Lincoln in the Telegraph Office on April 14, 1865

[wpbinzel]

(08-16-2016 05:23 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Bill, you say Lincoln and Rathbone were acquainted. I did not even realize they had previously met. Do you know when/where this took place? I think I have read that Clara Harris had previously gone to the theater with the Lincolns, but I do not recall reading that Henry Rathbone was with the group. I know Clara was at the White House on the night of April 11th, but I don't think Henry was with her.

Roger, Henry's stepfather, Ira Harris, succeeded William Seward in the U.S. Senate and according to Mary Todd Lincoln, was "an intimate friend, of my beloved husband, in Washington . . . always a welcome guest at the Executive Mansion." (Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. 256.) Neely also cites Clara as being Mary's "dear friend," so it seems likely that the Lincolns knew Henry as well. Caleb Stephens, in Worst Seat in the House supports that and describes "a special assignment" given to Henry by President Lincoln to recruit Confederate prisoners of war into the Union Army in September 1864 (see pp. 60-1). I have seen other references that Henry and Lincoln were acquainted, but I have not found anything to support or explain Bates's recollection that Rathbone was at the top of Lincoln's mind on the morning of April 14, 1865.