Had the good fortune to visit the
Morgan Library with a friend today to see the
Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation exhibit, put together by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The exhibit provides a chronology of Lincoln's readings and writings from his youth to death. While his Gettysburg Address and Second Inauguration were among the most familiar documents, there were several handwritten letters and executive memoranda that were remarkable both for their symbolism and simplicity. Less than three months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln penned a private letter to Andrew Johnson, then military Governor of Tennessee, encouraging him to raise a force of "50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers" who if sighted on the banks of the Mississippi "would end the rebellion at once."
Transcript:
Private
Executive Mansion
Washington March 26, 1863
Hon. Andrew Johnson
My dear Sir:
I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some men of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave-holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought.
Yours truly
A. Lincoln
I've been a Lincoln history buff since the third grade when my grandfather hoisted me above the silver chest to explain an ancestor's framed Civil War vellum commission papers signed by Lincoln in 1862, and countersigned by then Secretary of War Edwin M Stanton. An earlier commission before the Civil War was signed in 1853 by Franklin Pierce, and countersigned by his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, four years before Davis became President of the Confederate States of America.
