In December 1862, President of the United States Abraham Lincoln sent a brief consoling letter to Fanny McCullough, the daughter of lieutenant colonel William McCullough, following his death in the American Civil War.
In December 1862, President of the United States Abraham Lincoln sent a brief consoling letter to Fanny McCullough, the daughter of lieutenant colonel William McCullough, following his death in the American Civil War.
Lincoln had met William McCullough years before when Lincoln was a circuit lawyer in Illinois and McCullough was a Circuit Clerk in McLean County. Lincoln would sometimes stay with the McCullough family when he reached the Bloomington, Illinois area of the circuit. McCullough became an ardent supporter of Lincoln beginning with Lincoln's successful run for Congress in 1846. With the start of the Civil War, McCullough petitioned Lincoln to allow him to enlist despite his health problems and age. McCullough's request was granted, and he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the 4th Illinois Cavalry. [1]
After McCullough was killed December 5, 1862 in an engagement near Coffeeville, Mississippi, [2] his daughter Mary Frances ("Fanny") was inconsolable and locked herself in her room. At the request of David Davis, a mutual friend of Lincoln and the McCullough family, Lincoln wrote to Fanny on December 23. [3]
Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 23, 1862.Dear Fanny
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln.Miss. Fanny McCullough. [4]
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defending the nation as a constitutional union, defeating the Confederacy, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (No. 9487), was a controversial U.S. federal court case that arose out of the American Civil War. It was a test of the authority of the President to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" under the Constitution's Suspension Clause, when Congress was in recess and therefore unavailable to do so itself. More generally, the case raised questions about the ability of the executive branch to decline to enforce judicial decisions when the executive believes them to be erroneous and harmful to its own legal powers.
John Pope was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He had a brief stint in the Western Theater, but he is best known for his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in the East.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, even though concentrated in only the Southern United States, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence.
Edwin Vose Sumner was a career United States Army officer who became a Union Army general and the oldest field commander of any Army Corps on either side during the American Civil War. His nicknames "Bull" or "Bull Head" came both from his great booming voice and a legend that a musket ball once bounced off his head.
Nathaniel Gordon was an American slave trader who was the only person in the United States to be tried, convicted, and executed by the federal government for having "engaged in the slave trade" under the Piracy Law of 1820.
Sullivan Ballou was an American lawyer and politician from Rhode Island, and an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered for an eloquent letter he wrote to his wife Sarah a week before he was mortally wounded in the First Battle of Bull Run. He was left behind by retreating Union forces and died a week after the battle.
Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov ; December 24, 1822 – June 18, 1901) better known by his Anglicised name of John Basil Turchin, was a member of the Russian nobility, a military intelligence Colonel in the Imperial Russian Army, and a personal staff officer to the future Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who emigrated in 1856 to the United States. After working as a farmer in Long Island and a railroad official in Chicago, he voluntarily returned to military service and served as a Union Army Colonel during the American Civil War.
The Bixby letter is a brief, consoling message sent by President Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 to Lydia Parker Bixby, a widow living in Boston, Massachusetts, who was thought to have lost five sons in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Along with the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, the letter has been praised as one of Lincoln's finest written works and is often reproduced in memorials, media, and print.
Frisby Henderson McCullough was a Confederate army soldier in the American Civil War, executed on the orders of Union Colonel John McNeil after the Battle of Kirksville.
The 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was part of the Union Iron Brigade.
Condolences are an expression of sympathy to someone who is experiencing pain arising from death, deep mental anguish, or misfortune.
Brigadier General William Ward Orme (1832-1866) was born in Washington, D.C. in 1832. He moved to Bloomington, Illinois, in McLean County, prior to 1860 where he practiced law in the law firm of Swett & Orme. His partner was Leonard Swett. While practicing law in Illinois he caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln who called Orme the most promising lawyer in Illinois.
Lincoln's "Lost Speech" was a speech given by Abraham Lincoln at the Bloomington Convention on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois. Traditionally regarded as lost because it was so engaging that reporters neglected to take notes, the speech is believed to have been an impassioned condemnation of slavery.
David Davis was an American politician and jurist who was a U.S. senator from Illinois and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He also served as Abraham Lincoln's campaign manager at the 1860 Republican National Convention, engineering Lincoln's successful nomination for president by that party.
Colonel Edmund Dick Taylor was an American businessman, politician, and soldier from Illinois. He is remembered as the first person to suggest that the United States should issue paper currency ("greenbacks") during the American Civil War.
Henry Clay Whitney was an American lawyer who was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and later a biographer of the president.
Charles H. Constable was an American attorney, Illinois State Senator, judge, and real estate entrepreneur. He was raised in Maryland and graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Law. After settling in Illinois, he married the oldest daughter of Thomas S. Hinde, a pioneer and real estate developer. Initially, he practiced law in Mount Carmel, Illinois, the town founded by Hinde. He managed the business and real estate affairs of his father-in-law until Hinde died in 1846.
Asahel Gridley was an American politician, lawyer, merchant, and banker. Born in New York, Gridley moved to Bloomington, Illinois, when he was twenty-one. He served as a brigadier general in the Black Hawk War and was elected to three terms in the Illinois General Assembly. There, he lobbied to have the Illinois Central and Chicago and Alton Railroads pass near Bloomington. Abraham Lincoln once defended Gridley during a slander trial and was a frequent collaborator or opponent in the courts. Gridley is also the namesake of Gridley, Illinois, and platted two other McLean County towns.
Frances Elizabeth Quinn was an Irish-born Union Civil War soldier who fought in both the infantry and cavalry. She enlisted over five separate times throughout the war and the country. Each time she was eventually discovered to be a woman and discharged from the military.
