Boldly penned Civil War-dated ANS as president, signed “A. Lincoln,” written neatly on the reverse of an ALS from Major General John M. Schofield, two pages, 4.5 x 6.75, December 23, 1863. Schofield’s letter reads: “I desire simply to ask you if I may be absent from Washington a few days pending the settlement of my affairs. I wish to spend Christmas day with my relatives at West Point. If there is any reason for my remaining here of course I do not wish to go.” Lincoln’s handwritten note, in full: “Not the slightest objection to Gen. Schofield’s visiting West Point, so that he be in call by Telegraph.” In fine condition. Accompanied by an engraved portrait of Lincoln bearing a facsimile autograph.
Two days before writing this letter, President Lincoln wrote to the Craig family, cousins to Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd, who were a slave-holding family in Arkansas. When Union forces took over much of the state, the Craigs fled and sent word to Mary Todd that they wished to return to their home for Christmas. Lincoln agreed and, after meeting with the family, he wrote and signed a letter that they could use to safely move past Union forces and reoccupy their Arkansas plantation, stipulating that once they were home, they were to free their slaves. This letter to Schofield likewise exemplifies a certain ‘Christmas spirit’ shown by Lincoln, albeit one not so familiar.
This particular kindness from Lincoln to Schofield pales in contrast to the pickle the latter found himself following the Lawrence Massacre just four months prior. After the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, was attacked by Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate guerrilla group led by William Quantrill, leaving 150 unarmed men and boys dead, Schofield, then-commander of the Department of Missouri, refused to allow a posse to pursue the combatants into his state. That October, Pro-Union Missourians sent a delegation to Washington D.C. to plead with Lincoln to dismiss Schofield for sympathizing with these pro-Confederate bushwhackers. Lincoln, in turn, backed Schofield's position by attributing the carnage to wartime conditions rather than the commander's inadequacy.
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