Cabinet meets. Speculations arise regarding trouble between Gen. Butler and Rear Adm. Porter. Welles, Diary.

President decides to remove Butler from command. West, Welles, 303-5.

Lincoln writes to Cincinnati, Ohio, lithographer Elijah C. Middleton, who recently produced the president's image. Lincoln offers, "Your picture . . . is, in the main, very good. From a line across immediately above the eye-brows, downward it appears to me perfect. Above such line I think it is not so good,—that is, while it gives perhaps a better fore-head, it is not quite true to the original. If you were present I could tell you wherein, but I can not well do so on paper. The next best thing . . . would be to carefully study a photograph." Abraham Lincoln to Elijah C. Midddleton, 30 December 1864, CW, 8:191-92; Harold Holzer, "Lincoln and the Ohio Printmakers," Ohio History 89, no. 4 (1980): 418.