On Sunday, Feb. 12, 1865, his 56th birthday that would be his last, Abraham Lincoln was apparently working at his desk in Washington, D. C. Records show that he was in a merciful mood. After a long conversation with a Judge Fisher about the case of a Dr. E. Worrell, who had been sentenced to prison for a year for helping a prisoner escape from Fort Delaware, Lincoln was convinced that Worrell was partially insane. “I suppose that on this ground, he should be discharged,” Lincoln wrote. In a separate case he took up on his birthday, we are left to imagine what the “misbehaving schoolboys” had done. Lincoln wrote, “Let these boys return to their school upon the condition stated by them,” he wrote, “and remain so long as they do not misbehave.” –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2015.
