President sends for Asst. Sec. Fox before breakfast. Reason unknown. Fox, Diary, Gist-Blair Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Requests written opinions from members of cabinet on admission of West Virginia into Union. Abraham Lincoln to Members of the Cabinet, 23 December 1862, CW, 6:17.

Receives memorial from Mil. Gov. Andrew Johnson and prominent men of state asking that Emancipation Proclamation not apply to Tennessee. Washington Chronicle, 4 December 1862.

Considers proposal of Gen. Haupt to form military council of seven to plan campaigns and determine policies. Haupt to Lincoln, 22 December 1862, Edwin M. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

John Pitcher, boyhood friend, calls on Lincoln about son recovering from wound received at Battle of Cedar Mountain. Pitcher to Lincoln, 25 December 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Mrs. Lincoln prepares to serve Christmas dinner to wounded in hospitals. Philadelphia News, 24 December 1862.

[Irwin withdraws $9 from Springfield Marine Bank, interest on scholarship at Illinois State University. Pratt, Personal Finances, 177.]

Lincoln writes to Fanny McCullough, of Bloomington, Illinois, regarding Fanny's father Lieutenant Colonel William McCullough, who died on December 5, in a battle near Coffeeville, Mississippi. William McCullough had been clerk of the McLean County Circuit Court, where Lincoln frequently practiced law. Lincoln writes, "You can not now realize that you will ever feel better...You are sure to be happy again...I have had experience enough to know...The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before." Abraham Lincoln to Fanny McCullough, 23 December 1862, CW, 6:16-17; Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield), 10 December 1862, 2:1.