In 1886, Alexander Williamson was interviewed by a newspaper reporter. He’d been quietly working in the treasury department, at a job given to him by Abraham Lincoln and secured by Mary Lincoln after her husband’s death. But now, things were different. The article reported that “he is turned out to shift for himself in his old age.” The reason? “The wish of the great and good Lincoln had been sacredly regarded by all previous administrations, until the present one came into power and began to abolish war memories by ostracizing loyal men and filling their places with ex-confederate soldiers.”
Williamson had a long relationship with Mary Lincoln, spanning much of her White House life and beyond. Williamson, who was born and educated in Scotland, was already a well-regarded teacher in Washington: gentlemanly, scholarly, tactful, amiable, kind-hearted, and wonderfully patient, he was a hit with the entire Lincoln family from the start. He described their first meeting in 1861: “I received a note from Mrs. Lincoln requesting me to call at the executive mansion. On my arrival there I was was escorted to the library, where Mrs. Lincoln soon joined me. She stated that she wished her boys to have a teacher and that from many recommendations she had received regarding me she had concluded that I was the person for the position.”
Soon after, Williamson met the President himself:
He sent a verbal request that he wished to see me. I called the following day, sent in my card, and was at once ushered into his office, where I found him alone wading through a sea of papers, from the billet doux looking envelope to the mysterious and red tape State Department packet. He rose, shook hands, and requested me to take a seat near him. He opened the conversation by saying: “I have had a letter from Mrs. Lincoln (she was then at Long Branch) notifying me of your engagement as teacher to Willie and Tad. I am very glad of it, and whatever arrangements she may make with you regarding them I’ll willingly agree to. Are you satisfied.” I answered “Yes perfectly.” “Well,” said he, “I like this way of doing business; quick, to the point, and perfectly satisfactory to both parties.”
In a later interview, he gave more details about “this way of doing business.” A government official had recommended him to Mary Lincoln, which surprised Williamson, who was then teaching school. He reported to the White House as the official requested, but found that he and Mary “couldn’t agree on terms.” Williamson went home and spoke to his wife, and “she decided that she would go and see the President’s wife, saying a woman was the best one to talk with a woman. She went, and in a few days I began my tutorship…”
Unsurprisingly, he had a much easier time tutoring the scholarly Willie than Tad, and explained the latter had received his nickname because “he was then such a little tadpole of humanity,” whatever that means. As for Willie, “his studies to him were a pleasure. His eagerness to acquire information was phenomenal. In disposition he was retiring, affectionate and sympathetic.” Willie had his mother’s face, said Williamson, but “inherited all the lovable traits of his father’s character.”
He also shared with his father a love of learning, including curiosity about word roots and origins. “As he progressed with his Latin, he became very interested in collecting the English words derived from it. The last question he put to his teacher on this subject was: ‘Any English word derived from calculus, a pebble?’” Williamson replied, “Yes, Willie, the verb ‘to calculate.’”
“How so?”
“Because in ancient times the boys carried to school a small box containing a number of pebbles, and with these they calculated the arithmetical questions given them to work out by their teacher.”
Willie “alluded often to the historical significance of its meaning.”
He had inherited one characteristic from both parents: “His memory was so wonderfully retentive that he had only to con over once or twice a page . . . went through without hesitation or blundering, and his other studies in proportion.” Willie was also particular about etiquette, like his mother. He hated slang, and told Williamson, “If I was Papa, I would not permit Vice President Hamlin to visit him.” Asked why, he responded “Because he does not dress like a gentleman. The clothes look dusty & brown & his shirt dirty. His relations to my papa should make him dress better.” Willie seemed sensitive to the respect shown towards his parents — he once asked his friend Bud Taft “Why do you call Pa Mr. President but you don't call Ma Mrs. President?” When Tad sang "Old Abe Lincoln a rail splitter was he, And he'll split the Confederacee," Willie asked, "Ought Tad to sing that song . . . ? Isn't it real disrespectful to Pa?"
Tad, of course, had a different personality. Williamson continued to work with him after Willie’s death, but his largely unsuccessful efforts ended in 1863, and the Lincolns procured him a job in the treasury department. Tad would fail to show up for lessons frequently, and one time as Williamson gave up and exited the library, he ran into the President.
“Is Tad at his old tricks?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Now Mr. Williamson you go back & just take your usual seat & I’ll send one of the ushers in search of Tad.”
This was done, and “in a short time Tad’s voice was heard the tone of which indicated that he was an unwilling captive. Just as the usher with his prisoner on his back was nearing the library entrance the President hid by behind the door & as the captor & the captive entered the President locked the door & handed me the key.”
When Tad saw his father, he exclaimed “A make believe! You wont cheat me again.” Williamson explained that the usher had told him that the President had “something for him which would please him.” After that, “Tad was too excited of irritation at the ‘trick’ played on him to be benefited by his lessons.” Another time, as Lincoln searched for a book, he remarked to Williamson, “Tad is a terrible fellow. He puts everything in confusion.”
Williamson urged Mary to have an operation done on Tad in 1864 to fix his speech (he stated that Tad was “tongue-tied.”) He says the President was amenable, but Mary, probably wisely given the state of medicine at the time, refused for fear that Tad would bleed to death.
Williamson also provided some rare glimpses at Robert Lincoln’s time in the White House, when on vacation from Harvard. In them, Robert appears quite cultured:
Robert Lincoln, who was in college, objected, Mr. Williamson says, to his two smaller brothers being taught the Roman pronunciation of Latin. “After Robert began the study of Italian,” says the tutor, “he one day called to me through the door of the study and acknowledged that my method was the the right one.”
Towards the conclusion of our late struggle, when hundreds of confederate soldiers, starving, and poorly clad, were daily deserting the “Lost Cause,” and coming into our lines, General Grant telegraphed to Secretary Stanton that as they brought generally with them good, serviceable muskets and relative accoutrements, as well as horses fit for cavalry purposes, he suggested that they should be paid a fair valuation for them. The Secretary notified the President of the General’s telegram, and requested his action in the matter. The day on which he did so, being the one after the receipt of the General's communication to the Secretary, he came into the library in order to pass into his office by the private connection between the former and latter rooms. when Mr. Robert Lincoln, who was at the time playing a selection from the opera of “Maritana” on the piano, and stopped, and turning round asked his father “if there was any news?” The President walked quietly up to him and answered: “Not much, my son. I have just been to Stanton about General Grant’s telegram as to the purchase of arms from deserters from Lee’s army, and I have told him to authorize a fair price to be paid for them, so that the poor fellows might make themselves comfortable, and if need be to issue rations and clothing to them.”
Williamson was present at Lincoln’s deathbed and later wrote a play about that night, which he never published. Instead, he became more famous for writing of another kind: the many letters written to him by Mary Lincoln from 1865-1867.
In the years after Lincoln’s death, he was Mary’s unofficial lobbyist in trying to raise money and pay debts. Her surviving correspondence to him is voluminous, cloying, and painful to read. (“If I had been assisted, in the settlement, of my business I should not be pressed as I now am—I am sick of the name of H[owe, a wealthy prospective donor and politician]—-We have had enough of it . . . This subject is banished for the future—This is a patriotic country! . . . In haste yr friend . . . a pleasant Christmas to you & yours (A sad one to us!”)
Mary’s biographers, the Turners, described the relationship: “Mary Lincoln’s letters to Alexander Williamson have a quality all their own . . . filled with garbled instructions and admonitions delivered in the manner of a stern schoolmistress, with criticisms—often warranted—of Williamson’s methods, with frantic inquiries after his progress. Many of them were scrawled in pencil, some are nearly illegible, others barely coherent.”
Gerald Steffens Cowden wrote, “Williamson was soon disillusioned . . . she treated him little better than an errand boy.” When when their arrangement ended, “Both were no doubt relieved.” None of Williamson’s letters to her have survived, so it is has always been impossible to ascertain his actual feelings on the matter. But while historians have long been cringing on his behalf, we now have his own assessment.
“Mrs. Lincoln made no effort to win popular favor,” he told the interviewer. “Had she chosen to, her charming style and conversational talents would have made her a great favorite.”
Williamson seemed to key in on an overlooked aspect of Mary’s much-talked-about personality. She did not seek popularity, and she certainly did not find it among the press, then or now. But Williamson’s comments are in line with many who had daily contact with her, who were undoubtedly familiar with her outbursts and schemes, but gave her a favorable overall verdict.
Note: These comments are collected from a series of interviews Williamson gave over his lifetime. After losing his government position, Williamson worked as a clerk for a steamship line.
I am extremely interested to learn more about the play that Alexander Williamson wrote about President Lincoln’s assassination and death. I would like to know if it still exists and where it is located and if it is available for research purposes?