Charles H. Ray to Abraham Lincoln, 10 May [1858]1
Chicago, May 10th.My Dear Sir,I hope that you have not forgotten that opinion about which I have written you before.2 The time is at hand in which it must be used if ever. Permit me to give you a nudge.
The question is— “Would a claim of Mr. Leavitts for commissions come within the meaning of the act of ’45[1845] as preliminary expenses?”3
Yours Very TrulyC. H. Ray4A Lincoln Esq[Esquire]over
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I have run down that story about Washburne, and you see, from a letter which he says he has written to you, how much truth there
was in the story ^tale^ that Baker and Brown told. I am not disposed to make a fuss; but this attempt to malign him is too bad.5
C. H. R.1Charles H. Ray wrote and signed this letter. The year of composition, which was omitted
by Ray in the dateline, is conjectured from other letters from Ray to Lincoln around
the same time regarding legal proceedings commenced in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the March, 1858 term.
Charles H. Ray to Abraham Lincoln; Charles H. Ray to Abraham Lincoln; Illinois House Journal. 1863. 23rd G. A., 657.
2Ray had written to Abraham Lincoln regarding his legal opinion in March and April of 1858. No response from Lincoln to those letters has been located.
Ray asked Lincoln for legal advice, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), https://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=141837.
3Ray is referencing an 1845 act of the Illinois General Assembly related to the funding and completion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Section five of the act stipulates that “The preliminary expenses of the negotiation
of said contract with the expenses of the examinations of the canal property by the
agents appointed by the authority of the bond-holders shall be first paid by the said
trustees unless some other provision for their payment be made by the General Assembly.”
New York banker David Leavitt maintained that he was owed a commission of $40,000 for work
he claimed to have done to help secure a loan of $1,600,000 for the canal. In his
capacity as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, Ray had introduced a resolution in October of 1857 authorizing payment of this sum,
which Leavitt, also a trustee, had signed. Leavitt and Ray argued that their signatures
on the resolution constituted the approval of a majority of the three-person Board
of Trustees, and Leavitt, the board treasurer, charged the $40,000 to his treasurer’s
report for 1857. The remaining member of the Board of Trustees, William H. Swift, protested, and the canal’s bondholders in England, directed their agent in the United States to file suit in the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court to recover the money from Leavitt. Leavitt was ultimately allowed $10,000
of the sum he had claimed, and was ordered in 1863 to repay $32,063.90 plus court
costs.
“An Act Supplemental to ‘An Act to Provide for the Completion of the Illinois and
Michigan Canal, and for the Payment of the Canal Debt,’ Approved, February 21st, One
Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-Three,” 1 March 1845, Laws of Illinois (1845), 31-32; The New-York Times
(New York), 31 December 1879, 5:6; Illinois House Journal. 1863. 23rd G. A., 655-58.
4No response to this letter has been located, nor any opinion by Lincoln on this legal
question. The next extant letter between Lincoln and Ray is a June 6, 1858 letter from Lincoln on an unrelated topic.
5In a letter to Lincoln dated April 19, 1858, John Wentworth had conveyed a report that one of the Republican members of the U.S. Congress from Illinois had written a letter encouraging Illinois Republicans to support Stephen A. Douglas’ bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1858. This rumor circulated among Illinois Republicans, including at a meeting of party
leaders in Springfield on April 21, 1858 at which both Lincoln and Ray were present, and Elihu B. Washburne
was alleged to be the author of the controversial letter.
Lincoln wrote Washburne regarding the rumor on April 26, assuring Washburne that although suspicion
centered on him, Lincoln was confident the matter was a misunderstanding. The letter
in question had been written by Washburne to Charles L. Wilson on April 12, 1858. In it, Washburne wrote that in light of Douglas’ differences with
the Democratic Party over his criticism of the Lecompton Constitution, Washburne would consider welcoming Douglas as an ally to the Republican Party, but
that Lincoln must be the Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois
in the election of 1858. Washburne responded to Lincoln on May 2, denying the rumor, then wrote again on May 6, enclosing the letter in controversy for Lincoln to peruse himself.
Ray implicated Samuel L. Baker in the controversy in a letter he wrote Washburne
in which he alleged that Wilson had shown Washburnes’s April 12 letter to Baker, who
had promptly told Wentworth about it. Another correspondent informed Washburne that
Ray and George T. Brown of the Alton Courier were among those who had been agitated over the rumor.
Russell K. Nelson, “The Early Life and Congressional Career of Elihu B. Washburne”
(PhD dissertation, University of North Dakota, August 1953), 158-62; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 21 April 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-04-21; Charles H. Ray to Elihu B. Washburne, 2 May [1858], E. B. Washburne Papers: Bound Volumes, Letters Received; 1861; Mar. 21-May 31, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss44651.017/?sp=227&st=image, accessed 1 March 2024; William Cary to Elihu B. Washburne, 24 April 1858, E. B. Washburne Papers: Bound Volumes, Letters Received; 1857, Aug. 10-1858, Aug.
8, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss44651.003/?sp=181&st=image, accessed 1 March 2024.
Autograph Letter Signed, 3 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).