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LINCOLN, Abraham. Letter signed ("A. Lincoln"), as President, to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, Executive Mansion, 5 April 1861. 1 page, 4to, text in an elegant clerical hand, one word in text altered in Lincoln's hand.
LINCOLN INSTRUCTS THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY TO PAY HIS PRESIDENTIAL SALARY ON THE FIFTH, NOT THE FIRST OF EACH MONTH
Five days before the guns began firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln attends to the matter of his paycheck. "On to-day, and on the fifth of each month, please to send me a Warrant for the amount of my salary as President of the United States." The secretary who drafted the text originally wrote "first of each month" but Lincoln carefully amended "first" to "fifth." He evidently wanted his mothly pay to correspond to exactly a month's service. And since his term had begun on the fourth day of March, he preferred to receive his pay on the day after the completion of a month's work.
He earned every cent of that first month's pay. When he came into office seven states of the deep south had already stampeded out of the Union. Determined to hold the nation together and crush the secessionists, Lincoln drew on all of the considerable skills he had acquired in his political life. His masterful Inaugural Address expressed his passionate belief in the indissolubility of the Union -- "We must not be enemies...Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone,...will yet swell the chorus of the Union..." He had to keep the tottering states of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky and the "border" states from joining the rebel ranks. He had to face the immediate crisis of whether to resupply or relinquish an isolated Union garrison in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter. An armed reinforcement could trigger fighting and make Washington seem the aggressor. A passive surrender would show weakness and make the Union seem incapable of defending itself. And closer to home the President had to manage a fractious Cabinet, filled with ambitious and devious men, many of whom felt certain they were better equipped to handle the job for which Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was now being paid.
Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase was among the most truculent of those subordinates. This 5 April request is one of the few that Chase promptly obeyed. The President received his first salary warrant later that day, and he deposited the $2,083.33 check into his newly opened account at Riggs & Co. (H. E. Pratt, Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln, 124, 182). Throughout the war Lincoln diverted portions of his substantial (for the time) $25,000 salary towards war relief and the purchase of bonds. After his death, however, his pay became something of a problem. Congress balked at Mary Todd Lincoln's request to continue receiving her husband's second term salary. Mrs. Lincoln was enraged that large sums of money were being raised for a monument to her martyred husband, but no consideration given to the living widow. The lawmakers, on the other hand, thought the late President's estate - valued at over $100,000 - sufficient to maintain the former First Lady. They did, however, vote her a one time payment of $25,000 in December 1865. Basler, First Supplement, 10:65.
Provenance: Philip D. Sang (sale, Sotheby's New York, 27 March 1985, lot 194).
LINCOLN INSTRUCTS THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY TO PAY HIS PRESIDENTIAL SALARY ON THE FIFTH, NOT THE FIRST OF EACH MONTH
Five days before the guns began firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln attends to the matter of his paycheck. "On to-day, and on the fifth of each month, please to send me a Warrant for the amount of my salary as President of the United States." The secretary who drafted the text originally wrote "first of each month" but Lincoln carefully amended "first" to "fifth." He evidently wanted his mothly pay to correspond to exactly a month's service. And since his term had begun on the fourth day of March, he preferred to receive his pay on the day after the completion of a month's work.
He earned every cent of that first month's pay. When he came into office seven states of the deep south had already stampeded out of the Union. Determined to hold the nation together and crush the secessionists, Lincoln drew on all of the considerable skills he had acquired in his political life. His masterful Inaugural Address expressed his passionate belief in the indissolubility of the Union -- "We must not be enemies...Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone,...will yet swell the chorus of the Union..." He had to keep the tottering states of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky and the "border" states from joining the rebel ranks. He had to face the immediate crisis of whether to resupply or relinquish an isolated Union garrison in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter. An armed reinforcement could trigger fighting and make Washington seem the aggressor. A passive surrender would show weakness and make the Union seem incapable of defending itself. And closer to home the President had to manage a fractious Cabinet, filled with ambitious and devious men, many of whom felt certain they were better equipped to handle the job for which Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was now being paid.
Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase was among the most truculent of those subordinates. This 5 April request is one of the few that Chase promptly obeyed. The President received his first salary warrant later that day, and he deposited the $2,083.33 check into his newly opened account at Riggs & Co. (H. E. Pratt, Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln, 124, 182). Throughout the war Lincoln diverted portions of his substantial (for the time) $25,000 salary towards war relief and the purchase of bonds. After his death, however, his pay became something of a problem. Congress balked at Mary Todd Lincoln's request to continue receiving her husband's second term salary. Mrs. Lincoln was enraged that large sums of money were being raised for a monument to her martyred husband, but no consideration given to the living widow. The lawmakers, on the other hand, thought the late President's estate - valued at over $100,000 - sufficient to maintain the former First Lady. They did, however, vote her a one time payment of $25,000 in December 1865. Basler, First Supplement, 10:65.
Provenance: Philip D. Sang (sale, Sotheby's New York, 27 March 1985, lot 194).