Later, Watt threatened to blackmail the First Lady. To keep him quiet, he was given a commission in the army, but when Henry Wilson, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, learned of it, he blocked the nomination. Watt then demanded to be taken care of or else he would reveal all he knew. Terrified, Mary Lincoln appealed to Isaac Newton, head of the agriculture division of the Interior Department, to give Watt a clerkship. Newton refused, for he dreaded the wrath of Senator Wilson. According to Newton, the gardener “entered into a conspiracy to extort [^{219}^{220}^{221} Simeon Draper, a New York politico who in 1864 paid Mary Lincoln \20,000 for her help in obtaining his position as agent for selling cotton seized in Savannah, called on Watt and, “with much bluster & great oaths,” threatened to have him imprisoned. Watt then “fell on his literal marrow bones & begged, & gave up the letters & the conspiracy got demoralized & came down, down, to 1500 dollars which was paid, and the whole thing [was] settled.” The money came in the form of a sinecure; in March 1862, Watt was named special agent for Newton’s agriculture division to purchase seeds in Europe, at an annual salary of $1,500, plus travel costs. (Thomas Stackpole urged Browning “to get the President to give Watt the appointment of public gardener, or agent to buy seeds for [the] patent office.”) After failing to be paid for his services in Europe, Watt in 1863 billed the president $736 to compensate him for Mary Lincoln’s hotel bills, cash advances, and “Commissary stores.” The vouchers for these payments and advances from Watt to the First Lady were held by Simeon Draper. Watt told Simon Cameron: “You know very well what difficulties I had to contend with in regard to Mrs. Lincoln. … I paid about $700.00 for Mrs. Lincoln on one trip to Cambridge, Mass.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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