Description:

Abraham Lincoln
Washington, DC, January 11, 1865
A. Lincoln Gives Rebel Woman Pass to Visit Prisoner of War Husband - A Well-Documented Exchange Showing a Very Human Lincoln!
ANS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Autograph Note Signed, January 11, 1865, Washington, DC. 1 p., 3.125" x 1.785". Toning; smudging to last letter of Lincoln's name.

President Abraham Lincoln wrote this pass for Mrs. Rebecca Rust to allow her to visit her husband, a prisoner of war at Rock Island, Illinois. While boarding near Lynchburg, Virginia, she learned that her husband had been captured and was a prisoner at Camp Chase, Ohio. She moved to Lexington, Virginia, but when Union troops burned the town, she fled to Bedford County, twenty-five miles south of Lexington. From there, she traveled by train to Charlottesville, Virginia. She and her three daughters (born in 1860, 1861, and 1863) traveled for three days with a man who was passing through Union lines with a wagon of baled cotton with the "one idea...to go to Washington to see the president to obtain a pass to visit my husband."

When she arrived home, she found that the disabled overseer they had left in charge of their property had claimed it. With the aid of a neighbor, she regained entrance to her house and left her three small children with "their black mammy," while she went to Point of Rocks to determine how to cross the Potomac River despite the blockade. The next day, with her children and "my old negro nurse," she traveled to her parents' home near Baltimore. Leaving her children with her mother, she traveled to Washington. There, with the assistance of an old friend, Congressman Edward Webster of Maryland, she gained an introduction to President Abraham Lincoln.

According to her recounting of the meeting more than forty years later, Lincoln first gave her a pass to see her husband for ten minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the afternoon. She read it, laid it on the table, and said she would not accept "his favor, if such he considered it." She turned to leave, but he called her back, saying, "I will try again." He then wrote this pass, allowing her to stay as long as she wished. According to Rebecca Rust, Lincoln also told her to telegraph him if she had any trouble seeing her husband.

She did not make the trip to Rock Island because a few days later, she received a letter telling her to return to her home in Virginia. There, one evening, "who should appear but the husband and father of three daughters who knew him not." A lifelong "unreconstructed rebel," she later wrote of her meeting with Lincoln, "I went to see President Lincoln with anything but kind feelings. My interview with him and his extreme kindness changed my feelings toward him, and I thought him just as good as he knew how to be."

Complete Transcript
Allow the bearer, Mrs Rust to visit her husband, George T. Rust, prisoner of war at Rock Island, once per day, for one week.
A. Lincoln
Jan. 11, 1865.

George T. Rust (1826-1900) was born in Loudoun County, Virginia, to General George Rust Jr. (1788-1857), a veteran of the War of 1812 who rose to the rank of general in the Virginia militia. The younger George Rust attended the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) from 1845 to 1848 as part of the Class of 1849. He became a colonel in the Virginia militia before the Civil War and owned a 700-acre farm in Loudoun County. Early in the war, he joined the Confederate Army as a private and also supplied the Confederacy with beef cattle. From at least March to August 1863, he served as a courier for Major General Robert E. Rhodes (1829-1864), who attended VMI with him. In November 1863, he joined the Confederate Army as a private. Rust was captured and imprisoned at both Camp Chase in Ohio and Rock Island in Illinois. In August 1865, he took the oath of allegiance and appealed to President Andrew Johnson for a pardon. U.S. Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee wrote a letter in support of Rust's application for a pardon, and Johnson pardoned him in September. He and his family later moved to Texas, where he died in San Angelo.

Rebecca Coleman Yellott Rust (1838-1913) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1860, she married George T. Rust, and they settled in Loudoun County, Virginia. They had at least eight children. As the Union Army moved in, she moved further south in Virginia. While living in Lynchburg, she and her two oldest daughters contracted typhoid fever. She moved with her husband to San Angelo, Texas, in the 1870s. She was active in the United Daughters of the Confederacy and served as the Fourth Vice-President of the San Angelo chapter in 1902. She died in San Angelo.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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