To Francis P. Blair, Sr.1Jump to section
My dear Sir Washington, July 30, 1863.
Yours of to-day with inclosure is received. Yesterday I commenced trying to get up an expedition for Texas. I shall do the best I can. Meantime I would like to know who is the great man Alexander, that talks so oracularly about ``if the president keeps his word'' and Banks not having ``capacity to run an omnibus on Broadway.'' How has this Alexander's immense light been obscured hitherto? Yours truly A. LINCOLN
Annotation
[1] ADfS, DLC-RTL. Francis P. Blair, Sr., enclosed in a letter of July 30 the following from William Alexander, New York City, July 28, 1863:
``As there is now a chance to get some relief for the union men of Texas, (that is if the President, who promised that an expedition should be sent there as soon as Vicksburg should be taken, keeps his word,) I must trouble you again on the subject. It is all important that, as a preliminary move, Texas should be taken from the paralysing rule of Banks, and made into a separate military District or Department. Banks is an incapable as well as an incurable. He has not the capacity to run an omnibus on Broadway. So long as Texas is in his Department I shall remain absent. Now I should prefer to have a separate Department created, to consist solely of Texas, and to have Frank sent out to Western Texas to command it. I am here as the secret agent of the leading union men of western Texas, and am anxious to do anything in my power to bring it about that Frank should at once be sent there to take command. . . .'' (DLC-RTL).
Blair replied on August 1 to Lincoln's query concerning Alexander: ``He is, I understand, a Texan of talent, a lawyer, one of the first Union men driven out & made the agent of like sufferers. . . .'' (Ibid.).