Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, Washington, DC, January 19, 1865

    Source citation
    Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, Washington, DC, January 19, 1865 in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 8: 223-224, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
    Type
    Letter
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Transcriber
    Transcription adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler
    Adapted by Matthew Pinsker, Dickinson College
    Transcription date
    The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
     Executive Mansion, Washington,
    Jan. 19, 1865.
     
    Lieut. General Grant: 
    Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but only a friend. My son, now in his twenty second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those who have already served long, are better entitled, and better qualified to hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your Military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself. 
    Yours truly
    A. LINCOLN
    How to Cite This Page: "Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, Washington, DC, January 19, 1865," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/40357.