughter, who described it to her own daughter, Elizabeth M. Alexanderson, of Englewood, New Jersey. Newark, NJ, Star, 3 Mar. 1951.

  119. Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, 5397 (9 July 1870).

  120. Mary Lincoln to Abram Wakeman, n.p., 20 Feb. 1865, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 202.

  121. Martin Crawford, ed., William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 162 (entry for 3 Nov. 1861).

  122. On Watt, see Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 192–198.

  123. George Bancroft to his wife, [Washington], 12 Dec. 1861, Bancroft Papers, Cornell University; William P. Fessenden to Elizabeth Warriner, Washington, 8 Dec. 1861, Lincoln Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society.

  124. Government Contracts, House Report No. 2, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, vol. 1 (serial no. 1142), 72–73, 501–505. The exact chronology of this story is confused. On August 8, it was reported that the president would remove Wood and name Benjamin Brown French in his stead. Lincoln told French that he would appoint him commissioner of public buildings on September 1. In fact, the appointment was made on September 6. French, Witness to the Young Republic, ed. Cole and McDonough, 370–374. Mary Todd Lincoln claimed that her husband, “to save his [Wood’s] family from disgrace—When the Senate would not confirm him, [re]nominated him until the 1st of Sep. with a promise from him, he would resign.” Mary Todd Lincoln to John F. Potter, Washington, 13 September 1861, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 104. B. B. French explained that Lincoln appointed him without consulting him, but before the document was signed the president decided that it was his duty to reappoint Wood. So, French told his son, “I was sent for to go to the President’s, and had an interview with both him and Mrs. Lincoln. I have the vanity to believe that Mrs. L. and I rather cottoned to each other. The President explained that when he ordered my appointment he thought that Mr. Wood had been rejected by the Senate, but finding that he had not been—only laid over—and being very strong pressed by Mr. W. & his friends to give Mr. Wood an opportunity to resign! he had concluded to appoint him until the 1st of Sept. when he is to resign and I am to be appointed.” B. B. French to his son Frank, Washington, 20 Aug. 1861, French Family Papers, DLC.

  125. Mary Todd Lincoln to John F. Potter, Washington, 13 Sept. 1861, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 104.

  126. Crawford, ed., Russell’s Civil War, 162 (diary entry for 3 Nov. 1861).

  127. Anson G. Henry to Isaac Newton, Olympia, Washington Territory, 21 Apr. 1864, AL MSS DLC.

  128. Greeley to Beman Brockway, Washington, 12 Mar. 1861, Greeley Papers, DLC.

  129. Wendell Phillips told this to the journalist Samuel Wilkeson. Wilkeson to Sydney Howard Gay, [Washington], n.d., Gay Papers, Columbia University.

  130. Ralph Y. McGinnis and Calvin N. Smith, eds., Abraham Lincoln and the Western Territories (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1993), 150–155; James W. Nesmith to James Harlan, Cincinnati, 23 Oct. 1865, Lyon file, Letters of Application and Recommendation During the Administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, 1861–1869, Record Group 59, M 650, National Archives; Deren Kellogg, “Lincoln Administration and the Southwestern Territories” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 2000) 217.

  131. Mary Lincoln to Elizabeth Todd Grimsley, Washington, 2
9 Sept. 1861, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 105.

  132. Lincoln to John Todd Stuart, Washington, 30 Mar. 1861, CWL, 4:303.

  133. Herndon’s account in Caroline Dall, “Journal of a tour through Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio, Oct. & Nov. 1866,” entry for 29 Oct. 1866, Dall Papers, Bryn Mawr College.

  134. Lincoln to Baker, Washington, 15 June 1863, CWL, 6:275–276. Bailhache held a position in the quartermaster’s department throughout the war. William H. Bailhache, “History of Service,” undated memo, Lincoln Collection, RPB.

  135. John T. Stuart to Lincoln, Springfield, 3 Apr. 1861, AL MSS DLC.

  136. Washington correspondence, 12 Feb., St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 14 Feb. 1895, 23.

  137. Elizabeth J. Grimsley to Lincoln, Springfield, 22 Nov. 1864, AL MSS DLC.

  138. Mary Lincoln, interview with William H. Herndon, [Sept. 1866], Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln [hereafter HI] (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 359.

  139. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 129.

  140. “The Late Secretary Stanton,” Army and Navy Journal, 1 Jan. 1870.

  141. Peck to Lyman Trumbull, Chicago, 27 Aug. 1861, Trumbull Papers, DLC.

  142. William Jayne to Lyman Trumbull, Yankton, Dakota Territory, 13 Oct. 1861, ibid.

  143. Lincoln to John Todd Stuart, Washington, 30 Mar. 1861, CWL, 4:303.

  144. Henry S. Huidekoper, “Lincoln as I Knew Him,” Philadelphia Ledger, 7 Feb. 1915.

  145. John T. Hanks to Lincoln, Canyon Village, Oregon, 25 Feb. 1864, AL MSS DLC.

  146. Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, ed., Paul M. Angle (1892; Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1940), 419.

  147. Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capital, as a Woman Sees Them (Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington, 1875), 239.

  148. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 103 (diary entry for 11 Mar. 1861).

  149. Comments of Mrs. Owen Lovejoy, paraphrased in the Reverend Mr. David Todd to the Reverend Mr. John Todd, Providence, Illinois, 11 June 1862, copy, J. G. Randall Papers, DLC.