President Lincoln's "Blind Memorandum"

[David Lockmiller]

Abraham Lincoln’s “Blind Memorandum”

The following information was provided by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, in a post a century and half later on the Library of Congress Blog on August 21, 2014:

Republican insider Thurlow Weed told Lincoln in mid-August 1864 that “his re-election was an impossibility.”

Republican party chairman Henry J. Raymond expressed much the same sentiment to Lincoln on Aug. 22, urging him to consider sending a commission to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to offer peace terms “on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,” leaving the question of slavery to be resolved later.

"Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement,” wrote Lincoln’s secretary, John G. Nicolay, in August 1864.

The cabinet meeting in which President Lincoln requested that the members of his cabinet sign the "blind memorandum" was held on August 23, 1864.