On the scheduled day in March, Abraham Lincoln, Kate Warren, Alan Pinkerton and the entire Lincoln entourage arrived via Baltimore (the elected president poorly disguised, but safe) in plenty of time for a White House tour (it was called the Executive Mansion in those days) before the scheduled ceremony in front of the unfinished Capitol of the United States, in the open, with a crowd of 7,450 citizens (and others) attending.

I hope, said Mary Todd Lincoln, as night fell and they made ready for bed, you and Miss Warren had a marvelous time pretending to be you and me —

Mother — Lincoln began.

Do not mother me! Mary Todd interrupted, harshly, as was normal.

Pinkerton arranged, the president said, being Honest Abe,
separate sleeping cars for us.

For whom, the new brand new first lady demanded, again was as normal — you and Alan?

The next day Lincoln began his first term as president with the establishment of his first series of meetings in his second floor office, (he called it the Presidential Sancto-Sanctorium from 1 PM until 3, a meeting his son Tad, who had an inheirant speech dffect from Lincoln,s maternal grandfather.

oversaw at eleven years of age, according to the Lincoln diary, in which the president wrote, as follows:

Tad was an entrepreneur, perhaps the only one in the family who ever was or would ever be, Robert notwithstanding. He saw many opportunities, even at his tender age, to capitalize on being the youngest living son of a seated U.S. President; and when the one o’clock to three pm practice of admitting anyone wishing an audience with myself was instituted — Tad immediately had visions of substantial sums he might, under the guise of charitable fund-raising, augment his meager allowance of ten cents a week.

He told his best friend, Alvinas Turner, the old free-man retainer who worked as a butler in the Visitors Salon, of his recently discovered adventure in high finance.

"Yew inner ooor ooout?" Tad asked through his incurable cleft pallet.

"Wass in hit fer me?"

Turner was nearly seventy, the top of his huge black head an unbrushed ball of trampled cotton. He was a former slave, now a free-man, his freedom bought and paid for by me. Turner was released by the demarche of my controversial regard for Negro servitude, and he had attached himself to my family in many capacities over the last thirteen years. 

When Tad was born, Turner was there, assisting Mother as best he could. He was a sometime butler, sometime housekeeper, sometime buggy driver, and fulltime bodyguard for young Tad. They were rarely far from each other.

"When this awwwful war is ooover," Tad said, "I will tell my daddy yooou give Free Papers".

Alvinas laughed at that. He was a big man, actually taller than me. He said, "Why doan you offer me sumpin Ah already aint got?"

"Well, then — I will give yooou money."

The black man clapped his hands and did a two-"step gander. "Ha! Ha! Yeah, boy, thass da ticket! Shoot, Ah got more money in my pockets than you ever seen n no place to spend it on, anyway! Wha you gonna gimme Ah can use?"

Tad sat down on the bottom step of the angled staircase that led from the Visitors’ Salon up to my Sancto-Sanctorium (as I called my office). "I aint got nuuuuthin I can give nobody . . . wait a minute! How bout I give yooou all a ride on my pony?" (The President did little to write out Tad's stuttering.)

Turned started to laugh, but he held it back. "You want me to ride on at ol nag pony o yourn? Wha you want; you wanna kill me?"

Tad saw no humor in that.

"No, he said. I do not want yooou killed. I want you to help meee."

"Help me how?"

Turner noticed that glint in Tad’s eye that usually preceded an exercise in schadenfreude that would give the youngster tremors of glee at someone else’s expense.

Conspiratorially, Tad lowered his voice and beckoned the old Negro bend down closer. "I got meee a idee how to raise money for . . . for . . . for Warrr Rrrelief."

"Whass War Relief?"

"A charrrty. A real gooood charity," Tad said. "We can raise money to buy fooood and clothes fah families a men gooone and killed inna warrr. We ken sit up a kitchen right out onna da street in frooont o dis here ol Xecative Manshun n feed huuundreds of them peoples that aint got nuuuuthin. We ken beee rrremembered as kin o da presssdent that saved peoples from starvin n freezin ta death. But you gotta help meee!

 

His impassioned plea somehow touched the old man. Yass sir, Turner said, Ah can do dat!

My son outlined his plan in simplest terms: When someone cooomes into heah, that is gooood! Tad jumped up and grabbed the arm of his friend.

Here is what we gonna do . . . everyyy tyyyime somebody cooomes n sez he wants to have a meetin with mah daddy, that person would give us his bizness card, n we would place that card under a stack a others on da table next to da ol staircase.

The stack is held in place by a glass ornament of Old Ironsides, and everybody who wants to see me would be given fifteen minutes to say what had brought him to Executive Mansion in the first place; and when he goes up to see me, Tad or Alvinas takes the next card on top and announces the next visitor should come forth, climb the stairs, and be admitted to the Sancto-Sanctorium!

For a small fee they will hurry things up to get the poor fellow in faster.

A strange look came across Turner’s crinkled face. How we do dat?

Fah 25˘ we slip his card right in da middle o da pile. Fah 50˘, we stick it bout three-quarters da way up. En fah a dooollah, we lay it right smack-dab onna da top!

Turner sucked in his breath. Oh, my! Oh, oh, oh, my! We gonna hang inna mornin foh sure!

Tad laughed. No, we aint. We gonna raise lotsa moooney fo poooor fooolks! And to himself he thought, specially me!

It was an Aesopianlan plan, and it worked for several weeks, as though concocted through sapient engineering, successful for young Tad, until he had collected more than, say, thirty-five dollars — none of which, of course, ever made its way into the coffers of anything resembling War Relief!

No, my son, Tad, had other plans, despite his speech impediment, which caused him to take longer to say it than I took to write it out; no, his plan was to squirrel the money away in a huge flour can under his bed, a goal of one hundred dollars already set with which to buy another pony and a dual-harnessed carriage to be pulled by his birthday gift and its as yet unnamed stable mate.

And, of course, the constant stream of paying customers were delighted to pay to shorten their wait, and were committed to silence, for to reveal the ploy to others would bring it crashing down. Unfortunately, however, nothing good lasts forever.

The diary entry ends there …

The man sitting on the hard chair looked vaguely familiar, but Tad could not place him. The man smiled at the boy and reached up, tousling unruly curls the youngster had atop his head.

Tad stared at the man’s teeth; he had never seen teeth so even and straight and brilliantly white. The man handed him his calling card and said, Here you go, son. Make sure I am delayed not one extra second longer.

Folded under the card was a crisp five-dollar bill.

Tad stepped back, speechless for once. He regarded first the man, and then the money. Five dollars! No one had ever given him so princely a sum!

Yes, sir! he exclaimed through his harelip. Yeh-thur!

Tad ran across the room and looked at the pile of cards on the demilune; the pile was over two inches high and Old Ironsides seemed to rock precariously on top. He glanced over his shoulder to see if any of the throng was paying any attention; he gingerly pretended to slip the card beneath the pile as he casually switched hands and placed it squarely on top, appearing to slide it deftly beneath the tchotchke.

For the first time, he looked through the glass trinket at the name engraved in a raised and elegant scroll:

John Wilkes Booth






Robert A. Mills
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