Letters to Lincoln

After a frantic search through Eku’s library catalogue and following a few dead ends, I happened upon a book that looked promising. It was a collection of letters written to President Lincoln during his time in office and when he chose to, it gave his reply. ”The Lincoln Mailbag: America writes to the President, 1861-1865 edited by Harold Holzer. It is the sequel to “Dear Mr. Lincoln” which was so popular; demand prompted the author to write it just a few years later.

 Most of the letters were from normal citizens, wishing him luck with the war, or generally complimenting and praising him for what he had done and was planning to do. I guess most democrats didn’t have the time to write, or knew that an angry letter wouldn’t do any good. There were some that were more intriguing than others, like a secessionist privateer asking for a presidential pardon that had been detained and charged with piracy for dealings around the coast of the Carolinas. I thought it was funny that he chose to side with the part of the nation that didn’t want to be under the same president he was asking for help from. I guess when you are in prison, you will look for any way you can to get out, you can’t blame him; I would have tried it too. Another interesting letter written to the President was from a man who had invented a new weapon. He claimed that it was the most destructive weapon he had ever seen and it would destroy with flame anything it was aimed at. The actual description of the device was not extremely detailed. According to the footnote, it was very common for ideas about new weapons and even inventions themselves to be addressed to the president. The book reads that all letters of this type were forwarded to the ordinance department and the President normally didn’t read letters like this, but who could blame him? I think we could all agree that he had enough problems to deal with, and could spend a lot of time reading letters from everybody with an idea or advice for him.

Although all of the letters are interesting (or they would not have been worthy of being put into the book) most are from normal citizens and people that only a well-trained historian would recognize. One that jumps out though is a letter written on February 22, 1862. It is a letter from General George B. McClellan giving his condolences to the president after the loss of his middle son Willie. Willie was the president’s favorite son. The president and his wife Mary had a very hard time getting over his death, and it is speculated that Mary never recovered and her son’s death and it was a large contributor to her mental health problems. In the letter, Gen. McClellan writes the usual thing you would write to a friend that had lost a loved one, in the lingo of the mid-19^th century of course. The interesting part of the letter is the end when McClellan writes to the president to essentially “not worry about a thing, I got this” (my own words). I find it very interesting that General McClellan could not help himself from bragging about his ability to handle anything that came his way, maybe that’s where his nickname “little napoleon” came from. As we know now, McClellan was not always ready for any situation especially when it came to actual doing battle. I would have to guess that President Lincoln could have done without the bragging in the letter, and although the war was a very serious subject, I would also guess that it was a little farther from Lincoln’s mind than it usually was.