Jonas

The friendship of Abraham Jonas and Abraham Lincoln began shortly after Jonas moved in 1838 to Quincy, Illinois, the city’s first Jewish citizen. And the relationship would flourish over the next 26 years. They were together as young politicians in the Illinois Legislature in the early 1840s, and their politics were as close as their friendship.

Jonas, an early and ardent supporter of Lincoln in the newly formed Republican Party, handled arrangements for his friend’s arrival for the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy. Horace Greeley lectured in Quincy that December and attended a meeting at the law office of Asbury & Jonas where Lincoln’s name was put forth as a possible nominee for the presidential primary. The suggestion, by Jonas’s law partner Henry Asbury fell flat, but Jonas suggested the idea was a worthy one.

During the 1860 presidential primary campaign, Lincoln was accused of having earlier attended a Know-Nothing meeting in Quincy. Jonas vouched for Lincoln and the matter was never mentioned again. Jonas also worked the Republican Convention floor to help secure Lincoln’s nomination.

Quincy Friends

Abraham Jonas

In December 1860 Jonas wrote a private letter to Lincoln warning him that his life might be in peril with the inauguration approaching, and Lincoln afterward changed his travel plans to Washington. For his loyalty Jonas was appointed Postmaster of Quincy in 1861

In the great irony of the times Jonas had five and possibly six sons who fought in the Civil War for both the North and the South. In a final act of friendship in 1864 President Lincoln arranged for a three-week parole of Abraham Jonas’s oldest son Charles, a Confederate POW, to attend to his dying father.

Jonas is interred in Valley of Peace Cemetery in Quincy, Illinois
– Tim Jacobs

City of Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission 706 Maine Quincy, Illinois 62301