Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Daniel S. Dickinson to Abraham Lincoln, 9 August 18581
Binghamton
Aug. 9. 1858Dear sir
Your favor of the 3^d with enclosure of Mr Alfred Hyde to you, has just been recd[received].2 Hyde was here and in business, a few years,

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and I knew him, not intimately, but as I know men of that class who are here for two or three years. He consulted me as counsel, on one or two occasions, & I conducted some business suits against him. He came here from Boston as I understood,

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where it is said he was well brought up & respectably allied in domestic & business relations. His intercourse with me was always frank & honorable. He was connected here in a mercantile establishment, and was one of a good many free trade speculators, and as it was speculating

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times their dealings were pretty miscellaneous, but I saw nothing in Hydes course but that he was as good as the average. His establishment here failed badly, as it was natural it should, and he was a good deal censured in connection with it, but I do not know that

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he was more censured that reckless, careless dealers generally are.

This is all I know of him personally: — he went west and the stories circulated concerning him there, and among them his banking &c.[etc.] were not creditable, but I know nothing of their truth

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He is said to have married respectably in Cleveland 3
sincerely YoursD. S. DickinsonHon A. Lincoln

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[Envelope]

BINGHAMTON N.Y.[NEW YORK]
AUG[AUGUST] [?]Hon A. LincolnSpringfieldIll.

[ docketing ]
Lincoln, Abraham (President)

Hyde.4

1Daniel S. Dickinson wrote and signed this letter, including the address on the envelope.

2Alfred Hyde, who was at this time incarcerated in the Illinois State Penitentiary at Alton, had written Abraham Lincoln a on March 25, 1858, requesting his assistance seeking a pardon, and listing Dickinson as a reference. Lincoln had enclosed Hyde’s letter in a letter of his own to Dickinson on August 3, in which he inquired as to Dickinson’s knowledge of Hyde.
Hyde and his associate, Charles Maitland James, had been arrested in Chicago in August 1856 for possessing and circulating bills of the American Exchange Bank, Georgetown, an institution which allegedly existed in name only. Hyde was found guilty in the Chicago Recorder’s Court on February 27, 1857, and was sentenced to four years in the Illinois State Penitentiary. Acquaintances of Hyde in Massachusetts and in Chicago signed petitions addressed to Illinois Governor William H. Bissell urging that Hyde be pardoned and also met with the governor, but beyond Lincoln’s correspondence with Dickinson on the subject, there is no evidence that Lincoln involved himself in Hyde’s case. Bissell pardoned Hyde in October 1858 on the condition that he leave Illinois and never return.
Evening Star (Washington, DC), 9 August 1856, 3:1; The Daily Democratic Press (Chicago, IL), 28 February 1857, 3:1; Hyde requested Lincoln’s assistance in obtaining pardon, 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=141553; Illinois Department of Corrections & Predecessor Agencies, Register of Illinois Prison Records, Illinois State Prison (Alton), 4:330, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Secretary of State: Executive Section, Executive Clemency Files, 1835-1973, RG 103/096, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Secretary of State: Executive Section, Executive Register, October 6, 1818-December 30, 2004, RG 103/063, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL.

3Hyde married Martha Jane Hurlburt (Hurlbut) in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in February 1856. She was described as the “daughter of an influential Cleveland family” in a newspaper article about the couple. The marriage soured within a few months, and by July of that year Martha had apparently left Hyde, who applied for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that her father was detaining her. Shortly thereafter, Martha filed for divorce, and the divorce was reportedly pending in the courts as late as January 1857. When he entered the Illinois State Penitentiary in March 1857, Hyde reported that he had a wife in Ohio.
Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 12 February 1856, Cuyahoga County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); Cleveland Plain Dealer (OH), 3 July 1856, 3:3; Virginia Massey, ed., Annals of Cleveland 1818-1935 (Cleveland, OH: n.p., n.d.), 40:1:86; Illinois Department of Corrections & Predecessor Agencies, Register of Illinois Prison Records, Illinois State Prison (Alton), 4:330, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL.

4Lincoln wrote this docketing.