FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARY TODD LINCOLN¹>Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-82) married the future president of the United States in 1842. During the Civil War, gossip circulated regarding her extravagance and thoughtlessness. Antiadministration newspapers reported on her alleged willingness to accept gifts and then ask her husband to do favors for the donors. In 1861, Mrs. Lincoln naively befriended Henry Wickoff of the New York , who secretly reported on the Lincolns’ family life. When the published part of Lincoln’s first annual message to Congress before its delivery, a congressional investigation found Wickoff guilty of leaking the text; Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation thenceforth included the taint of political indiscretion. Charges of treason, however, soon overshadowed all others. With six siblings and nine stepbrothers and stepsisters, Mrs. Lincoln was, like many natives of the border states, a close relative of men fighting in the Confederate army and a comforter of their wives. She also was an advocate for their personal needs, although the president refused to grant substantive favors in the absence of Union loyalty. Besides general rumors of transmitting information to the enemy, Mrs. Lincoln was specifically accused of using her half-sister, Martha Todd White, to send information to the Confederates. Both the Lincolns, in fact, had refused Mrs. White’s requests for exemption from the requirements on transporting goods across Union lines, and both refused to see her at the Executive Mansion. Though there was talk of indiscretion, the White House secretary Noah Brooks firmly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s loyalty. When the Committee on the Conduct of the War proposed an investigation of the rumors, President Lincoln allegedly appeared before it without announcement and gravely stated his certainty that no such relations with the enemy existed. During and after the war, Douglass unswervingly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation. Ruth Painter Randall, (Boston, 1953); Ishbel Ross, (New York, 1973); , 2:404-06.

Rochester, N.Y. 17 August 1865.

MRS. ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

DEAR MADAM:

Allow me to thank you, as I certainly do thank you most Sincerely for your thoughtful kindness in making me the owner of a cane—which was formerly the property and the favorite walking staff of your late lamented husband, the honored and venerated President of the United States.² Mary Todd Lincoln gave away four of her husband’s canes following his assassination. They went to Douglass, Charles Sumner, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Slade, who was a messenger for Lincoln at the White House. Ross, , 247; Randall, , 364.

I assure you, that this inestimable memento of his Excellency will be retained in my possession while I live—an object of Sacred interest, a token not merely of the kind consideration in which I have reason to know that <the> President was pleased to hold me personally, but of as an indication of the his humane consideration interest [in the] welfare of my whole race.

With every proper Sentiment of Respect and Esteem I am, Dear
Madam, Your Obed[ient]t Servt

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Gilder-Lehrman Collection, Item # GLC02474.