April 20, 1864
After posing for some photographs earlier, in the afternoon, President Lincoln meets with General Ulysses S. Grant. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton transmits orders from the President: “That in all cases of sentences of death, by court-martial, for the crime of desertion, in the Army of the Potomac, Major General George G. Meade, commanding, is authorized and empowered to commute the sentence of death to imprisonment (with forfeiture of all pay due) in the Dry Tortugas Fort during the present war, or to make such other commutation of sentence, in lieu of the sentence of death, as in each case justice and the benefit of the service may, in his judgment, require.”
President Lincoln also meets with Pennsylvania Congressman Joseph Bailey and former Ohio Lieutenant Governor Thomas H. Ford
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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