Abraham Lincoln's private secretary, John Nicolay, found the job so overwhelming that he persuaded the president to let him hire an assistant. Young John Hay, nephew of one of Lincoln's Illinois friends and a recent Ivy League graduate, got the job and the trip East. Young, sophisticated and irreverent, Hay continued the venerable tradition of Washington-bashing soon after his arrival.

Home shines before my eyes like a social paradise compared with this miserable sprawling village which imagines itself a city because it is wicked, as a boy thinks he is a man when he smokes and swears.

He quickly found himself on the wrong side of a power struggle with Mrs. Lincoln. Typical of their many battles was her demand that Hay let her use the White House stationery fund as part of her scandalously extravagant redecoration of the White House. Behind her back he called her "The Hell-Cat" and "Her Satanic Majesty." He called General McClellan "The Little Napoleon," and Lincoln was "The Tycoon," "The Old Man," or "The Ancient."

While his fellow secretary Nicolay recovered from an illness, Hay wrote him letters describing life at the White House in his absence:

The little Napoleon sits trembling before the handful of men at Yorktown, afraid either to fight or run. Things go on here about as usual. There is no fun at all. The Hell-cat is getting more Hell-cattical day by day.

Devoted to Lincoln, he was finally worn down by the internal struggles with the First Lady and left the White House in March 1865. He later distinguished himself as  Secretary of State under two presidents, became a highly regarded writer and poet, and collaborated with Nicolay on a 10-volume biography of Lincoln.