FN: Lincoln’s Note for Slave Chaplain Window Into President’s Struggles

Nice. Love this man. We need desperately someone like him now.

1457124570011When more than 40,000 escaped slaves took refuge in Washington in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sought to provide them with food, shelter and medical care.

For their spiritual well-being, he turned to the Rev. Isaac Cross.

“December 15, 1862, Surgeon General, Please say whether there is a vacant chaplaincy in or about this city, to which I could appoint Rev. Mr. Cross, the bearer. A. Lincoln,” reads a letter the 16th president wrote for the Methodist Episcopal Church minister.

The letter, recently discovered and now being offered for sale by a Philadephia rare documents dealer, was written by Lincoln in reply to one Cross brought to Lincoln. That document was signed by more than a dozen officials and pastors in the church, who believed Cross was well-suited to serve the freed slaves.

Read it all.