If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.
— A. Lincoln, 1863Personal Danger at the Cottage
Friends and well-wishers appreciated being able to visit the Lincolns so easily, but others worried that the President was in constant danger. As the Civil War raged in nearby Virginia and Maryland, the President's friends feared that Lincoln was insufficiently protected from would-be assassins or kidnappers when he stayed at the cottage three miles north of the city.
The President and his family have been living out at the Soldiers' Home, about four miles only this side of the rebel line of skirmishers; but on Sunday night Secretary Stanton sent out a carriage and a guard and brought in the family, who are again domesticated at the White House. The lonely situation of the President's summer residence would have afforded a tempting chance for a daring squad of rebel cavalry to run some risks for the chance of carrying off the President, whom we could ill afford to spare right now.
— Noah Brooks, journalist and friend of the Lincolns', July 12, 1864.1
In spite of the danger he faced while living in the isolated area, Lincoln was uncomfortable with the idea of being assigned personal escorts and guards. He declared that "it would never do for a president to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor."2
Nevertheless, military guards from Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers were stationed at the Soldiers' Home in 1862 to guard the President. Despite his initial reluctance, Lincoln soon developed a friendly relationship with the soldiers assigned to guard him, and particularly with their captain, Charles Derickson. Lincoln went out of his way to ensure that the same company remained as his guards.
Executive Mansion
Washington
Nov. 1, 1862
Whom it may concern:
Capt. Derickson, with his company, has been, for some time keeping guard at my residence, now at the Soldiers' Retreat. He, and his Company are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Capt. D. and his company.
— A. Lincoln3
1Noah Brooks, 12 July 1864, in Michale Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 126.
2Cited in Francis F. Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln (1915), 310.
3Abraham Lincoln, cited in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. V, 484.