January 28, 1863
As General Joseph Hooker takes command of the Armhy of the Potomac, President Lincoln turns his attention elsewhere. President Lincoln orders General Benjamin F. Butler to come to Washington to meet with him: “Please come here immediately. Telegraph me about what time you will arrive.” Butler was without a command assignment after having been replaced as commander at New Orleans. Butler responds from Boston: “Telegram received, will leave thursday morning. Be in Washington friday morning.” Although President Lincoln anticipated sending Butler back to New Orleans, he decided not to take that action and leaves another Massachusetts general, Nathaniel Banks, in that job.
President Lincoln writes Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton regarding a request from his old friend Joshua F. Speed: “Mr. Speed tells me you wish to appoint him to some agency about the Goose-Creek Salt works; and he wishes to decline it, & that William P. Thomason may be appointed. I personally know Mr. Thomason to be an honest & very competent man, & fully in sympathy with the administration. I think he should be appointed.”
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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