Bribes given to Mary Lincoln also helped pave the way for the strange appointment of George Denison as naval agent in the New York customhouse. Denison was a partner of William Henry Marston, son-in-law of Lincoln’s friend and banker, Robert Irwin, who urged the appointment. (Irwin’s daughter Eliza married Marston in 1859. She was a friend of Mary Lincoln, accompanying her on a tour of New York harbor in July 1861.) The president hesitated to comply because, as he told Irwin: “I am scared about your friend Dennison. The place is so fiercely sought by, and for, others, while … his name is not mentioned at all, that I fear appointing him will appear too arbitrary on my part.” In May 1861, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase strongly objected to Denison: “A friend sometimes best proves his friendship by speaking when selfishness counsels silence. Agreeably to your direction I send a Commission for Mr. Dennison; but I shall not fulfill my duty to you if I do not say that I fear, if you make this appointment, you will regret it. When it was first proposed I had heard so little expression either way that I did not feel myself called upon,—though I felt that setting aside so many prominent men for a gentleman so little known in political or financial circles was of questionable expediency,—to say anything against it. But during the time which has since elapsed many of the most eminent and influential gentlemen of New York have expressed to me such unfavorable opinions of Mr. D—and such strong convictions that his appointment to so high an office will affect the Administration injuriously in quarters whose good opinion is most valuable that I feel myself constrained to say that were the responsibility of decision mine, I should not put my name to the commission.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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