February 27, ’65
Hill tells me we have imprisoned a Confederate citizen who was delivering a £40,000 draft to the Southern forces. He also jailed a M. Louis de Bedian, who had letters of credit ($39,000), for the Confederate army. He has apprehended Charles Kopperl, Washington resident, who boasts that he killed Union soldiers. Obviously, Washington has strange, determined men.
Some countrymen objected to Hill’s political imprisonments, and I am criticized, in turn. Again nepotism ghosts.
Billy Herndon has walked into my office. Our get-together seemed as though we were in Springfield, in the old office. I threw out questions about friends; he had the answers. The weather favored us as we rambled around Washington, in the presidential coach. Together we explored the White House—Billy’s highpoint. We had dinner, with Tad at our table.
Billy gave Tad a hand-carved pony express rider, in walnut. My books interested Billy. He thought my walnut bed a world’s wonder. “Is it really nine feet long!” The carvings on the headboard amused him, and the wooden nest with its walnut eggs, under my side table. We parted reluctantly.
I wish I had ten men of his caliber to work with here. He went away quite shaken by the cost of the war. “How could it be...$2,000,000 every single day... Can our country recover such an outlay?”
March 9th
The Library
We can not escape history. We, of this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation.