“First discipline yourself to live within the perimeters of the rules - then you’ll know how/when to break them properly.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

November 12

The President wrote to General Grant a few months before the war's end: “Please read and answer this letter as though I were not President, but only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those who have already served long, are better entitled, and better qualified to hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.” Grant replied that he would be glad to have his son “in my military family in the manner you propose.”