In Part I of my series Mistaken Identities, I wrote:
And all this is on top of the fact that, a few months earlier, Lincoln had spoken with Wikoff directly about Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles’ denial of a pass to accompany a Union warship down the Potomac.23 It is possible that Lincoln forgot Wikoff was connected with the Herald after this brief interaction, but Lincoln had a good memory, and Wikoff had a distinct manner and style of speech that apparently made him very striking. Additionally, Lincoln wrote down Wikoff’s unusual last name during the meeting.24 The reason for the denial remains unclear, and it appears Wikoff was making the request on behalf of another Herald reporter, but it was too late at night for Lincoln to consult with Welles. So, he sat down and wrote a note to Bennett, apologizing, and noting that Wikoff had emphasized that passes had been given to the reporters of other papers. “I write this to assure you that the administration will not discriminate against the Herald,” he wrote, an accusation that would shortly be inverted.25 Not to worry, Bennett reassured him—Welles had already given another of his reporters a pass.26
Recently, I found the letter that got him the late night meeting in Lincoln’s papers at LOC.gov, where they had been made available for transcription. It indicates that he wanted a pass for "Mr. Slack," not himself, as Lincoln and the Power of the Press represented. It also shows how routine and aggressive such requests were. (Take a look at my footnotes in Part I for more). It also shows how routine and aggressive such requests were.
"This letter I am sorry to hear the Secretary of the Navy refused to give Mr. Slack, out of prejudice to the N Y Herald, & for which he will be held responsible, I do not hesitate to say - My present object is to ask whether Your Excellency will repair the injustice of the Secretary of the Navy . . . I have just learned that the Secretary of the Navy has give permission to accompany our Fleet etc, to the correspondent of a . . . Journal in New York called the World - This makes his refusal to the Herald correspondent still more unjustifiable - I trust Your Excellency will put this all right - ”
This makes it clear that Lincoln knew Wikoff was the Herald’s factotum, and that he would go pretty far. By January, he was asking Mary not to ride out with Wikoff, as some people had complained (almost certainly not the general public, but political elite or editors who found the Herald distasteful). But he hadn’t thrown him out, even though the message leak had happened weeks prior. Maybe he didn’t know of Wikoff’s role yet, but in any event, he was still allowed to come over; Mary’s association with him was not that much of a scandal. I’m much more interested in what happened with White House gardener John Watt. More on that soon.
My best guess is that Wikoff used a similar tactic with Mary—saying that a competitor had already gotten access, and there would be consequences for such favoritism. But the old story of the Wikoff concealing his Herald connections and blindsiding the Lincolns will probably continue to stick around, as it is the story that will not die.
I recommend Wikoff’s books—one can easily see why he was so fun to hang around with, and sense how much trouble he was capable of causing. He planned to write a series of memoirs, but we only got Volume I before he died, which ended before the war years. Disappointing.