Let Your Whiskers Grow
Background
Three weeks before the 1860 election, Grace Bedell’s father came home from the county fair in western New York with a campaign picture of the Republican ticket: Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. Grace was eleven. She looked at Lincoln’s thin, clean-shaven face and sat down to write him some advice.
Lincoln answered four days later, doubtful. Then, within weeks, he started growing a beard — and became the first president to wear one.
In February 1861, on the long train trip to his inauguration, Lincoln stopped at Westfield and asked the crowd whether Grace Bedell was there. She was. He told everyone she had given him the advice, and that he had taken it, and he came down from the train to greet her.
The letters
Grace to Mr. Lincoln
N Y Westfield Chatauque Co
Oct 15. 1860
Hon A B Lincoln
Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter.
I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is a going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try and get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter dir[e]ct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye
Grace Bedell
Mr. Lincoln to Grace
Springfield, Ills.
Oct 19. 1860
Private
Miss. Grace Bedell
My dear little Miss.
Your very agreeable letter of the 15th. is received.
I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters. I have three sons — one seventeen, one nine, and one seven, years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family.
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?
Your very sincere well-wisher
A. Lincoln.
The spelling is as they wrote it (“affection” for affectation is Lincoln’s own), from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Grace’s letter is in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library. Grace grew up to be Grace Bedell Billings and lived most of her life in Kansas.
More of Lincoln in his own words: the Abraham Lincoln Quote Library and the Gettysburg Address.