"Lincoln" legal mistake

[David Lockmiller]

I was rereading recently F. B. Carpenter's book "Six Months at the White House" and came upon a paragraph which reminded me of the scene from the "Lincoln" movie in which the actor playing Lincoln curses because he feels that he will not have accomplished a "****" thing without the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The paragraph in Carpenter's book at page 84 reads as follows:

The bill empowering the Secretary of the Treasury to sell the surplus gold had recently passed, and Mr. Chase was then in New York, giving his attention personally to the experiment. Governor Curtin referred to this, saying, "I see by the quotations that Chase's movement has already knocked gold down several per cent." This gave occasion for the strongest expression I ever heard fall from the lips of Mr. Lincoln. Knotting his face in the intensity of his feeling, he said, "Curtin, what do you think of those fellows in Wall Street, who are gambling in gold at such a time as this?" "They are a set of sharks," returned Curtin. "For my part," continued the President, bringing his clinched hand down upon the table, "I wish every one of them had his devilish head shot off!"