Abraham Lincoln to Elias Kent Kane and Others, [1835]1
Gentlemen,We take pleasure in recommending General Wm. Lee D. Ewing as Secretary for the proposed Territory of Wisconsin and request you to urge the President to appoint him when the Territory shall be established.2
1In 1974, the original of this document was apparently located in RG 59, Records of
the Department of State at the National Archives in College Park, MD, but it was not
discovered during a thorough search of RG 59 by the staff of The Papers of Abraham
Lincoln. This transcription is taken from that given in Basler’s Collected Works.
Roy P. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974), 10:2.
2Abraham Lincoln was one of 102 Illinois state legislators and officials who signed this recommendation,
addressed to the Illinois’ Congressional Delegation. Other addressees were John M. Robinson, John Reynolds, William L. May, and Zadok Casey. Basler claims that Robinson, Kane, Casey, and Reynolds concurred with this recommendation
on January 31, 1835, but without the original it is impossible to verify their endorsements.
President Andrew Jackson appointed John S. Horner as Secretary of Wisconsin Territory in June 1836.
Wisconsin Biographical Disctionary (Hamburg, MI: State History Publications, 2008), 188.
Printed Transcription, 1 page(s), Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1974), 10:2.