President directs Sec. Seward: "Please invite all members of the Cabinet to be [present at the meeting today]." Abraham Lincoln to William H. Seward, 3 May 1864, CW, 7:330.

During a cabinet meeting , President Lincoln asks each member to "prepare, and give me in writing your opinion as to what course, the government should take" regarding the Confederates' "recent capture" of Ft. Pillow, located in Tennessee. Preliminary reports indicate that "a large number of our colored soldiers, with their white officers, were . . . massacred after they had surrendered." Lincoln awaits the report of a congressional committee that is investigating the April 12 incident. Abraham Lincoln to Cabinet Members, 3 May 1864, CW, 7:328-29; Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1960), 2:23-25.

Instructs L. E. Chittenden to proceed to Annapolis, Md., and investigate condition of exchanged war prisoners. Lucius E. Chittenden, Recollections of President Lincoln and his Administration (New York: Harper, 1891), 323.