Lincoln's White House Secretary

[Gene C]

Most of us have heard about the Presidents hate mail and threats made against him.
Here is a little more that Stoddard has to say about President Lincoln's mail

'Well, one day I and my paperfolder and my wastebaskets were hard at work.
While we were at it, in came a portly, dignified, elderly
party and sat down near me while he was waiting for an audience with Mr. Lincoln, to whom his card had been sent in.
He appeared to be some kind of distinguished person, may be a governor or something of that sort,
and he watched me with an interest which evidently grew upon him. He became un- easy in his chair and then he waxed red in the face.
He himself may at some time have written letters and at last he broke out with:
"Is that the way you treat the President's mail? Mr. Lincoln does not
know this ! What would the people of the United States think, if they knew
that their communications to their Chief Magistrate were dealt with in
this shameful manner? Thrown into the waste basket! What does Lincoln
mean? Putting such an awful responsibility into the hands of a mere boy! A boy!"

I had been all the while watching him as he fired up and I had an uncommonly dirty mail that morning,
I had therefore put aside as I opened them a number of the vilest scrawls that infamy could put on paper.
He had risen from his chair and was pacing up and down the room in hot indignation when I quietly turned and offered him a handful of the selected letters,
"Please read those, sir," I said, "and give me your opinion of them.
I may be right about them. Do you really think, now, that the President
of the United States ought to turn from the affairs of the nation to put
in his time on that sort of thing?"
The dignified party took the awful handful and began to read and his red
face grew redder. Then it was white with speechless wrath. Perhaps he had
never before perused anything quite so devilish in all his life. "You are quite right, sir," he gasped, as he sank into his chair again.
"Young man.' You are Right I He ought not to see a line of that stuff! Burn it, sir ! Burn it!
What devils there are !" He may even have admired me but I returned to my work and he fidgeted
around the room until the messenger came to summon him to his audience. I do not believe that he entered any complaint concerning "that boy," but
he was correct about the responsibility for it was a big one for any fellow,
old or young. It included many of the applications for pardons and all of these were at one time in my keeping.