LINCOLN, Abraham (1809-1865). Autograph letter signed ("A. Lincoln") as President, to Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, "Executive Mansion," 15 July 1861.

One page, bifolium, 180 x 116mm (light toning and vertical crease). Endorsed on the docket by Salmon P. CHASE (1808-1873).

Lincoln inquires on the status of the nomination "for Rufus F. Andrews, as Surveyor of the Port of New York — Thinking the note has been missent, or mislaid, I now send this asking that the nomination may be sent me." It appears that Chase complied immediately, as Andrews arrived in New York several days later to assume his post, an appointment that was lauded in the New York press at the time. Andrews would later run afoul of the powerful Republican boss, Thurlow Weed, who engineered his removal from the post in 1864—part of a larger purge in the New York customs house sanctioned by Lincoln in order to gain his support in the upcoming presidential election. (Weed had been a prominent critic of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Radical Republicans in general.) Salmon Chase would resign his post over the matter. (See New York Daily Tribune, 16 July 1861, p. 4; Commercial Advertiser, New York, 2 Aug. 1861, p. 2; "Rufus F. Andrew on Thurlow Weed," New York Herald, 12 Dec. 1864, p. 4) Not published in Basler.