[nolu chan]

[o-s] So, what's your point? That one of Abe's kids wanted to serve in the military? So what? One can always find an exception to a rule.

[nc] On January 19, 1865, President Lincoln wrote to Grant, asking him to find a safe staff appointment for Robert: "My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends.

[nc] Captain Lincoln's main duty as an army officer was that of escorting visitors to various locations. Additionally, he was present at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant.

Gee, I guess I should have added the flag.

If little Lincoln had wanted to get into the war, he could have. Robert entered the service during the last gasp of the war, with a letter from Daddy securing him a safe position on the staff of Gen. Grant. There were another 620,000 who were not so fortunate.

This was in the context of Lincoln having a substitute join in his own place. While he conscripted the kids of others, he stashed his own kid in Massachusetts and had his ticket punched at the end of the war. Even then, it was with instructions to Gen. Grant to keep sonny safe.

[Grand Old Partisan]

For several years prior to his enlistment, Robert Lincoln had been begging his father to let him enlist, but President Lincoln would not allow it, for fear that his wife Mary would go over the edge. Robert Lincoln's patriotism and personal courage was never in doubt, and his service in the U.S. Army only at the end of the war was not an obstacle at all to his being named Secretary of War under Presidents Garfield and Arthur.