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(07-05-2016 02:47 PM)Pamela Wrote:  Very amusing, Gene. Thanks for that, although he left out the phrase in question. Somewhere I read, and I can't remember where, that A.C. Richards was a volunteer escort who rode along side Lincoln's carriage for some event, and I also can't remember which event it was. Lincoln remembered him from that occasion when he chose his appointment for Major and Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. I don't know if cronyism was also involved. It doesn't seem to be the case.

Don't faint, Pamela, but I am actually agreeing with you as to the above information on Richards! At the time of Lincoln's first inaugural, Richards volunteered as a deputy marshal for the parade from Willard's to the Capitol. He was assigned the right wheel of the presidential carriage, so he would have had the opportunity to chat with Lincoln and Buchanan.

At the beginning of the war, he quit teaching to work as a financial clerk in the post office department. By 1862, he was elected as an alderman in the Third Ward and became active in city politics. However, the U.S. government took over the city's municipal affairs during the war, leaving elected officials with little to do.

In 1864, a list of names was submitted to Lincoln for consideration as Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police Force. Lincoln recognized the name (probably from the inaugural parade), and Richards received the official appointment on December 1, 1864. He was in office just a little over four months before the assassination.

This is in a biographical piece in the appendix of Risvold's editing of Weichmann's book, right before the copies of Richards's and Weichmann's correspondence. I remembered discussing his path to the police department with that agency's historian years ago.

If the phones will stop ringing, I'll start to refresh my memory by reading those letters.