Lincoln Job Letter

[Steve]

Here's a recent news article about a letter written by Abraham Lincoln trying to find a job for William Johnson, an African American friend and servant of his. It's currently on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum:

https://apnews.com/article/abraham-linco...74241db866

[jbarry]

Thanks for posting, Steve. The letter's recipient, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles mentions there is no job opening. His well-known diary indicates he was not predisposed to have hired Lincoln's friend in any place. Under President Johnson, Welles wrote on July 26, 1867:

"The President again asked me what I thought of put
ting Fred Douglass at the head of the Freedmen's Bu
reau, instead of Howard. I said if he proposed to appoint
negroes to any office, that perhaps would be as appropriate
as any. Howard is a very good sort of man, but loose in
taking and appropriating public property, and so intensely
Radical that I wished him removed, and an overturn in
the management of the Bureau.

But I was not prepared to appoint or recommend to be
appointed to so responsible a position a person because
he is a negro or a mulatto. Mr. Sumner and others have
expressed a hope that negroes would fill public and trusted
positions, but I cannot. They may succeed, under their
despotic and oppressive laws, in getting a few negroes
into Congress, but there would , in all probability, be a
sequence to this partisan negro philanthropy which would
be calamitous to the poor negroes themselves."
(Vol 3, p. 142-43.)

[David Lockmiller]

Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. Two

Back in Washington, Lincoln came down with a mild case of smallpox, known as
varioloid, which persisted for several days. Part of that time he was quarantined. When
told that his illness was contagious, he quipped “that since he has been President he had
always had a crowd of people asking him to give them something, but that now he has
something he can give them all.” Alluding to both the scars that smallpox often caused
and to his appearance, he told his physician: “There is one consolation about the matter,
doctor. It cannot in the least disfigure me!”345 In fact, he was not disfigured. A visitor on
December 6 wrote that although he “looks feeble,” yet “not a mark can be seen.” Earlier
“he only had half a dozen.”346 (Gustavus V. Fox to his wife Virginia, Washington, 6 December 1863, Fox Papers, New-York Historical
Society.)

The varioloid did more than disfigure one of the members of the presidential party
at Gettysburg, William H. Johnson, the young black man who accompanied Lincoln from
Illinois and served in the White House until his fellow black staffers there objected to his
presence because his skin was too dark. Lincoln then obtained for him a job in the
treasury department. Johnson contracted smallpox, which killed him in January 1864.
One day that month, as the poor fellow lay in the hospital, a journalist discovered the
president counting out some greenbacks. Lincoln explained that such activity “is
something out of my usual line, but a president of the United States has a multiplicity of
duties not specified in the Constitution or acts of Congress. This is one of them. This
money belongs to a poor Negro [Johnson] who is a porter in one of the departments (the
Treasury) and who is at present very bad with the smallpox. He did not catch it from me,
however; at least I think not. He is now in hospital and could not draw his pay because he
could not sign his name. I have been at considerable trouble to overcome the difficulty
and get it for him and have at length succeeded in cutting red tape . . . . I am now dividing
the money and putting by a portion labeled, in an envelope, with my own hands,
according to his wish.”347

Johnson had borrowed $150 from the First National Bank of Washington using
Lincoln as an endorser. After Johnson died, the bank’s cashier, William J. Huntington,
happened to mention the outstanding notes to Lincoln: “the barber who used to shave
you, I hear, is dead.”
“’Oh, yes,’ interrupted the President, with feeling; ‘William is gone. I bought a
coffin for the poor fellow, and have had to help his family.’”
When Huntington said the bank would forgive the loan, Lincoln replied
emphatically: “No you don’t. I endorsed the notes, and am bound to pay them; and it is
your duty to make me pay them.”
“Yes,” said the banker, “but it has long been our custom to devote a portion of our
profits to charitable objects; and this seems to be a most deserving one.”
When the president rejected that argument, Huntington said: “Well, Mr. Lincoln, I
will tell you how we can arrange this. The loan to William was a joint one between you
and the bank. You stand half of the loss, and I will cancel the other.”

After thinking it over, Lincoln said: “Mr. Huntington, that sounds fair, but it is
insidious; you are going to get ahead of me; you are going to give me the smallest note to
pay. There must be a fair divide over poor William. Reckon up the interest on both notes,
and chop the whole right straight through the middle, so that my half shall be as big as
yours. That’s the way we will fix it.”

Huntington agreed, saying: “After this, Mr. President, you can never deny that
you indorse the negro.”

“That’s a fact!” Lincoln exclaimed with a laugh; “but I don’t intend to deny it.”348