In the autumn the General Convention met in New York, and at the same time I visited Washington. General Halleck went with me to the President, to whom I gave an account of the outbreak [Dakota Conflict], its causes, and the suffering and evil which had followed in its wake. Mr. Lincoln had known something of Indian warfare in the Black Hawk War. He was deeply moved. He was a man of profound sympathy, but he usually relieved the strain upon his feelings by telling a story. When I had finished he said:---
"Bishop, a man thought that monkeys could pick cotton better than negroes could because they were quicker and their fingers smaller. He turned a lot of them into his cotton field, but he found that it took two overseers to watch one monkey. It needs more than one honest man to watch one Indian Agent."
A short time after this, President Lincoln, meeting a friend from Illinois, asked him if their old friend, Luther Dearborn, had not moved to Minnesota. Receiving an affirmative answer, he said: "When you see Lute, ask him if he knows Bishop Whipple. He came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots. If we get through this war, and I live, this Indian system shall be reformed!"
He gave me a card to the Secretary of the Interior with the message, "Give Bishop Whipple any information he desires about Indian affairs." [excerpted from Lights and Shadows of A Long Episcopate: Reminiscences and Recollections of the Right Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple]