Pass for Mrs. Harriet C. Bledsoe1Jump to section
Allow the bearer, Mrs. Harriet C. Bledsoe, to pass our lines with ordinary baggage and go South. A. LINCOLN
Jan. 16. 1865
Annotation
[1] ADS-P, DLC-Bledsoe Papers. Harriet C. Bledsoe was the wife of Albert T. Bledsoe, who had served as acting assistant secretary of War of the Confederacy. According to a newspaper article concerning this pass, Mrs. Bledsoe ``ran the blockade, hoping that in the North she could get clothing material for her children. . . . She had known Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in her younger days in Springfield, Ill., and she wrote to Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine, of the Methodist Church . . . a relative of the Bledsoes by marriage, and he asked that President Lincoln should grant her an interview and hear her request for a pass. . . .'' (Jersey City Journal, February 8, 1930).