‘My dear Little Miss,’
It was the sixth day of Abraham Lincoln’s nineteen-hundred-mile train ride through the northern states which had elected him the new president three months before.
He had departed Springfield the previous Monday morning, with a sad goodbye to a thousand friends and neighbors who had gathered at the train station in a cold rain to see him off.
The thirteen-day journey would culminate in Washington, D.C., where he would take the oath of office and appeal to the people’s ‘better angels’ to hold the nation together.
It was a dark time.
Seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union and more would soon follow.
Jefferson Davis would be sworn in as president of the Confederacy in two days.
But, for the new president, the trip was uplifting.
In towns big and small, huge throngs of people turned out to see Lincoln and hear him speak, with some crowds believed to have numbered more than 250,000.
Among the many stops on the journey was a brief one at Westfield, New York, a town of 3,600 people on Lake Erie, about halfway between Cleveland and Buffalo.
And as Lincoln’s train pulled into the small Westfield train station, thousands of people were waiting there to see him.
He came out onto the rear platform and addressed the crowd:
“Some three months ago, I received a letter from a young lady here;
“it was a very pretty letter, and she advised me to let my whiskers grow, as it would improve my personal appearance;
“acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so;
“and now, if she is here, I would like to see her.”
From a reporter traveling with the president-elect:
“A small boy, mounted on a post, with his mouth and eyes both wide open, cried out, ‘there she is, Mr. Lincoln,’ pointing to a beautiful girl, with black eyes, who was blushing all over her fair face.
“The President left the [train] car, and the crowd making way for him, he reached her, and gave her several hearty kisses,
“and amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd, he bade her good-bye, and on we rushed [in the train].”
The girl was eleven-year-old Grace Bedell, whose charming letter, written three weeks before the recent election, was full of good advice.
“[I]f you will let your whiskers grow… you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.
“All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.
“[I]f I was a man I would vote for you to [sic], but I will try and get every one to vote for you that I can.
“[A]nswer this letter right off.
“Good bye.”
And Lincoln did as he was asked, replying to Grace’s letter a few days later.
Addressing her as “My Dear Little Miss,” he answered her question by expressing his “regret” that “he had no daughters.”
Lincoln then asked whether wearing whiskers, which he had never done, could be considered “a piece of silly affection.”
In 1500 days, the funeral train returning Lincoln’s body to Springfield would return to Westfield at 1: 00 in the morning.
The crowds were there, once again, to see him, including five young women who brought him a cross of flowers.
They remembered.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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