Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[L Verge]

I finally have a lunch break and can "legally" participate in this discussion off company time. I immediately picked up on the mention of Duff Green in David's first posting, and I suspect that several of our Lincoln scholars did also.

Duff Green frequently ate dinner with Lincoln at Mrs. Spriggs's boardinghouse on Capitol Hill when Lincoln was in Congress in the 1840s. Duff was an old-timer and owned a row of nice townhouses nearby, known as Duff Green Row; he also took his dinners at Mrs. Spriggs's table, where he got into "lively" conversations with the young legislator. Unfortunately, neither the boardinghouse nor the Row exist. The Library of Congress now stands on their sites. I first learned of Duff about forty years ago when I met Joan Chaconas, now a member of my staff but also an excellent Washington, D.C. historian.

Green was a Kentuckian, a school teacher, and a Kentucky militia member who fought with Gen. William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812. He later moved to Missouri, where he fought with its brigade in Indian campaigns. In Missouri, he was a schoolmaster, lawyer, state representative and also senator. It was while here that he bought the St. Louis Enquirer and became a mover in the journalistic field - enough to get himself beaten up on occasion for his views, John Quincy Adams was one special antagonist when Green was a supporter of Andrew Jackson. In the 1830s, he was the editor for a controversial publication called The Reformation, which was radically partisan and in favor of free trade, states' rights, Manifest Destiny, etc.

After moving to Washington City, he ran The United States Telegraph paper and staunchly supported Jackson to the point that he became a member of that "unofficial" group of Jackson advisers known as the Kitchen Cabinet. When the Civil War came, however, Duff and his family headed south to a mansion that he had built in Vicksburg, Mississippi, for his bride. When Grant focused on Vicksburg and started the destructive siege, their mansion became a field hospital because Duff designated it as a hospital for both Union and Confederate troops. During that siege, Mrs. Green gave birth to their first child in a nearby cave where the family sought shelter.

Duff Green strongly supported the Confederacy and started three iron foundries and the Dalton Arms Company in order to supply the South with everything from nails to rifles and railroad tracks (he was also active in the railroad industry before and after the war). From sources that I read, Lincoln flat-out declared him a traitor. When Andrew Johnson became President, he granted Duff a pardon, but a $20,000 fine was part of the "deal."

The University of North Carolina has a collection of the Duff Green and Benjamin Green (his son) Papers in their Southern collection. The Vicksburg home, Duff Green Mansion, is now a lovely bed and breakfast, so you might want to visit and walk the same floors where Jefferson Davis once danced and U.S. Grant once paced.

Sorry for the history lesson, but that's what you put up with from a used history teacher, resident of metropolitan D.C. with a love of Capital history and a streak of Southern pride...