Lincoln's valet William Johnson

[J. Beckert]

An interesting piece about Lincoln's valet, William Johnson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjGHqIxAgE

[David Lockmiller]

PRIVATE TRAGEDY: THE DEATH OF WILLIE LINCOLN

Lincoln’s despair at the canal boat fiasco was doubtless intensified by the crushing blow he had sustained a week earlier when his beloved eleven-year-old son Willie died. A Springfield friend, the black barber William Florville, wrote Lincoln that he deemed Willie “a Smart boy for his age, So Considerate, So Manly: his Knowledge and good Sence, far exceeding most boys more advanced in years.”
(Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume Two, page 297.)

Canal Boat Fiasco - page 296

On February 27, 1862, when those vessels tried to enter a lift lock in order to move
from the Chesapeake and Ohio canal to the river, they proved six inches too wide. The entire operation had to be called off. . . . [Lincoln] banged his fist on a table and exclaimed: “Why in hell didn’t he measure first!” This was the only time Nicolay heard his boss swear, and his assistant, William O. Stoddard, said he “never knew Mr. Lincoln so really angry . . . .”