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Abraham Lincoln to Jean B. Beaubien, 29 December 18471
Washington, Decr 29– 1847Mr J. B. Beaubien:Dear Sir:
Your letter of the 16th was received–2 I went at once to see judge Breese in relation to your business, he being on the Committee on Public Lands– He says Mr Webster did not introduce the matter last session; and so the papers are still in his hands– He, Mr Webster is now very much engaged in the Supreme court; but Judge Breese & I have agreed that when he gets a little leisure, we will stir him up, and make him present the papers– Judge Breese says he knows your claim is just–3 He told to say to you that he received your letter–
Yours trulyA. Lincoln
1Abraham Lincoln wrote and signed the letter.
2Jean B. Beaubien’s December 16, 1847 letter to Lincoln has not been located.
3Beaubien claimed a pre-emption right on a fractional quarter-section of land along the Chicago lakefront. In 1835, he purchased the nearly seventy acres from the government, but later that year Ethan A. Brown, commissioner of the General Land Office, cancelled the conveyance on the grounds that the land was not subject to sale as other federal lands, due to the fact that it was a military reservation. Beaubien disputed the claim, but in 1840, the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Illinois voided the certificate of sale to Beaubien on the grounds that the land in question was indeed a military reservation.
A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1886), 3:190.

Autograph Letter Signed, 1 page(s), Webster Papers, Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH).