A new work on Emilie Todd Helm's visit to Lincoln's White House

[STS Lincolnite]

(01-26-2015 05:59 PM)Donna McCreary Wrote:  I read that Emilie refused to sign because she had just buried her husband and to do so would have been disrespectful to his memory.

Sanders mentions this in the e-book. Discussing her refusal to sign an the oath while at Fort Monroe (prior to going to the white house), Emilie later wrote: "a United States officer came on the boat and told me he had orders to require an oath of allegiance to the United States from everyone who landed. I had just left the friends in arms of my husband and brothers with tears in their eyes and hearts for me in my great bereavement, and they would have felt, if I had taken the oath, that I had deserted them and had not been true to the cause for which my husband had given up his life. My refusal was therefore not bravado." I have no doubt she still felt the same way when Lincoln gave her the oath, an amnesty document and a letter to help her move through Union lines when she left a few short weeks later in December.