President Abraham Lincoln Promotes Fairness For Those Serving the Union Troops in the South

Richard P. L. Baber of Columbus, Ohio helped organize the Republican party in that state. He recognized that Lincoln’s performance during his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in nearby Illinois was laden with national significance, and being a printer, decided to publish Lincoln’s speeches. This was done in early 1860, just on time to kick off Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency. Baber quickly sent Lincoln by express twenty copies of the Ohio State Journal in which the publication announcement appeared, for distribution “amongst the Illinois press.” In May 1860, Baber was instrumental in turning the vote of the Ohio delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago to Lincoln.

Once Lincoln was inaugurated, he offered Baber the consulate at Matanzas, Cuba, but Baber declined the post. Instead, in the fall of 1861, he accepted a place as paymaster in the Army. He was sent South and by early 1864 was stationed in New Orleans. The summer heat down South was oppressive to him, and in April 1864 he wrote to President Lincoln seeking his intervention in obtaining a transfer North for that season. He cited many reasons and made it clear that his position was no sinecure, mentioning his extensive and arduous travel to outlying units to perform his tasks (twice going as far as Texas), his poor health, and his beliefs that he was sent South rather than kept in Ohio for political reasons and that the Paymaster General, Timothy P. Andrews, was prejudiced against him.

Lincoln took an interest in Baber’s case. Autograph Letter Signed as President, on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, April 30, 1864, to Paymaster General Andrews, asking him for a personal favor on Baber’s behalf. “I shall be personally obliged if you can, without detriment to the service, or inconvenience to yourself, allow Additional Paymaster Richard P.L. Baber, now and for long time in the far South, to serve somewhere Northward in his own state of Ohio if possible, through the approaching warm season.” This letter is not in Basler’s “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” and appears to be unpublished.

Lincoln was always concerned to promote justice and fairness, and it turned out that he was not merely interested in Baber, but in the broader concept of rotation of paymasters serving in the South. On June 25, Lincoln again wrote Andrews, this time about the issue rather than the man. “I am so frequently called on by persons in behalf of Paymasters, who have already served a long time in the South, for leave to come North, as to induce me to inquire whether there might not, without much inconvenience be a rule of exchanges which would be fair to all, and keep none so long in an uncongenial climate as to much endanger health.”?As for Baber, after the war, President Andrew Johnson named him a Brevet Lt. Colonel for his services.