April 11, 1864
President Lincoln decides against planned visit to Fortress Monroe, VA because Mrs. Lincoln is sick. He writes to Benjamin F. Butler: “Mrs. L. is so unwell that I now think we will not make the contemplated trip this week. Will notify you in time. Will probably get a Boat here, but will accept yours if necessary. Thanks for your kind interest in the case. “
President Lincoln writes to Edwin M. Stanton: “Hon. Sec. of War, please see L.H. Putnam, whom you will find a very intelligent colored man; and who wishes to talk about our colored forces, their organization, &c.”
Presidential aide John G. Nicolay writes to New York journalist and businessman James R. Gilmore: “I brought your letter to the notice of the President as requested. He said he no longer distinctly remembered what he said to you at the interview referred to, and that he could better answer your question, if you were to write out and submit to him, what you propose to publish, concerning the same.”
White House aide William O. Stoddard writes in an anonymous newspaper dispatch: “The past two weeks have been for the most part stormy and inclement, to such a degree as to render extensive army movements next door to an impossibility. The rain has fallen in torrents, and the roads have been rivers of mud. So you see that at the very outset of his career in Vriginia, General Grant has been met by our old enemy in full force, for the red mud of the Old Dominion has from the first been as good as another army corps added to the strength of Lee’s army. Mud it was that scared McClellan away from Manassas, crippled him on the Peninsula, delayed Burnside’s pontoons, drove back one of Meade advances, and did more than anything else to facilitate Lee’s escape at Falling Waters, after the Gettysburg fight.”
From Arkansas comes the report from General Nathan Kimball regarding recent elections: “The inaugiration of the Governor of the free state of Arkansas today was preceeded by a grand civil & military procession participated in by upward of ten thousand (10.000) people including citizens troops & freed people, the procession was three (3) miles in length & is acknowledged to be the greatest civil & military demonstration that was ever received in arkansas. God has granted us a magnificent triumph & Arkansas is once more an organized state with National union free from slavery.”
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase writes Senator William P. Fessenden about problems with money in circulation: “The circulation of corporation notes as money under dissimilar laws of different States contributes largely to the depreciation of the National Currency and constitutes at this moment a most serious danger to the National Finances.
The law making United States Notes a legal tender in payment of debts did not except debts evidenced by these notes; and therefore operated as a virtual repeal of the State laws by which the corporations issuing them were required to redeem them in coin.– Availing themselves of this legislation, these corporations have made the United States notes the basis of their own issues; and inasmuch as these notes themselves cannot at present be exchanged for coin, redemption has become merely nominal.
No reduction in the volume of national issues, under these circumstances, can work material benefit to the circulation; for every such reduction merely makes room for fresh corporations issues, which are not always or even generally restricted to the amount of United States notes withdrawn. Thus the issues of the State Corporations create a constantly increasing excess in the volume of currency as compared with the requirements of actual transactions: and this excess works progressive depreciation.
To arrest this depreciation is an absolute necessity, and to effect this object I see no better or more certain means than judicious measures for the exclusion from circulation of all notes intended to circulate as money, and not authorized by national legislation.
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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