Sold – Abraham Lincoln Intervenes With Stanton on Behalf of a Democratic Senator

The U.S. Senate was in special session from March 4-11, 1865 to attend to inaugural affairs and set up committees. This brief session was the only one of Lincoln’s second term, as he was assassinated a month later and the Senate did not reconvene until December. So senators were in Washington and used that opportunity to attend to civilian and military matters that concerned them or their constituents. Senator William Wright, New Jersey Democrat, had obviously tried to enlist Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s agreement on something and been rebuffed. So he went to the President and sought his intervention. In the presidential election just four months earlier, New Jersey had not only elected a Democrat to the Senate, but had been the only Northern state to cast its electoral votes against Lincoln.

Autograph Endorsement Signed, Washington, March 7, 1865, to Stanton. “Will the Sec. of War please see and hear Mr. Senator Wright?” By saying “see” and “hear,” we catch an implication that Stanton had been approached by Wright, showed him into his office and then stone-walled him. Lincoln urges here that he give Wright a respectful hearing, showing yet again that as president, Lincoln put the country’s good above partisan politics.