From the Richmond Dispatch, 7/8/1887, p. 1, c. 6

MISS LIZZIE VAN LEW.
The New York World Proposes that She be Pensioned.

Miss Van Lew is in the city on leave of absence from the Department at Washington. Her case has been represented to President Cleveland, and she hopes to be restored to her $1,200 clerkship if some better provision for her is not made by the Government. She says that her work in Washington has been very hard, and that with her present strength it is as much as she can do to keep up with it.

How this matter is viewed in the North may be judged by the following editorial which appeared in the New York World yesterday:

“The Government owes a debt of gratitude to Miss Van Lew, the plucky Richmond woman who did such good service for the Union cause during the war But it is a debt which ought to be acknowledged and paid in a straightforward, honest manner, and not got rid of by a subterfuge.

“Miss Van Lew supplied information to the Union generals from inside the Confederate lines during the war, and spent her money in aiding Union prisoners to escape and in supplying them with necessaries of life while they were in the Richmond prisons. She was able, alert, and intelligent spy. General Grant rewarded her by making her postmistress of Richmond as soon as he became President and keeping her there during his two terms. She was removed by Acting-President Hayes, and becoming reduced in circumstances was given a $1,200 clerkship in the Post-Office Department at Washington by President Arthur. It was very well to appoint this lady to office when she was capable of performing public duties. But she is now sixty years old, is of no use as a clerk, and has been reduced by the Postmaster General to the $720 grade.

“Out of this story some super-loyal people are trying to raise a sort of battle-flag excitement. There is really not enough sensation in it to cause a flutter of fans at a Boston tea-party. The Postmaster-General finds a female clerk in his department incapable of performing certain duties for which she is paid and transfers her to an inferior position. The clerk happens to be Miss Van Lew. But the Postmaster-General can take no note of this. He manages a Government department, and not a pension office nor a bureau of sentimentality. The fact is that the Government ought to give Miss Van Lew a legal pension without requiring her to work for it, and without illegally pensioning her on the post-office of any other public department under false pretences.”

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