Ebenezer Peck to Abraham Lincoln, 18 August 18581
Chicago 18th Augst 1858Dear Lincoln
Mr Dewey is the correspondant of the New York Evening Post; is a "gentleman & scholar" and entitled to all proper respect and confidence.3 Any thing you may see proper to communicate, will be in safe hands
YoursE Peck<Page 2>
[Envelope]
A Lincoln Esqr[Esquire]Present
Chester Dewey
2Edward Wright, a cousin of Chester P. Dewey, married Sarah Louisa Peck, daughter
of Ebenezer Peck, in 1851.
The United States Army and Navy Journal, and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer
Forces (New York: Army and Navy Journal, 1874), 11: 329; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Cook County, 28 August 1851, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; The Daily Standard (St. Catharines, ON), 23 April 1900, 1:4.
3Dewey covered the Lincoln-Douglas Debates for the New York Evening Post. In his initial reaction to Lincoln, he wrote, “A native of Kentucky, where he belonged to the class of ‘poor whites,’ he came early to Illinois. Poor, unfriended, uneducated, a day-laborer, he has distanced all these disadvantages,
and in the profession of the law has risen steadily to a competence and the position
of an intelligent, shrewd, and well-balanced man.”
Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. He ran against, and lost to, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
Gilbert H. Muller, Abraham Lincoln and William Cullen Bryant: Their Civil War (Switzerland: Springer International, 2017), 3; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-85, 547, 557; Allen
C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,”
The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392.
Autograph Letter Signed, 2 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).