Lincoln, Abraham, as sixteenth President

1 page (7 1/2 x 4 5/8 in.; 190 x 116 mm) on a bifolium, [Washington], (denoted Executive Mansion" in Lincoln's hand), 8 April 1861, to Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania; uniformly browned from old framing apart from rectangle in lower half protected by old label ("President Lincoln's letter written four days before the commencement of the Civil War to Gov. Curtin urging preparedness for the anticipated outbreak").

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Basler, 4:324

1 page (7 1/2 x 4 5/8 in.; 190 x 116 mm) on a bifolium, [Washington], (denoted Executive Mansion" in Lincoln's hand), 8 April 1861, to Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania; uniformly browned from old framing apart from rectangle in lower half protected by old label ("President Lincoln's letter written four days before the commencement of the Civil War to Gov. Curtin urging preparedness for the anticipated outbreak").
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As the winds of war swirl around Washington, D.C., President Lincoln writes a letter to one of his key political allies, the brevity of which belies its enormous importance.

By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated the sixteenth President of the United States, 4 March 1861, seven southern states had already seceded in protest of his perceived abolitionist views: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. A month later, civil war seemed all but inevitable, and on 6 April Washington met at the White House with four Union governors—Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, David Tod of Ohio, Israel Washburn of Maine, and Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania—to discuss the military preparedness of their respective state militias.

Of these four, Curtin was Lincoln's closest ally. He was the first Republican governor of Pennsylvania and supported Lincoln's nomination as the fledgling party's national standard bearer. Two days after this meeting—and just four days before Confederate artillery fired on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—Lincoln sent this missive to Curtin: "I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it."

Curtin did "look to it." In his autobiography, James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate, recalled that "Before the firing on Sumter, but when the States of the Confederacy were evidently preparing for war, Mr. Lincoln earnestly desired a counter signal of the readiness on the part of the North. Governor Curtin undertook to do it in Pennsylvania at the President’s special request. On the eleventh day of April, one day before the South precipitated the conflict, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an Act for the better organization of the militia, and appropriated five hundred thousand dollars to carry out the details of the measure. The manifest reference to the impending trouble was in the words prescribing the duty of the Adjutant-General of the State in case the President should call out the militia. It was the first official step in the loyal States to defend the Union, and the generous appropriation, made in advance of any blow struck by the Confederacy, enabled Governor Curtin to rally the forces of the great Commonwealth to the defense of the Union with marvelous promptness."

Camp Curtin was established near Harrisburg on 18 April 1861 and was the first Union military camp for training militia. By the end of the war in 1865, more than 300 000 loyal troops had trained there.