December 16, 1863
President Lincoln talks to New York Congressman Fernando Wood about amnesty for Northern sympathizers with rebellion. Presidential aide John G. Nicolay writes: “This morning early Edward came into the President’s office and announced that Mr. [Fernando] Wood was here to see him. ‘I am sorry he is here,’ said the President. ‘I would rather he should not come about here so much. Tell Mr. Wood that I have nothing as yet to tell him, on the subject we conversed about when he was last here.’ Edward went out to deliver his message.
“‘I can tell you what Wood (F.) Wants,’ said the President to me. ‘He came here one day last week to urge me to publish some sort of amnesty for the northern sympathizers and abettors of the rebellion, which would include Vallandigham, and permit him to return; and promised that if I would do so, they would have two Democratic candidates in the field at the next Presidential election.”
President Lincoln writes Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton regarding an aging widow whose husband had been secretary of the navy and secretary of state: “I am so repeatedly applied to for leave to Mrs. Upshur, (widow of Sec. [Abel P.] Upshur her sister, and grand-child to come on the flag-of truce boat from City Point, that I shall be obliged if you will permit it.”
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
Leave a Reply