Hatcher’s Meeting with Lincoln

By Carl L. Sell Jr. · Originally published December 2018 · p. 21

At six-feet-five, Clinton Hatcher certainly stood out in a crowd in 1861. His red hair helped make him a topic of conversation for all who saw him, including the newly elected sixteenth president of the United States at a White House reception on March 9, 1861. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was inaugurated on March 4. He had defeated three other candidates to win the election the previous November. Hatcher had graduated from Columbian University in Washington City, June 27, 1860, in a ceremony at the First Baptist Church on Thirteenth Street. He apparently went home to the family farm near Purcellville in Loudoun County, Va., and traveled throughout the state. He was back in Washington City at the time of the inauguration. According to George Wise, a young friend from Accomack County, Va., he and Hatcher attended a reception at the White House shortly after Lincoln was inaugurated. As was the custom, Lincoln was shaking hands with visitors but Hatcher passed nearby with his hands behind his back. Lincoln asked that he come back because the president said he had noticed Hatcher’s height. This version comes from Wise, who was quoted in the Richmond State newspaper and reprinted in the Leesburg Mirror on June 16, 1887. The meeting originally was reported in the Evening Star in Washington City on March 9, 1861. How tall are you?” Lincoln asked Hatcher. “Six feet five,” Hatcher replied. “Well, I believe you top me by a few inches,” Lincoln replied. According to Wise, Hatcher and Lincoln then stood back to back and Hatcher was “at least a half a head taller.”* Wise became a captain in a Confederate cavalry regiment while Hatcher joined the Eighth Virginia Infantry Regiment and became the color sergeant. Hatcher was killed leading a charge at the Battle of Balls Bluff on Oct. 21, 1861, and is buried in Ketoctin Baptist Church Cemetery, Purcellville, Va. Wise survived the war and was elected to the United States Congress during the 1880s and 1890s. *If Wise’s measurement was correct, Hatcher was taller than six foot-five. Lincoln was six feet four. Verification that the event took place came from the archives of the Evening Star, which began publication in 1852, and provided

Clinton Hatcher daily dispatches from the field during the Civil War. The Star ceased publication in 1981. As a young reporter at The Star in the 1960s, the writer of this story spent hours in the paper’s library, reading those Civil War dispatches. He missed this story, however!

Carl Sell is a retired writer and editor for the Washington Evening

Star newspaper in Washington, D.C. Sell now writes about his relatives on both sides in the war, including Thank God He Survived Pickett’s Charge, an account of the life of his great grandfather. He lives in Northern Virginia and is a frequent visitor to nearby battle sites. He is particularly interested in finding stories, such as this one, that are hidden among the Official Records and memoirs. Sell is a frequent contributor to CWN.