A Suffering Veteran’s Letter to the President of the United States of America
After the assassination of President Lincoln, many northerners and recently freed slaves mourned the loss of their leader with a surprising intensity. They cried in the streets. They crammed into churches to hear sermons. And quite a few of them wrote personal letters to the new President, Andrew Johnson.
One such letter was written by a former veteran from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. The letter is typical of the mass of correspondence sent to Johnson, though its simple emotional power makes it stand out, too. Here’s the letter in its entirety:
To: Andrew Johnson President of the Greatest Republic on Earth
I congratulate you on your having arisen to this high and responsible and very useful position.
When the terrible news came of the assassination of President Lincoln I was for one disheartened. Not knowing much of your previous history I feared that the consequences would be exceedingly disastrous. But I am thankful to see the Presidential seat so well filled. (comparatively I might say more than filled). My fears are dispelled and my hopes are realized.
In your case we see that virtue has received its well merited reward. You were from a slave holding state. You stood by your Country and its Constitution. You opposed secession and Rebels. We now see your exaltation. Forming a wonderful contrast to the degradation of Jeff Davis.
We were pleased to hear of the speedy retribution visited upon Booth the assassin and the capture of Davis too. From this point the cry is hang him! hang him! As a Christian I cannot conscientiously ask for vengeance. But I shall not weep if justice is meted out to him as I know it will be when all is known to you.
I have been in the army as a volunteer. And I have or did have three brothers two of whom have been drafted. One my eldest Brother (a healthy and stout good looking young man) volunteered in the summer of 1862. In the year 1863 he was made a prisoner by the Rebels at Gettysburg and carried to Belle Island near Richmond where he died before the close of the year. Literally starved to death in his own country for which he was fighting. O, God! it drives me almost frantic when I think of these barbarities. Why common and speedy murder looks like mercy compared to such cruelty. The Black Hole of Calcutta has been out done in our own free Country.
It is just that those who caused such terrible suffering should lose their lives. The world should not be troubled with them longer. How can we live in the same country with men of such principles? I hope those principles will be something more than smothered.
Excuse me I have written too much perhaps more than you will have time to read. God help and strengthen you to do your great work.
I would like to see you and take you by the hand but I do not expect to be in Washington for years yet. I have been reading what you said to the Sunday school children of your City. It did me good (I am superintending a little Sunday school). I intend to read your speech to my Scholars on Sunday.
Of course you will not have time to answer such an unimportant letter. But I would feel highly complimented if you could but send me your autograph.God be with you.
From Your very Humble Servant
Chas. Linskill
Wilkes Barre, PA
To President Johnson, June 7, 1865
I’ve been reading dozens of these letters in the Library of Congress, and this one expresses a lot of common themes. He begins by mentioning Lincoln’s terrible assassination. He then offers his support for Andrew Johnson. And he also makes it very clear that he hopes justice is “meted out” to the leading rebels.
This particular letter also illustrates an extremely important aspect of the mourning of Lincoln. In addition to losing his President, the letter writer has also lost his eldest brother, a “healthy and stout looking young man.” His brother died of starvation in a prison camp, and the pain of the loss is still raw: “O,God! It drives me almost frantic when I think of these barbarities.”
Americans mourned Lincoln intensely because they were also mourning their fathers and brothers who had died in the war. Overall, roughly 620,000 Americans on both sides were killed with many more wounded and missing. As Drew Gilpin Faust notes in her excellent book This Republic of Suffering, all of this death “marked a sharp and alarming departure from existing preconceptions about who should die.” It was a very sad time in America in the aftermath of the war and Lincoln’s violent death.
This sadness was beautifully captured in Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. Whitman loved Lincoln, and would even wait for him in the mornings, so he could see the President ride by when he was returning from the Soldier’s Home — Lincoln’s summer lodgings during much of the war. Whitman also had a strong connection with ordinary soldiers too from his volunteering at Washington, DC, military hospitals. This poem was for both Lincoln and the ordinary soldiers.
He begins his elegy by referring to Lincoln — the great star in the western sky:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Later, he mentions the even greater loss of all those soldiers,
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war…
In a powerful image, Whitman talks of breaking copious sprigs of lilac for all of the coffins,
… now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O death.
One of the great tragedies of Lincoln’s death is that America lost perhaps the only person who had both the power and emotional strength to help heal our “republic of suffering.” It often feels like the raw wounds of that era are still with us today.
Further reading:
• Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering.
• Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln.
