Francis P. Blair, advisor to Presidents

It is the birthday of journalist Francis P. Blair, Sr. (1791), editor of the Washington Globe newspaper and a staunch supporter of Andrew Jackson. His residence in Washington is known as the Blair House and serves today as the President’s guest house. Blair also was a member of Jackson’s so-called Kitchen Cabinet group of unofficial advisors. Blair also was an unofficial advisor to Abraham Lincoln and served as the go-between in an unsuccessful bid to get Robert E. Lee to head the Union Armies at the beginning of the Civil War. Blair, originally a Democrat, helped found the Republican Party. Blair had a summer home in Maryland near a spring he called Silver Spring. The city took its name from Blair’s estate. The town of Blairsville, Georgia, is named for him. It is in Union County, named for the Union Party that helped get Andrew Jackson elected president.

Happy birthday, John George Nicolay

It is the birthday of biographer John George Nicolay (1832), who served as President Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, and wrote The Outbreak of Rebellion (1881), volume 1 of Campaigns of the Civil War, and, with John Hay, A. Lincoln, a history, a 10-volume history of Abraham Lincoln, which was first published in The Century Magazine. Lincoln appointed Nicolay U.S. Consul in Paris, where he served for four years after Lincoln’s assassination. Nicolay and Hay also edited the 12-volume Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1905).