Ladies Parlor, Willard's Hotel
As he would the following day, President-elect Lincoln takes a long early-morning walk before a day of meetings.
Lincoln aide John Hay writes for a newspaper: “If the President was in any respect an object of sympathy while on his travels, he is certainly doubly so now. He has exchanged the minor tribulations of hand-shaking and speech-making for the graver woes which attach to the martyr toasted between two fires. The conservatives have chiefly had the presidential ear since the unexpected arrival last Saturday morning. Last night a deputation of the straight-outs had an interview with him, their rumored object being to defeat the appointment of Gen. [Simon] Cameron to the cabinet. A protest, signed by a number of senators, to a similar effect was yesterday sent him, and every effort possible in his disfavor is being made.”
Mrs. Lincoln holds both an afternoon and evening reception. Hay added: “Mrs. Lincoln receives nightly at her parlor at Willard’s. She has won all hearts by her frank, unaffected cordiality of manner, and the unconventional simplicity with which she greets those who call to pay the respect due the wife of the President. Young Bob has been extensively lionized, and a good deal of regret is expressed by the ladies at his approaching departure for Harvard. The private secretaries of the President, Nicolay and Hay, are toiling early and late with a mass of correspondence, of the extent of which I can convey no adequate idea. Some of the communications are pious, some blasphemous, many long a few threatening, and all contain applications for some little office. Judging from the number of these missives, it would seem that the number of people in the United States who find it impossible to earn an honest living must be appalling.”
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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