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Jaquess and the Lincoln Connection
Patricia Bauer Burnette
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James Frazier Jaquess (1819–1898) was a man of great ability, a powerful speaker, and a born leader. The educated son of a well-to-do farm family in Southern Indiana, Jaquess became a teacher, a Methodist preacher, and a college president. He was also admitted to the bar in the informal manner of men of his generation in Indiana and Illinois but never actually practiced law. At the age of forty-one, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. However, James Jaquess' greatest assets were his long-lasting friendships with two men of national importance, James Harlan and Richard Yates. Abraham Lincoln came to know Jaquess chiefly through these men. Because of their confidence in Jaquess, President Lincoln asked him to serve as one of his private agents during the final years of the Civil War. |
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James Frazier Jaquess came from Posey County on the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana. He attended Indiana Asbury (now DePauw University) where he graduated in 1845. At Asbury, Jaquess was a classmate and friend of James Harlan, who later became a U.S. Senator from Iowa and a member of Lincoln's cabinet. Harlan's daughter Mary became the wife of Robert Todd Lincoln. The friendship between Jaquess and Harlan continued through the years and provided an important connection between Jaquess and Abraham Lincoln.1 |
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Jaquess taught at Mt. Carmel (Illinois) Academy while serving as supply pastor for the Palestine Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Then, in 1845 he "was recommended and admitted" to the Illinois Conference and sent "on trial" to the Shawneetown Circuit. From there he went to Petersburg where he probably met Abraham Lincoln for the first time at the home of Henry B. Rankin's father. The Reverend Jaquess, now a young widower, lived with the Rankins when he was not on the road visiting congregations on the Petersburg Circuit of the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Lincoln sometimes stopped by the Rankin household when he came to Petersburg to appear in a case on the 8th Judicial Circuit. Rankin says that Lincoln met Jaquess during one of these visits.2 |
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The Illinois Conference next moved Jaquess to Springfield in 1847 where Peter Cartwright claimed that there was "an increase of over five hundred members ... under the faithful labors of Brother J. F. Jaquess." However, shortly after receiving a Master's degree from McKendree College in 1848, Jaquess left the pulpit to become the first President of the Illinois Conference Female Academy (MacMurray College) where he served until 1855. It is likely that Jaquess met Lincoln for a second time on one of his trips to Jacksonville to seek advice from his personal and political friend Richard Yates at his home on East State Street. When Jaquess and his family moved into the college's first building in the winter of 1851–1852,Yates was their neighbor across the street. However, President Lincoln and Colonel Jaquess would come to know one another much more than casually when their paths crossed again during the years of the Civil War.3 |
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After Jaquess left Jacksonville, he spent his last year in the pulpit on the Paris Circuit before accepting his second college presidency at Quincy English and German Seminary in 1856. He remained at this school until Governor Richard Yates appointed him Chaplain of the 6th Illinois Cavalry when it was organized at Camp Butler in November 1861. After a power struggle within the 6th Cavalry persuaded Jaquess to resign in June 1862, Governor Yates allowed Jaquess to recruit his own regiment, the 73rd Illinois Infantry, and serve as its colonel. Most of the men came from Methodist congregations and several of them were ministers. For this reason, the 73rd gained the nickname of the "Preacher's Regiment."4 |
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Abraham Lincoln, like other Presidents before him, enlisted private individuals to carry out covert assignments for the U.S. government and sometimes for Lincoln himself. He sent personal agents to the Confederate States, Canada, and Europe on secret missions. However, sometimes these secret missions failed to remain that way. Shortly after the South seceded, Lincoln asked George Ashmun, a friend from their days to the U.S. House of Representatives, to undertake a mission to Canada at the salary of ten dollars a day and expenses. His assignment was to assure that the Canadian government took the "right" position with regard to the South. Someone leaked Ashmun's mission a few days after his appointment and the United States government had to officially recall him. Thurlow Weed, known as "The Wizard of the Lobby," succeeded in the task that Lincoln assigned to him. He was a great political organizer whose mission was to secure pledges of a thousand dollars each from fifteen corporations and individuals. Lincoln wanted this money to finance efforts to defeat Peace Democrats in the Connecticut and New Hampshire elections. Weed raised the money, but it remains unclear just how the Republican Party spent it. William Lloyd was a personal agent who came closer to fulfilling the modern idea of a spy. He crossed into rebel territory and remained there throughout the Civil War. Lincoln promised him a salary of two-hundred dollars a month to send back information about forts, fortifications, and Confederate military preparations. After Lincoln's assassination, the federal government reimbursed Lloyd for his expenses but refused to pay his salary. The Supreme Court ruled in 1875 that the oral contract between Lincoln and the now deceased spy was not enforceable "because it might do harm to make public the details of the enterprise and embarrass the government." In 1864 or possibly 1863, Abraham Lincoln invited James F. Jaquess, a friend of his friends Yates and Harlan, to join the President's cadre of private agents.5 |
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Early in May 1863, Colonel Jaquess wrote to James A. Garfield, Chief of Staff for General William S. Rosecrans, requesting permission to go to the Southern Confederacy to negotiate terms of peace acceptable to the federal government. In connection with this request, Lincoln wrote to General Rosecrans that he had "but a slight personal acquaintance with Col. Jaquess, though I know him very well by character." Apparently, Jaquess believed that he had influential friends among ministers in the Methodist Episcopal Church South who were weary of the war and willing to discuss how best to end it. General Rosecrans telegraphed and then wrote President Lincoln about the Colonel's proposal and asked whether he should send Jaquess to Washington. The President replied that "For certain reasons it is thought best for Rev. Dr. Jacquess [sic] not to come here." At Lincoln's request, Jaquess wrote a letter describing his proposal which James R. Gilmore, a writer with the pen name Edmund Kirke, carried to the President. A year later, during the summer before the 1864 election, Gilmore became Jaquess' partner on a second trip to the Confederacy to meet with Jefferson Davis.6 |
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With Lincoln's permission but without any official sanction from the President, Jaquess entered the Confederacy around July 13 and was back in Baltimore by July 22. He did not meet with Jefferson Davis. However, he wrote Lincoln that he had "valuable information, and proposals for peace" that were "unofficial, but from men of character and great influence"—most likely his friends in the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Jaquess asked Lincoln to let him know whether he could communicate this information to the President in person. After waiting two weeks for a reply from Lincoln that never came, Jaquess returned to his regiment in time for the bloody battle of Chickamauga. Many years later at a Reunion of the 73rd Illinois Volunteer Regiment, Jaquess told his men that before joining his regiment at Chickamauga, he had sent important written information to Lincoln about an increase of the Confederate troops. But Lincoln failed to receive this message. Jaquess referred to this mishap as "an incident of the war veiled in mystery, and attended with fearful consequences to General Rosecrans, and his brave army of the Cumberland." Jaquess had crossed into enemy territory in the middle of July and returned within a week. Although General James Longstreet had proposed in May that General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee needed reinforcements, no decision took place until August. When Jaquess visited the Confederacy in July, it is possible that he overheard gossip about Longstreet's recommendation but he certainly could not have learned anything about the final decision on this matter.7 |
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It is unclear whether Lincoln ever saw the letter from Jaquess and no answer has been discovered. In their biography of Lincoln, his Secretaries John G. Nicolay and John Hay compliment the President for not listening to a report from Jaquess and maintain that "it was preposterous to suppose that in the brief space of a single week he could have gathered any considerable information concerning public sentiment." However, John C. Waugh, in his study of the 1864 election, maintains that the Colonel's "illusions were so strong, and earnest that others half believed them." It appears that Nicolay and Hay did not believe the Colonel's "illusions" at all. Stephen F. Knott, in Secret and Sanctioned; Covert Operations and the American Presidency, argues that although President Lincoln had "to maintain a discreet distance from Jaquess," the Colonel did make his trip in 1863 as Lincoln's private agent. When Jaquess appeared in 1870 before the Senate Military Affairs Committee to request reimbursement for his later missions, he indicated that he has already been paid for his trip in 1863. The Colonel's statement suggests that Knott may have been right.8 |
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Jaquess' trip to the Confederacy in 1863 was a Peace Mission, although an unofficial and unsuccessful one. The trip of Jaquess and James Gilmore to Richmond in 1864, although called the Second Peace Mission, was actually a Political Mission. Historical writers have recounted the 1864 trip of Jaquess and Gilmore a great many times. Gilmore himself wrote three articles and two books about this mission. Unfortunately, later authors have relied on Gilmore's accounts although they are often more fiction than they are fact. Plans for their trip to Richmond date from the middle of May when Gilmore obtained a note from Lincoln giving Colonel Jaquess "leave of absence until further orders." It took time for Gilmore's letter about this furlough to reach Jaquess who was in the field of battle and still more time before the two men were able meet in Baltimore. General Ulysses S. Grant contacted General Robert E. Lee on July 8th to arrange their safe passage. Six days later, the Confederate Agent of Exchange, Judge Robert Ould, met them on the Rebel side of the line.9 |
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How very different this 1864 trip was from the one that Jaquess made alone the year before. In 1863 Lincoln allowed General Rosecrans to decide whether the Colonel would get a furlough and let Major General Robert Schenck determine whether Jaquess would be sent on to Fortress Monroe in order to enter the Confederacy. But in 1864 Abraham Lincoln had a strong political purpose for the Jaquess-Gilmore mission and a real stake in its outcome. Lincoln wanted to save the union and he certainly wanted to be reelected president. In a letter written to Horace Greeley two years earlier, Lincoln had made it clear that his "paramount object in this struggle" was "to save the Union, and ... not either to save or to destroy slavery." He wrote: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all of the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Greeley, on the other hand, wanted to end the war, no matter what the cost. He was convinced that representatives from the Confederate States who were meeting in Canada were sincere about wanting peace and urged Lincoln "to submit overtures of pacification to the Southern insurgents." Lincoln counted on Jaquess and Gilmore to bring back proof that such peace negotiations would be fruitless. The President chose an excellent public speaker and a well-known journalist, the right combination to insure that the words of Jefferson Davis would be spread throughout the North.10 |
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The two met with Jefferson Davis in Richmond on July 17, and heard the President of the Confederacy say the words that Lincoln expected them to hear: "We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence—and that, or extermination, we will have." The New York Times recognized the political significance of the trip made by Jaquess and Gilmore, stating that it "proved of extreme service ... because it established that Jeff. Davis will listen to no proposals of peace that do not embrace disunion ... In view of the efforts now being made by the Peace Party of the North to delude our people into a belief that peace is now practicable without disunion."11 |
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In a brief letter to Gilmore dated July 21, Jaquess stated that he would report about their trip to Richmond to Lincoln at 8 p.m. that evening. This meeting did not take place at the White House but at the Soldier's Home to which the President had moved the week before to escape the summer heat of Washington. Two months later, the Republican Congressional Committee published a printed version of the Colonel's oral account of the trip to Richmond. Called "Rebel Terms of Peace," it was distributed as Republican campaign literature. Jaquess stated that a shorthand reporter recorded his oral report and then transcribed it at the request of the Treasurer of the Republican Congressional Committee, his friend from Indiana Asbury, Senator James Harlan. "Rebel Terms of Peace" includes a letter from Harlan mentioning their "long and intimate acquaintance." Colonel Jaquess, evidently an eloquent speaker, also stumped for Lincoln's reelection in an effort to convince voters "that no peace was possible until the rebellion had been suppressed."12 |
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On the evening when Jaquess recounted his trip to Richmond, Lincoln appears to have engaged the Colonel to undertake several additional missions as the President's private agent. Evidence of these secret service activities rests on the Report of the Proceedings of the Committee on Military Affairs of the United States Senate held on May 27, 1870. Senator Jacob Howard from Ohio questioned Colonel Jaquess on behalf of the Committee. Senator James Harlan was also present to testify to the Colonel's fine character and veracity. The purpose of this hearing was to determine whether the government should pay $6719 to Jaquess to reimburse his personal expenses. The Regimental History of the 73rd Illinois Infantry records that on the afternoon of April 27, 1865, "Colonel James F. Jaquess rejoined the regiment, after an absence since June 5, 1864." In addition, the Field and Staff Muster Rolls in the Colonel's Military File show that he was away from his regiment for an extended period of time. He was reported absent from his Regiment with reference to several different |
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Special Field Orders during March, April, May, and June of 1864. For example, he requested a leave of twenty days on April 8, to visit his mother in Indiana who had asked him to visit her before she died. Then for nine consecutive months, from late July 1864 to April 1865, the Colonel is reported "Absent with Leave per S. O. [Special Order] No. 248 War Department, [issued] July 25, 1864." However, the Muster Rolls do not explain where he was or what he was doing there. Jaquess told the Committee that although he was reimbursed for his Peace Mission to the Confederacy in 1863, he was never reimbursed for the trip to meet with Jefferson Davis the following year or any other missions thereafter. All of these expenses were included in the sum that he requested in 1870.13 |
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When Jaquess reported to Lincoln after the 1864 mission, the President sent him immediately on two consecutive trips to Niagara. His assignment was to assess what was going on there between the Confederate Peace Commissioners and those individuals who had crossed into Canada to meet with them. Jaquess says that he met with two of the Peace Commissioners, Clement C. Clay and Jacob Thompson, and reported what he learned to President Lincoln. Because things were not going well for the Union Army, making peace with the South was a major topic of discussion in July and August of 1864. Horace Greeley, editor of the powerful New York Tribune, pressured Lincoln into negotiating with the Confederate delegation at Niagara. Lincoln finally agreed to give these Southerners safe conduct to Washington, only to discover that the men actually had no official standing with the Confederate government. Later, in August of 1864, the Chair of the National Executive Committee of the Union Party urged Lincoln to appoint an official United States Commissioner "to make proffers of peace to President Davis." It was likely that Lincoln would lose the election and the North might lose the war if he did not make some official move toward peace. After all, the previous efforts of Jaquess and Gilmore had no official sanction from the U. S. government. Lincoln and his cabinet discussed the Union Party's proposal but decided against carrying it out. Then, after being a hot topic of discussion for much of the summer of 1864, ideas about how to negotiate an acceptable peace no longer held center stage. When General John Bell Hood surrendered Atlanta to General Sherman on September 1, the chances for a Union victory at last seemed favorable.14 |
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Next, Lincoln sent Jaquess to Niagara on a third and different kind of mission, this time as a "working member" of what the Colonel calls "a sort of convention of rebel leaders and sympathizers and spies, with some persons from the United States who went over to confer with them." Jaquess visited ex-President Buchanan at his residence in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for advice on how to become an official delegate to this "convention." Jaquess said that when he was with Buchanan, he drank "more liquor ... than I ever drank in my life." The Colonel became the representative for a part of Southern Illinois and most likely used an assumed name. He pictured James Buchanan as a confidante of the pro-Confederacy group at Niagara possibly because one of the Confederate Peace Commissioners, Jacob Thompson, had served as Secretary of Agriculture during Buchanan's administration. As Lincoln had stated earlier, he believed that the real purpose of the Niagara gathering was "to assist in selecting and arranging a candidate, and a platform for the Chicago Convention" of the Democratic Party to be held on August 29. As the Chicago convention grew near, Lincoln became more and more convinced that it was "exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected." He asked his Cabinet to sign without reading a memorandum stating his willingness "to co-operate with the President elect, [so] as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration."15 |
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On his third mission to Canada, Jaquess met a disaffected Southerner who told him about a Confederate plot to burn northern cities and shipping. From this Southerner, Jaquess learned the identity of the Rebel chemist who was making the incendiary bombs, and where the Colonel could locate him. This information motivated Jaquess to "smuggle" himself through enemy lines on a third trip to the Confederacy. When he talked with the Confederate chemist, Jaquess learned that this man had become "opposed to the whole thing" and believed that the weapon that he was creating was "not sanctioned by the laws of War." Colonel Jaquess, who had taught chemistry during his first college presidency, worked with the unnamed chemist to alter the chemical ingredients of the bombs. Together they created a formula that would catch fire when exposed to the air, burn brightly for a short time, and then extinguish itself. The Colonel told the Committee that he had spent between $1200 and $1300 on the ingredients for the new bomb formula. Jaquess maintained that the southern spies failed in their plans because their bombs did not work. The |
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Colonel's account offers one explanation for the failure of the Confederate spies to burn New York City on November 23, 1864, the day before Thanksgiving. It was claimed at the time that the fires in several hotels and the Barnum Museum died because they were set in closed areas with insufficient oxygen. Another explanation was that those individuals who accidentally discovered the fires simply put them out. However, Jaquess maintained that the fires went out because the new chemical formula included a means of "self-extinguishment." John W. Headley, one of the Confederate spies who tried to burn New York City, agrees that the bombs did not work properly. He writes: "It seemed to us that there was something wrong with our Greek fire.... We came to the conclusion that [the] manufacturing chemist had put up a job on us."16 |
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The Colonel's private service to the President concluded with some fence-mending missions following Lincoln's reelection in November 1864. Jaquess told the Committee that he visited Horace Greeley twice but he "was not willing to be reconciled" and continued to insist that "Mr. Lincoln lied to him." However, Jaquess was more successful with Governor Horatio Seymour of New York and Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts. Seymour was a major critic of Lincoln's first administration while Andrew was a strong supporter of the Northern cause. Jaquess claimed that he brokered a meeting between the two of them in New York City and paid their expenses himself.17 |
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As might be expected, the Committee on Military Affairs wanted to know why Jaquess had waited until 1870 to present his claim for reimbursement. Jaquess said that Lincoln had tried to pay him before the Colonel left for New York but he did not want to take such a large sum with him on this trip. Then he missed connections with the President when Lincoln left on March 23, 1865, aboard the River Queen to visit the Union troops. Lincoln did not return to Washington until April 9. By that time, Colonel Jaquess had already headed west to Quincy, Illinois, to visit his wife and perform his daughter Margaret's marriage to Captain Henry A. Castle. When the Reverend Jaquess performed the wedding on April 18, President Lincoln had been dead since 7:22 a.m. on April 15. Jaquess explained to the Committee that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton told him not to try to submit his claim while President Andrew Johnson was in office and the Colonel followed his advice.18 |
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The Committee on Military Affairs believed what Jaquess had told them. They authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to pay Colonel James F. Jaquess the full amount of $6719 "for services performed and money expended by said Jaquess during the recent rebellion, under the direction of the late President Abraham Lincoln." Senator James Harlan proposed this legislation as Senate Bill 886. Congress did not pass the legislation to pay the $6719 until February 12, 1873, the 64th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. In justifying approval of the payment to Colonel Jaquess, the Committee said that they "looked upon the claim as one of a sacred character, growing out of the intimate and confidential relations of Colonel Jaquess [sic] with the President. "Certainly, Jaquess and Lincoln could no longer be considered as nothing more than "slight acquaintances."18 |
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Notes
1 Attendance Records of Indiana Asbury University and Alumnae Register. DePauw University, 1900. Edward C. Kirkland, "James Frazier Jaquess" in Dictionary of American Biography edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960 reprint), 5:615–6. Affidavit of Colonel Jaquess, sworn 15 May 1888. Evidence presented to House of Lords, Item No. 16, 38. Evansville and Its Men of Mark (Evansville, IN: Historical Publishing Company, 1873. Reprinted Evansville, IN: Whipporwill Publications, 1985), 402–3.
2 Mt. Carmel Register, 2 October 1844 and 12 March 1845. Part II The Journal of the Illinois Annual Conference from 1824 to 1851 Inclusive; quote in "Journal-Twenty Second Session 1845 Springfield," 335. Henry R. Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (New York: The Knickerbocker, 1916), 318–9. James F. Jaquess' grandmother Rebekah Fraser was the widow of James Rankin when she married Jonathan Jaquess. Thus, it is possible that the Rankins of Petersburg were Jaquess' distant relatives. Lincoln appeared before the Court in Petersburg both in December 1846 and in May 1847. The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln. http://www.stg.brown.edu/project/lincoln which includes, corrects, and adds to Lincoln Day-by-Day: A Chronology.
3 Jaquess was assigned to the Petersburg Circuit by the Methodist Episcopal Church at its Twenty-Third Session in late September1846 and remained there until he was assigned to Springfield a year later. Part II The Journal of the Illinois Annual Conference from 1824 to 1851 Inclusive, McKendree College Methodist Archives. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright: 53 Years as a Pioneer Preacher, Centennial Edition. Introduction by Charles B. Wallis. (Nashville: Abington Press, 1956), 296. Centennial McKendree College with St. Clair County History, ed. Joseph Guandolo. (St. Louis: Blackwell Wielandy Co., 1928), 149. Also, Alumnae Register, DePauw University, 1900. Mary Watters, A History of MacMurray College: The First Hundred Years (Springfield, IL: Williamson Printing & Publishing Company, 1947), 62, 71, 72. The Jaquess family lived in the Nicholas Milburn residence, also on East State near the Yates house, in 1850–1851, before moving into Main Hall. Lincoln, for example, stayed all night at the Yates home on E. State on August 25, 1854. The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln. Illinois Conference Female Academy, Illinois Conference Female College, Record of Trustees' Meetings Beginning October 10, 1846, Ending May 19, 1858. Bound photocopy of original handwritten document. MacMurray College Archives. Mary Watters, 41–2. Minutes of the Board of Trustees, 26 April 1855. Watters, 114–5.
4 Published Records of the Annual Minutes of the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the Year 1854, 1855, 1856. Great Rivers Methodist Archives. MacMurray College. The Daily Whig, Thursday, 16 August 1856, 2. One of several newspapers published 1835–1890, digitized by the Quincy Public Library. http://www.quincylibrary.org/Reference/NewspaperArchive.asp. Records remaining from the Methodist College in Quincy were sent to Illinois Wesleyan University where they apparently perished in a major fire. Colonel Thomas H. Cavanaugh from Jacksonville fell out with officers under his command, especially Lt. Colonel John Olney, over procurement of whiskey from Rebel sympathizers in Southern Illinois. Jaquess sided with Cavanaugh who was forced to resign in April 1862; Jaquess resigned two months later.
5 F. Lauriston Bullard, "Abraham Lincoln and George Ashmun," The New England Quarterly, 19 (2 June 1946): 197–200. Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned; Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 145, 147–8. Totten v. United States, 92 U. S. 105 (1875). John J. Carter, Covert Action as a Tool of Presidential Foreign Policy: from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-contra (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 123–4.
6 All of the correspondence cited in the remainder of the paper comes from the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, unless otherwise identified. James F. Jaquess to James A. Garfield, 19 May 1863; Abraham Lincoln to William S. Rosecrans, 28 May 1863: William S. Rosecrans to Abraham Lincoln, both messages on 21 May 1863; Abraham Lincoln to William S. Rosecrans, 21 May 1863 in Roy E. Basler, et al. eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N. J., 1953–55), 6:225. James F. Jaquess to Abraham Lincoln, May 23, 1863; James R. Gilmore to Abraham Lincoln, 27 May 1863; Abraham Lincoln to William S. Rosecrans, 28 May 1863; James F. Jaquess to General Rosecrans, 4 June 1863, in Jaquess' Military Record, National Archives and Records Administration.
7 Robert C. Schenck to Abraham Lincoln, 13 July 1863; James F. Jaquess to Abraham Lincoln, 22 July 1863. J. F. Jaquess to J. R. Gilmore Esq., 4 November 1863, Archives of the Lincoln Library and Museum, Harrogate, TN. Reproduced in Lester L. Swift, "Col. Jaquess' First Peace Mission," The Filson Club Quarterly 41 (January 1967): 32–3. Address to the 73rd Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, by Colonel James F. Jaquess, at a reunion held in Springfield, Illinois, October 8th-10th, 1890. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 12. Lester L. Swift, "The Preacher Regiment at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge," Lincoln Herald, 72(2) (Summer 1970): 51.
8 John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York: Century, Co., 1890), 9:204. John C. Waugh, Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1997), 255. Knott, 47. Report of the Committee on Military Affairs, Ordered to be printed 14 June 1870, The Library of Congress, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U. S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875. http://memory.loc.gov.
9 "Our Visit to Richmond," The Atlantic Monthly (September 1864), 372–83; "Our Last Day in Dixie," The Atlantic Monthly (December 3 1864), 715–26; "A Suppressed Chapter of History," The Atlantic Monthly (April 1887), 435–48 all available at http://cdl.library.cor-nell.edu. Down in Tennessee. (New York: Carleton, 1864); Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. (Boston: L. C. Page and Co., 1898). James R. Gilmore to Major General George H. Thomas, 24 May 1864, Illinois Archives, contains a copy of Lincoln's note authorizing this leave of absence dated 18 May 1864. James F. Jaquess to James R. Gilmore, 10 June 1864, Gilmore Papers Ms. 37, Johns Hopkins University; James R. Gilmore to Abraham Lincoln,11 June 1864; James R. Gilmore to Abraham Lincoln, 15 June 1864; James F. Jaquess to Brigadier General Whipple, 18 June 1864, Illinois Archives; James F. Jaquess to James R. Gilmore, telegram 30 June 1864, Gilmore Papers Ms 37. Ro. Ould to Officer commanding the U. S. forces at Deep Bottom VA, 12 July 1864, Gilmore Papers Ms. 37. General U. S. Grant to General Robert E. Lee, 8 July 1864, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1984), 11:190.
10 Abraham Lincoln to William S. Rosecrans, 28 May 1863 and Robert Schenck to Abraham Lincoln, 13 July 1863. Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862; Horace Greeley to Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1864.
11 Edmund Kirke [James R. Gilmore], "Our Visit to Richmond," The Atlantic Monthly (September 1864), 379. New York Times as quoted in James M. McPherson, "Presidential Address: No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865," The American Historical Review, 109 (1) February 2004): 10.
12 Jaquess to Gilmore, 21 July 1864, Gilmore Papers, Ms. 37; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham; Lincoln Union Congressional Committee (1 Broadside) and Rebel Terms of Peace (6 pp.), Washington: L. Towers, 1864. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. W. H. Newlin, D. F. Lawler, and J. W. Sherrick, A History of the Seventy-third Regiment of Illinois Infantry Volunteers: Its Services and Experiences in Camp, on the March, on the Picket and Skirmish Lines and in the Many Battles of the War, 1861–65. [Illinois]: published by Authority of the Regimental Reunion Association of Survivors of the 73d Illinois Infantry Volunteers, 1890, 555.
13 Report of the Committee on Military Affairs. All statements credited to Colonel Jaquess come from this Report. The Colonel's testimony before the Committee received newspaper coverage. There were lengthy articles in the New York Herald, a Republican paper, on 21, 22 June 1870 and a long article in his hometown paper, The Quincy Daily Whig, on 27 June 1870. National Archives and Records Administration. Jaquess shows the Military Affairs Committee a note from Lincoln dated 18 May 1864 stating "Colonel James F. Jaquess, of the Seventy-third Illinois volunteers, is hereby given leave of absence until further notice." This is the same note quoted by Gilmore in his letter to General Thomas on 24 May 1864. History of the Seventy-third, 518. The Muster Roll from April-May 1864 shows Jaquess as "Absent with Leave SFO No. 161 HdQrs. D.C.," 3 June 1864. On 28 June 1864, Jaquess writes Brigadier General Whipple for an extension of the "Thirty (30), days leave of absence" provided under SFO No. 150 "to perform a Special Service." General Thomas orders that the Colonel's leave "be extended indefinitely." This letter is in the Illinois Archives. I can find no mention of SFO No. 150 in the Muster Roll. However, I assume that "SO No. 248 War Department" is the indefinite extension of Jaquess' leave granted by Thomas. Jaquess to Campbell, 8 April 1864, Military Record.
14 Abraham Lincoln to Abram Wakeman, 25 July 1864; Frank H. Severance, "The Peace Conference at Niagara Falls in 1864: An Episode of the Civil War," The Cornell Library New York Historical Literature. http://historicallibrary.cornell.edu. In answer to a question from Senator Howell about his trips to Niagara, Jaquess provides the only exact date in the printed report of the hearing: "I made my report to him [Lincoln] in reference to my first visit to Niagara Falls, I think, on the morning of the 18th July, 1864." The date is, of course, incorrect since Jaquess and Gilmore returned from their interview with Jefferson Davis on the evening of July 18.
15 Lincoln to Abram Wakeman, 28 July 1864: Abraham Lincoln, Memorandum, 23 August 1864.
16 Lincoln's Proclamation on 20 October 1864, established the day for Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of November. John W. Headley, Confederate Operations in Canada and New York (New York and Washington: Neale Publishing Company, 1906; Reprinted by Time-Life Inc., 1981), 277. It was nicknamed Greek Fire, a liquid fire that could not be put out by water that was used by the Byzantine Empire.
17 As noted above, all quotations from Jaquess and summaries of his statements come from Report of the Committee on Military Affairs, Ordered to be printed June 14, 1870.
18 The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln. Drew W. Castle, Castle-Jaquess Families.
19 A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U. S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875.
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