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McCrea was banished from Beaufort by the Military authorities, & I am now called on to send him back, without the consent of those authorities, which I can not consent to do. They & not I must judge whether his presence is injurious. If the Gen. in command there---
Gen. Saxton I believe---consents, then I am quite willing for Mr. McCrea to return---not without. A. LINCOLN
June 10, 1864.
[1] AES, The Rosenbach Company, Philadelphia and New York. James G. McAdam of New York had interviewed Lincoln on June 8 in behalf of his friend James A. McCrea, who had been arrested and banished from the Department commanded by General Rufus Saxton at Beaufort, South Carolina, for procuring whisky for enlisted men. A resident of New York who formerly had operated a plantation in the West Indies, McCrea had acquired an abandoned plantation near Beaufort and was undertaking to raise cotton with hired labor. The letter from McAdam of June 9, 1864, which bears Lincoln's endorsement is a lengthy summary of the case, from McCrea's point of view, in which McAdam attempts to reinforce his ineffectual interview of the day before.