Person:Isaac Harvey (6)

Issac and Sarah visited President Abraham Lincoln just a short time before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Issac was led by his "Inner Light" to travel into slave holding states, where he became convinced that he must do something. After returning to Ohio, he again was led to visit Lincoln.

    From Carl Sandburg's "Life of Lincoln- The War Years", volume II, page 234: " A Quaker farmer and his wife had left their farm in Clinton county, Ohio, and traveled to see the President in his office. They had heard of him as a kind man who would surely listen to a plan, yes a plan that had pressed on the mind of the Quaker and kept him awake night after night for many hours. The local council of Quakers had endorsed the plan. The President bowed and shook hands, and gazed deep into their faces, and they told him everything about the plan and they were struck deep that he had already thought about the plan and favored it and prayed for it's success and told them so. The war could end instantly and slavery too end instantly by this plan. It would only be needed that the Federal Government would offer to pay $300 each for slaves, and all slaveowners accept the offer, whereupon the Government would free the slaves- and the armies go home from their bloody work. To the Quaker farmer from Clinton County, Ohio, the plan was so simple and reasonable that he could not stay at home with it nor trust it to a letter. He must take it personally to the President. And the answer from the President was that the plan was wise, humane, and the cheapest way to end the war. In his next message to Congress the President would use his every power of persuasion to get Congress to see the plan exactly as the Quaker farmer and his wife saw it. A half-hour glided by while the President talked with the two Friends. He stood up. They arose. He put his hands in theirs. "I thank you for this visit. May God bless you." The Quaker man asked if he would object to writing just a line or two, "Certifying that I have fulfilled my mission, so that I can show it to the council at home." The President sat at his table and wrote: I take pleasure in asserting that I have had profitable intercourse with Friend Isaac Harvey and his good wife, Sarah Harvey. May the Lord comfort them as they have sustained me. Sept. 19, 1862. Abraham Lincoln". The note written by Lincoln is supposed to be at Swarthmore College among Quaker archives. The visit to Lincoln was arranged by Salmon Chase, the man who later became Lincoln's Supreme Court Justice. This family was prominent in Clinton Co. OH and they were part of the Underground Railroad.

Contributed by N. E. Almond & Ronald Harvey. Also confirmed in "Cyrus Pringle's Diary", from the Indianapolis Library, IN.

1. ↑ Harvey History "Book", by N. E. Almond, 12/99..