Lincoln's White House Secretary

[Gene C]

Full title, "Lincoln's White House Secretary - The Adventurous Life of William O Stoddard"

edited by Harold Holzer. about 400 pages, copyright 2007.
This appears to be a condensed and edited version of an autobiography of his life written down for his children which was over 700 pages.
You can find Stoddard's original work on Internet Archives
https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofc01stod and
https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofc02stod

The print is a bit small, but you can enlarge it.

In the copy by Holzer, it is around page 210 before Lincoln is mentioned. Stoddard is a talented writer, but I wasn't that interested in his school days. I had to keep in mind the book was intended for Stoddard's children, not the general public. And he wrote to tell them about his life, not Lincoln's.

The White House years were the best part of the book. A large part of Stoddard's job was to open the mail. He somehow managed to get into the good graces of Mrs. Lincoln, where Hay and Nicolay did not.
Stoddard seems to have genuinely liked Mrs. Lincoln. He tells how she requested that he open all her mail, and he indicates she received a lot of very vicious mail which he threw out.

""Stod" he exclaimed (John Hay). "I'm in the worst kind of fix! You know how it is. Nicolay and I are out with Madame. She is down on both of us. Now You were away, yesterday, and I tried to help you along on the mail. I had
seen how you did it and so I turned a whole pile of them over on their
backs and sliced them open with a paper folder, before I saw the address
on one of them. Then O my soul I There they are, About a dozen of 'em are
for Mrs. Lincoln and wont she give it to me"
I was lying back in my chair and laughing, for he put it in first rate
style and it really looked awkward.
"What shall I do about it?" he woefully demanded.
"Don't do anything," I told him. "Shut up and say nothing about it. I'll
take the letters and go down and see Mrs. Lincoln. She wont know but what
I opened them myself. I can make it all right."
He evidently did not believe I could and he awaited the result with
some anxiety. Down I went to the Red Room and sent for Mrs. Lincoln. In
she came and asked me what on earth was the matter.
"Bad conduct of this here impertinent paperfolder," I told her. "Opened
a lot of your letters, just because they were mixed in with the others.
No fault of his, either. He didn't know they were there. Stupid fellow."
At first she laughed heartily but then her face grew sober,
"Mr. Stoddard," she said, "read them all. I want you, from this time
onward, to open every letter or parcel that comes in the mail for me. You
know my sister's handwriting and hers are the only exception.—NO .' You
may open hers, too. They accuse me of correspondence with the rebels. I
want them all read!"
She was blushing an angry crimson, too, and I did not know the meaning
of it until I read some of the infamous things which the political ghouls
were sending her. The President's own mail was bad enough but it did seem
too bad for the nasty devils of the enemy to torment his unoffending wife.
She had good reasons for wishing her mail winnowed. So I went back and
told Hay that she was going to appeal to the president and have him discharged,
but he looked so badly that I let him up and told him the new
arrangement. After that I had the mail to myself for nobody else would
touch it if it could be avoided.

more to follow.....

[RJNorton]

Very interesting, Gene! Thanks for posting.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Gene, I always appreciate your reviews. I didn't know Stoddard wrote for his children, and I think that "he wrote to tell them about his life, not Lincoln's" makes it quite a valuable account. Sure both the Lincolns were likely the kind of characters one either likes or dislikes - strongly.

[Gene C]

Stoddard wrote a lot of books for children, and at least one children's book about Lincoln, and a few books about Lincoln for adults.
This was the first one I had read, I will be reading more. Many of them are on Internet Archives, and the best way to find them is to search by his name, William O Stoddard. .

[Steve]

(09-11-2018 03:30 PM)Gene C Wrote:  In the copy by Holzer, it is around page 210 before Lincoln is mentioned. Stoddard is a talented writer, but I wasn't that interested in his school days. I had to keep in mind the book was intended for Stoddard's children, not the general public. And he wrote to tell them about his life, not Lincoln's.

Gene, I'm sure Stoddard's descendants might feel differently...

(09-11-2018 03:30 PM)Gene C Wrote:  The White House years were the best part of the book. A large part of Stoddard's job was to open the mail. He somehow managed to get into the good graces of Mrs. Lincoln, where Hay and Nicolay did not.
Stoddard seems to have genuinely liked Mrs. Lincoln. He tells how she requested that he open all her mail, and he indicates she received a lot of very vicious mail which he threw out.

Really interesting bit about Mrs. Lincoln's vicious hate mail. It just shows how little has changed in human behavior in a century in a half...

[LincolnMan]

It is said that Stoddard was the first one to suggest to Lincoln that he ought to run for president. Lincoln was a lawyer in Springfield, of course, at the time. Stoddard also wrote out the Prelimenary Emancipation Proclamation in Sept. 62. His son also wrote some children’s books like his father.

[David Lockmiller]

President Lincoln responded to a question from Stoddard about Grant:

Grant is the first general I've had. He's a general! . . . You know how it's been with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the army, he'd come to me with a plan of campaign and about as much say, "Now, I don't believe I can do it, but if you say so, I'll try it on," and so put the responsibility of success or failure on me. They all wanted me to be the general. Now, it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want to know. I'm glad to find a man who can go ahead without me. . . . You see, when any of the rest set out on a campaign, they'd look over matters and pick out some one thing they were short of and they knew I couldn't give them and tell me they couldn't hope to win unless they had it; and it was most generally cavalry. . . . Now, when Grant took hold, I was waiting to see what his pet impossibility would be, and I reckoned it would be cavalry, as a matter of course, for we hadn't horses enough to mount even what men we had. There were 15,000 or thereabouts up near Harper's Ferry and no horses to put them on. Well, the other day, just as I expected, Grant sent to me about those very men; but what he wanted to know was whether he should disband them or turn them into infantry. He doesn't ask me to do impossibilities for him, and he's the first general I've had that didn't!

(Source: "Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln," Compiled and Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, pp 426-427.)

[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.