Dr. Robert K. Stone, Lincoln’s personal physician, was considered the dean of Washington, D.C.’s medical community.

The pro-slavery physician was wholly unsympathetic to the Union cause, although he did ask occasional favors of the president for his wife’s family in Richmond.

While he disliked Lincoln’s politics, Stone felt the opposite about the man himself.

“Lincoln is the purest-hearted man with whom I ever came in contact,” he said.