Annotation
[1] Copy, DLC-Garfield Papers. The copy in the handwriting of Anna E. Carroll was enclosed in her letter to President James A. Garfield, August 6, 1880, along with a copy of a letter from Attorney General Bates, August 20, 1862:
``I have now to thank you for your able and patriotic address of the 5th instant to your State which has equal relevancy to mine and all the border States. I trust and believe its influence will go far to fill the quota now required without resort to a draft on the militia of the several States.
``The President sends you a brief note of thanks.''
Lincoln's note was probably an effort to mollify the indignant Miss Carroll, who following an interview with the president had written him on August 14 a very long letter reading in part as follows:
``I am just informed, that at a public dinner . . . in a Washington Hotel, a gentleman . . . stated, that the President had said `a lady demanded fifty thousand dollars, for writing a document,' &c; meaning myself. . . . I saw . . . that you did not comprehend me . . . at the time of my interview. . . . It is due to myself . . . that I make this statement plain.
``I had a verbal agreement, with Hon Thos. A. Scott . . . to write in defense of the War Policy. . . .
``For the writing and circulating of the copies, accepted, under this agreement, there was no question; as I knew the Government was legally bound, to pay me, its just value.
``But for the circulation of all my documents, that I had written under this agreement, and for what I might write . . . I was advised . . . to bring the matter before you. . . .
``I was also advised . . . that the Government should circulate . . . the `Reply to Breckinridge' `The War Powers of the Government.' `The Relations of the Government to the Revolted Citizens' &c, &c,. . . .
``They all understood, that the amount suggested, was to be used in the circulation of my documents . . . and to write and publish in Europe . . . and they deemed it a very reasonable sum. . . .
``When you said to me, that my proposition, [`] was the most outrageous one, ever made to any government, upon earth,' I remarked, that, the difference between us, was in our views, upon the value of intellectual laber. . . . If the estimate placed upon my writings, be too high, the error is not mine. . . .'' (DLC-RTL). See also Sydney Greenbie and Marjorie Barstow Greenbie, Anna Ella Carroll and Abraham Lincoln (1952).