We are Lincoln Men by David Herbert Donald

We are Lincoln Men by David Herbert Donald

Author:David Herbert Donald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00


“B EYOND THE PALE OF HUMAN ENVY ”

Lincoln and William H. Seward

ON November 16, 1862, Virginia Woodbury Fox recorded a delicious piece of gossip in her diary. “Tish,” she reported—referring to her friend, Leticia McKean, a Washington socialite—told her: “There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.” “What stuff!” Mrs. Fox appraised the rumor. 1

This item was brought to my attention by Professor Ari Hoogenboom, who was preparing a biography of Virginia Fox’s husband, Gustavus Vasa Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. I tucked away his letter in the voluminous files I was collecting for my Lincoln biography but passed along copies to several Lincoln specialists. Matthew Pinsker, who was writing a history of the Soldiers’ Home, just outside Washington, identified the soldier in question as David V. Derickson of the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers, known as the “Bucktails” because of the insignia they attached to their uniforms, and the indefatigable C. A. Tripp looked into the story with a view to adding another chapter to his history of Lincoln’s sexual life. 2

They both discovered that there was a little more to the story than Mrs. Fox’s unsubstantiated second-hand report. On arriving in Washington in September 1862, two companies of the Bucktail regiment were detailed as a permanent guard for the President at the Soldiers’ Home, where he and Mrs. Lincoln tried to escape the summer heat of the capital. Lincoln himself cared little about having such a guard, but Mary Lincoln constantly worried about protecting him. When Robert E. Lee, fresh from his victory at Second Bull Run, invaded Maryland, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton also grew concerned about the President’s safety and insisted that he be accompanied on his daily journeys between the Soldiers’ Home and the White House. So on the day after the Bucktails took up their duties and encamped outside the Soldiers’ Home, the President asked Derickson, the captain of Company K, to ride with him in his carriage as he drove back to the city. Asking him about his residence, his occupation, and his military service, Lincoln was obviously much taken with the captain and designated him as his regular escort.

According to Derickson’s recollections, which were not published until 1888, he saw the President almost every day during the next four months. The captain reported to the Soldiers’ Home at about 6:30 or 7:00 every morning, where he usually found Lincoln having breakfast, before other members of the household were up. Often the President was reading the Bible or “some work on the art of war.” The two men drove into the city and returned about five o’clock. 3 Lincoln, Derickson claimed, brought him into his White House office and talked freely about the progress of the war. He introduced Derickson to military commanders, like General Henry Wager Halleck, and also to the members of his cabinet. It is certain that, after the battle of Antietam, Lincoln asked Derickson to join the small party that accompanied him to view the battlefield.



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