While walking to the USSC offices, Olmsted caught his first glimpse of Abraham Lincoln. The president was moving at a brisk clip, headed to the War Department, accompanied by three other men. Olmsted thought the president looked younger than expected. He was put off by the president’s style of dress, describing Lincoln as wearing a “cheap & nasty French black cloth suit just out of a tight carpet bag. Looked as if he would be an applicant for a Broadway squad policemanship, but a little too smart and careless.”
