21 Autograph Letters Signed while an official the US Treasury Department Office of Internal Revenue. 55 pp. in total.
All to his wife in Rockford, Illinois. This group of letters, written over a year after Lincoln’s death, find Talcott back in Washington nearly ten years after he had fled from this city of un-Chrisitian “temptations”. In the interim, President Lincoln, having magnanimously appointed Edwin Stanton as his Secretary of War - with Peter Watson, the other insulting lawyer of the Talcott case, as Stanton’s deputy and alter ego – unexpectedly wrote Talcott that he was “determined” to appoint him Illinois executive of the Treasury Department’s new Office of Internal Revenue. Accepting reluctantly, Talcott again travelled to Washington, where Lincoln handed him a cryptic note to the Secretary of the Treasury which read, “Please see Mr. Talcott, one of the best men there is, and if any difference, one they would like better than they do me.” Talcott held his federal appointment throughout the War, mournfully attended Lincoln’s funeral in 1865, then was forced to return to the unpleasant “bustle and commotion” Washington on official business. These homesick love letters, written to his wife on those trips, show him admiring the capital’s “wonders” of art, science and architecture, but nevertheless appalled by the “forgetfulness of God in the surging Masses of this City. They have many churches here, but the great Mass are not God fearing people. Congress seems to be moving some in the direction of protecting the loyal men South, but there is a grievous cry coming up from that sin cursed country…Surrounded by the seething crowd, met every where by the pressure of a multitude, I am still alone. I have many acquaintances, yet friends, few…” Dismayed by the deep divisions in Congress over Reconstruction policy – and by signs of official racism – Talcott read the Bible daily, attended Church regularly – even visiting a Negro Sunday School – and was most moved, through all the political hubbub, by a Congressman’s funeral in the Capitol, with President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward and a hundred other high officials in attendance, “an impressive scene to look upon”, but only because death pointed up “how empty look all the vanities of earth”. Finally removed from office by Andrew Johnson, Talcott happily returned to his happy Rockford home and never again held public office.