Overview
- The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is exhibiting the handwritten March 16, 1861 recommendation, donated in August by private collector Peter Tuite.
- Addressed to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, the note asks for employment for William Johnson after resistance to placing him on the White House staff.
- Lincoln wrote that the “difference of color” separated Johnson from other servants, spotlighting intra-Black color hierarchies among domestic workers of the era.
- Welles had no position to offer at the time, and Lincoln later obtained Johnson a Treasury Department messenger job in November 1861.
- Johnson continued to assist Lincoln, traveled to Gettysburg, cared for him during a mild smallpox illness, died of smallpox in early 1864, and Lincoln ensured his pay and funeral costs were covered.