Abraham Lincoln Signed Endorsement. by Lincoln, Abraham

Rare Civil War dated endorsement as president, signed by Abraham Lincoln, dated March 9, 1865. The endorsement reads, "Allow Mrs. C. W. Frazier to visit her husband a Prisoner of War at Johnson's Island. A Lincoln." In fine condition. In September 1863, Captain C. W. Frazer of Company B, Fifth Infantry, was captured and delivered to the Confederate officers' prison camp located on Lake Erie's Johnson's Island. His wife, Letitia Frazer, who moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Sandusky, Ohio, so as to be nearer her detained husband, wrote an impassioned letter to President Lincoln, begging for 'the opportunity to convince him that his duty is at home and to leave the Rebel Army.' Without hesitation the president allowed Letitia Frazer, upon her taking the oath of allegiance, 'an interview with her husband,' once every ten days until his release. On June 11, 1865, Frazer was paroled and returned to Memphis and his family, resuming his law practice and becoming the president of the Confederate Historical Association of Memphis. Frazer later authored a war drama entitled Johnson's Island, a play that featured ex-Confederate soldiers as its chief actors. The signed sheet measures 2 inches by 3.25 inches. Double matted and framed with a rare carte-de-visite of Lincoln. The entire piece measures 11.25 inches by 14.5 inches. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through its Civil War, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. In his Address at the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore Maryland in April of 1861, Lincoln stated: "The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names...liberty and tyranny.