366 Days in Abraham Lincoln's Presidency Quotes

“Foreign Enlistment”
― Stephen A. Wynalda, 366 Days in Abraham Lincoln's Presidency: The Private, Political, and Military Decisions of America's Greatest President

“would be forced to flee—a”
― Stephen A. Wynalda, 366 Days in Abraham Lincoln's Presidency: The Private, Political, and Military Decisions of America's Greatest President

“I would have you”
― Stephen A. Wynalda, 366 Days in Abraham Lincoln's Presidency: The Private, Political, and Military Decisions of America's Greatest President

“NOVEMBER 29 “Chevalier” Wikoff Lincoln, on this day in 1861, read to his cabinet part of his first annual message to Congress. Subsequently the message—to be delivered on December 3—was, however, prematurely leaked to the press, prompting an investigation of Henry Wikoff and the first lady. In her first year in the White House, Mary Lincoln held evening soirees in the downstairs Blue Room. Her guests were mostly men who doted on her and, as journalist Henry Villard noted, Mary was vulnerable to “a common set of men and women whose bare-faced flattery easily gained controlling influence over her.” One such flatterer was Wikoff, a European adventurer who was an intimate of the French emperor, Napoleon. The New York Herald sent Wikoff to Washington as a secret correspondent for them. Wikoff charmed his way into Mary’s salon to become, as Villard claimed, a “guide in matters of social etiquette, domestic arrangements, and personal requirements, including her toilette.” The “Chevalier” Wikoff escorted Mary on her shopping sprees as an advisor, and repaid the first lady with stories in the Herald about her lavish spending. When the Herald published excerpts of Lincoln’s annual message, it was alleged that Wikoff was the leak and Mary his source. A House judiciary committee investigated and Wikoff claimed that it was not Mary but the White House gardener, John Watt, who was his source, and Watt confirmed Wikoff’s claim. As reporter Ben Poore wrote, “Mr. Lincoln had visited the Capitol and urged the Republicans on the Committee to spare him disgrace, so Watt’s improbable story was received and Wikoff liberated.” In February 1862, a reporter named Matthew Hale Smith of the Boston Journal showed Lincoln proof that Wikoff was working for the Herald. “Give me those papers and sit here till I return,” said the president on his way to confront Wikoff. He returned to tell Smith that the “chevalier” had been “driven from the Mansion [White House] that night.”
― Stephen A. Wynalda, 366 Days in Abraham Lincoln's Presidency: The Private, Political, and Military Decisions of America's Greatest President