Lincoln, Abraham. Autograph letter signed, to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, 10 May 1861

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED AS PRESIDENT ("A. LINCOLN"), TO ADJUTANT GENERAL LORENZO THOMAS, SEEKING THE REINSTATEMENT OF AN ARMY OFFICER

One page (8 x 5 in.; 203 x 128 mm) on blue-ruled machine-laid paper, Washington (headed in Lincoln's hand, "Executive Mansion"), 10 May 1861; browned from earlier framing, mounting remnant on verso, vertical crease with short separations at top and bottom margins. Accompanied by a photographic portrait of Lincoln.

Venerando Pulizzi Jr. was born in Washington, D.C.; his father was in the United States Marine Band, serving at various times as director and drum major. Pulizzi Senior was one of a group of musicians from southern Italy recruited for this duty at the suggestion of President Thomas Jefferson. The younger Pulizzi was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army in June 1855, but resigned less than three months later. Pulizzi claimed that while travelling through Charleston, South Carolina, on the way to his duty station in Florida, some local citizens objected to his friendly manner with his black servant and attacked him. The Charlestonians, for their part, maintained that Pulizzi instigated the altercation. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ordered that charges be brought against the officer, and Pulizzi, rather than face an array of hostile witnesses, resigned his commission. 

Little less than six years after this incident, Pulizzi sought to regain his commission, and his appeal came somehow to Lincoln's attention, who sent the present letter to the Adjutant General: "Mr. V. Pullizzi [sic], as I understand, was once in the regular Army, and resigned under some charges, of which you probably know more than I do. He now wishes to re-enter the Army; and if it violates no rule of law or propriety I shall be glad for him to be obliged in that respect."

Perhaps Pulizzi was motivated to rejoin the Army by the memory (as he claimed) of being called an abolitionist by his Charleston attackers. But his second stint in the military was no more successful than the first. Pulizzi was reinstated with the rank of first lieutenant on 14 May 1861, but resigned again while stationed in Boston on 9 September of that year. His widow's application for a pension was rejected in 1906 because of the brevity of his Civil War service.

LITERATURE:

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Basler, 4:366 (text from a copy in the Huntington Library, with the recipient's copy unlocated)