John Hay to John G. Nicolay, August 1, 1862

Executive Mansion,

Washington, August 1, 1862.

MY DEAR JNO. GEORGE:

There is positively nothing of the slightest interest since you left. The abomination of desolation has fallen upon this town. I find that I can put in twenty-four hours out of every day very easily, in the present state of affairs, at the Executive Mansion. The crowd continually increases instead of diminishing. The Tax Business has begun to grind. Chase is having  things very much his own way. He makes out a batch of twenty or thirty commissions at a time, filling in the names, and presenting them to the President to sign.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 58-9; Michael Burlingame, Editor, At lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings, p. 23-4