Annotation
[1] ALS, RPB. No correspondence from Hannah Armstrong has been found. The roster of Company C, Eighty-fifth Illinois Volunteers lists William Armstrong as ``Discharged at Louisville, Ky. by order of the President.'' According to tradition, the son of Jack and Hannah Armstrong, William (``Duff'') Armstrong, whom Lincoln had successfully defended in a famous murder trial in 1858, was ill with rheumatism and unable to obtain a discharge; whereupon his mother asked a friend, ``Uncle Jakey'' Garber, to write a letter for her asking the president to obtain William's discharge (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XIV, 266).