President Thinking About Home State

March 29, 1862

On a snowy afternoon in Washington, one of the president’s aides, John G. Nicolay, left Washington to return home to Illinois. Although the president’s assistants would occasionally leave the city during the Civil War for personal time and family visits, President Lincoln himself never would. The President’s mind was on Illinois as well. He wrote Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton regarding one of his original presidential boosters: “Sir: I really wish Jesse W. Fell, of Illinois, to be appointed a Paymaster in the Regular Army, at farthest, as early as the 1st. of July 1862. I wish nothing to interfere with this; and I have so written as much as two months ago, I think.”