The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Entire
#8 in our series of the Writings of Abraham Lincoln

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other
Project Gutenberg file.

We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your
own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future
readers.  Please do not remove this.

This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the
information they need to understand what they may and may not
do with the etext.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
further information, is included below.  We need your donations.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541



Title: The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

Author: Abraham Lincoln

Release Date: June, 2002 [Etext #3253]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on February 28, 2001]
[Most recently updated: December 8, 2001]

Edition: 11

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Robin Hood, by J. Walker McSpadden
*******This file should be named lcent11.txt or lcent11.zip******

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, lcent12.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, lcent11a.txt

This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>

Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net or
http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2001 as we release over 50 new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 4000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts.  We need
funding, as well as continued efforts by volunteers, to maintain
or increase our production and reach our goals.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of November, 2001, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin,
and Wyoming.

*In Progress

We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

All donations should be made to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fundraising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fundraising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
software or any other related product without express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*





This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>





THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION



VOLUME 1.


INTRODUCTORY

Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an
off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of
his admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as
follows:

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too
strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to
maintain its existence in great emergencies.  On this point, the
present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, and the
Presidential election, occurring in regular course during the
rebellion, added not a little to the strain....  The strife of
the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts
in the case.  What has occurred in this case must ever occur in
similar cases.  Human nature will not change.  In any future
great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall
have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as
good.  Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy
to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged....
Now that the election is over, may not all having a common
interest reunite in a common fort to save our common country?
For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing
any obstacle in the way.  So long as I have been here, I have not
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.  While I am deeply
sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and duly
grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good,
it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be
disappointed or pained by the result."

This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is
in a peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great
statesman who made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in
its lofty standard of morality.  Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds
and words, are not only of consuming interest to the historian,
but should be intimately known to every man engaged in the hard
practical work of American political life.  It is difficult to
overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the two
foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln.
It is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to
feel that the highest ambition any American can possibly have
will be gratified just in proportion as he raises himself toward
the standards set by these two men.

It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to
advance the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse
for doing poorly in the present; but it is an excellent thing to
study the history of the great deeds of the past, and of the
great men who did them, with an earnest desire to profit thereby
so as to render better service in the present.  In their
essentials, the men of the present day are much like the men of
the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to
better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the
leaders of the nation faced the dead issues of the past.  Such a
study of Lincoln's life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of
immorality and inefficiency--the gulfs which always lie one on
each side of the careers alike of man and of nation.  It helps
nothing to have avoided one if shipwreck is encountered in the
other.  The fanatic, the well-meaning moralist of unbalanced
mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but has no power
himself to do good and but little power to do ill--all these were
as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves.
His life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom,
because otherwise adherence to right will be mere sound and fury
without substance; and that they must also act high-mindedly, or
else what seems to be wisdom will in the end turn out to be the
most destructive kind of folly.

Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to
leadership in his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the
sense of fealty to a lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life,
he also accepted human nature as it is, and worked with keen,
practical good sense to achieve results with the instruments at
hand.  It is impossible to conceive of a man farther removed from
baseness, farther removed from corruption, from mere self-
seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more
sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that
fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to
be in reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-
a-day world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot
accomplish the impossible.

In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian
draws an interesting distinction between the qualities needed for
a successful political career in modern society and those which
lead to eminence in the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral
effort. He says:

"....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres
of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate
earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every
faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of
conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the
average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than
an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the
superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure
that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of modern life,
the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses secondary
qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest
intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the
intelligent men of his time, and who pursues common ideals with.
mow than common ability....  Tact, business talent, knowledge of
men, resolution, promptitude and sagacity in dealing with
immediate emergencies, a character which lends itself easily to
conciliation, diminishes friction and inspires confidence, are
especially needed, and they are more likely to be found among
shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men of great
original genius or of an heroic type of character."

The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the
greatest American statesman since Washington, the statesman who
in this absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the
very man who actually combined the two sets of qualities which
the historian thus puts in antithesis.  Abraham Lincoln, the
rail-splitter, the Western country lawyer, was one of the
shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world, and he had all
the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide his
countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a
leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this
nation or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SAGAMORE HILL,
OYSTER BAY, N. Y.,
September 22, 1905.




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"I have endured," wrote Lincoln not long before his death, "a
great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a
great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule."  On Easter
Day, 1865, the world knew how little this ridicule, how much this
kindness, had really signified.  Thereafter, Lincoln the man
became Lincoln the hero, year by year more heroic, until to-day,
with the swift passing of those who knew him, his figure grows
ever dimmer, less real.  This should not be.  For Lincoln the
man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more than
Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious.  Invaluable is the example of
the man, intangible that of the hero.

And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness
listened at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham
Lincoln, yet there is for us another way whereby we may attain
such knowledge--through his words--uttered in all sincerity to
those who loved or hated him. Cold, unsatisfying they may seem,
these printed words, while we can yet speak with those who knew
him, and look into eyes that once looked into his.  But in truth
it is here that we find his simple greatness, his great
simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no
man has so shown it more clearly.

Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those
of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other "Founders of
the Republic," not that Lincoln should become still more of the
past, but, rather, that he with them should become still more of
the present.  However faint and mythical may grow the story of
that Great Struggle, the leader, Lincoln, at least should remain
a real, living American.  No matter how clearly, how directly,
Lincoln has shown himself in his writings, we yet should not
forget those men whose minds, from their various view-points,
have illumined for us his character.  As this nation owes a great
debt to Lincoln, so, also, Lincoln's memory owes a great debt to
a nation which, as no other nation could have done, has been able
to appreciate his full worth.  Among the many who have brought
about this appreciation, those only whose estimates have been
placed in these volumes may be mentioned here.  To President
Roosevelt, to Mr. Schurz and to Mr. Choate, the editor, for
himself, for the publishers, and on behalf of the readers, wishes
to offer his sincere acknowledgments.

Thanks are also due, for valuable and sympathetic assistance
rendered in the preparation of this work, to Mr. Gilbert A.
Tracy, of Putnam, Conn., Major William H. Lambert, of
Philadelphia, and Mr. C. F. Gunther, of Chicago, to the Chicago
Historical Association and personally to its capable Secretary,
Miss McIlvaine, to Major Henry S. Burrage, of Portland, Me., and
to General Thomas J. Henderson, of Illinois.

For various courtesies received, the editor is furthermore
indebted to the Librarian of the Library of Congress; to Messrs.
McClure, Phillips & Co., D. Appleton & Co., Macmillan & Co.,
Dodd, Mead & Co., and Harper Brothers, of New York; to Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., Dana, Estes & Co., and L. C. Page & Co., of
Boston; to A. C. McClurg & Co., of Chicago; to The Robert Clarke
Co., of Cincinnati, and to the J. B. Lippincott Co., of
Philadelphia.

It is hardly necessary to add that every effort has been made by
the editor to bring into these volumes whatever material may
there properly belong, material much of which is widely scattered
in public libraries and in private collections. He has been
fortunate in securing certain interesting correspondence and
papers which had not before come into print in book form.
Information concerning some of these papers had reached him too
late to enable the papers to find place in their proper
chronological order in the set. Rather, however, than not to
present these papers to the readers they have been included in
the seventh volume of the set, which concludes the "Writings."

[These later papers are, in this etext, re-arranged into
chronologic order.  D.W.]


October, 1905,

A. B. L.






ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

AN ESSAY BY CARL SHURZ

No American can study the character and career of Abraham Lincoln
without being carried away by sentimental emotions.  We are
always inclined to idealize that which we love,--a state of mind
very unfavorable to the exercise of sober critical judgment.  It
is therefore not surprising that most of those who have written
or spoken on that extraordinary man, even while conscientiously
endeavoring to draw a lifelike portraiture of his being, and to
form a just estimate of his public conduct, should have drifted
into more or less indiscriminating eulogy, painting his great
features in the most glowing colors, and covering with tender
shadings whatever might look like a blemish.

But his standing before posterity will not be exalted by mere
praise of his virtues and abilities, nor by any concealment of
his limitations and faults.  The stature of the great man, one of
whose peculiar charms consisted in his being so unlike all other
great men, will rather lose than gain by the idealization which
so easily runs into the commonplace.  For it was distinctly the
weird mixture of qualities and forces in him, of the lofty with
the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which he had
become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so
fascinating a character among his fellow-men, gave him his
singular power over their minds and hearts, and fitted him to be
the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our national life.

His was indeed a marvellous growth.  The statesman or the
military hero born and reared in a log cabin is a familiar figure
in American history; but we may search in vain among our
celebrities for one whose origin and early life equalled Abraham
Lincoln's in wretchedness.  He first saw the light in a miserable
hovel in Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few barren acres in
a dreary neighborhood; his father a typical "poor Southern
white," shiftless and without ambition for himself or his
children, constantly looking for a new piece of land on which he
might make a living without much work; his mother, in her youth
handsome and bright, grown prematurely coarse in feature and
soured in mind by daily toil and care; the whole household
squalid, cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspirations...
Only when the family had "moved" into the malarious backwoods of
Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a woman of thrift
and energy, had taken charge of the children, the shaggy-headed,
ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, "began to
feel like a human being."  Hard work was his early lot.  When a
mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his
father's clearing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, or
dig ditches, or chop wood, or drive ox teams; occasionally also
to "tend the baby," when the farmer's wife was otherwise engaged.
He could regard it as an advancement to a higher sphere of
activity when he obtained work in a "crossroads store," where he
amused the customers by his talk over the counter; for he soon
distinguished himself among the backwoods folk as one who had
something to say worth listening to.  To win that distinction, he
had to draw mainly upon his wits; for, while his thirst for
knowledge was great, his opportunities for satisfying that thirst
were wofully slender.

In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but little, he was
taught only reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic.  Among
the people of the settlement, bush farmers and small tradesmen,
he found none of uncommon intelligence or education; but some of
them had a few books, which he borrowed eagerly.  Thus he read
and reread, AEsop's Fables, learning to tell stories with a point
and to argue by parables; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's
Progress, a short history of the United States, and Weems's Life
of Washington.  To the town constable's he went to read the
Revised Statutes of Indiana.  Every printed page that fell into
his hands he would greedily devour, and his family and friends
watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his daily
work, crouched in a corner of the log cabin or outside under a
tree, absorbed in a book while munching his supper of corn bread.
In this manner he began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes
he would astonish the girls with such startling remarks as that
the earth was moving around the sun, and not the sun around the
earth, and they marvelled where "Abe" could have got such queer
notions.  Soon he also felt the impulse to write; not only making
extracts from books he wished to remember, but also composing
little essays of his own.  First he sketched these with charcoal
on a wooden shovel scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on
basswood shingles.  Then he transferred them to paper, which was
a scarce commodity in the Lincoln household; taking care to cut
his expressions close, so that they might not cover too much
space,--a style-forming method greatly to be commended.  Seeing
boys put a burning coal on the back of a wood turtle, he was
moved to write on cruelty to animals.  Seeing men intoxicated
with whiskey, he wrote on temperance.  In verse-making, too, he
tried himself, and in satire on persons offensive to him or
others,--satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for
ears polite.  Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some
of his pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the
county weekly.

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever young man,
which he increased by his performances as a speaker, not seldom
drawing upon himself the dissatisfaction of his employers by
mounting a stump in the field, and keeping the farm hands from
their work by little speeches in a jocose and sometimes also a
serious vein.  At the rude social frolics of the settlement he
became an important person, telling funny, stories, mimicking the
itinerant preachers who had happened to pass by, and making his
mark at wrestling matches, too; for at the age of seventeen he
had attained his full height, six feet four inches in his
stockings, if he had any, and a terribly muscular clodhopper he
was.  But he was known never to use his extraordinary strength to
the injury or humiliation of others; rather to do them a kindly
turn, or to enforce justice and fair dealing between them.  All
this made him a favorite in backwoods society, although in some
things he appeared a little odd, to his friends.  Far more than
any of them, he was given not only to reading, but to fits of
abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and also to strange
spells of melancholy, from which he often would pass in a moment
to rollicking outbursts of droll humor.  But on the whole he was
one of the people among whom he lived; in appearance perhaps even
a little more uncouth than most of them,--a very tall, rawboned
youth, with large features, dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious
hair; his arms and legs long, out of proportion; clad in deerskin
trousers, which from frequent exposure to the rain had shrunk so
as to sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several inches of bluish
shin exposed between their lower end and the heavy tan-colored
shoes; the nether garment held usually by only one suspender,
that was strung over a coarse homemade shirt; the head covered in
winter with a coonskin cap, in summer with a rough straw hat of
uncertain shape, without a band.

It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior to his
surroundings, although he confessed to a yearning for some
knowledge of the world outside of the circle in which he lived.
This wish was gratified; but how?  At the age of nineteen he went
down the Mississippi to New Orleans as a flatboat hand,
temporarily joining a trade many members of which at that time
still took pride in being called "half horse and half alligator."
After his return he worked and lived in the old way until the
spring of 1830, when his father "moved again," this time to
Illinois; and on the journey of fifteen days "Abe" had to drive
the ox wagon which carried the household goods.  Another log
cabin was built, and then, fencing a field, Abraham Lincoln split
those historic rails which were destined to play so picturesque a
part in the Presidential campaign twenty-eight years later.

Having come of age, Lincoln left the family, and "struck out for
himself."  He had to "take jobs whenever he could get them."  The
first of these carried him again as a flatboat hand to New
Orleans.  There something happened that made a lasting impression
upon his soul: he witnessed a slave auction.  "His heart bled,"
wrote one of his companions; "said nothing much; was silent;
looked bad.  I can say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that
he formed his opinion on slavery.  It run its iron in him then
and there, May, 1831.  I have heard him say so often."  Then he
lived several years at New Salem, in Illinois, a small mushroom
village, with a mill, some "stores" and whiskey shops, that rose
quickly, and soon disappeared again.  It was a desolate,
disjointed, half-working and half-loitering life, without any
other aim than to gain food and shelter from day to day.  He
served as pilot on a steamboat trip, then as clerk in a store and
a mill; business failing, he was adrift for some time.  Being
compelled to measure his strength with the chief bully of the
neighborhood, and overcoming him, he became a noted person in
that muscular community, and won the esteem and friendship of the
ruling gang of ruffians to such a degree that, when the Black
Hawk war broke out, they elected him, a young man of twenty-
three, captain of a volunteer company, composed mainly of roughs
of their kind.  He took the field, and his most noteworthy deed
of valor consisted, not in killing an Indian, but in protecting
against his own men, at the peril of his own life, the life of an
old savage who had strayed into his camp.

The Black Hawk war over, he turned to politics.  The step from
the captaincy of a volunteer company to a candidacy for a seat in
the Legislature seemed a natural one.  But his popularity,
although great in New Salem, had not spread far enough over the
district, and he was defeated.  Then the wretched hand-to-mouth
struggle began again.  He "set up in store-business" with a
dissolute partner, who drank whiskey while Lincoln was reading
books.  The result was a disastrous failure and a load of debt.
Thereupon he became a deputy surveyor, and was appointed
postmaster of New Salem, the business of the post-office being so
small that he could carry the incoming and outgoing mail in his
hat.  All this could not lift him from poverty, and his surveying
instruments and horse and saddle were sold by the sheriff for
debt.

But while all this misery was upon him his ambition rose to
higher aims.  He walked many miles to borrow from a schoolmaster
a grammar with which to improve his language.  A lawyer lent him
a copy of Blackstone, and he began to study law.

People would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying in
the grass, "with his feet up a tree," or sitting on a fence, as,
absorbed in a book, he learned to construct correct sentences and
made himself a jurist.  At once he gained a little practice,
pettifogging before a justice of the peace for friends, without
expecting a fee.  Judicial functions, too, were thrust upon him,
but only at horse-races or wrestling matches, where his
acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts undisputed
authority.  His popularity grew apace, and soon he could be a
candidate for the Legislature again.  Although he called himself
a Whig, an ardent admirer of Henry Clay, his clever stump
speeches won him the election in the strongly Democratic
district.  Then for the first time, perhaps, he thought seriously
of his outward appearance.  So far he had been content with a
garb of "Kentucky jeans," not seldom ragged, usually patched, and
always shabby.  Now, he borrowed some money from a friend to buy
a new suit of clothes--"store clothes" fit for a Sangamon County
statesman; and thus adorned he set out for the state capital,
Vandalia, to take his seat among the lawmakers.

His legislative career, which stretched over several sessions--
for he was thrice re-elected, in 1836, 1838, and 1840--was not
remarkably brilliant.  He did, indeed, not lack ambition.  He
dreamed even of making himself "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois,"
and he actually distinguished himself by zealous and effective
work in those "log-rolling" operations by which the young State
received "a general system of internal improvements" in the shape
of railroads, canals, and banks,--a reckless policy, burdening
the State with debt, and producing the usual crop of political
demoralization, but a policy characteristic of the time and the
impatiently enterprising spirit of the Western people.  Lincoln,
no doubt with the best intentions, but with little knowledge of
the subject, simply followed the popular current.  The
achievement in which, perhaps, he gloried most was the removal of
the State government from Vandalia to Springfield; one of those
triumphs of political management which are apt to be the pride of
the small politician's statesmanship.  One thing, however, he did
in which his true nature asserted itself, and which gave distinct
promise of the future pursuit of high aims.  Against an
overwhelming preponderance of sentiment in the Legislature,
followed by only one other member, he recorded his protest
against a proslavery resolution,--that protest declaring "the
institution of slavery to be founded on both injustice and bad
policy."  This was not only the irrepressible voice of his
conscience; it was true moral valor, too; for at that time, in
many parts of the West, an abolitionist was regarded as little
better than a horse-thief, and even "Abe Lincoln" would hardly
have been forgiven his antislavery principles, had he not been
known as such an "uncommon good fellow."  But here, in obedience
to the great conviction of his life, he manifested his courage to
stand alone, that courage which is the first requisite of
leadership in a great cause.

Together with his reputation and influence as a politician grew
his law practice, especially after he had removed from New Salem
to Springfield, and associated himself with a practitioner of
good standing.  He had now at last won a fixed position in
society.  He became a successful lawyer, less, indeed, by his
learning as a jurist than by his effectiveness as an advocate and
by the striking uprightness of his character; and it may truly be
said that his vivid sense of truth and justice had much to do
with his effectiveness as an advocate.  He would refuse to act as
the attorney even of personal friends when he saw the right on
the other side.  He would abandon cases, even during trial, when
the testimony convinced him that his client was in the wrong.  He
would dissuade those who sought his service from pursuing an
obtainable advantage when their claims seemed to him unfair.
Presenting his very first case in the United States Circuit
Court, the only question being one of authority, he declared
that, upon careful examination, he found all the authorities on
the other side, and none on his.  Persons accused of crime, when
he thought them guilty, he would not defend at all, or,
attempting their defence, he was unable to put forth his powers.
One notable exception is on record, when his personal sympathies
had been strongly aroused.  But when he felt himself to be the
protector of innocence, the defender of justice, or the
prosecutor of wrong, he frequently disclosed such unexpected
resources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to such
fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his hearers, and
make him fairly irresistible.  Even an ordinary law argument,
coming from him, seldom failed to produce the impression that he
was profoundly convinced of the soundness of his position.  It is
not surprising that the mere appearance of so conscientious an
attorney in any case should have carried, not only to juries, but
even to judges, almost a presumption of right on his side, and
that the people began to call him, sincerely meaning it, "honest
Abe Lincoln."

In the meantime he had private sorrows and trials of a painfully
afflicting nature.  He had loved and been loved by a fair and
estimable girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in the flower of her youth
and beauty, and he mourned her loss with such intensity of grief
that his friends feared for his reason.  Recovering from his
morbid depression, he bestowed what he thought a new affection
upon another lady, who refused him.  And finally, moderately
prosperous in his worldly affairs, and having prospects of
political distinction before him, he paid his addresses to Mary
Todd, of Kentucky, and was accepted.  But then tormenting doubts
of the genuineness of his own affection for her, of the
compatibility of their characters, and of their future happiness
came upon him.  His distress was so great that he felt himself in
danger of suicide, and feared to carry a pocket-knife with him;
and he gave mortal offence to his bride by not appearing on the
appointed wedding day.  Now the torturing consciousness of the
wrong he had done her grew unendurable.  He won back her
affection, ended the agony by marrying her, and became a faithful
and patient husband and a good father.  But it was no secret to
those who knew the family well that his domestic life was full of
trials.  The erratic temper of his wife not seldom put the
gentleness of his nature to the severest tests; and these
troubles and struggles, which accompanied him through all the
vicissitudes of his life from the modest home in Springfield to
the White House at Washington, adding untold private heart-
burnings to his public cares, and sometimes precipitating upon
him incredible embarrassments in the discharge of his public
duties, form one of the most pathetic features of his career.

He continued to "ride the circuit," read books while travelling
in his buggy, told funny stories to his fellow-lawyers in the
tavern, chatted familiarly with his neighbors around the stove in
the store and at the post-office, had his hours of melancholy
brooding as of old, and became more and more widely known and
trusted and beloved among the people of his State for his ability
as a lawyer and politician, for the uprightness of his character
and the overflowing spring of sympathetic kindness in his heart.
His main ambition was confessedly that of political distinction;
but hardly any one would at that time have seen in him the man
destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the
century.

His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was elected to
Congress.  In a clever speech in the House of Representatives he
denounced President Polk for having unjustly forced war upon
Mexico, and he amused the Committee of the Whole by a witty
attack upon General Cass.  More important was the expression he
gave to his antislavery impulses by offering a bill looking to
the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, and
by his repeated votes for the famous Wilmot Proviso, intended to
exclude slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico.  But
when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 1849, he left his
seat, he gloomily despaired of ever seeing the day when the cause
nearest to his heart would be rightly grasped by the people, and
when he would be able to render any service to his country in
solving the great problem.  Nor had his career as a member of
Congress in any sense been such as to gratify his ambition.
Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great destiny for himself,
it must have been weak at that period; for he actually sought to
obtain from the new Whig President, General Taylor, the place of
Commissioner of the General Land Office; willing to bury himself
in one of the administrative bureaus of the government.
Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately,
when, later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered
to him, Mrs. Lincoln's protest induced him to decline it.
Returning to Springfield, he gave himself with renewed zest to
his law practice, acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850 with
reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in the
Presidential campaign of 1852  the Whig candidate in some
spiritless speeches, and took but a languid interest in the
politics of the day.  But just then his time was drawing near.

The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, by the Compromise
of 1850 was rudely broken by the introduction of the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill in 1854.  The repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
opening the Territories of the United States, the heritage of
coming generations, to the invasion of slavery, suddenly revealed
the whole significance of the slavery question to the people of
the free States, and thrust itself into the politics of the
country as the paramount issue.  Something like an electric shock
flashed through the North.  Men who but a short time before had
been absorbed by their business pursuits, and deprecated all
political agitation, were startled out of their security by a
sudden alarm, and excitedly took sides.  That restless trouble of
conscience about slavery, which even in times of apparent repose
had secretly disturbed the souls of Northern people, broke forth
in an utterance louder than ever.  The bonds of accustomed party
allegiance gave way.  Antislavery Democrats and antislavery Whigs
felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering
sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization.
The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling
call of the hour.  Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come.  He
rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the
struggle.  This, however, was not owing to his virtues and
abilities alone.  Indeed, the slavery question stirred his soul
in its profoundest depths; it was, as one of his intimate friends
said, "the only one on which he would become excited"; it called
forth all his faculties and energies.  Yet there were many others
who, having long and arduously fought the antislavery battle in
the popular assembly, or in the press, or in the halls of
Congress, far surpassed him in prestige, and compared with whom
he was still an obscure and untried man.  His reputation,
although highly honorable and well earned, had so far been
essentially local.  As a stump-speaker in Whig canvasses outside
of his State he had attracted comparatively little attention; but
in Illinois he had been recognized as one of the foremost men of
the Whig party.  Among the opponents of the Nebraska Bill he
occupied in his State so important a position, that in 1856 he
was the choice of a large majority of the "Anti-Nebraska men" in
the Legislature for a seat in the Senate of the United States
which then became vacant; and when he, an old Whig, could not
obtain the votes of the Anti-Nebraska Democrats necessary to make
a majority, he generously urged his friends to transfer their
votes to Lyman Trumbull, who was then elected.  Two years later,
in the first national convention of the Republican party, the
delegation from Illinois brought him forward as a candidate for
the vice-presidency, and he received respectable support.  Still,
the name of Abraham Lincoln was not widely known beyond the
boundaries of his own State.  But now it was this local
prominence in Illinois that put him in a position of peculiar
advantage on the battlefield of national politics.  In the
assault on the Missouri Compromise which broke down all legal
barriers to the spread of slavery Stephen Arnold Douglas was the
ostensible leader and central figure; and Douglas was a Senator
from Illinois, Lincoln's State.  Douglas's national theatre of
action was the Senate, but in his constituency in Illinois were
the roots of his official position and power.  What he did in the
Senate he had to justify before the people of Illinois, in order
to maintain himself in place; and in Illinois all eyes turned to
Lincoln as Douglas's natural antagonist.

As very young men they had come to Illinois, Lincoln from
Indiana, Douglas from Vermont, and had grown up together in
public life, Douglas as a Democrat, Lincoln as a Whig.  They had
met first in Vandalia, in 1834, when Lincoln was in the
Legislature and Douglas in the lobby; and again in 1836, both as
members of the Legislature.  Douglas, a very able politician, of
the agile, combative, audacious, "pushing" sort, rose in
political distinction with remarkable rapidity.  In quick
succession he became a member of the Legislature, a State's
attorney, secretary of state, a judge on the supreme bench of
Illinois, three times a Representative in Congress, and a Senator
of the United States when only thirty-nine years old.  In the
National Democratic convention of 1852 he appeared even as an
aspirant to the nomination for the Presidency, as the favorite of
"young America," and received a respectable vote.  He had far
outstripped Lincoln in what is commonly called political success
and in reputation.  But it had frequently happened that in
political campaigns Lincoln felt himself impelled, or was
selected by his Whig friends, to answer Douglas's speeches; and
thus the two were looked upon, in a large part of the State at
least, as the representative combatants of their respective
parties in the debates before popular meetings.  As soon,
therefore, as, after the passage of his Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
Douglas returned to Illinois to defend his cause before his
constituents, Lincoln, obeying not only his own impulse, but also
general expectation, stepped forward as his principal opponent.
Thus the struggle about the principles involved in the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill, or, in a broader sense, the struggle between
freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois the outward form of a
personal contest between Lincoln and Douglas; and, as it
continued and became more animated, that personal contest in
Illinois was watched with constantly increasing interest by the
whole country.  When, in 1858, Douglas's senatorial term being
about to expire, Lincoln was formally designated by the
Republican convention of Illinois as their candidate for the
Senate, to take Douglas's place, and the two contestants agreed
to debate the questions at issue face to face in a series of
public meetings, the eyes of the whole American people were
turned eagerly to that one point: and the spectacle reminded one
of those lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle
array, standing still to see their two principal champions fight
out the contested cause between the lines in single combat.

Lincoln had then reached the full maturity of his powers.  His
equipment as a statesman did not embrace a comprehensive
knowledge of public affairs.  What he had studied he had indeed
made his own, with the eager craving and that zealous tenacity
characteristic of superior minds learning under difficulties.
But his narrow opportunities and the unsteady life he had led
during his younger years had not permitted the accumulation of
large stores in his mind.  It is true, in political campaigns he
had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the
Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements,
banks, and so on, but only in a perfunctory manner.  Had he ever
given much serious thought and study to these subjects, it is
safe to assume that a mind so prolific of original conceits as
his would certainly have produced some utterance upon them worth
remembering.  His soul had evidently never been deeply stirred by
such topics.  But when his moral nature was aroused, his brain
developed an untiring activity until it had mastered all the
knowledge within reach.  As soon as the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise had thrust the slavery question into politics as the
paramount issue, Lincoln plunged into an arduous study of all its
legal, historical, and moral aspects, and then his mind became a
complete arsenal of argument.  His rich natural gifts, trained by
long and varied practice, had made him an orator of rare
persuasiveness.  In his immature days, he had pleased himself for
a short period with that inflated, high-flown style which, among
the uncultivated, passes for "beautiful speaking."  His inborn
truthfulness and his artistic instinct soon overcame that
aberration and revealed to him the noble beauty and strength of
simplicity.  He possessed an uncommon power of clear and compact
statement, which might have reminded those who knew the story of
his early youth of the efforts of the poor boy, when he copied
his compositions from the scraped wooden shovel, carefully to
trim his expressions in order to save paper.  His language had
the energy of honest directness and he was a master of logical
lucidity.  He loved to point and enliven his reasoning by
humorous illustrations, usually anecdotes of Western life, of
which he had an inexhaustible store at his command.  These
anecdotes had not seldom a flavor of rustic robustness about
them, but he used them with great effect, while amusing the
audience, to give life to an abstraction, to explode an
absurdity, to clinch an argument, to drive home an admonition.
The natural kindliness of his tone, softening prejudice and
disarming partisan rancor, would often open to his reasoning a
way into minds most unwilling to receive it.

Yet his greatest power consisted in the charm of his
individuality.  That charm did not, in the ordinary way, appeal
to the ear or to the eye.  His voice was not melodious; rather
shrill and piercing, especially when it rose to its high treble
in moments of great animation.  His figure was unhandsome, and
the action of his unwieldy limbs awkward.  He commanded none of
the outward graces of oratory as they are commonly understood.
His charm was of a different kind.  It flowed from the rare depth
and genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings.
Sympathy was the strongest element in his nature.  One of his
biographers, who knew him before he became President, says:
"Lincoln's compassion might be stirred deeply by an object
present, but never by an object absent and unseen.  In the former
case he would most likely extend relief, with little inquiry into
the merits of the case, because, as he expressed it himself, it
`took a pain out of his own heart.'"  Only half of this is
correct.  It is certainly true that he could not witness any
individual distress or oppression, or any kind of suffering,
without feeling a pang of pain himself, and that by relieving as
much as he could the suffering of others he put an end to his
own.  This compassionate impulse to help he felt not only for
human beings, but for every living creature.  As in his boyhood
he angrily reproved the boys who tormented a wood turtle by
putting a burning coal on its back, so, we are told, he would,
when a mature man, on a journey, dismount from his buggy and wade
waist-deep in mire to rescue a pig struggling in a swamp.
Indeed, appeals to his compassion were so irresistible to him,
and he felt it so difficult to refuse anything when his refusal
could give pain, that he himself sometimes spoke of his inability
to say "no" as a positive weakness.  But that certainly does not
prove that his compassionate feeling was confined to individual
cases of suffering witnessed with his own eyes.  As the boy was
moved by the aspect of the tortured wood turtle to compose an
essay against cruelty to animals in general, so the aspect of
other cases of suffering and wrong wrought up his moral nature,
and set his mind to work against cruelty, injustice, and
oppression in general.

As his sympathy went forth to others, it attracted others to him.
Especially those whom he called the "plain people" felt
themselves drawn to him by the instinctive feeling that he
understood, esteemed, and appreciated them.  He had grown up
among the poor, the lowly, the ignorant.  He never ceased to
remember the good souls he had met among them, and the many
kindnesses they had done him.  Although in his mental development
he had risen far above them, he never looked down upon them.  How
they felt and how they reasoned he knew, for so he had once felt
and reasoned himself.  How they could be moved he knew, for so he
had once been moved himself and practised moving others.  His
mind was much larger than theirs, but it thoroughly comprehended
theirs; and while he thought much farther than they, their
thoughts were ever present to him.  Nor had the visible distance
between them grown as wide as his rise in the world would seem to
have warranted.  Much of his backwoods speech and manners still
clung to him.  Although he had become "Mr. Lincoln" to his later
acquaintances, he was still "Abe" to the "Nats" and "Billys" and
"Daves" of his youth; and their familiarity neither appeared
unnatural to them, nor was it in the least awkward to him.  He
still told and enjoyed stories similar to those he had told and
enjoyed in the Indiana settlement and at New Salem.  His wants
remained as modest as they had ever been; his domestic habits had
by no means completely accommodated themselves to those of his
more highborn wife; and though the "Kentucky jeans" apparel had
long been dropped, his clothes of better material and better make
would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs.  His cotton umbrella,
without a handle, and tied together with a coarse string to keep
it from flapping, which he carried on his circuit rides, is said
to be remembered still by some of his surviving neighbors.  This
rusticity of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt
of refinement and comfort which self-made men sometimes carry
into their more affluent circumstances.  To Abraham Lincoln it
was entirely natural, and all those who came into contact with
him knew it to be so.  In his ways of thinking and feeling he had
become a gentleman in the highest sense, but the refining process
had polished but little the outward form.  The plain people,
therefore, still considered "honest Abe Lincoln" one of
themselves; and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently
did, that his thoughts and aspirations moved in a sphere above
their own, they were all the more proud of him, without any
diminution of fellow-feeling.  It was this relation of mutual
sympathy and understanding between Lincoln and the plain people
that gave him his peculiar power as a public man, and singularly
fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership which was
preeminently required in the great crisis then coming on,--the
leadership which indeed thinks and moves ahead of the masses, but
always remains within sight and sympathetic touch of them.

He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better equipped than he had
ever been before.  He not only instinctively felt, but he had
convinced himself by arduous study, that in this struggle against
the spread of slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, the
enlightened opinion of mankind, history, the Constitution, and
good policy on his side.  It was observed that after he began to
discuss the slavery question his speeches were pitched in a much
loftier key than his former oratorical efforts.  While he
remained fond of telling funny stories in private conversation,
they disappeared more and more from his public discourse.  He
would still now and then point his argument with expressions of
inimitable quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly humor and
witty irony; but his general tone was serious, and rose sometimes
to genuine solemnity. His masterly skill in dialectical thrust
and parry, his wealth of knowledge, his power of reasoning and
elevation of sentiment, disclosed in language of rare precision,
strength, and beauty, not seldom astonished his old friends.

Neither of the two champions could have found a more formidable
antagonist than each now met in the other.  Douglas was by far
the most conspicuous member of his party. His admirers had dubbed
him "the Little Giant," contrasting in that nickname the
greatness of his mind with the smallness of his body.  But though
of low stature, his broad-shouldered figure appeared uncommonly
sturdy, and there was something lion-like in the squareness of
his brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of his long hair.  His
loud and persistent advocacy of territorial expansion, in the
name of patriotism and "manifest destiny," had given him an
enthusiastic following among the young and ardent.  Great natural
parts, a highly combative temperament, and long training had made
him a debater unsurpassed in a Senate filled with able men.  He
could be as forceful in his appeals to patriotic feelings as he
was fierce in denunciation and thoroughly skilled in all the
baser tricks of parliamentary pugilism.  While genial and
rollicking in his social intercourse--the idol of the "boys" he
felt himself one of the most renowned statesmen of his time, and
would frequently meet his opponents with an overbearing
haughtiness, as persons more to be pitied than to be feared.  In
his speech opening the campaign of 1858, he spoke of Lincoln,
whom the Republicans had dared to advance as their candidate for
"his" place in the Senate, with an air of patronizing if not
contemptuous condescension, as "a kind, amiable, and intelligent
gentleman and a good citizen."  The Little Giant would have been
pleased to pass off his antagonist as a tall dwarf.  He knew
Lincoln too well, however, to indulge himself seriously in such a
delusion.  But the political situation was at that moment in a
curious tangle, and Douglas could expect to derive from the
confusion great advantage over his opponent.

By the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories
to the ingress of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, but
greatly alarmed the North.  He had sought to conciliate Northern
sentiment by appending to his Kansas-Nebraska Bill the
declaration that its intent was "not to legislate slavery into
any State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave
the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States."  This he called "the great principle of
popular sovereignty."  When asked whether, under this act, the
people of a Territory, before its admission as a State, would
have the right to exclude slavery, he answered, "That is a
question for the courts to decide."  Then came the famous "Dred
Scott decision," in which the Supreme Court held substantially
that the right to hold slaves as property existed in the
Territories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and that this
right could not be denied by any act of a territorial government.
This, of course, denied the right of the people of any Territory
to exclude slavery while they were in a territorial condition,
and it alarmed the Northern people still more.  Douglas
recognized the binding force of the decision of the Supreme
Court, at the same time maintaining, most illogically, that his
great principle of popular sovereignty remained in force
nevertheless.  Meanwhile, the proslavery people of western
Missouri, the so-called "border ruffians," had invaded Kansas,
set up a constitutional convention, made a constitution of an
extreme pro-slavery type, the "Lecompton Constitution," refused
to submit it fairly to a vote of the people of Kansas, and then
referred it to Congress for acceptance,--seeking thus to
accomplish the admission of Kansas as a slave State.  Had Douglas
supported such a scheme, he would have lost all foothold in the
North.  In the name of popular sovereignty he loudly declared his
opposition to the acceptance of any constitution not sanctioned
by a formal popular vote.  He "did not care," he said, "whether
slavery be voted up or down," but there must be a fair vote of
the people.  Thus he drew upon himself the hostility of the
Buchanan administration, which was controlled by the proslavery
interest, but he saved his Northern following.  More than this,
not only did his Democratic admirers now call him "the true
champion of freedom," but even some Republicans of large
influence, prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing with
Douglas in his fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and
hoping to detach him permanently from the proslavery interest and
to force a lasting breach in the Democratic party, seriously
advised the Republicans of Illinois to give up their opposition
to Douglas, and to help re-elect him to the Senate.  Lincoln was
not of that opinion.  He believed that great popular movements
can succeed only when guided by their faithful friends, and that
the antislavery cause could not safely be entrusted to the
keeping of one who "did not care whether slavery be voted up or
down."  This opinion prevailed in Illinois; but the influences
within the Republican party over which it prevailed yielded only
a reluctant acquiescence, if they acquiesced at all, after having
materially strengthened Douglas's position.  Such was the
situation of things when the campaign of 1858 between Lincoln and
Douglas began.

Lincoln opened the campaign on his side at the convention which
nominated him as the Republican candidate for the senatorship,
with a memorable saying which sounded like a shout from the
watchtower of history: "A house divided against itself cannot
stand.  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved.
I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it will cease to
be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all
the States,--old as well as new, North as well as South."  Then
he proceeded to point out that the Nebraska doctrine combined
with the Dred Scott decision worked in the direction of making
the nation "all slave."  Here was the "irrepressible conflict"
spoken of by Seward a short time later, in a speech made famous
mainly by that phrase.  If there was any new discovery in it, the
right of priority was Lincoln's.  This utterance proved not only
his statesmanlike conception of the issue, but also, in his
situation as a candidate, the firmness of his moral courage.  The
friends to whom he had read the draught of this speech before he
delivered it warned him anxiously that its delivery might be
fatal to his success in the election.  This was shrewd advice, in
the ordinary sense.  While a slaveholder could threaten disunion
with impunity, the mere suggestion that the existence of slavery
was incompatible with freedom in the Union would hazard the
political chances of any public man in the North.  But Lincoln
was inflexible.  "It is true," said he, "and I will deliver it as
written.... I would rather be defeated with these expressions in
my speech held up and discussed before the people than be
victorious without them."  The statesman was right in his far-
seeing judgment and his conscientious statement of the truth, but
the practical politicians were also right in their prediction of
the immediate effect.  Douglas instantly seized upon the
declaration that a house divided against itself cannot stand as
the main objective point of his attack, interpreting it as an
incitement to a "relentless sectional war," and there is no doubt
that the persistent reiteration of this charge served to frighten
not a few timid souls.

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring the moral and
philosophical side of the subject to the foreground.  "Slavery is
wrong" was the keynote of all his speeches.  To Douglas's
glittering sophism that the right of the people of a Territory to
have slavery or not, as they might desire, was in accordance with
the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made the pointed
answer: "Then true popular sovereignty, according to Senator
Douglas, means that, when one man makes another man his slave, no
third man shall be allowed to object."  To Douglas's argument
that the principle which demanded that the people of a Territory
should be permitted to choose whether they would have slavery or
not "originated when God made man, and placed good and evil
before him, allowing him to choose upon his own responsibility,"
Lincoln solemnly replied: "No; God--did not place good and evil
before man, telling him to make his choice.  On the contrary, God
did tell him there was one tree of the fruit of which he should
not eat, upon pain of death."  He did not, however, place himself
on the most advanced ground taken by the radical anti-slavery
men.  He admitted that, under the Constitution, "the Southern
people were entitled to a Congressional fugitive slave law,"
although he did not approve the fugitive slave law then existing.
He declared also that, if slavery were kept out of the
Territories during their territorial existence, as it should be,
and if then the people of any Territory, having a fair chance and
a clear field, should do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt
a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the
institution among them, he saw no alternative but to admit such a
Territory into the Union.  He declared further that, while he
should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the
District of Columbia, he would, as a member of Congress, with his
present views, not endeavor to bring on that abolition except on
condition that emancipation be gradual, that it be approved by
the decision of a majority of voters in the District, and that
compensation be made to unwilling owners.  On every available
occasion, he pronounced himself in favor of the deportation and
colonization of the blacks, of course with their consent.  He
repeatedly disavowed any wish on his part to have social and
political equality established between whites and blacks.  On
this point he summed up his views in a reply to Douglas's
assertion that the Declaration of Independence, in speaking of
all men as being created equal, did not include the negroes,
saying: "I do not understand the Declaration of Independence to
mean that all men were created equal in all respects.  They are
not equal in color.  But I believe that it does mean to declare
that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal in their
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

With regard to some of these subjects Lincoln modified his
position at a later period, and it has been suggested that he
would have professed more advanced principles in his debates with
Douglas, had he not feared thereby to lose votes.  This view can
hardly be sustained.  Lincoln had the courage of his opinions,
but he was not a radical.  The man who risked his election by
delivering, against the urgent protest of his friends, the speech
about "the house divided against itself" would not have shrunk
from the expression of more extreme views, had he really
entertained them.  It is only fair to assume that he said what at
the time he really thought, and that if, subsequently, his
opinions changed, it was owing to new conceptions of good policy
and of duty brought forth by an entirely new set of circumstances
and exigencies.  It is characteristic that he continued to adhere
to the impracticable colonization plan even after the
Emancipation Proclamation had already been issued.

But in this contest Lincoln proved himself not only a debater,
but also a political strategist of the first order.  The "kind,
amiable, and intelligent gentleman," as Douglas had been pleased
to call him, was by no means as harmless as a dove.  He possessed
an uncommon share of that worldly shrewdness which not seldom
goes with genuine simplicity of character; and the political
experience gathered in the Legislature and in Congress, and in
many election campaigns, added to his keen intuitions, had made
him as far-sighted a judge of the probable effects of a public
man's sayings or doings upon the popular mind, and as accurate a
calculator in estimating political chances and forecasting
results, as could be found among the party managers in Illinois.
And now he perceived keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas
found himself, between the Dred Scott decision, which declared
the right to hold slaves to exist in the Territories by virtue of
the Federal Constitution, and his "great principle of popular
sovereignty," according to which the people of a Territory, if
they saw fit, were to have the right to exclude slavery
therefrom.  Douglas was twisting and squirming to the best of his
ability to avoid the admission that the two were incompatible.
The question then presented itself if it would be good policy for
Lincoln to force Douglas to a clear expression of his opinion as
to whether, the Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, "the people
of a Territory could in any lawful way exclude slavery from its
limits prior to the formation of a State constitution."  Lincoln
foresaw and predicted what Douglas would answer: that slavery
could not exist in a Territory unless the people desired it and
gave it protection by territorial legislation.  In an improvised
caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory on Douglas was
discussed.  Lincoln's friends unanimously advised against it,
because the answer foreseen would sufficiently commend Douglas to
the people of Illinois to insure his re-election to the Senate.
But Lincoln persisted.  "I am after larger game," said he.  "If
Douglas so answers, he can never be President, and the battle of
1860 is worth a hundred of this."  The interrogatory was pressed
upon Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no matter what the
decision of the Supreme Court might be on the abstract question,
the people of a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or
exclude slavery by territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly
to the institution.  Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity
of the proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist of
right in the Territories by virtue of the supreme law, the
Federal Constitution, it could be kept out or expelled by an
inferior law, one made by a territorial Legislature.  Again the
judgment of the politicians, having only the nearest object in
view, proved correct: Douglas was reelected to the Senate.  But
Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by resorting to
the expedient of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine," forfeited
his last chance of becoming President of the United States.  He
might have hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from
the South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution; but
that he taught the people of the Territories a trick by which
they could defeat what the proslavery men considered a
constitutional right, and that he called that trick lawful, this
the slave power would never forgive.  The breach between the
Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth irremediable
and fatal.

The Presidential election of 1860 approached.  The struggle in
Kansas, and the debates in Congress which accompanied it, and
which not unfrequently provoked violent outbursts, continually
stirred the popular excitement.  Within the Democratic party
raged the war of factions.  The national Democratic convention
met at Charleston on the 23d of April, 1860.  After a struggle of
ten days between the adherents and the opponents of Douglas,
during which the delegates from the cotton States had withdrawn,
the convention adjourned without having nominated any candidates,
to meet again in Baltimore on the 18th of June.  There was no
prospect, however, of reconciling the hostile elements.  It
appeared very probable that the Baltimore convention would
nominate Douglas, while the seceding Southern Democrats would set
up a candidate of their own, representing extreme proslavery
principles.

Meanwhile, the national Republican convention assembled at
Chicago on the 16th of May, full of enthusiasm and hope.  The
situation was easily understood.  The Democrats would have the
South.  In order to succeed in the election, the Republicans had
to win, in addition to the States carried by Fremont in 1856,
those that were classed as "doubtful,"--New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Indiana, or Illinois in the place of either New Jersey or
Indiana.  The most eminent Republican statesmen and leaders of
the time thought of for the Presidency were Seward and Chase,
both regarded as belonging to the more advanced order of
antislavery men.  Of the two, Seward had the largest following,
mainly from New York, New England, and the Northwest.  Cautious
politicians doubted seriously whether Seward, to whom some
phrases in his speeches had undeservedly given the reputation of
a reckless radical, would be able to command the whole Republican
vote in the doubtful States.  Besides, during his long public
career he had made enemies.  It was evident that those who
thought Seward's nomination too hazardous an experiment would
consider Chase unavailable for the same reason.  They would then
look round for an "available" man; and among the "available" men
Abraham Lincoln was easily discovered to stand foremost.  His
great debate with Douglas had given him a national reputation.
The people of the East being eager to see the hero of so dramatic
a contest, he had been induced to visit several Eastern cities,
and had astonished and delighted large and distinguished
audiences with speeches of singular power and originality.  An
address delivered by him in the Cooper Institute in New York,
before an audience containing a large number of important
persons, was then, and has ever since been, especially praised as
one of the most logical and convincing political speeches ever
made in this country.  The people of the West had grown proud of
him as a distinctively Western great man, and his popularity at
home had some peculiar features which could be expected to
exercise a potent charm.  Nor was Lincoln's name as that of an
available candidate left to the chance of accidental discovery.
It is indeed not probable that he thought of himself as a
Presidential possibility, during his contest with Douglas for the
senatorship.  As late as April, 1859, he had written to a friend
who had approached him on the subject that he did not think
himself fit for the Presidency.  The Vice-Presidency was then the
limit of his ambition.  But some of his friends in Illinois took
the matter seriously in hand, and Lincoln, after some hesitation,
then formally authorized "the use of his name."  The matter was
managed with such energy and excellent judgment that, in the
convention, he had not only the whole vote of Illinois to start
with, but won votes on all sides without offending any rival.  A
large majority of the opponents of Seward went over to Abraham
Lincoln, and gave him the nomination on the third ballot.  As had
been foreseen, Douglas was nominated by one wing of the
Democratic party at Baltimore, while the extreme proslavery wing
put Breckinridge into the field as its candidate.  After a
campaign conducted with the energy of genuine enthusiasm on the
antislavery side the united Republicans defeated the divided
Democrats, and Lincoln was elected President by a majority of
fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges.

The result of the election had hardly been declared when the
disunion movement in the South, long threatened and carefully
planned and prepared, broke out in the shape of open revolt, and
nearly a month before Lincoln could be inaugurated as President
of the United States seven Southern States had adopted ordinances
of secession, formed an independent confederacy, framed a
constitution for it, and elected Jefferson Davis its president,
expecting the other slaveholding States soon to join them.  On
the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield for
Washington; having, with characteristic simplicity, asked his law
partner not to change the sign of the firm "Lincoln and Herndon"
during the four years unavoidable absence of the senior partner,
and having taken an affectionate and touching leave of his
neighbors.

The situation which confronted the new President was appalling:
the larger part of the South in open rebellion, the rest of the
slaveholding States wavering preparing to follow; the revolt
guided by determined, daring, and skillful leaders; the Southern
people, apparently full of enthusiasm and military spirit,
rushing to arms, some of the forts and arsenals already in their
possession; the government of the Union, before the accession of
the new President, in the hands of men some of whom actively
sympathized with the revolt, while others were hampered by their
traditional doctrines in dealing with it, and really gave it aid
and comfort by their irresolute attitude; all the departments
full of "Southern sympathizers" and honeycombed with disloyalty;
the treasury empty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb; the
arsenals ill supplied with arms, if not emptied by treacherous
practices; the regular army of insignificant strength, dispersed
over an immense surface, and deprived of some of its best
officers by defection; the navy small and antiquated.  But that
was not all.  The threat of disunion had so often been resorted
to by the slave power in years gone by that most Northern people
had ceased to believe in its seriousness.  But, when disunion
actually appeared as a stern reality, something like a chill
swept through the whole Northern country.  A cry for union and
peace at any price rose on all sides.  Democratic partisanship
reiterated this cry with vociferous vehemence, and even many
Republicans grew afraid of the victory they had just achieved at
the ballot-box, and spoke of compromise.  The country fairly
resounded with the noise of "anticoercion meetings."  Expressions
of firm resolution from determined antislavery men were indeed
not wanting, but they were for a while almost drowned by a
bewildering confusion of discordant voices.  Even this was not
all.  Potent influences in Europe, with an ill-concealed desire
for the permanent disruption of the American Union, eagerly
espoused the cause of the Southern seceders, and the two
principal maritime powers of the Old World seemed only to be
waiting for a favorable opportunity to lend them a helping hand.

This was the state of things to be mastered by "honest Abe
Lincoln" when he took his seat in the Presidential chair,--
"honest Abe Lincoln," who was so good-natured that he could not
say "no"; the greatest achievement in whose life had been a
debate on the slavery question; who had never been in any
position of power; who was without the slightest experience of
high executive duties, and who had only a speaking acquaintance
with the men upon whose counsel and cooperation he was to depend.
Nor was his accession to power under such circumstances greeted
with general confidence even by the members of his party.  While
he had indeed won much popularity, many Republicans, especially
among those who had advocated Seward's nomination for the
Presidency, saw the simple "Illinois lawyer" take the reins of
government with a feeling little short of dismay.  The orators
and journals of the opposition were ridiculing and lampooning him
without measure.  Many people actually wondered how such a man
could dare to undertake a task which, as he himself had said to
his neighbors in his parting speech, was "more difficult than
that of Washington himself had been."

But Lincoln brought to that task, aside from other uncommon
qualities, the first requisite,--an intuitive comprehension of
its nature.  While he did not indulge in the delusion that the
Union could be maintained or restored without a conflict of arms,
he could indeed not foresee all the problems he would have to
solve.  He instinctively understood, however, by what means that
conflict would have to be conducted by the government of a
democracy.  He knew that the impending war, whether great or
small, would not be like a foreign war, exciting a united
national enthusiasm, but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon
heat the animosities of party even in the localities controlled
by the government; that this war would have to be carried on not
by means of a ready-made machinery, ruled by an undisputed,
absolute will, but by means to be furnished by the voluntary
action of the people:--armies to be formed by voluntary
enlistments; large sums of money to be raised by the people,
through representatives, voluntarily taxing themselves; trust of
extraordinary power to be voluntarily granted; and war measures,
not seldom restricting the rights and liberties to which the
citizen was accustomed, to be voluntarily accepted and submitted
to by the people, or at least a large majority of them; and that
this would have to be kept up not merely during a short period of
enthusiastic excitement; but possibly through weary years of
alternating success and disaster, hope and despondency.  He knew
that in order to steer this government by public opinion
successfully through all the confusion created by the prejudices
and doubts and differences of sentiment distracting the popular
mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and
guide the popular will that it might give forth all the means
required for the performance of his great task, he would have to
take into account all the influences strongly affecting the
current of popular thought and feeling, and to direct while
appearing to obey.

This was the kind of leadership he intuitively conceived to be
needed when a free people were to be led forward en masse to
overcome a great common danger under circumstances of appalling
difficulty, the leadership which does not dash ahead with
brilliant daring, no matter who follows, but which is intent upon
rallying all the available forces, gathering in the stragglers,
closing up the column, so that the front may advance well
supported.  For this leadership Abraham Lincoln was admirably
fitted, better than any other American statesman of his day; for
he understood the plain people, with all their loves and hates,
their prejudices and their noble impulses, their weaknesses and
their strength, as he understood himself, and his sympathetic
nature was apt to draw their sympathy to him.

His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in
characteristic manner.  Although yielding nothing in point of
principle, it was by no means a flaming antislavery manifesto,
such as would have pleased the more ardent Republicans.  It was
rather the entreaty of a sorrowing father speaking to his wayward
children.  In the kindliest language he pointed out to the
secessionists how ill advised their attempt at disunion was, and
why, for their own sakes, they should desist.  Almost
plaintively, he told them that, while it was not their duty to
destroy the Union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the
least he could do, under the obligations of his oath, was to
possess and hold the property of the United States; that he hoped
to do this peaceably; that he abhorred war for any purpose, and
that they would have none unless they themselves were the
aggressors.  It was a masterpiece of persuasiveness, and while
Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments suggested by
Seward, it was essentially his own.  Probably Lincoln himself did
not expect his inaugural address to have any effect upon the
secessionists, for he must have known them to be resolved upon
disunion at any cost.  But it was an appeal to the wavering minds
in the North, and upon them it made a profound impression.  Every
candid man, however timid and halting, had to admit that the
President was bound by his oath to do his duty; that under that
oath he could do no less than he said he would do; that if the
secessionists resisted such an appeal as the President had made,
they were bent upon mischief, and that the government must be
supported against them.  The partisan sympathy with the Southern
insurrection which still existed in the North did indeed not
disappear, but it diminished perceptibly under the influence of
such reasoning.  Those who still resisted it did so at the risk
of appearing unpatriotic.

It must not be supposed, however, that Lincoln at once succeeded
in pleasing everybody, even among his friends,--even among those
nearest to him.  In selecting his cabinet, which he did
substantially before he left Springfield for Washington, he
thought it wise to call to his assistance the strong men of his
party, especially those who had given evidence of the support
they commanded as his competitors in the Chicago convention.  In
them he found at the same time representatives of the different
shades of opinion within the party, and of the different
elements--former Whigs and former Democrats--from which the party
had recruited itself.  This was sound policy under the
circumstances.  It might indeed have been foreseen that among the
members of a cabinet so composed, troublesome disagreements and
rivalries would break out.  But it was better for the President
to have these strong and ambitious men near him as his co-
operators than to have them as his critics in Congress, where
their differences might have been composed in a common opposition
to him.  As members of his cabinet he could hope to control them,
and to keep them busily employed in the service of a common
purpose, if he had the strength to do so.  Whether he did possess
this strength was soon tested by a singularly rude trial.

There can be no doubt that the foremost members of his cabinet,
Seward and Chase, the most eminent Republican statesmen, had felt
themselves wronged by their party when in its national convention
it preferred to them for the Presidency a man whom, not
unnaturally, they thought greatly their inferior in ability and
experience as well as in service.  The soreness of that
disappointment was intensified when they saw this Western man in
the White House, with so much of rustic manner and speech as
still clung to him, meeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, on
a footing of equality, with the simplicity of his good nature
unburdened by any conventional dignity of deportment, and dealing
with the great business of state in an easy-going, unmethodical,
and apparently somewhat irreverent way.  They did not understand
such a man.  Especially Seward, who, as Secretary of State,
considered himself next to the Chief Executive, and who quickly
accustomed himself to giving orders and making arrangements upon
his own motion, thought it necessary that he should rescue the
direction of public affairs from hands so unskilled, and take
full charge of them himself.  At the end of the first month of
the administration he submitted a "memorandum" to President
Lincoln, which has been first brought to light by Nicolay and
Hay, and is one of their most valuable contributions to the
history of those days.  In that paper Seward actually told the
President that at the end of a month's administration the
government was still without a policy, either domestic or
foreign; that the slavery question should be eliminated from the
struggle about the Union; that the matter of the maintenance of
the forts and other possessions in the South should be decided
with that view; that explanations should be demanded
categorically from the governments of Spain and France, which
were then preparing, one for the annexation of San Domingo, and
both for the invasion of Mexico; that if no satisfactory
explanations were received war should be declared against Spain
and France by the United States; that explanations should also be
sought from Russia and Great Britain, and a vigorous continental
spirit of independence against European intervention be aroused
all over the American continent; that this policy should be
incessantly pursued and directed by somebody; that either the
President should devote himself entirely to it, or devolve the
direction on some member of his cabinet, whereupon all debate on
this policy must end.

This could be understood only as a formal demand that the
President should acknowledge his own incompetency to perform his
duties, content himself with the amusement of distributing post-
offices, and resign his power as to all important affairs into
the hands of his Secretary of State.  It seems to-day
incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's calibre could at
that period conceive a plan of policy in which the slavery
question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly
delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already
formed their Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution
preparing to fight for its independence, could be hoodwinked back
into the Union by some sentimental demonstration against European
interference; a policy which, at that critical moment, would have
involved the Union in a foreign war, thus inviting foreign
intervention in favor of the Southern Confederacy, and increasing
tenfold its chances in the struggle for independence.  But it is
equally incomprehensible how Seward could fail to see that this
demand of an unconditional surrender was a mortal insult to the
head of the government, and that by putting his proposition on
paper he delivered himself into the hands of the very man he had
insulted; for, had Lincoln, as most Presidents would have done,
instantly dismissed Seward, and published the true reason for
that dismissal, it would inevitably have been the end of Seward's
career.  But Lincoln did what not many of the noblest and
greatest men in history would have been noble and great enough to
do.  He considered that Seward was still capable of rendering
great service to his country in the place in which he was, if
rightly controlled.  He ignored the insult, but firmly
established his superiority.  In his reply, which he forthwith
despatched, he told Seward that the administration had a domestic
policy as laid down in the inaugural address with Seward's
approval; that it had a foreign policy as traced in Seward's
despatches with the President's approval; that if any policy was
to be maintained or changed, he, the President, was to direct
that on his responsibility; and that in performing that duty the
President had a right to the advice of his secretaries.  Seward's
fantastic schemes of foreign war and continental policies Lincoln
brushed aside by passing them over in silence.  Nothing more was
said.  Seward must have felt that he was at the mercy of a
superior man; that his offensive proposition had been generously
pardoned as a temporary aberration of a great mind, and that he
could atone for it only by devoted personal loyalty.  This he
did.  He was thoroughly subdued, and thenceforth submitted to
Lincoln his despatches for revision and amendment without a
murmur.  The war with European nations was no longer thought of;
the slavery question found in due time its proper place in the
struggle for the Union; and when, at a later period, the
dismissal of Seward was demanded by dissatisfied senators, who
attributed to him the shortcomings of the administration, Lincoln
stood stoutly by his faithful Secretary of State.

Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superb presence,
of eminent ability and ardent patriotism, of great natural
dignity and a certain outward coldness of manner, which made him
appear more difficult of approach than he really was, did not
permit his disappointment to burst out in such extravagant
demonstrations.  But Lincoln's ways were so essentially different
from his that they never became quite intelligible, and certainly
not congenial to him.  It might, perhaps, have been better had
there been, at the beginning of the administration, some decided
clash between Lincoln and Chase, as there was between Lincoln and
Seward, to bring on a full mutual explanation, and to make Chase
appreciate the real seriousness of Lincoln's nature.  But, as it
was, their relations always remained somewhat formal, and Chase
never felt quite at ease under a chief whom he could not
understand, and whose character and powers he never learned to
esteem at their true value.  At the same time, he devoted himself
zealously to the duties of his department, and did the country
arduous service under circumstances of extreme difficulty.
Nobody recognized this more heartily than Lincoln himself, and
they managed to work together until near the end of Lincoln's
first Presidential term, when Chase, after some disagreements
concerning appointments to office, resigned from the treasury;
and, after Taney's death, the President made him Chief Justice.

The rest of the cabinet consisted of men of less eminence, who
subordinated themselves more easily.  In January, 1862, Lincoln
found it necessary to bow Cameron out of the war office, and to
put in his place Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely practical
mind, vehement impulses, fierce positiveness, ruthless energy,
immense working power, lofty patriotism, and severest devotion to
duty.  He accepted the war office not as a partisan, for he had
never been a Republican, but only to do all he could in "helping
to save the country."  The manner in which Lincoln succeeded in
taming this lion to his will, by frankly recognizing his great
qualities, by giving him the most generous confidence, by aiding
him in his work to the full of his power, by kindly concession or
affectionate persuasiveness in cases of differing opinions, or,
when it was necessary, by firm assertions of superior authority,
bears the highest testimony to his skill in the management of
men.  Stanton, who had entered the service with rather a mean
opinion of Lincoln's character and capacity, became one of his
warmest, most devoted, and most admiring friends, and with none
of his secretaries was Lincoln's intercourse more intimate.  To
take advice with candid readiness, and to weigh it without any
pride of his own opinion, was one of Lincoln's preeminent
virtues; but he had not long presided over his cabinet council
when his was felt by all its members to be the ruling mind.

The cautious policy foreshadowed in his inaugural address, and
pursued during the first period of the civil war, was far from
satisfying all his party friends.  The ardent spirits among the
Union men thought that the whole North should at once be called
to arms, to crush the rebellion by one powerful blow.  The ardent
spirits among the antislavery men insisted that, slavery having
brought forth the rebellion, this powerful blow should at once be
aimed at slavery.  Both complained that the administration was
spiritless, undecided, and lamentably slow in its proceedings.
Lincoln reasoned otherwise.  The ways of thinking and feeling of
the masses, of the plain people, were constantly present to his
mind.  The masses, the plain people, had to furnish the men for
the fighting, if fighting was to be done.  He believed that the
plain people would be ready to fight when it clearly appeared
necessary, and that they would feel that necessity when they felt
themselves attacked.  He therefore waited until the enemies of
the Union struck the first blow.  As soon as, on the 12th of
April, 1861, the first gun was fired in Charleston harbor on the
Union flag upon Fort Sumter, the call was sounded, and the
Northern people rushed to arms.

Lincoln knew that the plain people were now indeed ready to fight
in defence of the Union, but not yet ready to fight for the
destruction of slavery.  He declared openly that he had a right
to summon the people to fight for the Union, but not to summon
them to fight for the abolition of slavery as a primary object;
and this declaration gave him numberless soldiers for the Union
who at that period would have hesitated to do battle against the
institution of slavery.  For a time he succeeded in rendering
harmless the cry of the partisan opposition that the Republican
administration were perverting the war for the Union into an
"abolition war."  But when he went so far as to countermand the
acts of some generals in the field, looking to the emancipation
of the slaves in the districts covered by their commands, loud
complaints arose from earnest antislavery men, who accused the
President of turning his back upon the antislavery cause.  Many
of these antislavery men will now, after a calm retrospect, be
willing to admit that it would have been a hazardous policy to
endanger, by precipitating a demonstrative fight against slavery,
the success of the struggle for the Union.

Lincoln's views and feelings concerning slavery had not changed.
Those who conversed with him intimately upon the subject at that
period know that he did not expect slavery long to survive the
triumph of the Union, even if it were not immediately destroyed
by the war.  In this he was right.  Had the Union armies achieved
a decisive victory in an early period of the conflict, and had
the seceded States been received back with slavery, the "slave
power" would then have been a defeated power, defeated in an
attempt to carry out its most effective threat.  It would have
lost its prestige.  Its menaces would have been hollow sound, and
ceased to make any one afraid.  It could no longer have hoped to
expand, to maintain an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and
to control the government.  The victorious free States would have
largely overbalanced it.  It would no longer have been able to
withstand the onset of a hostile age.  It could no longer have
ruled,--and slavery had to rule in order to live.  It would have
lingered for a while, but it would surely have been "in the
course of ultimate extinction."  A prolonged war precipitated the
destruction of slavery; a short war might only have prolonged its
death struggle.  Lincoln saw this clearly; but he saw also that,
in a protracted death struggle, it might still have kept disloyal
sentiments alive, bred distracting commotions, and caused great
mischief to the country.  He therefore hoped that slavery would
not survive the war.

But the question how he could rightfully employ his power to
bring on its speedy destruction was to him not a question of mere
sentiment.  He himself set forth his reasoning upon it, at a
later period, in one of his inimitable letters.  "I am naturally
antislavery," said he.  "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is
wrong.  I cannot remember the time when I did not so think and
feel.  And yet I have never understood that the Presidency
conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon that judgment
and feeling.  It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best
of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States.  I could not take the office without taking
the oath.  Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get
power, and break the oath in using that power.  I understood,
too, that, in ordinary civil administration, this oath even
forbade me practically to indulge my private abstract judgment on
the moral question of slavery.  I did understand, however, also,
that my oath imposed upon me the duty of preserving, to the best
of my ability, by every indispensable means, that government,
that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic law.  I
could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tied
to preserve the Constitution--if, to save slavery, or any minor
matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and
Constitution all together."  In other words, if the salvation of
the government, the Constitution, and the Union demanded the
destruction of slavery, he felt it to be not only his right, but
his sworn duty to destroy it.  Its destruction became a necessity
of the war for the Union.

As the war dragged on and disaster followed disaster, the sense
of that necessity steadily grew upon him.  Early in 1862, as some
of his friends well remember, he saw, what Seward seemed not to
see, that to give the war for the Union an antislavery character
was the surest means to prevent the recognition of the Southern
Confederacy as an independent nation by European powers; that,
slavery being abhorred by the moral sense of civilized mankind,
no European government would dare to offer so gross an insult to
the public opinion of its people as openly to favor the creation
of a state founded upon slavery to the prejudice of an existing
nation fighting against slavery.  He saw also that slavery
untouched was to the rebellion an element of power, and that in
order to overcome that power it was necessary to turn it into an
element of weakness.  Still, he felt no assurance that the plain
people were prepared for so radical a measure as the emancipation
of the slaves by act of the government, and he anxiously
considered that, if they were not, this great step might, by
exciting dissension at the North, injure the cause of the Union
in one quarter more than it would help it in another.  He
heartily welcomed an effort made in New York to mould and
stimulate public sentiment on the slavery question by public
meetings boldly pronouncing for emancipation.  At the same time
he himself cautiously advanced with a recommendation, expressed
in a special message to Congress, that the United States should
co-operate with any State which might adopt the gradual
abolishment of slavery, giving such State pecuniary aid to
compensate the former owners of emancipated slaves.  The
discussion was started, and spread rapidly.  Congress adopted the
resolution recommended, and soon went a step farther in passing a
bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.  The plain
people began to look at emancipation on a larger scale as a thing
to be considered seriously by patriotic citizens; and soon
Lincoln thought that the time was ripe, and that the edict of
freedom could be ventured upon without danger of serious
confusion in the Union ranks.

The failure of McClellan's movement upon Richmond increased
immensely the prestige of the enemy.  The need of some great act
to stimulate the vitality of the Union cause seemed to grow daily
more pressing.  On July 21, 1862, Lincoln surprised his cabinet
with the draught of a proclamation declaring free the slaves in
all the States that should be still in rebellion against the
United States on the 1st of January,1863.  As to the matter
itself he announced that he had fully made up his mind; he
invited advice only concerning the form and the time of
publication.  Seward suggested that the proclamation, if then
brought out, amidst disaster and distress, would sound like the
last shriek of a perishing cause.  Lincoln accepted the
suggestion, and the proclamation was postponed.  Another defeat
followed, the second at Bull Run.  But when, after that battle,
the Confederate army, under Lee, crossed the Potomac and invaded
Maryland, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if the Union army were
now blessed with success, the decree of freedom should surely be
issued.  The victory of Antietam was won on September 17, and the
preliminary Emancipation Proclamation came forth on the a 22d.
It was Lincoln's own resolution and act; but practically it bound
the nation, and permitted no step backward.  In spite of its
limitations, it was the actual abolition of slavery.  Thus he
wrote his name upon the books of history with the title dearest
to his heart, the liberator of the slave.

It is true, the great proclamation, which stamped the war as one
for "union and freedom," did not at once mark the turning of the
tide on the field of military operations.  There were more
disasters, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  But with
Gettysburg and Vicksburg the whole aspect of the war changed.
Step by step, now more slowly, then more rapidly, but with
increasing steadiness, the flag of the Union advanced from field
to field toward the final consummation.  The decree of
emancipation was naturally followed by the enlistment of
emancipated negroes in the Union armies.  This measure had a
anther reaching effect than merely giving the Union armies an
increased supply of men.  The laboring force of the rebellion was
hopelessly disorganized.  The war became like a problem of
arithmetic.  As the Union armies pushed forward, the area from
which the Southern Confederacy could draw recruits and supplies
constantly grew smaller, while the area from which the Union
recruited its strength constantly grew larger; and everywhere,
even within the Southern lines, the Union had its allies.  The
fate of the rebellion was then virtually decided; but it still
required much bloody work to convince the brave warriors who
fought for it that they were really beaten.

Neither did the Emancipation Proclamation forthwith command
universal assent among the people who were loyal to the Union.
There were even signs of a reaction against the administration in
the fall elections of 1862, seemingly justifying the opinion,
entertained by many, that the President had really anticipated
the development of popular feeling.  The cry that the war for the
Union had been turned into an "abolition war" was raised again by
the opposition, and more loudly than ever.  But the good sense
and patriotic instincts of the plain people gradually marshalled
themselves on Lincoln's side, and he lost no opportunity to help
on this process by personal argument and admonition.  There never
has been a President in such constant and active contact with the
public opinion of the country, as there never has been a
President who, while at the head of the government, remained so
near to the people.  Beyond the circle of those who had long
known him the feeling steadily grew that the man in the White
House was "honest Abe Lincoln" still, and that every citizen
might approach him with complaint, expostulation, or advice,
without danger of meeting a rebuff from power-proud authority, or
humiliating condescension; and this privilege was used by so many
and with such unsparing freedom that only superhuman patience
could have endured it all.  There are men now living who would
to-day read with amazement, if not regret, what they ventured to
say or write to him.  But Lincoln repelled no one whom he
believed to speak to him in good faith and with patriotic
purpose.  No good advice would go unheeded.  No candid criticism
would offend him.  No honest opposition, while it might pain him,
would produce a lasting alienation of feeling between him and the
opponent.  It may truly be said that few men in power have ever
been exposed to more daring attempts to direct their course, to
severer censure of their acts, and to more cruel
misrepresentation of their motives: And all this he met with that
good-natured humor peculiarly his own, and with untiring effort
to see the right and to impress it upon those who differed from
him.  The conversations he had and the correspondence he carried
on upon matters of public interest, not only with men in official
position, but with private citizens, were almost unceasing, and
in a large number of public letters, written ostensibly to
meetings, or committees, or persons of importance, he addressed
himself directly to the popular mind.  Most of these letters
stand among the finest monuments of our political literature.
Thus he presented the singular spectacle of a President who, in
the midst of a great civil war, with unprecedented duties
weighing upon him, was constantly in person debating the great
features of his policy with the people.

While in this manner he exercised an ever-increasing influence
upon the popular understanding, his sympathetic nature endeared
him more and more to the popular heart.  In vain did journals and
speakers of the opposition represent him as a lightminded
trifler, who amused himself with frivolous story-telling and
coarse jokes, while the blood of the people was flowing in
streams.  The people knew that the man at the head of affairs, on
whose haggard face the twinkle of humor so frequently changed
into an expression of profoundest sadness, was more than any
other deeply distressed by the suffering he witnessed; that he
felt the pain of every wound that was inflicted on the
battlefield, and the anguish of every woman or child who had lost
husband or father; that whenever he could he was eager to
alleviate sorrow, and that his mercy was never implored in vain.
They looked to him as one who was with them and of them in all
their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, who laughed with
them and wept with them; and as his heart was theirs; so their
hearts turned to him.  His popularity was far different from that
of Washington, who was revered with awe, or that of Jackson, the
unconquerable hero, for whom party enthusiasm never grew weary of
shouting.  To Abraham Lincoln the people became bound by a
genuine sentimental attachment.  It was not a matter of respect,
or confidence, or party pride, for this feeling spread far beyond
the boundary lines of his party; it was an affair of the heart,
independent of mere reasoning.  When the soldiers in the field or
their folks at home spoke of "Father Abraham," there was no cant
in it.  They felt that their President was really caring for them
as a father would, and that they could go to him, every one of
them, as they would go to a father, and talk to him of what
troubled them, sure to find a willing ear and tender sympathy.
Thus, their President, and his cause, and his endeavors, and his
success gradually became to them almost matters of family
concern.  And this popularity carried him triumphantly through
the Presidential election of 1864, in spite of an opposition
within his own party which at first seemed very formidable.

Many of the radical antislavery men were never quite satisfied
with Lincoln's ways of meeting the problems of the time.  They
were very earnest and mostly very able men, who had positive
ideas as to "how this rebellion should be put down."  They would
not recognize the necessity of measuring the steps of the
government according to the progress of opinion among the plain
people.  They criticised Lincoln's cautious management as
irresolute, halting, lacking in definite purpose and in energy;
he should not have delayed emancipation so long; he should not
have confided important commands to men of doubtful views as to
slavery; he should have authorized military commanders to set the
slaves free as they went on; he dealt too leniently with
unsuccessful generals; he should have put down all factious
opposition with a strong hand instead of trying to pacify it; he
should have given the people accomplished facts instead of
arguing with them, and so on.  It is true, these criticisms were
not always entirely unfounded.  Lincoln's policy had, with the
virtues of democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which
in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive
governmental action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of
heart, his disposition always to respect the feelings of others,
frequently made him recoil from anything like severity, even when
severity was urgently called for.  But many of his radical
critics have since then revised their judgment sufficiently to
admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the whole, the wisest and
safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has sometimes
accomplished great results, could in a democracy like ours be
maintained only by constant success; that it would have quickly
broken down under the weight of disaster; that it might have been
successful from the start, had the Union, at the beginning of the
conflict, had its Grants and Shermans and Sheridans, its
Farraguts and Porters, fully matured at the head of its forces;
but that, as the great commanders had to be evolved slowly from
the developments of the war, constant success could not be
counted upon, and it was best to follow a policy which was in
friendly contact with the popular force, and therefore more fit
to stand trial of misfortune on the battlefield.  But at that
period they thought differently, and their dissatisfaction with
Lincoln's doings was greatly increased by the steps he took
toward the reconstruction of rebel States then partially in
possession of the Union forces.

In December, 1863, Lincoln issued an amnesty proclamation,
offering pardon to all implicated in the rebellion, with certain
specified exceptions, on condition of their taking and
maintaining an oath to support the Constitution and obey the laws
of the United States and the proclamations of the President with
regard to slaves; and also promising that when, in any of the
rebel States, a number of citizens equal to one tenth of the
voters in 1860 should re-establish a state government in
conformity with the oath above mentioned, such should be
recognized by the Executive as the true government of the State.
The proclamation seemed at first to be received with general
favor.  But soon another scheme of reconstruction, much more
stringent in its provisions, was put forward in the House of
Representatives by Henry Winter Davis.  Benjamin Wade championed
it in the Senate.  It passed in the closing moments of the
session in July, 1864, and Lincoln, instead of making it a law by
his signature, embodied the text of it in a proclamation as a
plan of reconstruction worthy of being earnestly considered.  The
differences of opinion concerning this subject had only
intensified the feeling against Lincoln which had long been
nursed among the radicals, and some of them openly declared their
purpose of resisting his re-election to the Presidency.  Similar
sentiments were manifested by the advanced antislavery men of
Missouri, who, in their hot faction-fight with the
"conservatives" of that State, had not received from Lincoln the
active support they demanded.  Still another class of Union men,
mainly in the East, gravely shook their heads when considering
the question whether Lincoln should be re-elected.  They were
those who cherished in their minds an ideal of statesmanship and
of personal bearing in high office with which, in their opinion,
Lincoln's individuality was much out of accord.  They were
shocked when they heard him cap an argument upon grave affairs of
state with a story about "a man out in Sangamon County,"--a
story, to be sure, strikingly clinching his point, but sadly
lacking in dignity.  They could not understand the man who was
capable, in opening a cabinet meeting, of reading to his
secretaries a funny chapter from a recent book of Artemus Ward,
with which in an unoccupied moment he had relieved his care-
burdened mind, and who then solemnly informed the executive
council that he had vowed in his heart to issue a proclamation
emancipating the slaves as soon as God blessed the Union arms
with another victory.  They were alarmed at the weakness of a
President who would indeed resist the urgent remonstrances of
statesmen against his policy, but could not resist the prayer of
an old woman for the pardon of a soldier who was sentenced to be
shot for desertion.  Such men, mostly sincere and ardent
patriots, not only wished, but earnestly set to work, to prevent
Lincoln's renomination.  Not a few of them actually believed, in
1863, that, if the national convention of the Union party were
held then, Lincoln would not be supported by the delegation of a
single State.  But when the convention met at Baltimore, in June,
1864, the voice of the people was heard.  On the first ballot
Lincoln received the votes of the delegations from all the States
except Missouri; and even the Missourians turned over their votes
to him before the result of the ballot was declared.

But even after his renomination the opposition to Lincoln within
the ranks of the Union party did not subside.  A convention,
called by the dissatisfied radicals in Missouri, and favored by
men of a similar way of thinking in other States, had been held
already in May, and had nominated as its candidate for the
Presidency General Fremont.  He, indeed, did not attract a strong
following, but opposition movements from different quarters
appeared more formidable.  Henry Winter Davis and Benjamin Wade
assailed Lincoln in a flaming manifesto.  Other Union men, of
undoubted patriotism and high standing, persuaded themselves, and
sought to persuade the people, that Lincoln's renomination was
ill advised and dangerous to the Union cause.  As the Democrats
had put off their convention until the 29th of August, the Union
party had, during the larger part of the summer, no opposing
candidate and platform to attack, and the political campaign
languished.  Neither were the tidings from the theatre of war of
a cheering character.  The terrible losses suffered by Grant's
army in the battles of the Wilderness spread general gloom.
Sherman seemed for a while to be in a precarious position before
Atlanta.  The opposition to Lincoln within the Union party grew
louder in its complaints and discouraging predictions.  Earnest
demands were heard that his candidacy should be withdrawn.
Lincoln himself, not knowing how strongly the masses were
attached to him, was haunted by dark forebodings of defeat.  Then
the scene suddenly changed as if by magic.

The Democrats, in their national convention, declared the war a
failure, demanded, substantially, peace at any price, and
nominated on such a platform General McClellan as their
candidate.  Their convention had hardly adjourned when the
capture of Atlanta gave a new aspect to the military situation.
It was like a sun-ray bursting through a dark cloud.  The rank
and file of the Union party rose with rapidly growing enthusiasm.
The song "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
strong," resounded all over the land.  Long before the decisive
day arrived, the result was beyond doubt, and Lincoln was re-
elected President by overwhelming majorities.  The election over
even his severest critics found themselves forced to admit that
Lincoln was the only possible candidate for the Union party in
1864, and that neither political combinations nor campaign
speeches, nor even victories in the field, were needed to insure
his success.  The plain people had all the while been satisfied
with Abraham Lincoln: they confided in him; they loved him; they
felt themselves near to him; they saw personified in him the
cause of Union and freedom; and they went to the ballot-box for
him in their strength.

The hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of his
nature.  The opposition within the Union party had stung him to
the quick.  Now he had his opponents before him, baffled and
humiliated.  Not a moment did he lose to stretch out the hand of
friendship to all.  "Now that the election is over," he said, in
response to a serenade, "may not all, having a common interest,
reunite in a common effort to save our common country? For my own
part, I have striven, and will strive, to place no obstacle in
the way.  So long as I have been here I have not willingly
planted a thorn in any man's bosom.  While I am deeply sensible
to the high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my
satisfaction that any other man may be pained or disappointed by
the result.  May I ask those who were with me to join with me in
the same spirit toward those who were against me?"  This was
Abraham Lincoln's character as tested in the furnace of
prosperity.

The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended.  Sherman was
irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South.  Grant
had his iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond.  The days of the
Confederacy were evidently numbered.  Only the last blow remained
to be struck.  Then Lincoln's second inauguration came, and with
it his second inaugural address.  Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg
speech "has been much and justly admired.  But far greater, as
well as far more characteristic, was that inaugural in which he
poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his great soul.
It had all the solemnity of a father's last admonition and
blessing to his children before he lay down to die.  These were
its closing words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet if God
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said, `The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'  With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us
to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne
the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and
with all nations."

This was like a sacred poem.  No American President had ever
spoken words like these to the American people.  America never
had a President who found such words in the depth of his heart.

Now followed the closing scenes of the war.  The Southern armies
fought bravely to the last, but all in vain.  Richmond fell.
Lincoln himself entered the city on foot, accompanied only by a
few officers and a squad of sailors who had rowed him ashore from
the flotilla in the James River, a negro picked up on the way
serving as a guide.  Never had the world seen a more modest
conqueror and a more characteristic triumphal procession, no army
with banners and drums, only a throng of those who had been
slaves, hastily run together, escorting the victorious chief into
the capital of the vanquished foe.  We are told that they pressed
around him, kissed his hands and his garments, and shouted and
danced for joy, while tears ran down the President's care-
furrowed cheeks.

A few days more brought the surrender of Lee's army, and peace
was assured.  The people of the North were wild with joy.
Everywhere festive guns were booming, bells pealing, the churches
ringing with thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the
thoroughfares, when suddenly the news flashed over the land that
Abraham Lincoln had been murdered.  The people were stunned by
the blow.  Then a wail of sorrow went up such as America had
never heard before.  Thousands of Northern households grieved as
if they had lost their dearest member.  Many a Southern man cried
out in his heart that his people had been robbed of their best
friend in their humiliation and distress, when Abraham Lincoln
was struck down.  It was as if the tender affection which his
countrymen bore him had inspired all nations with a common
sentiment.  All civilized mankind stood mourning around the
coffin of the dead President.  Many of those, here and abroad,
who not long before had ridiculed and reviled him were among the
first to hasten on with their flowers of eulogy, and in that
universal chorus of lamentation and praise there was not a voice
that did not tremble with genuine emotion.  Never since
Washington's death had there been such unanimity of judgment as
to a man's virtues and greatness; and even Washington's death,
although his name was held in greater reverence, did not touch so
sympathetic a chord in the people's hearts.

Nor can it be said that this was owing to the tragic character of
Lincoln's end.  It is true, the death of this gentlest and most
merciful of rulers by the hand of a mad fanatic was well apt to
exalt him beyond his merits in the estimation of those who loved
him, and to make his renown the object of peculiarly tender
solicitude.  But it is also true that the verdict pronounced upon
him in those days has been affected little by time, and that
historical inquiry has served rather to increase than to lessen
the appreciation of his virtues, his abilities, his services.
Giving the fullest measure of credit to his great ministers,--to
Seward for his conduct of foreign affairs, to Chase for the
management of the finances under terrible difficulties, to
Stanton for the performance of his tremendous task as war
secretary,--and readily acknowledging that without the skill and
fortitude of the great commanders, and the heroism of the
soldiers and sailors under them, success could not have been
achieved, the historian still finds that Lincoln's judgment and
will were by no means governed by those around him; that the most
important steps were owing to his initiative; that his was the
deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he
whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the
administration in its struggles the countenance, the sympathy,
and the support of the people.  It is found, even, that his
judgment on military matters was astonishingly acute, and that
the advice and instructions he gave to the generals commanding in
the field would not seldom have done honor to the ablest of them.
History, therefore, without overlooking, or palliating, or
excusing any of his shortcomings or mistakes, continues to place
him foremost among the saviours of the Union and the liberators
of the slave.  More than that, it awards to him the merit of
having accomplished what but few political philosophers would
have recognized as possible,--of leading the republic through
four years of furious civil conflict without any serious
detriment to its free institutions.

He was, indeed, while President, violently denounced by the
opposition as a tyrant and a usurper, for having gone beyond his
constitutional powers in authorizing or permitting the temporary
suppression of newspapers, and in wantonly suspending the writ of
habeas corpus and resorting to arbitrary arrests.  Nobody should
be blamed who, when such things are done, in good faith and from
patriotic motives protests against them.  In a republic,
arbitrary stretches of power, even when demanded by necessity,
should never be permitted to pass without a protest on the one
hand, and without an apology on the other.  It is well they did
not so pass during our civil war.  That arbitrary measures were
resorted to is true.  That they were resorted to most sparingly,
and only when the government thought them absolutely required by
the safety of the republic, will now hardly be denied.  But
certain it is that the history of the world does not furnish a
single example of a government passing through so tremendous a
crisis as our civil war was with so small a record of arbitrary
acts, and so little interference with the ordinary course of law
outside the field of military operations.  No American President
ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into Lincoln's
hands.  It is to be hoped that no American President ever will
have to be entrusted with such power again.  But no man was ever
entrusted with it to whom its seductions were less dangerous than
they proved to be to Abraham Lincoln.  With scrupulous care he
endeavored, even under the most trying circumstances, to remain
strictly within the constitutional limitations of his authority;
and whenever the boundary became indistinct, or when the dangers
of the situation forced him to cross it, he was equally careful
to mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only by the
imperative necessities of the civil war, so that they might not
pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time of
peace.  It is an unquestionable fact that during the
reconstruction period which followed the war, more things were
done capable of serving as dangerous precedents than during the
war itself.  Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under
his guidance the republic was saved from disruption and the
country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that, during the
stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so
conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial
power as to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all
things that concern the rights and liberties of the citizens.  He
understood well the nature of the problem.  In his first message
to Congress he defined it in admirably pointed language: "Must a
government be of necessity too strong for the liberties of its
own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? Is there
in all republics this inherent weakness?"  This question he
answered in the name of the great American republic, as no man
could have answered it better, with a triumphant  "No...."

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the right moment
for his fame.  However that may be, he had, at the time of his
death, certainly not exhausted his usefulness to his country.  He
was probably the only man who could have guided the nation
through the perplexities of the reconstruction period in such a
manner as to prevent in the work of peace the revival of the
passions of the war.  He would indeed not have escaped serious
controversy as to details of policy; but he could have weathered
it far better than any other statesman of his time, for his
prestige with the active politicians had been immensely
strengthened by his triumphant re-election; and, what is more
important, he would have been supported by the confidence of the
victorious Northern people that he would do all to secure the
safety of the Union and the rights of the emancipated negro, and
at the same time by the confidence of the defeated Southern
people that nothing would be done by him from motives of
vindictiveness, or of unreasoning fanaticism, or of a selfish
party spirit.  "With malice toward none, with charity for all,"
the foremost of the victors would have personified in himself the
genius of reconciliation.

He might have rendered the country a great service in another
direction.  A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out
to a friend the crowd of office-seekers besieging his door.
"Look at that," said he.  "Now we have conquered the rebellion,
but here you see something that may become more dangerous to this
republic than the rebellion itself."  It is true, Lincoln as
President did not profess what we now call civil service reform
principles.  He used the patronage of the government in many
cases avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form
combinations and to produce political effects advantageous to the
Union cause, and in still others simply to put the right man into
the right place.  But in his endeavors to strengthen the Union
cause, and in his search for able and useful men for public
duties, he frequently went beyond the limits of his party, and
gradually accustomed himself to the thought that, while party
service had its value, considerations of the public interest
were, as to appointments to office, of far greater consequence.
Moreover, there had been such a mingling of different political
elements in support of the Union during the civil war that
Lincoln, standing at the head of that temporarily united motley
mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow sense of the term, a
party man.  And as he became strongly impressed with the dangers
brought upon the republic by the use of public offices as party
spoils, it is by no means improbable that, had he survived the
all-absorbing crisis and found time to turn to other objects, one
of the most important reforms of later days would have been
pioneered by his powerful authority.  This was not to be.  But
the measure of his achievements was full enough for immortality.

To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a
half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance,
grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in
distinctness of outline and feature.  This is indeed the common
lot of popular heroes; but the Lincoln legend will be more than
ordinarily apt to become fanciful, as his individuality,
assembling seemingly incongruous qualities and forces in a
character at the same time grand and most lovable, was so unique,
and his career so abounding in startling contrasts.  As the state
of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the
world will read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only
of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most
unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power
unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most
peace-loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer
without a pang in his own breast, and suddenly found himself
called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of our wars; who
wielded the power of government when stern resolution and
relentless force were the order of the day and then won and ruled
the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his
nature; who was a cautious conservative by temperament and mental
habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping social revolution of
our time; who, preserving his homely speech and rustic manner
even in the most conspicuous position of that period, drew upon
himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the soul
of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur; who,
in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was murdered
because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who,
while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by
sectional passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose
bier friend and foe gathered to praise him which they have since
never ceased to do--as one of the greatest of Americans and the
best of men.






ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE


[This Address was delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical
Institution, November 13, 1900.  It is included in this set with
the courteous permission of the author and of Messrs. Thomas Y.
Crowell & Company.]


ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

When you asked me to deliver the Inaugural Address on this
occasion, I recognized that I owed this compliment to the fact
that I was the official representative of America, and in
selecting a subject I ventured to think that I might interest you
for an hour in a brief study in popular government, as
illustrated by the life of the most American of all Americans.  I
therefore offer no apology for asking your attention to Abraham
Lincoln--to his unique character and the part he bore in two
important achievements of modern history: the preservation of the
integrity of the American Union and the emancipation of the
colored race.

During his brief term of power he was probably the object of more
abuse, vilification, and ridicule than any other man in the
world; but when he fell by the hand of an assassin, at the very
moment of his stupendous victory, all the nations of the earth
vied with one another in paying homage to his character, and the
thirty-five years that have since elapsed have established his
place in history as one of the great benefactors not of his own
country alone, but of the human race.

One of many noble utterances upon the occasion of his death was
that in which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the
spirit with which it had pursued him:


    "Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet
     The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew,
     Between the mourners at his head and feet,
     Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

                    ...................

    "Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
     To lame my pencil, and confute my pen
     To make me own this hind--of princes peer,
     This rail-splitter--a true born king of men."


Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of his life, and
biography will be searched in vain for such startling
vicissitudes of fortune, so great power and glory won out of such
humble beginnings and adverse circumstances.

Doubtless you are all familiar with the salient points of his
extraordinary career.  In the zenith of his fame he was the wise,
patient, courageous, successful ruler of men; exercising more
power than any monarch of his time, not for himself, but for the
good of the people who had placed it in his hands; commander-in-
chief of a vast military power, which waged with ultimate success
the greatest war of the century; the triumphant champion of
popular government, the deliverer of four millions of his fellow-
men from bondage; honored by mankind as Statesman, President, and
Liberator.

Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which
this was the glorious and happy consummation.  Nothing could be
more squalid and miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln
was born--a one-roomed cabin without floor or window in what was
then the wilderness of Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier
life which swiftly moved westward from the Alleghanies to the
Mississippi, always in advance of schools and churches, of books
and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things which are
generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of life.
His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could
keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever
seeking, without success, to better his unhappy condition by
moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to another.
The rude society which surrounded them was not much better.  The
struggle for existence was hard, and absorbed all their energies.
They were fighting the forest, the wild beast, and the retreating
savage.  From the time when he could barely handle tools until he
attained his majority, Lincoln's life was that of a simple farm
laborer, poorly clad, housed, and fed, at work either on his
father's wretched farm or hired out to neighboring farmers.  But
in spite, or perhaps by means, of this rude environment, he grew
to be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and
fabulous stories are told of his feats of strength.  With the
growth of this mighty frame began that strange education which in
his ripening years was to qualify him for the great destiny that
awaited him, and the development of those mental faculties and
moral endowments which, by the time he reached middle life, were
to make him the sagacious, patient, and triumphant leader of a
great nation in the crisis of its fate.  His whole schooling,
obtained during such odd times as could be spared from grinding
labor, did not amount in all to as much as one year, and the
quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible grade,
including only the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering.
But out of these simple elements, when rightly used by the right
man, education is achieved, and Lincoln knew how to use them.  As
so often happens, he seemed to take warning from his father's
unfortunate example.  Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst for
knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise above his
surroundings, were early manifestations of his character.

Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in
every house, and somehow or other Pilgrim's Progress, AEsop's
Fables, a History of the United States, and a Life of Washington
fell into his hands.  He trudged on foot many miles through the
wilderness to borrow an English Grammar, and is said to have
devoured greedily the contents of the Statutes of Indiana that
fell in his way.  These few volumes he read and reread--and his
power of assimilation was great.  To be shut in with a few books
and to master them thoroughly sometimes does more for the
development of character than freedom to range at large, in a
cursory and indiscriminate way, through wide domains of
literature.  This youth's mind, at any rate, was thoroughly
saturated with Biblical knowledge and Biblical language, which,
in after life, he used with great readiness and effect.  But it
was the constant use of the little knowledge which he had that
developed and exercised his mental powers.  After the hard day's
work was done, while others slept, he toiled on, always reading
or writing.  From an early age he did his own thinking and made
up his own mind--invaluable traits in the future President.
Paper was such a scarce commodity that, by the evening firelight,
he would write and cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, and
then shave it off to make room for more.  By and by, as he
approached manhood, he began speaking in the rude gatherings of
the neighborhood, and so laid the foundation of that art of
persuading his fellow-men which was one rich result of his
education, and one great secret of his subsequent success.

Accustomed as we are in these days of steam and telegraphs to
have every intelligent boy survey the whole world each morning
before breakfast, and inform himself as to what is going on in
every nation, it is hardly possible to conceive how benighted and
isolated was the condition of the community at Pigeon Creek in
Indiana, of which the family of Lincoln's father formed a part,
or how eagerly an ambitious and high-spirited boy, such as he,
must have yearned to escape.  The first glimpse that he ever got
of any world beyond the narrow confines of his home was in 1828,
at the age of nineteen, when a neighbor employed him to accompany
his son down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a flatboat of
produce--a commission which he discharged with great success.

Shortly after his return from this his first excursion into the
outer world, his father, tired of failure in Indiana, packed his
family and all his worldly goods into a single wagon drawn by two
yoke of oxen, and after a fourteen days' tramp through the
wilderness, pitched his camp once more, in Illinois.  Here
Abraham, having come of age and being now his own master,
rendered the last service of his minority by ploughing the
fifteen-acre lot and splitting from the tall walnut trees of the
primeval forest enough rails to surround the little clearing with
a fence.  Such was the meagre outfit of this coming leader of
men, at the age when the future British Prime Minister or
statesman emerges from the university as a double first or senior
wrangler, with every advantage that high training and broad
culture and association with the wisest and the best of men and
women can give, and enters upon some form of public service on
the road to usefulness and honor, the University course being
only the first stage of the public training.  So Lincoln, at
twenty-one, had just begun his preparation for the public life to
which he soon began to aspire.  For some years yet he must
continue to earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, having
absolutely no means, no home, no friend to consult.  More farm
work as a hired hand, a clerkship in a village store, the running
of a mill, another trip to New Orleans on a flatboat of his own
contriving, a pilot's berth on the river--these were the means by
which he subsisted until, in the summer of 1832, when he was
twenty-three years of age, an event occurred which gave him
public recognition.

The Black Hawk war broke out, and, the Governor of Illinois
calling for volunteers to repel the band of savages whose leader
bore that name, Lincoln enlisted and was elected captain by his
comrades, among whom he had already established his supremacy by
signal feats of strength and more than one successful single
combat.  During the brief hostilities he was engaged in no battle
and won no military glory, but his local leadership was
established.  The same year he offered himself as a candidate for
the Legislature of Illinois, but failed at the polls.  Yet his
vast popularity with those who knew him was manifest.  The
district consisted of several counties, but the unanimous vote of
the people of his own county was for Lincoln.  Another
unsuccessful attempt at store-keeping was followed by better luck
at surveying, until his horse and instruments were levied upon
under execution for the debts of his business adventure.

I have been thus detailed in sketching his early years because
upon these strange foundations the structure of his great fame
and service was built.  In the place of a school and university
training fortune substituted these trials, hardships, and
struggles as a preparation for the great work which he had to do.
It turned out to be exactly what the emergency required.  Ten
years instead at the public school and the university certainly
never could have fitted this man for the unique work which was to
be thrown upon him.  Some other Moses would have had to lead us
to our Jordan, to the sight of our promised land of liberty.

At the age of twenty-five he became a member of the Legislature
of Illinois, and so continued for eight years, and, in the
meantime, qualified himself by reading such law books as he could
borrow at random--for he was too poor to buy any to be called to
the Bar.  For his second quarter of a century--during which a
single term in Congress introduced him into the arena of national
questions--he gave himself up to law and politics.  In spite of
his soaring ambition, his two years in Congress gave him no
premonition of the great destiny that awaited him,--and at its
close, in 1849, we find him an unsuccessful applicant to the
President for appointment as Commissioner of the General Land
Office--a purely administrative bureau; a fortunate escape for
himself and for his country.  Year by year his knowledge and
power, his experience and reputation extended, and his mental
faculties seemed to grow by what they fed on.  His power of
persuasion, which had always been marked, was developed to an
extraordinary degree, now that he became engaged in congenial
questions and subjects.  Little by little he rose to prominence
at the Bar, and became the most effective public speaker in the
West.  Not that he possessed any of the graces of the orator; but
his logic was invincible, and his clearness and force of
statement impressed upon his hearers the convictions of his
honest mind, while his broad sympathies and sparkling and genial
humor made him a universal favorite as far and as fast as his
acquaintance extended.

These twenty years that elapsed from the time of his
establishment as a lawyer and legislator in Springfield, the new
capital of Illinois, furnished a fitting theatre for the
development and display of his great faculties, and, with his new
and enlarged opportunities, he obviously grew in mental stature
in this second period of his career, as if to compensate for the
absolute lack of advantages under which he had suffered in youth.
As his powers enlarged, his reputation extended, for he was
always before the people, felt a warm sympathy with all that
concerned them, took a zealous part in the discussion of every
public question, and made his personal influence ever more widely
and deeply felt.

My, brethren of the legal profession will naturally ask me, how
could this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the
forest or on the farm and the flatboat, without culture or
training, education or study, by the random reading, on the wing,
of a few miscellaneous law books, become a learned and
accomplished lawyer?  Well, he never did.  He never would have
earned his salt as a 'Writer' for the 'Signet', nor have won a
place as advocate in the Court of Session, where the technique of
the profession has reached its highest perfection, and centuries
of learning and precedent are involved in the equipment of a
lawyer.  Dr. Holmes, when asked by an anxious young mother, "When
should the education of a child begin?"  replied, "Madam, at least
two centuries before it is born!" and so I am sure it is with the
Scots lawyer.

But not so in Illinois in 1840.  Between 1830 and 1880 its
population increased twenty-fold, and when Lincoln began
practising law in Springfield in 1837, life in Illinois was very
crude and simple, and so were the courts and the administration
of justice.  Books and libraries were scarce.  But the people
loved justice, upheld the law, and followed the courts, and soon
found their favorites among the advocates.  The fundamental
principles of the common law, as set forth by Blackstone and
Chitty, were not so difficult to acquire; and brains, common
sense, force of character, tenacity of purpose, ready wit and
power of speech did the rest, and supplied all the deficiencies
of learning.

The lawsuits of those days were extremely simple, and the
principles of natural justice were mainly relied on to dispose of
them at the Bar and on the Bench, without resort to technical
learning.  Railroads, corporations absorbing the chief business
of the community, combined and inherited wealth, with all the
subtle and intricate questions they breed, had not yet come in--
and so the professional agents and the equipment which they
require were not needed.  But there were many highly educated and
powerful men at the Bar of Illinois, even in those early days,
whom the spirit of enterprise had carried there in search of fame
and fortune.  It was by constant contact and conflict with these
that Lincoln acquired professional strength and skill.  Every
community and every age creates its own Bar, entirely adequate
for its present uses and necessities.  So in Illinois, as the
population and wealth of the State kept on doubling and
quadrupling, its Bar presented a growing abundance of learning
and science and technical skill.  The early practitioners grew
with its growth and mastered the requisite knowledge.  Chicago
soon grew to be one of the largest and richest and certainly the
most intensely active city on the continent, and if any of my
professional friends here had gone there in Lincoln's later
years, to try or argue a cause, or transact other business, with
any idea that Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of legal
learning, science, or subtlety, they would certainly have found
their mistake.

In those early days in the West, every lawyer, especially every
court lawyer, was necessarily a politician, constantly engaged in
the public discussion of the many questions evolved from the
rapid development of town, county, State, and Federal affairs.
Then and there, in this regard, public discussion supplied the
place which the universal activity of the press has since
monopolized, and the public speaker who, by clearness, force,
earnestness, and wit; could make himself felt on the questions of
the day would rapidly come to the front.  In the absence of that
immense variety of popular entertainments which now feed the
public taste and appetite, the people found their chief amusement
in frequenting the courts and public and political assemblies.
In either place, he who impressed, entertained, and amused them
most was the hero of the hour.  They did not discriminate very
carefully between the eloquence of the forum and the eloquence of
the hustings.  Human nature ruled in both alike, and he who was
the most effective speaker in a political harangue was often
retained as most likely to win in a cause to be tried or argued.
And I have no doubt in this way many retainers came to Lincoln.
Fees, money in any form, had no charms for him--in his eager
pursuit of fame he could not afford to make money.  He was
ambitious to distinguish himself by some great service to
mankind, and this ambition for fame and real public service left
no room for avarice in his composition. However much he earned,
he seems to have ended every year hardly richer than he began it,
and yet, as the years passed, fees came to him freely.  One of
L 1,000 is recorded--a very large professional fee at that time,
even in any part of America, the paradise of lawyers.  I lay
great stress on Lincoln's career as a lawyer--much more than his
biographers do because in America a state of things exists wholly
different from that which prevails in Great Britain.  The
profession of the law always has been and is to this day the
principal avenue to public life; and I am sure that his training
and experience in the courts had much to do with the development
of those forces of intellect and character which he soon
displayed on a broader arena.

It was in political controversy, of course, that he acquired his
wide reputation, and made his deep and lasting impression upon
the people of what had now become the powerful State of Illinois,
and upon the people of the Great West, to whom the political
power and control of the United States were already surely and
swiftly passing from the older Eastern States.  It was this
reputation and this impression, and the familiar knowledge of his
character which had come to them from his local leadership, that
happily inspired the people of the West to present him as their
candidate, and to press him upon the Republican convention of
1860 as the fit and necessary leader in the struggle for life
which was before the nation.

That struggle, as you all know, arose out of the terrible
question of slavery--and I must trust to your general knowledge
of the history of that question to make intelligible the attitude
and leadership of Lincoln as the champion of the hosts of freedom
in the final contest.  Negro slavery had been firmly established
in the Southern States from an early period of their history.  In
1619, the year before the Mayflower landed our Pilgrim Fathers
upon Plymouth Rock, a Dutch ship had discharged a cargo of
African slaves at Jamestown in Virginia: All through the colonial
period their importation had continued.  A few had found their
way into the Northern States, but none of them in sufficient
numbers to constitute danger or to afford a basis for political
power.  At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution,
there is no doubt that the principal members of the convention
not only condemned slavery as a moral, social, and political
evil, but believed that by the suppression of the slave trade it
was in the course of gradual extinction in the South, as it
certainly was in the North.  Washington, in his will, provided
for the emancipation of his own slaves, and said to Jefferson
that it "was among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by
which slavery in his country might be abolished."  Jefferson
said, referring to the institution: "I tremble for my country
when I think that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep
forever,"--and Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry were
all utterly opposed to it.  But it was made the subject of a
fatal compromise in the Federal Constitution, whereby its
existence was recognized in the States as a basis of
representation, the prohibition of the importation of slaves was
postponed for twenty years, and the return of fugitive slaves
provided for.  But no imminent danger was apprehended from it
till, by the invention of the cotton gin in 1792, cotton culture
by negro labor became at once and forever the leading industry of
the South, and gave a new impetus to the importation of slaves,
so that in 1808, when the constitutional prohibition took effect,
their numbers had vastly increased.  From that time forward
slavery became the basis of a great political power, and the
Southern States, under all circumstances and at every
opportunity, carried on a brave and unrelenting struggle for its
maintenance and extension.

The conscience of the North was slow to rise against it, though
bitter controversies from time to time took place.  The Southern
leaders threatened disunion if their demands were not complied
with.  To save the Union, compromise after compromise was made,
but each one in the end was broken.  The Missouri Compromise,
made in 1820 upon the occasion of the admission of Missouri into
the Union as a slave State, whereby, in consideration of such
admission, slavery was forever excluded from the Northwest
Territory, was ruthlessly repealed in 1854, by a Congress elected
in the interests of the slave power, the intent being to force
slavery into that vast territory which had so long been dedicated
to freedom.  This challenge at last aroused the slumbering
conscience and passion of the North, and led to the formation of
the Republican party for the avowed purpose of preventing, by
constitutional methods, the further extension of slavery.

In its first campaign, in 1856, though it failed to elect its
candidates; it received a surprising vote and carried many of the
States.  No one could any longer doubt that the North had made up
its mind that no threats of disunion should deter it from
pressing its cherished purpose and performing its long neglected
duty.  From the outset, Lincoln was one of the most active and
effective leaders and speakers of the new party, and the great
debates between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858, as the respective
champions of the restriction and extension of slavery, attracted
the attention of the whole country.  Lincoln's powerful arguments
carried conviction everywhere.  His moral nature was thoroughly
aroused his conscience was stirred to the quick.  Unless slavery
was wrong, nothing was wrong.  Was each man, of whatever color,
entitled to the fruits of his own labor, or could one man live in
idle luxury by the sweat of another's brow, whose skin was
darker?  He was an implicit believer in that principle of the
Declaration of Independence that all men are vested with certain
inalienable rights the equal rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.  On this doctrine he staked his case and
carried it.  We have time only for one or two sentences in which
he struck the keynote of the contest

"The real issue in this country is the eternal struggle between
these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world.
They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the
beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle.  The one
is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right
of kings.  It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops
itself.  It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and
earn bread and I'll eat it.'"

He foresaw with unerring vision that the conflict was inevitable
and irrepressible--that one or the other, the right or the wrong,
freedom or slavery, must ultimately prevail and wholly prevail,
throughout the country; and this was the principle that carried
the war, once begun, to a finish.

One sentence of his is immortal:

"Under the operation of the policy of compromise, the slavery
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed.  'A house divided against itself cannot
stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved.
I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease
to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other;
either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

During the entire decade from 1850 to 1860 the agitation of the
slavery question was at the boiling point, and events which have
become historical continually indicated the near approach of the
overwhelming storm.  No sooner had the Compromise Acts of 1850
resulted in a temporary peace, which everybody said must be final
and perpetual, than new outbreaks came.  The forcible carrying
away of fugitive slaves by Federal troops from Boston agitated
that ancient stronghold of freedom to its foundations.  The
publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which truly exposed the
frightful possibilities of the slave system; the reckless
attempts by force and fraud to establish it in Kansas against the
will of the vast majority of the settlers; the beating of Summer
in the Senate Chamber for words spoken in debate; the Dred Scott
decision in the Supreme Court, which made the nation realize that
the slave power had at last reached the fountain of Federal
justice; and finally the execution of John Brown, for his wild
raid into Virginia, to invite the slaves to rally to the standard
of freedom which he unfurled:--all these events tend to
illustrate and confirm Lincoln's contention that the nation could
not permanently continue half slave and half free, but must
become all one thing or all the other.  When John Brown lay under
sentence of death he declared that now he was sure that slavery
must be wiped out in blood; but neither he nor his executioners
dreamt that within four years a million soldiers would be
marching across the country for its final extirpation, to the
music of the war-song of the great conflict:

     "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
     But his soul is marching on."

And now, at the age of fifty-one, this child of the wilderness,
this farm laborer, rail-sputter, flatboatman, this surveyor,
lawyer, orator, statesman, and patriot, found himself elected by
the great party which was pledged to prevent at all hazards the
further extension of slavery, as the chief magistrate of the
Republic, bound to carry out that purpose, to be the leader and
ruler of the nation in its most trying hour.

Those who believe that there is a living Providence that
overrules and conducts the affairs of nations, find in the
elevation of this plain man to this extraordinary fortune and to
this great duty, which he so fitly discharged, a signal
vindication of their faith.  Perhaps to this philosophical
institution the judgment of our philosopher Emerson will commend
itself as a just estimate of Lincoln's historical place

"His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense
of mankind and of the public conscience.  He grew according to
the need; his mind mastered the problem of the day: and as the
problem grew, so did his comprehension of it.  In the war there
was no place for holiday magistrate, nor fair-weather sailor.
The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado.  In four
years--four years of battle days--his endurance, his fertility of
resource, his magnanimity, were sorely tried, and never found
wanting.  There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper,
his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in
the centre of a heroic epoch.  He is the true history of the
American people in his time, the true representative of this
continent--father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions
throbbing in his heart, the thought of their mind--articulated in
his tongue."

He was born great, as distinguished from those who achieve
greatness or have it thrust upon them, and his inherent capacity,
mental, moral, and physical, having been recognized by the
educated intelligence of a free people, they happily chose him
for their ruler in a day of deadly peril.

It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham
Lincoln, but the impression which he left on my mind is
ineffaceable.  After his great successes in the West he came to
New York to make a political address.  He appeared in every sense
of the word like one of the plain people among whom he loved to
be counted.  At first sight there was nothing impressive or
imposing about him--except that his great stature singled him out
from the crowd: his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame;
his face was of a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of
color; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of
hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious;
his countenance in repose gave little evidence of that brain
power which had raised him from the lowest to the highest station
among his countrymen; as he talked to me before the meeting, he
seemed ill at ease, with that sort of apprehension which a young
man might feel before presenting himself to a new and strange
audience, whose critical disposition he dreaded.  It was a great
audience, including all the noted men--all the learned and
cultured of his party in New York editors, clergymen, statesmen,
lawyers, merchants, critics.  They were all very curious to hear
him.  His fame as a powerful speaker had preceded him, and
exaggerated rumor of his wit--the worst forerunner of an orator--
had reached the East.  When Mr. Bryant presented him, on the high
platform of the Cooper Institute, a vast sea of eager upturned
faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see what this
rude child of the people was like.  He was equal to the occasion.
When he spoke he was transformed; his eye kindled, his voice
rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly.
For an hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his
hand.  His style of speech and manner of delivery were severely
simple.  What Lowell called "the grand simplicities of the
Bible," with which he was so familiar, were reflected in his
discourse.  With no attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without
parade or pretence, he spoke straight to the point.  If any came
expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier,
they must have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of
his utterances.  It was marvellous to see how this untutored man,
by mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had
outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his own way to the
grandeur and strength of absolute simplicity.

He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so thoroughly.  He
demonstrated by copious historical proofs and masterly logic that
the fathers who created the Constitution in order to form a more
perfect union, to establish justice, and to secure the blessings
of liberty to themselves and their posterity, intended to empower
the Federal Government to exclude slavery from the Territories.
In the kindliest spirit he protested against the avowed threat of
the Southern States to destroy the Union if, in order to secure
freedom in those vast regions out of which future States were to
be carved, a Republican President were elected.  He closed with
an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his
aroused and kindling conscience, with a full outpouring of his
love of justice and liberty, to maintain their political purpose
on that lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong which
alone could justify it, and not to be intimidated from their high
resolve and sacred duty by any threats of destruction to the
government or of ruin to themselves.  He concluded with this
telling sentence, which drove the whole argument home to all our
hearts: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that
faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."
That night the great hall, and the next day the whole city, rang
with delighted applause and congratulations, and he who had come
as a stranger departed with the laurels of great triumph.

Alas! in five years from that exulting night I saw him again, for
the last time, in the same city, borne in his coffin through its
draped streets.  With tears and lamentations a heart-broken
people accompanied him from Washington, the scene of his
martyrdom, to his last resting-place in the young city of the
West where he had worked his way to fame.

Never was a new ruler in a more desperate plight than Lincoln
when he entered office on the fourth of March, 1861, four months
after his election, and took his oath to support the Constitution
and the Union.  The intervening time had been busily employed by
the Southern States in carrying out their threat of disunion in
the event of his election.  As soon as the fact was ascertained,
seven of them had seceded and had seized upon the forts,
arsenals, navy yards, and other public property of the United
States within their boundaries, and were making every preparation
for war.  In the meantime the retiring President, who had been
elected by the slave power, and who thought the seceding States
could not lawfully be coerced, had done absolutely nothing.
Lincoln found himself, by the Constitution, Commander-in-Chief of
the Army and Navy of the United States, but with only a remnant
of either at hand.  Each was to be created on a great scale out
of the unknown resources of a nation untried in war.

In his mild and conciliatory inaugural address, while appealing
to the seceding States to return to their allegiance, he avowed
his purpose to keep the solemn oath he had taken that day, to see
that the laws of the Union were faithfully executed, and to use
the troops to recover the forts, navy yards, and other property
belonging to the government.  It is probable, however, that
neither side actually realized that war was inevitable, and that
the other was determined to fight, until the assault on Fort
Sumter presented the South as the first aggressor and roused the
North to use every possible resource to maintain the government
and the imperilled Union, and to vindicate the supremacy of the
flag over every inch of the territory of the United States.  The
fact that Lincoln's first proclamation called for only 75,000
troops, to serve for three months, shows how inadequate was even
his idea of what the future had in store.  But from that moment
Lincoln and his loyal supporters never faltered in their purpose.
They knew they could win, that it was their duty to win, and that
for America the whole hope of the future depended upon their
winning; for now by the acts of the seceding States the issue of
the election to secure or prevent the extension of slavery--stood
transformed into a struggle to preserve or to destroy the Union.

We cannot follow this contest.  You know its gigantic
proportions; that it lasted four years instead of three months;
that in its progress, instead of 75,000 men, more than 2,000,000
were enrolled on the side of the government alone; that the
aggregate cost and loss to the nation approximated to
1,000,000,000 pounds sterling, and that not less than 300,000
brave and precious lives were sacrificed on each side.  History
has recorded how Lincoln bore himself during these four frightful
years; that he was the real President, the responsible and actual
head of the government, through it all; that he listened to all
advice, heard all parties, and then, always realizing his
responsibility to God and the nation, decided every great
executive question for himself.  His absolute honesty had become
proverbial long before he was President.  "Honest Abe Lincoln"
was the name by which he had been known for years.  His every act
attested it.

In all the grandeur of the vast power that he wielded, he never
ceased to be one of the plain people, as he always called them,
never lost or impaired his perfect sympathy with them, was always
in perfect touch with them and open to their appeals; and here
lay the very secret of his personality and of his power, for the
people in turn gave him their absolute confidence.  His courage,
his fortitude, his patience, his hopefulness, were sorely tried
but never exhausted.

He was true as steel to his generals, but had frequent occasion
to change them, as he found them inadequate.  This serious and
painful duty rested wholly upon him, and was perhaps his most
important function as Commander-in-Chief; but when, at last, he
recognized in General Grant the master of the situation, the man
who could and would bring the war to a triumphant end, he gave it
all over to him and upheld him with all his might.  Amid all the
pressure and distress that the burdens of office brought upon
him, his unfailing sense of humor saved him; probably it made it
possible for him to live under the burden.  He had always been
the great story-teller of the West, and he used and cultivated
this faculty to relieve the weight of the load he bore.

It enabled him to keep the wonderful record of never having lost
his temper, no matter what agony he had to bear.  A whole night
might be spent in recounting the stories of his wit, humor, and
harmless sarcasm.  But I will recall only two of his sayings,
both about General Grant, who always found plenty of enemies and
critics to urge the President to oust him from his command.  One,
I am sure, will interest all Scotchmen.  They repeated with
malicious intent the gossip that Grant drank.  "What does he
drink?"  asked Lincoln.  "Whiskey," was, of course, the answer;
doubtless you can guess the brand.  "Well," said the President,
"just find out what particular kind he uses and I'll send a
barrel to each of my other generals."  The other must be as
pleasing to the British as to the American ear.  When pressed
again on other grounds to get rid of Grant, he declared, "I can't
spare that man, he fights!"

He was tender-hearted to a fault, and never could resist the
appeals of wives and mothers of soldiers who had got into trouble
and were under sentence of death for their offences.  His
Secretary of War and other officials complained that they never
could get deserters shot.  As surely as the women of the
culprit's family could get at him he always gave way.  Certainly
you will all appreciate his exquisite sympathy with the suffering
relatives of those who had fallen in battle.  His heart bled with
theirs.  Never was there a more gentle and tender utterance than
his letter to a mother who had given all her sons to her country,
written at a time when the angel of death had visited almost
every household in the land, and was already hovering over him.

"I have been shown," he says, "in the files of the War Department
a statement that you are the mother of five sons who have died
gloriously on the field of battle.  I feel how weak and fruitless
must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you
from your grief for a loss so overwhelming but I cannot refrain
from tendering to you the consolation which may be found in the
thanks of the Republic they died to save.  I pray that our
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost,
and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a
sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

Hardly could your illustrious sovereign, from the depths of her
queenly and womanly heart, have spoken words more touching and
tender to soothe the stricken mothers of her own soldiers.

The Emancipation Proclamation, with which Mr. Lincoln delighted
the country and the world on the first of January, 1863, will
doubtless secure for him a foremost place in history among the
philanthropists and benefactors of the race, as it rescued, from
hopeless and degrading slavery, so many millions of his fellow-
beings described in the law and existing in fact as "chattels-
personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, to all
intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever."  Rarely does
the happy fortune come to one man to render such a service to his
kind--to proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof.

Ideas rule the world, and never was there a more signal instance
of this triumph of an idea than here.  William Lloyd Garrison,
who thirty years before had begun his crusade for the abolition
of slavery, and had lived to see this glorious and unexpected
consummation of the hopeless cause to which he had devoted his
life, well described the proclamation as a "great historic event,
sublime in its magnitude, momentous and beneficent in its far-
reaching consequences, and eminently just and right alike to the
oppressor and the oppressed."

Lincoln had always been heart and soul opposed to slavery.
Tradition says that on the trip on the flatboat to New Orleans he
formed his first and last opinion of slavery at the sight of
negroes chained and scourged, and that then and there the iron
entered into his soul.  No boy could grow to manhood in those
days as a poor white in Kentucky and Indiana, in close contact
with slavery or in its neighborhood, without a growing
consciousness of its blighting effects on free labor, as well as
of its frightful injustice and cruelty.  In the Legislature of
Illinois, where the public sentiment was all for upholding the
institution and violently against every movement for its
abolition or restriction, upon the passage of resolutions to that
effect he had the courage with one companion to put on record his
protest, "believing that the institution of slavery is founded
both in injustice and bad policy."  No great demonstration of
courage, you will say; but that was at a time when Garrison, for
his abolition utterances, had been dragged by an angry mob
through the streets of Boston with a rope around his body, and in
the very year that Lovejoy in the same State of Illinois was
slain by rioters while defending his press, from which he had
printed antislavery appeals.

In Congress he brought in a bill for gradual abolition in the
District of Columbia, with compensation to the owners, for until
they raised treasonable hands against the life of the nation he
always maintained that the property of the slaveholders, into
which they had come by two centuries of descent, without fault on
their part, ought not to be taken away from them without just
compensation.  He used to say that, one way or another, he had
voted forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso, which Mr. Wilmot of
Pennsylvania moved as an addition to every bill which affected
United States territory, "that neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude shall ever exist in any part of the said territory,"
and it is evident that his condemnation of the system, on moral
grounds as a crime against the human race, and on political
grounds as a cancer that was sapping the vitals of the nation,
and must master its whole being or be itself extirpated, grew
steadily upon him until it culminated in his great speeches in
the Illinois debate.

By the mere election of Lincoln to the Presidency, the further
extension of slavery into the Territories was rendered forever
impossible--Vox populi, vox Dei.  Revolutions never go backward,
and when founded on a great moral sentiment stirring the heart of
an indignant people their edicts are irresistible and final.  Had
the slave power acquiesced in that election, had the Southern
States remained under the Constitution and within the Union, and
relied upon their constitutional and legal rights, their favorite
institution, immoral as it was, blighting and fatal as it was,
might have endured for another century.  The great party that had
elected him, unalterably determined against its extension, was
nevertheless pledged not to interfere with its continuance in the
States where it already existed.  Of course, when new regions
were forever closed against it, from its very nature it must have
begun to shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and
compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new
President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the
progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas of the founders of
the Republic, have found a safe outlet for both masters and
slaves.  But whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad,
and when seven States, afterwards increased to eleven, openly
seceded from the Union, when they declared and began the war upon
the nation, and challenged its mighty power to the desperate and
protracted struggle for its life, and for the maintenance of its
authority as a nation over its territory, they gave to Lincoln
and to freedom the sublime opportunity of history.

In his first inaugural address, when as yet not a drop of
precious blood had been shed, while he held out to them the olive
branch in one hand, in the other he presented the guarantees of
the Constitution, and after reciting the emphatic resolution of
the convention that nominated him, that the maintenance inviolate
of the "rights of the States, and especially the right of each
State to order and control its own domestic institutions
according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that
balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our
political fabric depend," he reiterated this sentiment, and
declared, with no mental reservation, "that all the protection
which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be
given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully
demanded for whatever cause as cheerfully to one section as to
another."

When, however, these magnanimous overtures for peace and reunion
were rejected; when the seceding States defied the Constitution
and every clause and principle of it; when they persisted in
staying out of the Union from which they had seceded, and
proceeded to carve out of its territory a new and hostile empire
based on slavery; when they flew at the throat of the nation and
plunged it into the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century the
tables were turned, and the belief gradually came to the mind of
the President that if the Rebellion was not soon subdued by force
of arms, if the war must be fought out to the bitter end, then to
reach that end the salvation of the nation itself might require
the destruction of slavery wherever it existed; that if the war
was to continue on one side for Disunion, for no other purpose
than to preserve slavery, it must continue on the other side for
the Union, to destroy slavery.

As he said, "Events control me; I cannot control events," and as
the dreadful war progressed and became more deadly and dangerous,
the unalterable conviction was forced upon him that, in order
that the frightful sacrifice of life and treasure on both sides
might not be all in vain, it had become his duty as Commander-in-
Chief of the Army, as a necessary war measure, to strike a blow
at the Rebellion which, all others failing, would inevitably lead
to its annihilation, by annihilating the very thing for which it
was contending.  His own words are the best:

"I understood that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the
best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving by
every indispensable means that government--that nation--of which
that Constitution was the organic law.  Was it possible to lose
the nation and yet preserve the Constitution?  By general law,
life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be
amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to
save a limb.  I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional
might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation
of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation.
Right or wrong, I assumed this ground and now avow it.  I could
not feel that to the best of my ability I had ever tried to
preserve the Constitution if to save slavery or any minor matter
I should permit the wreck of government, country, and
Constitution all together."

And so, at last, when in his judgment the indispensable necessity
had come, he struck the fatal blow, and signed the proclamation
which has made his name immortal.  By it, the President, as
Commander-in-Chief in time of actual armed rebellion, and as a
fit and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion,
proclaimed all persons held as slaves in the States and parts of
States then in rebellion to be thenceforward free, and declared
that the executive, with the army and navy, would recognize and
maintain their freedom.

In the other great steps of the government, which led to the
triumphant prosecution of the war, he necessarily shared the
responsibility and the credit with the great statesmen who stayed
up his hands in his cabinet, with Seward, Chase and Stanton, and
the rest,--and with his generals and admirals, his soldiers and
sailors, but this great act was absolutely his own.  The
conception and execution were exclusively his.  He laid it before
his cabinet as a measure on which his mind was made up and could
not be changed, asking them only for suggestions as to details.
He chose the time and the circumstances under which the
Emancipation should be proclaimed and when it should take effect.

It came not an hour too soon; but public opinion in the North
would not have sustained it earlier.  In the first eighteen
months of the war its ravages had extended from the Atlantic to
beyond the Mississippi.  Many victories in the West had been
balanced and paralyzed by inaction and disasters in Virginia,
only partially redeemed by the bloody and indecisive battle of
Antietam; a reaction had set in from the general enthusiasm which
had swept the Northern States after the assault upon Sumter.  It
could not truly be said that they had lost heart, but faction was
raising its head.  Heard through the land like the blast of a
bugle, the proclamation rallied the patriotism of the country to
fresh sacrifices and renewed ardor.  It was a step that could not
be revoked.  It relieved the conscience of the nation from an
incubus that had oppressed it from its birth.  The United States
were rescued from the false predicament in which they had been
from the beginning, and the great popular heart leaped with new
enthusiasm for "Liberty and Union, henceforth and forever, one
and inseparable."  It brought not only moral but material support
to the cause of the government, for within two years 120,000
colored troops were enlisted in the military service and
following the national flag, supported by all the loyalty of the
North, and led by its choicest spirits.  One mother said, when
her son was offered the command of the first colored regiment,
"If he accepts it I shall be as proud as if I had heard that he
was shot."  He was shot heading a gallant charge of his
regiment....  The Confederates replied to a request of his
friends for his body that they had "buried him under a layer of
his niggers....;" but that mother has lived to enjoy thirty-six
years of his glory, and Boston has erected its noblest monument
to his memory.

The effect of the proclamation upon the actual progress of the
war was not immediate, but wherever the Federal armies advanced
they carried freedom with them, and when the summer came round
the new spirit and force which had animated the heart of the
government and people were manifest.  In the first week of July
the decisive battle of Gettysburg turned the tide of war, and the
fall of Vicksburg made the great river free from its source to
the Gulf.

On foreign nations the influence of the proclamation and of these
new victories was of great importance.  In those days, when there
was no cable, it was not easy for foreign observers to appreciate
what was really going on; they could not see clearly the true
state of affairs, as in the last year of the nineteenth century
we have been able, by our new electric vision, to watch every
event at the antipodes and observe its effect.  The Rebel
emissaries, sent over to solicit intervention, spared no pains to
impress upon the minds of public and private men and upon the
press their own views of the character of the contest.  The
prospects of the Confederacy were always better abroad than at
home.  The stock markets of the world gambled upon its chances,
and its bonds at one time were high in favor.

Such ideas as these were seriously held: that the North was
fighting for empire and the South for independence; that the
Southern States, instead of being the grossest oligarchies,
essentially despotisms, founded on the right of one man to
appropriate the fruit of other men's toil and to exclude them
from equal rights, were real republics, feebler to be sure than
their Northern rivals, but representing the same idea of freedom,
and that the mighty strength of the nation was being put forth to
crush them; that Jefferson Davis and the Southern leaders had
created a nation; that the republican experiment had failed and
the Union had ceased to exist.  But the crowning argument to
foreign minds was that it was an utter impossibility for the
government to win in the contest; that the success of the
Southern States, so far as separation was concerned, was as
certain as any event yet future and contingent could be; that the
subjugation of the South by the North, even if it could be
accomplished, would prove a calamity to the United States and the
world, and especially calamitous to the negro race; and that such
a victory would necessarily leave the people of the South for
many generations cherishing deadly hostility against the
government and the North, and plotting always to recover their
independence.

When Lincoln issued his proclamation he knew that all these ideas
were founded in error; that the national resources were
inexhaustible; that the government could and would win, and that
if slavery were once finally disposed of, the only cause of
difference being out of the way, the North and South would come
together again, and by and by be as good friends as ever.  In
many quarters abroad the proclamation was welcomed with
enthusiasm by the friends of America; but I think the
demonstrations in its favor that brought more gladness to
Lincoln's heart than any other were the meetings held in the
manufacturing centres, by the very operatives upon whom the war
bore the hardest, expressing the most enthusiastic sympathy with
the proclamation, while they bore with heroic fortitude the
grievous privations which the war entailed upon them.  Mr.
Lincoln's expectation when he announced to the world that all
slaves in all States then in rebellion were set free must have
been that the avowed position of his government, that the
continuance of the war now meant the annihilation of slavery,
would make intervention impossible for any foreign nation whose
people were lovers of liberty--and so the result proved.

The growth and development of Lincoln's mental power and moral
force, of his intense and magnetic personality, after the vast
responsibilities of government were thrown upon him at the age of
fifty-two, furnish a rare and striking illustration of the
marvellous capacity and adaptability of the human intellect--of
the sound mind in the sound body.  He came to the discharge of
the great duties of the Presidency with absolutely no experience
in the administration of government, or of the vastly varied and
complicated questions of foreign and domestic policy which
immediately arose, and continued to press upon him during the
rest of his life; but he mastered each as it came, apparently
with the facility of a trained and experienced ruler.  As
Clarendon said of Cromwell, "His parts seemed to be raised by the
demands of great station."  His life through it all was one of
intense labor, anxiety, and distress, without one hour of
peaceful repose from first to last.  But he rose to every
occasion.  He led public opinion, but did not march so far in
advance of it as to fail of its effective support in every great
emergency.  He knew the heart and thought of the people, as no
man not in constant and absolute sympathy with them could have
known it, and so holding their confidence, he triumphed through
and with them.  Not only was there this steady growth of
intellect, but the infinite delicacy of his nature and its
capacity for refinement developed also, as exhibited in the
purity and perfection of his language and style of speech.  The
rough backwoodsman, who had never seen the inside of a
university, became in the end, by self-training and the exercise
of his own powers of mind, heart, and soul, a master of style,
and some of his utterances will rank with the best, the most
perfectly adapted to the occasion which produced them.

Have you time to listen to his two-minutes speech at Gettysburg,
at the dedication of the Soldiers' Cemetery?  His whole soul was
in it:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a
great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.  But in a larger sense
we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this
ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.  The
world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but
it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us, the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new
birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the
people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

He lived to see his work indorsed by an overwhelming majority of
his countrymen.  In his second inaugural address, pronounced just
forty days before his death, there is a single passage which well
displays his indomitable will and at the same time his deep
religious feeling, his sublime charity to the enemies of his
country, and his broad and catholic humanity:

"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those
offences which in the Providence of God must needs come, but
which, having continued through the appointed time, He now wills
to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this
terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came,
shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to
Him?  Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet, if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another
drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so
still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to
finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds; to care
for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his
orphan to do all which may achieve, and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

His prayer was answered.  The forty days of life that remained to
him were crowned with great historic events.  He lived to see his
Proclamation of Emancipation embodied in an amendment of the
Constitution, adopted by Congress, and submitted to the States
for ratification.  The mighty scourge of war did speedily pass
away, for it was given him to witness the surrender of the Rebel
army and the fall of their capital, and the starry flag that he
loved waving in triumph over the national soil.  When he died by
the madman's hand in the supreme hour of victory, the vanquished
lost their best friend, and the human race one of its noblest
examples; and all the friends of freedom and justice, in whose
cause he lived and died, joined hands as mourners at his grave.






THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1832-1843




1832


ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF SANGAMON COUNTY.

March 9, 1832.

FELLOW CITIZENS:--Having become a candidate for the honorable
office of one of your Representatives in the next General
Assembly of this State, in according with an established custom
and the principles of true Republicanism it becomes my duty to
make known to you, the people whom I propose to represent, my
sentiments with regard to local affairs.

Time and experience have verified to a demonstration the public
utility of internal improvements.  That the poorest and most
thinly populated countries would be greatly benefited by the
opening of good roads, and in the clearing of navigable streams
within their limits, is what no person will deny.  Yet it is
folly to undertake works of this or any other without first
knowing that we are able to finish them--as half-finished work
generally proves to be labor lost.  There cannot justly be any
objection to having railroads and canals, any more than to other
good things, provided they cost nothing.  The only objection is
to paying for them; and the objection arises from the want of
ability to pay.

With respect to the County of Sangamon, some....

Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad
through our country may be, however high our imaginations may be
heated at thoughts of it,--there is always a heart-appalling
shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces us to
shrink from our pleasing anticipations.  The probable cost of
this contemplated railroad is estimated at $290,000; the bare
statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient to justify the
belief that the improvement of the Sangamon River is an object
much better suited to our infant resources.......

What the cost of this work would be, I am unable to say.  It is
probable, however, that it would not be greater than is common to
streams of the same length.  Finally, I believe the improvement
of the Sangamon River to be vastly important and highly desirable
to the people of the county; and, if elected, any measure in the
Legislature having this for its object, which may appear
judicious, will meet my approbation and receive my support.

It appears that the practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates
of interest has already been opened as a field for discussion; so
I suppose I may enter upon it without claiming the honor or
risking the danger which may await its first explorer.  It seems
as though we are never to have an end to this baneful and
corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the general
interests of the community as a direct tax of several thousand
dollars annually laid on each county for the benefit of a few
individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits of
usury.  A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made
without materially injuring any class of people.  In cases of
extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the
law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect.
I would favor the passage of a law on this subject which might
not be very easily evaded.  Let it be such that the labor and
difficulty of evading it could only be justified in cases of
greatest necessity.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan
or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the
most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and
thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other
countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free
institutions, appears to be an object
of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing
of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being
able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious
and moral nature, for themselves.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education--and by its
means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry--shall become
much more general than at present, and should be gratified to
have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of
any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate that happy
period.

With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be
necessary.  Many respectable men have suggested that our estray
laws, the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law,
and some others, are deficient in their present form, and require
alterations.  But, considering the great probability that the
framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not
meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others; in
which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take
that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement
of justice.

But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude.  Considering the great
degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is
probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me.
However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken
as I have thought.  I may be wrong in regard to any or all of
them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only
sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I
discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to
renounce them.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.  Whether it be
true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as
that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering
myself worthy of their esteem.  How far I shall succeed in
gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.  I am young, and
unknown to many of you.  I was born, and have ever remained, in
the most humble walks of life.  I have no wealthy or popular
relations or friends to recommend me.  My case is thrown
exclusively upon the independent voters of the county; and, if
elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I
shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.  But, if the
good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the
background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be
very much chagrined.

Your friend and fellow-citizen,
A. LINCOLN.

New Salem, March 9, 1832.




1833


TO E. C. BLANKENSHIP.

NEW SALEM,
Aug. 10, 1833

E. C. BLANKENSHIP.

Dear Sir:--In regard to the time David Rankin served the enclosed
discharge shows correctly--as well as I can recollect--having no
writing to refer.  The transfer of Rankin from my company
occurred as follows: Rankin having lost his horse at Dixon's
ferry and having acquaintance in one of the foot companies who
were going down the river was desirous to go with them, and one
Galishen being an acquaintance of mine and belonging to the
company in which Rankin wished to go wished to leave it and join
mine, this being the case it was agreed that they should exchange
places and answer to each other's names--as it was expected we
all would be discharged in very few days.  As to a blanket--I
have no knowledge of Rankin ever getting any.  The above embraces
all the facts now in my recollection which are pertinent to the
case.

I shall take pleasure in giving any further information in my
power should you call on me.

Your friend,
A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR POSTAGE RECEIPT

TO Mr. SPEARS.

Mr. SPEARS:

At your request I send you a receipt for the postage on your
paper.  I am somewhat surprised at your request.  I will,
however, comply with it.  The law requires newspaper postage to
be paid in advance, and now that I have waited a full year you
choose to wound my feelings by insinuating that unless you get a
receipt I will probably make you pay it again.

Respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.




1836


ANNOUNCEMENT OF POLITICAL VIEWS.

New Salem, June 13, 1836.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "JOURNAL"--In your paper of last Saturday I
see a communication, over the signature of "Many Voters," in
which the candidates who are announced in the Journal are called
upon to "show their hands."  Agreed.  Here's mine.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist
in bearing its burdens.  Consequently, I go for admitting all
whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no
means excluding females).

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.

While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by
their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing
what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own
judgment teaches me will best advance their interests.  Whether
elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales
of the public lands to the several States, to enable our State,
in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads
without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.  If alive
on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L.  White
for President.

Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO POLITICAL SMEAR

TO ROBERT ALLEN

New Salem,
June 21, 1836

DEAR COLONEL:--I am told that during my absence last week you
passed through this place, and stated publicly that you were in
possession of a fact or facts which, if known to the public,
would entirely destroy the prospects of N.  W.  Edwards and
myself at the ensuing election; but that, through favor to us,
you should forbear to divulge them.  No one has needed favors
more than I, and, generally, few have been less unwilling to
accept them; but in this case favor to me would be injustice to
the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining
it.  That I once had the confidence of the people of Sangamon, is
sufficiently evident; and if I have since done anything, either
by design or misadventure, which if known would subject me to a
forfeiture of that confidence, he that knows of that thing, and
conceals it, is a traitor to his country's interest.

I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what fact
or facts, real or supposed, you spoke; but my opinion of your
veracity will not permit me for a moment to doubt that you at
least believed what you said.  I am flattered with the personal
regard you manifested for me; but I do hope that, on more mature
reflection, you will view the public interest as a paramount
consideration, and therefore determine to let the worst come.  I
here assure you that the candid statement of facts on your part,
however low it may sink me, shall never break the tie of personal
friendship between us.  I wish an answer to this, and you are at
liberty to publish both, if you choose.

Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.




TO MISS MARY OWENS.

VANDALIA,
December 13, 1836.

MARY:--I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should have
written sooner.  It is but little difference, however, as I have
very little even yet to write.  And more, the longer I can avoid
the mortification of looking in the post-office for your letter
and not finding it, the better.  You see I am mad about that old
letter yet.  I don't like very well to risk you again.  I'll try
you once more, anyhow.

The new State House is not yet finished, and consequently the
Legislature is doing little or nothing.  The governor delivered
an inflammatory political message, and it is expected there will
be some sparring between the parties about it as soon as the two
Houses get to business.  Taylor delivered up his petition for the
new county to one of our members this morning.  I am told he
despairs of its success, on account of all the members from
Morgan County opposing it.  There are names enough on the
petition, I think, to justify the members from our county in
going for it; but if the members from Morgan oppose it, which
they say they will, the chance will be bad.

Our chance to take the seat of government to Springfield is
better than I expected.  An internal-improvement convention was
held there since we met, which recommended a loan of several
millions of dollars, on the faith of the State, to construct
railroads.  Some of the Legislature are for it, and some against
it; which has the majority I cannot tell.  There is great strife
and struggling for the office of the United States Senator here
at this time.  It is probable we shall ease their pains in a few
days.  The opposition men have no candidate of their own, and
consequently they will smile as complacently at the angry snarl
of the contending Van Buren candidates and their respective
friends as the Christian does at Satan's rage.  You recollect
that I mentioned at the outset of this letter that I had been
unwell.  That is the fact, though I believe I am about well now;
but that, with other things I cannot account for, have conspired,
and have gotten my spirits so low that I feel that I would rather
be any place in the world than here.  I really cannot endure the
thought of staying here ten weeks.  Write back as soon as you get
this, and, if possible, say something that will please me, for
really I have not been pleased since I left you.  This letter is
so dry and stupid that I am ashamed to send it, but with my
present feelings I cannot do any better.

Give my best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Able and family.

Your friend,
LINCOLN




1837


SPEECH IN ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

January [?], 1837

Mr. CHAIRMAN:--Lest I should fall into the too common error of
being mistaken in regard to which side I design to be upon, I
shall make it my first care to remove all doubt on that point, by
declaring that I am opposed to the resolution under
consideration, in toto.  Before I proceed to the body of the
subject, I will further remark, that it is not without a
considerable degree of apprehension that I venture to cross the
track of the gentleman from Coles [Mr. Linder].  Indeed, I do not
believe I could muster a sufficiency of courage to come in
contact with that gentleman, were it not for the fact that he,
some days since, most graciously condescended to assure us that
he would never be found wasting ammunition on small game.  On the
same fortunate occasion, he further gave us to understand, that
he regarded himself as being decidedly the superior of our common
friend from Randolph [Mr. Shields]; and feeling, as I really do,
that I, to say the most of myself, am nothing more than the peer
of our friend from Randolph, I shall regard the gentleman from
Coles as decidedly my superior also, and consequently, in the
course of what I shall have to say, whenever I shall have
occasion to allude to that gentleman, I shall endeavor to adopt
that kind of court language which I understand to be due to
decided superiority.  In one faculty, at least, there can be no
dispute of the gentleman's superiority over me and most other
men, and that is, the faculty of entangling a subject, so that
neither himself, or any other man, can find head or tail to it.
Here he has introduced a resolution embracing ninety-nine printed
lines across common writing paper, and yet more than one half of
his opening speech has been made upon subjects about which there
is not one word said in his resolution.

Though his resolution embraces nothing in regard to the
constitutionality of the Bank, much of what he has said has been
with a view to make the impression that it was unconstitutional
in its inception.  Now, although I am satisfied that an ample
field may be found within the pale of the resolution, at least
for small game, yet, as the gentleman has traveled out of it, I
feel that I may, with all due humility, venture to follow him.
The gentleman has discovered that some gentleman at Washington
city has been upon the very eve of deciding our Bank
unconstitutional, and that he would probably have completed his
very authentic decision, had not some one of the Bank officers
placed his hand upon his mouth, and begged him to withhold it.
The fact that the individuals composing our Supreme Court have,
in an official capacity, decided in favor of the
constitutionality of the Bank, would, in my mind, seem a
sufficient answer to this.  It is a fact known to all, that the
members of the Supreme Court, together with the Governor, form a
Council of Revision, and that this Council approved this Bank
charter.  I ask, then, if the extra-judicial decision not quite
but almost made by the gentleman at Washington, before whom, by
the way, the question of the constitutionality of our Bank never
has, nor never can come--is to be taken as paramount to a
decision officially made by that tribunal, by which, and which
alone, the constitutionality of the Bank can ever be settled?
But, aside from this view of the subject, I would ask, if the
committee which this resolution proposes to appoint are to
examine into the Constitutionality of the Bank?  Are they to be
clothed with power to send for persons and papers, for this
object?  And after they have found the bank to be
unconstitutional, and decided it so, how are they to enforce
their decision?  What will their decision amount to?  They cannot
compel the Bank to cease operations, or to change the course of
its operations.  What good, then, can their labors result in?
Certainly none.

The gentleman asks, if we, without an examination, shall, by
giving the State deposits to the Bank, and by taking the stock
reserved for the State, legalize its former misconduct.  Now I do
not pretend to possess sufficient legal knowledge to decide
whether a legislative enactment proposing to, and accepting from,
the Bank, certain terms, would have the effect to legalize or
wipe out its former errors, or not; but I can assure the
gentleman, if such should be the effect, he has already got
behind the settlement of accounts; for it is well known to all,
that the Legislature, at its last session, passed a supplemental
Bank charter, which the Bank has since accepted, and which,
according to his doctrine, has legalized all the alleged
violations of its original charter in the distribution of its
stock.

I now proceed to the resolution.  By examination it will be found
that the first thirty-three lines, being precisely one third of
the whole, relate exclusively to the distribution of the stock by
the commissioners appointed by the State.  Now, Sir, it is clear
that no question can arise on this portion of the resolution,
except a question between capitalists in regard to the ownership
of stock.  Some gentlemen have their stock in their hands, while
others, who have more money than they know what to do with, want
it; and this, and this alone, is the question, to settle which we
are called on to squander thousands of the people's money.  What
interest, let me ask, have the people in the settlement of this
question?  What difference is it to them whether the stock is
owned by Judge Smith or Sam Wiggins?  If any gentleman be entitled
to stock in the Bank, which he is kept out of possession of by
others, let him assert his right in the Supreme Court, and let
him or his antagonist, whichever may be found in the wrong, pay
the costs of suit.  It is an old maxim, and a very sound one,
that he that dances should always pay the fiddler.  Now, Sir, in
the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to
them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the
people's money being used to pay the fiddler.  No one can doubt
that the examination proposed by this resolution must cost the
State some ten or twelve thousand dollars; and all this to settle
a question in which the people have no interest, and about which
they care nothing.  These capitalists generally act harmoniously
and in concert, to fleece the people, and now that they have got
into a quarrel with themselves we are called upon to appropriate
the people's money to settle the quarrel.

I leave this part of the resolution and proceed to the remainder.
It will be found that no charge in the remaining part of the
resolution, if true, amounts to the violation of the Bank
charter, except one, which I will notice in due time.  It might
seem quite sufficient to say no more upon any of these charges or
insinuations than enough to show they are not violations of the
charter; yet, as they are ingeniously framed and handled, with a
view to deceive and mislead, I will notice in their order all the
most prominent of them.  The first of these is in relation to a
connection between our Bank and several banking institutions in
other States.  Admitting this connection to exist, I should like
to see the gentleman from Coles, or any other gentleman,
undertake to show that there is any harm in it.  What can there
be in such a connection, that the people of Illinois are willing
to pay their money to get a peep into?  By a reference to the
tenth section of the Bank charter, any gentleman can see that the
framers of the act contemplated the holding of stock in the
institutions of other corporations.  Why, then, is it, when
neither law nor justice forbids it, that we are asked to spend
our time and money in inquiring into its truth?

The next charge, in the order of time, is, that some officer,
director, clerk or servant of the Bank, has been required to take
an oath of secrecy in relation to the affairs of said Bank.  Now,
I do not know whether this be true or false--neither do I believe
any honest man cares.  I know that the seventh section of the
charter expressly guarantees to the Bank the right of making,
under certain restrictions, such by-laws as it may think fit; and
I further know that the requiring an oath of secrecy would not
transcend those restrictions.  What, then, if the Bank has chosen
to exercise this right?  Whom can it injure?  Does not every
merchant have his secret mark?  and who is ever silly enough to
complain of it?  I presume if the Bank does require any such oath
of secrecy, it is done through a motive of delicacy to those
individuals who deal with it.  Why, Sir, not many days since, one
gentleman upon this floor, who, by the way, I have no doubt is
now ready to join this hue and cry against the Bank, indulged in
a philippic against one of the Bank officials, because, as he
said, he had divulged a secret.

Immediately following this last charge, there are several
insinuations in the resolution, which are too silly to require
any sort of notice, were it not for the fact that they conclude
by saying, "to the great injury of the people at large."  In
answer to this I would say that it is strange enough, that the
people are suffering these "great injuries," and yet are not
sensible of it! Singular indeed that the people should be
writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them
to be found to raise the voice of complaint.  If the Bank be
inflicting injury upon the people, why is it that not a single
petition is presented to this body on the subject?  If the Bank
really be a grievance, why is it that no one of the real people
is found to ask redress of it?  The truth is, no such oppression
exists.  If it did, our people would groan with memorials and
petitions, and we would not be permitted to rest day or night,
till we had put it down.  The people know their rights, and they
are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are
invaded.  Let them call for an investigation, and I shall ever
stand ready to respond to the call.  But they have made no such
call.  I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of
contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does
not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank.  It has
doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled
their pockets with a sound circulating medium, and they are all
well pleased with its operations.  No, Sir, it is the politician
who is the first to sound the alarm (which, by the way, is a
false one.)  It is he, who, by these unholy means, is endeavoring
to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct.  It is he,
and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the
people's public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to
make valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry.
Mr. Chairman, this work is exclusively the work of politicians; a
set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the
people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass,
at least one long step removed from honest men.  I say this with
the greater freedom, because, being a politician myself, none can
regard it as personal.

Again, it is charged, or rather insinuated, that officers of the
Bank have loaned money at usurious rates of interest.  Suppose
this to be true, are we to send a committee of this House to
inquire into it?  Suppose the committee should find it true, can
they redress the injured individuals?  Assuredly not.  If any
individual had been injured in this way, is there not an ample
remedy to be found in the laws of the land?  Does the gentleman
from Coles know that there is a statute standing in full force
making it highly penal for an individual to loan money at a
higher rate of interest than twelve per cent?  If he does not he
is too ignorant to be placed at the head of the committee which
his resolution purposes and if he does, his neglect to mention it
shows him to be too uncandid to merit the respect or confidence
of any one.

But besides all this, if the Bank were struck from existence,
could not the owners of the capital still loan it usuriously, as
well as now?  whatever the Bank, or its officers, may have done, I
know that usurious transactions were much more frequent and
enormous before the commencement of its operations than they have
ever been since.

The next insinuation is, that the Bank has refused specie
payments.  This, if true is a violation of the charter.  But
there is not the least probability of its truth; because, if such
had been the fact, the individual to whom payment was refused
would have had an interest in making it public, by suing for the
damages to which the charter entitles him.  Yet no such thing has
been done; and the strong presumption is, that the insinuation is
false and groundless.

From this to the end of the resolution, there is nothing that
merits attention--I therefore drop the particular examination of
it.

By a general view of the resolution, it will be seen that a
principal object of the committee is to examine into, and ferret
out, a mass of corruption supposed to have been committed by the
commissioners who apportioned the stock of the Bank.  I believe
it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will
ever act correctly unless they have a motive to do otherwise.  If
this be true, we can only suppose that the commissioners acted
corruptly by also supposing that they were bribed to do so.
Taking this view of the subject, I would ask if the Bank is
likely to find it more difficult to bribe the committee of seven,
which, we are about to appoint, than it may have found it to
bribe the commissioners?

(Here Mr. Linder called to order.  The Chair decided that Mr.
Lincoln was not out of order.  Mr. Linder appealed to the House,
but, before the question was put, withdrew his appeal, saying he
preferred to let the gentleman go on; he thought he would break
his own neck.  Mr. Lincoln proceeded:)

Another gracious condescension! I acknowledge it with gratitude.
I know I was not out of order; and I know every sensible man in
the House knows it.  I was not saying that the gentleman from
Coles could be bribed, nor, on the other hand, will I say he
could not.  In that particular I leave him where I found him.  I
was only endeavoring to show that there was at least as great a
probability of any seven members that could be selected from this
House being bribed to act corruptly, as there was that the
twenty-four commissioners had been so bribed.  By a reference to
the ninth section of the Bank charter, it will be seen that those
commissioners were John Tilson, Robert K.  McLaughlin, Daniel
Warm, A.G.  S.  Wight, John C.  Riley, W.  H.  Davidson, Edward
M.  Wilson, Edward L.  Pierson, Robert R.  Green, Ezra Baker,
Aquilla Wren, John Taylor, Samuel C.  Christy, Edmund Roberts,
Benjamin Godfrey, Thomas Mather, A.  M.  Jenkins, W.  Linn, W.
S.  Gilman, Charles Prentice, Richard I.  Hamilton, A.H.
Buckner, W.  F.  Thornton, and Edmund D.  Taylor.

These are twenty-four of the most respectable men in the State.
Probably no twenty-four men could be selected in the State with
whom the people are better acquainted, or in whose honor and
integrity they would more readily place confidence.  And I now
repeat, that there is less probability that those men have been
bribed and corrupted, than that any seven men, or rather any six
men, that could be selected from the members of this House, might
be so bribed and corrupted, even though they were headed and led
on by "decided superiority" himself.

In all seriousness, I ask every reasonable man, if an issue be
joined by these twenty-four commissioners, on the one part, and
any other seven men, on the other part, and the whole depend upon
the honor and integrity of the contending parties, to which party
would the greatest degree of credit be due?  Again: Another
consideration is, that we have no right to make the examination.
What I shall say upon this head I design exclusively for the law-
loving and law-abiding part of the House.  To those who claim
omnipotence for the Legislature, and who in the plenitude of
their assumed powers are disposed to disregard the Constitution,
law, good faith, moral right, and everything else, I have not a
word to say.  But to the law-abiding part I say, examine the Bank
charter, go examine the Constitution, go examine the acts that
the General Assembly of this State has passed, and you will find
just as much authority given in each and every of them to compel
the Bank to bring its coffers to this hall and to pour their
contents upon this floor, as to compel it to submit to this
examination which this resolution proposes.  Why, Sir, the
gentleman from Coles, the mover of this resolution, very lately
denied on this floor that the Legislature had any right to repeal
or otherwise meddle with its own acts, when those acts were made
in the nature of contracts, and had been accepted and acted on by
other parties.  Now I ask if this resolution does not propose,
for this House alone, to do what he, but the other day, denied
the right of the whole Legislature to do?  He must either abandon
the position he then took, or he must now vote against his own
resolution.  It is no difference to me, and I presume but little
to any one else, which he does.

I am by no means the special advocate of the Bank.  I have long
thought that it would be well for it to report its condition to
the General Assembly, and that cases might occur, when it might
be proper to make an examination of its affairs by a committee.
Accordingly, during the last session, while a bill supplemental
to the Bank charter was pending before the House, I offered an
amendment to the same, in these words: "The said corporation
shall, at the next session of the General Assembly, and at each
subsequent General Session, during the existence of its charter,
report to the same the amount of debts due from said corporation;
the amount of debts due to the same; the amount of specie in its
vaults, and an account of all lands then owned by the same, and
the amount for which such lands have been taken; and moreover, if
said corporation shall at any time neglect or refuse to submit
its books, papers, and all and everything necessary for a full
and fair examination of its affairs, to any person or persons
appointed by the General Assembly, for the purpose of making such
examination, the said corporation shall forfeit its charter."

This amendment was negatived by a vote of 34 to 15.  Eleven of
the 34 who voted against it are now members of this House; and
though it would be out of order to call their names, I hope they
will all recollect themselves, and not vote for this examination
to be made without authority, inasmuch as they refused to receive
the authority when it was in their power to do so.

I have said that cases might occur, when an examination might be
proper; but I do not believe any such case has now occurred; and
if it has, I should still be opposed to making an examination
without legal authority.  I am opposed to encouraging that
lawless and mobocratic spirit, whether in relation to the Bank or
anything else, which is already abroad in the land and is
spreading with rapid and fearful impetuosity, to the ultimate
overthrow of every institution, of every moral principle, in
which persons and property have hitherto found security.

But supposing we had the authority, I would ask what good can
result from the examination?  Can we declare the Bank
unconstitutional, and compel it to desist from the abuses of its
power, provided we find such abuses to exist?  Can we repair the
injuries which it may have done to individuals?  Most certainly we
can do none of these things.  Why then
shall we spend the public money in such employment?  Oh, say the
examiners, we can injure the credit of the Bank, if nothing else,
Please tell me, gentlemen, who will suffer most by that?  You
cannot injure, to any extent, the stockholders.  They are men of
wealth--of large capital; and consequently, beyond the power of
malice.  But by injuring the credit of the Bank, you will
depreciate the value of its paper in the hands of the honest and
unsuspecting farmer and mechanic, and that is all you can do.
But suppose you could effect your whole purpose; suppose you
could wipe the Bank from existence, which is the grand ultimatum
of the project, what would be the consequence?  why, Sir, we
should spend several thousand dollars of the public treasure in
the operation, annihilate the currency of the State, render
valueless in the hands of our people that reward of their former
labors, and finally be once more under the comfortable obligation
of paying the Wiggins loan, principal and interest.




OPPOSITION TO MOB-RULE

ADDRESS BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN' S LYCEUM OF SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

January 27, 1837.

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, "The Perpetuation of
our Political Institutions "is selected.

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the
American people, find our account running under date of the
nineteenth century of the Christian era.  We find ourselves in
the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as
regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of
climate.  We find ourselves under the government of a system of
political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of
civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of
former times tells us.  We, when mounting the stage of existence,
found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental
blessings.  We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of
them; they are a legacy bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave, and
patriotic, but now lamented and departed, race of ancestors.
Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess
themselves, and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and
to uprear upon its hills and its valleys a political edifice of
liberty and equal rights; it is ours only to transmit these--the
former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed
by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the latest
generation that fate shall permit the world to know.  This task
gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to
posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively
require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?  At what point shall we expect the
approach of danger?  By what means shall we fortify against it?
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the
ocean and crush us at a blow?  Never!  All the armies of Europe,
Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth
(our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for
a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or
make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?  I
answer: If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it
cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot we must
ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen we
must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over-wary; but if I am not, there is even now
something of ill omen amongst us.  I mean the increasing
disregard for law which pervades the country--the growing
disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu
of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs
for the executive ministers of justice.  This disposition is
awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours,
though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation
of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.  Accounts of
outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times.
They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana;
they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor
the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of
climate, neither are they confined to the slave holding or the
non-slave holding States.  Alike they spring up among the
pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving
citizens of the land of steady habits.  Whatever then their cause
may be, it is common to the whole country.

It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of
all of them.  Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at
St.  Louis are perhaps the most dangerous in example and
revolting to humanity.  In the Mississippi case they first
commenced by hanging the regular gamblers--a set of men certainly
not following for a livelihood a very useful or very honest
occupation, but one which, so far from being forbidden by the
laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature passed
but a single year before.  Next, negroes suspected of conspiring
to raise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts
of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the
negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going
thither on business, were in many instances subjected to the same
fate.  Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to
negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to
strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from the
boughs of trees upon every roadside, and in numbers almost
sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a
drapery of the forest.

Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St.  Louis.  A single
victim only was sacrificed there.  This story is very short, and
is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything of its length that
has ever been witnessed in real life.  A mulatto man by the name
of McIntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of
the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and
all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman
attending to his own business and at peace with the world.

Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming
more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of
law and order, and the stories of which have even now grown too
familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark.

But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What has this to do with the
perpetuation of our political institutions?"  I answer, It has
much to do with it.  Its direct consequences are, comparatively
speaking, but a small evil, and much of its danger consists in
the proneness of our minds to regard its direct as its only
consequences.  Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers
at Vicksburg was of but little consequence.  They constitute a
portion of population that is worse than useless in any
community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by
it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one.  If they
were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or
smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the
operation.  Similar too is the correct reasoning in regard to the
burning of the negro at St.  Louis.  He had forfeited his life by
the perpetration of an outrageous murder upon one of the most
worthy and respectable citizens of the city, and had he not died
as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law in a very
short time afterwards.  As to him alone, it was as well the way
it was as it could otherwise have been.  But the example in
either case was fearful.  When men take it in their heads to-day
to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that in
the confusion usually attending such transactions they will be as
likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a
murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon the example they
set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or burn
some of them by the very same mistake.  And not only so: the
innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations
of law in every shape, alike with the guilty fall victims to the
ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all
the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of
individuals are trodden down and disregarded.  But all this,
even, is not the full extent of the evil.  By such examples, by
instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the
lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice;
and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment,
they thus become absolutely unrestrained.  Having ever regarded
government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the
suspension of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its
total annihilation.  While, on the other hand, good men, men who
love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy
their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense
of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families
insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and
seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the
better, become tired of and disgusted with a government that
offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in
which they imagine they have nothing to lose.  Thus, then, by the
operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now
abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and
particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be
broken down and destroyed--I mean the attachment of the people.
Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the
vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in
bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and
rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot
editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with
impunity, depend on it, this government cannot last.  By such
things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less
alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or
with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship
effectual.  At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of
sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the
opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which
for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers
of freedom throughout the world.

I know the American people are much attached to their government;
I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would
endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of
exchanging it for another,--yet, notwithstanding all this, if the
laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to
be secure in their persons and property are held by no better
tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their
affections from the government is the natural consequence; and to
that, sooner or later, it must come.

Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected.

The question recurs, How shall we fortify against it?  The answer
is simple.  Let every American, every lover of liberty, every
well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution
never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country,
and never to tolerate their violation by others.  As the patriots
of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of
Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let
every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred
honor.  Let every man remember that to violate the law is to
trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of
his own and his children's liberty.  Let reverence for the laws
be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that
prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries,
and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books,
and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed
in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.  And, in
short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and
let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and
the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions,
sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

While ever a state of feeling such as this shall universally or
even very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be
every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our
national freedom.

When, I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws,
let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that
grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal
provisions have been made.  I mean to say no such thing.  But I
do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be
repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in
force, for the sake of example they should be religiously
observed.  So also in unprovided cases.  If such arise, let
proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible
delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne
with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
In any case that may arise, as, for instance, the promulgation of
abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true--that is,
the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the
protection of all law and all good citizens, or it is wrong, and
therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in
neither case is the interposition of mob law either necessary,
justifiable, or excusable.

But it may be asked, Why suppose danger to our political
institutions?  Have we not preserved them for more than fifty
years?  And why may we not for fifty times as long?

We hope there is no sufficient reason.  We hope all danger may be
overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would
itself be extremely dangerous.  There are now, and will hereafter
be, many causes, dangerous in their tendency, which have not
existed heretofore, and which are not too insignificant to merit
attention.  That our government should have been maintained in
its original form, from its establishment until now, is not much
to be wondered at.  It had many props to support it through that
period, which now are decayed and crumbled away.  Through that
period it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now it
is understood to be a successful one.  Then, all that sought
celebrity and fame and distinction expected to find them in the
success of that experiment.  Their all was staked upon it; their
destiny was inseparably linked with it.  Their ambition aspired
to display before an admiring world a practical demonstration of
the truth of a proposition which had hitherto been considered at
best no better than problematical--namely, the capability of a
people to govern themselves.  If they succeeded they were to be
immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties, and
cities, and rivers, and mountains; and to be revered and sung,
toasted through all time.  If they failed, they were to be called
knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink
and be forgotten.  They succeeded.  The experiment is successful,
and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so.
But the game is caught; and I believe it is true that with the
catching end the pleasures of the chase.  This field of glory is
harvested, and the crop is already appropriated.  But new reapers
will arise, and they too will seek a field.  It is to deny what
the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of
ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us.
And when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification
of their ruling passion as others have done before them.  The
question then is, Can that gratification be found in supporting
and in maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?
Most certainly it cannot.  Many great and good men, sufficiently
qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found
whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress,
a Gubernatorial or a Presidential chair; but such belong not to
the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle.  What! think
you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a
Napoleon?  Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path.  It
seeks regions hitherto unexplored.  It sees no distinction in
adding story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the
memory of others.  It denies that it is glory enough to serve
under any chief.  It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any
predecessor, however illustrious.  It thirsts and burns for
distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the
expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.  Is it
unreasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the
loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to
its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us?  And
when such an one does it will require the people to be united
with each other, attached to the government and laws, and
generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would
as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm,
yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in
the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of
pulling down.

Here then is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such an one
as could not have well existed heretofore.

Another reason which once was, but which, to the same extent, is
now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus
far.  I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes
of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as
distinguished from their judgment.  By this influence, the
jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature, and so common
to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for
the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive,
while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive
of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were
directed exclusively against the British nation.  And thus, from
the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature
were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents
in the advancement of the noblest of causes--that of establishing
and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with
the circumstances that produced it.

I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or
ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else,
they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and
more dim by the lapse of time.  In history, we hope, they will be
read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but
even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it
heretofore has been.  Even then they cannot be so universally
known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just
gone to rest.  At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult
male had been a participator in some of its scenes.  The
consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a
father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in
every family--a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of
its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of
wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a
history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the
wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.  But those
histories are gone.  They can be read no more forever.  They were
a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do
the silent artillery of time has done--the leveling of its walls.
They are gone.  They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-
restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and
there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its
foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle
breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder
storms, then to sink and be no more.

They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they
have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their
descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from
the solid quarry of sober reason.  Passion has helped us, but can
do so no more.  It will in future be our enemy.  Reason cold,
calculating, unimpassioned reason--must furnish all the materials
for our future support and defense.  Let those materials be
moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in
particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; and that
we improved to the last, that we remained free to the last, that
we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we
permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting
place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken
our Washington.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of
its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater
institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."




PROTEST IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE ON THE
SUBJECT OF SLAVERY.

March 3, 1837.

The following protest was presented to the House, which was read
and ordered to be spread in the journals, to wit:

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed
both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the
undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition
doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power
under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the
power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless
at the request of the people of the District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the
said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

"DAN STONE,
"A. LINCOLN,
"Representatives from the County of Sangamon."




TO MISS MARY OWENS.

SPRINGFIELD, May 7, 1837.

MISS MARY S. OWENS.

FRIEND MARY:--I have commenced two letters to send you before
this, both of which displeased me before I got half done, and so
I tore them up.  The first I thought was not serious enough, and
the second was on the other extreme.  I shall send this, turn out
as it may.

This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business,
after all; at least it is so to me.  I am quite as lonesome here
as I ever was anywhere in my life.  I have been spoken to by but
one woman since I have been here, and should not have been by her
if she could have avoided it.  I 've never been to church yet,
and probably shall not be soon.  I stay away because I am
conscious I should not know how to behave myself.

I am often thinking of what we said about your coming to live at
Springfield.  I am afraid you would not be satisfied.  There is a
great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would
be your doom to see without sharing it.  You would have to be
poor, without the means of hiding your poverty.  Do you believe
you could bear that patiently?  Whatever woman may cast her lot
with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in
my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I
can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the
effort.  I know I should be much happier with you than the way I
am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you.  What you have
said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have
misunderstood you.  If so, then let it be forgotten; if
otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before you
decide.  What I have said I will most positively abide by,
provided you wish it.  My opinion is that you had better not do
it.  You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more
severe than you now imagine.  I know you are capable of thinking
correctly on any subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon
this subject before you decide, then I am willing to abide your
decision.

You must write me a good long letter after you get this.  You
have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem interesting
to you after you had written it, it would be a good deal of
company to me in this "busy wilderness."  Tell your sister I don't
want to hear any more about selling out and moving.  That gives
me the "hypo" whenever I think of it.  Yours, etc.,

LINCOLN




TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Aug. 5, 1837.

JOHN BENNETT, ESQ.

DEAR SIR:-Mr. Edwards tells me you wish to know whether the act
to which your own incorporation provision was attached passed
into a law.  It did. You can organize under the general
incorporation law as soon as you choose.

I also tacked a provision onto a fellow's bill to authorize the
relocation of the road from Salem down to your town, but I am not
certain whether or not the bill passed, neither do I suppose I
can ascertain before the law will be published, if it is a law.
Bowling Greene, Bennette Abe?  and yourself are appointed to make
the change.  No news. No excitement except a little about the
election of Monday next.

I suppose, of course, our friend Dr. Heney stands no chance in
your diggings.

Your friend and humble servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO MARY OWENS.

SPRINGFIELD,
Aug. 16, 1837

FRIEND MARY:
You will no doubt think it rather strange that I should write you
a letter on the same day on which we parted, and I can only
account for it by supposing that seeing you lately makes me think
of you more than usual; while at our late meeting we had but few
expressions of thoughts.  You must know that I cannot see you, or
think of you, with entire indifference; and yet it may be that
you are mistaken in regard to what my real feelings toward you
are.

If I knew you were not, I should not have troubled you with this
letter.  Perhaps any other man would know enough without
information; but I consider it my peculiar right to plead
ignorance, and your bounden duty to allow the plea.

I want in all cases to do right; and most particularly so in all
cases with women.

I want, at this particular time, more than any thing else to do
right with you; and if I knew it would be doing right, as I
rather suspect it would, to let you alone I would do it.  And,
for the purpose of making the matter as plain as possible, I now
say that you can drop the subject, dismiss your thoughts (if you
ever had any) from me for ever and leave this letter unanswered
without calling forth one accusing murmur from me.  And I will
even go further and say that, if it will add anything to your
comfort or peace of mind to do so, it is my sincere wish that you
should.  Do not understand by this that I wish to cut your
acquaintance.  I mean no such thing.  What I do wish is that our
further acquaintance shall depend upon yourself.  If such further
acquaintance would contribute nothing to your happiness, I am
sure it would not to mine.  If you feel yourself in any degree
bound to me, I am now willing to release you, provided you wish
it; while on the other hand I am willing and even anxious to bind
you faster if I can be convinced that it will, in any
considerable degree, add to your happiness.  This, indeed, is the
whole question with me.  Nothing would make me more miserable
than to believe you miserable, nothing more happy than to know
you were so.

In what I have now said, I think I cannot be misunderstood; and
to make myself understood is the only object of this letter.

If it suits you best not to answer this, farewell.  A long life
and a merry one attend you.  But, if you conclude to write back,
speak as plainly as I do.  There can neither be harm nor danger
in saying to me anything you think, just in the manner you think
it.  My respects to your sister.

Your friend,

LINCOLN




LEGAL SUIT OF WIDOW v.s. Gen. ADAMS

TO THE PEOPLE.

"SANGAMON JOURNAL," SPRINGFIELD, ILL.,
Aug. 19, 1837.

In accordance with our determination, as expressed last week, we
present to the reader the articles which were published in hand-
bill form, in reference to the case of the heirs of Joseph
Anderson vs.  James Adams.  These articles can now be read
uninfluenced by personal or party feeling, and with the sole
motive of learning the truth.  When that is done, the reader can
pass his own judgment on the matters at issue.

We only regret in this case, that the publications were not made
some weeks before the election.  Such a course might have
prevented the expressions of regret, which have often been heard
since, from different individuals, on account of the disposition
they made of their votes.



To the Public:

It is well known to most of you, that there is existing at this
time considerable excitement in regard to Gen. Adams's titles to
certain tracts of land, and the manner in which he acquired them.
As I understand, the Gen. charges that the whole has been gotten
up by a knot of lawyers to injure his election; and as I am one
of the knot to which he refers, and as I happen to be in
possession of facts connected with the matter, I will, in as
brief a manner as possible, make a statement of them, together
with the means by which I arrived at the knowledge of them.

Sometime in May or June last, a widow woman, by the name of
Anderson, and her son, who resides in Fulton county, came to
Springfield, for the purpose as they said of selling a ten acre
lot of ground lying near town, which they claimed as the property
of the deceased husband and father.

When they reached town they found the land was claimed by Gen.
Adams.  John T.  Stuart and myself were employed to look into the
matter, and if it was thought we could do so with any prospect of
success, to commence a suit for the land.  I went immediately to
the recorder's office to examine Adams's title, and found that
the land had been entered by one Dixon, deeded by Dixon to
Thomas, by Thomas to one Miller, and by Miller to Gen. Adams.
The oldest of these three deeds was about ten or eleven years
old, and the latest more than five, all recorded at the same
time, and that within less than one year.  This I thought a
suspicious circumstance, and I was thereby induced to examine the
deeds very closely, with a view to the discovery of some defect
by which to overturn the title, being almost convinced then it
was founded in fraud.  I discovered that in the deed from Thomas
to Miller, although Miller's name stood in a sort of marginal
note on the record book, it was nowhere in the deed itself.  I
told the fact to Talbott, the recorder, and proposed to him that
he should go to Gen. Adams's and get the original deed, and
compare it with the record, and thereby ascertain whether the
defect was in the original or there was merely an error in the
recording.  As Talbott afterwards told me, he went to the
General's, but not finding him at home, got the deed from his
son, which, when compared with the record, proved what we had
discovered was merely an error of the recorder.  After Mr.
Talbott corrected the record, be brought the original to our
office, as I then thought and think yet, to show us that it was
right.  When he came into the room he handed the deed to me,
remarking that the fault was all his own.  On opening it, another
paper fell out of it, which on examination proved to be an
assignment of a judgment in the Circuit Court of Sangamon County
from Joseph Anderson, the late husband of the widow above named,
to James Adams, the judgment being in favor of said Anderson
against one Joseph Miller.  Knowing that this judgment had some
connection with the land affair, I immediately took a copy of it,
which is word for word, letter for letter and cross for cross as
follows:

Joseph Anderson,
vs.
Joseph Miller.

Judgment in Sangamon Circuit Court against Joseph Miller obtained
on a note originally 25 dolls and interest thereon accrued.
I assign all my right, title and interest to James Adams which is
in consideration of a debt I owe said Adams.

his
JOSEPH  x  ANDERSON.
mark.


As the copy shows, it bore date May 10, 1827; although the
judgment assigned by it was not obtained until the October
afterwards, as may be seen by any one on the records of the
Circuit Court.  Two other strange circumstances attended it which
cannot be represented by a copy.  One of them was, that the date
"1827" had first been made "1837" and, without the figure "3,"
being fully obliterated, the figure "2" had afterwards been made
on top of it; the other was that, although the date was ten years
old, the writing on it, from the freshness of its appearance, was
thought by many, and I believe by all who saw it, not to be more
than a week old.  The paper on which it was written had a very
old appearance; and there were some old figures on the back of it
which made the freshness of the writing on the face of it much
more striking than I suppose it otherwise might have been.  The
reader's curiosity is no doubt excited to know what connection
this assignment had with the land in question.  The story is
this: Dixon sold and deeded the land to Thomas; Thomas sold it to
Anderson; but before he gave a deed, Anderson sold it to Miller,
and took Miller's note for the purchase money.  When this note
became due, Anderson sued Miller on it, and Miller procured an
injunction from the Court of Chancery to stay the collection of
the money until he should get a deed for the land.  Gen. Adams
was employed as an attorney by Anderson in this chancery suit,
and at the October term, 1827, the injunction was dissolved, and
a judgment given in favor of Anderson against Miller; and it was
provided that Thomas was to execute a deed for the land in favor
of Miller and deliver it to Gen. Adams, to be held up by him till
Miller paid the judgment, and then to deliver it to him.  Miller
left the county without paying the judgment.  Anderson moved to
Fulton county, where he has since died  When the widow came to
Springfield last May or June, as before mentioned, and found the
land deeded to Gen. Adams by Miller, she was naturally led to
inquire why the money due upon the judgment had not been sent to
them, inasmuch as he, Gen. Adams, had no authority to deliver
Thomas's deed to Miller until the money was paid.  Then it was
the General told her, or perhaps her son, who came with her, that
Anderson, in his lifetime, had assigned the judgment to him, Gen.
Adams.  I am now told that the General is exhibiting an
assignment of the same judgment bearing date "1828" and in other
respects differing from the one described; and that he is
asserting that no such assignment as the one copied by me ever
existed; or if there did, it was forged between Talbott and the
lawyers, and slipped into his papers for the purpose of injuring
him.  Now, I can only say that I know precisely such a one did
exist, and that Ben.  Talbott, Wm.  Butler, C.R.  Matheny, John
T.  Stuart, Judge Logan, Robert Irwin, P.  C.  Canedy and S.  M.
Tinsley, all saw and examined it, and that at least one half of
them will swear that IT WAS IN GENERAL ADAMS'S HANDWRITING !! And
further, I know that Talbott will swear that he got it out of the
General's possession, and returned it into his possession again.
The assignment which the General is now exhibiting purports to
have been by Anderson in writing.  The one I copied was signed
with a cross.

I am told that Gen. Neale says that he will swear that he heard
Gen. Adams tell young Anderson that the assignment made by his
father was signed with a cross.

The above are 'facts,' as stated.  I leave them without comment.
I have given the names of persons who have knowledge of these
facts, in order that any one who chooses may call on them and
ascertain how far they will corroborate my statements.  I have
only made these statements because I am known by many to be one
of the individuals against whom the charge of forging the
assignment and slipping it into the General's papers has been
made, and because our silence might be construed into a
confession of its truth.  I shall not subscribe my name; but I
hereby authorize the editor of the Journal to give it up to any
one that may call for it.




LINCOLN AND TALBOTT IN REPLY TO GEN. ADAMS.

"SANGAMON JOURNAL," SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Oct. 28, 1837.

In the Republican of this morning a publication of Gen. Adams's
appears, in which my name is used quite unreservedly.  For this I
thank the General.  I thank him because it gives me an
opportunity, without appearing obtrusive, of explaining a part of
a former publication of mine, which appears to me to have been
misunderstood by many.

In the former publication alluded to, I stated, in substance,
that Mr. Talbott got a deed from a son of Gen. Adams's for the
purpose of correcting a mistake that had occurred on the record
of the said deed in the recorder's office; that he corrected the
record, and brought the deed and handed it to me, and that on
opening the deed, another paper, being the assignment of a
judgment, fell out of it.  This statement Gen. Adams and the
editor of the Republican have seized upon as a most palpable
evidence of fabrication and falsehood.  They set themselves
gravely about proving that the assignment could not have been in
the deed when Talbott got it from young Adams, as he, Talbott,
would have seen it when he opened the deed to correct the record.
Now, the truth is, Talbott did see the assignment when he opened
the deed, or at least he told me he did on the same day; and I
only omitted to say so, in my former publication, because it was
a matter of such palpable and necessary inference.  I had stated
that Talbott had corrected the record by the deed; and of course
he must have opened it; and, just as the General and his friends
argue, must have seen the assignment.  I omitted to state the
fact of Talbott's seeing the assignment, because its existence
was so necessarily connected with other facts which I did state,
that I thought the greatest dunce could not but understand it.
Did I say Talbott had not seen it?  Did I say anything that was
inconsistent with his having seen it before?  Most certainly I did
neither; and if I did not, what becomes of the argument?  These
logical gentlemen can sustain their argument only by assuming
that I did say negatively everything that I did not say
affirmatively; and upon the same assumption, we may expect to
find the General, if a little harder pressed for argument, saying
that I said Talbott came to our office with his head downward,
not that I actually said so, but because I omitted to say he came
feet downward.

In his publication to-day, the General produces the affidavit of
Reuben Radford, in which it is said that Talbott told Radford
that he did not find the assignment in the deed, in the recording
of which the error was committed, but that he found it wrapped in
another paper in the recorder's office, upon which statement the
Genl.  comments as follows, to wit:
"If it be true as stated by Talbott to Radford, that he found the
assignment wrapped up in another paper at his office, that
contradicts the statement of Lincoln that it fell out of the
deed."

Is common sense to be abused with such sophistry?  Did I say what
Talbott found it in?  If Talbott did find it in another paper at
his office, is that any reason why he could not have folded it in
a deed and brought it to my office?  Can any one be so far duped
as to be made believe that what may have happened at Talbot's
office at one time is inconsistent with what happened at my
office at another time?

Now Talbott's statement of the case as he makes it to me is this,
that he got a bunch of deeds from young Adams, and that he knows
he found the assignment in the bunch, but he is not certain which
particular deed it was in, nor is he certain whether it was
folded in the same deed out of which it was taken, or another
one, when it was brought to my office.  Is this a mysterious
story?  Is there anything suspicious about it?

"But it is useless to dwell longer on this point.  Any man who is
not wilfully blind can see at a flash, that there is no
discrepancy, and Lincoln has shown that they are not only
inconsistent with truth, but each other"--I can only say, that I
have shown that he has done no such thing; and if the reader is
disposed to require any other evidence than the General's
assertion, he will be of my opinion.

Excepting the General's most flimsy attempt at mystification, in
regard to a discrepance between Talbott and myself, he has not
denied a single statement that I made in my hand-bill.  Every
material statement that I made has been sworn to by men who, in
former times, were thought as respectable as General Adams.  I
stated that an assignment of a judgment, a copy of which I gave,
had existed--Benj.  Talbott, C.  R.  Matheny, Wm.  Butler, and
Judge Logan swore to its existence.  I stated that it was said to
be in Gen. Adams's handwriting--the same men swore it was in his
handwriting.  I stated that Talbott would swear that he got it
out of Gen. Adams's possession--Talbott came forward and did
swear it.

Bidding adieu to the former publication, I now propose to examine
the General's last gigantic production.  I now propose to point
out some discrepancies in the General's address; and such, too,
as he shall not be able to escape from.  Speaking of the famous
assignment, the General says: "This last charge, which was their
last resort, their dying effort to render my character infamous
among my fellow citizens, was manufactured at a certain lawyer's
office in the town, printed at the office of the Sangamon
Journal, and found its way into the world some time between two
days just before the last election."  Now turn to Mr. Keys'
affidavit, in which you will find the following, viz.: "I certify
that some time in May or the early part of June, 1837, I saw at
Williams's corner a paper purporting to be an assignment from
Joseph Anderson to James Adams, which assignment was signed by a
mark to Anderson's name," etc.  Now mark, if Keys saw the
assignment on the last of May or first of June, Gen. Adams tells
a falsehood when he says it was manufactured just before the
election, which was on the 7th of August; and if it was
manufactured just before the election, Keys tells a falsehood
when he says he saw it on the last of May or first of June.
Either Keys or the General is irretrievably in for it; and in the
General's very condescending language, I say "Let them settle it
between them."

Now again, let the reader, bearing in mind that General Adams has
unequivocally said, in one part of his address, that the charge
in relation to the assignment was manufactured just before the
election, turn to the affidavit of Peter S.  Weber, where the
following will be found viz.: "I, Peter S.  Weber, do certify
that from the best of my recollection, on the day or day after
Gen. Adams started for the Illinois Rapids, in May last, that I
was at the house of Gen. Adams, sitting in the kitchen, situated
on the back part of the house, it being in the afternoon, and
that Benjamin Talbott came around the house, back into the
kitchen, and appeared wild and confused, and that he laid a
package of papers on the kitchen table and requested that they
should be handed to Lucian.  He made no apology for coming to the
kitchen, nor for not handing them to Lucian himself, but showed
the token of being frightened and confused both in demeanor and
speech and for what cause I could not apprehend."

Commenting on Weber's affidavit, Gen. Adams asks, "Why this
fright and confusion?"  I reply that this is a question for the
General himself.  Weber says that it was in May, and if so, it is
most clear that Talbott was not frightened on account of the
assignment, unless the General lies when he says the assignment
charge was manufactured just before the election.  Is it not a
strong evidence, that the General is not traveling with the pole-
star of truth in his front, to see him in one part of his address
roundly asserting that the assignment was manufactured just
before the election, and then, forgetting that position,
procuring Weber's most foolish affidavit, to prove that Talbott
had been engaged in manufacturing it two months before?

In another part of his address, Gen. Adams says:  "That I hold an
assignment of said judgment, dated the 20th of May, 1828, and
signed by said Anderson, I have never pretended to deny or
conceal, but stated that fact in one of my circulars previous to
the election, and also in answer to a bill in chancery."  Now I
pronounce this statement unqualifiedly false, and shall not rely
on the word or oath of any man to sustain me in what I say; but
will let the whole be decided by reference to the circular and
answer in chancery of which the General speaks.  In his circular
he did speak of an assignment; but he did not say it bore date
20th of May, 1828; nor did he say it bore any date.  In his
answer in chancery, he did say that he had an assignment; but he
did not say that it bore date the 20th May, 1828; but so far from
it, he said on oath (for he swore to the answer) that as well as
recollected, he obtained it in 1827.  If any one doubts, let him
examine the circular and answer for himself.  They are both
accessible.

It will readily be observed that the principal part of Adams's
defense rests upon the argument that if he had been base enough
to forge an assignment he would not have been fool enough to
forge one that would not cover the case.  This argument he used
in his circular before the election.  The Republican has used it
at least once, since then; and Adams uses it again in his
publication of to-day.  Now I pledge myself to show that he is
just such a fool that he and his friends have contended it was
impossible for him to be.  Recollect--he says he has a genuine
assignment; and that he got Joseph Klein's affidavit, stating
that he had seen it, and that he believed the signature to have
been executed by the same hand that signed Anderson's name to the
answer in chancery.  Luckily Klein took a copy of this genuine
assignment, which I have been permitted to see; and hence I know
it does not cover the case.  In the first place it is headed
"Joseph Anderson vs.  Joseph Miller," and heads off "Judgment in
Sangamon Circuit Court."  Now, mark, there never was a case in
Sangamon Circuit Court entitled Joseph Anderson vs.  Joseph
Miller.  The case mentioned in my former publication, and the
only one between these parties that ever existed in the Circuit
Court, was entitled Joseph Miller vs.  Joseph Anderson, Miller
being the plaintiff.  What then becomes of all their sophistry
about Adams not being fool enough to forge an assignment that
would not cover the case?  It is certain that the present one does
not cover the case; and if he got it honestly, it is still clear
that he was fool enough to pay for an assignment that does not
cover the case.

The General asks for the proof of disinterested witnesses.  Whom
does he consider disinterested?  None can be more so than those
who have already testified against him.  No one of them had the
least interest on earth, so far as I can learn, to injure him.
True, he says they had conspired against him; but if the
testimony of an angel from Heaven were introduced against him, he
would make the same charge of conspiracy.  And now I put the
question to every reflecting man, Do you believe that Benjamin
Talbott, Chas.  R.  Matheny, William Butler and Stephen T.
Logan, all sustaining high and spotless characters, and justly
proud of them, would deliberately perjure themselves, without any
motive whatever, except to injure a man's election; and that,
too, a man who had been a candidate, time out of mind, and yet
who had never been elected to any office?

Adams's assurance, in demanding disinterested testimony, is
surpassing.  He brings in the affidavit of his own son, and even
of Peter S.  Weber, with whom I am not acquainted, but who, I
suppose, is some black or mulatto boy, from his being kept in the
kitchen, to prove his points; but when such a man as Talbott, a
man who, but two years ago, ran against Gen. Adams for the office
of Recorder and beat him more than four votes to one, is
introduced against him, he asks the community, with all the
consequence of a lord, to reject his testimony.

I might easily write a volume, pointing out inconsistencies
between the statements in Adams's last address with one another,
and with other known facts; but I am aware the reader must
already be tired with the length of this article.  His opening
statements, that he was first accused of being a Tory, and that
he refuted that; that then the Sampson's ghost story was got up,
and he refuted that; that as a last resort, a dying effort, the
assignment charge was got up is all as false as hell, as all this
community must know.  Sampson's ghost first made its appearance
in print, and that, too, after Keys swears he saw the assignment,
as any one may see by reference to the files of papers; and Gen.
Adams himself, in reply to the Sampson's ghost story, was the
first man that raised the cry of toryism, and it was only by way
of set-off, and never in seriousness, that it was bandied back at
him.  His effort is to make the impression that his enemies first
made the charge of toryism and he drove them from that, then
Sampson's ghost, he drove them from that, then finally the
assignment charge was manufactured just before election.  Now,
the only general reply he ever made to the Sampson's ghost and
tory charges he made at one and the same time, and not in
succession as he states; and the date of that reply will show,
that it was made at least a month after the date on which Keys
swears he saw the Anderson assignment.  But enough.  In
conclusion I will only say that I have a character to defend as
well as Gen. Adams, but I disdain to whine about it as he does.
It is true I have no children nor kitchen boys; and if I had, I
should scorn to lug them in to make affidavits for me.

A. LINCOLN,  September 6, 1837.




Gen. ADAMS CONTROVERSY--CONTINUED

TO THE PUBLIC.

"SANGAMON JOURNAL," Springfield, Ill, Oct.28, 1837.

Such is the turn which things have taken lately, that when Gen.
Adams writes a book, I am expected to write a commentary on it.
In the Republican of this morning he has presented the world with
a new work of six columns in length; in consequence of which I
must beg the room of one column in the Journal.  It is obvious
that a minute reply cannot be made in one column to everything
that can be said in six; and, consequently, I hope that
expectation will be answered if I reply to such parts of the
General's publication as are worth replying to.

It may not be improper to remind the reader that in his
publication of Sept.  6th General Adams said that the assignment
charge was manufactured just before the election; and that in
reply I proved that statement to be false by Keys, his own
witness.  Now, without attempting to explain, he furnishes me
with another witness (Tinsley) by which the same thing is proved,
to wit, that the assignment was not manufactured just before the
election; but that it was some weeks before.  Let it be borne in
mind that Adams made this statement--has himself furnished two
witnesses to prove its falsehood, and does not attempt to deny or
explain it.  Before going farther, let a pin be stuck here,
labeled "One lie proved and confessed."  On the 6th of September
he said he had before stated in the hand-bill that he held an
assignment dated May 20th, 1828, which in reply I pronounced to
be false, and referred to the hand-bill for the truth of what I
said.  This week he forgets to make any explanation of this.  Let
another pin be stuck here, labelled as before.  I mention these
things because, if, when I convict him in one falsehood, he is
permitted to shift his ground and pass it by in silence, there
can be no end to this controversy.

The first thing that attracts my attention in the General's
present production is the information he is pleased to give to
"those who are made to suffer at his (my) hands."

Under present circumstances, this cannot apply to me, for I am
not a widow nor an orphan: nor have I a wife or children who
might by possibility become such.  Such, however, I have no
doubt, have been, and will again be made to suffer at his hands!
Hands!  Yes, they are the mischievous agents.  The next thing I
shall notice is his favorite expression, "not of lawyers, doctors
and others," which he is so fond of applying to all who dare
expose his rascality.  Now, let it be remembered that when he
first came to this country he attempted to impose himself upon
the community as a lawyer, and actually carried the attempt so
far as to induce a man who was under a charge of murder to
entrust the defence of his life in his hands, and finally took
his money and got him hanged.  Is this the man that is to raise a
breeze in his favor by abusing lawyers?  If he is not himself a
lawyer, it is for the lack of sense, and not of inclination.  If
he is not a lawyer, he is a liar, for he proclaimed himself a
lawyer, and got a man hanged by depending on him.

Passing over such parts of the article as have neither fact nor
argument in them, I come to the question asked by Adams whether
any person ever saw the assignment in his possession.  This is an
insult to common sense.  Talbott has sworn once and repeated time
and again, that he got it out of Adams's possession and returned
it into the same possession.  Still, as though he was addressing
fools, he has assurance to ask if any person ever saw it in his
possession.

Next I quote a sentence,     "Now my son Lucian swears that when
Talbott called for the deed, that he, Talbott, opened it and
pointed out the error."  True.  His son Lucian did swear as he
says; and in doing so, he swore what I will prove by his own
affidavit to be a falsehood.  Turn to Lucian's affidavit, and you
will there see that Talbott called for the deed by which to
correct an error on the record.  Thus it appears that the error
in question was on the record, and not in the deed.  How then
could Talbott open the deed and point out the error?  Where a
thing is not, it cannot be pointed out.  The error was not in the
deed, and of course could not be pointed out there.  This does
not merely prove that the error could not be pointed out, as
Lucian swore it was; but it proves, too, that the deed was not
opened in his presence with a special view to the error, for if
it had been, he could not have failed to see that there was no
error in it.  It is easy enough to see why Lucian swore this.
His object was to prove that the assignment was not in the deed
when Talbott got it: but it was discovered he could not swear
this safely, without first swearing the deed was opened--and if
he swore it was opened, he must show a motive for opening it, and
the conclusion with him and his father was that the pointing out
the error would appear the most plausible.

For the purpose of showing that the assignment was not in the
bundle when Talbott got it, is the story introduced into Lucian's
affidavit that the deeds were counted.  It is a remarkable fact,
and one that should stand as a warning to all liars and
fabricators, that in this short affidavit of Lucian's he only
attempted to depart from the truth, so far as I have the means of
knowing, in two points, to wit, in the opening the deed and
pointing out the error and the counting of the deeds,--and in
both of these he caught himself.  About the counting, he caught
himself thus--after saying the bundle contained five deeds and a
lease, he proceeds, "and I saw no other papers than the said deed
and lease."  First he has six papers, and then he saw none but
two; for "my son Lucian's" benefit, let a pin be stuck here.

Adams again adduces the argument, that he could not have forged
the assignment, for the reason that he could have had no motive
for it.  With those that know the facts there is no absence of
motive.  Admitting the paper which he has filed in the suit to be
genuine, it is clear that it cannot answer the purpose for which
he designs it.  Hence his motive for making one that he supposed
would answer is obvious.  His making the date too old is also
easily enough accounted for.  The records were not in his hands,
and then, there being some considerable talk upon this particular
subject, he knew he could not examine the records to ascertain
the precise dates without subjecting himself to suspicion; and
hence he concluded to try it by guess, and, as it turned out,
missed it a little.  About Miller's deposition I have a word to
say.  In the first place, Miller's answer to the first question
shows upon its face that he had been tampered with, and the
answer dictated to him.  He was asked if he knew Joel Wright and
James Adams; and above three-fourths of his answer consists of
what he knew about Joseph Anderson, a man about whom nothing had
been asked, nor a word said in the question--a fact that can only
be accounted for upon the supposition that Adams had secretly
told him what he wished him to swear to.

Another of Miller's answers I will prove both by common sense and
the Court of Record is untrue.  To one question he answers,
"Anderson brought a suit against me before James Adams, then an
acting justice of the peace in Sangamon County, before whom he
obtained a judgment.

"Q.--Did you remove the same by injunction to the Sangamon
Circuit Court?  Ans.--I did remove it."

Now mark--it is said he removed it by injunction.  The word
"injunction" in common language imports a command that some
person or thing shall not move or be removed; in law it has the
same meaning.  An injunction issuing out of chancery to a justice
of the peace is a command to him to stop all proceedings in a
named case until further orders.  It is not an order to remove
but to stop or stay something that is already moving.  Besides
this, the records of the Sangamon Circuit Court show that the
judgment of which Miller swore was never removed into said Court
by injunction or otherwise.

I have now to take notice of a part of Adams's address which in
the order of time should have been noticed before.  It is in
these words: "I have now shown, in the opinion of two competent
judges, that the handwriting of the forged assignment differed
from mine, and by one of them that it could not be mistaken for
mine."  That is false.  Tinsley no doubt is the judge referred
to; and by reference to his certificate it will be seen that he
did not say the handwriting of the assignment could not be
mistaken for Adams's--nor did he use any other expression
substantially, or anything near substantially, the same.  But if
Tinsley had said the handwriting could not be mistaken for
Adams's, it would have been equally unfortunate for Adams: for it
then would have contradicted Keys, who says, "I looked at the
writing and judged it the said Adams's or a good imitation."

Adams speaks with much apparent confidence of his success on
attending lawsuits, and the ultimate maintenance of his title to
the land in question.  Without wishing to disturb the pleasure of
his dream, I would say to him that it is not impossible that he
may yet be taught to sing a different song in relation to the
matter.

At the end of Miller's deposition, Adams asks, "Will Mr. Lincoln
now say that he is almost convinced my title to this ten acre
tract of land is founded in fraud?"  I answer, I will not.  I will
now change the phraseology so as to make it run--I am quite
convinced, &c.  I cannot pass in silence Adams's assertion that
he has proved that the forged assignment was not in the deed when
it came from his house by Talbott, the recorder.  In this,
although Talbott has sworn that the assignment was in the bundle
of deeds when it came from his house, Adams has the unaccountable
assurance to say that he has proved the contrary by Talbott.  Let
him or his friends attempt to show wherein he proved any such
thing by Talbott.

In his publication of the 6th of September he hinted to Talbott,
that he might be mistaken.  In his present, speaking of Talbott
and me he says "They may have been imposed upon."  Can any man of
the least penetration fail to see the object of this?  After be
has stormed and raged till he hopes and imagines he has got us a
little scared he wishes to softly whisper in our ears, "If you'll
quit I will."  If he could get us to say that some unknown,
undefined being had slipped the assignment into our hands without
our knowledge, not a doubt remains but that be would immediately
discover that we were the purest men on earth.  This is the
ground he evidently wishes us to understand he is willing to
compromise upon.  But we ask no such charity at his hands.  We
are neither mistaken nor imposed upon.  We have made the
statements we have because we know them to be true and we choose
to live or die by them.

Esq.  Carter, who is Adams's friend, personal and political, will
recollect, that, on the 5th of this month, he (Adams), with a
great affectation of modesty, declared that he would never
introduce his own child as a witness.  Notwithstanding this
affectation of modesty, he has in his present publication
introduced his child as witness; and as if to show with how much
contempt he could treat his own declaration, he has had this same
Esq.  Carter to administer the oath to him.  And so important a
witness does he consider him, and so entirely does the whole of
his entire present production depend upon the testimony of his
child, that in it he has mentioned "my son," "my son Lucian,"
"Lucian, my son," and the like expressions no less than fifteen
different times.  Let it be remembered here, that I have shown
the affidavit of "my darling son Lucian" to be false by the
evidence apparent on its own face; and I now ask if that
affidavit be taken away what foundation will the fabric have left
to stand upon?

General Adams's publications and out-door maneuvering, taken in
connection with the editorial articles of the Republican, are not
more foolish and contradictory than they are ludicrous and
amusing.  One week the Republican notifies the public that Gen.
Adams is preparing an instrument that will tear, rend, split,
rive, blow up, confound, overwhelm, annihilate, extinguish,
exterminate, burst asunder, and grind to powder all its
slanderers, and particularly Talbott and Lincoln--all of which is
to be done in due time.

Then for two or three weeks all is calm--not a word said.  Again
the Republican comes forth with a mere passing remark that
"public" opinion has decided in favor of Gen. Adams, and
intimates that he will give himself no more trouble about the
matter.  In the meantime Adams himself is prowling about and, as
Burns says of the devil, "For prey, and holes and corners
tryin'," and in one instance goes so far as to take an old
acquaintance of mine several steps from a crowd and, apparently
weighed down with the importance of his business, gravely and
solemnly asks him if "he ever heard Lincoln say he was a deist."

Anon the Republican comes again.  "We invite the attention of the
public to General Adams's communication," &c.  "The victory is a
great one, the triumph is overwhelming."  I really believe the
editor of the Illinois Republican is fool enough to think General
Adams leads off--"Authors most egregiously mistaken &c.  Most
woefully shall their presumption be punished," &c.  (Lord have
mercy on us.) "The hour is yet to come, yea, nigh at hand--(how
long first do you reckon ?)--when the Journal and its junto shall
say, I have appeared too early."  "Their infamy shall be laid bare
to the public gaze."  Suddenly the General appears to relent at
the severity with which he is treating us and he exclaims: "The
condemnation of my enemies is the inevitable result of my own
defense."  For your health's sake, dear Gen., do not permit your
tenderness of heart to afflict you so much on our account.  For
some reason (perhaps because we are killed so quickly) we shall
never be sensible of our suffering.

Farewell, General.  I will see you again at court if not before--
when and where we will settle the question whether you or the
widow shall have the land.

A. LINCOLN.
October 18, 1837.




1838


TO Mrs. O. H. BROWNING--A FARCE

SPRINGFIELD,  April 1, 1838.

DEAR MADAM:--Without apologizing for being egotistical, I shall
make the history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw
you the subject of this letter.  And, by the way, I now discover
that, in order to give a full and intelligible account of the
things I have done and suffered since I saw you, I shall
necessarily have to relate some that happened before.

It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my
acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to
pay a visit to her father and other relatives residing in
Kentucky, proposed to me that on her return she would bring a
sister of hers with her on condition that I would engage to
become her brother-in-law with all convenient despatch.  I, of
course, accepted the proposal, for you know I could not have done
otherwise had I really been averse to it; but privately, between
you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with the
project.  I had seen the said sister some three years before,
thought her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection
to plodding life through hand in hand with her.  Time passed on;
the lady took her journey and in due time returned, sister in
company, sure enough.  This astonished me a little, for it
appeared to me that her coming so readily showed that she was a
trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred to me that she
might have been prevailed on by her married sister to come
without anything concerning me ever having been mentioned to her,
and so I concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I
would consent to waive this.  All this occurred to me on hearing
of her arrival in the neighborhood--for, be it remembered, I had
not yet seen her, except about three years previous, as above
mentioned.  In a few days we had an interview, and, although I
had seen her before, she did not look as my imagination had
pictured her.  I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a
fair match for Falstaff.  I knew she was called an "old maid,"
and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the
appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life
avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered
features,--for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its
contracting into wrinkles,--but from her want of teeth, weather-
beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran
in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of
infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or
forty years; and in short, I was not at all pleased with her.
But what could I do?  I had told her sister that I would take her
for better or for worse, and I made a point of honor and
conscience in all things to stick to my word especially if others
had been induced to act on it which in this case I had no doubt
they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no other man on
earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were
bent on holding me to my bargain.

"Well," thought I, "I have said it, and, be the consequences what
they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it."  At once I
determined to consider her my wife; and, this done, all my powers
of discovery were put to work in search of perfections in her
which might be fairly set off against her defects.  I tried to
imagine her handsome, which, but for her unfortunate corpulency,
was actually true.  Exclusive of this no woman that I have ever
seen has a finer face.  I also tried to convince myself that the
mind was much more to be valued than the person; and in this she
was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had
been acquainted.

Shortly after this, without coming to any positive understanding
with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first saw
me.  During my stay there I had letters from her which did not
change my opinion of either her intellect or intention, but on
the contrary confirmed it in both.

All this while, although I was fixed, "firm as the surge-
repelling rock," in my resolution, I found I was continually
repenting the rashness which had led me to make it.  Through
life, I have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from
the thraldom of which I so much desired to be free.  After my
return home, I saw nothing to change my opinions of her in any
particular.  She was the same, and so was I.  I now spent my time
in planning how I might get along through life after my
contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and
how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really
dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.

After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here
I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the "scrape"; and
now I want to know if you can guess how I got out of it----out,
clear, in every sense of the term; no violation of word, honor,
or conscience.  I don't believe you can guess, and so I might as
well tell you at once.  As the lawyer says, it was done in the
manner following, to wit: After I had delayed the matter as long
as I thought I could in honor do (which, by the way, had brought
me round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well bring
it to a consummation without further delay; and so I mustered my
resolution, and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to
relate, she answered, No.  At first I supposed she did it through
an affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill became her
under the peculiar circumstances of her case; but on my renewal
of the charge, I found she repelled it with greater firmness than
before.  I tried it again and again but with the same success, or
rather with the same want of success.

I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly
found myself mortified almost beyond endurance.  I was mortified,
it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways.  My vanity was
deeply wounded by the reflection that I had been too stupid to
discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that
I understood them perfectly, and also that she, whom I had taught
myself to believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected
me with all my fancied greatness.  And, to cap the whole, I then
for the first time began to suspect that I was really a little in
love with her.  But let it all go.  I'll try and outlive it.
Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never
with truth be said of me.  I most emphatically in this instance,
made a fool of myself.  I have now come to the conclusion never
again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be
satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me.

When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to
amuse me.  Give my respects to Mr. Browning.

Your sincere friend,
A. LINCOLN.




1839


REMARKS ON SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 17, 1839.

Mr. Lincoln, from Committee on Finance, to which the subject was
referred, made a report on the subject of purchasing of the
United States all the unsold lands lying within the limits of the
State of Illinois, accompanied by resolutions that this State
propose to purchase all unsold lands at twenty-five cents per
acre, and pledging the faith of the State to carry the proposal
into effect if the government accept the same within two years.

Mr. Lincoln thought the resolutions ought to be seriously
considered.  In reply to the gentleman from Adams, he said that
it was not to enrich the State.  The price of the lands may be
raised, it was thought by some; by others, that it would be
reduced.  The conclusion in his mind was that the representatives
in this Legislature from the country in which the lands lie would
be opposed to raising the price, because it would operate against
the settlement of the lands.  He referred to the lands in the
military tract.  They had fallen into the hands of large
speculators in consequence of the low price.  He was opposed to a
low price of land.  He thought it was adverse to the interests of
the poor settler, because speculators buy them up.  He was
opposed to a reduction of the price of public lands.

Mr. Lincoln referred to some official documents emanating from
Indiana, and compared the progressive population of the two
States.  Illinois had gained upon that State under the public
land system as it is.  His conclusion was that ten years from
this time Illinois would have no more public land unsold than
Indiana now has.  He referred also to Ohio.  That State had sold
nearly all her public lands.  She was but twenty years ahead of
us, and as our lands were equally salable--more so, as he
maintained--we should have no more twenty years from now than she
has at present.

Mr. Lincoln referred to the canal lands, and supposed that the
policy of the State would be different in regard to them, if the
representatives from that section of country could themselves
choose the policy; but the representatives from other parts of
the State had a veto upon it, and regulated the policy.  He
thought that if the State had all the lands, the policy of the
Legislature would be more liberal to all sections.

He referred to the policy of the General Government.  He thought
that if the national debt had not been paid, the expenses of the
government would not have doubled, as they had done since that
debt was paid.




TO _________ ROW.

SPRINGFIELD, June 11, 1839

DEAR ROW:

Mr. Redman informs me that you wish me to write you the
particulars of a conversation between Dr. Felix and myself
relative to you.  The Dr. overtook me between Rushville and
Beardstown.

He, after learning that I had lived at Springfield, asked if I
was acquainted with you.  I told him I was.  He said you had
lately been elected constable in Adams, but that you never would
be again.  I asked him why.  He said the people there had found
out that you had been sheriff or deputy sheriff in Sangamon
County, and that you came off and left your securities to suffer.
He then asked me if I did not know such to be the fact.  I told
him I did not think you had ever been sheriff or deputy sheriff
in Sangamon, but that I thought you had been constable.  I
further told him that if you had left your securities to suffer
in that or any other case, I had never heard of it, and that if
it had been so, I thought I would have heard of it.

If the Dr. is telling that I told him anything against you
whatever, I authorize you to contradict it flatly.  We have no
news here.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH ON NATIONAL BANK

IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,  December 20, 1839.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt
a continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been
conducted in this hall on several preceding ones.  It is so
because on each of those evenings there was a much fuller
attendance than now, without any reason for its being so, except
the greater interest the community feel in the speakers who
addressed them then than they do in him who is to do so now.  I
am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended have done
so more to spare me mortification than in the hope of being
interested in anything I may be able to say.  This circumstance
casts a damp upon my spirits, which I am sure I shall be unable
to overcome during the evening.  But enough of preface.

The subject heretofore and now to be discussed is the subtreasury
scheme of the present administration, as a means of collecting,
safe-keeping, transferring, and disbursing, the revenues of the
nation, as contrasted with a national bank for the same purposes.
Mr. Douglas has said that we (the Whigs) have not dared to meet
them (the Locos) in argument on this question.  I protest against
this assertion.  I assert that we have again and again, during
this discussion, urged facts and arguments against the
subtreasury which they have neither dared to deny nor attempted
to answer.  But lest some may be led to believe that we really
wish to avoid the question, I now propose, in my humble way, to
urge those arguments again; at the same time begging the audience
to mark well the positions I shall take and the proof I shall
offer to sustain them, and that they will not again permit Mr.
Douglas or his friends to escape the force of them by a round and
groundless assertion that we "dare not meet them in argument."

Of the subtreasury, then, as contrasted with a national bank for
the before-enumerated purposes, I lay down the following
propositions, to wit: (1) It will injuriously affect the
community by its operation on the circulating medium.  (2) It
will be a more expensive fiscal agent.  (3) It will be a less
secure depository of the public money.  To show the truth of the
first proposition, let us take a short review of our condition
under the operation of a national bank.  It was the depository of
the public revenues.  Between the collection of those revenues
and the disbursement of them by the government, the bank was
permitted to and did actually loan them out to individuals, and
hence the large amount of money actually collected for revenue
purposes, which by any other plan would have been idle a great
portion of the time, was kept almost constantly in circulation.
Any person who will reflect that money is only valuable while in
circulation will readily perceive that any device which will keep
the government revenues in constant circulation, instead of being
locked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advantage.  By the
subtreasury the revenue is to be collected and kept in iron boxes
until the government wants it for disbursement; thus robbing the
people of the use of it, while the government does not itself
need it, and while the money is performing no nobler office than
that of rusting in iron boxes.  The natural effect of this change
of policy, every one will see, is to reduce the quantity of money
in circulation.  But, again, by the subtreasury scheme the
revenue is to be collected in specie.  I anticipate that this
will be disputed.  I expect to hear it said that it is not the
policy of the administration to collect the revenue in specie.
If it shall, I reply that Mr. Van Buren, in his message
recommending the subtreasury, expended nearly a column of that
document in an attempt to persuade Congress to provide for the
collection of the revenue in specie exclusively; and he concludes
with these words:

"It may be safely assumed that no motive of convenience to the
citizens requires the reception of bank paper."  In addition to
this, Mr. Silas Wright, Senator from New York, and the political,
personal and confidential friend of Mr. Van Buren, drafted and
introduced into the Senate the first subtreasury bill, and that
bill provided for ultimately collecting the revenue in specie.
It is true, I know, that that clause was stricken from the bill,
but it was done by the votes of the Whigs, aided by a portion
only of the Van Buren senators.  No subtreasury bill has yet
become a law, though two or three have been considered by
Congress, some with and some without the specie clause; so that I
admit there is room for quibbling upon the question of whether
the administration favor the exclusive specie doctrine or not;
but I take it that the fact that the President at first urged the
specie doctrine, and that under his recommendation the first bill
introduced embraced it, warrants us in charging it as the policy
of the party until their head as publicly recants it as he at
first espoused it.  I repeat, then, that by the subtreasury the
revenue is to be collected in specie.  Now mark what the effect
of this must be.  By all estimates ever made there are but
between sixty and eighty millions of specie in the United States.
The expenditures of the Government for the year 1838--the last
for which we have had the report--were forty millions.  Thus it
is seen that if the whole revenue be collected in specie, it will
take more than half of all the specie in the nation to do it.  By
this means more than half of all the specie belonging to the
fifteen millions of souls who compose the whole population of the
country is thrown into the hands of the public office-holders,
and other public creditors comprising in number perhaps not more
than one quarter of a million, leaving the other fourteen
millions and three quarters to get along as they best can, with
less than one half of the specie of the country, and whatever
rags and shinplasters they may be able to put, and keep, in
circulation.  By this means, every office-holder and other public
creditor may, and most likely will, set up shaver; and a most
glorious harvest will the specie-men have of it,--each specie-
man, upon a fair division, having to his share the fleecing of
about fifty-nine rag-men.  In all candor let me ask, was such a
system for benefiting the few at the expense of the many ever
before devised?  And was the sacred name of Democracy ever before
made to indorse such an enormity against the rights of the
people?

I have already said that the subtreasury will reduce the quantity
of money in circulation.  This position is strengthened by the
recollection that the revenue is to be collected in Specie, so
that the mere amount of revenue is not all that is withdrawn, but
the amount of paper circulation that the forty millions would
serve as a basis to is withdrawn, which would be in a sound state
at least one hundred millions.  When one hundred millions, or
more, of the circulation we now have shall be withdrawn, who can
contemplate without terror the distress, ruin, bankruptcy, and
beggary that must follow?  The man who has purchased any article--
say a horse--on credit, at one hundred dollars, when there are
two hundred millions circulating in the country, if the quantity
be reduced to one hundred millions by the arrival of pay-day,
will find the horse but sufficient to pay half the debt; and the
other half must either be paid out of his other means, and
thereby become a clear loss to him, or go unpaid, and thereby
become a clear loss to his creditor.  What I have here said of a
single case of the purchase of a horse will hold good in every
case of a debt existing at the time a reduction in the quantity
of money occurs, by whomsoever, and for whatsoever, it may have
been contracted.  It may be said that what the debtor loses the
creditor gains by this operation; but on examination this will be
found true only to a very limited extent.  It is more generally
true that all lose by it--the creditor by losing more of his
debts than he gains by the increased value of those he collects;
the debtor by either parting with more of his property to pay his
debts than he received in contracting them, or by entirely
breaking up his business, and thereby being thrown upon the world
in idleness.

The general distress thus created will, to be sure, be temporary,
because, whatever change may occur in the quantity of money in
any community, time will adjust the derangement produced; but
while that adjustment is progressing, all suffer more or less,
and very many lose everything that renders life desirable.  Why,
then, shall we suffer a severe difficulty, even though it be but
temporary, unless we receive some equivalent for it?

What I have been saying as to the effect produced by a reduction
of the quantity of money relates to the whole country.  I now
propose to show that it would produce a peculiar and permanent
hardship upon the citizens of those States and Territories in
which the public lands lie.  The land-offices in those States and
Territories, as all know, form the great gulf by which all, or
nearly all, the money in them is swallowed up.  When the quantity
of money shall be reduced, and consequently everything under
individual control brought down in proportion, the price of those
lands, being fixed by law, will remain as now.  Of necessity it
will follow that the produce or labor that now raises money
sufficient to purchase eighty acres will then raise but
sufficient to purchase forty, or perhaps not that much; and this
difficulty and hardship will last as long, in some degree, as any
portion of these lands shall remain undisposed of.  Knowing, as I
well do, the difficulty that poor people now encounter in
procuring homes, I hesitate not to say that when the price of the
public lands shall be doubled or trebled, or, which is the same
thing, produce and labor cut down to one half or one third of
their present prices, it will be little less than impossible for
them to procure those homes at all....

Well, then, what did become of him?  (Postmaster General Barry)
Why, the President immediately expressed his high disapprobation
of his almost unequaled incapacity and corruption by appointing
him to a foreign mission, with a salary and outfit of $18,000 a
year! The party now attempt to throw Barry off, and to avoid the
responsibility of his sins.  Did not the President indorse those
sins when, on the very heel of their commission, he appointed
their author to the very highest and most honorable office in his
gift, and which is but a single step behind the very goal of
American political ambition?

I return to another of Mr. Douglas's excuses for the expenditures
of 1838, at the same time announcing the pleasing intelligence
that this is the last one.  He says that ten millions of that
year's expenditure was a contingent appropriation, to prosecute
an anticipated war with Great Britain on the Maine boundary
question.  Few words will settle this.  First, that the ten
millions appropriated was not made till 1839, and consequently
could not have been expended in 1838; second, although it was
appropriated, it has never been expended at all.  Those who heard
Mr. Douglas recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous
expression of pity for me.  "Now he's got me," thought I.  But
when he went on to say that five millions of the expenditure of
1838 were payments of the French indemnities, which I knew to be
untrue; that five millions had been for the post-office, which I
knew to be untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine
boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely
ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope
that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to
go unexposed,--I readily consented that, on the score both of
veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or I
were the more deserving of the world's contempt.

Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren
party and the Whigs is that, although the former sometimes err in
practice, they are always correct in principle, whereas the
latter are wrong in principle; and, better to impress this
proposition, he uses a figurative expression in these words: "The
Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the
head and the heart."  The first branch of the figure--that is,
that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel--I admit is not
merely figuratively, but literally true.  Who that looks but for
a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons,
and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the public
money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a
villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt
that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a
species of "running itch"?  It seems that this malady of their
heels operates on these sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures
very much like the cork leg in the comic song did on its owner:
which, when he had once got started on it, the more he tried to
stop it, the more it would run away.  At the hazard of wearing
this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too
strikingly in point to be omitted.  A witty Irish soldier, who
was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but
who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of an
engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied:
"Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but,
somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs
will run away with it."  So with Mr. Lamborn's party.  They take
the public money into their hand for the most laudable purpose
that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but before they
can possibly get it out again, their rascally "vulnerable heels"
will run away with them.

Seriously this proposition of Mr. Lamborn is nothing more or less
than a request that his party may be tried by their professions
instead of their practices.  Perhaps no position that the party
assumes is more liable to or more deserving of exposure than this
very modest request; and nothing but the unwarrantable length to
which I have already extended these remarks forbids me now
attempting to expose it.  For the reason given, I pass it by.

I shall advert to but one more point.  Mr. Lamborn refers to the
late elections in the States, and from their results confidently
predicts that every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van
Buren at the next Presidential election.  Address that argument
to cowards and to knaves; with the free and the brave it will
effect nothing.  It may be true; if it must, let it.  Many free
countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if
she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to
desert, but that I never deserted her.  I know that the great
volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit
that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political
corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with
frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land,
bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing;
while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell,
the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those
who dare resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of
their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be
swept away.  Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to
deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it
shall not deter me.  If ever I feel the soul within me elevate
and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its
almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my
country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up
boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious
oppressors.  Here, without contemplating consequences, before
high heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal
fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life,
my liberty, and my love.  And who that thinks with me will not
fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?  Let none falter who thinks
he is right, and we may succeed.  But if, after all, we shall
fail, be it so.  We still shall have the proud consolation of
saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our
country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and
adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in
death, we never faltered in defending.




TO JOHN T. STUART.

SPRINGFIELD, December 23, 1839.

DEAR STUART:

Dr.  Henry will write you all the political news.  I write this
about some little matters of business.  You recollect you told me
you had drawn the Chicago Masark money, and sent it to the
claimants.  A hawk-billed Yankee is here besetting me at every
turn I take, saying that Robert Kinzie never received the eighty
dollars to which he was entitled.  Can you tell me anything about
the matter?  Again, old Mr. Wright, who lives up South Fork
somewhere, is teasing me continually about some deeds which he
says he left with you, but which I can find nothing of.  Can you
tell me where they are?  The Legislature is in session and has
suffered the bank to forfeit its charter without benefit of
clergy.  There seems to be little disposition to resuscitate it.

Whenever a letter comes from you to Mrs._____________
I carry it to her, and then I see Betty; she is a tolerable nice
"fellow" now.  Maybe I will write again when I get more time.

Your friend as ever,
A. LINCOLN

P. S.--The Democratic giant is here, but he is not much worth
talking about.
A.L.




1840


CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.

Confidential.

January [1?], 1840.

To MESSRS _______

GENTLEMEN:--In obedience to a resolution of the Whig State
convention, we have appointed you the Central Whig Committee of
your county.  The trust confided to you will be one of
watchfulness and labor; but we hope the glory of having
contributed to the overthrow of the corrupt powers that now
control our beloved country will be a sufficient reward for the
time and labor you will devote to it.  Our Whig brethren
throughout the Union have met in convention, and after due
deliberation and mutual concessions have elected candidates for
the Presidency and Vice-Presidency not only worthy of our cause,
but worthy of the support of every true patriot who would have
our country redeemed, and her institutions honestly and
faithfully administered.  To overthrow the trained bands that are
opposed to us whose salaried officers are ever on the watch, and
whose misguided followers are ever ready to obey their smallest
commands, every Whig must not only know his duty, but must firmly
resolve, whatever of time and labor it may cost, boldly and
faithfully to do it.  Our intention is to organize the whole
State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls in the
coming Presidential contest.  We cannot do this, however, without
your co-operation; and as we do our duty, so we shall expect you
to do yours.  After due deliberation, the following is the plan
of organization, and the duties required of each county
committee:

(1) To divide their county into small districts, and to appoint
in each a subcommittee, whose duty it shall be to make a perfect
list of all the voters in their respective districts, and to
ascertain with certainty for whom they will vote.  If they meet
with men who are doubtful as to the man they will support, such
voters should be designated in separate lines, with the name of
the man they will probably support.

(2) It will be the duty of said subcommittee to keep a constant
watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them
talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence, and
also to place in their hands such documents as will enlighten and
influence them.

(3) It will also be their duty to report to you, at least once a
month, the progress they are making, and on election days see
that every Whig is brought to the polls.

(4) The subcommittees should be appointed immediately; and by the
last of April, at least, they should make their first report.

(5) On the first of each month hereafter we shall expect to hear
from you.  After the first report of your subcommittees, unless
there should be found a great many doubtful voters, you can tell
pretty accurately the manner in which your county will vote. In
each of your letters to us, you will state the number of certain
votes both for and against us, as well as the number of doubtful
votes, with your opinion of the manner in which they will be
cast.

(6) When we have heard from all the counties, we shall be able to
tell with similar accuracy the political complexion of the State.
This information will be forwarded to you as soon as received.

(7) Inclosed is a prospectus for a newspaper to be continued
until after the Presidential election. It will be superintended
by ourselves, and every Whig in the State must take it.  It will
be published so low that every one can afford it.  You must raise
a fund and forward us for extra copies,--every county ought to
send--fifty or one hundred dollars,--and the copies will be
forwarded to you for distribution among our political opponents.
The paper will be devoted exclusively to the great cause in which
we are engaged.  Procure subscriptions, and forward them to us
immediately.

(8) Immediately after any election in your county, you must
inform us of its results; and as early as possible after any
general election we will give you the like information.

(9) A senator in Congress is to be elected by our next
Legislature.  Let no local interests divide you, but select
candidates that can succeed.

(10) Our plan of operations will of course be concealed from
every one except our good friends who of right ought to know
them.

Trusting much in our good cause, the strength of our candidates,
and the determination of the Whigs everywhere to do their duty,
we go to the work of organization in this State confident of
success. We have the numbers, and if properly organized and
exerted, with the gallant Harrison at our head, we shall meet our
foes and conquer them in all parts of the Union.

Address your letters to Dr. A. G. Henry, R. F, Barrett; A.
Lincoln, E. D. Baker, J. F. Speed.




TO JOHN T. STUART.

SPRINGFIELD,
March 1, 1840

DEAR STUART:

I have never seen the prospects of our party so bright in these
parts as they are now.  We shall carry this county by a larger
majority than we did in 1836, when you ran against May.  I do not
think my prospects, individually, are very flattering, for I
think it probable I shall not be permitted to be a candidate; but
the party ticket will succeed triumphantly.  Subscriptions to the
"Old Soldier" pour in without abatement.  This morning I took
from the post office a letter from Dubois enclosing the names of
sixty subscribers, and on carrying it to Francis I found he had
received one hundred and forty more from other quarters by the
same day's mail.  That is but an average specimen of every day's
receipts.  Yesterday Douglas, having chosen to consider himself
insulted by something in the Journal, undertook to cane Francis
in the street.  Francis caught him by the hair and jammed him
back against a market cart where the matter ended by Francis
being pulled away from him.  The whole affair was so ludicrous
that Francis and everybody else (Douglass excepted) have been
laughing about it ever since.

I send you the names of some of the V.B.  men who have come out
for Harrison about town, and suggest that you send them some
documents.

Moses Coffman (he let us appoint him a delegate yesterday), Aaron
Coffman, George Gregory, H.  M.  Briggs, Johnson (at Birchall's
Bookstore), Michael Glyn, Armstrong (not Hosea nor Hugh, but a
carpenter), Thomas Hunter, Moses Pileher (he was always a Whig
and deserves attention), Matthew Crowder Jr., Greenberry Smith;
John Fagan, George Fagan, William Fagan (these three fell out
with us about Early, and are doubtful now), John M.  Cartmel,
Noah Rickard, John Rickard, Walter Marsh.

The foregoing should be addressed at Springfield.

Also send some to Solomon Miller and John Auth at Salisbury.
Also to Charles Harper, Samuel Harper, and B.  C.  Harper, and T.
J.  Scroggins, John Scroggins at Pulaski, Logan County.

Speed says he wrote you what Jo Smith said about you as he passed
here.  We will procure the names of some of his people here, and
send them to you before long.  Speed also says you must not fail
to send us the New York Journal he wrote for some time since.

Evan Butler is jealous that you never send your compliments to
him.  You must not neglect him next time.

Your friend, as ever,
A. LINCOLN




RESOLUTION IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

November 28, 1840.

In the Illinois House of Representatives, November 28, 1840, Mr.
Lincoln offered the following:

Resolved, That so much of the governor's message as relates to
fraudulent voting, and other fraudulent practices at elections,
be referred to the Committee on Elections, with instructions to
said committee to prepare and report to the House a bill for such
an act as may in their judgment afford the greatest possible
protection of the elective franchise against all frauds of all
sorts whatever.




RESOLUTION IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

December 2, 1840.

Resolved, That the Committee on Education be instructed to
inquire into the expediency of providing by law for the
examination as to the qualification of persons offering
themselves as school teachers, that no teacher shall receive any
part of the public school fund who shall not have successfully
passed such examination, and that they report by bill or
otherwise.




REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

December 4, 1840

In the House of Representatives, Illinois, December 4, 1840, on
presentation of a report respecting petition of H. N. Purple,
claiming the seat of Mr. Phelps from Peoria, Mr. Lincoln moved
that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole on the
question, and take it up immediately.  Mr. Lincoln considered the
question of the highest importance whether an individual had a
right to sit in this House or not.  The course he should propose
would be to take up the evidence and decide upon the facts
seriatim.

Mr. Drummond wanted time; they could not decide in the heat of
debate, etc.

Mr. Lincoln thought that the question had better be gone into
now.  In courts of law jurors were required to decide on
evidence, without previous study or examination.  They were
required to know nothing of the subject until the evidence was
laid before them for their immediate decision.  He thought that
the heat of party would be augmented by delay.

The Speaker called Mr. Lincoln to order as being irrelevant; no
mention had been made of party heat.

Mr. Drummond said he had only spoken of debate.  Mr. Lincoln
asked what caused the heat, if it was not party?  Mr. Lincoln
concluded by urging that the question would be decided now better
than hereafter, and he thought with less heat and excitement.

(Further debate, in which Lincoln participated.)




REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

December 4, 1840.

In the Illinois House of Representatives, December 4, 1840, House
in Committee of the Whole on the bill providing for payment of
interest on the State debt,--Mr. Lincoln moved to strike out the
body and amendments of the bill, and insert in lieu thereof an
amendment which in substance was that the governor be authorized
to issue bonds for the payment of the interest; that these be
called "interest bonds"; that the taxes accruing on Congress
lands as they become taxable be irrevocably set aside and devoted
as a fund to the payment of the interest bonds.  Mr. Lincoln went
into the reasons which appeared to him to render this plan
preferable to that of hypothecating the State bonds.  By this
course we could get along till the next meeting of the
Legislature, which was of great importance.  To the objection
which might be urged that these interest bonds could not be
cashed, he replied that if our other bonds could, much more could
these, which offered a perfect security, a fund being irrevocably
set aside to provide for their redemption.  To another objection,
that we should be paying compound interest, he would reply that
the rapid growth and increase of our resources was in so great a
ratio as to outstrip the difficulty; that his object was to do
the best that could be done in the present emergency.  All agreed
that the faith of the State must be preserved; this plan appeared
to him preferable to a hypothecation of bonds, which would have
to be redeemed and the interest paid. How this was to be done, he
could not see; therefore he had, after turning the matter over in
every way, devised this measure, which would carry us on till the
next Legislature.

(Mr. Lincoln spoke at some length, advocating his measure.)

Lincoln advocated his measure, December 11, 1840.

December 12, 1840, he had thought some permanent provision ought
to be made for the bonds to be hypothecated, but was satisfied
taxation and revenue could not be connected with it now.




1841


TO JOHN T. STUART--ON DEPRESSION

SPRINGFIELD, Jan 23, 1841

DEAR STUART:
I am now the most miserable man living.  If what I feel were
equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be
one cheerful face on earth.  Whether I shall ever be better, I
cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not.  To remain as I am is
impossible.  I must die or be better, as it appears to me....
I fear I shall be unable to attend any business here, and a
change of scene might help me.  If I could be myself, I would
rather remain at home with Judge Logan.  I can write no more.




REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.

January 23, 1841


In the House of Representatives January 23, 1841, while
discussing the continuation of the Illinois and Michigan Canal,
Mr. Moore was afraid the holders of the "scrip" would lose.

Mr. Napier thought there was no danger of that; and Mr. Lincoln
said he had not examined to see what amount of scrip would
probably be needed.  The principal point in his mind was this,
that nobody was obliged to take these certificates.  It is
altogether voluntary on their part, and if they apprehend it will
fall in their hands they will not take it.  Further the loss, if
any there be, will fall on the citizens of that section of the
country.

This scrip is not going to circulate over an extensive range of
country, but will be confined chiefly to the vicinity of the
canal.  Now, we find the representatives of that section of the
country are all in favor of the bill.

When we propose to protect their interests, they say to us: Leave
us to take care of ourselves; we are willing to run the risk.
And this is reasonable; we must suppose they are competent to
protect their own interests, and it is only fair to let them do
it.




CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.

February 9, 1841.

Appeal to the People of the State of Illinois.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When the General Assembly, now about
adjourning, assembled in November last, from the bankrupt state
of the public treasury, the pecuniary embarrassments prevailing
in every department of society, the dilapidated state of the
public works, and the impending danger of the degradation of the
State, you had a right to expect that your representatives would
lose no time in devising and adopting measures to avert
threatened calamities, alleviate the distresses of the people,
and allay the fearful apprehensions in regard to the future
prosperity of the State.  It was not expected by you that the
spirit of party would take the lead in the councils of the State,
and make every interest bend to its demands.  Nor was it expected
that any party would assume to itself the entire control of
legislation, and convert the means and offices of the State, and
the substance of the people, into aliment for party subsistence.
Neither could it have been expected by you that party spirit,
however strong its desires and unreasonable its demands, would
have passed the sanctuary of the Constitution, and entered with
its unhallowed and hideous form into the formation of the
judiciary system.

At the early period of the session, measures were adopted by the
dominant party to take possession of the State, to fill all
public offices with party men, and make every measure affecting
the interests of the people and the credit of the State operate
in furtherance of their party views.  The merits of men and
measures therefore became the subject of discussion in caucus,
instead of the halls of legislation, and decisions there made by
a minority of the Legislature have been executed and carried into
effect by the force of party discipline, without any regard
whatever to the rights of the people or the interests of the
State.  The Supreme Court of the State was organized, and judges
appointed, according to the provisions of the Constitution, in
1824.  The people have never complained of the organization of
that court; no attempt has ever before been made to change that
department.  Respect for public opinion, and regard for the
rights and liberties of the people, have hitherto restrained the
spirit of party from attacks upon the independence and integrity
of the judiciary.  The same judges have continued in office since
1824; their decisions have not been the subject of complaint
among the people; the integrity and honesty of the court have not
been questioned, and it has never been supposed that the court
has ever permitted party prejudice or party considerations to
operate upon their decisions.  The court was made to consist of
four judges, and by the Constitution two form a quorum for the
transaction of business.  With this tribunal, thus constituted,
the people have been satisfied for near sixteen years.  The same
law which organized the Supreme Court in 1824 also established
and organized circuit courts to be held in each county in the
State, and five circuit judges were appointed to hold those
courts.  In 1826 the Legislature abolished these circuit courts,
repealed the judges out of office, and required the judges of the
Supreme Court to hold the circuit courts.  The reasons assigned
for this change were, first, that the business of the country
could be better attended to by the four judges of the Supreme
Court than by the two sets of judges; and, second, the state of
the public treasury forbade the employment of unnecessary
officers.  In 1828 a circuit was established north of the
Illinois River, in order to meet the wants of the people, and a
circuit judge was appointed to hold the courts in that circuit.

In 1834 the circuit-court system was again established throughout
the State, circuit judges appointed to hold the courts, and the
judges of the Supreme Court were relieved from the performance of
circuit court duties. The change was recommended by the then
acting governor of the State, General W. L. D. Ewing, in the
following terms:

"The augmented population of the State, the multiplied number of
organized counties, as well as the increase of business in all,
has long since convinced every one conversant with this
department of our government of the indispensable necessity of an
alteration in our judiciary system, and the subject is therefore
recommended to the earnest patriotic consideration of the
Legislature.  The present system has never been exempt from
serious and weighty objections.  The idea of appealing from the
circuit court to the same judges in the Supreme Court is
recommended by little hopes of redress to the injured party
below.  The duties of the circuit, too, it may be added, consume
one half of the year, leaving a small and inadequate portion of
time (when that required for domestic purposes is deducted) to
erect, in the decisions of the Supreme Court, a judicial monument
of legal learning and research, which the talent and ability of
the court might otherwise be entirely competent to."

With this organization of circuit courts the people have never
complained. The only complaints which we have heard have come
from circuits which were so large that the judges could not
dispose of the business, and the circuits in which Judges Pearson
and Ralston lately presided.

Whilst the honor and credit of the State demanded legislation
upon the subject of the public debt, the canal, the unfinished
public works, and the embarrassments of the people, the judiciary
stood upon a basis which required no change--no legislative
action. Yet the party in power, neglecting every interest
requiring legislative action, and wholly disregarding the rights,
wishes, and interests of the people, has, for the unholy purpose
of providing places for its partisans and supplying them with
large salaries, disorganized that department of the government.
Provision is made for the election of five party judges of the
Supreme Court, the proscription of four circuit judges, and the
appointment of party clerks in more than half the counties of the
State.  Men professing respect for public opinion, and
acknowledged to be leaders of the party, have avowed in the halls
of legislation that the change in the judiciary was intended to
produce political results favorable to their party and party
friends.  The immutable principles of justice are to make way for
party interests, and the bonds of social order are to be rent in
twain, in order that a desperate faction may be sustained at the
expense of the people.  The change proposed in the judiciary was
supported upon grounds so destructive to the institutions of the
country, and so entirely at war with the rights and liberties of
the people, that the party could not secure entire unanimity in
its support, three Democrats of the Senate and five of the House
voting against the measure. They were unwilling to see the
temples of justice and the seats of independent judges occupied
by the tools of faction.  The declarations of the party leaders,
the selection of party men for judges, and the total disregard
for the public will in the adoption of the measure, prove
conclusively that the object has been not reform, but
destruction; not the advancement of the highest interests of the
State, but the predominance of party.

We cannot in this manner undertake to point out all the
objections to this party measure; we present you with those
stated by the Council of Revision upon returning the bill, and we
ask for them a candid consideration.

Believing that the independence of the judiciary has been
destroyed, that hereafter our courts will be independent of the
people, and entirely dependent upon the Legislature; that our
rights of property and liberty of conscience can no longer be
regarded as safe from the encroachments of unconstitutional
legislation; and knowing of no other remedy which can be adopted
consistently with the peace and good order of society, we call
upon you to avail yourselves of the opportunity afforded, and, at
the next general election, vote for a convention of the people.

S. H. LITTLE,
E. D. BAKER,
J. J. HARDIN,
E. B. WEBS,
A. LINCOLN,
J. GILLESPIE,

Committee on behalf of the Whig members of the Legislature.




EXTRACT FROM A PROTEST IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE AGAINST THE
REORGANIZATION OF THE JUDICIARY.

February 26, 1841

For the reasons thus presented, and for others no less apparent,
the undersigned cannot assent to the passage of the bill, or
permit it to become a law, without this evidence of their
disapprobation; and they now protest against the reorganization
of the judiciary, because--(1) It violates the great principles
of free government by subjecting the judiciary to the
Legislature.  (2) It is a fatal blow at the independence of the
judges and the constitutional term of their office.  (3) It is a
measure not asked for, or wished for, by the people.  (4) It will
greatly increase the expense of our courts, or else greatly
diminish their utility.  (5) It will give our courts a political
and partisan character, thereby impairing public confidence in
their decisions.  (6) It will impair our standing with other
States and the world.  (7)It is a party measure for party
purposes, from which no practical good to the people can possibly
arise, but which may be the source of immeasurable evils.

The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be
altogether unavailing with the majority of this body.  The blow
has already fallen, and we are compelled to stand by, the
mournful spectators of the ruin it will cause.

[Signed by 35 members, among whom was Abraham Lincoln.]




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--MURDER CASE

SPRINGFIELD June 19, 1841.

DEAR SPEED:--We have had the highest state of excitement here for
a week past that our community has ever witnessed; and, although
the public feeling is somewhat allayed, the curious affair which
aroused it is very far from being even yet cleared of mystery.
It would take a quire of paper to give you anything like a full
account of it, and I therefore only propose a brief outline.  The
chief personages in the drama are Archibald Fisher, supposed to
be murdered, and Archibald Trailor, Henry Trailor, and William
Trailor, supposed to have murdered him.  The three Trailors are
brothers: the first, Arch., as you know, lives in town; the
second, Henry, in Clary's Grove; and the third, William, in
Warren County; and Fisher, the supposed murdered, being without a
family, had made his home with William.  On Saturday evening,
being the 29th of May, Fisher and William came to Henry's in a
one-horse dearborn, and there stayed over Sunday; and on Monday
all three came to Springfield (Henry on horseback) and joined
Archibald at Myers's, the Dutch carpenter.  That evening at
supper Fisher was missing, and so next morning some ineffectual
search was made for him; and on Tuesday, at one o'clock P.M.,
William and Henry started home without him.  In a day or two
Henry and one or two of his Clary-Grove neighbors came back for
him again, and advertised his disappearance in the papers.  The
knowledge of the matter thus far had not been general, and here
it dropped entirely, till about the 10th instant, when Keys
received a letter from the postmaster in Warren County, that
William had arrived at home, and was telling a very mysterious
and improbable story about the disappearance of Fisher, which
induced the community there to suppose he had been disposed of
unfairly.  Keys made this letter public, which immediately set
the whole town and adjoining county agog.  And so it has
continued until yesterday.  The mass of the people commenced a
systematic search for the dead body, while Wickersham was
despatched to arrest Henry Trailor at the Grove, and Jim Maxcy to
Warren to arrest William.  On Monday last, Henry was brought in,
and showed an evident inclination to insinuate that he knew
Fisher to be dead, and that Arch.  and William had killed him.
He said he guessed the body could be found in Spring Creek,
between the Beardstown road and Hickox's mill.  Away the people
swept like a herd of buffalo, and cut down Hickox's mill-dam
nolens volens, to draw the water out of the pond, and then went
up and down and down and up the creek, fishing and raking, and
raking and ducking and diving for two days, and, after all, no
dead body found.

In the meantime a sort of scuffling-ground had been found in the
brush in the angle, or point, where the road leading into the
woods past the brewery and the one leading in past the brick-yard
meet.  From the scuffle-ground was the sign of something about
the size of a man having been dragged to the edge of the thicket,
where it joined the track of some small-wheeled carriage drawn by
one horse, as shown by the road-tracks.  The carriage-track led
off toward Spring Creek.  Near this drag-trail Dr. Merryman found
two hairs, which, after a long scientific examination, he
pronounced to be triangular human hairs, which term, he says,
includes within it the whiskers, the hair growing under the arms
and on other parts of the body; and he judged that these two were
of the whiskers, because the ends were cut, showing that they had
flourished in the neighborhood of the razor's operations.  On
Thursday last Jim Maxcy brought in William Trailor from Warren.
On the same day Arch. was arrested and put in jail.  Yesterday
(Friday) William was put upon his examining trial before May and
Lovely.  Archibald and Henry were both present.  Lamborn
prosecuted, and Logan, Baker, and your humble servant defended.
A great many witnesses were introduced and examined, but I shall
only mention those whose testimony seemed most important.  The
first of these was Captain Ransdell.  He swore that when William
and Henry left Springfield for home on Tuesday before mentioned
they did not take the direct route,--which, you know, leads by
the butcher shop,--but that they followed the street north until
they got opposite, or nearly opposite, May's new house, after
which he could not see them from where he stood; and it was
afterwards proved that in about an hour after they started, they
came into the street by the butcher shop from toward the brick-
yard.  Dr.  Merryman and others swore to what is stated about the
scuffle-ground, drag-trail, whiskers, and carriage tracks.  Henry
was then introduced by the prosecution.  He swore that when they
started for home they went out north, as Ransdell stated, and
turned down west by the brick-yard into the woods, and there met
Archibald; that they proceeded a small distance farther, when he
was placed as a sentinel to watch for and announce the approach
of any one that might happen that way; that William and Arch.
took the dearborn out of the road a small distance to the edge of
the thicket, where they stopped, and he saw them lift the body of
a man into it; that they then moved off with the carriage in the
direction of Hickox's mill, and he loitered about for something
like an hour, when William returned with the carriage, but
without Arch., and said they had put him in a safe place; that
they went somehow he did not know exactly how--into the road
close to the brewery, and proceeded on to Clary's Grove.  He also
stated that some time during the day William told him that he and
Arch.  had killed Fisher the evening before; that the way they
did it was by him William knocking him down with a club, and
Arch.  then choking him to death.

An old man from Warren, called Dr.  Gilmore, was then introduced
on the part of the defense.  He swore that he had known Fisher
for several years; that Fisher had resided at his house a long
time at each of two different spells--once while he built a barn
for him, and once while he was doctored for some chronic disease;
that two or three years ago Fisher had a serious hurt in his head
by the bursting of a gun, since which he had been subject to
continued bad health and occasional aberration of mind.  He also
stated that on last Tuesday, being the same day that Maxcy
arrested William Trailor, he (the doctor) was from home in the
early part of the day, and on his return, about eleven o'clock,
found Fisher at his house in bed, and apparently very unwell;
that he asked him how he came from Springfield; that Fisher said
he had come by Peoria, and also told of several other places he
had been at more in the direction of Peoria, which showed that he
at the time of speaking did not know where he had been wandering
about in a state of derangement.  He further stated that in about
two hours he received a note from one of Trailor's friends,
advising him of his arrest, and requesting him to go on to
Springfield as a witness, to testify as to the state of Fisher's
health in former times; that he immediately set off, calling up
two of his neighbors as company, and, riding all evening and all
night, overtook Maxcy and William at Lewiston in Fulton County;
that Maxcy refusing to discharge Trailor upon his statement, his
two neighbors returned and he came on to Springfield.  Some
question being made as to whether the doctor's story was not a
fabrication, several acquaintances of his (among whom was the
same postmaster who wrote Keys, as before mentioned) were
introduced as sort of compurgators, who swore that they knew the
doctor to be of good character for truth and veracity, and
generally of good character in every way.

Here the testimony ended, and the Trailors were discharged, Arch.
and William expressing both in word and manner their entire
confidence that Fisher would be found alive at the doctor's by
Galloway, Mallory, and Myers, who a day before had been
despatched for that purpose; which Henry still protested that no
power on earth could ever show Fisher alive.  Thus stands this
curious affair.  When the doctor's story was first made public,
it was amusing to scan and contemplate the countenances and hear
the remarks of those who had been actively in search for the dead
body: some looked quizzical, some melancholy, and some furiously
angry.  Porter, who had been very active, swore he always knew
the man was not dead, and that he had not stirred an inch to hunt
for him; Langford, who had taken the lead in cutting down
Hickox's mill-dam, and wanted to hang Hickox for objecting,
looked most awfully woebegone: he seemed the "victim of
unrequited affection," as represented in the comic almanacs we
used to laugh over; and Hart, the little drayman that hauled
Molly home once, said it was too damned bad to have so much
trouble, and no hanging after all.

I commenced this letter on yesterday, since which I received
yours of the 13th.  I stick to my promise to come to Louisville.
Nothing new here except what I have written.  I have not seen
_____  since my last trip, and I am going out there as soon as I
mail this letter.

Yours forever,
LINCOLN.




STATEMENT ABOUT HARRY WILTON.

June 25, 1841

It having been charged in some of the public prints that Harry
Wilton, late United States marshal for the district of Illinois,
had used his office for political effect, in the appointment of
deputies for the taking of the census for the year 1840, we, the
undersigned, were called upon by Mr. Wilton to examine the papers
in his possession relative to these appointments, and to
ascertain therefrom the correctness or incorrectness of such
charge. We accompanied Mr. Wilton to a room, and examined the
matter as fully as we could with the means afforded us.  The only
sources of information bearing on the subject which were
submitted to us were the letters, etc., recommending and opposing
the various appointments made, and Mr. Wilton's verbal statements
concerning the same.  From these letters, etc., it appears that
in some instances appointments were made in accordance with the
recommendations of leading Whigs, and in opposition to those of
leading Democrats; among which instances the appointments at
Scott, Wayne, Madison, and Lawrence are the strongest.  According
to Mr. Wilton's statement of the seventy-six appointments we
examined, fifty-four were of Democrats, eleven of Whigs, and
eleven of unknown politics.

The chief ground of complaint against Mr. Wilton, as we had
understood it, was because of his appointment of so many
Democratic candidates for the Legislature, thus giving them a
decided advantage over their Whig opponents; and consequently our
attention was directed rather particularly to that point.  We
found that there were many such appointments, among which were
those in Tazewell, McLean, Iroquois, Coles, Menard, Wayne,
Washington, Fayette, etc.; and we did not learn that there was
one instance in which a Whig candidate for the Legislature had
been appointed. There was no written evidence before us showing
us at what time those appointments were made; but Mr. Wilton
stated that they all with one exception were made before those
appointed became candidates for the Legislature, and the letters,
etc., recommending them all bear date before, and most of them
long before, those appointed were publicly announced candidates.

We give the foregoing naked facts and draw no conclusions from
them.

BEND. S. EDWARDS, A. LINCOLN.




TO MISS MARY SPEED--PRACTICAL SLAVERY

BLOOMINGTON, ILL., September 27, 1841.

Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.

MY FRIEND:
By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for
contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness.  A
gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of
Kentucky, and was taking them to a farm in the South.  They were
chained six and six together.  A small iron clevis was around the
left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a
shorter one, at a convenient distance from the others, so that
the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon
a trotline.  In this condition they were being separated forever
from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers
and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from
their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where
the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and
unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these
distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the
most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board.  One,
whose offence for which he had been sold was an overfondness for
his wife, played the fiddle almost continually, and the others
danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards
from day to day.  How true it is that 'God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb,' or in other words, that he renders the worst of
human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be
nothing better than tolerable.  To return to the narrative: When
we reached Springfield I stayed but one day, when I started on
this tedious circuit where I now am.  Do you remember my going to
the city, while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and
making a failure of it?  Well, that same old tooth got to paining
me so much that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing
with it a bit of the jawbone, the consequence of which is that my
mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk nor eat.

Your sincere friend,
A. LINCOLN.




1842


TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON MARRIAGE

January 3?, 1842.

MY DEAR SPEED:--Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude
for the success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt
this as the last method I can adopt to aid you, in case (which
God forbid!) you shall need any aid.  I do not place what I am
going to say on paper because I can say it better that way than I
could by word of mouth, but, were I to say it orally before we
part, most likely you would forget it at the very time when it
might do you some good.  As I think it reasonable that you will
feel very badly some time between this and the final consummation
of your purpose, it is intended that you shall read this just at
such a time.  Why I say it is reasonable that you will feel very
badly yet, is because of three special causes added to the
general one which I shall mention.

The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous
temperament; and this I say from what I have seen of you
personally, and what you have told me concerning your mother at
various times, and concerning your brother William at the time
his wife died.  The first special cause is your exposure to bad
weather on your journey, which my experience clearly proves to be
very severe on defective nerves.  The second is the absence of
all business and conversation of friends, which might divert your
mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which
will sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to
the bitterness of death.  The third is the rapid and near
approach of that crisis on which all your thoughts and feelings
concentrate.

If from all these causes you shall escape and go through
triumphantly, without another "twinge of the soul," I shall be
most happily but most egregiously deceived.  If, on the contrary,
you shall, as I expect you will at sometime, be agonized and
distressed, let me, who have some reason to speak with judgment
on such a subject, beseech you to ascribe it to the causes I have
mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous suggestion of the
Devil.

"But," you will say, "do not your causes apply to every one
engaged in a like undertaking?"  By no means.  The particular
causes, to a greater or less extent, perhaps do apply in all
cases; but the general one,--nervous debility, which is the key
and conductor of all the particular ones, and without which they
would be utterly harmless,--though it does pertain to you, does
not pertain to one in a thousand.  It is out of this that the
painful difference between you and the mass of the world springs.

I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you
are unhappy; it is an apprehension that you do not love her as
you should.  What nonsense! How came you to court her?  Was it
because you thought she deserved it, and that you had given her
reason to expect it?  If it was for that why did not the same
reason make you court Ann Todd, and at least twenty others of
whom you can think, and to whom it would apply with greater force
than to her?  Did you court her for her wealth?  Why, you know she
had none.  But you say you reasoned yourself into it.  What do
you mean by that?  Was it not that you found yourself unable to
reason yourself out of it?  Did you not think, and partly form the
purpose, of courting her the first time you ever saw her or heard
of her?  What had reason to do with it at that early stage?  There
was nothing at that time for reason to work upon.  Whether she
was moral, amiable, sensible, or even of good character, you did
not, nor could then know, except, perhaps, you might infer the
last from the company you found her in.

All you then did or could know of her was her personal appearance
and deportment; and these, if they impress at all, impress the
heart, and not the head.

Say candidly, were not those heavenly black eyes the whole basis
of all your early reasoning on the subject?  After you and I had
once been at the residence, did you not go and take me all the
way to Lexington and back, for no other purpose but to get to see
her again, on our return on that evening to take a trip for that
express object?  What earthly consideration would you take to find
her scouting and despising you, and giving herself up to another?
But of this you have no apprehension; and therefore you cannot
bring it home to your feelings.

I shall be so anxious about you that I shall want you to write by
every mail.  Your friend,

LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 3, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day.
You well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly
than I do yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was
not much hurt by what you wrote me of your excessively bad
feeling at the time you wrote.  Not that I am less capable of
sympathizing with you now than ever, not that I am less your
friend than ever, but because I hope and believe that your
present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must
and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you
sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her.  If
they can once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a
presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction
expressly for that object), surely nothing can come in their
stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery.  The death-
scenes of those we love are surely painful enough; but these we
are prepared for and expect to see: they happen to all, and all
know they must happen.  Painful as they are, they are not an
unlooked for sorrow.  Should she, as you fear, be destined to an
early grave, it is indeed a great consolation to know that she is
so well prepared to meet it.  Her religion, which you once
disliked so much, I will venture you now prize most highly.  But
I hope your melancholy bodings as to her early death are not well
founded.  I even hope that ere this reaches you she will have
returned with improved and still improving health, and that you
will have met her, and forgotten the sorrows of the past in the
enjoyments of the present.  I would say more if I could, but it
seems that I have said enough.  It really appears to me that you
yourself ought to rejoice, and not sorrow, at this indubitable
evidence of your undying affection for her.  Why, Speed, if you
did not love her although you might not wish her death, you would
most certainly be resigned to it.  Perhaps this point is no
longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it
is a rude intrusion upon your feelings.  If so, you must pardon
me.  You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how
tender I am upon it.  You know I do not mean wrong.  I have been
quite clear of "hypo" since you left, even better than I was
along in the fall.  I have seen ______ but once.  She seemed very
cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what we spoke of.

Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that
Uncle Ben Ferguson will not live.  This, I believe, is all the
news, and enough at that unless it were better.  Write me
immediately on the receipt of this.  Your friend, as ever,

LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON DEPRESSION

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 13, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 1st instant came to hand three or four
days ago.  When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's
husband several days.  You know my desire to befriend you is
everlasting; that I will never cease while I know how to do
anything.  But you will always hereafter be on ground that I have
never occupied, and consequently, if advice were needed, I might
advise wrong.  I do fondly hope, however, that you will never
again need any comfort from abroad.  But should I be mistaken in
this, should excessive pleasure still be accompanied with a
painful counterpart at times, still let me urge you, as I have
ever done, to remember, in the depth and even agony of
despondency, that very shortly you are to feel well again.  I am
now fully convinced that you love her as ardently as you are
capable of loving.  Your ever being happy in her presence, and
your intense anxiety about her health, if there were nothing
else, would place this beyond all dispute in my mind.  I incline
to think it probable that your nerves will fail you occasionally
for a while; but once you get them firmly guarded now that
trouble is over forever.  I think, if I were you, in case my mind
were not exactly right, I would avoid being idle.  I would
immediately engage in some business, or go to making preparations
for it, which would be the same thing.  If you went through the
ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite
alarm in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in two or
three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men.

I would desire you to give my particular respects to Fanny; but
perhaps you will not wish her to know you have received this,
lest she should desire to see it.  Make her write me an answer to
my last letter to her; at any rate I would set great value upon a
note or letter from her.  Write me whenever you have leisure.
Yours forever,
A. LINCOLN.
P.  S.--I have been quite a man since you left.




TO G. B. SHELEDY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Feb.  16, 1842.

G. B. SHELEDY, ESQ.:

Yours of the 10th is duly received.  Judge Logan and myself are
doing business together now, and we are willing to attend to your
cases as you propose.  As to the terms, we are willing to attend
each case you prepare and send us for $10 (when there shall be no
opposition) to be sent in advance, or you to know that it is
safe.  It takes $5.75 of cost to start upon, that is, $1.75 to
clerk, and $2 to each of two publishers of papers.  Judge Logan
thinks it will take the balance of $20 to carry a case through.
This must be advanced from time to time as the services are
performed, as the officers will not act without.  I do not know
whether you can be admitted an attorney of the Federal court in
your absence or not; nor is it material, as the business can be
done in our names.

Thinking it may aid you a little, I send you one of our blank
forms of Petitions.  It, you will see, is framed to be sworn to
before the Federal court clerk, and, in your cases, will have
[to] be so far changed as to be sworn to before the clerk of your
circuit court; and his certificate must be accompanied with his
official seal.  The schedules, too, must be attended to.  Be sure
that they contain the creditors' names, their residences, the
amounts due each, the debtors' names, their residences, and the
amounts they owe, also all property and where located.

Also be sure that the schedules are all signed by the applicants
as well as the Petition.  Publication will have to be made here
in one paper, and in one nearest the residence of the applicant.
Write us in each case where the last advertisement is to be sent,
whether to you or to what paper.

I believe I have now said everything that can be of any
advantage.  Your friend as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO GEORGE E. PICKETT--ADVICE TO YOUTH

February 22, 1842.

I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have
got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have.  The fact
is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances
are.  Notwithstanding this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am
inclined to suggest a little prudence on your part.  You see I
have a congenital aversion to failure, and the sudden
announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your "lamp
rubbing" might possibly prevent your passing the severe physical
examination to which you will be subjected in order to enter the
Military Academy.  You see I should like to have a perfect
soldier credited to dear old Illinois--no broken bones, scalp
wounds, etc.  So I think it might be wise to hand this letter
from me in to your good uncle through his room-window after he
has had a comfortable dinner, and watch its effect from the top
of the pigeon-house.

I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this 111th
anniversary of the birth of him whose name, mightiest in the
cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in the cause of moral
reformation, we mention in solemn awe, in naked, deathless
splendor, that the one victory we can ever call complete will be
that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one
drunkard on the face of God's green earth.  Recruit for this
victory.

Now, boy, on your march, don't you go and forget the old maxim
that "one drop of honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of
gall."  Load your musket with this maxim, and smoke it in your
pipe.




ADDRESS BEFORE THE SPRINGFIELD WASHINGTONIAN
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 22, 1842.

Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near
twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being
crowned with a degree of success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of
fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands.  The cause itself seems
suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory to a living,
breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth
"conquering and to conquer."  The citadels of his great adversary
are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and his
altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been
performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be
made, are daily desecrated and deserted.  The triumph of the
conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea,
and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a
blast.

For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. That that
success is so much greater now than heretofore is doubtless owing
to rational causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do
well to inquire what those causes are.

The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance has
somehow or other been erroneous.  Either the champions engaged or
the tactics they adopted have not been the most proper.  These
champions for the most part have been preachers, lawyers, and
hired agents.  Between these and the mass of mankind there is a
want of approachability, if the term be admissible, partially, at
least, fatal to their success.  They are supposed to have no
sympathy of feeling or interest with those very persons whom it
is their object to convince and persuade.

And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men
of these classes other than those they profess to act upon.  The
preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a
fanatic, and desires a union of the Church and State; the lawyer
from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired
agent for his salary.  But when one who has long been known as a
victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him,
and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right mind,"
a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up, with
tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once
endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and
starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long
weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored
to health, happiness, and a renewed affection; and how easily it
is all done, once it is resolved to be done; how simple his
language! there is a logic and an eloquence in it that few with
human feelings can resist.  They cannot say that he desires a
union of Church and State, for he is not a church member; they
cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole
demeanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot
say he speaks for pay, for he receives none, and asks for none.
Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted, or his sympathy for
those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied.

In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of
champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly,
owing.  But, had the old-school champions themselves been of the
most wise selecting, was their system of tactics the most
judicious?  It seems to me it was not.  Too much denunciation
against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in.  This I
think was both impolitic and unjust.  It was impolitic, because
it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything;
still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own
business; and least of all where such driving is to be submitted
to at the expense of pecuniary interest or burning appetite.
When the dram-seller and drinker were incessantly told not in
accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by
erring man to an erring brother, but in the thundering tones of
anathema and denunciation with which the lordly judge often
groups together all the crimes of the felon's life, and thrusts
them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him
that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime
in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all
the thieves and robbers and murderers that infest the earth; that
their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their
persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral
pestilences--I say, when they were told all this, and in this
way, it is not wonderful that they were slow to acknowledge the
truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their
denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves.

To have expected them to do otherwise than they did to have
expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation,
crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema--was to
expect a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can
never be reversed.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion,
kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted.  It is an
old and a true maxim that "a drop of honey catches more flies
than a gallon of gall."  So with men. If you would win a man to
your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say
what he will, is the great highroad to his reason; and which,
when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing
his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause
really be a just one.  On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be
shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close
all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause
be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder
than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and though you
throw it with more than herculean force and precision, you shall
be no more able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of
a tortoise with a rye straw.  Such is man, and so must he be
understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best
interests.

On this point the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance
advocates of former times.  Those whom they desire to convince
and persuade are their old friends and companions.  They know
they are not demons, nor even the worst of men; they know that
generally they are kind, generous, and charitable even beyond the
example of their more staid and sober neighbors.  They are
practical philanthropists; and they glow with a generous and
brotherly zeal that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling.
Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out of
the abundance of their hearts their tongues give utterance; "love
through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild."
In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same they are heard
and regarded.  And when such is the temper of the advocate, and
such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful.  But I
have said that denunciations against dramsellers and dram-
drinkers are unjust, as well as impolitic.  Let us see. I have
not inquired at what period of time the use of intoxicating
liquors commenced; nor is it important to know.  It is sufficient
that, to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice of
drinking them is just as old as the world itself that is, we have
seen the one just as long as we have seen the other.  When all
such of us as have now reached the years of maturity first opened
our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating
liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by
nobody.  It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant
and the last draught of the dying man.  From the sideboard of the
parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was
constantly found.  Physicians proscribed it in this, that, and
the other disease; government provided it for soldiers and
sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or
"hoedown," anywhere about without it was positively insufferable.
So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manufacture
and merchandise.  The making of it was regarded as an honorable
livelihood, and he who could make most was the most enterprising
and respectable.  Large and small manufactories of it were
everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their
owners were invested.  Wagons drew it from town to town; boats
bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation
to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and
retail, with precisely the same feelings on the part of the
seller, buyer, and bystander as are felt at the selling and
buying of ploughs, beef, bacon, or any other of the real
necessaries of life.  Universal public opinion not only tolerated
but recognized and adopted its use.

It is true that even then it was known and acknowledged that many
were greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury
arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very
good thing.  The victims of it were to be pitied and
compassionated, just as are the heirs of consumption and other
hereditary diseases.  Their failing was treated as a misfortune,
and not as a crime, or even as a disgrace.  If, then, what I have
been saying is true, is it wonderful that some should think and
act now as all thought and acted twenty years ago?  and is it just
to assail, condemn, or despise them for doing so?  The universal
sense of mankind on any subject is an argument, or at least an
influence, not easily overcome.  The success of the argument in
favor of the existence of an overruling Providence mainly depends
upon that sense; and men ought not in justice to be denounced for
yielding to it in any case, or giving it up slowly, especially
when they are backed by interest, fixed habits, or burning
appetites.

Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers
fell, was the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly
incorrigible, and therefore must be turned adrift and damned
without remedy in order that the grace of temperance might
abound, to the temperate then, and to all mankind some hundreds
of years thereafter.  There is in this some thing so repugnant to
humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless, that
it, never did nor ever can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular
cause. We could not love the man who taught it we could not hear
him with patience.  The heart could not throw open its portals to
it, the generous man could not adopt it--it could not mix with
his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing
fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our
security, that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness
of the thing.  And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to
be effected by such a system were too remote in point of time to
warmly engage many in its behalf.  Few can be induced to labor
exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically.
--Posterity has done nothing for us; and, theorize on it as we
may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are
made to think we are at the same time doing something for
ourselves.

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit to ask or to
expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal
happiness of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the
dust, a majority of which community take no pains whatever to
secure their own eternal welfare at no more distant day!  Great
distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and
render quiescent the human mind.  Pleasures to be enjoyed, or
pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone are but
little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in the cases
of others.  Still, in addition to this there is something so
ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off
as to render the whole subject with which they are connected
easily turned into ridicule.  "Better lay down that spade you are
stealing, Paddy; if you don't you'll pay for it at the day of
judgment."  "Be the powers, if ye 'll credit me so long I'll take
another jist."

By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual
drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated.  They adopt a more
enlarged philanthropy; they go for present as well as future
good.  They labor for all now living, as well as hereafter to
live.  They teach hope to all-despair to none.  As applying to
their cause, they deny the doctrine of unpardonable sin; as in
Christianity it is taught, so in this they teach--"While--While
the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return."  And,
what is a matter of more profound congratulation, they, by
experiment upon experiment and example upon example, prove the
maxim to be no less true in the one case than in the other.  On
every hand we behold those who but yesterday were the chief of
sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause.  Drunken devils are
cast out by ones, by sevens, by legions; and their unfortunate
victims, like the poor possessed who were redeemed from their
long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publishing to the
ends of the earth how great things have been done for them.

To these new champions and this new system of tactics our late
success is mainly owing, and to them we must mainly look for the
final consummation. The ball is now rolling gloriously on, and
none are so able as they to increase its speed and its bulk, to
add to its momentum and its magnitude--even though unlearned in
letters, for this task none are so well educated.  To fit them
for this work they have been taught in the true school.  They
have been in that gulf from which they would teach others the
means of escape.  They have passed that prison wall which others
have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to
weigh opinions with them as to the mode of passing?

But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have
suffered by intemperance personally, and have reformed, are the
most powerful and efficient instruments to push the reformation
to ultimate success, it does not follow that those who have not
suffered have no part left them to perform.  Whether or not the
world would be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment
from it of all intoxicating drinks seems to me not now an open
question.  Three fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with
their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge it in
their hearts.

Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good the good
of the whole demands?  Shall he who cannot do much be for that
reason excused if he do nothing?  "But," says one, "what good can
I do by signing the pledge?  I never drank, even without
signing."  This question has already been asked and answered more
than a million of times.  Let it be answered once more.  For the
man suddenly or in any other way to break off from the use of
drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years and
until his appetite for them has grown ten or a hundredfold
stronger and more craving than any natural appetite can be,
requires a most powerful moral effort.  In such an undertaking he
needs every moral support and influence that can possibly be
brought to his aid and thrown around him.  And not only so, but
every moral prop should be taken from whatever argument might
rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding.  When he casts
his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he
respects, all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and
anxiously pointing him onward, and none beckoning him back to his
former miserable "wallowing in the mire."

But it is said by some that men will think and act for
themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else
because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that
powerful engine contended for.  Let us examine this.  Let me ask
the man who could maintain this position most stiffly, what
compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit
during the sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head?  Not a
trifle, I'll venture.  And why not?  There would be nothing
irreligious in it, nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable--then
why not?  Is it not because there would be something egregiously
unfashionable in it?  Then it is the influence of fashion; and
what is the influence of fashion but the influence that other
people's actions have on our actions--the strong inclination each
of us feels to do as we see all our neighbors do?  Nor is the
influence of fashion confined to any particular thing or class of
things; it is just as strong on one subject as another. Let us
make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the
temperance cause as for husbands to wear their wives' bonnets to
church, and instances will be just as rare in the one case as the
other.

"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not
acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard's
society, whatever our influence might be."  Surely no Christian
will adhere to this objection.  If they believe as they profess,
that Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of
sinful man, and as such to die an ignominious death for their
sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely
lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal,
salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their
fellow-creatures.  Nor is the condescension very great.  In my
judgment such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared
more by the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral
superiority over those who have.  Indeed, I believe if we take
habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will
bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.
There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and
warm-blooded to fall into this vice--the demon of intemperance
ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and
of generosity.  What one of us but can call to mind some
relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has
fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity?  He ever seems to have gone
forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if
not the first, the fairest born of every family.  Shall he now be
arrested in his desolating career?  In that arrest all can give
aid that will; and who shall be excused that can and will not?
Far around as human breath has ever blown he keeps our fathers,
our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains
of moral death.  To all the living everywhere we cry, "Come sound
the moral trump, that these may rise and stand up an exceeding
great army."  "Come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe
upon these slain that they may live."  If the relative grandeur
of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human
misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then
indeed will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen.

Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud.  It
has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of
any other nation of the earth.  In it the world has found a
solution of the long-mooted problem as to the capability of man
to govern himself.  In it was the germ which has vegetated, and
still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of
mankind.  But, with all these glorious results, past, present,
and to come, it had its evils too.  It breathed forth famine,
swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the
orphan's cry and the widow's wail continued to break the sad
silence that ensued.  These were the price, the inevitable price,
paid for the blessings it bought.

Turn now to the temperance revolution.  In it we shall find a
stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater
tyrant deposed; in it, more of want supplied, more disease
healed, more sorrow assuaged.  By it no Orphans starving, no
widows weeping.  By it none wounded in feeling, none injured in
interest; even the drammaker and dram-seller will have glided
into other occupations so gradually as never to have felt the
change, and will stand ready to join all others in the universal
song of gladness.  And what a noble ally this to the cause of
political freedom, with such an aid its march cannot fail to be
on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition
the sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty.  Happy day
when-all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter
subjected-mind, all-conquering mind, shall live and move, the
monarch of the world.  Glorious consummation!  Hail, fall of
fury! Reign of reason, all hail!

And when the victory shall be complete, when there shall be
neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth, how proud the title
of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the
cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in that
victory.  How nobly distinguished that people who shall have
planted and nurtured to maturity both the political and moral
freedom of their species.

This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birthday of
Washington; we are met to celebrate this day.  Washington is the
mightiest name of earth long since mightiest in the cause of
civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation.  On that
name no eulogy is expected.  It cannot be.  To add brightness to
the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible.
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its
naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, February 25, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 16th instant, announcing that Miss
Fanny and you are "no more twain, but one flesh," reached me this
morning. I have no way of telling you how much happiness I wish
you both, though I believe you both can conceive it.  I feel
somewhat jealous of both of you now: you will be so exclusively
concerned for one another, that I shall be forgotten entirely.
My acquaintance with Miss Fanny (I call her this, lest you should
think I am speaking of your mother) was too short for me to
reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and still I am sure
I shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her of that
debt she owes me--and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her
paying it.

I regret to learn that you have resolved to not return to
Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably
things seem to be arranged in this world!  If we have no friends,
we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose
them, and be doubly pained by the loss.  I did hope she and you
would make your home here; but I own I have no right to insist.
You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more sacred than
you can owe to others, and in that light let them be respected
and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain with
her relatives and friends. As to friends, however, she could not
need them anywhere: she would have them in abundance here.

Give my kind remembrance to Mr. Williamson and his family,
particularly Miss Elizabeth; also to your mother, brother, and
sisters. Ask little Eliza Davis if she will ride to town with me
if I come there again. And finally, give Fanny a double
reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me often, and
believe me

Yours forever,

LINCOLN.

P. S. Poor Easthouse is gone at last. He died awhile before day
this morning.  They say he was very loath to die....

L.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON MARRIAGE CONCERNS

SPRINGFIELD, February 25,1842.

DEAR SPEED:--I received yours of the 12th written the day you
went down to William's place, some days since, but delayed
answering it till I should receive the promised one of the 16th,
which came last night.  I opened the letter with intense anxiety
and trepidation; so much so, that, although it turned out better
than I expected, I have hardly yet, at a distance of ten hours,
become calm.

I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are
peculiar) are all the worst sort of nonsense.  I fancied, from
the time I received your letter of Saturday, that the one of
Wednesday was never to come, and yet it did come, and what is
more, it is perfectly clear, both from its tone and handwriting,
that you were much happier, or, if you think the term preferable,
less miserable, when you wrote it than when you wrote the last
one before.  You had so obviously improved at the very time I so
much fancied you would have grown worse.  You say that something
indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you.  You will
not say that three months from now, I will venture.  When your
nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble will be over
forever.  Nor should you become impatient at their being even
very slow in becoming steady.  Again you say, you much fear that
that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be
realized.  Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the
fault of her who is now your wife.  I now have no doubt that it
is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of
Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize.  Far
short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to
realize them than that same black-eyed Fanny.  If you could but
contemplate her through my imagination, it would appear
ridiculous to you that any one should for a moment think of being
unhappy with her.  My old father used to have a saying that "If
you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter"; and it occurs to
me that if the bargain you have just closed can possibly be
called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for
applying that maxim to which my fancy can by any effort picture.

I write another letter, enclosing this, which you can show her,
if she desires it.  I do this because she would think strangely,
perhaps, should you tell her that you received no letters from
me, or, telling her you do, refuse to let her see them.  I close
this, entertaining the confident hope that every successive
letter I shall have from you (which I here pray may not be few,
nor far between) may show you possessing a more steady hand and
cheerful heart than the last preceding it.
As ever, your friend,

LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, March 27, 1842

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 10th instant was received three or four
days since.  You know I am sincere when I tell you the pleasure
its contents gave me was, and is, inexpressible.  As to your farm
matter, I have no sympathy with you.  I have no farm, nor ever
expect to have, and consequently have not studied the subject
enough to be much interested with it.  I can only say that I am
glad you are satisfied and pleased with it.  But on that other
subject, to me of the most intense interest whether in joy or
sorrow, I never had the power to withhold my sympathy from you.
It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you say
you are "far happier than you ever expected to be."  That much I
know is enough.  I know you too well to suppose your expectations
were not, at least, sometimes extravagant, and if the reality
exceeds them all, I say, Enough, dear Lord.  I am not going
beyond the truth when I tell you that the short space it took me
to read your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum
of all I have enjoyed since the fatal 1st of January, 1841.
Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but
for the never-absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I
have contributed to make so.  That still kills my soul.  I cannot
but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is
otherwise.  She accompanied a large party on the railroad cars to
Jacksonville last Monday, and on her return spoke, so that I
heard of it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly.  God be
praised for that.

You know with what sleepless vigilance I have watched you ever
since the commencement of your affair; and although I am almost
confident it is useless, I cannot forbear once more to say that I
think it is even yet possible for your spirits to flag down and
leave you miserable.  If they should, don't fail to remember that
they cannot long remain so.  One thing I can tell you which I
know you will be glad to hear, and that is that I have seen--and
scrutinized her feelings as well as I could, and am fully
convinced she is far happier now than she has been for the last
fifteen months past.

You will see by the last Sangamon Journal, that I made a
temperance speech on the 22d of February, which I claim that
Fanny and you shall read as an act of charity to me; for I cannot
learn that anybody else has read it, or is likely to.
Fortunately it is not very long, and I shall deem it a sufficient
compliance with my request if one of you listens while the other
reads it.

As to your Lockridge matter, it is only necessary to say that
there has been no court since you left, and that the next
commences to-morrow morning, during which I suppose we cannot
fail to get a judgment.

I wish you would learn of Everett what he would take, over and
above a discharge for all the trouble we have been at, to take
his business out of our hands and give it to somebody else.  It
is impossible to collect money on that or any other claim here
now; and although you know I am not a very petulant man, I
declare I am almost out of patience with Mr. Everett's
importunity.  It seems like he not only writes all the letters he
can himself, but gets everybody else in Louisville and vicinity
to be constantly writing to us about his claim.  I have always
said that Mr. Everett is a very clever fellow, and I am very
sorry he cannot be obliged; but it does seem to me he ought to
know we are interested to collect his claim, and therefore would
do it if we could.

I am neither joking nor in a pet when I say we would thank him to
transfer his business to some other, without any compensation for
what we have done, provided he will see the court cost paid, for
which we are security.

The sweet violet you inclosed came safely to hand, but it was so
dry, and mashed so flat, that it crumbled to dust at the first
attempt to handle it.  The juice that mashed out of it stained a
place in the letter, which I mean to preserve and cherish for the
sake of her who procured it to be sent.  My renewed good wishes
to her in particular, and generally to all such of your relations
who know me.

As ever,

LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 4, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 16th June was received only a day or
two since.  It was not mailed at Louisville till the 25th.  You
speak of the great time that has elapsed since I wrote you.  Let
me explain that.  Your letter reached here a day or two after I
started on the circuit.  I was gone five or six weeks, so that I
got the letters only a few weeks before Butler started to your
country.  I thought it scarcely worth while to write you the news
which he could and would tell you more in detail.  On his return
he told me you would write me soon, and so I waited for your
letter.  As to my having been displeased with your advice, surely
you know better than that.  I know you do, and therefore will not
labor to convince you.  True, that subject is painful to me; but
it is not your silence, or the silence of all the world, that can
make me forget it.  I acknowledge the correctness of your advice
too; but before I resolve to do the one thing or the other, I
must gain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves
when they are made.  In that ability you know I once prided
myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I lost-
-how and where you know too well.  I have not yet regained it;
and until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much
importance.  I believe now that had you understood my case at the
time as well as I understand yours afterward, by the aid you
would have given me I should have sailed through clear, but that
does not now afford me sufficient confidence to begin that or the
like of that again.

You make a kind acknowledgment of your obligations to me for your
present happiness.  I am pleased with that acknowledgment.  But a
thousand times more am I pleased to know that you enjoy a degree
of happiness worthy of an acknowledgment.  The truth is, I am not
sure that there was any merit with me in the part I took in your
difficulty; I was drawn to it by a fate.  If I would I could not
have done less than I did.  I always was superstitious; I believe
God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you
together, which union I have no doubt He had fore-ordained.
Whatever He designs He will do for me yet.  "Stand still, and see
the salvation of the Lord" is my text just now.  If, as you say,
you have told Fanny all, I should have no objection to her seeing
this letter, but for its reference to our friend here: let her
seeing it depend upon whether she has ever known anything of my
affairs; and if she has not, do not let her.

I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season.  I am so poor
and make so little headway in the world, that I drop back in a
month of idleness as much as I gain in a year's sowing.  I should
like to visit you again.  I should like to see that "sis" of
yours that was absent when I was there, though I suppose she
would run away again if she were to hear I was coming.

My respects and esteem to all your friends there, and, by your
permission, my love to your Fanny.

Ever yours,

LINCOLN.




A LETTER FROM THE LOST TOWNSHIPS

Article written by Lincoln for the Sangamon Journal in ridicule
of James Shields, who, as State Auditor, had declined to receive
State Bank notes in payment of taxes.  The above letter purported
to come from a poor widow who, though supplied with State Bank
paper, could not obtain a receipt for her tax bill.  This, and
another subsequent letter by Mary Todd, brought about the
"Lincoln-Shields Duel."




LOST TOWNSHIPS

August 27, 1842.

DEAR Mr. PRINTER:

I see you printed that long letter I sent you a spell ago.  I 'm
quite encouraged by it, and can't keep from writing again.  I
think the printing of my letters will be a good thing all round--
it will give me the benefit of being known by the world, and give
the world the advantage of knowing what's going on in the Lost
Townships, and give your paper respectability besides.  So here
comes another.  Yesterday afternoon I hurried through cleaning up
the dinner dishes and stepped over to neighbor S_______ to see if
his wife Peggy was as well as mout be expected, and hear what
they called the baby.  Well, when I got there and just turned
round the corner of his log cabin, there he was, setting on the
doorstep reading a newspaper.  "How are you, Jeff?"  says I.  He
sorter started when he heard me, for he hadn't seen me before.
"Why," says he, "I 'm mad as the devil, Aunt 'Becca!"  "What
about?"  says I; "ain't its hair the right color?  None of that
nonsense, Jeff; there ain't an honester woman in the Lost
Townships than..."  --"Than who?"  says he; "what the mischief are
you about?"  I began to see I was running the wrong trail, and so
says I, "Oh! nothing: I guess I was mistaken a little, that's
all.  But what is it you 're mad about?"

"Why," says he, "I've been tugging ever since harvest, getting
out wheat and hauling it to the river to raise State Bank paper
enough to pay my tax this year and a little school debt I owe;
and now, just as I 've got it, here I open this infernal Extra
Register, expecting to find it full of 'Glorious Democratic
Victories' and 'High Comb'd Cocks,' when, lo and behold! I find a
set of fellows, calling themselves officers of the State, have
forbidden the tax collectors, and school commissioners to receive
State paper at all; and so here it is dead on my hands.  I don't
now believe all the plunder I've got will fetch ready cash enough
to pay my taxes and that school debt."

I was a good deal thunderstruck myself; for that was the first I
had heard of the proclamation, and my old man was pretty much in
the same fix with Jeff.  We both stood a moment staring at one
another without knowing what to say.  At last says I, "Mr.
S______    let me look at that paper."  He handed it to me, when I
read the proclamation over.

"There now," says he, "did you ever see such a piece of impudence
and imposition as that?"  I saw Jeff was in a good tune for saying
some ill-natured things, and so I tho't I would just argue a
little on the contrary side, and make him rant a spell if I
could.  "Why," says I,  looking as dignified and thoughtful as I
could, "it seems pretty tough, to be sure, to have to raise
silver where there's none to be raised; but then, you see, 'there
will be danger of loss' if it ain't done."

"Loss! damnation!" says he.  "I defy Daniel Webster, I defy King
Solomon, I defy the world--I defy--I defy--yes, I defy even you,
Aunt 'Becca, to show how the people can lose anything by paying
their taxes in State paper."

"Well," says I, "you see what the officers of State say about it,
and they are a desarnin' set of men.  But," says I, "I guess you
're mistaken about what the proclamation says.  It don't say the
people will lose anything by the paper money being taken for
taxes.  It only says 'there will be danger of loss'; and though
it is tolerable plain that the people can't lose by paying their
taxes in something they can get easier than silver, instead of
having to pay silver; and though it's just as plain that the
State can't lose by taking State Bank paper, however low it may
be, while she owes the bank more than the whole revenue, and can
pay that paper over on her debt, dollar for dollar;--still there
is danger of loss to the 'officers of State'; and you know, Jeff,
we can't get along without officers of State."

"Damn officers of State!" says he; "that's what Whigs are always
hurrahing for."

"Now, don't swear so, Jeff," says I, "you know I belong to the
meetin', and swearin' hurts my feelings."

"Beg pardon, Aunt 'Becca," says he; "but I do say it's enough to
make Dr.  Goddard swear, to have tax to pay in silver, for
nothing only that Ford may get his two thousand a year, and
Shields his twenty-four hundred a year, and Carpenter his sixteen
hundred a year, and all without 'danger of loss' by taking it in
State paper.  Yes, yes: it's plain enough now what these officers
of State mean by 'danger of loss.' Wash, I s'pose, actually lost
fifteen hundred dollars out of the three thousand that two of
these 'officers of State' let him steal from the treasury, by
being compelled to take it in State paper.  Wonder if we don't
have a proclamation before long, commanding us to make up this
loss to Wash in silver."

And so he went on till his breath run out, and he had to stop.  I
couldn't think of anything to say just then, and so I begun to
look over the paper again.  "Ay! here's another proclamation, or
something like it."

"Another?" says Jeff; "and whose egg is it, pray?"

I looked to the bottom of it, and read aloud, "Your obedient
servant, James Shields, Auditor."

"Aha!" says Jeff, "one of them same three fellows again.  Well
read it, and let's hear what of it."

I read on till I came to where it says, "The object of this
measure is to suspend the collection of the revenue for the
current year."

"Now stop, now stop!" says he; "that's a lie a'ready, and I don't
want to hear of it."

"Oh, maybe not," says I.

"I say it-is-a-lie.  Suspend the collection, indeed! Will the
collectors, that have taken their oaths to make the collection,
dare to end it?  Is there anything in law requiring them to
perjure themselves at the bidding of James Shields?

"Will the greedy gullet of the penitentiary be satisfied with
swallowing him instead of all of them, if they should venture to
obey him?  And would he not discover some 'danger of loss,' and be
off about the time it came to taking their places?

"And suppose the people attempt to suspend, by refusing to pay;
what then?  The collectors would just jerk up their horses and
cows, and the like, and sell them to the highest bidder for
silver in hand, without valuation or redemption.  Why, Shields
didn't believe that story himself; it was never meant for the
truth.  If it was true, why was it not writ till five days after
the proclamation?  Why did n't Carlin and Carpenter sign it as
well as Shields?  Answer me that, Aunt 'Becca.  I say it's a lie,
and not a well told one at that.  It grins out like a copper
dollar.  Shields is a fool as well as a liar.  With him truth is
out of the question; and as for getting a good, bright, passable
lie out of him, you might as well try to strike fire from a cake
of tallow.  I stick to it, it's all an infernal Whig lie!"

"A Whig lie! Highty tighty!"

"Yes, a Whig lie; and it's just like everything the cursed
British Whigs do.  First they'll do some divilment, and then
they'll tell a lie to hide it.  And they don't care how plain a
lie it is; they think they can cram any sort of a one down the
throats of the ignorant Locofocos, as they call the Democrats."

"Why, Jeff, you 're crazy: you don't mean to say Shields is a
Whig!"

"Yes, I do."

"Why, look here! the proclamation is in your own Democratic
paper, as you call it."

"I know it; and what of that?  They only printed it to let us
Democrats see the deviltry the Whigs are at."

"Well, but Shields is the auditor of this Loco--I mean this
Democratic State."

"So he is, and Tyler appointed him to office."

"Tyler appointed him?"

"Yes (if you must chaw it over), Tyler appointed him; or, if it
was n't him, it was old Granny Harrison, and that's all one.  I
tell you, Aunt 'Becca, there's no mistake about his being a Whig.
Why, his very looks shows it; everything about him shows it: if I
was deaf and blind, I could tell him by the smell.  I seed him
when I was down in Springfield last winter.  They had a sort of a
gatherin' there one night among the grandees, they called a fair.
All the gals about town was there, and all the handsome widows
and married women, finickin' about trying to look like gals, tied
as tight in the middle, and puffed out at both ends, like bundles
of fodder that had n't been stacked yet, but wanted stackin'
pretty bad.  And then they had tables all around the house
kivered over with [------] caps and pincushions and ten
thousand such little knick-knacks, tryin' to sell 'em to the
fellows that were bowin', and scrapin' and kungeerin' about 'em.
They would n't let no Democrats in, for fear they'd disgust the
ladies, or scare the little gals, or dirty the floor.  I looked
in at the window, and there was this same fellow Shields floatin'
about on the air, without heft or earthly substances, just like a
lock of cat fur where cats had been fighting.

"He was paying his money to this one, and that one, and t' other
one, and sufferin' great loss because it was n't silver instead
of State paper; and the sweet distress he seemed to be in,--his
very features, in the ecstatic agony of his soul, spoke audibly
and distinctly, 'Dear girls, it is distressing, but I cannot
marry you all.  Too well I know how much you suffer; but do, do
remember, it is not my fault that I am so handsome and so
interesting.'

"As this last was expressed by a most exquisite contortion of his
face, he seized hold of one of their hands, and squeezed, and
held on to it about a quarter of an hour.  'Oh, my good fellow!'
says I to myself, 'if that was one of our Democratic gals in the
Lost Townships, the way you 'd get a brass pin let into you would
be about up to the head.' He a Democrat! Fiddlesticks! I tell
you, Aunt 'Becca, he's a Whig, and no mistake; nobody but a Whig
could make such a conceity dunce of himself."

"Well," says I, "maybe he is; but, if he is, I 'm mistaken the
worst sort.  Maybe so, maybe so; but, if I am, I'll suffer by it;
I'll be a Democrat if it turns out that Shields is a Whig,
considerin' you shall be a Whig if he turns out a Democrat."

"A bargain, by jingoes!" says he; "but how will we find out?"

"Why," says I, "we'll just write and ax the printer."

"Agreed again!" says he; "and by thunder! if it does turn out
that Shields is a Democrat, I never will __________"

"Jefferson! Jefferson!"

"What do you want, Peggy?"

"Do get through your everlasting clatter some time, and bring me
a gourd of water; the child's been crying for a drink this
livelong hour."

"Let it die, then; it may as well die for water as to be taxed to
death to fatten officers of State."

Jeff run off to get the water, though, just like he hadn't been
saying anything spiteful, for he's a raal good-hearted fellow,
after all, once you get at the foundation of him.

I walked into the house, and, "Why, Peggy," says I, "I declare we
like to forgot you altogether."

"Oh, yes," says she, "when a body can't help themselves,
everybody soon forgets 'em; but, thank God! by day after to-
morrow I shall be well enough to milk the cows, and pen the
calves, and wring the contrary ones' tails for 'em, and no thanks
to nobody."

"Good evening, Peggy," says I, and so I sloped, for I seed she
was mad at me for making Jeff neglect her so long.

And now, Mr. Printer, will you be sure to let us know in your
next paper whether this Shields is a Whig or a Democrat?  I don't
care about it for myself, for I know well enough how it is
already; but I want to convince Jeff.  It may do some good to let
him, and others like him, know who and what these officers of
State are.  It may help to send the present hypocritical set to
where they belong, and to fill the places they now disgrace with
men who will do more work for less pay, and take fewer airs while
they are doing it.  It ain't sensible to think that the same men
who get us in trouble will change their course; and yet it's
pretty plain if some change for the better is not made, it's not
long that either Peggy or I or any of us will have a cow left to
milk, or a calf's tail to wring.

Yours truly,

REBECCA ____________




INVITATION TO HENRY CLAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL.,  Aug 29, 1842.

HON. HENRY CLAY, Lexington, Ky.

DEAR SIR:--We hear you are to visit Indianapolis, Indiana, on the
5th Of October next.  If our information in this is correct we
hope you will not deny us the pleasure of seeing you in our
State.  We are aware of the toil necessarily incident to a
journey by one circumstanced as you are; but once you have
embarked, as you have already determined to do, the toil would
not be greatly augmented by extending the journey to our capital.
The season of the year will be most favorable for good roads, and
pleasant weather; and although we cannot but believe you would be
highly gratified with such a visit to the prairie-land, the
pleasure it would give us and thousands such as we is beyond all
question.  You have never visited Illinois, or at least this
portion of it; and should you now yield to our request, we
promise you such a reception as shall he worthy of the man on
whom are now turned the fondest hopes of a great and suffering
nation.

Please inform us at the earliest convenience whether we may
expect you.

Very respectfully your obedient servants,
A. G. HENRY,  A. T. BLEDSOE,
C. BIRCHALL,  A. LINCOLN,
G. M. CABANNISS,  ROB'T IRWIN,
P. A. SAUNDERS,  J. M. ALLEN,
F. N. FRANCIS.
Executive Committee "Clay Club."

(Clay's answer, September 6, 1842, declines with thanks.)




CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT THE LINCOLN-SHIELDS DUEL.

TREMONT, September 17, 1842.

ABRA. LINCOLN, ESQ.:--I regret that my absence on public business
compelled me to postpone a matter of private consideration a
little longer than I could have desired.  It will only be
necessary, however, to account for it by informing you that I
have been to Quincy on business that would not admit of delay.  I
will now state briefly the reasons of my troubling you with this
communication, the disagreeable nature of which I regret, as I
had hoped to avoid any difficulty with any one in Springfield
while residing there, by endeavoring to conduct myself in such a
way amongst both my political friends and opponents as to escape
the necessity of any.  Whilst thus abstaining from giving
provocation, I have become the object of slander, vituperation,
and personal abuse, which were I capable of submitting to, I
would prove myself worthy of the whole of it.

In two or three of the last numbers of the Sangamon Journal,
articles of the most personal nature and calculated to degrade me
have made their appearance.  On inquiring, I was informed by the
editor of that paper, through the medium of my friend General
Whitesides, that you are the author of those articles.  This
information satisfies me that I have become by some means or
other the object of your secret hostility.  I will not take the
trouble of inquiring into the reason of all this; but I will take
the liberty of requiring a full, positive, and absolute
retraction of all offensive allusions used by you in these
communications, in relation to my private character and standing
as a man, as an apology for the insults conveyed in them.

This may prevent consequences which no one will regret more than
myself.

Your obedient servant,    JAS.  SHIELDS.




TO J. SHIELDS.

TREMONT, September 17, 1842

JAS. SHIELDS, ESQ.:--Your note of to-day was handed me by General
Whitesides.  In that note you say you have been informed, through
the medium of the editor of the Journal, that I am the author of
certain articles in that paper which you deem personally abusive
of you; and without stopping to inquire whether I really am the
author, or to point out what is offensive in them, you demand an
unqualified retraction of all that is offensive, and then proceed
to hint at consequences.

Now, sir, there is in this so much assumption of facts and so
much of menace as to consequences, that I cannot submit to answer
that note any further than I have, and to add that the
consequences to which I suppose you allude would be matter of as
great regret to me as it possibly could to you.

Respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. LINCOLN FROM JAS. SHIELDS

TREMONT, September 17, 1842.

ABRA. LINCOLN, ESQ.:--In reply to my note of this date, you
intimate that I assume facts and menace consequences, and that
you cannot submit to answer it further.  As now, sir, you desire
it, I will be a little more particular.  The editor of the
Sangamon Journal gave me to understand that you are the author of
an article which appeared, I think, in that paper of the 2d
September instant, headed "The Lost Townships," and signed
Rebecca or 'Becca.  I would therefore take the liberty of asking
whether you are the author of said article, or any other over the
same signature which has appeared in any of the late numbers of
that paper.  If so, I repeat my request of an absolute retraction
of all offensive allusions contained therein in relation to my
private character and standing.  If you are not the author of any
of these articles, your denial will he sufficient.  I will say
further, it is not my intention to menace, but to do myself
justice.

Your obedient servant,
JAS. SHIELDS.




MEMORANDUM OF INSTRUCTIONS TO E. H. MERRYMAN,

Lincoln's Second,

September 19, 1842.

In case Whitesides shall signify a wish to adjust this affair
without further difficulty, let him know that if the present
papers be withdrawn, and a note from Mr. Shields asking to know
if I am the author of the articles of which he complains, and
asking that I shall make him gentlemanly satisfaction if I am the
author, and this without menace, or dictation as to what that
satisfaction shall be, a pledge is made that the following answer
shall be given:

"I did write the 'Lost Townships' letter which appeared in the
Journal of the 2d instant, but had no participation in any form
in any other article alluding to you.  I wrote that wholly for
political effect--I had no intention of injuring your personal or
private character or standing as a man or a gentleman; and I did
not then think, and do not now think, that that article could
produce or has produced that effect against you; and had I
anticipated such an effect I would have forborne to write it.
And I will add that your conduct toward me, so far as I know, had
always been gentlemanly; and that I had no personal pique against
you, and no cause for any."

If this should be done, I leave it with you to arrange what shall
and what shall not be published.  If nothing like this is done,
the preliminaries of the fight are to be--

First.  Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the largest size,
precisely equal in all respects, and such as now used by the
cavalry company at Jacksonville.

Second.  Position: A plank ten feet long, and from nine to twelve
inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge, on the ground, as the
line between us, which neither is to pass his foot over upon
forfeit of his life.  Next a line drawn on the ground on either
side of said plank and parallel with it, each at the distance of
the whole length of the sword and three feet additional from the
plank; and the passing of his own such line by either party
during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest.

Third.  Time: On Thursday evening at five o'clock, if you can get
it so; but in no case to be at a greater distance of time than
Friday evening at five o'clock.

Fourth.  Place: Within three miles of Alton, on the opposite side
of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you.

Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at
liberty to make at your discretion; but you are in no case to
swerve from these rules, or to pass beyond their limits.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, October 4, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--You have heard of my duel with Shields, and I have
now to inform you that the dueling business still rages in this
city.  Day before yesterday Shields challenged Butler, who
accepted, and proposed fighting next morning at sunrise in Bob
Allen's meadow, one hundred yards' distance, with rifles.  To
this Whitesides, Shields's second, said "No," because of the law.
Thus ended duel No.  2.  Yesterday Whitesides chose to consider
himself insulted by Dr.  Merryman, so sent him a kind of quasi-
challenge, inviting him to meet him at the Planter's House in St.
Louis on the next Friday, to settle their difficulty.  Merryman
made me his friend, and sent Whitesides a note, inquiring to know
if he meant his note as a challenge, and if so, that he would,
according to the law in such case made and provided, prescribe
the terms of the meeting.  Whitesides returned for answer that if
Merryman would meet him at the Planter's House as desired, he
would challenge him.  Merryman replied in a note that he denied
Whitesides's right to dictate time and place, but that he
(Merryman) would waive the question of time, and meet him at
Louisiana, Missouri.  Upon my presenting this note to Whitesides
and stating verbally its contents, he declined receiving it,
saying he had business in St.  Louis, and it was as near as
Louisiana.  Merryman then directed me to notify Whitesides that
he should publish the correspondence between them, with such
comments as he thought fit.  This I did.  Thus it stood at
bedtime last night.  This morning Whitesides, by his friend
Shields, is praying for a new trial, on the ground that he was
mistaken in Merryman's proposition to meet him at Louisiana,
Missouri, thinking it was the State of Louisiana.  This Merryman
hoots at, and is preparing his publication; while the town is in
a ferment, and a street fight somewhat anticipated.

But I began this letter not for what I have been writing, but to
say something on that subject which you know to be of such
infinite solicitude to me.  The immense sufferings you endured
from the first days of September till the middle of February you
never tried to conceal from me, and I well understood.  You have
now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months.  That
you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for
without you could not be living.  But I have your word for it,
too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested
in your letters.  But I want to ask a close question, "Are you
now in feeling as well as judgment glad that you are married as
you are?"  From anybody but me this would be an impudent question,
not to be tolerated; but I know you will pardon it in me.  Please
answer it quickly, as I am impatient to know.  I have sent my
love to your Fanny so often, I fear she is getting tired of it.
However, I venture to tender it again.

Yours forever,

LINCOLN.




TO JAMES S. IRWIN.

SPRINGFIELD,
November 2, 1842.

JAS. S. IRWIN ESQ.:

Owing to my absence, yours of the 22nd ult.  was not received
till this moment.  Judge Logan and myself are willing to attend
to any business in the Supreme Court you may send us.  As to
fees, it is impossible to establish a rule that will apply in
all, or even a great many cases.  We believe we are never accused
of being very unreasonable in this particular; and we would
always be easily satisfied, provided we could see the money--but
whatever fees we earn at a distance, if not paid before, we have
noticed, we never hear of after the work is done.  We, therefore,
are growing a little sensitive on that point.

Yours etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




1843


RESOLUTIONS AT A WHIG MEETING AT SPRINGFIELD,
ILLINOIS, MARCH 1, 1843.

The object of the meeting was stated by Mr. Lincoln of
Springfield, who offered the following resolutions, which were
unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That a tariff of duties on imported goods, producing
sufficient revenue for the payment of the necessary expenditures
of the National Government, and so adjusted as to protect
American industry, is indispensably necessary to the prosperity
of the American people.

Resolved, That we are opposed to direct taxation for the support
of the National Government.

Resolved, That a national bank, properly restricted, is highly
necessary and proper to the establishment and maintenance of a
sound currency, and for the cheap and safe collection, keeping,
and disbursing of the public revenue.

Resolved, That the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of
the public lands, upon the principles of Mr. Clay's bill, accords
with the best interests of the nation, and particularly with
those of the State of Illinois.

Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of each Congressional
district of the State to nominate and support at the approaching
election a candidate of their own principles, regardless of the
chances of success.

Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of all portions of the
State to adopt and rigidly adhere to the convention system of
nominating candidates.

Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of each Congressional
district to hold a district convention on or before the first
Monday of May next, to be composed of a number of delegates from
each county equal to double the n tuber of its representatives in
the General Assembly, provided, each county shall have at least
one delegate.  Said delegates to be chosen by primary meetings of
the Whigs, at such times and places as they in their respective
counties may see fit.  Said district conventions each to nominate
one candidate for Congress, and one delegate to a national
convention for the purpose of nominating candidates for President
and Vice-President of the United States.  The seven delegates so
nominated to a national convention to have power to add two
delegates to their own number, and to fill all vacancies.

Resolved, That A. T. Bledsoe, S. T. Logan, and A. Lincoln be
appointed a committee to prepare an address to the people of the
State.

Resolved, That N. W. Edwards, A. G. Henry, James H. Matheny, John
C. Doremus, and James C. Conkling be appointed a Whig Central
State Committee, with authority to fill any vacancy that may
occur in the committee.




CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.

Address to the People of Illinois.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:-By a resolution of a meeting of such of the
Whigs of the State as are now at Springfield, we, the
undersigned, were appointed to prepare an address to you.  The
performance of that task we now undertake.

Several resolutions were adopted by the meeting; and the chief
object of this address is to show briefly the reasons for their
adoption.

The first of those resolutions declares a tariff of duties upon
foreign importations, producing sufficient revenue for the
support of the General Government, and so adjusted as to protect
American industry, to be indispensably necessary to the
prosperity of the American people; and the second declares direct
taxation for a national revenue to be improper.  Those two
resolutions are kindred in their nature, and therefore proper and
convenient to be considered together.  The question of protection
is a subject entirely too broad to be crowded into a few pages
only, together with several other subjects.  On that point we
therefore content ourselves with giving the following extracts
from the writings of Mr. Jefferson, General Jackson, and the
speech of Mr. Calhoun:

"To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate
them ourselves.  We must now place the manufacturer by the side
of the agriculturalist. The grand inquiry now is, Shall we make
our own comforts, or go without them at the will of a foreign
nation?  He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufactures
must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign
nation, or to be clothed in skins and to live like wild beasts in
dens and caverns.  I am not one of those; experience has taught
me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as
to our comfort."  Letter of Mr. Jefferson to Benjamin Austin.

"I ask, What is the real situation of the agriculturalist?  Where
has the American farmer a market for his surplus produce?  Except
for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor a home market.  Does not
this clearly prove, when there is no market at home or abroad,
that there [is] too much labor employed in agriculture?  Common
sense at once points out the remedy.  Take from agriculture six
hundred thousand men, women, and children, and you will at once
give a market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now furnishes.
In short, we have been too long subject to the policy of British
merchants.  It is time we should become a little more
Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of
England, feed our own; or else in a short time, by continuing our
present policy, we shall all be rendered paupers ourselves."  --
General Jackson's Letter to Dr. Coleman.

"When our manufactures are grown to a certain perfection, as they
soon will be, under the fostering care of government, the farmer
will find a ready market for his surplus produce, and--what is of
equal consequence--a certain and cheap supply of all he wants;
his prosperity will diffuse itself to every class of the
community."  Speech of Hon. J. C. Calhoun on the Tariff.

The question of revenue we will now briefly consider.  For
several years past the revenues of the government have been
unequal to its expenditures, and consequently loan after loan,
sometimes direct and sometimes indirect in form, has been
resorted to.  By this means a new national debt has been created,
and is still growing on us with a rapidity fearful to
contemplate--a rapidity only reasonably to be expected in time of
war.  This state of things has been produced by a prevailing
unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to direct
taxation.  But the one or the other must come.  Coming
expenditures must be met, and the present debt must be paid; and
money cannot always be borrowed for these objects.  The system of
loans is but temporary in its nature, and must soon explode.  It
is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must
soon fail and leave us destitute.  As an individual who
undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his original means
devoured by interest, and, next, no one left to borrow from, so
must it be with a government.

We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a
direct tax, must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe
this alternative is now denied by no one.  But which system shall
be adopted?  Some of our opponents, in theory, admit the propriety
of a tariff sufficient for a revenue, but even they will not in
practice vote for such a tariff; while others boldly advocate
direct taxation.  Inasmuch, therefore, as some of them boldly
advocate direct taxation, and all the rest--or so nearly all as
to make exceptions needless--refuse to adopt the tariff, we think
it is doing them no injustice to class them all as advocates of
direct taxation.  Indeed, we believe they are only delaying an
open avowal of the system till they can assure themselves that
the people will tolerate it.  Let us, then, briefly compare the
two systems.  The tariff is the cheaper system, because the
duties, being collected in large parcels at a few commercial
points, will require comparatively few officers in their
collection; while by the direct-tax system the land must be
literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like
swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and
other green thing.  And, again, by the tariff system the whole
revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those
chiefly the luxuries, and not the necessaries, of life.  By this
system the man who contents himself to live upon the products of
his own country pays nothing at all.  And surely that country is
extensive enough, and its products abundant and varied enough, to
answer all the real wants of its people.  In short, by this
system the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the
wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring
many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.
By the direct-tax system none can escape.  However strictly the
citizen may exclude from his premises all foreign luxuries,--fine
cloths, fine silks, rich wines, golden chains, and diamond
rings,--still, for the possession of his house, his barn, and his
homespun, he is to be perpetually haunted and harassed by the
tax-gatherer.  With these views we leave it to be determined
whether we or our opponents are the more truly democratic on the
subject.

The third resolution declares the necessity and propriety of a
national bank.  During the last fifty years so much has been said
and written both as to the constitutionality and expediency of
such an institution, that we could not hope to improve in the
least on former discussions of the subject, were we to undertake
it.  We, therefore, upon the question of constitutionality
content ourselves with remarking the facts that the first
national bank was established chiefly by the same men who formed
the Constitution, at a time when that instrument was but two
years old, and receiving the sanction, as President, of the
immortal Washington; that the second received the sanction, as
President, of Mr. Madison, to whom common consent has awarded the
proud title of "Father of the Constitution"; and subsequently the
sanction of the Supreme Court, the most enlightened judicial
tribunal in the world.  Upon the question of expediency, we only
ask you to examine the history of the times during the existence
of the two banks, and compare those times with the miserable
present.

The fourth resolution declares the expediency of Mr. Clay's land
bill.  Much incomprehensible jargon is often used against the
constitutionality of this measure.  We forbear, in this place,
attempting an answer to it, simply because, in our opinion, those
who urge it are through party zeal resolved not to see or
acknowledge the truth.  The question of expediency, at least so
far as Illinois is concerned, seems to us the clearest
imaginable.  By the bill we are to receive annually a large sum
of money, no part of which we otherwise receive.  The precise
annual sum cannot be known in advance; it doubtless will vary in
different years.  Still it is something to know that in the last
year--a year of almost unparalleled pecuniary pressure--it
amounted to more than forty thousand dollars.  This annual
income, in the midst of our almost insupportable difficulties, in
the days of our severest necessity, our political opponents are
furiously resolving to take and keep from us.  And for what?
Many silly reasons are given, as is usual in cases where a single
good one is not to be found.  One is that by giving us the
proceeds of the lands we impoverish the national treasury, and
thereby render necessary an increase of the tariff.  This may be
true; but if so, the amount of it only is that those whose pride,
whose abundance of means, prompt them to spurn the manufactures
of our country, and to strut in British cloaks and coats and
pantaloons, may have to pay a few cents more on the yard for the
cloth that makes them.  A terrible evil, truly, to the Illinois
farmer, who never wore, nor ever expects to wear, a single yard
of British goods in his whole life.  Another of their reasons is
that by the passage and continuance of Mr. Clay's bill, we
prevent the passage of a bill which would give us more.  This, if
it were sound in itself, is waging destructive war with the
former position; for if Mr. Clay's bill impoverishes the treasury
too much, what shall be said of one that impoverishes it still
more?  But it is not sound in itself.  It is not true that Mr.
Clay's bill prevents the passage of one more favorable to us of
the new States.  Considering the strength and opposite interest
of the old States, the wonder is that they ever permitted one to
pass so favorable as Mr. Clay's.  The last twenty-odd years'
efforts to reduce the price of the lands, and to pass graduation
bills and cession bills, prove the assertion to be true; and if
there were no experience in support of it, the reason itself is
plain.  The States in which none, or few, of the public lands
lie, and those consequently interested against parting with them
except for the best price, are the majority; and a moment's
reflection will show that they must ever continue the majority,
because by the time one of the original new States (Ohio, for
example) becomes populous and gets weight in Congress, the public
lands in her limits are so nearly sold out that in every point
material to this question she becomes an old State.  She does not
wish the price reduced, because there is none left for her
citizens to buy; she does not wish them ceded to the States in
which they lie, because they no longer lie in her limits, and she
will get nothing by the cession.  In the nature of things, the
States interested in the reduction of price, in graduation, in
cession, and in all similar projects, never can be the majority.
Nor is there reason to hope that any of them can ever succeed as
a Democratic party measure, because we have heretofore seen that
party in full power, year after year, with many of their leaders
making loud professions in favor of these projects, and yet doing
nothing.  What reason, then, is there to believe they will
hereafter do better?  In every light in which we can view this
question, it amounts simply to this: Shall we accept our share of
the proceeds under Mr. Clay's bill, or shall we rather reject
that and get nothing?

The fifth resolution recommends that a Whig candidate for
Congress be run in every district, regardless of the chances of
success.  We are aware that it is sometimes a temporary
gratification, when a friend cannot succeed, to be able to choose
between opponents; but we believe that that gratification is the
seed-time which never fails to be followed by a most abundant
harvest of bitterness.  By this policy we entangle ourselves.  By
voting for our opponents, such of us as do it in some measure
estop ourselves to complain of their acts, however glaringly
wrong we may believe them to be.  By this policy no one portion
of our friends can ever be certain as to what course another
portion may adopt; and by this want of mutual and perfect
understanding our political identity is partially frittered away
and lost.  And, again, those who are thus elected by our aid ever
become our bitterest persecutors.  Take a few prominent examples.
In 1830 Reynolds was elected Governor; in 1835 we exerted our
whole strength to elect Judge Young to the United States Senate,
which effort, though failing, gave him the prominence that
subsequently elected him; in 1836 General Ewing, was so elected
to the United States Senate; and yet let us ask what three men
have been more perseveringly vindictive in their assaults upon
all our men and measures than they?  During the last summer the
whole State was covered with pamphlet editions of
misrepresentations against us, methodized into chapters and
verses, written by two of these same men,--Reynolds and Young, in
which they did not stop at charging us with error merely, but
roundly denounced us as the designing enemies of human liberty,
itself.  If it be the will of Heaven that such men shall
politically live, be it so; but never, never again permit them to
draw a particle of their sustenance from us.

The sixth resolution recommends the adoption of the convention
system for the nomination of candidates.  This we believe to be
of the very first importance.  Whether the system is right in
itself we do not stop to inquire; contenting ourselves with
trying to show that, while our opponents use it, it is madness in
us not to defend ourselves with it.  Experience has shown that we
cannot successfully defend ourselves without it.  For examples,
look at the elections of last year.  Our candidate for governor,
with the approbation of a large portion of the party, took the
field without a nomination, and in open opposition to the system.
Wherever in the counties the Whigs had held conventions and
nominated candidates for the Legislature, the aspirants who were
not nominated were induced to rebel against the nominations, and
to become candidates, as is said, "on their own hook."  And, go
where you would into a large Whig county, you were sure to find
the Whigs not contending shoulder to shoulder against the common
enemy, but divided into factions, and fighting furiously with one
another.  The election came, and what was the result?  The
governor beaten, the Whig vote being decreased many thousands
since 1840, although the Democratic vote had not increased any.
Beaten almost everywhere for members of the Legislature,--
Tazewell, with her four hundred Whig majority, sending a
delegation half Democratic; Vermillion, with her five hundred,
doing the same; Coles, with her four hundred, sending two out of
three; and Morgan, with her two hundred and fifty, sending three
out of four,--and this to say nothing of the numerous other less
glaring examples; the whole winding up with the aggregate number
of twenty-seven Democratic representatives sent from Whig
counties.  As to the senators, too, the result was of the same
character.  And it is most worthy to be remembered that of all
the Whigs in the State who ran against the regular nominees, a
single one only was elected.  Although they succeeded in
defeating the nominees almost by scores, they too were defeated,
and the spoils chucklingly borne off by the common enemy.

We do not mention the fact of many of the Whigs opposing the
convention system heretofore for the purpose of censuring them.
Far from it.  We expressly protest against such a conclusion.  We
know they were generally, perhaps universally, as good and true
Whigs as we ourselves claim to be.

We mention it merely to draw attention to the disastrous result
it produced, as an example forever hereafter to be avoided.  That
"union is strength" is a truth that has been known, illustrated,
and declared in various ways and forms in all ages of the world.
That great fabulist and philosopher Aesop illustrated it by his
fable of the bundle of sticks; and he whose wisdom surpasses that
of all philosophers has declared that "a house divided against
itself cannot stand."  It is to induce our friends to act upon
this important and universally acknowledged truth that we urge
the adoption of the convention system.  Reflection will prove
that there is no other way of practically applying it.  In its
application we know there will be incidents temporarily painful;
but, after all, those incidents will be fewer and less intense
with than without the system.  If two friends aspire to the same
office it is certain that both cannot succeed.  Would it not,
then, be much less painful to have the question decided by mutual
friends some time before, than to snarl and quarrel until the day
of election, and then both be beaten by the common enemy?

Before leaving this subject, we think proper to remark that we do
not understand the resolution as intended to recommend the
application of the convention system to the nomination of
candidates for the small offices no way connected with politics;
though we must say we do not perceive that such an application.
of it would be wrong.

The seventh resolution recommends the holding of district
conventions in May next, for the purpose of nominating candidates
for Congress.  The propriety of this rests upon the same reasons
with that of the sixth, and therefore needs no further
discussion.

The eighth and ninth also relate merely to the practical
application of the foregoing, and therefore need no discussion.

Before closing, permit us to add a few reflections on the present
condition and future prospects of the Whig party.  In almost all
the States we have fallen into the minority, and despondency
seems to prevail universally among us.  Is there just cause for
this?  In 1840 we carried the nation by more than a hundred and
forty thousand majority.  Our opponents charged that we did it by
fraudulent voting; but whatever they may have believed, we know
the charge to be untrue.  Where, now, is that mighty host?  Have
they gone over to the enemy?  Let the results of the late
elections answer.  Every State which has fallen off from the Whig
cause since 1840 has done so not by giving more Democratic votes
than they did then, but by giving fewer Whig.  Bouck, who was
elected Democratic Governor of New York last fall by more than
15,000 majority, had not then as many votes as he had in 1840,
when he was beaten by seven or eight thousand.  And so has it
been in all the other States which have fallen away from our
cause.  From this it is evident that tens of thousands in the
late elections have not voted at all.  Who and what are they?  is
an important question, as respects the future.  They can come
forward and give us the victory again.  That all, or nearly all,
of them are Whigs is most apparent.  Our opponents, stung to
madness by the defeat of 1840, have ever since rallied with more
than their usual unanimity.  It has not been they that have been
kept from the polls.  These facts show what the result must be,
once the people again rally in their entire strength.  Proclaim
these facts, and predict this result; and although unthinking
opponents may smile at us, the sagacious ones will "believe and
tremble."  And why shall the Whigs not all rally again?  Are
their principles less dear now than in 1840?  Have any of their
doctrines since then been discovered to be untrue?  It is true,
the victory of 1840 did not produce the happy results
anticipated; but it is equally true, as we believe, that the
unfortunate death of General Harrison was the cause of the
failure.  It was not the election of General Harrison that was
expected to produce happy effects, but the measures to be adopted
by his administration.  By means of his death, and the unexpected
course of his successor, those measures were never adopted.  How
could the fruits follow?  The consequences we always predicted
would follow the failure of those measures have followed, and are
now upon us in all their horrors.  By the course of Mr. Tyler the
policy of our opponents has continued in operation, still leaving
them with the advantage of charging all its evils upon us as the
results of a Whig administration.  Let none be deceived by this
somewhat plausible, though entirely false charge.  If they ask us
for the sufficient and sound currency we promised, let them be
answered that we only promised it through the medium of a
national bank, which they, aided by Mr. Tyler, prevented our
establishing.  And let them be reminded, too, that their own
policy in relation to the currency has all the time been, and
still is, in full operation.  Let us then again come forth in our
might, and by a second victory accomplish that which death
prevented in the first.  We can do it.  When did the Whigs ever
fail if they were fully aroused and united?  Even in single
States, under such circumstances, defeat seldom overtakes them.
Call to mind the contested elections within the last few years,
and particularly those of Moore and Letcher from Kentucky,
Newland and Graham from North Carolina, and the famous New Jersey
case.  In all these districts Locofocoism had stalked omnipotent
before; but when the whole people were aroused by its enormities
on those occasions, they put it down, never to rise again.

We declare it to be our solemn conviction, that the Whigs are
always a majority of this nation; and that to make them always
successful needs but to get them all to the polls and to vote
unitedly.  This is the great desideratum.  Let us make every
effort to attain it.  At every election, let every Whig act as
though he knew the result to depend upon his action.  In the
great contest of 1840 some more than twenty one hundred thousand
votes were cast, and so surely as there shall be that many, with
the ordinary increase added, cast in 1844 that surely will a Whig
be elected President of the United States.

A. LINCOLN.
S. T. LOGAN.
A. T. BLEDSOE.

March 4, 1843.




TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, March 7, 1843.

FRIEND BENNETT:

Your letter of this day was handed me by Mr. Miles.  It is too
late now to effect the object you desire.  On yesterday morning
the most of the Whig members from this district got together and
agreed to hold the convention at Tremont in Tazewell County.  I
am sorry to hear that any of the Whigs of your county, or indeed
of any county, should longer be against conventions.  On last
Wednesday evening a meeting of all the Whigs then here from all
parts of the State was held, and the question of the propriety.
of conventions was brought up and fully discussed, and at the end
of the discussion a resolution recommending the system of
conventions to all the Whigs of the State was unanimously
adopted.  Other resolutions were also passed, all of which will
appear in the next Journal.  The meeting also appointed a
committee to draft an address to the people of the State, which
address will also appear in the next journal.

In it you will find a brief argument in favor of conventions--and
although I wrote it myself I will say to you that it is
conclusive upon the point and can not be reasonably answered.
The right way for you to do is hold your meeting and appoint
delegates any how, and if there be any who will not take part,
let it be so.  The matter will work so well this time that even
they who now oppose will come in next time.

The convention is to be held at Tremont on the 5th of April and
according to the rule we have adopted your county is to have
delegates--being double your representation.

If there be any good Whig who is disposed to stick out against
conventions get him at least to read the arguement in their
favor in the address.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, March 24, 1843.

DEAR SPEED:--We had a meeting of the Whigs of the county here on
last Monday to appoint delegates to a district convention; and
Baker beat me, and got the delegation instructed to go for him.
The meeting, in spite of my attempt to decline it, appointed me
one of the delegates; so that in getting Baker the nomination I
shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a groomsman
to a man that has cut him out and is marrying his own dear "gal."
About the prospects of your having a namesake at our town, can't
say exactly yet.

A. LINCOLN.




TO MARTIN M. MORRIS.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., March 26, 1843.

FRIEND MORRIS:

Your letter of the a 3 d, was received on yesterday morning, and
for which (instead of an excuse, which you thought proper to ask)
I tender you my sincere thanks.  It is truly gratifying to me to
learn that, while the people of Sangamon have cast me off, my old
friends of Menard, who have known me longest and best, stick to
me.  It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citizens to learn
that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy,
working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put
down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic
family distinction.  Yet so, chiefly, it was.  There was, too,
the strangest combination of church influence against me.  Baker
is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose, with few
exceptions got all that church.  My wife has some relations in
the Presbyterian churches, and some with the Episcopal churches;
and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either
the one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no
Christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church,
was suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fighting a
duel.  With all these things, Baker, of course, had nothing to
do.  Nor do I complain of them.  As to his own church going for
him, I think that was right enough, and as to the influences I
have spoken of in the other, though they were very strong, it
would be grossly untrue and unjust to charge that they acted upon
them in a body or were very near so.  I only mean that those
influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent. upon my
strength throughout the religious controversy.  But enough of
this.

You say that in choosing a candidate for Congress you have an
equal right with Sangamon, and in this you are undoubtedly
correct.  In agreeing to withdraw if the Whigs of Sangamon should
go against me, I did not mean that they alone were worth
consulting, but that if she, with her heavy delegation, should be
against me, it would be impossible for me to succeed, and
therefore I had as well decline.  And in relation to Menard
having rights, permit me fully to recognize them, and to express
the opinion that, if she and Mason act circumspectly, they will
in the convention be able so far to enforce their rights as to
decide absolutely which one of the candidates shall be
successful.  Let me show the reason of this.  Hardin, or some
other Morgan candidate, will get Putnam, Marshall, Woodford,
Tazewell, and Logan--making sixteen.  Then you and Mason, having
three, can give the victory to either side.

You say you shall instruct your delegates for me, unless I
object.  I certainly shall not object.  That would be too
pleasant a compliment for me to tread in the dust.  And besides,
if anything should happen (which, however, is not probable) by
which Baker should be thrown out of the fight, I would be at
liberty to accept the nomination if I could get it.  I do,
however, feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from
getting the nomination.  I should despise myself were I to
attempt it.  I think, then, it would be proper for your meeting
to appoint three delegates and to instruct them to go for some
one as the first choice, some one else as a second, and perhaps
some one as a third; and if in those instructions I were named as
the first choice, it would gratify me very much.  If you wish to
hold the balance of power, it is important for you to attend to
and secure the vote of Mason also: You should be sure to have men
appointed delegates that you know you can safely confide in.  If
yourself and James Short were appointed from your county, all
would be safe; but whether Jim's woman affair a year ago might
not be in the way of his appointment is a question.  I don't know
whether you know it, but I know him to be as honorable a man as
there is in the world.  You have my permission, and even request,
to show this letter to Short; but to no one else, unless it be a
very particular friend who you know will not speak of it.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S  Will you write me again?




TO MARTIN M. MORRIS.

April 14, 1843.

FRIEND MORRIS:

I have heard it intimated that Baker has been attempting to get
you or Miles, or both of you, to violate the instructions of the
meeting that appointed you, and to go for him.  I have insisted,
and still insist, that this cannot be true.  Surely Baker would
not do the like.  As well might Hardin ask me to vote for him in
the convention.  Again, it is said there will be an attempt to
get up instructions in your county requiring you to go for Baker.
This is all wrong.  Upon the same rule, Why might not I fly from
the decision against me in Sangamon, and get up instructions to
their delegates to go for me?  There are at least twelve hundred
Whigs in the county that took no part, and yet I would as soon
put my head in the fire as to attempt it.  Besides, if any one
should get the nomination by such extraordinary means, all
harmony in the district would inevitably be lost.  Honest Whigs
(and very nearly all of them are honest) would not quietly abide
such enormities.  I repeat, such an attempt on Baker's part
cannot be true.  Write me at Springfield how the matter is.
Don't show or speak of this letter.

A. LINCOLN




TO GEN. J. J. HARDIN.

SPRINGFIELD, May 11, 1843.

FRIEND HARDIN:

Butler informs me that he received a letter from you, in which
you expressed some doubt whether the Whigs of Sangamon will
support you cordially.  You may, at once, dismiss all fears on
that subject.  We have already resolved to make a particular
effort to give you the very largest majority possible in our
county.  From this, no Whig of the county dissents.  We have many
objects for doing it.  We make it a matter of honor and pride to
do it; we do it because we love the Whig cause; we do it because
we like you personally; and last, we wish to convince you that we
do not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have so
long seemed to imagine.  You will see by the journals of this
week that we propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue, to give you
twice as great a majority in this county as you shall receive in
your own.  I got up the proposal.

Who of the five appointed is to write the district address?  I
did the labor of writing one address this year, and got thunder
for my reward.  Nothing new here.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--I wish you would measure one of the largest of those
swords we took to Alton and write me the length of it, from tip
of the point to tip of the hilt, in feet and inches.  I have a
dispute about the length.

A. L.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v1
By Abraham Lincoln






WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN VOLUME II.


1843-1858



FIRST CHILD

TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
SPRINGFIELD, May 18, 1843.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 9th instant is duly received, which I
do not meet as a "bore," but as a most welcome visitor.  I will
answer the business part of it first.

In relation to our Congress matter here, you were right in
supposing I would support the nominee.  Neither Baker nor I,
however, is the man, but Hardin, so far as I can judge from
present appearances.  We shall have no split or trouble about the
matter; all will be harmony.  In relation to the "coming events"
about which Butler wrote you, I had not heard one word before I
got your letter; but I have so much confidence in the judgment of
Butler on such a subject that I incline to think there may be
some reality in it.  What day does Butler appoint?  By the way,
how do "events" of the same sort come on in your family?  Are you
possessing houses and lands, and oxen and asses, and men-servants
and maid-servants, and begetting sons and daughters?  We are not
keeping house, but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very
well kept now by a widow lady of the name of Beck.  Our room (the
same that Dr. Wallace occupied there) and boarding only costs us
four dollars a week.  Ann Todd was married something more than a
year since to a fellow by the name of Campbell, and who, Mary
says, is pretty much of a "dunce," though he has a little money
and property.  They live in Boonville, Missouri, and have not
been heard from lately enough for me to say anything about her
health.  I reckon it will scarcely be in our power to visit
Kentucky this year.  Besides poverty and the necessity of
attending to business, those "coming events," I suspect, would be
somewhat in the way.  I most heartily wish you and your Fanny
would not fail to come.  Just let us know the time, and we will
have a room provided for you at our house, and all be merry
together for a while.  Be sure to give my respects to your mother
and family; assure her that if ever I come near her, I will not
fail to call and see her.  Mary joins in sending love to your
Fanny and you.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1844



TO Gen. J. J. HARDIN.

SPRINGFIELD, May 21, 1844.

DEAR HARDIN:
Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to
trouble you heretofore; and I now only do so to get you to set a
matter right which has got wrong with one of our best friends.
It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek--(Berlin P.O.).
He has received several documents from you, and he says they are
old newspapers and documents, having no sort of interest in them.
He is, therefore, getting a strong impression that you treat him
with disrespect.  This, I know, is a mistaken impression; and you
must correct it.  The way, I leave to yourself.  Rob't W.
Canfield says he would like to have a document or two from you.

The Locos (Democrats) here are in considerable trouble about Van
Buren's letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors.  They are
growing sick of the Tariff question; and consequently are much
confounded at V.B.'s cutting them off from the new Texas
question.  Nearly half the leaders swear they won't stand it.  Of
those are Ford, T.  Campbell, Ewing, Calhoun and others.  They
don't exactly say they won't vote for V.B., but they say he will
not be the candidate, and that they are for Texas anyhow.

As ever yours,

A. LINCOLN.




1845



SELECTION OF CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES

TO Gen. J. J. HARDIN, SPRINGFIELD, Jany. 19, 1845.

DEAR GENERAL:

I do not wish to join in your proposal of a new plan for the
selection of a Whig candidate for Congress because:

1st.  I am entirely satisfied with the old system under which you
and Baker were successively nominated and elected to Congress;
and because the Whigs of the district are well acquainted with
the system, and, so far as I know or believe, are well satisfied
with it.  If the old system be thought to be vague, as to all the
delegates of the county voting the same way, or as to
instructions to them as to whom they are to vote for, or as to
filling vacancies, I am willing to join in a provision to make
these matters certain.

2d.  As to your proposals that a poll shall be opened in every
precinct, and that the whole shall take place on the same day, I
do not personally object.  They seem to me to be not unfair; and
I forbear to join in proposing them only because I choose to
leave the decision in each county to the Whigs of the county, to
be made as their own judgment and convenience may dictate.

3d.  As to your proposed stipulation that all the candidates
shall remain in their own counties, and restrain their friends in
the same it seems to me that on reflection you will see the fact
of your having been in Congress has, in various ways, so spread
your name in the district as to give you a decided advantage in
such a stipulation.  I appreciate your desire to keep down
excitement; and I promise you to "keep cool" under all
circumstances.

4th.  I have already said I am satisfied with the old system
under which such good men have triumphed and that I desire no
departure from its principles.  But if there must be a departure
from it, I shall insist upon a more accurate and just
apportionment of delegates, or representative votes, to the
constituent body, than exists by the old, and which you propose
to retain in your new plan.  If we take the entire population of
the counties as shown by the late census, we shall see by the old
plan, and by your proposed new plan,

Morgan County, with a population 16,541, has but ....... 8 votes
While Sangamon with 18,697--2156 greater has but ....... 8   "
So Scott with 6553 has ................................. 4   "
While Tazewell with 7615 1062 greater has but .......... 4   "
So Mason with 3135 has ................................. 1 vote
While Logan with 3907, 772 greater, has but ............ 1   "

And so on in a less degree the matter runs through all the
counties, being not only wrong in principle, but the advantage of
it being all manifestly in your favor with one slight exception,
in the comparison of two counties not here mentioned.

Again, if we take the Whig votes of the counties as shown by the
late Presidential election as a basis, the thing is still worse.

It seems to me most obvious that the old system needs adjustment
in nothing so much as in this; and still, by your proposal, no
notice is taken of it.  I have always been in the habit of
acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would make and I am
truly sorry that I cannot in this.  I perhaps ought to mention
that some friends at different places are endeavoring to secure
the honor of the sitting of the convention at their towns
respectively, and I fear that they would not feel much
complimented if we shall make a bargain that it should sit
nowhere.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO _________ WILLIAMS,

SPRINGFIELD, March 1, 1845.

FRIEND WILLIAMS:

The Supreme Court adjourned this morning for the term.  Your
cases of Reinhardt vs. Schuyler, Bunce vs. Schuyler, Dickhut vs.
Dunell, and Sullivan vs. Andrews are continued.  Hinman vs. Pope
I wrote you concerning some time ago.  McNutt et al. vs. Bean and
Thompson is reversed and remanded.

Fitzpatrick vs. Brady et al. is reversed and remanded with leave
to complainant to amend his bill so as to show the real
consideration given for the land.

Bunce against Graves the court confirmed, wherefore, in
accordance with your directions, I moved to have the case
remanded to enable you to take a new trial in the court below.
The court allowed the motion; of which I am glad, and I guess you
are.

This, I believe, is all as to court business.  The canal men have
got their measure through the Legislature pretty much or quite in
the shape they desired.  Nothing else now.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




ABOLITION MOVEMENT

TO WILLIAMSON DURLEY.

SPRINGFIELD, October 3, 1845

When I saw you at home, it was agreed that I should write to you
and your brother Madison.  Until I then saw you I was not aware
of your being what is generally called an abolitionist, or, as
you call yourself, a Liberty man, though I well knew there were
many such in your country.

I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to bring about,
at the next election in Putnam, a Union of the Whigs proper and
such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in principle on all
questions save only that of slavery.  So far as I can perceive,
by such union neither party need yield anything on the point in
difference between them.  If the Whig abolitionists of New York
had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be President,
Whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed; whereas,
by the division, all that either had at stake in the contest was
lost.  And, indeed, it was extremely probable, beforehand, that
such would be the result.  As I always understood, the Liberty
men deprecated the annexation of Texas extremely; and this being
so, why they should refuse to cast their votes [so] as to prevent
it, even to me seemed wonderful.  What was their process of
reasoning, I can only judge from what a single one of them told
me.  It was this: "We are not to do evil that good may come."
This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply?
If by your votes you could have prevented the extension, etc., of
slavery would it not have been good, and not evil, so to have
used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for
a slaveholder?  By the fruit the tree is to be known.  An evil
tree cannot bring forth good fruit.  If the fruit of electing Mr.
Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could
the act of electing have been evil?

But I will not argue further.  I perhaps ought to say that
individually I never was much interested in the Texas question.
I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as
they were already a free republican people on our own model.  On
the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation
would augment the evil of slavery.  It always seemed to me that
slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or
without annexation.  And if more were taken because of
annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left
where they were taken from.  It is possibly true, to some extent,
that, with annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and
continued in slavery that otherwise might have been liberated.
To whatever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil.
I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free States, due to
the Union of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox
though it may seem), to let the slavery of the other States
alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear
that we should never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or
indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--
to find new places for it to live in when it can no longer exist
in the old.  Of course I am not now considering what would be our
duty in cases of insurrection among the slaves.  To recur to the
Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have viewed
annexation as a much greater evil than ever I did; and I would
like to convince you, if I could, that they could have prevented
it, if they had chosen.  I intend this letter for you and Madison
together; and if you and he or either shall think fit to drop me
a line, I shall be pleased.

Yours with respect,

A. LINCOLN.




1846


REQUEST FOR POLITICAL SUPPORT

TO Dr. ROBERT BOAL.
SPRINGFIELD, January 7, 1846.

Dr. ROBERT BOAL, Lacon, Ill.

DEAR DOCTOR:--Since I saw you last fall, I have often thought of
writing to you, as it was then understood I would, but, on
reflection, I have always found that I had nothing new to tell
you.  All has happened as I then told you I expected it would--
Baker's declining, Hardin's taking the track, and so on.

If Hardin and I stood precisely equal, if neither of us had been
to Congress, or if we both had, it would only accord with what I
have always done, for the sake of peace, to give way to him; and
I expect I should do it.  That I can voluntarily postpone my
pretensions, when they are no more than equal to those to which
they are postponed, you have yourself seen.  But to yield to
Hardin under present circumstances seems to me as nothing else
than yielding to one who would gladly sacrifice me altogether.
This I would rather not submit to.  That Hardin is talented,
energetic, usually generous and magnanimous, I have before this
affirmed to you and do not deny.  You know that my only argument
is that "turn about is fair play."  This he, practically at least,
denies.

If it would not be taxing you too much, I wish you would write
me, telling the aspect of things in your country, or rather your
district; and also, send the names of some of your Whig
neighbors, to whom I might, with propriety, write.  Unless I can
get some one to do this, Hardin, with his old franking list, will
have the advantage of me.  My reliance for a fair shake (and I
want nothing more) in your country is chiefly on you, because of
your position and standing, and because I am acquainted with so
few others.  Let me hear from you soon.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan. 15, 1846.

JOHN BENNETT.

FRIEND JOHN:

Nathan Dresser is here, and speaks as though the contest between
Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County.  I know he is
candid and this alarms me some.  I asked him to tell me the names
of the men that were going strong for Hardin, he said Morris was
about as strong as any-now tell me, is Morris going it openly?
You remember you wrote me that he would be neutral.  Nathan also
said that some man, whom he could not remember, had said lately
that Menard County was going to decide the contest and that made
the, contest very doubtful.  Do you know who that was?  Don't
fail to write me instantly on receiving this, telling me all-
particularly the names of those who are going strong against me.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO N. J. ROCKWELL.

SPRINGFIELD, January 21, 1846.

DEAR SIR:--You perhaps know that General Hardin and I have a
contest for the Whig nomination for Congress for this district.

He has had a turn and my argument is "turn about is fair play."

I shall be pleased if this strikes you as a sufficient
argument.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JAMES BERDAN.

SPRINGFIELD, April 26, 1846.

DEAR SIR:--I thank you for the promptness with which you answered
my letter from Bloomington.  I also thank you for the frankness
with which you comment upon a certain part of my letter; because
that comment affords me an opportunity of trying to express
myself better than I did before, seeing, as I do, that in that
part of my letter, you have not understood me as I intended to be
understood.

In speaking of the "dissatisfaction" of men who yet mean to do no
wrong, etc., I mean no special application of what I said to the
Whigs of Morgan, or of Morgan & Scott.  I only had in my mind the
fact that previous to General Hardin's withdrawal some of his
friends and some of mine had become a little warm; and I felt,
and meant to say, that for them now to meet face to face and
converse together was the best way to efface any remnant of
unpleasant feeling, if any such existed.

I did not suppose that General Hardin's friends were in any
greater need of having their feelings corrected than mine were.
Since I saw you at Jacksonville, I have had no more suspicion of
the Whigs of Morgan than of those of any other part of the
district.  I write this only to try to remove any impression that
I distrust you and the other Whigs of your country.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JAMES BERDAN.

SPRINGFIELD, May 7, 1866.

DEAR SIR:--It is a matter of high moral obligation, if not of
necessity, for me to attend the Coles and Edwards courts.  I have
some cases in both of them, in which the parties have my promise,
and are depending upon me.  The court commences in Coles on the
second Monday, and in Edgar on the third.  Your court in Morgan
commences on the fourth Monday; and it is my purpose to be with
you then, and make a speech.  I mention the Coles and Edgar
courts in order that if I should not reach Jacksonville at the
time named you may understand the reason why.  I do not, however,
think there is much danger of my being detained; as I shall go
with a purpose not to be, and consequently shall engage in no new
cases that might delay me.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




VERSES WRITTEN BY LINCOLN AFTER A VISIT TO HIS OLD HOME IN
INDIANA-(A FRAGMENT).

[In December, 1847, when Lincoln was stumping for Clay, he
crossed into Indiana and revisited his old home.  He writes:
"That part of the country is within itself as unpoetical as any
spot on earth; but still seeing it and its objects and
inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry;
though whether my expression of these feelings is poetry, is
quite another question."]


Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How naught from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I 'm living in the tombs.




VERSES WRITTEN BY LINCOLN CONCERNING A SCHOOL-FELLOW
WHO BECAME INSANE--(A FRAGMENT).

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone;
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.


But this is past, and naught remains
That raised thee o'er the brute;
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strains
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well! More thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs by time's kind laws
Hast lost the power to know.

O Death! thou awe-inspiring prince
That keepst the world in fear,
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingering here?




SECOND CHILD

TO JOSHUA P. SPEED

SPRINGFIELD, October 22, 1846.

DEAR SPEED:--You, no doubt, assign the suspension of our
correspondence to the true philosophic cause; though it must be
confessed by both of us that this is rather a cold reason for
allowing a friendship such as ours to die out by degrees.  I
propose now that, upon receipt of this, you shall be considered
in my debt, and under obligations to pay soon, and that neither
shall remain long in arrears hereafter.  Are you agreed?

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our
friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I
expected.

We have another boy, born the 10th of March.  He is very much
such a child as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order.
Bob is "short and low," and I expect always will be.  He talks
very plainly,--almost as plainly as anybody.  He is quite smart
enough.  I sometimes fear that he is one of the little rare-ripe
sort that are smarter at about five than ever after.  He has a
great deal of that sort of mischief that is the offspring of such
animal spirits.  Since I began this letter, a messenger came to
tell me Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house his
mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very
likely, he is run away again.  Mary has read your letter, and
wishes to be remembered to Mrs.  Speed and you, in which I most
sincerely join her.

As ever yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TO MORRIS AND BROWN

SPRINGFIELD,
October 21, 1847.

MESSRS. MORRIS AND BROWN.

GENTLEMEN:--Your second letter on the matter of Thornton and
others, came to hand this morning.  I went at once to see Logan,
and found that he is not engaged against you, and that he has so
sent you word by Mr. Butterfield, as he says.  He says that some
time ago, a young man (who he knows not) came to him, with a copy
of the affidavit, to engage him to aid in getting the Governor to
grant the warrant; and that he, Logan, told the man, that in his
opinion, the affidavit was clearly insufficient, upon which the
young man left, without making any engagement with him.  If the
Governor shall arrive before I leave, Logan and I will both
attend to the matter, and he will attend to it, if he does not
come till after I leave; all upon the condition that the Governor
shall not have acted upon the matter, before his arrival here.  I
mention this condition because, I learned this morning from the
Secretary of State, that he is forwarding to the Governor, at
Palestine, all papers he receives in the case, as fast as he
receives them.  Among the papers forwarded will be your letter to
the Governor or Secretary of, I believe, the same date and about
the same contents of your last letter to me; so that the Governor
will, at all events have your points and authorities.  The case
is a clear one on our side; but whether the Governor will view it
so is another thing.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H.  HERNDON

WASHINGTON, December 5, 1847.

DEAR WILLIAM:--You may remember that about a year ago a man by
the name of Wilson (James Wilson, I think) paid us twenty dollars
as an advance fee to attend to a case in the Supreme Court for
him, against a Mr. Campbell, the record of which case was in the
hands of Mr. Dixon of St.  Louis, who never furnished it to us.
When I was at Bloomington last fall I met a friend of Wilson, who
mentioned the subject to me, and induced me to write to Wilson,
telling him I would leave the ten dollars with you which had been
left with me to pay for making abstracts in the case, so that the
case may go on this winter; but I came away, and forgot to do it.
What I want now is to send you the money, to be used accordingly,
if any one comes on to start the case, or to be retained by you
if no one does.

There is nothing of consequence new here.  Congress is to
organize to-morrow.  Last night we held a Whig caucus for the
House, and nominated Winthrop of Massachusetts for speaker,
Sargent of Pennsylvania for sergeant-at-arms, Homer of New Jersey
door-keeper, and McCormick of District of Columbia postmaster.
The Whig majority in the House is so small that, together with
some little dissatisfaction, [it] leaves it doubtful whether we
will elect them all.

This paper is too thick to fold, which is the reason I send only
a half-sheet.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, December 13, 1847

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter, advising me of the receipt of our fee
in the bank case, is just received, and I don't expect to hear
another as good a piece of news from Springfield while I am away.
I am under no obligations to the bank; and I therefore wish you
to buy bank certificates, and pay my debt there, so as to pay it
with the least money possible.  I would as soon you should buy
them of Mr. Ridgely, or any other person at the bank, as of any
one else, provided you can get them as cheaply.  I suppose, after
the bank debt shall be paid, there will be some money left, out
of which I would like to have you pay Lavely and Stout twenty
dollars, and Priest and somebody (oil-makers) ten dollars, for
materials got for house-painting.  If there shall still be any
left, keep it till you see or hear from me.

I shall begin sending documents so soon as I can get them.  I
wrote you yesterday about a "Congressional Globe."  As you are all
so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do
so before long.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RESOLUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 22, 1847

Whereas, The President of the United States, in his message of
May 11, 1846, has declared that "the Mexican Government not only
refused to receive him [the envoy of the United States], or to
listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of
menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of
our fellow-citizens on our own soil";

And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that "we had ample
cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of
hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our
own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading
our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our
citizens";

And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that "the
Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment
which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and
finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two
countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of
Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our
citizens on our own soil";

And whereas, This House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of
all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot
on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at
that time our own soil: therefore,

Resolved, By the House of Representatives, that the President of
the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House:

First.  Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was
shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the
territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the
Mexican revolution.

Second.  Whether that spot is or is not within the territory
which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary government of
Mexico.

Third.  Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of
people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the
Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the
approach of the United States army.

Fourth.  Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any
and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the
south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and
east.

Fifth.  Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of
them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the
government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent
or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at
elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process
served upon them, or in any other way.

Sixth.  Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee
from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected
their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed,
as in the message stated; and whether the first blood, so shed,
was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who
had thus fled from it.

Seventh.  Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his
message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers
and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of
the President, through the Secretary of War.

Eighth.  Whether the military force of the United States was or
was not so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had
more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his
opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or
protection of Texas.




REMARKS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 5, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln said he had made an effort, some few days since, to
obtain the floor in relation to this measure [resolution to
direct Postmaster-General to make arrangements with railroad for
carrying the mails--in Committee of the Whole], but had failed.
One of the objects he had then had in view was now in a great
measure superseded by what had fallen from the gentleman from
Virginia who had just taken his seat.  He begged to assure his
friends on the other side of the House that no assault whatever
was meant upon the Postmaster-General, and he was glad that what
the gentleman had now said modified to a great extent the
impression which might have been created by the language he had
used on a previous occasion.  He wanted to state to gentlemen who
might have entertained such impressions, that the Committee on
the Post-office was composed of five Whigs and four Democrats,
and their report was understood as sustaining, not impugning, the
position taken by the Postmaster-General.  That report had met
with the approbation of all the Whigs, and of all the Democrats
also, with the exception of one, and he wanted to go even further
than this.  [Intimation was informally given Mr. Lincoln that it
was not in order to mention on the floor what had taken place in
committee.]  He then observed that if he had been out of order in
what he had said he took it all back so far as he could.  He had
no desire, he could assure gentlemen, ever to be out of order--
though he never could keep long in order.

Mr. Lincoln went on to observe that he differed in opinion, in
the present case, from his honorable friend from Richmond [Mr.
Botts].  That gentleman, had begun his remarks by saying that if
all prepossessions in this matter could be removed out of the
way, but little difficulty would be experienced in coming to an
agreement.  Now, he could assure that gentleman that he had
himself begun the examination of the subject with prepossessions
all in his favor.  He had long and often heard of him, and, from
what he had heard, was prepossessed in his favor.  Of the
Postmaster-General he had also heard, but had no prepossessions
in his favor, though certainly none of an opposite kind.  He
differed, however, with that gentleman in politics, while in this
respect he agreed with the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Botts],
whom he wished to oblige whenever it was in his power.  That
gentleman had referred to the report made to the House by the
Postmaster-General, and had intimated an apprehension that
gentlemen would be disposed to rely, on that report alone, and
derive their views of the case from that document alone.  Now it
so happened that a pamphlet had been slipped into his [Mr.
Lincoln's] hand before he read the report of the Postmaster-
General; so that, even in this, he had begun with prepossessions
in favor of the gentleman from Virginia.

As to the report, he had but one remark to make: he had carefully
examined it, and he did not understand that there was any dispute
as to the facts therein stated the dispute, if he understood it,
was confined altogether to the inferences to be drawn from those
facts.  It was a difference not about facts, but about
conclusions.  The facts were not disputed.  If he was right in
this, he supposed the House might assume the facts to be as they
were stated, and thence proceed to draw their own conclusions.

The gentleman had said that the Postmaster-General had got into a
personal squabble with the railroad company.  Of this Mr. Lincoln
knew nothing, nor did he need or desire to know anything, because
it had nothing whatever to do with a just conclusion from the
premises.  But the gentleman had gone on to ask whether so great
a grievance as the present detention of the Southern mail ought
not to be remedied.  Mr. Lincoln would assure the gentleman that
if there was a proper way of doing it, no man was more anxious
than he that it should be done.  The report made by the committee
had been intended to yield much for the sake of removing that
grievance.  That the grievance was very great there was no
dispute in any quarter.  He supposed that the statements made by
the gentleman from Virginia to show this were all entirely
correct in point of fact.  He did suppose that the interruptions
of regular intercourse, and all the other inconveniences growing
out of it, were all as that gentleman had stated them to be; and
certainly, if redress could be rendered, it was proper it should
be rendered as soon as possible.  The gentleman said that in
order to effect this no new legislative action was needed; all
that was necessary was that the Postmaster-General should be
required to do what the law, as it stood, authorized and required
him to do.

We come then, said Mr. Lincoln, to the law.  Now the Postmaster-
General says he cannot give to this company more than two hundred
and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents per railroad mile of
transportation, and twelve and a half per cent. less for
transportation by steamboats.  He considers himself as restricted
by law to this amount; and he says, further, that he would not
give more if he could, because in his apprehension it would not
be fair and just.




1848


DESIRE FOR SECOND TERM IN CONGRESS

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, January 8, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of December 27 was received a day or
two ago.  I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have
taken, and promise to take in my little business there.  As to
speech making, by way of getting the hang of the House I made a
little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of
no general interest.  I find speaking here and elsewhere about
the same thing.  I was about as badly scared, and no worse as I
am when I speak in court.  I expect to make one within a week or
two, in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see
it.

It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who
desire that I should be reelected.  I most heartily thank them
for their kind partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the
annexation of Texas, that "personally I would not object" to a
reelection, although I thought at the time, and still think, it
would be quite as well for me to return to the law at the end of
a single term.  I made the declaration that I would not be a
candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to
keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going
to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that if
it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I
could not refuse the people the right of sending me again.  But
to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any
one so to enter me is what my word and honor forbid.


I got some letters intimating a probability of so much difficulty
amongst our friends as to lose us the district; but I remember
such letters were written to Baker when my own case was under
consideration, and I trust there is no more ground for such
apprehension now than there was then.  Remember I am always glad
to receive a letter from you.

Most truly your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH ON DECLARATION OF WAR ON MEXICO
SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JANUARY 12, 1848.

MR CHAIRMAN:--Some if not all the gentlemen on the other side of
the House who have addressed the committee within the last two
days have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly
understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago
declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally commenced by the President.  I admit that such
a vote should not be given in mere party wantonness, and that the
one given is justly censurable if it have no other or better
foundation.  I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did
so under my best impression of the truth of the case.  How I got
this impression, and how it may possibly be remedied, I will now
try to show.  When the war began, it was my opinion that all
those who because of knowing too little, or because of knowing
too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the
President in the beginning of it should nevertheless, as good
citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till
the war should be ended.  Some leading Democrats, including ex-
President Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand
them; and I adhered to it and acted upon it, until since I took
my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it were it not
that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so.
Besides the continual effort of the President to argue every
silent vote given for supplies into an indorsement of the justice
and wisdom of his conduct; besides that singularly candid
paragraph in his late message in which he tells us that Congress
with great unanimity had declared that "by the act of the
Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that government
and the United States," when the same journals that informed him
of this also informed him that when that declaration stood
disconnected from the question of supplies sixty-seven in the
House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it; besides this
open attempt to prove by telling the truth what he could not
prove by telling the whole truth-demanding of all who will not
submit to be misrepresented, in justice to themselves, to speak
out, besides all this, one of my colleagues [Mr. Richardson] at a
very early day in the session brought in a set of resolutions
expressly indorsing the original justice of the war on the part
of the President.  Upon these resolutions when they shall be put
on their passage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I cannot
be silent if I would.  Seeing this, I went about preparing myself
to give the vote understandingly when it should come.  I
carefully examined the President's message, to ascertain what he
himself had said and proved upon the point.  The result of this
examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all
the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his
justification; and that the President would have gone further
with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the
truth would not permit him.  Under the impression thus made I
gave the vote before mentioned.  I propose now to give concisely
the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the
conclusion I did.  The President, in his first war message of
May, 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities
were commenced by Mexico, and he repeats that declaration almost
in the same language in each successive annual message, thus
showing that he deems that point a highly essential one.  In the
importance of that point I entirely agree with the President.  To
my judgment it is the very point upon which he should be
justified, or condemned.  In his message of December, 1846, it
seems to have occurred to him, as is certainly true, that title-
ownership-to soil or anything else is not a simple fact, but is a
conclusion following on one or more simple facts; and that it was
incumbent upon him to present the facts from which he concluded
the soil was ours on which the first blood of the war was shed.

Accordingly, a little below the middle of page twelve in the
message last referred to, he enters upon that task; forming an
issue and introducing testimony, extending the whole to a little
below the middle of page fourteen.  Now, I propose to try to show
that the whole of this--issue and evidence--is from beginning to
end the sheerest deception.  The issue, as he presents it, is in
these words: "But there are those who, conceding all this to be
true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas
is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that, therefore, in
marching our army to the east bank of the latter river, we passed
the Texas line and invaded the territory of Mexico."  Now this
issue is made up of two affirmatives and no negative. The main
deception of it is that it assumes as true that one river or the
other is necessarily the boundary; and cheats the superficial
thinker entirely out of the idea that possibly the boundary is
somewhere between the two, and not actually at either.  A further
deception is that it will let in evidence which a true issue
would exclude.  A true issue made by the President would be about
as follows: "I say the soil was ours, on which the first blood
was shed; there are those who say it was not."

I now proceed to examine the President's evidence as applicable
to such an issue.  When that evidence is analyzed, it is all
included in the following propositions

(1) That the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana as
we purchased it of France in 1803.

(2) That the Republic of Texas always claimed the Rio Grande as
her eastern boundary.

(3) That by various acts she had claimed it on paper.

(4) That Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recognized the Rio
Grande as her boundary.

(5) That Texas before, and the United States after, annexation
had exercised jurisdiction beyond the Nueces--between the two
rivers.

(6) That our Congress understood the boundary of Texas to extend
beyond the Nueces.

Now for each of these in its turn.  His first item is that the
Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana, as we purchased
it of France in 1803; and seeming to expect this to be disputed,
he argues over the amount of nearly a page to prove it true, at
the end of which he lets us know that by the treaty of 1803 we
sold to Spain the whole country from the Rio Grande eastward to
the Sabine.  Now, admitting for the present that the Rio Grande
was the boundary of Louisiana, what under heaven had that to do
with the present boundary between us and Mexico?  How, Mr.
Chairman, the line that once divided your land from mine can
still be the boundary between us after I have sold my land to you
is to me beyond all comprehension.  And how any man, with an
honest purpose only of proving the truth, could ever have thought
of introducing such a fact to prove such an issue is equally
incomprehensible. His next piece of evidence is that "the
Republic of Texas always claimed this river [Rio Grande] as her
western boundary."  That is not true, in fact.  Texas has claimed
it, but she has not always claimed it.  There is at least one
distinguished exception.  Her State constitution the republic's
most solemn and well-considered act, that which may, without
impropriety, be called her last will and testament, revoking all
others-makes no such claim.  But suppose she had always claimed
it.  Has not Mexico always claimed the contrary?  So that there
is but claim against claim, leaving nothing proved until we get
back of the claims and find which has the better foundation.
Though not in the order in which the President presents his
evidence, I now consider that class of his statements which are
in substance nothing more than that Texas has, by various acts of
her Convention and Congress, claimed the Rio Grande as her
boundary, on paper.  I mean here what he says about the fixing of
the Rio Grande as her boundary in her old constitution (not her
State constitution), about forming Congressional districts,
counties, etc.  Now all of this is but naked claim; and what I
have already said about claims is strictly applicable to this.
If I should claim your land by word of mouth, that certainly
would not make it mine; and if I were to claim it by a deed which
I had made myself, and with which you had had nothing to do, the
claim would be quite the same in substance--or rather, in utter
nothingness.  I next consider the President's statement that
Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recognized the Rio Grande as
the western boundary of Texas.  Besides the position so often
taken, that Santa Anna while a prisoner of war, a captive, could
not bind Mexico by a treaty, which I deem conclusive--besides
this, I wish to say something in relation to this treaty, so
called by the President, with Santa Anna.  If any man would like
to be amused by a sight of that little thing which the President
calls by that big name, he can have it by turning to Niles's
Register, vol. 1, p. 336. And if any one should suppose that
Niles's Register is a curious repository of so mighty a document
as a solemn treaty between nations, I can only say that I learned
to a tolerable degree of certainty, by inquiry at the State
Department, that the President himself never saw it anywhere
else.  By the way, I believe I should not err if I were to
declare that during the first ten years of the existence of that
document it was never by anybody called a treaty--that it was
never so called till the President, in his extremity, attempted
by so calling it to wring something from it in justification of
himself in connection with the Mexican War.  It has none of the
distinguishing features of a treaty.  It does not call itself a
treaty.  Santa Anna does not therein assume to bind Mexico; he
assumes only to act as the President--Commander-in-Chief of the
Mexican army and navy; stipulates that the then present
hostilities should cease, and that he would not himself take up
arms, nor influence the Mexican people to take up arms, against
Texas during the existence of the war of independence.  He did
not recognize the independence of Texas; he did not assume to put
an end to the war, but clearly indicated his expectation of its
continuance; he did not say one word about boundary, and, most
probably, never thought of it.  It is stipulated therein that the
Mexican forces should evacuate the territory of Texas, passing to
the other side of the Rio Grande; and in another article it is
stipulated that, to prevent collisions between the armies, the
Texas army should not approach nearer than within five leagues--
of what is not said, but clearly, from the object stated, it is
of the Rio Grande. Now, if this is a treaty recognizing the Rio
Grande as the boundary of Texas, it contains the singular feature
of stipulating that Texas shall not go within five leagues of her
own boundary.

Next comes the evidence of Texas before annexation, and the
United States afterwards, exercising jurisdiction beyond the
Nueces and between the two rivers.  This actual exercise of
jurisdiction is the very class or quality of evidence we want.
It is excellent so far as it goes; but does it go far enough?  He
tells us it went beyond the Nueces, but he does not tell us it
went to the Rio Grande. He tells us jurisdiction was exercised
between the two rivers, but he does not tell us it was exercised
over all the territory between them.  Some simple-minded people
think it is possible to cross one river and go beyond it without
going all the way to the next, that jurisdiction may be exercised
between two rivers without covering all the country between them.
I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction
over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi; and
yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers
that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet long by fifty feet
wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He
has a neighbor between him and the Mississippi--that is, just
across the street, in that direction--whom I am sure he could
neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which
nevertheless he could certainly annex, if it were to be done by
merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or
even sitting down and writing a deed for it.

But next the President tells us the Congress of the United States
understood the State of Texas they admitted into the Union to
extend beyond the Nueces.  Well, I suppose they did.  I certainly
so understood it.  But how far beyond?  That Congress did not
understand it to extend clear to the Rio Grande is quite certain,
by the fact of their joint resolutions for admission expressly
leaving all questions of boundary to future adjustment.  And it
may be added that Texas herself is proven to have had the same
understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact of the
exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolutions.

I am now through the whole of the President's evidence; and it is
a singular fact that if any one should declare the President sent
the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had
never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of
Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby the
first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the
which would either admit or deny the declaration.  This strange
omission it does seem to me could not have occurred but by
design.  My way of living leads me to be about the courts of
justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer,
struggling for his client's neck in a desperate case, employing
every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words
some point arising in the case which he dared not admit and yet
could not deny.  Party bias may help to make it appear so, but
with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does
appear to me that just such, and from just such necessity, is the
President's struggle in this case.

Sometime after my colleague [Mr. Richardson] introduced the
resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble,
resolution, and interrogations, intended to draw the President
out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground.  To show
their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true
rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico.  It
is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and
wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that
whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one
from that of the other was the true boundary between them.  If,
as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the
western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along
the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the
boundary: but the uninhabited country between the two was.  The
extent of our territory in that region depended not on any
treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on
revolution.  Any people anywhere being inclined and having the
power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing
government, and form a new one that suits them better.  This is a
most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and
believe is to liberate the world.  Nor is this right confined to
cases in which the whole people of an existing government may
choose to exercise it.  Any portion of such people that can may
revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as
they inhabit.  More than this, a majority of any portion of such
people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled
with or near about them, who may oppose this movement.  Such
minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own
revolution.  It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old
lines or old laws, but to break up both, and make new ones.

As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in
1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President's
statements.  After this, all Mexico, including Texas,
revolutionized against Spain; and still later Texas
revolutionized against Mexico.  In my view, just so far as she
carried her resolution by obtaining the actual, willing or
unwilling, submission of the people, so far the country was hers,
and no farther.  Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very
best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her
revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war
commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I
proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let
him answer fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts
and not with arguments.  Let him remember he sits where
Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington
would answer.  As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not,
be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion--no equivocation.  And
if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the
first blood of the war was shed,--that it was not within an
inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had
submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the
United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort
Brown, then I am with him for his justification.  In that case I
shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day.  I
have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this
--I expect to gain some votes, in connection with the war, which,
without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety in my own
judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so.
But if he can not or will not do this,--if on any pretence or no
pretence he shall refuse or omit it then I shall be fully
convinced of what I more than suspect already that he is deeply
conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this
war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him;
that originally having some strong motive--what, I will not stop
now to give my opinion concerning to involve the two countries in
a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze
upon the exceeding brightness of military glory,--that attractive
rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that
charms to destroy,--he plunged into it, and was swept on and on
till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which
Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where.
How like the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole
war part of his late message!  At one time telling us that Mexico
has nothing whatever that we can get--but territory; at another
showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions on
Mexico.  At one time urging the national honor, the security of
the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even the
good of Mexico herself as among the objects of the war; at
another telling us that "to reject indemnity, by refusing to
accept a cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just
demands, and to wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a
purpose or definite object."  So then this national honor,
security of the future, and everything but territorial indemnity
may be considered the no-purposes and indefinite objects of the
war!  But, having it now settled that territorial indemnity is
the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all
that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole
province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the
war to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on.  Again,
the President is resolved under all circumstances to have full
territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets
to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses
shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican
territory.  So again, he insists that the separate national
existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us
how this can be done, after we shall have taken all her
territory.  Lest the questions I have suggested be considered
speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show
they are not.  The war has gone on some twenty months; for the
expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the
President now claims about one half of the Mexican territory, and
that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to
make anything out of it.  It is comparatively uninhabited; so
that we could establish land-offices in it, and raise some money
in that way.  But the other half is already inhabited, as I
understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country,
and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated
as private property.  How then are we to make anything out of
these lands with this encumbrance on them?  or how remove the
encumbrance?  I suppose no one would say we should kill the
people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or confiscate
their property.  How, then, can we make much out of this part of
the territory?  If the prosecution of the war has in expenses
already equalled the better half of the country, how long its
future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is
not a speculative, but a practical, question, pressing closely
upon us.  And yet it is a question which the President seems
never to have thought of.  As to the mode of terminating the war
and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and
indefinite.  First, it is to be done by a more vigorous
prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy's country;
and after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the
President drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us
that "with a people distracted and divided by contending
factions, and a government subject to constant changes by
successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may
fail to secure a satisfactory peace."  Then he suggests the
propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels
of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protestations, to set
up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace;
telling us that "this may become the only mode of obtaining
such a peace."  But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and
then drops back on to the already half-abandoned ground of "more
vigorous prosecution."  All this shows that the President is in
nowise satisfied with his own positions.  First he takes up one,
and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out of
it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and
then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches
up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off.
His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither,
like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no
position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere
intimates when the President expects the war to terminate.  At
its beginning, General Scott was by this same President driven
into disfavor if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could
not be conquered in less than three or four months.  But now, at
the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have
given us the most splendid successes, every department and every
part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and
volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things
which it had ever before been thought men could not do--after all
this, this same President gives a long message, without showing
us that as to the end he himself has even an imaginary
conception.  As I have before said, he knows not where he is.  He
is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.  God
grant he may be able to show there is not something about his
conscience more painful than his mental perplexity.

The following is a copy of the so-called "treaty" referred to in
the speech:

     "Articles of Agreement entered into between his Excellency
David G. Burnet, President of the Republic of Texas, of the one
part, and his Excellency General Santa Anna, President-General-
in-Chief of the Mexican army, of the other part:
     "Article I. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna agrees that
he will not take up arms, nor will he exercise his influence to
cause them to be taken up, against the people of Texas during the
present war of independence.
     "Article II. All hostilities between the Mexican and Texan
troops will cease immediately, both by land and water.
     "Article III. The Mexican troops will evacuate the territory
of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande Del Norte.
     "Article IV. The Mexican army, in its retreat, shall not
take the property of any person without his consent and just
indemnification, using only such articles as may be necessary for
its subsistence, in cases when the owner may not be present, and
remitting to the commander of the army of Texas, or to the
commissioners to be appointed for the adjustment of such matters,
an account of the value of the property consumed, the place where
taken, and the name of the owner, if it can be ascertained.
     "Article V. That all private property, including cattle,
horses, negro slaves, or indentured persons, of whatever
denomination, that may have been captured by any portion of the
Mexican army, or may have taken refuge in the said army, since
the commencement of the late invasion, shall be restored to the
commander of the Texan army, or to such other persons as may be
appointed by the Government of Texas to receive them.
     "Article VI. The troops of both armies will refrain from
coming in contact with each other; and to this end the commander
of the army of Texas will be careful not to approach within a
shorter distance than five leagues.
     "Article VII. The Mexican army shall not make any other
delay on its march than that which is necessary to take up their
hospitals, baggage, etc., and to cross the rivers; any delay not
necessary to these purposes to be considered an infraction of
this agreement.
     "Article VIII. By an express, to be immediately despatched,
this agreement shall be sent to General Vincente Filisola and to
General T. J. Rusk, commander of the Texan army, in order that
they may be apprised of its stipulations; and to this end they
will exchange engagements to comply with the same.
     "Article IX. That all Texan prisoners now in the possession
of the Mexican army, or its authorities, be forthwith released,
and furnished with free passports to return to their homes; in
consideration of which a corresponding number of Mexican
prisoners, rank and file, now in possession of the Government of
Texas shall be immediately released; the remainder of the Mexican
prisoners that continue in the possession of the Government of
Texas to be treated with due humanity,--any extraordinary
comforts that may be furnished them to be at the charge of the
Government of Mexico.
     "Article X. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna will be sent
to Vera Cruz as soon as it shall be deemed proper.

"The contracting parties sign this instrument for the
abovementioned purposes, in duplicate, at the port of Velasco,
this fourteenth day of May, 1836.

"DAVID G. BURNET, President,
"JAS. COLLINGSWORTH, Secretary of State,
"ANTONIO LOPEZ DE SANTA ANNA,
"B. HARDIMAN, Secretary o f the Treasury,
"P. W. GRAYSON, Attorney-General."




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 19, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Post-office and Post
Roads, made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the petition of Messrs.  Saltmarsh and Fuller, report:
That, as proved to their satisfaction, the mail routes from
Milledgeville to Athens, and from Warrenton to Decatur, in the
State of Georgia (numbered 2366 and 2380), were let to Reeside
and Avery at $1300 per annum for the former and $1500 for the
latter, for the term of four years, to commence on the first day
of January, 1835; that, previous to the time for commencing the
service, Reeside sold his interest therein to Avery; that on the
5th of May, 1835, Avery sold the whole to these petitioners,
Saltmarsh and Fuller, to take effect from the beginning, January
a 1835; that at this time, the Assistant Postmaster-General,
being called on for that purpose, consented to the transfer of
the contracts from Reeside and Avery to these petitioners, and
promised to have proper entries of the transfer made on the books
of the department, which, however, was neglected to be done; that
the petitioners, supposing all was right, in good faith commenced
the transportation of the mail on these routes, and after
difficulty arose, still trusting that all would be made right,
continued the service till December a 1837; that they performed
the service to the entire satisfaction of the department, and
have never been paid anything for it except $----; that the
difficulty occurred as follows:

Mr. Barry was Postmaster-General at the times of making the
contracts and the attempted transfer of them; Mr. Kendall
succeeded Mr. Barry, and finding Reeside apparently in debt to
the department, and these contracts still standing in the names
of Reeside and Avery, refused to pay for the services under them,
otherwise than by credits to Reeside; afterward, however, he
divided the compensation, still crediting one half to Reeside,
and directing the other to be paid to the order of Avery, who
disclaimed all right to it.  After discontinuing the service,
these petitioners, supposing they might have legal redress
against Avery, brought suit against him in New Orleans; in which
suit they failed, on the ground that Avery had complied with his
contract, having done so much toward the transfer as they had
accepted and been satisfied with.  Still later the department
sued Reeside on his supposed indebtedness, and by a verdict of
the jury it was determined that the department was indebted to
him in a sum much beyond all the credits given him on the account
above stated.  Under these circumstances, the committee consider
the petitioners clearly entitled to relief, and they report a
bill accordingly; lest, however, there should be some mistake as
to the amount which they have already received, we so frame it as
that, by adjustment at the department, they may be paid so much
as remains unpaid for services actually performed by them not
charging them with the credits given to Reeside.  The committee
think it not improbable that the petitioners purchased the right
of Avery to be paid for the service from the 1st of January, till
their purchase on May 11, 1835; but, the evidence on this point
being very vague, they forbear to report in favor of allowing it.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON--LEGAL WORK

WASHINGTON, January 19, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Inclosed you find a letter of Louis W. Chandler.
What is wanted is that you shall ascertain whether the claim upon
the note described has received any dividend in the Probate Court
of Christian County, where the estate of Mr. Overbon Williams has
been administered on.  If nothing is paid on it, withdraw the
note and send it to me, so that Chandler can see the indorser of
it.  At all events write me all about it, till I can somehow get
it off my hands.  I have already been bored more than enough
about it; not the least of which annoyance is his cursed,
unreadable, and ungodly handwriting.

I have made a speech, a copy of which I will send you by next
mail.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REGARDING SPEECH ON MEXICAN WAR

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 1, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of the 19th ultimo was received last
night, and for which I am much obliged.  The only thing in it
that I wish to talk to you at once about is that because of my
vote for Ashmun's amendment you fear that you and I disagree
about the war.  I regret this, not because of any fear we shall
remain disagreed after you have read this letter, but because if
you misunderstand I fear other good friends may also.  That vote
affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally
commenced by the President; and I will stake my life that if you
had been in my place you would have voted just as I did.  Would
you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie?  I know you
would not.  Would you have gone out of the House--skulked the
vote?  I expect not.  If you had skulked one vote, you would have
had to skulk many more before the end of the session.
Richardson's resolutions, introduced before I made any move or
gave any vote upon the subject, make the direct question of the
justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would.
You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell
the truth or a lie.  I cannot doubt which you would do.

This vote has nothing to do in determining my votes on the
questions of supplies.  I have always intended, and still intend,
to vote supplies; perhaps not in the precise form recommended by
the President, but in a better form for all purposes, except
Locofoco party purposes.  It is in this particular you seem
mistaken.  The Locos are untiring in their efforts to make the
impression that all who vote supplies or take part in the war do
of necessity approve the President's conduct in the beginning of
it; but the Whigs have from the beginning made and kept the
distinction between the two.  In the very first act nearly all
the Whigs voted against the preamble declaring that war existed
by the act of Mexico; and yet nearly all of them voted for the
supplies.  As to the Whig men who have participated in the war,
so far as they have spoken in my hearing they do not hesitate to
denounce as unjust the President's conduct in the beginning of
the war.  They do not suppose that such denunciation is directed
by undying hatred to him, as The Register  would have it
believed.  There are two such Whigs on this floor (Colonel
Haskell and Major James) The former fought as a colonel by the
side of Colonel Baker at Cerro Gordo, and stands side by side
with me in the vote that you seem dissatisfied with.  The latter,
the history of whose capture with Cassius Clay you well know, had
not arrived here when that vote was given; but, as I understand,
he stands ready to give just such a vote whenever an occasion
shall present.  Baker, too, who is now here, says the truth is
undoubtedly that way; and whenever he shall speak out, he will
say so.  Colonel Doniphan, too, the favorite Whig of Missouri,
and who overran all Northern Mexico, on his return home in a
public speech at St.  Louis condemned the administration in
relation to the war.  If I remember, G.  T.  M.  Davis, who has
been through almost the whole war, declares in favor of Mr. Clay;
from which I infer that he adopts the sentiments of Mr. Clay,
generally at least.  On the other hand, I have heard of but one
Whig who has been to the war attempting to justify the
President's conduct.  That one was Captain Bishop, editor of the
Charleston Courier, and a very clever fellow.  I do not mean this
letter for the public, but for you.  Before it reaches you, you
will have seen and read my pamphlet speech, and perhaps been
scared anew by it.  After you get over your scare, read it over
again, sentence by sentence, and tell me honestly what you think
of it.  I condensed all I could for fear of being cut off by the
hour rule, and when I got through I had spoken but forty-five
minutes.

Yours forever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 2, 1848

DEAR WILLIAM:--I just take my pen to say that Mr. Stephens, of
Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a
voice like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an
hour's length I ever heard.  My old withered dry eyes are full of
tears yet.

If he writes it out anything like he delivered it, our people
shall see a good many copies of it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON THE MEXICAN WAR

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 15, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of the 29th January was received last
night.  Being exclusively a constitutional argument, I wish to
submit some reflections upon it in the same spirit of kindness
that I know actuates you.  Let me first state what I understand
to be your position.  It is that if it shall become necessary to
repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the
Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another
country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case
the President is the sole judge.

Before going further consider well whether this is or is not your
position.  If it is, it is a position that neither the President
himself, nor any friend of his, so far as I know, has ever taken.
Their only positions are--first, that the soil was ours when the
hostilities commenced; and second, that whether it was rightfully
ours or not, Congress had annexed it, and the President for that
reason was bound to defend it; both of which are as clearly
proved to be false in fact as you can prove that your house is
mine.  The soil was not ours, and Congress did not annex or
attempt to annex it.  But to return to your position.  Allow the
President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem
it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so
whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such
purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.  Study to see
if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after
having given him so much as you propose.  If to-day he should
choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent
the British from invading us, how could you stop him?  You may
say to him,--"I see no probability of the British invading us";
but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to
Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following
reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their
people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the
good of the people was the object.  This our convention
understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions,
and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man
should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.  But
your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President
where kings have always stood.  Write soon again.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MARCH 9, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Postoffice and Post Roads,
made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the resolution of the House of Representatives entitled
"An Act authorizing postmasters at county seats of justice to
receive subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals, to be paid
through the agency of the Post-office Department, and for other
purposes," beg leave to submit the following report

The committee have reason to believe that a general wish pervades
the community at large that some such facility as the proposed
measure should be granted by express law, for subscribing,
through the agency of the Post-office Department, to newspapers
and periodicals which diffuse daily, weekly, or monthly
intelligence of passing events.  Compliance with this general
wish is deemed to be in accordance with our republican
institutions, which can be best sustained by the diffusion of
knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national
spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the
medium of the public press.  The committee, however, has not been
insensible to its duty of guarding the Post-office Department
against injurious sacrifices for the accomplishment of this
object, whereby its ordinary efficacy might be impaired or
embarrassed.  It has therefore been a subject of much
consideration; but it is now confidently hoped that the bill
herewith submitted effectually obviates all objections which
might exist with regard to a less matured proposition.

The committee learned, upon inquiry, that the Post-office
Department, in view of meeting the general wish on this subject,
made the experiment through one if its own internal regulations,
when the new postage system went into operation on the first of
July, 1845, and that it was continued until the thirtieth of
September, 1847.  But this experiment, for reasons hereafter
stated, proved unsatisfactory, and it was discontinued by order
of the Postmaster-General.  As far as the committee can at
present ascertain, the following seem to have been the principal
grounds of dissatisfaction in this experiment:

(1) The legal responsibility of postmasters receiving newspaper
subscriptions, or of their sureties, was not defined.

(2) The authority was open to all postmasters instead of being
limited to those of specific offices.

(3) The consequence of this extension of authority was that, in
innumerable instances, the money, without the previous knowledge
or control of the officers of the department who are responsible
for the good management of its finances, was deposited in offices
where it was improper such funds should be placed; and the
repayment was ordered, not by the financial officers, but by the
postmasters, at points where it was inconvenient to the
department so to disburse its funds.

(4) The inconvenience of accumulating uncertain and fluctuating
sums at small offices was felt seriously in consequent
overpayments to contractors on their quarterly collecting orders;
and, in case of private mail routes, in litigation concerning the
misapplication of such funds to the special service of supplying
mails.

(5) The accumulation of such funds on draft offices could not be
known to the financial clerks of the department in time to
control it, and too often this rendered uncertain all their
calculations of funds in hand.

(6) The orders of payment were for the most part issued upon the
principal offices, such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
Baltimore, etc., where the large offices of publishers are
located, causing an illimitable and uncontrollable drain of the
department funds from those points where it was essential to
husband them for its own regular disbursements.  In Philadelphia
alone this drain averaged $5000 per quarter; and in other cities
of the seaboard it was proportionate.

(7) The embarrassment of the department was increased by the
illimitable, uncontrollable, and irresponsible scattering of its
funds from concentrated points suitable for its distributions, to
remote, unsafe, and inconvenient offices, where they could not be
again made available till collected by special agents, or were
transferred at considerable expense into the principal disbursing
offices again.

(8) There was a vast increase of duties thrown upon the limited
force before necessary to conduct the business of the department;
and from the delay of obtaining vouchers impediments arose to the
speedy settlement of accounts with present or retired post-
masters, causing postponements which endangered the liability of
sureties under the act of limitations, and causing much danger of
an increase of such cases.

(9) The most responsible postmasters (at the large offices) were
ordered by the least responsible (at small offices) to make
payments upon their vouchers, without having the means of
ascertaining whether these vouchers were genuine or forged, or if
genuine, whether the signers were in or out of office, or solvent
or defaulters.

(10) The transaction of this business for subscribers and
publishers at the public expense, an the embarrassment,
inconvenience, and delay of the department's own business
occasioned by it, were not justified by any sufficient
remuneration of revenue to sustain the department, as required in
every other respect with regard to its agency.

The committee, in view of these objections, has been solicitous
to frame a bill which would not be obnoxious to them in principle
or in practical effect.

It is confidently believed that by limiting the offices for
receiving subscriptions to less than one tenth of the number
authorized by the experiment already tried, and designating the
county seat in each county for the purpose, the control of the
department will be rendered satisfactory; particularly as it will
be in the power of the Auditor, who is the officer required by
law to check the accounts, to approve or disapprove of the
deposits, and to sanction not only the payments, but to point out
the place of payment.  If these payments should cause a drain on
the principal offices of the seaboard, it will be compensated by
the accumulation of funds at county seats, where the contractors
on those routes can be paid to that extent by the department's
drafts, with more local convenience to themselves than by drafts
on the seaboard offices.

The legal responsibility for these deposits is defined, and the
accumulation of funds at the point of deposit, and the repayment
at points drawn upon, being known to and controlled by the
Auditor, will not occasion any such embarrassments as were before
felt; the record kept by the Auditor on the passing of the
certificates through his hands will enable him to settle accounts
without the delay occasioned by vouchers being withheld; all
doubt or uncertainty as to the genuineness of certificates, or
the propriety of their issue, will be removed by the Auditor's
examination and approval; and there can be no risk of loss of
funds by transmission, as the certificate will not be payable
till sanctioned by the Auditor, and after his sanction the payor
need not pay it unless it is presented by the publisher or his
known clerk or agent.

The main principle of equivalent for the agency of the department
is secured by the postage required to be paid upon the
transmission of the certificates, augmenting adequately the post-
office revenue.

The committee, conceiving that in this report all the
difficulties of the subject have been fully and fairly stated,
and that these difficulties have been obviated by the plan
proposed in the accompanying bill, and believing that the measure
will satisfactorily meet the wants and wishes of a very large
portion of the community, beg leave to recommend its adoption.




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MARCH 9, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Postoffice and Post Roads,
made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the petition of H.  M.  Barney, postmaster at Brimfield,
Peoria County, Illinois, report: That they have been satisfied by
evidence, that on the 15th of December, 1847, said petitioner had
his store, with some fifteen hundred dollars' worth of goods,
together with all the papers of the post-office, entirely
destroyed by fire; and that the specie funds of the office were
melted down, partially lost and partially destroyed; that this
large individual loss entirely precludes the idea of
embezzlement; that the balances due the department of former
quarters had been only about twenty-five dollars; and that owing
to the destruction of papers, the exact amount due for the
quarter ending December 31, 1847, cannot be ascertained.  They
therefore report a joint resolution, releasing said petitioner
from paying anything for the quarter last mentioned.




REMARKS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
MARCH 29, 1848.

The bill for raising additional military force for limited time,
etc., was reported from Committee on judiciary; similar bills had
been reported from Committee on, Public Lands and Military
Committee.

Mr. Lincoln said if there was a general desire on the part of the
House to pass the bill now he should be glad to have it done--
concurring, as he did generally, with the gentleman from Arkansas
[Mr. Johnson] that the postponement might jeopard the safety of
the proposition. If, however, a reference was to be made, he
wished to make a very few remarks in relation to the several
subjects desired by the gentlemen to be embraced in amendments to
the ninth section of the act of the last session of Congress.
The first amendment desired by members of this House had for its
only object to give bounty lands to such persons as had served
for a time as privates, but had never been discharged as such,
because promoted to office.  That subject, and no other, was
embraced in this bill.  There were some others who desired, while
they were legislating on this subject, that they should also give
bounty lands to the volunteers of the War of 1812.  His friend
from Maryland said there were no such men.  He [Mr. L.] did not
say there were many, but he was very confident there were some.
His friend from Kentucky near him, [Mr. Gaines] told him he
himself was one.

There was still another proposition touching this matter; that
was, that persons entitled to bounty lands should by law be
entitled to locate these lands in parcels, and not be required to
locate them in one body, as was provided by the existing law.

Now he had carefully drawn up a bill embracing these three
separate propositions, which he intended to propose as a
substitute for all these bills in the House, or in Committee of
the Whole on the State of the Union, at some suitable time.  If
there was a disposition on the part of the House to act at once
on this separate proposition, he repeated that, with the
gentlemen from Arkansas, he should prefer it lest they should
lose all.  But if there was to be a reference, he desired to
introduce his bill embracing the three propositions, thus
enabling the committee and the House to act at the same time,
whether favorably or unfavorably, upon all.  He inquired whether
an amendment was now in order.

The Speaker replied in the negative.




TO ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS.

WASHINGTON, April 30, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAMS:--I have not seen in the papers any evidence of a
movement to send a delegate from your circuit to the June
convention.  I wish to say that I think it all-important that a
delegate should be sent.  Mr. Clay's chance for an election is
just no chance at all.  He might get New York, and that would
have elected in 1844, but it will not now, because he must now,
at the least, lose Tennessee, which he had then, and in addition
the fifteen new votes of Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin.  I
know our good friend Browning is a great admirer of Mr. Clay, and
I therefore fear he is favoring his nomination.  If he is, ask
him to discard feeling, and try if he can possibly, as a matter
of judgment, count the votes necessary to elect him.

In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor; and we
cannot elect him without a nomination.  Therefore don't fail to
send a delegate.  Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MAY 11, 1848.

A bill for the admission of Wisconsin into the Union had been
passed.

Mr. Lincoln moved to reconsider the vote by which the bill was
passed.  He stated to the House that he had made this motion for
the purpose of obtaining an opportunity to say a few words in
relation to a point raised in the course of the debate on this
bill, which he would now proceed to make if in order.  The point
in the case to which he referred arose on the amendment that was
submitted by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] in
Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and which was
afterward renewed in the House, in relation to the question
whether the reserved sections, which, by some bills heretofore
passed, by which an appropriation of land had been made to
Wisconsin, had been enhanced in value, should be reduced to the
minimum price of the public lands.  The question of the reduction
in value of those sections was to him at this time a matter very
nearly of indifference.  He was inclined to desire that Wisconsin
should be obliged by having it reduced.  But the gentleman from
Indiana [Mr. C. B. Smith], the chairman of the Committee on
Territories, yesterday associated that question with the general
question, which is now to some extent agitated in Congress, of
making appropriations of alternate sections of land to aid the
States in making internal improvements, and enhancing the price
of the sections reserved, and the gentleman from Indiana took
ground against that policy.  He did not make any special argument
in favor of Wisconsin, but he took ground generally against the
policy of giving alternate sections of land, and enhancing the
price of the reserved sections.  Now he [Mr. Lincoln] did not at
this time take the floor for the purpose of attempting to make an
argument on the general subject.  He rose simply to protest
against the doctrine which the gentleman from Indiana had avowed
in the course of what he [Mr. Lincoln] could not but consider an
unsound argument.

It might, however, be true, for anything he knew, that the
gentleman from Indiana might convince him that his argument was
sound; but he [Mr. Lincoln] feared that gentleman would not be
able to convince a majority in Congress that it was sound.  It
was true the question appeared in a different aspect to persons
in consequence of a difference in the point from which they
looked at it.  It did not look to persons residing east of the
mountains as it did to those who lived among the public lands.
But, for his part, he would state that if Congress would make a
donation of alternate sections of public land for the purpose of
internal improvements in his State, and forbid the reserved
sections being sold at $1.25, he should be glad to see the
appropriation made; though he should prefer it if the reserved
sections were not enhanced in price.  He repeated, he should be
glad to have such appropriations made, even though the reserved
sections should be enhanced in price.  He did not wish to be
understood as concurring in any intimation that they would refuse
to receive such an appropriation of alternate sections of land
because a condition enhancing the price of the reserved sections
should be attached thereto.  He believed his position would now
be understood: if not, he feared he should not be able to make
himself understood.

But, before he took his seat, he would remark that the Senate
during the present session had passed a bill making
appropriations of land on that principle for the benefit of the
State in which he resided the State of Illinois.  The alternate
sections were to be given for the purpose of constructing roads,
and the reserved sections were to be enhanced in value in
consequence.  When that bill came here for the action of this
House--it had been received, and was now before the Committee on
Public Lands--he desired much to see it passed as it was, if it
could be put in no more favorable form for the State of Illinois.
When it should be before this House, if any member from a section
of the Union in which these lands did not lie, whose interest
might be less than that which he felt, should propose a reduction
of the price of the reserved sections to $1.25, he should be much
obliged; but he did not think it would be well for those who came
from the section of the Union in which the lands lay to do so.
--He wished it, then, to be understood that he did not join in
the warfare against the principle which had engaged the minds of
some members of Congress who were favorable to the improvements
in the western country. There was a good deal of force, he
admitted, in what fell from the chairman of the Committee on
Territories.  It might be that there was no precise justice in
raising the price of the reserved sections to $2.50 per acre.  It
might be proper that the price should be enhanced to some extent,
though not to double the usual price; but he should be glad to
have such an appropriation with the reserved sections at $2.50;
he should be better pleased to have the price of those sections
at something less; and he should be still better pleased to have
them without any enhancement at all.

There was one portion of the argument of the gentleman from
Indiana, the chairman of the Committee on Territories [Mr.
Smith], which he wished to take occasion to say that he did not
view as unsound.  He alluded to the statement that the General
Government was interested in these internal improvements being
made, inasmuch as they increased the value of the lands that were
unsold, and they enabled the government to sell the lands which
could not be sold without them.  Thus, then, the government
gained by internal improvements as well as by the general good
which the people derived from them, and it might be, therefore,
that the lands should not be sold for more than $1.50 instead of
the price being doubled.  He, however, merely mentioned this in
passing, for he only rose to state, as the principle of giving
these lands for the purposes which he had mentioned had been laid
hold of and considered favorably, and as there were some
gentlemen who had constitutional scruples about giving money for
these purchases who would not hesitate to give land, that he was
not willing to have it understood that he was one of those who
made war against that principle.  This was all he desired to say,
and having accomplished the object with which he rose, he
withdrew his motion to reconsider.




ON TAYLOR'S NOMINATION

TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

WASHINGTON, April 30,1848.

DEAR WASHBURNE:

I have this moment received your very short note asking me if old
Taylor is to be used up, and who will be the nominee.  My hope of
Taylor's nomination is as high--a little higher than it was when
you left.  Still, the case is by no means out of doubt.  Mr.
Clay's letter has not advanced his interests any here.  Several
who were against Taylor, but not for anybody particularly,
before, are since taking ground, some for Scott and some for
McLean.  Who will be nominated neither I nor any one else can
tell.  Now, let me pray to you in turn.  My prayer is that you
let nothing discourage or baffle you, but that, in spite of every
difficulty, you send us a good Taylor delegate from your circuit.
Make Baker, who is now with you, I suppose, help about it.  He is
a good hand to raise a breeze.

General Ashley, in the Senate from Arkansas, died yesterday.
Nothing else new beyond what you see in the papers.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN




DEFENSE OF MEXICAN WAR POSITION

TO REV. J. M. PECK

WASHINGTON, May 21, 1848.

DEAR SIR:

....Not in view of all the facts.  There are facts which you have
kept out of view.  It is a fact that the United States army in
marching to the Rio Grande marched into a peaceful Mexican
settlement, and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes
and their growing crops.  It is a fact that Fort Brown, opposite
Matamoras, was built by that army within a Mexican cotton-field,
on which at the time the army reached it a young cotton crop was
growing, and which crop was wholly destroyed and the field itself
greatly and permanently injured by ditches, embankments, and the
like.  It is a fact that when the Mexicans captured Captain
Thornton and his command, they found and captured them within
another Mexican field.

Now I wish to bring these facts to your notice, and to ascertain
what is the result of your reflections upon them.  If you deny
that they are facts, I think I can furnish proofs which shall
convince you that you are mistaken.  If you admit that they are
facts, then I shall be obliged for a reference to any law of
language, law of States, law of nations, law of morals, law of
religions, any law, human or divine, in which an authority can be
found for saying those facts constitute "no aggression."

Possibly you consider those acts too small for notice.  Would you
venture to so consider them had they been committed by any nation
on earth against the humblest of our people?  I know you would
not.  Then I ask, is the precept "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them" obsolete?  of no force?
of no application?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON ZACHARY TAYLOR NOMINATION

TO ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS.

WASHINGTON, June 12, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAMS:--On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been
attending the nomination of "Old Rough," (Zachary Taylor) I found
your letter in a mass of others which had accumulated in my
absence.  By many, and often, it had been said they would not
abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done,
they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most
overwhelming, glorious triumph.  One unmistakable sign is that
all the odds and ends are with us--Barnburners, Native Americans,
Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord
knows what.  This is important, if in nothing else, in showing
which way the wind blows.  Some of the sanguine men have set down
all the States as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as
doubtful.  Cannot something be done even in Illinois?  Taylor's
nomination takes the Locos on the blind side.  It turns the war
thunder against them.  The war is now to them the gallows of
Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to
be hanged themselves.

Excuse this short letter.  I have so many to write that I cannot
devote much time to any one.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JUNE 20, 1848.

In Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, on the Civil
and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill:

Mr. CHAIRMAN:--I wish at all times in no way to practise any
fraud upon the House or the committee, and I also desire to do
nothing which may be very disagreeable to any of the members.  I
therefore state in advance that my object in taking the floor is
to make a speech on the general subject of internal improvements;
and if I am out of order in doing so, I give the chair an
opportunity of so deciding, and I will take my seat.

The Chair: I will not undertake to anticipate what the gentleman
may say on the subject of internal improvements.  He will,
therefore, proceed in his remarks, and if any question of order
shall be made, the chair will then decide it.

Mr. Lincoln: At an early day of this session the President sent
us what may properly be called an internal improvement veto
message.  The late Democratic convention, which sat at Baltimore,
and which nominated General Cass for the Presidency, adopted a
set of resolutions, now called the Democratic platform, among
which is one in these words:

"That the Constitution does not confer upon the General
Government the power to commence and carry on a general system of
internal improvements."

General Cass, in his letter accepting the nomination, holds this
language:

"I have carefully read the resolutions of the Democratic national
convention, laying down the platform of our political faith, and
I adhere to them as firmly as I approve them cordially."

These things, taken together, show that the question of internal
improvements is now more distinctly made--has become more intense
--than at any former period.  The veto message and the Baltimore
resolution I understand to be, in substance, the same thing; the
latter being the more general statement, of which the former is
the amplification the bill of particulars.  While I know there
are many Democrats, on this floor and elsewhere, who disapprove
that message, I understand that all who voted for General Cass
will thereafter be counted as having approved it, as having
indorsed all its doctrines.

I suppose all, or nearly all, the Democrats will vote for him.
Many of them will do so not because they like his position on
this question, but because they prefer him, being wrong on this,
to another whom they consider farther wrong on other questions.
In this way the internal improvement Democrats are to be, by a
sort of forced consent, carried over and arrayed against
themselves on this measure of policy.  General Cass, once
elected, will not trouble himself to make a constitutional
argument, or perhaps any argument at all, when he shall veto a
river or harbor bill; he will consider it a sufficient answer to
all Democratic murmurs to point to Mr. Polk's message, and to the
Democratic platform.  This being the case, the question of
improvements is verging to a final crisis; and the friends of
this policy must now battle, and battle manfully, or surrender
all.  In this view, humble as I am, I wish to review, and contest
as well as I may, the general positions of this veto message.
When I say general positions, I mean to exclude from
consideration so much as relates to the present embarrassed state
of the treasury in consequence of the Mexican War.

Those general positions are: that internal improvements ought not
to be made by the General Government--First.  Because they would
overwhelm the treasury Second.  Because, while their burdens
would be general, their benefits would be local and partial,
involving an obnoxious inequality; and Third.  Because they would
be unconstitutional.  Fourth.  Because the States may do enough
by the levy and collection of tonnage duties; or if not--Fifth.
That the Constitution may be amended.  "Do nothing at all, lest
you do something wrong," is the sum of these positions is the sum
of this message.  And this, with the exception of what is said
about constitutionality, applying as forcibly to what is said
about making improvements by State authority as by the national
authority; so that we must abandon the improvements of the
country altogether, by any and every authority, or we must resist
and repudiate the doctrines of this message.  Let us attempt the
latter.

The first position is, that a system of internal improvements
would overwhelm the treasury.  That in such a system there is a
tendency to undue expansion, is not to be denied.  Such tendency
is founded in the nature of the subject.  A member of Congress
will prefer voting for a bill which contains an appropriation for
his district, to voting for one which does not; and when a bill
shall be expanded till every district shall be provided for, that
it will be too greatly expanded is obvious.  But is this any more
true in Congress than in a State Legislature?  If a member of
Congress must have an appropriation for his district, so a member
of a Legislature must have one for his county.  And if one will
overwhelm the national treasury, so the other will overwhelm the
State treasury.  Go where we will, the difficulty is the same.
Allow it to drive us from the halls of Congress, and it will,
just as easily, drive us from the State Legislatures.  Let us,
then, grapple with it, and test its strength.  Let us, judging of
the future by the past, ascertain whether there may not be, in
the discretion of Congress, a sufficient power to limit and
restrain this expansive tendency within reasonable and proper
bounds.  The President himself values the evidence of the past.
He tells us that at a certain point of our history more than two
hundred millions of dollars had been applied for to make
improvements; and this he does to prove that the treasury would
be overwhelmed by such a system.  Why did he not tell us how much
was granted?  Would not that have been better evidence?  Let us
turn to it, and see what it proves.  In the message the President
tells us that "during the four succeeding years embraced by the
administration of President Adams, the power not only to
appropriate money, but to apply it, under the direction and
authority of the General Government, as well to the construction
of roads as to the improvement of harbors and rivers, was fully
asserted and exercised."  This, then, was the period of greatest
enormity.  These, if any, must have been the days of the two
hundred millions.  And how much do you suppose was really
expended for improvements during that four years?  Two hundred
millions?  One hundred?  Fifty?  Ten?  Five?  No, sir; less than
two millions.  As shown by authentic documents, the expenditures
on improvements during 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828 amounted to one
million eight hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and
twenty-seven dollars and one cent.  These four years were the
period of Mr. Adams's administration, nearly and substantially.
This fact shows that when the power to make improvements "was
fully asserted and exercised," the Congress did keep within
reasonable limits; and what has been done, it seems to me, can be
done again.

Now for the second portion of the message--namely, that the
burdens of improvements would be general, while their benefits
would be local and partial, involving an obnoxious inequality.
That there is some degree of truth in this position, I shall not
deny.  No commercial object of government patronage can be so
exclusively general as to not be of some peculiar local
advantage.  The navy, as I understand it, was established, and is
maintained at a great annual expense, partly to be ready for war
when war shall come, and partly also, and perhaps chiefly, for
the protection of our commerce on the high seas.  This latter
object is, for all I can see, in principle the same as internal
improvements.  The driving a pirate from the track of commerce on
the broad ocean, and the removing of a snag from its more narrow
path in the Mississippi River, cannot, I think, be distinguished
in principle.  Each is done to save life and property, and for
nothing else.

The navy, then, is the most general in its benefits of all this
class of objects; and yet even the navy is of some peculiar
advantage to Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston, beyond what it is to the interior towns of Illinois.  The
next most general object I can think of would be improvements on
the Mississippi River and its tributaries.  They touch thirteen
of our States-Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa.  Now I suppose it will not be denied
that these thirteen States are a little more interested in
improvements on that great river than are the remaining
seventeen.  These instances of the navy and the Mississippi River
show clearly that there is something of local advantage in the
most general objects.  But the converse is also true.  Nothing is
so local as to not be of some general benefit.  Take, for
instance, the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  Considered apart from
its effects, it is perfectly local.  Every inch of it is within
the State of Illinois.  That canal was first opened for business
last April.  In a very few days we were all gratified to learn,
among other things, that sugar had been carried from New Orleans
through this canal to Buffalo in New York.  This sugar took this
route, doubtless, because it was cheaper than the old route.
Supposing benefit of the reduction in the cost of carriage to be
shared between seller and the buyer, result is that the New
Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer, and the people
of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper, than before,-
-a benefit resulting from the canal, not to Illinois, where the
canal is, but to Louisiana and New York, where it is not.  In
other transactions Illinois will, of course, have her share, and
perhaps the larger share too, of the benefits of the canal; but
this instance of the sugar clearly shows that the benefits of an
improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality
of the improvement itself.  The just conclusion from all this is
that if the nation refuse to make improvements of the more
general kind because their benefits may be somewhat local, a
State may for the same reason refuse to make an improvement of a
local kind because its benefits may be somewhat general.  A State
may well say to the nation, "If you will do nothing for me, I
will do nothing for you."  Thus it is seen that if this argument
of "inequality" is sufficient anywhere, it is sufficient
everywhere, and puts an end to improvements altogether.  I hope
and believe that if both the nation and the States would, in good
faith, in their respective spheres do what they could in the way
of improvements, what of inequality might be produced in one
place might be compensated in another, and the sum of the whole
might not be very unequal.

But suppose, after all, there should be some degree of
inequality.  Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its
own sake; but is every good thing to be discarded which may be
inseparably connected with some degree of it?  If so, we must
discard all government.  This Capitol is built at the public
expense, for the public benefit; but does any one doubt that it
is of some peculiar local advantage to the property-holders and
business people of Washington?  Shall we remove it for this
reason?  And if so, where shall we set it down, and be free from
the difficulty?  To make sure of our object, shall we locate it
nowhere, and have Congress hereafter to hold its sessions, as the
loafer lodged, "in spots about"?  I make no allusion to the
present President when I say there are few stronger cases in this
world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of
"inequality," than the Presidency itself is by some thought to
be.  An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day,
while the President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a
day.  The coal is clearly worth more than the abstractions, and
yet what a monstrous inequality in the prices!  Does the
President, for this reason, propose to abolish the Presidency?
He does not, and he ought not.  The true rule, in determining to
embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil in
it, but whether it have more of evil than of good.  There are few
things wholly evil or wholly good.  Almost everything, especially
of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so
that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is
continually demanded.  On this principle the President, his
friends, and the world generally act on most subjects.  Why not
apply it, then, upon this question?  Why, as to improvements,
magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in them?

Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the
constitutional question--I have not much to say.  Being the man I
am, and speaking, where I do, I feel that in any attempt at an
original constitutional argument I should not be and ought not to
be listened to patiently.  The ablest and the best of men have
gone over the whole ground long ago.  I shall attempt but little
more than a brief notice of what some of them have said.  In
relation to Mr. Jefferson's views, I read from Mr. Polk's veto
message:

"President Jefferson, in his message to Congress in 1806,
recommended an amendment of the Constitution, with a view to
apply an anticipated surplus in the treasury 'to the great
purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such
other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper
to add to the constitutional enumeration of the federal powers';
and he adds: 'I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by
consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now
recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution,
and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.'  In
1825, he repeated in his published letters the opinion that no
such power has been conferred upon Congress."

I introduce this not to controvert just now the constitutional
opinion, but to show that, on the question of expediency, Mr.
Jefferson's opinion was against the present President; that this
opinion of Mr. Jefferson, in one branch at least, is in the hands
of Mr. Polk like McFingal's gun--"bears wide and kicks the owner
over."

But to the constitutional question.  In 1826 Chancellor Kent
first published his Commentaries on American law.  He devoted a
portion of one of the lectures to the question of the authority
of Congress to appropriate public moneys for internal
improvements.  He mentions that the subject had never been
brought under judicial consideration, and proceeds to give a
brief summary of the discussion it had undergone between the
legislative and executive branches of the government.  He shows
that the legislative branch had usually been for, and the
executive against, the power, till the period of Mr. J.Q. Adams's
administration, at which point he considers the executive
influence as withdrawn from opposition, and added to the support
of the power.  In 1844 the chancellor published a new edition of
his Commentaries, in which he adds some notes of what had
transpired on the question since 1826.  I have not time to read
the original text on the notes; but the whole may be found on
page 267, and the two or three following pages, of the first
volume of the edition of 1844.  As to what Chancellor Kent seems
to consider the sum of the whole, I read from one of the notes:

"Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of
the United States, Vol. II., pp. 429-440, and again pp. 519-538,
has stated at large the arguments for and against the proposition
that Congress have a constitutional authority to lay taxes and to
apply the power to regulate commerce as a means directly to
encourage and protect domestic manufactures; and without giving
any opinion of his own on the contested doctrine, he has left the
reader to draw his own conclusions.  I should think, however,
from the arguments as stated, that every mind which has taken no
part in the discussion, and felt no prejudice or territorial bias
on either side of the question, would deem the arguments in favor
of the Congressional power vastly superior."

It will be seen that in this extract the power to make
improvements is not directly mentioned; but by examining the
context, both of Kent and Story, it will be seen that the power
mentioned in the extract and the power to make improvements are
regarded as identical.  It is not to be denied that many great
and good men have been against the power; but it is insisted that
quite as many, as great and as good, have been for it; and it is
shown that, on a full survey of the whole, Chancellor Kent was of
opinion that the arguments of the latter were vastly superior.
This is but the opinion of a man; but who was that man?  He was
one of the ablest and most learned lawyers of his age, or of any
age.  It is no disparagement to Mr. Polk, nor indeed to any one
who devotes much time to politics, to be placed far behind
Chancellor Kent as a lawyer.  His attitude was most favorable to
correct conclusions.  He wrote coolly, and in retirement.  He was
struggling to rear a durable monument of fame; and he well knew
that truth and thoroughly sound reasoning were the only sure
foundations.  Can the party opinion of a party President on a law
question, as this purely is, be at all compared or set in
opposition to that of such a man, in such an attitude, as
Chancellor Kent?  This constitutional question will probably
never be better settled than it is, until it shall pass under
judicial consideration; but I do think no man who is clear on the
questions of expediency need feel his conscience much pricked
upon this.

Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be
done, in the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties
under State authority, with the consent of the General
Government.  Now I suppose this matter of tonnage duties is well
enough in its own sphere.  I suppose it may be efficient, and
perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs in
harbors already in use and not much out of repair.  But if I have
any correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for
any general beneficent purposes of improvement.  I know very
little, or rather nothing at all, of the practical matter of
levying and collecting tonnage duties; but I suppose one of its
principles must be to lay a duty for the improvement of any
particular harbor upon the tonnage coming into that harbor; to do
otherwise--to collect money in one harbor, to be expended on
improvements in another--would be an extremely aggravated form of
that inequality which the President so much deprecates.  If I be
right in this, how could we make any entirely new improvement by
means of tonnage duties?  How make a road, a canal, or clear a
greatly obstructed river?  The idea that we could involves the
same absurdity as the Irish bull about the new boots.  "I shall
niver git 'em on," says Patrick, "till I wear 'em a day or two,
and stretch 'em a little."  We shall never make a canal by
tonnage duties until it shall already have been made awhile, so
the tonnage can get into it.

After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be
some great objects of improvement which cannot be effected by
tonnage duties, and which it therefore may be expedient for the
General Government to take in hand.  Accordingly he suggests, in
case any such be discovered, the propriety of amending the
Constitution.  Amend it for what?  If, like Mr. Jefferson, the
President thought improvements expedient, but not constitutional,
it would be natural enough for him to recommend such an
amendment.  But hear what he says in this very message:

"In view of these portentous consequences, I cannot but think
that this course of legislation should be arrested, even were
there nothing to forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union."

For what, then, would he have the Constitution amended?  With him
it is a proposition to remove one impediment merely to be met by
others which, in his opinion, cannot be removed, to enable
Congress to do what, in his opinion, they ought not to do if they
could.

Here Mr. Meade of Virginia inquired if Mr. Lincoln understood the
President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and
every improvement.

Mr. Lincoln answered: In the very part of his message of which I
am speaking, I understand him as giving some vague expression in
favor of some possible objects of improvement; but in doing so I
understand him to be directly on the teeth of his own arguments
in other parts of it.  Neither the President nor any one can
possibly specify an improvement which shall not be clearly liable
to one or another of the objections he has urged on the score of
expediency.  I have shown, and might show again, that no work--no
object--can be so general as to dispense its benefits with
precise equality; and this inequality is chief among the
"portentous consequences" for which he declares that improvements
should be arrested.  No, sir.  When the President intimates that
something in the way of improvements may properly be done by the
General Government, he is shrinking from the conclusions to which
his own arguments would force him.  He feels that the
improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty interest;
and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps to
himself, that he has built an argument which, when pressed to its
conclusions, entirely annihilates this interest.

I have already said that no one who is satisfied of the
expediency of making improvements needs be much uneasy in his
conscience about its constitutionality.  I wish now to submit a
few remarks on the general proposition of amending the
Constitution.  As a general rule, I think we would much better
let it alone.  No slight occasion should tempt us to touch it.
Better not take the first step, which may lead to a habit of
altering it.  Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of it
as unalterable.  It can scarcely be made better than it is.  New
provisions would introduce new difficulties, and thus create and
increase appetite for further change.  No, sir; let it stand as
it is.  New hands have never touched it.  The men who made it
have done their work, and have passed away.  Who shall improve on
what they did?

Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of reviewing this message in the
least possible time, as well as for the sake of distinctness, I
have analyzed its arguments as well as I could, and reduced them
to the propositions I have stated.  I have now examined them in
detail.  I wish to detain the committee only a little while
longer with some general remarks upon the subject of
improvements.  That the subject is a difficult one, cannot be
denied.  Still it is no more difficult in Congress than in the
State Legislatures, in the counties, or in the smallest municipal
districts which anywhere exist.  All can recur to instances of
this difficulty in the case of county roads, bridges, and the
like.  One man is offended because a road passes over his land,
and another is offended because it does not pass over his; one is
dissatisfied because the bridge for which he is taxed crosses the
river on a different road from that which leads from his house to
town; another cannot bear that the county should be got in debt
for these same roads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard
to have roads located over their lands, and then stoutly refuse
to let them be opened until they are first paid the damages.
Even between the different wards and streets of towns and cities
we find this same wrangling and difficulty.  Now these are no
other than the very difficulties against which, and out of which,
the President constructs his objections of "inequality,"
"speculation," and "crushing the treasury."  There is but a
single alternative about them: they are sufficient, or they are
not.  If sufficient, they are sufficient out of Congress as well
as in it, and there is the end.  We must reject them as
insufficient, or lie down and do nothing by any authority.  Then,
difficulty though there be, let us meet and encounter it.
"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; nothing so hard, but
search will find it out."  Determine that the thing can and shall
be done, and then we shall find the way.  The tendency to undue
expansion is unquestionably the chief difficulty.

How to do something, and still not do too much, is the
desideratum.  Let each contribute his mite in the way of
suggestion.  The late Silas Wright, in a letter to the Chicago
convention, contributed his, which was worth something; and I now
contribute mine, which may be worth nothing.  At all events, it
will mislead nobody, and therefore will do no harm.  I would not
borrow money.  I am against an overwhelming, crushing system.
Suppose that, at each session, Congress shall first determine how
much money can, for that year, be spared for improvements; then
apportion that sum to the most important objects.  So far all is
easy; but how shall we determine which are the most important?
On this question comes the collision of interests.  I shall be
slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more
important than mine, and vice versa.  To clear this difficulty,
let us have that same statistical information which the gentleman
from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this
session.  In that information we shall have a stern, unbending
basis of facts--a basis in no wise subject to whim, caprice, or
local interest.  The prelimited amount of means will save us from
doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing what
we do in wrong places.  Adopt and adhere to this course, and, it
seems to me, the difficulty is cleared.

One of the gentlemen from South Carolina [Mr. Rhett] very much
deprecates these statistics.  He particularly objects, as I
understand him, to counting all the pigs and chickens in the
land.  I do not perceive much force in the objection.  It is true
that if everything be enumerated, a portion of such statistics
may not be very useful to this object.  Such products of the
country as are to be consumed where they are produced need no
roads or rivers, no means of transportation, and have no very
proper connection with this subject.  The surplus--that which is
produced in one place to be consumed in another; the capacity of
each locality for producing a greater surplus; the natural means
of transportation, and their susceptibility of improvement; the
hindrances, delays, and losses of life and property during
transportation, and the causes of each, would be among the most
valuable statistics in this connection.  From these it would
readily appear where a given amount of expenditure would do the
most good.  These statistics might be equally accessible, as they
would be equally useful, to both the nation and the States.  In
this way, and by these means, let the nation take hold of the
larger works, and the States the smaller ones; and thus, working
in a meeting direction, discreetly, but steadily and firmly, what
is made unequal in one place may be equalized in another,
extravagance avoided, and the whole country put on that career of
prosperity which shall correspond with its extent of territory,
its natural resources, and the intelligence and enterprise of its
people.




OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG POLITICIANS

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, June 22, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Last night I was attending a sort of caucus of the
Whig members, held in relation to the coming Presidential
election.  The whole field of the nation was scanned, and all is
high hope and confidence.  Illinois is expected to better her
condition in this race.  Under these circumstances, judge how
heartrending it was to come to my room and find and read your
discouraging letter of the 15th.  We have made no gains, but have
lost "H.  R.  Robinson, Turner, Campbell, and four or five more."
Tell Arney to reconsider, if he would be saved.  Baker and I used
to do something, but I think you attach more importance to our
absence than is just.  There is another cause.  In 1840, for
instance, we had two senators and five representatives in
Sangamon; now we have part of one senator and two
representatives.  With quite one third more people than we had
then, we have only half the sort of offices which are sought by
men of the speaking sort of talent.  This, I think, is the chief
cause.  Now, as to the young men.  You must not wait to be
brought forward by the older men.  For instance, do you suppose
that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be
hunted up and pushed forward by older men?  You young men get
together and form a "Rough and Ready Club," and have regular
meetings and speeches.  Take in everybody you can get.  Harrison
Grimsley, L.  A.  Enos, Lee Kimball, and C.  W.  Matheny will do
to begin the thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd,
wild boys about town, whether just of age, or a little under age,
Chris.  Logan, Reddick Ridgely, Lewis Zwizler, and hundreds such.
Let every one play the part he can play best,--some speak, some
sing, and all "holler."  Your meetings will be of evenings; the
older men, and the women, will go to hear you; so that it will
not only contribute to the election of "Old Zach," but will be an
interesting pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties
of all engaged.  Don't fail to do this.

You ask me to send you all the speeches made about "Old Zach,"
the war, etc.  Now this makes me a little impatient.  I have
regularly sent you the Congressional Globe and Appendix, and you
cannot have examined them, or you would have discovered that they
contain every speech made by every man in both houses of
Congress, on every subject, during the session.  Can I send any
more?  Can I send speeches that nobody has made?  Thinking it
would be most natural that the newspapers would feel interested
to give at least some of the speeches to their readers, I at the
beginning of the session made arrangements to have one copy of
the Globe and Appendix regularly sent to each Whig paper of the
district.  And yet, with the exception of my own little speech,
which was published in two only of the then five, now four, Whig
papers, I do not remember having seen a single speech, or even
extract from one, in any single one of those papers.  With equal
and full means on both sides, I will venture that the State
Register has thrown before its readers more of Locofoco speeches
in a month than all the Whig papers of the district have done of
Whig speeches during the session.

If you wish a full understanding of the war, I repeat what I
believe I said to you in a letter once before, that the whole, or
nearly so, is to be found in the speech of Dixon of Connecticut.
This I sent you in pamphlet as well as in the Globe.  Examine and
study every sentence of that speech thoroughly, and you will
understand the whole subject.  You ask how Congress came to
declare that war had existed by the act of Mexico.  Is it
possible you don't understand that yet?  You have at least twenty
speeches in your possession that fully explain it.  I will,
however, try it once more.  The news reached Washington of the
commencement of hostilities on the Rio Grande, and of the great
peril of General Taylor's army.  Everybody, Whigs and Democrats,
was for sending them aid, in men and money.  It was necessary to
pass a bill for this.  The Locos had a majority in both houses,
and they brought in a bill with a preamble saying: Whereas, War
exists by the act of Mexico, therefore we send General Taylor
money.  The Whigs moved to strike out the preamble, so that they
could vote to send the men and money, without saying anything
about how the war commenced; but being in the minority, they were
voted down, and the preamble was retained.  Then, on the passage
of the bill, the question came upon them, Shall we vote for
preamble and bill together, or against both together?  They did
not want to vote against sending help to General Taylor, and
therefore they voted for both together.  Is there any difficulty
in understanding this?  Even my little speech shows how this was;
and if you will go to the library, you may get the Journal of
1845-46, in which you will find the whole for yourself.

We have nothing published yet with special reference to the
Taylor race; but we soon will have, and then I will send them to
everybody.  I made an internal-improvement speech day before
yesterday, which I shall send home as soon as I can get it
written out and printed,--and which I suppose nobody will read.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SALARY OF JUDGE IN WESTERN VIRGINIA

REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JUNE 28, 1848.


Discussion as to salary of judge of western Virginia:--Wishing to
increase it from $1800 to $2500.

Mr. Lincoln said he felt unwilling to be either unjust or
ungenerous, and he wanted to understand the real case of this
judicial officer.  The gentleman from Virginia had stated that he
had to hold eleven courts.  Now everybody knew that it was not
the habit of the district judges of the United States in other
States to hold anything like that number of courts; and he
therefore took it for granted that this must happen under a
peculiar law which required that large number of courts to be
holden every year; and these laws, he further supposed, were
passed at the request of the people of that judicial district.
It came, then, to this: that the people in the western district
of Virginia had got eleven courts to be held among them in one
year, for their own accommodation; and being thus better
accommodated than neighbors elsewhere, they wanted their judge to
be a little better paid.  In Illinois there had been until the
present season but one district court held in the year.  There
were now to be two.  Could it be that the western district of
Virginia furnished more business for a judge than the whole State
of Illinois?




NATIONAL BANK

JULY, 1848,

[FRAGMENT]

The question of a national bank is at rest.  Were I President, I
should not urge its reagitation upon Congress; but should
Congress see fit to pass an act to establish such an institution,
I should not arrest it by the veto, unless I should consider it
subject to some constitutional objection from which I believe the
two former banks to have been free.




YOUNG v.s. OLD--POLITICAL JEALOUSY

TO W.  H.  HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, July 10, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:

Your letter covering the newspaper slips was received last night.
The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to me, and I
cannot but think there is some mistake in your impression of the
motives of the old men.  I suppose I am now one of the old men;
and I declare on my veracity, which I think is good with you,
that nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that
you and others of my young friends at home were doing battle in
the contest and endearing themselves to the people and taking a
stand far above any I have ever been able to reach in their
admiration.  I cannot conceive that other men feel differently.
Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young once,
and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back.  I hardly
know what to say.  The way for a young man to rise is to improve
himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to
hinder him.  Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy
never did help any man in any situation.  There may sometimes be
ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will
succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true
channel to brood over the attempted injury.  Cast about and see
if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known
to fall into it.

Now, in what I have said I am sure you will suspect nothing but
sincere friendship.  I would save you from a fatal error.  You
have been a studious young man.  You are far better informed on
almost all subjects than I ever have been.  You cannot fail in
any laudable object unless you allow your mind to be improperly
directed.  I have some the advantage of you in the world's
experience, merely by being older; and it is this that induces me
to advise.  You still seem to be a little mistaken about the
Congressional Globe and Appendix.  They contain all of the
speeches that are published in any way.  My speech and Dayton's
speech which you say you got in pamphlet form are both word for
word in the Appendix.  I repeat again, all are there.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




GENERAL TAYLOR AND THE VETO

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JULY 27, 1848.

Mr. SPEAKER, our Democratic friends seem to be in a great
distress because they think our candidate for the Presidency
don't suit us.  Most of them cannot find out that General Taylor
has any principles at all; some, however, have discovered that he
has one, but that one is entirely wrong.  This one principle is
his position on the veto power.  The gentleman from Tennessee
[Mr. Stanton] who has just taken his seat, indeed, has said there
is very little, if any, difference on this question between
General Taylor and all the Presidents; and he seems to think it
sufficient detraction from General Taylor's position on it that
it has nothing new in it.  But all others whom I have heard speak
assail it furiously.  A new member from Kentucky [Mr. Clark], of
very considerable ability, was in particular concerned about it.
He thought it altogether novel and unprecedented for a President
or a Presidential candidate to think of approving bills whose
constitutionality may not be entirely clear to his own mind.  He
thinks the ark of our safety is gone unless Presidents shall
always veto such bills as in their judgment may be of doubtful
constitutionality.  However clear Congress may be on their
authority to pass any particular act, the gentleman from Kentucky
thinks the President must veto it if he has doubts about it.  Now
I have neither time nor inclination to argue with the gentleman
on the veto power as an original question; but I wish to show
that General Taylor, and not he, agrees with the earlier
statesmen on this question.  When the bill chartering the first
Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality
was questioned.  Mr. Madison, then in the House of
Representatives, as well as others, had opposed it on that
ground.  General Washington, as President, was called on to
approve or reject it.  He sought and obtained on the
constitutionality question the separate written opinions of
Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph,--they then being
respectively Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and
Attorney general.  Hamilton's opinion was for the power; while
Randolph's and Jefferson's were both against it.  Mr. Jefferson,
after giving his opinion deciding only against the
constitutionality of the bill, closes his letter with the
paragraph which I now read:

"It must be admitted, however, that unless the President's mind,
on a view of everything which is urged for and against this bill,
is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution,--
if the pro and con hang so even as to balance his judgment, a
just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally
decide the balance in favor of their opinion.  It is chiefly for
cases where they are clearly misled by error, ambition, or
interest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the
negative of the President.
"THOMAS JEFFERSON.
"February 15, 1791."


General Taylor's opinion, as expressed in his Allison letter, is
as I now read:

"The power given by the veto is a high conservative power; but,
in my opinion, should never be exercised except in cases of clear
violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of
consideration by Congress."

It is here seen that, in Mr. Jefferson's opinion, if on the
constitutionality of any given bill the President doubts, he is
not to veto it, as the gentleman from Kentucky would have him do,
but is to defer to Congress and approve it.  And if we compare
the opinion of Jefferson and Taylor, as expressed in these
paragraphs, we shall find them more exactly alike than we can
often find any two expressions having any literal difference.
None but interested faultfinders, I think, can discover any
substantial variation.

But gentlemen on the other side are unanimously agreed that
General Taylor has no other principles.  They are in utter
darkness as to his opinions on any of the questions of policy
which occupy the public attention.  But is there any doubt as to
what he will do on the prominent questions if elected?  Not the
least.  It is not possible to know what he will or would do in
every imaginable case, because many questions have passed away,
and others doubtless will arise which none of us have yet thought
of; but on the prominent questions of currency, tariff, internal
improvements, and Wilmot Proviso, General Taylor's course is at
least as well defined as is General Cass's.  Why, in their
eagerness to get at General Taylor, several Democratic members
here have desired to know whether, in case of his election, a
bankrupt law is to be established.  Can they tell us General
Cass's opinion on this question?

[Some member answered, "He is against it."]

Aye, how do you know he is?  There is nothing about it in the
platform, nor elsewhere, that I have seen.  If the gentleman
knows of anything which I do not know he can show it.  But to
return.  General Taylor, in his Allison letter, says:

"Upon the subject of the tariff, the currency, the improvement of
our great highways, rivers, lakes, and harbors, the will of the
people, as expressed through their representatives in Congress,
ought to be respected and carried out by the executive."

Now this is the whole matter.  In substance, it is this: The
people say to General Taylor, "If you are elected, shall we have
a national bank?"  He answers, "Your will, gentlemen, not mine.
"What about the tariff?"  "Say yourselves."  "Shall our rivers
and harbors be improved?"  "Just as you please.  If you desire a
bank, an alteration of the tariff, internal improvements, any or
all, I will not hinder you.  If you do not desire them, I will
not attempt to force them on you.  Send up your members of
Congress from the various districts, with opinions according to
your own, and if they are for these measures, or any of them, I
shall have nothing to oppose; if they are not for them, I shall
not, by any appliances whatever, attempt to dragoon them into
their adoption."

Now can there be any difficulty in understanding this?  To you
Democrats it may not seem like principle; but surely you cannot
fail to perceive the position plainly enough.  The distinction
between it and the position of your candidate is broad and
obvious, and I admit you have a clear right to show it is wrong
if you can; but you have no right to pretend you cannot see it at
all.  We see it, and to us it appears like principle, and the
best sort of principle at that--the principle of allowing the
people to do as they please with their own business.  My friend
from Indiana (C. B. Smith) has aptly asked, "Are you willing to
trust the people?"  Some of you answered substantially, "We are
willing to trust the people; but the President is as much the
representative of the people as Congress."  In a certain sense,
and to a certain extent, he is the representative of the people.
He is elected by them, as well as Congress is; but can he, in the
nature of things know the wants of the people as well as three
hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the
nation?  If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?
That the Constitution gives the President a negative on
legislation, all know; but that this negative should be so
combined with platforms and other appliances as to enable him,
and in fact almost compel him, to take the whole of legislation
into his own hands, is what we object to, is what General Taylor
objects to, and is what constitutes the broad distinction between
you and us.  To thus transfer legislation is clearly to take it
from those who understand with minuteness the interests of the
people, and give it to one who does not and cannot so well
understand it.  I understand your idea that if a Presidential
candidate avow his opinion upon a given question, or rather upon
all questions, and the people, with full knowledge of this, elect
him, they thereby distinctly approve all those opinions.  By
means of it, measures are adopted or rejected contrary to the
wishes of the whole of one party, and often nearly half of the
other.  Three, four, or half a dozen questions are prominent at a
given time; the party selects its candidate, and he takes his
position on each of these questions.  On all but one his
positions have already been indorsed at former elections, and his
party fully committed to them; but that one is new, and a large
portion of them are against it.  But what are they to do?  The
whole was strung together; and they must take all, or reject all.
They cannot take what they like, and leave the rest.  What they
are already committed to being the majority, they shut their
eyes, and gulp the whole.  Next election, still another is
introduced in the same way.  If we run our eyes along the line of
the past, we shall see that almost if not quite all the articles
of the present Democratic creed have been at first forced upon
the party in this very way.  And just now, and just so,
opposition to internal improvements is to be established if
General Cass shall be elected.  Almost half the Democrats here
are for improvements; but they will vote for Cass, and if he
succeeds, their vote will have aided in closing the doors against
improvements.  Now this is a process which we think is wrong.  We
prefer a candidate who, like General Taylor, will allow the
people to have their own way, regardless of his private opinions;
and I should think the internal-improvement Democrats, at least,
ought to prefer such a candidate.  He would force nothing on them
which they don't want, and he would allow them to have
improvements which their own candidate, if elected, will not.

Mr. Speaker, I have said General Taylor's position is as well
defined as is that of General Cass.  In saying this, I admit I do
not certainly know what he would do on the Wilmot Proviso.  I am
a Northern man or rather a Western Free-State man, with a
constituency I believe to be, and with personal feelings I know
to be, against the extension of slavery.  As such, and with what
information I have, I hope and believe General Taylor, if
elected, would not veto the proviso.  But I do not know it.  Yet
if I knew he would, I still would vote for him.  I should do so
because, in my judgment, his election alone can defeat General
Cass; and because, should slavery thereby go to the territory we
now have, just so much will certainly happen by the election of
Cass, and in addition a course of policy leading to new wars, new
acquisitions of territory and still further extensions of
slavery.  One of the two is to be President.  Which is
preferable?

But there is as much doubt of Cass on improvements as there is of
Taylor on the proviso.  I have no doubt myself of General Cass on
this question; but I know the Democrats differ among themselves
as to his position.  My internal-improvement colleague [Mr.
Wentworth] stated on this floor the other day that he was
satisfied Cass was for improvements, because he had voted for all
the bills that he [Mr. Wentworth] had.  So far so good.  But Mr.
Polk vetoed some of these very bills.  The Baltimore convention
passed a set of resolutions, among other things, approving these
vetoes, and General Cass declares, in his letter accepting the
nomination, that he has carefully read these resolutions, and
that he adheres to them as firmly as he approves them cordially.
In other words, General Cass voted for the bills, and thinks the
President did right to veto them; and his friends here are
amiable enough to consider him as being on one side or the other,
just as one or the other may correspond with their own respective
inclinations.  My colleague admits that the platform declares
against the constitutionality of a general system of
improvements, and that General Cass indorses the platform; but he
still thinks General Cass is in favor of some sort of
improvements.  Well, what are they?  As he is against general
objects, those he is for must be particular and local.  Now this
is taking the subject precisely by the wrong end.  Particularity
expending the money of the whole people for an object which will
benefit only a portion of them--is the greatest real objection to
improvements, and has been so held by General Jackson, Mr. Polk,
and all others, I believe, till now.  But now, behold, the
objects most general--nearest free from this objection--are to be
rejected, while those most liable to it are to be embraced.  To
return: I cannot help believing that General Cass, when he wrote
his letter of acceptance, well understood he was to be claimed by
the advocates of both sides of this question, and that he then
closed the door against all further expressions of opinion
purposely to retain the benefits of that double position.  His
subsequent equivocation at Cleveland, to my mind, proves such to
have been the case.

One word more, and I shall have done with this branch of the
subject.  You Democrats, and your candidate, in the main are in
favor of laying down in advance a platform--a set of party
positions--as a unit, and then of forcing the people, by every
sort of appliance, to ratify them, however unpalatable some of
them may be.  We and our candidate are in favor of making
Presidential elections and the legislation of the country
distinct matters; so that the people can elect whom they please,
and afterward legislate just as they please, without any
hindrance, save only so much as may guard against infractions of
the Constitution, undue haste, and want of consideration.  The
difference between us is clear as noonday.  That we are right we
cannot doubt.  We hold the true Republican position.  In leaving
the people's business in their hands, we cannot be wrong.  We are
willing, and even anxious, to go to the people on this issue.

But I suppose I cannot reasonably hope to convince you that we
have any principles.  The most I can expect is to assure you that
we think we have and are quite contented with them.  The other
day one of the gentlemen from Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent
man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being
learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly.  He spoke in
what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering
style."  At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind,
and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my
continued existence.  A little of the bone was left, and I
gradually revived.  He eulogized Mr. Clay in high and beautiful
terms, and then declared that we had deserted all our principles,
and had turned Henry Clay out, like an old horse, to root.  This
is terribly severe.  It cannot be answered by argument--at least
I cannot so answer it.  I merely wish to ask the gentleman if the
Whigs are the only party he can think of who sometimes turn old
horses out to root.  Is not a certain Martin Van Buren an old
horse which your own party have turned out to root? and is he
not rooting a little to your discomfort about now?  But in not
nominating Mr. Clay we deserted our principles, you say.  Ah! In
what?  Tell us, ye men of principle, what principle we violated.
We say you did violate principle in discarding Van Buren, and we
can tell you how.  You violated the primary, the cardinal, the
one great living principle of all democratic representative
government--the principle that the representative is bound to
carry out the known will of his constituents.  A large majority
of the Baltimore convention of 1844 were, by their constituents,
instructed to procure Van Buren 's nomination if they could.  In
violation--in utter glaring contempt of this, you rejected him;
rejected him, as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Birdsall] the
other day expressly admitted, for availability--that same
"general availability" which you charge upon us, and daily chew
over here, as something exceedingly odious and unprincipled.  But
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Iverson] gave us a second speech
yesterday, all well considered and put down in writing, in which
Van Buren was scathed and withered a "few" for his present
position and movements.  I cannot remember the gentleman's
precise language; but I do remember he put Van Buren down, down,
till he got him where he was finally to "stink" and "rot."

Mr. Speaker, it is no business or inclination of mine to defend
Martin Van Buren in the war of extermination now waging between
him and his old admirers.  I say, "Devil take the hindmost"--and
the foremost.  But there is no mistaking the origin of the
breach; and if the curse of "stinking" and "rotting" is to fall
on the first and greatest violators of principle in the matter, I
disinterestedly suggest that the gentleman from Georgia and his
present co-workers are bound to take it upon themselves.  But the
gentleman from Georgia further says we have deserted all our
principles, and taken shelter under General Taylor's military
coat-tail, and he seems to think this is exceedingly degrading.
Well, as his faith is, so be it unto him.  But can he remember no
other military coat-tail under which a certain other party have
been sheltering for near a quarter of a century?  Has he no
acquaintance with the ample military coat tail of General
Jackson?  Does he not know that his own party have run the five
last Presidential races under that coat-tail, and that they are
now running the sixth under the same cover?  Yes, sir, that coat-
tail was used not only for General Jackson himself, but has been
clung to, with the grip of death, by every Democratic candidate
since.  You have never ventured, and dare not now venture, from
under it.  Your campaign papers have constantly been "Old
Hickories," with rude likenesses of the old general upon them;
hickory poles and hickory brooms your never-ending emblems; Mr.
Polk himself was "Young Hickory," or something so; and even now
your campaign paper here is proclaiming that Cass and Butler are
of the true "Hickory stripe."  Now, sir, you dare not give it up.
Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the
Hermitage Lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking
to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is
dead.  A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by
which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough
of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog.  Just such a
discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you.  You not
only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had
enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several
comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now
to make still another.

Mr. Speaker, old horses and military coat-tails, or tails of any
sort, are not figures of speech such as I would be the first to
introduce into discussions here; but as the gentleman from
Georgia has thought fit to introduce them, he and you are welcome
to all you have made, or can make by them.  If you have any more
old horses, trot them out; any more tails, just cock them and
come at us.  I repeat, I would not introduce this mode of
discussion here; but I wish gentlemen on the other side to
understand that the use of degrading figures is a game at which
they may not find themselves able to take all the winnings.

["We give it up!"]

Aye, you give it up, and well you may; but for a very different
reason from that which you would have us understand.  The point--
the power to hurt--of all figures consists in the truthfulness of
their application; and, understanding this, you may well give it
up.  They are weapons which hit you, but miss us.

But in my hurry I was very near closing this subject of military
tails before I was done with it.  There is one entire article of
the sort I have not discussed yet,--I mean the military tail you
Democrats are now engaged in dovetailing into the great
Michigander [Cass].  Yes, sir; all his biographies (and they are
legion) have him in hand, tying him to a military tail, like so
many mischievous boys tying a dog to a bladder of beans.  True,
the material they have is very limited, but they drive at it
might and main.  He invaded Canada without resistance, and he
outvaded it without pursuit.  As he did both under orders, I
suppose there was to him neither credit nor discredit in them;
but they constitute a large part of the tail.  He was not at
Hull's surrender, but he was close by; he was volunteer aid to
General Harrison on the day of the battle of the Thames; and as
you said in 1840 Harrison was picking huckleberries two miles off
while the battle was fought, I suppose it is a just conclusion
with you to say Cass was aiding Harrison to pick huckleberries.
This is about all, except the mooted question of the broken
sword.  Some authors say he broke it, some say he threw it away,
and some others, who ought to know, say nothing about it.
Perhaps it would be a fair historical compromise to say, if he
did not break it, he did not do anything else with it.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military hero?  Yes,
sir; in the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled, and came
away.  Speaking of General Cass's career reminds me of my own.  I
was not at Stiliman's defeat, but I was about as near it as Cass
was to Hull's surrender; and, like him, I saw the place very soon
afterward.  It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I
had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one
occasion.  If Cass broke his sword, the idea is he broke it in
desperation; I bent the musket by accident.  If General Cass went
in advance of me in picking huckleberries, I guess I surpassed
him in charges upon the wild onions.  If he saw any live,
fighting Indians, it was more than I did; but I had a good many
bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never
fainted from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very
hungry.  Mr. Speaker, if I should ever conclude to doff whatever
our Democratic friends may suppose there is of black-cockade
federalism about me, and therefore they shall take me up as their
candidate for the Presidency, I protest they shall not make fun
of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me
into a military hero.

While I have General Cass in hand, I wish to say a word about his
political principles.  As a specimen, I take the record of his
progress in the Wilmot Proviso.  In the Washington Union of March
2, 1847, there is a report of a speech of General Cass, made the
day before in the Senate, on the Wilmot Proviso, during the
delivery of which Mr. Miller of New Jersey is reported to have
interrupted him as follows, to wit:

"Mr. Miller expressed his great surprise at the change in the
sentiments of the Senator from Michigan, who had been regarded as
the great champion of freedom in the Northwest, of which he was a
distinguished  ornament.  Last year the Senator from Michigan was
understood to be decidedly in favor of the Wilmot Proviso; and as
no reason had been stated for the change, he [Mr. Miller] could
not refrain from the expression of his extreme surprise."

To this General Cass is reported to have replied as follows, to
wit:

"Mr. Cass said that the course of the Senator from New Jersey was
most extraordinary.  Last year he [Mr. Cass] should have voted
for the proposition, had it come up.  But circumstances had
altogether changed.  The honorable Senator then read several
passages from the remarks, as given above, which he had committed
to writing, in order to refute such a charge as that of the
Senator from New Jersey."

In the "remarks above reduced to writing" is one numbered four,
as follows, to wit:

"Fourth.  Legislation now would be wholly inoperative, because no
territory hereafter to be acquired can be governed without an act
of Congress providing for its government; and such an act, on its
passage, would open the whole subject, and leave the Congress
called on to pass it free to exercise its own discretion,
entirely uncontrolled by any declaration found on the statute-
book."

In Niles's Register, vol.  lxxiii., p.  293, there is a letter of
General Cass to _______Nicholson, of Nashville, Tennessee, dated
December 24, 1847, from which the following are correct extracts:

"The Wilmot Proviso has been before the country some time.  It
has been repeatedly discussed in Congress and by the public
press.  I am strongly impressed with the opinion that a great
change has been going on in the public mind upon this subject,--
in my own as well as others',--and that doubts are resolving
themselves into convictions that the principle it involves should
be kept out of the national legislature, and left to the people
of the confederacy in their respective local governments....
Briefly, then, I am opposed to the exercise of any jurisdiction
by Congress over this matter; and I am in favor of leaving the
people of any territory which may be hereafter acquired the right
to regulate it themselves, under the general principles of the
Constitution.  Because--'First.  I do not see in the Constitution
any grant of the requisite power to Congress; and I am not
disposed to extend a doubtful precedent beyond its necessity,--
the establishment of territorial governments when needed,--
leaving to the inhabitants all the right compatible with the
relations they bear to the confederation."

These extracts show that in 1846 General Cass was for the proviso
at once; that in March, 1847, he was still for it, but not just
then; and that in December, 1847, he was against it altogether.
This is a true index to the whole man.  When the question was
raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for
it.  He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting
position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see glimpses of
the great Democratic ox-goad waving in his face, and to hear
indistinctly a voice saying, "Back! Back, sir! Back a little!"  He
shakes his head, and bats his eyes, and blunders back to his
position of March, 1847; but still the goad waves, and the voice
grows more distinct and sharper still, "Back, sir! Back, I say!
Further back!"--and back he goes to the position of December,
1847, at which the goad is still, and the voice soothingly says,
"So! Stand at that!"

Have no fears, gentlemen, of your candidate.  He exactly suits
you, and we congratulate you upon it.  However much you may be
distressed about our candidate, you have all cause to be
contented and happy with your own.  If elected, he may not
maintain all or even any of his positions previously taken; but
he will be sure to do whatever the party exigency for the time
being may require; and that is precisely what you want.  He and
Van Buren are the same "manner of men"; and, like Van Buren, he
will never desert you till you first desert him.

Mr. Speaker, I adopt the suggestion of a friend, that General
Cass is a general of splendidly successful charges--charges, to
be sure, not upon the public enemy, but upon the public treasury.
He was Governor of Michigan territory, and ex-officio
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, from the 9th of October, 1813,
till the 31st of July, 1831--a period of seventeen years, nine
months, and twenty-two days.  During this period he received from
the United States treasury, for personal services and personal
expenses, the aggregate sum of ninety-six thousand and twenty
eight dollars, being an average of fourteen dollars and seventy-
nine cents per day for every day of the time.  This large sum was
reached by assuming that he was doing service at several
different places, and in several different capacities in the same
place, all at the same time.  By a correct analysis of his
accounts during that period, the following propositions may be
deduced:

First.  He was paid in three different capacities during the
whole of the time: that is to say--(1) As governor a salary at
the rate per year of $2000.  (2) As estimated for office rent,
clerk hire, fuel, etc., in superintendence of Indian affairs in
Michigan, at the rate per year of $1500.  (3) As compensation and
expenses for various miscellaneous items of Indian service out of
Michigan, an average per year of $625.

Second.  During part of the time--that is, from the 9th of
October, 1813, to the 29th of May, 1822 he was paid in four
different capacities; that is to say, the three as above, and, in
addition thereto, the commutation of ten rations per day,
amounting per year to $730.

Third.  During another part of the time--that is, from the
beginning of 1822 to the 31st of July, '83 he was also paid in
four different capacities; that is to say, the first three, as
above (the rations being dropped after the 29th of May, 1822),
and, in addition thereto, for superintending Indian Agencies at
Piqua, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Chicago, Illinois, at the
rate per year of $1500.  It should be observed here that the last
item, commencing at the beginning of 1822, and the item of
rations, ending on the 29th of May, 1822, lap on each other
during so much of the time as lies between those two dates.

Fourth.  Still another part of the time--that is, from the 31st
of October, 1821, to the 29th of May, 1822--he was paid in six
different capacities; that is to say, the three first, as above;
the item of rations, as above; and, in addition thereto, another
item of ten rations per day while at Washington settling his
accounts, being at the rate per year of $730; and also an
allowance for expenses traveling to and from Washington, and
while there, of $1022, being at the rate per year of $1793.

Fifth.  And yet during the little portion of the time which lies
between the 1st of January, 1822, and the 29th of May, 1822, he
was paid in seven different capacities; that is to say, the six
last mentioned, and also, at the rate of $1500 per year, for the
Piqua, Fort Wayne, and Chicago service, as mentioned above.


These accounts have already been discussed some here; but when we
are amongst them, as when we are in the Patent Office, we must
peep about a good deal before we can see all the curiosities.  I
shall not be tedious with them.  As to the large item of $1500
per year--amounting in the aggregate to $26,715 for office rent,
clerk hire, fuel, etc., I barely wish to remark that, so far as I
can discover in the public documents, there is no evidence, by
word or inference, either from any disinterested witness or of
General Cass himself, that he ever rented or kept a separate
office, ever hired or kept a clerk, or even used any extra amount
of fuel, etc., in consequence of his Indian services.  Indeed,
General Cass's entire silence in regard to these items, in his
two long letters urging his claims upon the government, is, to my
mind, almost conclusive that no such claims had any real
existence.

But I have introduced General Cass's accounts here chiefly to
show the wonderful physical capacities of the man.  They show
that he not only did the labor of several men at the same time,
but that he often did it at several places, many hundreds of
miles apart, at the same time.  And at eating, too, his
capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful.  From October,
1821, to May, 1822, he eat ten rations a day in Michigan, ten
rations a day here in Washington, and near five dollars' worth a
day on the road between the two places! And then there is an
important discovery in his example--the art of being paid for
what one eats, instead of having to pay for it.  Hereafter if any
nice young man should owe a bill which he cannot pay in any other
way, he can just board it out.  Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of
the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay and
starving to death.  The like of that would never happen to
General Cass.  Place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would
stand stock-still midway between them, and eat them both at once,
and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some,
too, at the same time.  By all means make him President,
gentlemen.  He will feed you bounteously--if--if there is any
left after he shall have helped himself.

But, as General Taylor is, par exellence, the hero of the Mexican
War, and as you Democrats say we Whigs have always opposed the
war, you think it must be very awkward and embarrassing for us to
go for General Taylor.  The declaration that we have always
opposed the war is true or false, according as one may understand
the term "oppose the war."  If to say "the war was unnecessarily
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President" by opposing
the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it.  Whenever
they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they have said
it on what has appeared good reason to them.  The marching an
army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening
the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other
property to destruction, to you may appear a perfectly amiable,
peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us.
So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked,
impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly.  But if, when
the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the
giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was
support of the war, then it is not true that we have always
opposed the war.  With few individual exceptions, you have
constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies.
And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and
the lives of our political brethren in every trial and on every
field.  The beardless boy and the mature man, the humble and the
distinguished--you have had them.  Through suffering and death,
by disease and in battle they have endured and fought and fell
with you.  Clay and Webster each gave a son, never to be
returned.  From the State of my own residence, besides other
worthy but less known Whig names, we sent Marshall, Morrison,
Baker, and Hardin; they all fought, and one fell, and in the fall
of that one we lost our best Whig man.  Nor were the Whigs few in
number, or laggard in the day of danger.  In that fearful,
bloody, breathless struggle at Buena Vista, where each man's hard
task was to beat back five foes or die himself, of the five high
officers who perished, four were Whigs.

In speaking of this, I mean no odious comparison between the
lion-hearted Whigs and the Democrats who fought there.  On other
occasions, and among the lower officers and privates on that
occasion, I doubt not the proportion was different.  I wish to do
justice to all.  I think of all those brave men as Americans, in
whose proud fame, as an American, I too have a share.  Many of
them, Whigs and Democrats are my constituents and personal
friends; and I thank them,--more than thank them,--one and all,
for the high imperishable honor they have conferred on our common
State.

But the distinction between the cause of the President in
beginning the war, and the cause of the country after it was
begun, is a distinction which you cannot perceive.  To you the
President and the country seem to be all one.  You are interested
to see no distinction between them; and I venture to suggest that
probably your interest blinds you a little.  We see the
distinction, as we think, clearly enough; and our friends who
have fought in the war have no difficulty in seeing it also.
What those who have fallen would say, were they alive and here,
of course we can never know; but with those who have returned
there is no difficulty.  Colonel Haskell and Major Gaines,
members here, both fought in the war, and both of them underwent
extraordinary perils and hardships; still they, like all other
Whigs here, vote, on the record, that the war was unnecessarily
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President.  And even
General Taylor himself, the noblest Roman of them all, has
declared that as a citizen, and particularly as a soldier, it is
sufficient for him to know that his country is at war with a
foreign nation, to do all in his power to bring it to a speedy
and honorable termination by the most vigorous and energetic
operations, without inquiry about its justice, or anything else
connected with it.

Mr. Speaker, let our Democratic friends be comforted with the
assurance that we are content with our position, content with our
company, and content with our candidate; and that although they,
in their generous sympathy, think we ought to be miserable, we
really are not, and that they may dismiss the great anxiety they
have on our account.

Mr. Speaker, I see I have but three minutes left, and this forces
me to throw out one whole branch of my subject.  A single word on
still another.  The Democrats are keen enough to frequently
remind us that we have some dissensions in our ranks.  Our good
friend from Baltimore immediately before me [Mr. McLane]
expressed some doubt the other day as to which branch of our
party General Taylor would ultimately fall into the hands of.
That was a new idea to me.  I knew we had dissenters, but I did
not know they were trying to get our candidate away from us.  I
would like to say a word to our dissenters, but I have not the
time.  Some such we certainly have; have you none, gentlemen
Democrats?  Is it all union and harmony in your ranks? no
bickerings? no divisions?  If there be doubt as to which of our
divisions will get our candidate, is there no doubt as to which
of your candidates will get your party?  I have heard some things
from New York; and if they are true, one might well say of your
party there, as a drunken fellow once said when he heard the
reading of an indictment for hog-stealing.  The clerk read on
till he got to and through the words, "did steal, take, and carry
away ten boars, ten sows, ten shoats, and ten pigs," at which he
exclaimed, "Well, by golly, that is the most equally divided gang
of hogs I ever did hear of!"  If there is any other gang of hogs
more equally divided than the Democrats of New York are about
this time, I have not heard of it.




SPEECH DELIVERED AT WORCESTER, MASS., ON
SEPT. 12, 1848.

(From the Boston Advertiser.)

Mr. Kellogg then introduced to the meeting the Hon.  Abram
Lincoln, Whig member of Congress from Illinois, a representative
of free soil.

Mr. Lincoln has a very tall and thin figure, with an intellectual
face, showing a searching mind, and a cool judgment.  He spoke in
a clear and cool and very eloquent manner, for an hour and a
half, carrying the audience with him in his able arguments and
brilliant illustrations--only interrupted by warm and frequent
applause.  He began by expressing a real feeling of modesty in
addressing an audience "this side of the mountains," a part of
the country where, in the opinion of the people of his section,
everybody was supposed to be instructed and wise.  But he had
devoted his attention to the question of the coming Presidential
election, and was not unwilling to exchange with all whom he
might the ideas to which he had arrived.  He then began to show
the fallacy of some of the arguments against Gen. Taylor, making
his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those who oppose
him ("the old Locofocos as well as the new") that he has no
principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their
principles by adopting him as their candidate.  He maintained
that Gen.  Taylor occupied a high and unexceptionable Whig
ground, and took for his first instance and proof of this the
statement in the Allison letter--with regard to the bank, tariff,
rivers and harbors, etc.--that the will of the people should
produce its own results, without executive influence.  The
principle that the people should do what--under the Constitution-
-as they please, is a Whig principle.  All that Gen.  Taylor is not
only to consent to, but appeal to the people to judge and act for
themselves.  And this was no new doctrine for Whigs.  It was the
"platform" on which they had fought all their battles, the
resistance of executive influence, and the principle of enabling
the people to frame the government according to their will.  Gen.
Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the people to
do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in
their national affairs, but because he don't want to tell what we
ought to do, he is accused of having no principles.  The Whigs
here maintained for years that neither the influence, the duress,
or the prohibition of the executive should control the
legitimately expressed will of the people; and now that, on that
very ground, Gen. Taylor says that he should use the power given
him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of
the people, he is accused of want of principle, and of
inconsistency in position.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to
make a platform or creed for a national party, to all parts of
which all must consent and agree, when it was clearly the
intention and the true philosophy of our government, that in
Congress all opinions and principles should be represented, and
that when the wisdom of all had been compared and united, the
will of the majority should be carried out.  On this ground he
conceived (and the audience seemed to go with him) that Gen.
Taylor held correct, sound republican principles.

Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the States,
saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the
people of Massachusetts on this subject, except perhaps that they
did not keep so constantly thinking about it.  All agreed that
slavery was an evil, but that we were not responsible for it and
cannot affect it in States of this Union where we do not live.
But the question of the extension of slavery to new territories
of this country is a part of our responsibility and care, and is
under our control.  In opposition to this Mr. L.  believed that
the self-named "Free Soil" party was far behind the Whigs.  Both
parties opposed the extension.  As he understood it the new party
had no principle except this opposition.  If their platform held
any other, it was in such a general way that it was like the pair
of pantaloons the Yankee pedlar offered for sale, "large enough
for any man, small enough for any boy."  They therefore had taken
a position calculated to break down their single important
declared object.  They were working for the election of either
Gen. Cass or Gen. Taylor.  The speaker then went on to show,
clearly and eloquently, the danger of extension of slavery,
likely to result from the election of Gen. Cass.  To unite with
those who annexed the new territory to prevent the extension of
slavery in that territory seemed to him to be in the highest
degree absurd and ridiculous.  Suppose these gentlemen succeed in
electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the
extension of slavery to New Mexico and California, and Gen.
Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and
would not prohibit its restriction.  But if Gen. Cass was
elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of
territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of
slavery would meet no check.  The "Free Soil" mart in claiming
that name indirectly attempts a deception, by implying that Whigs
were not Free Soil men.  Declaring that they would "do their duty
and leave the consequences to God" merely gave an excuse for
taking a course they were not able to maintain by a fair and full
argument.  To make this declaration did not show what their duty
was.  If it did we should have no use for judgment, we might as
well be made without intellect; and when divine or human law does
not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of
finding out what it is but by using our most intelligent judgment
of the consequences.  If there were divine law or human law for
voting for Martin Van Buren, or if a, fair examination of the
consequences and just reasoning would show that voting for him
would bring about the ends they pretended to wish--then he would
give up the argument.  But since there was no fixed law on the
subject, and since the whole probable result of their action
would be an assistance in electing Gen. Cass, he must say that
they were behind the Whigs in their advocacy of the freedom of
the soil.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for
forbearing to say anything--after all the previous declarations
of those members who were formerly Whigs--on the subject of the
Mexican War, because the Van Burens had been known to have
supported it.  He declared that of all the parties asking the
confidence of the country, this new one had less of principle
than any other.

He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free Soil
gentlemen, as declared in the "whereas" at Buffalo, that the Whig
and Democratic parties were both entirely dissolved and absorbed
into their own body.  Had the Vermont election given them any
light?  They had calculated on making as great an impression in
that State as in any part of the Union, and there their attempts
had been wholly ineffectual.  Their failure was a greater success
than they would find in any other part of the Union.

Mr. Lincoln went on to say that he honestly believed that all
those who wished to keep up the character of the Union; who did
not believe in enlarging our field, but in keeping our fences
where they are and cultivating our present possessions, making it
a garden, improving the morals and education of the people,
devoting the administrations to this purpose; all real Whigs,
friends of good honest government--the race was ours.  He had
opportunities of hearing from almost every part of the Union from
reliable sources and had not heard of a county in which we had
not received accessions from other parties.  If the true Whigs
come forward and join these new friends, they need not have a
doubt.  We had a candidate whose personal character and
principles he had already described, whom he could not eulogize
if he would.  Gen. Taylor had been constantly, perseveringly,
quietly standing up, doing his duty and asking no praise or
reward for it.  He was and must be just the man to whom the
interests, principles, and prosperity of the country might be
safely intrusted.  He had never failed in anything he had
undertaken, although many of his duties had been considered
almost impossible.

Mr. Lincoln then went into a terse though rapid review of the
origin of the Mexican War and the connection of the
administration and General Taylor with it, from which he deduced
a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty in the
support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest
aspirations for and confidence in a deserved success.

At the close of his truly masterly and convincing speech, the
audience gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and three
more for the eloquent Whig member from the State.




HIS FATHER'S REQUEST FOR MONEY

TO THOMAS LINCOLN

WASHINGTON,  Dec.  24, 1848.

MY DEAR FATHER:--Your letter of the 7th was received night before
last.  I very cheerfully send you the twenty dollars, which sum
you say is necessary to save your land from sale.  It is singular
that you should have forgotten a judgment against you; and it is
more singular that the plaintiff should have let you forget it so
long; particularly as I suppose you always had property enough to
satisfy a judgment of that amount.  Before you pay it, it would
be well to be sure you have not paid, or at least, that you
cannot prove you have paid it.

Give my love to mother and all the connections.  Affectionately
your son,

A. LINCOLN.




1849


BILL TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia be
instructed to report a bill in substance as follows:

Sec.  1.  Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled, That
no person not now within the District of Columbia, nor now owned
by any person or persons now resident within it, nor hereafter
born within it, shall ever be held in slavery within said
District.

Sec.  2.  That no person now within said District, or now owned
by any person or persons now resident within the same, or
hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery without
the limits of said District: Provided, That officers of the
Government of the United States, being citizens of the
slaveholding States, coming into said District on public
business, and remaining only so long as may be reasonably
necessary for that object, may be attended into and out of said
District, and while there, by the necessary servants of
themselves and their families, without their right to hold such
servants in service being thereby impaired.

Sec.  3.  That all children born of slave mothers within said
District, on or after the first day of January, in the year of
our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty, shall be free; but shall be
reasonably supported and educated by the respective owners of
their mothers, or by their heirs or representatives, and shall
owe reasonable service as apprentices to such owners, heirs, or
representatives, until they respectively arrive at the age of  __
years, when they shall be entirely free; and the municipal
authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective
jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to make
all suitable and necessary provision for enforcing obedience to
this section, on the part of both masters and apprentices.

Sec.  4.  That all persons now within this District, lawfully
held as slaves, or now owned by any person or persons now
resident within said District, shall remain such at the will of
their respective owners, their heirs, and legal representatives:
Provided, That such owner, or his legal representative, may at
any time receive from the Treasury of the United States the full
value of his or her slave, of the class in this section
mentioned, upon which such slave shall be forthwith and forever
free: And provided further, That the President of the United
States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury
shall be a board for determining the value of such slaves as
their owners may desire to emancipate under this section, and
whose duty it shall be to hold a session for the purpose on the
first Monday of each calendar month, to receive all applications,
and, on satisfactory evidence in each case that the person
presented for valuation is a slave, and of the class in this
section mentioned, and is owned by the applicant, shall value
such slave at his or her full cash value, and give to the
applicant an order on the Treasury for the amount, and also to
such slave a certificate of freedom.

Sec.  5.  That the municipal authorities of Washington and
Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are
hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient
means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive
slaves escaping into said District.

Sec.  6.  That the election officers within said District of
Columbia are hereby empowered and required to open polls, at all
the usual places of holding elections, on the first Monday of
April next, and receive the vote of every free white male citizen
above the age of twenty-one years, having resided within said
District for the period of one year or more next preceding the
time of such voting for or against this act, to proceed in taking
said votes, in all respects not herein specified, as at elections
under the municipal laws, and with as little delay as possible to
transmit correct statements of the votes so cast to the President
of the United States; and it shall be the duty of the President
to canvass said votes immediately, and if a majority of them be
found to be for this act, to forthwith issue his proclamation
giving notice of the fact; and this act shall only be in full
force and effect on and after the day of such proclamation.

Sec.  7.  That involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall in no
wise be prohibited by this act.

Sec.  8.  That for all the purposes of this act, the
jurisdictional limits of Washington are extended to all parts of
the District of Columbia not now included within the present
limits of Georgetown.




BILL GRANTING LANDS TO THE STATES TO MAKE RAILWAYS AND CANALS

REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
FEBRUARY 13, 1849.

Mr. Lincoln said he had not risen for the purpose of making a
speech, but only for the purpose of meeting some of the
objections to the bill.  If he understood those objections, the
first was that if the bill were to become a law, it would be used
to lock large portions of the public lands from sale, without at
last effecting the ostensible object of the bill--the
construction of railroads in the new States; and secondly, that
Congress would be forced to the abandonment of large portions of
the public lands to the States for which they might be reserved,
without their paying for them.  This he understood to be the
substance of the objections of the gentleman from Ohio to the
passage of the bill.

If he could get the attention of the House for a few minutes, he
would ask gentlemen to tell us what motive could induce any State
Legislature, or individual, or company of individuals, of the new
States, to expend money in surveying roads which they might know
they could not make.

(A voice: They are not required to make the road.)

Mr. Lincoln continued: That was not the case he was making.  What
motive would tempt any set of men to go into an extensive survey
of a railroad which they did not intend to make?  What good would
it do?  Did men act without motive?  Did business men commonly go
into an expenditure of money which could be of no account to
them?  He generally found that men who have money were disposed
to hold on to it, unless they could see something to be made by
its investment.  He could not see what motive of advantage to the
new States could be subserved by merely keeping the public lands
out of market, and preventing their settlement.  As far as he
could see, the new States were wholly without any motive to do
such a thing.  This, then, he took to be a good answer to the
first objection.

In relation to the fact assumed, that after a while, the new
States having got hold of the public lands to a certain extent,
they would turn round and compel Congress to relinquish all claim
to them, he had a word to say, by way of recurring to the history
of the past.  When was the time to come (he asked) when the
States in which the public lands were situated would compose a
majority of the representation in Congress, or anything like it?
A majority of Representatives would very soon reside west of the
mountains, he admitted; but would they all come from States in
which the public lands were situated?  They certainly would not;
for, as these Western States grew strong in Congress, the public
lands passed away from them, and they got on the other side of
the question; and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] was an
example attesting that fact.

Mr. Vinton interrupted here to say that he had stood on this
question just where he was now, for five and twenty years.

Mr. Lincoln was not making an argument for the purpose of
convicting the gentleman of any impropriety at all.  He was
speaking of a fact in history, of which his State was an example.
He was referring to a plain principle in the nature of things.
The State of Ohio had now grown to be a giant.  She had a large
delegation on that floor; but was she now in favor of granting
lands to the new States, as she used to be?  The New England
States, New York, and the Old Thirteen were all rather quiet upon
the subject; and it was seen just now that a member from one of
the new States was the first man to rise up in opposition.  And
such would be with the history of this question for the future.
There never would come a time when the people residing in the
States embracing the public lands would have the entire control
of this subject; and so it was a matter of certainty that
Congress would never do more in this respect than what would be
dictated by a just liberality.  The apprehension, therefore, that
the public lands were in danger of being wrested from the General
Government by the strength of the delegation in Congress from the
new States, was utterly futile.  There never could be such a
thing.  If we take these lands (said he) it will not be without
your consent.  We can never outnumber you.  The result is that
all fear of the new States turning against the right of Congress
to the public domain must be effectually quelled, as those who
are opposed to that interest must always hold a vast majority
here, and they will never surrender the whole or any part of the
public lands unless they themselves choose to do so.  That was
all he desired to say.




ON FEDERAL POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

WASHINGTON, March 9, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

DEAR SIR: Co1onel R. D. Baker and myself are the only Whig
members of Congress from Illinois of the Thirtieth, and he of the
Thirty-first.  We have reason to think the Whigs of that State
hold us responsible, to some extent, for the appointments which
may be made of our citizens.  We do not know you personally, and
our efforts to you have so far been unavailing.  I therefore hope
I am not obtrusive in saying in this way, for him and myself,
that when a citizen of Illinois is to be appointed in your
department, to an office either in or out of the State, we most
respectfully ask to be heard.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




MORE POLITICAL PATRONAGE REQUESTS

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

WASHINGTON, March 10, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF STATE.

SIR:--There are several applicants for the office of United
States Marshal for the District of Illinois.  Among the most
prominent of them are Benjamin Bond, Esq., of Carlyle, and
Thomas, Esq., of Galena.  Mr. Bond I know to be personally every
way worthy of the office; and he is very numerously and most
respectably recommended.  His papers I send to you; and I solicit
for his claims a full and fair consideration.

Having said this much, I add that in my individual judgment the
appointment of Mr. Thomas would be the better.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.


(Indorsed on Mr. Bond's papers.)

In this and the accompanying envelope are the recommendations of
about two hundred good citizens of all parts of Illinois, that
Benjamin Bond be appointed marshal for that district.  They
include the names of nearly all our Whigs who now are, or have
ever been, members of the State Legislature, besides forty-six of
the Democratic members of the present Legislature, and many other
good citizens.  I add that from personal knowledge I consider Mr.
Bond every way worthy of the office, and qualified to fill it.
Holding the individual opinion that the appointment of a
different gentleman would be better, I ask especial attention and
consideration for his claims, and for the opinions expressed in
his favor by those over whom I can claim no superiority.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that Walter Davis be appointed receiver of
the land-office at this place, whenever there shall be a vacancy.
I cannot say that Mr. Herndon, the present incumbent, has failed
in the proper discharge of any of the duties of the office.  He
is a very warm partisan, and openly and actively opposed to the
election of General Taylor.  I also understand that since General
Taylor's election he has received a reappointment from Mr. Polk,
his old commission not having expired.  Whether this is true the
records of the department will show.  I may add that the Whigs
here almost universally desire his removal.

I give no opinion of my own, but state the facts, and express the
hope that the department will act in this as in all other cases
on some proper general rule.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.--The land district to which this office belongs is very
nearly if not entirely within my district; so that Colonel Baker,
the other Whig representative, claims no voice in the
appointment.
A.  L.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that Turner R.  King, now of Pekin,
Illinois, be appointed register of the land-office at this place
whenever there shall be a vacancy.

I do not know that Mr. Barret, the present incumbent, has failed
in the proper discharge of any of his duties in the office.  He
is a decided partisan, and openly and actively opposed the
election of General Taylor.  I understand, too, that since the
election of General Taylor, Mr. Barret has received a
reappointment from Mr. Polk, his old commission not having
expired.  Whether this be true, the records of the department
will show.

Whether he should be removed I give no opinion, but merely
express the wish that the department may act upon some proper
general rule, and that Mr. Barret's case may not be made an
exception to it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.-The land district to which this office belongs is very
nearly if not entirely within my district; so that Colonel Baker,
the other Whig representative, claims no voice in the
appointment.
A.  L.




TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7,1849.

HON.  POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

DEAR Sir:--I recommend that Abner Y.  Ellis be appointed
postmaster at this place, whenever there shall be a vacancy.  J.
R.  Diller, the present incumbent, I cannot say has failed in the
proper discharge of any of the duties of the office.  He,
however, has been an active partisan in opposition to us.

Located at the seat of government of the State, he has been, for
part if not the whole of the time he has held the office, a
member of the Democratic State Central Committee, signing his
name to their addresses and manifestoes; and has been, as I
understand, reappointed by Mr. Polk since General Taylor's
election.  These are the facts of the case as I understand them,
and I give no opinion of mine as to whether he should or should
not be removed.  My wish is that the department may adopt some
proper general rule for such cases, and that Mr. Diller may not
be made an exception to it, one way or the other.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.--This office, with its delivery, is entirely within my
district; so that Colonel Baker, the other Whig representative,
claims no voice in the appointment.L.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that William Butler be appointed pension
agent for the Illinois agency, when the place shall be vacant.
Mr. Hurst, the present incumbent, I believe has performed the
duties very well.  He is a decided partisan, and I believe
expects to be removed.  Whether he shall, I submit to the
department.  This office is not confined to my district, but
pertains to the whole State; so that Colonel Baker has an equal
right with myself to be heard concerning it.  However, the office
is located here; and I think it is not probable that any one
would desire to remove from a distance to take it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.





TO THOMPSON.

SPRINGFIELD, April 25, 1849.

DEAR THOMPSON:
A tirade is still kept up against me here for recommending T. R.
King.  This morning it is openly avowed that my supposed
influence at Washington shall be broken down generally, and
King's prospects defeated in particular.  Now, what I have done
in this matter I have done at the request of you and some other
friends in Tazewell; and I therefore ask you to either admit it
is wrong or come forward and sustain me.  If the truth will
permit, I propose that you sustain me in the following manner:
copy the inclosed scrap in your own handwriting and get everybody
(not three or four, but three or four hundred) to sign it, and
then send it to me.  Also, have six, eight or ten of our best
known Whig friends there write to me individual letters, stating
the truth in this matter as they understand it.  Don't neglect or
delay in the matter.  I understand information of an indictment
having been found against him about three years ago, for gaming
or keeping a gaming house, has been sent to the department.  I
shall try to take care of it at the department till your action
can be had and forwarded on.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD ILLINOIS.  May 10, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

DEAR SIR:--I regret troubling you so often in relation to the
land-offices here, but I hope you will perceive the necessity of
it, and excuse me.  On the 7th of April I wrote you recommending
Turner R.  King for register, and Walter Davis for receiver.
Subsequently I wrote you that, for a private reason, I had
concluded to transpose them.  That private reason was the request
of an old personal friend who himself desired to be receiver, but
whom I felt it my duty to refuse a recommendation.  He said if I
would transpose King and Davis he would be satisfied.  I thought
it a whim, but, anxious to oblige him, I consented.  Immediately
he commenced an assault upon King's character, intending, as I
suppose, to defeat his appointment, and thereby secure another
chance for himself.  This double offence of bad faith to me and
slander upon a good man is so totally outrageous that I now ask
to have King and Davis placed as I originally recommended,--that
is, King for register and Davis for receiver.

An effort is being made now to have Mr. Barret, the present
register, retained.  I have already said he has done the duties
of the office well, and I now add he is a gentleman in the true
sense.  Still, he submits to be the instrument of his party to
injure us.  His high character enables him to do it more
effectually.  Last year he presided at the convention which
nominated the Democratic candidate for Congress in this district,
and afterward ran for the State Senate himself, not desiring the
seat, but avowedly to aid and strengthen his party.  He made
speech after speech with a degree of fierceness and coarseness
against General Taylor not quite consistent with his habitually
gentlemanly deportment.  At least one (and I think more) of those
who are now trying to have him retained was himself an applicant
for this very office, and, failing to get my recommendation, now
takes this turn.

In writing you a third time in relation to these offices, I
stated that I supposed charges had been forwarded to you against
King, and that I would inquire into the truth of them.  I now
send you herewith what I suppose will be an ample defense against
any such charges.  I ask attention to all the papers, but
particularly to the letters of Mr. David Mack, and the paper with
the long list of names.  There is no mistake about King's being a
good man.  After the unjust assault upon him, and considering the
just claims of Tazewell County, as indicated in the letters I
inclose you, it would in my opinion be injustice, and withal a
blunder, not to appoint him, at least as soon as any one is
appointed to either of the offices here.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., May 19, 1849.

DEAR GILLESPIE:

Butterfield will be commissioner of the Gen'l Land Office, unless
prevented by strong and speedy efforts.  Ewing is for him, and he
is only not appointed yet because Old Zach.  hangs fire.

I have reliable information of this.  Now, if you agree with me
that this appointment would dissatisfy rather than gratify the
Whigs of this State, that it would slacken their energies in
future contests, that his appointment in '41 is an old sore with
them which they will not patiently have reopened,--in a word that
his appointment now would be a fatal blunder to the
administration and our political men here in Illinois, write
Crittenden to that effect.  He can control the matter.  Were you
to write Ewing I fear the President would never hear of your
letter.  This may be mere suspicion.  You might write directly to
Old Zach.  You will be the best judge of the propriety of that.
Not a moment's time is to be lost.

Let this be confidential except with Mr. Edwards and a few others
whom you know I would trust just as I do you.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REQUEST FOR GENERAL LAND-OFICE APPPOINTMENT

TO E.  EMBREE.

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, May 25, 1849.

HON.  E.  EMBREE

DEAR SIR:--I am about to ask a favor of you, one which I hope
will not cost you much.  I understand the General Land-Office is
about to be given to Illinois, and that Mr. Ewing desires Justin
Butterfield, of Chicago, to be the man.  I give you my word, the
appointment of Mr. Butterfield will be an egregious political
blunder.  It will give offence to the whole Whig party here, and
be worse than a dead loss to the administration of so much of its
patronage.  Now, if you can conscientiously do so, I wish you to
write General Taylor at once, saying that either I or the man I
recommend should in your opinion be appointed to that office, if
any one from Illinois shall be.  I restrict my request to
Illinois because you may have a man from your own State, and I do
not ask to interfere with that.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REQUEST FOR A PATENT

IMPROVED METHOD OF LIFTING VESSELS OVER SHOALS.

Application for Patent:

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by letters
patent, is the combination of expansible buoyant chambers placed
at the sides of a vessel with the main shaft or shafts by means
of the sliding spars, which pass down through the buoyant
chambers and are made fast to their bottoms and the series of
ropes and pulleys or their equivalents in such a manner that by
turning the main shaft or shafts in one direction the buoyant
chambers will be forced downward into the water, and at the same
time expanded and filled with air for buoying up the vessel by
the displacement of water, and by turning the shafts in an
opposite direction the buoyant chambers will be contracted into a
small space and secured against injury.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 3, 1849

HON.  SECRETARY OF INTERIOR.

DEAR SIR:--Vandalia, the receiver's office at which place is the
subject of the within, is not in my district; and I have been
much perplexed to express any preference between Dr. Stapp and
Mr. Remann.  If any one man is better qualified for such an
office than all others, Dr. Stapp is that man; still, I believe a
large majority of the Whigs of the district prefer Mr. Remann,
who also is a good man.  Perhaps the papers on file will enable
you to judge better than I can.  The writers of the within are
good men, residing within the land district.

Your obt.  servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO W.  H.  HERNDON.

SPRINGFIELD, June 5, 1849.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your two letters were received last night.  I have
a great many letters to write, and so cannot write very long
ones.  There must be some mistake about Walter Davis saying I
promised him the post-office.  I did not so promise him.  I did
tell him that if the distribution of the offices should fall into
my hands, he should have something; and if I shall be convinced
he has said any more than this, I shall be disappointed.  I said
this much to him because, as I understand, he is of good
character, is one of the young men, is of the mechanics, and
always faithful and never troublesome; a Whig, and is poor, with
the support of a widow mother thrown almost exclusively on him by
the death of his brother.  If these are wrong reasons, then I
have been wrong; but I have certainly not been selfish in it,
because in my greatest need of friends he was against me, and for
Baker.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.  Let the above be confidential.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

DEAR GILLESPIE:

Mr. Edwards is unquestionably offended with me in connection with
the matter of the General Land-Office.  He wrote a letter against
me which was filed at the department.

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships; and,
of them, mine with Mr. Edwards was one of the most cherished.  I
have not been false to it.  At a word I could have had the office
any time before the department was committed to Mr. Butterfield,
at least Mr. Ewing and the President say as much.  That word I
forbore to speak, partly for other reasons, but chiefly for Mr.
Edwards' sake, losing the office (that he might gain it) I was
always for; but to lose his friendship, by the effort for him,
would oppress me very much, were I not sustained by the utmost
consciousness of rectitude.  I first determined to be an
applicant, unconditionally, on the 2nd of June; and I did so then
upon being informed by a telegraphic despatch that the question
was narrowed down to Mr. B and myself, and that the Cabinet had
postponed the appointment three weeks, for my benefit.  Not
doubting that Mr. Edwards was wholly out of the question I,
nevertheless, would not then have become an applicant had I
supposed he would thereby be brought to suspect me of treachery
to him.  Two or three days afterwards a conversation with Levi
Davis convinced me Mr. Edwards was dissatisfied; but I was then
too far in to get out.  His own letter, written on the 25th of
April, after I had fully informed him of all that had passed, up
to within a few days of that time, gave assurance I had that
entire confidence from him which I felt my uniform and strong
friendship for him entitled me to.  Among other things it says,
"Whatever course your judgment may dictate as proper to be
pursued, shall never be excepted to by me."  I also had had a
letter from Washington, saying Chambers, of the Republic, had
brought a rumor then, that Mr. E had declined in my favor, which
rumor I judged came from Mr. E himself, as I had not then
breathed of his letter to any living creature.  In saying I had
never, before the 2nd of June, determined to be an applicant,
unconditionally, I mean to admit that, before then, I had said
substantially I would take the office rather than it should be
lost to the State, or given to one in the State whom the Whigs
did not want; but I aver that in every instance in which I spoke
of myself, I intended to keep, and now believe I did keep, Mr. E
above myself.  Mr. Edwards' first suspicion was that I had
allowed Baker to overreach me, as his friend, in behalf of Don
Morrison.  I knew this was a mistake; and the result has proved
it.  I understand his view now is, that if I had gone to open war
with Baker I could have ridden him down, and had the thing all my
own way.  I believe no such thing.  With Baker and some strong
man from the Military tract & elsewhere for Morrison, and we and
some strong man from the Wabash & elsewhere for Mr. E, it was not
possible for either to succeed.  I believed this in March, and I
know it now.  The only thing which gave either any chance was the
very thing Baker & I proposed,--an adjustment with themselves.

You may wish to know how Butterfield finally beat me.  I can not
tell you particulars now, but will when I see you.  In the
meantime let it be understood I am not greatly dissatisfied,--I
wish the offer had been so bestowed as to encourage our friends
in future contests, and I regret exceedingly Mr. Edwards'
feelings towards me.  These two things away, I should have no
regrets,--at least I think I would not.

Write me soon.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




RESOLUTIONS OF SYMPATHY WITH THE CAUSE OF
HUNGARIAN FREEDOM, SEPTEMBER [12??], 1849.

At a meeting to express sympathy with the cause of Hungarian
freedom, Dr. Todd, Thos. Lewis, Hon. A. Lincoln, and Wm.
Carpenter were appointed a committee to present appropriate
resolutions, which reported through Hon. A. Lincoln the
following:

Resolved, That, in their present glorious struggle for liberty,
the Hungarians command our highest admiration and have our
warmest sympathy.

Resolved, That they have our most ardent prayers for their speedy
triumph and final success.

Resolved, That the Government of the United States should
acknowledge the independence of Hungary as a nation of freemen at
the very earliest moment consistent with our amicable relations
with the government against which they are contending.

Resolved, That, in the opinion of this meeting, the immediate
acknowledgment of the independence of Hungary by our government
is due from American freemen to their struggling brethren, to the
general cause of republican liberty, and not violative of the
just rights of any nation or people.




TO Dr. WILLIAM FITHIAN.

SPRINGFIELD, Sept. 14, 1849.

Dr. WILLIAM FITHIAN, Danville, Ill.

DEAR DOCTOR:--Your letter of the 9th was received a day or two
ago.  The notes and mortgages you enclosed me were duly received.
I also got the original Blanchard mortgage from Antrim Campbell,
with whom Blanchard had left it for you.  I got a decree of
foreclosure on the whole; but, owing to there being no redemption
on the sale to be under the Blanchard mortgage, the court allowed
Mobley till the first of March to pay the money, before
advertising for sale.  Stuart was empowered by Mobley to appear
for him, and I had to take such decree as he would consent to, or
none at all.  I cast the matter about in my mind and concluded
that as I could not get a decree we would put the accrued
interest at interest, and thereby more than match the fact of
throwing the Blanchard debt back from twelve to six per cent., it
was better to do it.  This is the present state of the case.

I can well enough understand and appreciate your suggestions
about the Land-Office at Danville; but in my present condition, I
can do nothing.

Yours, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SPRINGFIELD, Dec.  15, 1849.

__________ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--On my return from Kentucky I found your letter of the
7th of November, and have delayed answering it till now for the
reason I now briefly state.  From the beginning of our
acquaintance I had felt the greatest kindness for you and had
supposed it was reciprocated on your part.  Last summer, under
circumstances which I mentioned to you, I was painfully
constrained to withhold a recommendation which you desired, and
shortly afterwards I learned, in such a way as to believe it,
that you were indulging in open abuse of me.  Of course my
feelings were wounded.  On receiving your last letter the
question occurred whether you were attempting to use me at the
same time you would injure me, or whether you might not have been
misrepresented to me.  If the former, I ought not to answer you;
if the latter, I ought, and so I have remained in suspense.  I
now enclose you the letter, which you may use if you see fit.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




1850


RESOLUTIONS ON THE DEATH OF JUDGE NATHANIEL POPE.

Circuit and District Court of the U. S. in and for the State and
District of Illinois.  Monday, June 3, 1850.

On the opening of the Court this morning, the Hon. A. Lincoln, a
member of the Bar of this Court, suggested the death of the Hon.
Nathaniel Pope, late a judge of this Court, since the adjournment
of the last term; whereupon, in token of respect for the memory
of the deceased, it is ordered that the Court do now adjourn
until to-morrow morning at ten o'clock.

The Hon. Stephen T. Logan, the Hon. Norman H. Purple, the Hon.
David L. Gregg, the Hon. A. Lincoln, and George W. Meeker, Esq.,
were appointed a Committee to prepare resolutions.

Whereupon, the Hon.  Stephen T. Logan, in behalf of the
Committee, presented the following preamble and resolutions:

Whereas The Hon.  Nathaniel Pope, District Judge of the United
States Court for the District of Illinois, having departed this
life during the last vacation of said Court, and the members of
the Bar of said Court, entertainmg the highest veneration for his
memory, a profound respect for his ability, great experience, and
learning as a judge, and cherishing for his many virtues, public
and private, his earnest simplicity of character and
unostentatious deportment, both in his public and private
relations, the most lively and affectionate recollections, have

Resolved, That, as a manifestation of their deep sense of the
loss which has been sustained in his death, they will wear the
usual badge of mourning during the residue of the term.

Resolved, That the Chairman communicate to the family of the
deceased a copy of these proceedings, with an assurance of our
sincere condolence on account of their heavy bereavement.

Resolved, That the Hon.  A.  Williams, District Attorney of this
Court, be requested in behalf of the meeting to present these
proceedings to the Circuit Court, and respectfully to ask that
they may be entered on the records.

E. N. POWELL, Sec'y.
SAMUEL H. TREAT, Ch'n.




NOTES FOR LAW LECTURE

(fragments)

JULY 1, 1850

DISCOURAGE LITIGATION.  Persuade your neighbors to compromise
whenever you can.  Point out to them how the nominal winner is
often a real loser-in fees, expenses, and waste of time.  As a
peace-maker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good
man.  There will still be business enough.

Never stir up litigation.  A worse man can scarcely be found than
one who does this.  Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who
habitually over-hauls the register of deeds in search of defects
in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his
pocket?  A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession
which should drive such men out of it.

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of
bread and butter involved.  Properly attended to, fuller justice
is done to both lawyer and client.  An exorbitant fee should
never be claimed.  As a general rule never take your whole fee in
advance, nor any more than a small retainer.  When fully paid
beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the
same interest in the case as if something was still in prospect
for you, as well as for your client.  And when you lack interest
in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in
the performance.  Settle the amount of fee and take a note in
advance.  Then you will feel that you are working for something,
and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well.  Never sell
a fee note--at least not before the consideration service is
performed.  It leads to negligence and dishonesty--negligence by
losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund
when you have allowed the consideration to fail.

This idea of a refund or reduction of charges from the lawyer in
a failed case is a new one to me--but not a bad one.




1851


LETTERS TO FAMILY MEMBERS

TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

January 2, 1851

DEAR JOHNSTON:--Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it
best to comply with now.  At the various times when I have helped
you a little you have said to me, "We can get along very well
now"; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty
again.  Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.
What that defect is, I think I know.  You are not lazy, and still
you are an idler.  I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have
done a good whole day's work in any one day.  You do not very
much dislike to work, and still you do not work much merely
because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.
This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it
is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children,
that you should break the habit.  It is more important to them,
because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle
habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after
they are in.

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that
you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will
give you money for it.  Let father and your boys take charge of
your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and
you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any
debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward
for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you
will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor,
either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you
one other dollar.  By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a
month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a
month for your work.  In this I do not mean you shall go off to
St.  Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California,
but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get
close to home in Coles County.  Now, if you will do this, you
will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a
habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.  But, if I
should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as
deep in as ever.  You say you would almost give your place in
heaven for seventy or eighty dollars.  Then you value your place
in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I
make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months'
work.  You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me
the land, and, if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver
possession.  Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how
will you then live without it?  You have always been kind to me,
and I do not mean to be unkind to you.  On the contrary, if you
will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than
eighty times eighty dollars to you.

Affectionately your brother,

A. LINCOLN.




TO C.  HOYT.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan.  11, 1851.

C. HOYT, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Our case is decided against us.  The decision was
announced this morning.  Very sorry, but there is no help.  The
history of the case since it came here is this.  On Friday
morning last, Mr. Joy filed his papers, and entered his motion
for a mandamus, and urged me to take up the motion as soon as
possible.  I already had the points and authority sent me by you
and by Mr. Goodrich, but had not studied them.  I began preparing
as fast as possible.

The evening of the same day I was again urged to take up the
case.  I refused on the ground that I was not ready, and on which
plea I also got off over Saturday.  But on Monday (the 14th) I
had to go into it.  We occupied the whole day, I using the large
part.  I made every point and used every authority sent me by
yourself and by Mr. Goodrich; and in addition all the points I
could think of and all the authorities I could find myself.  When
I closed the argument on my part, a large package was handed me,
which proved to be the plat you sent me.

The court received it of me, but it was not different from the
plat already on the record.  I do not think I could ever have
argued the case better than I did.  I did nothing else, but
prepare to argue and argue this case, from Friday morning till
Monday evening.  Very sorry for the result; but I do not think it
could have been prevented.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, January 12, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:--On the day before yesterday I received a letter
from Harriet, written at Greenup.  She says she has just returned
from your house, and that father is very low and will hardly
recover.  She also says you have written me two letters, and
that, although you do not expect me to come now, you wonder that
I do not write.

I received both your letters, and although I have not answered
them it is not because I have forgotten them, or been
uninterested about them, but because it appeared to me that I
could write nothing which would do any good.  You already know I
desire that neither father nor mother shall be in want of any
comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live; and I
feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to
procure a doctor, or anything else for father in his present
sickness.  My business is such that I could hardly leave home
now, if it was not as it is, that my own wife is sick abed.  (It
is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose is not dangerous.) I
sincerely hope father may recover his health, but at all events,
tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and
good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any
extremity.  He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs
of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his
trust in Him.  Say to him that if we could meet now it is
doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant, but
that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous
meeting with many loved ones gone before, and where the rest of
us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them.

Write to me again when you receive this.

Affectionately,

A. LINCOLN.




PETITION ON BEHALF OF ONE JOSHUA GIPSON
TO THE JUDGE OF THE SANGAMON COUNTY COURT,

MAY 13, 1851.

TO THE HONORABLE, THE JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURT IN AND FOR THE
COUNTY OF SANGAMON AND STATE OF ILLINOIS:

Your Petitioner, Joshua Gipson, respectfully represents that on
or about the 21st day of December, 1850, a judgment was rendered
against your Petitioner for costs, by J.  C.  Spugg, one of the
Justices of the Peace in and for said County of Sangamon, in a
suit wherein your Petitioner was plaintiff and James L.  and C.
B.  Gerard were defendants; that said judgment was not the result
of negligence on the part of your Petitioner; that said judgment,
in his opinion, is unjust and erroneous in this, that the
defendants were at that time and are indebted to this Petitioner
in the full amount of the principal and interest of the note sued
on, the principal being, as affiant remembers and believes,
thirty-one dollars and eighty two cents; and that, as affiant is
informed and believes, the defendants succeeded in the trial of
said cause by proving old claims against your petitioner, in set-
off against said note, which claims had been settled, adjusted
and paid before said note was executed.  Your Petitioner further
states that the reasons of his not being present at said trial,
as he was not, and of its not being in his power to take an
appeal in the ordinary way, as it was not, were that your
Petitioner then resided in Edgar County about one hundred and
twenty miles from where defendants resided; that a very short
time before the suit was commenced your Petitioner was in
Sangamon County for the purpose of collecting debts due him, and
with the rest, the note in question, which note had then been
given more than a year, that your Petitioner then saw the
defendant J. L. Gerard who is the principal in said note, and
solicited payment of the same; that said defendant then made no
pretense that he did not owe the same, but on the contrary
expressly promised that he would come into Springfield, in a very
few days and either pay the money, or give a new note, payable by
the then next Christmas; that your Petitioner accordingly left
said note with said J. C. Spugg, with directions to give
defendant full time to pay the money or give the new note as
above, and if he did neither to sue; and then affiant came home
to Edgar County, not having the slightest suspicion that if suit
should be brought, the defendants would make any defense
whatever; and your Petitioner never did in any way learn that
said suit had been commenced until more than twenty days after it
had been decided against him.  He therefore prays for a writ of
Certiorari.

      HIS
JOSHUA x GIPSON
      MARK




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug.  31, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:
Inclosed is the deed for the land.  We are all well, and have
nothing in the way of news.  We have had no Cholera here for
about two weeks.

Give my love to all, and especially to Mother.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 4, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:

When I came into Charleston day before yesterday I learned that
you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to
Missouri.  I have been thinking of this ever since, and cannot
but think such a notion is utterly foolish.  What can you do in
Missouri better than here?  Is the land richer?  Can you there,
any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work?
Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you?  If
you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right
where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get
along anywhere.  Squirming and crawling about from place to place
can do no good.  You have raised no crop this year, and what you
really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it.
Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never
after own a spot big enough to bury you in.  Half you will get
for the land you spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half
you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be
bought.  Now I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece
of foolery.  I feel that it is so even on your own account, and
particularly on Mother's account.  The eastern forty acres I
intend to keep for Mother while she lives; if you will not
cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least it
will rent for something.  Her dower in the other two forties she
can let you have, and no thanks to me.

Now do not misunderstand this letter.  I do not write it in any
unkindness.  I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face
the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have
idled away all your time.  Your thousand pretenses for not
getting along better are all nonsense; they deceive nobody but
yourself.  Go to work is the only cure for your case.

A word for Mother: Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live
with him.  If I were you I would try it awhile.  If you get tired
of it (as I think you will not) you can return to your own home.
Chapman feels very kindly to you; and I have no doubt he will
make your situation very pleasant.

Sincerely yours,

A. LINCOLN.




Nov.  4, 1851

DEAR MOTHER:

Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him.  If I were
you I would try it awhile.  If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not) you can return to your own home.  Chapman feels
very kindly to you; and I have no doubt he will make your
situation very pleasant.

Sincerely your son,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, November 9, 1851

DEAR BROTHER :-When I wrote you before, I had not received your
letter.  I still think as I did, but if the land can be sold so
that I get three hundred dollars to put to interest for Mother, I
will not object, if she does not.  But before I will make a deed,
the money must be had, or secured beyond all doubt, at ten per
cent.

As to Abram, I do not want him, on my own account; but I
understand he wants to live with me, so that he can go to school
and get a fair start in the world, which I very much wish him to
have.  When I reach home, if I can make it convenient to take, I
will take him, provided there is no mistake between us as to the
object and terms of my taking him.  In haste, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.


SPRINGFIELD, November 25, 1851.

DEAR BROTHER:--Your letter of the 22d is just received.  Your
proposal about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I
want or could claim for myself; but I am not satisfied with it on
Mother's account--I want her to have her living, and I feel that
it is my duty, to some extent, to see that she is not wronged.
She had a right of dower (that is, the use of one-third for life)
in the other two forties; but, it seems, she has already let you
take that, hook and line.  She now has the use of the whole of
the east forty, as long as she lives; and if it be sold, of
course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it
brings, as long as she lives; but you propose to sell it for
three hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave
her two hundred at 8 per cent., making her the enormous sum of 16
dollars a year.  Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in
that way, I am not.  It is true that you are to have that forty
for two hundred dollars, at Mother's death, but you are not to
have it before.  I am confident that land can be made to produce
for Mother at least $30 a year, and I can not, to oblige any
living person, consent that she shall be put on an allowance of
sixteen dollars a year.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




1852


EULOGY ON HENRY CLAY, DELIVERED IN THE STATE
HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JULY 16, 1852.

On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and
oppressed colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the
Atlantic coast of North America, publicly declared their national
independence, and made their appeal to the justice of their cause
and to the God of battles for the maintenance of that
declaration.  That people were few in number and without
resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts.  Within
the first year of that declared independence, and while its
maintenance was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle
between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters
was still waging,--of undistinguished parents and in an obscure
district of one of those colonies Henry Clay was born.  The
infant nation and the infant child began the race of life
together.  For three quarters of a century they have travelled
hand in hand.  They have been companions ever.  The nation has
passed its perils, and it is free, prosperous, and powerful.  The
child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and
is dead.  In all that has concerned the nation the man ever
sympathized; and now the nation mourns the man.

The day after his death one of the public journals, opposed to
him politically, held the following pathetic and beautiful
language, which I adopt partly because such high and exclusive
eulogy, originating with a political friend, might offend good
taste, but chiefly because I could not in any language of my own
so well express my thoughts:

"Alas, who can realize that Henry Clay is dead!  Who can realize
that never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-
chambers of his country to beat back the storms of anarchy which
may threaten, or pour the oil of peace upon the troubled billows
as they rage and menace around!  Who can realize that the
workings of that mighty mind have ceased, that the throbbings of
that gallant heart are stilled, that the mighty sweep of that
graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent
tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is hushed
hushed for ever!  Who can realize that freedom's champion, the
champion of a civilized world and of all tongues and kindreds of
people, has indeed fallen!  Alas, in those dark hours of peril
and dread which our land has experienced, and which she may be
called to experience again, to whom now may her people look up
for that counsel and advice which only wisdom and experience and
patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of
a nation will receive?  Perchance in the whole circle of the
great and gifted of our land there remains but one on whose
shoulders the mighty mantle of the departed statesman may fall;
one who while we now write is doubtless pouring his tears over
the bier of his brother and friend brother, friend, ever, yet in
political sentiment as far apart as party could make them.  Ah,
it is at times like these that the petty distinctions of mere
party disappear.  We see only the great, the grand, the noble
features of the departed statesman; and we do not even beg
permission to bow at his feet and mingle our tears with those who
have ever been his political adherents--we do [not] beg this
permission, we claim it as a right, though we feel it as a
privilege.  Henry Clay belonged to his country--to the world;
mere party cannot claim men like him.  His career has been
national, his fame has filled the earth, his memory will endure
to the last syllable of recorded time.

"Henry Clay is dead!  He breathed his last on yesterday, at
twenty minutes after eleven, in his chamber at Washington.  To
those who followed his lead in public affairs, it more
appropriately belongs to pronounce his eulogy and pay specific
honors to the memory of the illustrious dead.  But all Americans
may show the grief which his death inspires, for his character
and fame are national property.  As on a question of liberty he
knew no North, no South, no East, no West, but only the Union
which held them all in its sacred circle, so now his countrymen
will know no grief that is not as wide-spread as the bounds of
the confederacy.  The career of Henry Clay was a public career.
From his youth he has been devoted to the public service, at a
period, too, in the world's history justly regarded as a
remarkable era in human affairs.  He witnessed in the beginning
the throes of the French Revolution.  He saw the rise and fall of
Napoleon.  He was called upon to legislate for America and direct
her policy when all Europe was the battlefield of contending
dynasties, and when the struggle for supremacy imperilled the
rights of all neutral nations.  His voice spoke war and peace in
the contest with Great Britain.

"When Greece rose against the Turks and struck for liberty, his
name was mingled with the battle-cry of freedom.  When South
America threw off the thraldom of Spain, his speeches were read
at the head of her armies by Bolivar.  His name has been, and
will continue to be, hallowed in two hemispheres, for it is

          "'One of the few, the immortal names
           That were not born to die!'

"To the ardent patriot and profound statesman he added a quality
possessed by few of the gifted on earth.  His eloquence has not
been surpassed.  In the effective power to move the heart of man,
Clay was without an equal, and the heaven-born endowment, in the
spirit of its origin, has been most conspicuously exhibited
against intestine feud.  On at least three important occasions he
has quelled our civil commotions by a power and influence which
belonged to no other statesman of his age and times.  And in our
last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its centre, in
old age he left the shades of private life, and gave the death-
blow to fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years, in
a series of senatorial efforts which in themselves would bring
immortality by challenging comparison with the efforts of any
statesman in any age.  He exorcised the demon which possessed the
body politic, and gave peace to a distracted land.  Alas! the
achievement cost him his life.  He sank day by day to the tomb
his pale but noble brow bound with a triple wreath, put there by
a grateful country.  May his ashes rest in peace, while his
spirit goes to take its station among the great and good men who
preceded him."

While it is customary and proper upon occasions like the present
to give a brief sketch of the life of the deceased, in the case
of Mr. Clay it is less necessary than most others; for his
biography has been written and rewritten and read and reread for
the last twenty-five years; so that, with the exception of a few
of the latest incidents of his life, all is as well known as it
can be.  The short sketch which I give is, therefore, merely to
maintain the connection of this discourse.

Henry Clay was born on the twelfth day of April, 1777, in Hanover
County, Virginia.  Of his father, who died in the fourth or fifth
year of Henry's age, little seems to be known, except that he was
a respectable man and a preacher of the Baptist persuasion.  Mr.
Clay's education to the end of life was comparatively limited.  I
say "to the end of life," because I have understood that from
time to time he added something to his education during the
greater part of his whole life.  Mr. Clay's lack of a more
perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally,
teaches at least one profitable lesson: it teaches that in this
country one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can
acquire sufficient education to get through the world
respectably.  In his twenty-third year Mr. Clay was licensed to
practise law, and emigrated to Lexington, Kentucky.  Here he
commenced and continued the practice till the year 1803, when he
was first elected to the Kentucky Legislature.  By successive
elections he was continued in the Legislature till the latter
part of 1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single
session in the United States Senate.  In 18O7 he was again
elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, and by that
body chosen Speaker.  In 1808 he was re-elected to the same body.
In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a vacancy of two years in the
United States Senate.  In 1811 he was elected to the United
States House of Representatives, and on the first day of taking
his seat in that body he was chosen its Speaker.  In 1813 he was
again elected Speaker.  Early in 1814, being the period of our
last British war, Mr. Clay was sent as commissioner, with others,
to negotiate a treaty of peace, which treaty was concluded in the
latter part of the same year.  On his return from Europe he was
again elected to the lower branch of Congress, and on taking his
seat in December, 1815, was called to his old post-the Speaker's
chair, a position in which he was retained by successive
elections, with one brief intermission, till the inauguration of
John Quincy Adams, in March, 1825.  He was then appointed
Secretary of State, and occupied that important station till the
inauguration of General Jackson, in March, 1829.  After this he
returned to Kentucky, resumed the practice of law, and continued
it till the autumn of 1831, when he was by the Legislature of
Kentucky again placed in the United States Senate.  By a
reelection he was continued in the Senate till he resigned his
seat and retired, in March, 1848.  In December, 1849, he again
took his seat in the Senate, which he again resigned only a few
months before his death.

By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the
beginning of Mr. Clay's official life in 1803 to the end of 1852
is but one year short of half a century, and that the sum of all
the intervals in it will not amount to ten years.  But mere
duration of time in office constitutes the smallest part of Mr.
Clay's history.  Throughout that long period he has constantly
been the most loved and most implicitly followed by friends, and
the most dreaded by opponents, of all living American
politicians.  In all the great questions which have agitated the
country, and particularly in those fearful crises, the Missouri
question, the nullification question, and the late slavery
question, as connected with the newly acquired territory,
involving and endangering the stability of the Union, his has
been the leading and most conspicuous part.  In 1824 he was first
a candidate for the Presidency, and was defeated; and, although
he was successively defeated for the same office in 1832 and in
1844, there has never been a moment since 1824 till after 1848
when a very large portion of the American people did not cling to
him with an enthusiastic hope and purpose of still elevating him
to the Presidency.  With other men, to be defeated was to be
forgotten; but with him defeat was but a trifling incident,
neither changing him nor the world's estimate of him.  Even those
of both political parties who have been preferred to him for the
highest office have run far briefer courses than he, and left him
still shining high in the heavens of the political world.
Jackson, Van Buren, Harnson, Polk, and Taylor all rose after, and
set long before him.  The spell--the long-enduring spell--with
which the souls of men were bound to him is a miracle.  Who can
compass it?  It is probably true he owed his pre-eminence to no
one quality, but to a fortunate combination of several.  He was
surpassingly eloquent; but many eloquent men fail utterly, and
they are not, as a class, generally successful.  His judgment was
excellent; but many men of good judgment live and die unnoticed.
His will was indomitable; but this quality often secures to its
owner nothing better than a character for useless obstinacy.
These, then, were Mr. Clay's leading qualities.  No one of them
is very uncommon; but all together are rarely combined in a
single individual, and this is probably the reason why such men
as Henry Clay are so rare in the world.

Mr. Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of
eloquence do, of types and figures, of antithesis and elegant
arrangement of words and sentences, but rather of that deeply
earnest and impassioned tone and manner which can proceed only
from great sincerity, and a thorough conviction in the speaker of
the justice and importance of his cause.  This it is that truly
touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay
never failed to be moved by it, or ever afterward forgot the
impression.  All his efforts were made for practical effect.  He
never spoke merely to be heard.  He never delivered a Fourth of
July oration, or a eulogy on an occasion like this.  As a
politician or statesman, no one was so habitually careful to
avoid all sectional ground.  Whatever he did he did for the whole
country.  In the construction of his measures, he ever carefully
surveyed every part of the field, and duly weighed every
conflicting interest.  Feeling as he did, and as the truth surely
is, that the world's best hope depended on the continued union of
these States, he was ever jealous of and watchful for whatever
might have the slightest tendency to separate them.

Mr. Clay's predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep
devotion to the cause of human liberty--a strong sympathy with
the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation.
With him this was a primary and all-controlling passion.
Subsidiary to this was the conduct of his whole life.  He loved
his country partly because it was his own country, and mostly
because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its
advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the
advancement, prosperity, and glory of human liberty, human right,
and human nature.  He desired the prosperity of his countrymen,
partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to
the world that free men could be prosperous.

That his views and measures were always the wisest needs not to
be affirmed; nor should it be on this occasion, where so many
thinking differently join in doing honor to his memory.  A free
people in times of peace and quiet when pressed by no common
danger-naturally divide into parties.  At such times the man who
is of neither party is not, cannot be, of any consequence.  Mr.
Clay therefore was of a party.  Taking a prominent part, as he
did, in all the great political questions of his country for the
last half century, the wisdom of his course on many is doubted
and denied by a large portion of his countrymen; and of such it
is not now proper to speak particularly.  But there are many
others, about his course upon which there is little or no
disagreement amongst intelligent and patriotic Americans.  Of
these last are the War of 1812, the Missouri question,
nullification, and the now recent compromise measures.  In 1812
Mr. Clay, though not unknown, was still a young man.  Whether we
should go to war with Great Britain being the question of the
day, a minority opposed the declaration of war by Congress, while
the majority, though apparently inclined to war, had for years
wavered, and hesitated to act decisively.  Meanwhile British
aggressions multiplied, and grew more daring and aggravated.  By
Mr. Clay more than any other man the struggle was brought to a
decision in Congress.  The question, being now fully before
Congress, came up in a variety of ways in rapid succession, on
most of which occasions Mr. Clay spoke.  Adding to all the logic
of which the subject was susceptible that noble inspiration which
came to him as it came to no other, he aroused and nerved and
inspired his friends, and confounded and bore down all
opposition.  Several of his speeches on these occasions were
reported and are still extant, but the best of them all never
was.  During its delivery the reporters forgot their vocation,
dropped their pens, and sat enchanted from near the beginning to
quite the close.  The speech now lives only in the memory of a
few old men, and the enthusiasm with which they cherish their
recollection of it is absolutely astonishing.  The precise
language of this speech we shall never know; but we do know we
cannot help knowing--that with deep pathos it pleaded the cause
of the injured sailor, that it invoked the genius of the
Revolution, that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry,
and of Washington, that it appealed to the interests, the pride,
the honor, and the glory of the nation, that it shamed and
taunted the timidity of friends, that it scorned and scouted and
withered the temerity of domestic foes, that it bearded and
defied the British lion, and, rising and swelling and maddening
in its course, it sounded the onset, till the charge, the shock,
the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all passed in vivid
review before the entranced hearers.

Important and exciting as was the war question of 1812, it never
so alarmed the sagacious statesmen of the country for the safety
of the Republic as afterward did the Missouri question.  This
sprang from that unfortunate source of discord--negro slavery.
When our Federal Constitution was adopted, we owned no territory
beyond the limits or ownership of the States, except the
territory northwest of the River Ohio and east of the
Mississippi.  What has since been formed into the States of
Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits
of or owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina.  As
to the Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even
before the adoption of the Constitution that slavery should never
go there.  On the admission of States into the Union, carved from
the territory we owned before the Constitution, no question, or
at most no considerable question, arose about slavery--those
which were within the limits of or owned by the old States
following respectively the condition of the parent State, and
those within the Northwest Territory following the previously
made provision.  But in 1803 we purchased Louisiana of the
French, and it included with much more what has since been formed
into the State of Missouri.  With regard to it, nothing had been
done to forestall the question of slavery.  When, therefore, in
1819, Missouri, having formed a State constitution without
excluding slavery, and with slavery already actually existing
within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for
admission, almost the entire representation of the non-
slaveholding States objected.  A fearful and angry struggle
instantly followed.  This alarmed thinking men more than any
previous question, because, unlike all the former, it divided the
country by geographical lines.  Other questions had their
opposing partisans in all localities of the country and in almost
every family, so that no division of the Union could follow such
without a separation of friends to quite as great an extent as
that of opponents.  Not so with the Missouri question.  On this a
geographical line could be traced, which in the main would
separate opponents only.  This was the danger.  Mr. Jefferson,
then in retirement, wrote:

"I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any
attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands
and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which
I am not distant.  But this momentous question, like a firebell
in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.  I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union.  It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment.  But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.
A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and
political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of
men, will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it
deeper and deeper.  I can say with conscious truth that there is
not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to
relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way.

"The cession of that kind of property--for it is so misnamed--is
a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that
way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected,
and gradually and with due sacrifices I think it might be.  But
as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold
him nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale, and self-
preservation in the other."

Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once
engaged his whole energies to avert it.  It began, as I have
said, in 1819; and it did not terminate till 1821.  Missouri
would not yield the point; and Congress that is, a majority in
Congress--by repeated votes showed a determination not to admit
the State unless it should yield.  After several failures, and
great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question
that a majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote
rejected, and, as all seemed to think, finally.  A sullen gloom
hung over the nation.  All felt that the rejection of Missouri
was equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, because those
States which already had what Missouri was rejected for refusing
to relinquish would go with Missouri.  All deprecated and
deplored this, but none saw how to avert it.  For the judgment of
members to be convinced of the necessity of yielding was not the
whole difficulty; each had a constituency to meet and to answer
to.  Mr. Clay, though worn down and exhausted, was appealed to by
members to renew his efforts at compromise.  He did so, and by
some judicious modifications of his plan, coupled with laborious
efforts with individual members and his own overmastering
eloquence upon that floor, he finally secured the admission of
the State.  Brightly and captivating as it had previously shown,
it was now perceived that his great eloquence was a mere
embellishment, or at most but a helping hand to his inventive
genius and his devotion to his country in the day of her extreme
peril.

After the settlement of the Missouri question, although a portion
of the American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a
majority even appear generally to have been opposed to him on
questions of ordinary administration, he seems constantly to have
been regarded by all as the man for the crisis.  Accordingly, in
the days of nullification, and more recently in the reappearance
of the slavery question connected with our territory newly
acquired of Mexico, the task of devising a mode of adjustment
seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent--and his
performance of the task in each case was little else than a
literal fulfilment of the public expectation.

Mr. Clay's efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and
afterward in behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their
respective struggles for civil liberty, are among the finest on
record, upon the noblest of all themes, and bear ample
corroboration of what I have said was his ruling passion--a love
of liberty and right, unselfishly, and for their own sakes.

Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently
already, I am unwilling to close without referring more
particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it.  He
ever was on principle and in feeling opposed to slavery.  The
very earliest, and one of the latest, public efforts of his life,
separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in
favor of gradual emancipation.  He did not perceive that on a
question of human right the negroes were to be excepted from the
human race.  And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves.  Cast into
life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he
did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it
could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil even
to the cause of human liberty itself.  His feeling and his
judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of
opinion on the subject.  Those who would shiver into fragments
the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated
Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather
than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all
their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are
receiving, their just execration; and the name and opinions and
influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and
enduringly arrayed against them.  But I would also, if I could,
array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite
extreme--against a few but an increasing number of men who, for
the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to
ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that
"all men are created free and equal."  So far as I have learned,
the first American of any note to do or attempt this was the late
John C.  Calhoun; and if I mistake not, it soon after found its
way into some of the messages of the Governor of South Carolina.
We, however, look for and are not much shocked by political
eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina.  But only last
year I saw with astonishment what purported to be a letter of a
very distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied,
with apparent approbation, into a St.  Louis newspaper,
containing the following to me very unsatisfactory language:

"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not
in mine.  Professional abolitionists have made more use of it
than of any passage in the Bible.  It came, however, as I trace
it, from Saint Voltaire, and was baptized by Thomas Jefferson,
and since almost universally regarded as canonical authority`All
men are born free and equal.'

"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our
generation.  I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of
whom it is true.  But I must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins,
and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw a
proof of this sage aphorism."

This sounds strangely in republican America.  The like was not
heard in the fresher days of the republic.  Let us contrast with
it the language of that truly national man whose life and death
we now commemorate and lament: I quote from a speech of Mr. Clay
delivered before the American Colonization Society in 1827:

" We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this
question.  The society goes into no household to disturb its
domestic tranquillity.  It addresses itself to no slaves to
weaken their obligations of obedience.  It seeks to affect no
man's property.  It neither has the power nor the will to affect
the property of any one contrary to his consent.  The execution
of its scheme would augment instead of diminishing the value of
property left behind.  The society, composed of free men,
conceals itself only with the free.  Collateral consequences we
are not responsible for.  It is not this society which has
produced the great moral revolution which the age exhibits.  What
would they who thus reproach us have done?  If they would
repress all tendencies toward liberty and ultimate emancipation,
they must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of this
society.  They must go back to the era of our liberty and
independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual
joyous return.  They must renew the slave trade, with all its
train of atrocities.  They must suppress the workings of British
philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of the
unfortunate West Indian slave.  They must arrest the career of
South American deliverance from thraldom.  They must blow out the
moral lights around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all
which America presents to a benighted world--pointing the way to
their rights, their liberties, and their happiness.  And when
they have achieved all those purposes their work will be yet
incomplete.  They must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
the light of reason and the love of liberty.  Then, and not till
then, when universal darkness and despair prevail, can you
perpetuate slavery and repress all sympathy and all humane and
benevolent efforts among free men in behalf of the unhappy
portion of our race doomed to bondage."

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816.  Mr.
Clay, though not its projector, was one of its earliest members;
and he died, as for many preceding years he had been, its
president.  It was one of the most cherished objects of his
direct care and consideration, and the association of his name
with it has probably been its very greatest collateral support.
He considered it no demerit in the society that it tended to
relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the
free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation.  In the same speech from which we have quoted he
says:

" There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her
children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless
hand of fraud and violence.  Transplanted in a foreign land, they
will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion,
civilization, law, and liberty.  May it not be one of the great
designs of the Ruler of the universe, whose ways are often
inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus to transform an
original crime into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate
portion of the globe?"

This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the
African race and African continent was made twenty-five years
ago.  Every succeeding year has added strength to the hope of its
realization.  May it indeed be realized.  Pharaoh's country was
cursed with plagues, and his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for
striving to retain a captive people who had already served them
more than four hundred years.  May like disasters never befall
us!  If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and
coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed
in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and
at the same time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost
fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this too so
gradually that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered
by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.  And if
to such a consummation the efforts of Mr. Clay shall have
contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished, and none of
his labors will have been more valuable to his country and his
kind.

But Henry Clay is dead.  His long and eventful life is closed.
Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been
quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay?
Such a man the times have demanded, and such in the providence of
God was given us.  But he is gone.  Let us strive to deserve, as
far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence,
trusting that in future national emergencies He will not fail to
provide us the instruments of safety and security.

NOTE.  We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy
of Major Wm. H. Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of
the Illinois State Journal.




CHALLENGED VOTERS

OPINION ON THE ILLINOIS ELECTION LAW.

SPRINGFIELD, November 1, 1852

A leading article in the Daily Register of this morning has
induced some of our friends to request our opinion on the
election laws as applicable to challenged voters.  We have
examined the present constitution of the State, the election law
of 1849, and the unrepealed parts of the election law in the
revised code of 1845; and we are of the opinion that any person
taking the oath prescribed in the act of 1849 is entitled to vote
unless counter-proof be made satisfactory to a majority of the
judges that such oath is untrue; and that for the purpose of
obtaining such counter-proof, the proposed voter may be asked
questions in the way of cross-examination, and other independent
testimony may be received.  We base our opinion as to receiving
counter-proof upon the unrepealed Section nineteen of the
election law in the revised code.

A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EDWARDS
S. T. LOGAN.
S. H. TREAT




1853


LEGAL OFFICE WORK

TO JOSHUA R.  STANFORD.

PEKIN, MAY 12, 1853

Mr. JOSHUA R. STANFORD.

SIR:--I hope the subject-matter of this letter will appear a
sufficient apology to you for the liberty I, a total stranger,
take in addressing you.  The persons here holding two lots under
a conveyance made by you, as the attorney of Daniel M.  Baily,
now nearly twenty-two years ago, are in great danger of losing
the lots, and very much, perhaps all, is to depend on the
testimony you give as to whether you did or did not account to
Baily for the proceeds received by you on this sale of the lots.
I, therefore, as one of the counsel, beg of you to fully refresh
your recollection by any means in your power before the time you
may be called on to testify.  If persons should come about you,
and show a disposition to pump you on the subject, it may be no
more than prudent to remember that it may be possible they design
to misrepresent you and embarrass the real testimony you may
ultimately give.  It may be six months or a year before you are
called on to testify.

Respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




1854



TO O. L. DAVIS.

SPRINGFIELD, June 22, 1854.

O. L. DAVIS, ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--You, no doubt, remember the enclosed memorandum being
handed me in your office.  I have just made the desired search,
and find that no such deed has ever been here.  Campbell, the
auditor, says that if it were here, it would be in his office,
and that he has hunted for it a dozen times, and could never find
it.  He says that one time and another, he has heard much about
the matter, that it was not a deed for Right of Way, but a deed,
outright, for Depot-ground--at least, a sale for Depot-ground,
and there may never have been a deed.  He says, if there is a
deed, it is most probable General Alexander, of Paris, has it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




NEBRASKA MEASURE

TO J. M. PALMER

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, Sept.  7, 1854.

HON. J. M. PALMER.

DEAR SIR:--You know how anxious I am that this Nebraska measure
shall be rebuked and condemned everywhere.  Of course I hope
something from your position; yet I do not expect you to do
anything which may be wrong in your own judgment; nor would I
have you do anything personally injurious to yourself.  You are,
and always have been, honestly and sincerely a Democrat; and I
know how painful it must be to an honest, sincere man to be urged
by his party to the support of a measure which in his conscience
he believes to be wrong.  You have had a severe struggle with
yourself, and you have determined not to swallow the wrong.  Is
it not just to yourself that you should, in a few public
speeches, state your reasons, and thus justify yourself?  I wish
you would; and yet I say, don't do it, if you think it will
injure you.  You may have given your word to vote for Major
Harris; and if so, of course you will stick to it.  But allow me
to suggest that you should avoid speaking of this; for it
probably would induce some of your friends in like manner to cast
their votes.  You understand.  And now let me beg your pardon for
obtruding this letter upon you, to whom I have ever been opposed
in politics.  Had your party omitted to make Nebraska a test of
party fidelity, you probably would have been the Democratic
candidate for Congress in the district.  You deserved it, and I
believe it would have been given you.  In that case I should have
been quite happy that Nebraska was to be rebuked at all events.
I still should have voted for the Whig candidate; but I should
have made no speeches, written no letters; and you would have
been elected by at least a thousand majority.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. B. MOREAU.

SPRINGFIELD, September 7, 1854

A. B. MOREAU, ESQ.

SIR:--Stranger though I am, personally, being a brother in the
faith, I venture to write you.  Yates can not come to your court
next week.  He is obliged to be at Pike court where he has a
case, with a fee of five hundred dollars, two hundred dollars
already paid.  To neglect it would be unjust to himself, and
dishonest to his client.  Harris will be with you, head up and
tail up, for Nebraska.  You must have some one to make an anti-
Nebraska speech.  Palmer is the best, if you can get him, I
think.  Jo.  Gillespie, if you can not get Palmer, and somebody
anyhow, if you can get neither.  But press Palmer hard.  It is in
his Senatorial district, I believe.

Yours etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS--PEORIA SPEECH

SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS,
IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS,

OCTOBER 16, 1854.

I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience
to meet me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock.  It is now
several minutes past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over
three hours.  If you hear me at all, I wish you to hear me
through.  It will take me as long as it has taken him.  That will
carry us beyond eight o'clock at night.  Now, every one of you
who can remain that long can just as well get his supper, meet me
at seven, and remain an hour or two later.  The Judge has already
informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me.  I doubt
not but you have been a little surprised to learn that I have
consented to give one of his high reputation and known ability
this advantage of me.  Indeed, my consenting to it, though
reluctant, was not wholly unselfish, for I suspected, if it were
understood that the Judge was entirely done, you Democrats would
leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I felt
confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.

The audience signified their assent to the arrangement, and
adjourned to seven o'clock P.M., at which time they reassembled,
and Mr. Lincoln spoke substantially as follows:

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its
restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say.
As I desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my
remarks will not be specifically an answer to Judge Douglas; yet,
as I proceed, the main points he has presented will arise, and
will receive such respectful attention as I may be able to give
them.  I wish further to say that I do not propose to question
the patriotism or to assail the motives of any man or class of
men, but rather to confine myself strictly to the naked merits of
the question.  I also wish to be no less than national in all the
positions I may take, and whenever I take ground which others
have thought, or may think, narrow, sectional, and dangerous to
the Union, I hope to give a reason which will appear sufficient,
at least to some, why I think differently.

And as this subject is no other than part and parcel of the
larger general question of domestic slavery, I wish to make and
to keep the distinction between the existing institution and the
extension of it so broad and so clear that no honest man can
misunderstand me, and no dishonest one successfully misrepresent
me.

In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise
is, a short history of the preceding kindred subjects will
perhaps be proper.

When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the
country to which this compromise applies.  Indeed, strictly
speaking, the Confederacy then owned no country at all; the
States respectively owned the country within their limits, and
some of them owned territory beyond their strict State limits.
Virginia thus owned the Northwestern Territory--the country out
of which the principal part of Ohio, all Indiana, all Illinois,
all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been formed.  She also
owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since been formed
into the State of Kentucky.  North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned,
in separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama.
Connecticut, I think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio,
being the same where they now send Giddings to Congress and beat
all creation in making cheese.

These territories, together with the States themselves,
constitute all the country over which the Confederacy then
claimed any sort of jurisdiction.  We were then living under the
Articles of Confederation, which were superseded by the
Constitution several years afterward.  The question of ceding the
territories to the General Government was set on foot.  Mr.
Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in
Congress; afterward, twice President; who was, is, and perhaps
will continue to be, the most distinguished politician of our
history; a Virginian by birth and continued residence, and withal
a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of taking that occasion to
prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern Territory.  He
prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views, and to
cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein a
condition of the deed.  (Jefferson got only an understanding, not
a condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the
cession with the condition; and the first ordinance (which the
acts of Congress were then called) for the government of the
Territory provided that slavery should never be permitted
therein.  This is the famed "Ordinance of '87," so often spoken
of.

Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last
scrap of this Territory came into the Union as the State of
Wisconsin, all parties acted in quiet obedience to this
ordinance.  It is now what Jefferson foresaw and intended--the
happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people,
and no slave among them.

Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the
policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated.  Thus,
away back to the Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of
the Revolution, the State of Virginia and the national Congress
put that policy into practice.  Thus, through more than sixty of
the best years of the republic, did that policy steadily work to
its great and beneficent end.  And thus, in those five States,
and in five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before
us the rich fruits of this policy.

But now new light breaks upon us.  Now Congress declares this
ought never to have been, and the like of it must never be again.
The sacred right of self-government is grossly violated by it.
We even find some men who drew their first breath--and every
other breath of their lives--under this very restriction, now
live in dread of absolute suffocation if they should be
restricted in the "sacred right" of taking slaves to Nebraska.
That perfect liberty they sigh for--the liberty of making slaves
of other people, Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers
never thought of, they never thought of themselves, a year ago.
How fortunate for them they did not sooner become sensible of
their great misery! Oh, how difficult it is to treat with respect
such assaults upon all we have ever really held sacred!

But to return to history.  In 1803 we purchased what was then
called Louisiana, of France.  It included the present States of
Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa; also the Territory of
Minnesota, and the present bone of contention, Kansas and
Nebraska.  Slavery already existed among the French at New
Orleans, and to some extent at St.  Louis.  In 1812 Louisiana
came into the Union as a slave State, without controversy.  In
1818 or '19, Missouri showed signs of a wish to come in with
slavery.  This was resisted by Northern members of Congress; and
thus began the first great slavery agitation in the nation.  This
controversy lasted several months, and became very angry and
exciting--the House of Representatives voting steadily for the
prohibition of slavery in Missouri, and the Senate voting as
steadily against it.  Threats of the breaking up of the Union
were freely made, and the ablest public men of the day became
seriously alarmed.  At length a compromise was made, in which, as
in all compromises, both sides yielded something.  It was a law,
passed on the 6th of March, 1820, providing that Missouri might
come into the Union with slavery, but that in all the remaining
part of the territory purchased of France which lies north of
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, slavery
should never be permitted.  This provision of law is the
"Missouri Compromise."  In excluding slavery north of the line,
the same language is employed as in the Ordinance of 1787.  It
directly applied to Iowa, Minnesota, and to the present bone of
contention, Kansas and Nebraska.  Whether there should or should
not be slavery south of that line, nothing was said in the law.
But Arkansas constituted the principal remaining part south of
the line; and it has since been admitted as a slave State,
without serious controversy.  More recently, Iowa, north of the
line, came in as a free State without controversy.  Still later,
Minnesota, north of the line, had a territorial organization
without controversy.  Texas, principally south of the line, and
west of Arkansas, though originally within the purchase from
France, had, in 1819, been traded off to Spain in our treaty for
the acquisition of Florida.  It had thus become a part of Mexico.
Mexico revolutionized and became independent of Spain.  American
citizens began settling rapidly with their slaves in the southern
part of Texas.  Soon they revolutionized against Mexico, and
established an independent government of their own, adopting a
constitution with slavery, strongly resembling the constitutions
of our slave States.  By still another rapid move, Texas,
claiming a boundary much farther west than when we parted with
her in 1819, was brought back to the United States, and admitted
into the Union as a slave State.  Then there was little or no
settlement in the northern part of Texas, a considerable portion
of which lay north of the Missouri line; and in the resolutions
admitting her into the Union, the Missouri restriction was
expressly extended westward across her territory.  This was in
1845, only nine years ago.

Thus originated the Missouri Compromise; and thus has it been
respected down to 1845.  And even four years later, in 1849, our
distinguished Senator, in a public address, held the following
language in relation to it:

"The Missouri Compromise has been in practical operation for
about a quarter of a century, and has received the sanction and
approbation of men of all parties in every section of the Union.
It has allayed all sectional jealousies and irritations growing
out of this vexed question, and harmonized and tranquillized the
whole country.  It has given to Henry Clay, as its prominent
champion, the proud sobriquet of the "Great Pacificator," and by
that title, and for that service, his political friends had
repeatedly appealed to the people to rally under his standard as
a Presidential candidate, as the man who had exhibited the
patriotism and power to suppress an unholy and treasonable
agitation, and preserve the Union.  He was not aware that any man
or any party, from any section of the Union, had ever urged as an
objection to Mr. Clay that he was the great champion of the
Missouri Compromise.  On the contrary, the effort was made by the
opponents of Mr. Clay to prove that he was not entitled to the
exclusive merit of that great patriotic measure, and that the
honor was equally due to others, as well as to him, for securing
its adoption; that it had its origin in the hearts of all
patriotic men, who desired to preserve and perpetuate the
blessings of our glorious Union--an origin akin to that of the
Constitution of the United States, conceived in the same spirit
of fraternal affection, and calculated to remove forever the only
danger which seemed to threaten, at some distant day, to sever
the social bond of union.  All the evidences of public opinion at
that day seemed to indicate that this compromise had been
canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing
which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb."

I do not read this extract to involve Judge Douglas in an
inconsistency.  If he afterward thought he had been wrong, it was
right for him to change.  I bring this forward merely to show the
high estimate placed on the Missouri Compromise by all parties up
to so late as the year 1849.

But going back a little in point of time.  Our war with Mexico
broke out in 1846.  When Congress was about adjourning that
session, President Polk asked them to place two millions of
dollars under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if
found practicable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace
with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory.  A bill
was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing
swimmingly in the House of Representatives, when a member by the
name of David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an
amendment, "Provided, that in any territory thus acquired there
never shall be slavery."

This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso.  It created a
great flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill,
and the bill passed with it through the House.  The Senate,
however, adjourned without final action on it, and so both
appropriation and proviso were lost for the time.  The war
continued, and at the next session the President renewed his
request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think, to
three millions.  Again came the proviso, and defeated the
measure.  Congress adjourned again, and the war went on.  In
December, 1847, the new Congress assembled.  I was in the lower
House that term.  The Wilmot Proviso, or the principle of it, was
constantly coming up in some shape or other, and I think I may
venture to say I voted for it at least forty times during the
short time I was there.  The Senate, however, held it in check,
and it never became a law.  In the spring of 1848 a treaty of
peace was made with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of
her country which now constitutes the Territories of New Mexico
and Utah and the present State of California.  By this treaty the
Wilmot Proviso was defeated, in so far as it was intended to be a
condition of the acquisition of territory.  Its friends, however,
were still determined to find some way to restrain slavery from
getting into the new country.  This new acquisition lay directly
west of our old purchase from France, and extended west to the
Pacific Ocean, and was so situated that if the Missouri line
should be extended straight west, the new country would be
divided by such extended line, leaving some north and some south
of it.  On Judge Douglas's motion, a bill, or provision of a
bill, passed the Senate to so extend the Missouri line.  The
proviso men in the House, including myself, voted it down,
because, by implication, it gave up the southern part to slavery,
while we were bent on having it all free.

In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California.
This attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that
on, or soon after, the meeting of the new Congress in December,
1849, she already had a population of nearly a hundred thousand,
had called a convention, formed a State constitution excluding
slavery, and was knocking for admission into the Union.  The
proviso men, of course, were for letting her in, but the Senate,
always true to the other side, would not consent to her
admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union
because she would not let slavery into her borders.  Under all
the circumstances, perhaps, this was not wrong.  There were other
points of dispute connected with the general question of Slavery,
which equally needed adjustment.  The South clamored for a more
efficient fugitive slave law.  The North clamored for the
abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District of
Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of
the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of
negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to
Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been
openly maintained for fifty years.  Utah and New Mexico needed
territorial governments; and whether slavery should or should not
be prohibited within them was another question.  The indefinite
western boundary of Texas was to be settled.  She was a slave
State, and consequently the farther west the slavery men could
push her boundary, the more slave country they secured; and the
farther east the slavery opponents could thrust the boundary
back, the less slave ground was secured.  Thus this was just as
clearly a slavery question as any of the others.

These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up,
perhaps wisely, to make them help adjust one another.  The Union
now, as in 1820, was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the
Union rightfully inclined men to yield somewhat in points where
nothing else could have so inclined them.  A compromise was
finally effected.  The South got their new fugitive slave law,
and the North got California, (by far the best part of our
acquisition from Mexico) as a free State.  The South got a
provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may
come in with or without slavery as they may then choose; and the
North got the slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia..
The North got the western boundary of Texas thrown farther back
eastward than the South desired; but, in turn, they gave Texas
ten millions of dollars with which to pay her old debts.  This is
the Compromise of 1850.

Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great
political parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and
adopted resolutions indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a
"finality," a final settlement, so far as these parties could
make it so, of all slavery agitation.  Previous to this, in 1851,
the Illinois Legislature had indorsed it.

During this long period of time, Nebraska (the Nebraska
Territory, not the State of as we know it now) had remained
substantially an uninhabited country, but now emigration to and
settlement within it began to take place.  It is about one third
as large as the present United States, and its importance, so
long overlooked, begins to come into view.  The restriction of
slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to it--in
fact was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for
it.  In 1853, a bill to give it a territorial government passed
the House of Representatives, and, in the hands of Judge Douglas,
failed of passing only for want of time.  This bill contained no
repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  Indeed, when it was assailed
because it did not contain such repeal, Judge Douglas defended it
in its existing form.  On January 4, 1854, Judge Douglas
introduces a new bill to give Nebraska territorial government.
He accompanies this bill with a report, in which last he
expressly recommends that the Missouri Compromise shall neither
be affirmed nor repealed.  Before long the bill is so modified as
to make two territories instead of one, calling the southern one
Kansas.

Also, about a month after the introduction of the bill, on the
Judge's own motion it is so amended as to declare the Missouri
Compromise inoperative and void; and, substantially, that the
people who go and settle there may establish slavery, or exclude
it, as they may see fit.  In this shape the bill passed both
branches of Congress and became a law.

This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  The foregoing
history may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I
am sure it is sufficiently so for all the use I shall attempt to
make of it, and in it we have before us the chief material
enabling us to judge correctly whether the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is right or wrong.  I think, and shall try to show,
that it is wrong--wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery
into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle,
allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where
men can be found inclined to take it.

This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real
zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.  I hate it
because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.  I hate it
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence
in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with
plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends
of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it
forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the
very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right
principle of action but self-interest.

Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice
against the Southern people.  They are just what we would be in
their situation.  If slavery did not now exist among them, they
would not introduce it.  If it did now exist among us, we should
not instantly give it up.  This I believe of the masses North and
South.  Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would
not hold slaves under any circumstances, and others who would
gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence.  We
know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and
become tip-top abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South
and become most cruel slave masters.

When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible
for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact.
When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very
difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can
understand and appreciate the saying.  I surely will not blame
them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.  If
all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as
to the existing institution.  My first impulse would be to free
all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native
land.  But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever
of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the
long run, its sudden execution is impossible.  If they were all
landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten
days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough
to carry them there in many times ten days.  What then?  Free
them all, and keep them among us as underlings?  Is it quite
certain that this betters their condition?  I think I would not
hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear
enough for me to denounce people upon.  What next?  Free them,
and make them politically and socially our equals?  My own
feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know
that those of the great mass of whites will not.  Whether this
feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole
question, if indeed it is any part of it.  A universal feeling,
whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.  We
cannot then make them equals.  It does seem to me that systems of
gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in
this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge
them--not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them
any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives which
should not in its stringency be more likely to carry a free man
into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an
innocent one.

But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for
permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it
would for reviving the African slave trade by law.  The law which
forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so
long forbidden the taking of them into Nebraska, can hardy be
distinguished on any moral principle, and the repeal of the
former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter.

The arguments by which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is
sought to be justified are these:

First.  That the Nebraska country needed a territorial
government.

Second.  That in various ways the public had repudiated that
compromise and demanded the repeal, and therefore should not now
complain of it.

 And, lastly, That the repeal establishes a principle which is
intrinsically right.

I will attempt an answer to each of them in its turn.

First, then: If that country was in need of a territorial
organization, could it not have had it as well without as with a
repeal?  Iowa and Minnesota, to both of which the Missouri
restriction applied,
had, without its repeal, each in succession, territorial
organizations.  And even the year before, a bill for Nebraska
itself was within an ace of passing without the repealing clause,
and this in the hands of the same men who are now the champions
of repeal.  Why no necessity then for repeal?  But still later,
when this very bill was first brought in, it contained no repeal.
But, say they, because the people had demanded, or rather
commanded, the repeal, the repeal was to accompany the
organization whenever that should occur.

Now, I deny that the public ever demanded any such thing--ever
repudiated the Missouri Compromise, ever commanded its repeal.  I
deny it, and call for the proof.  It is not contended, I believe,
that any such command has ever been given in express terms.  It
is only said that it was done in principle.  The support of the
Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned to prove that the
Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and the second
is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country
acquired from Mexico.  These are near enough alike to be treated
together.  The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the
whole new acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a
division of it, by which one half was to be given up to those
chances.  Now, whether this was a repudiation of the Missouri
line in principle depends upon whether the Missouri law contained
any principle requiring the line to be extended over the country
acquired from Mexico.  I contend it did not.  I insist that it
contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense,
specific.  That its terms limit it to the country purchased from
France is undenied and undeniable.  It could have no principle
beyond the intention of those who made it.  They did not intend
to extend the line to country which they did not own.  If they
intended to extend it in the event of acquiring additional
territory, why did they not say so?  It was just as easy to say
that "in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now
own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery," as
to say what they did say; and they would have said it if they had
meant it.  An intention to extend the law is not only not
mentioned in the law, but is not mentioned in any contemporaneous
history.  Both the law itself, and the history of the times, are
a blank as to any principle of extension; and by neither the
known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor by common
sense, can any such principle be inferred.

Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law--
showing that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that
the line was not intended as a universal dividing line between
Free and Slave territory, present and prospective, north of which
slavery could never go--is the fact that by that very law
Missouri came in as a slave State, north of the line.  If that
law contained any prospective principle, the whole law must be
looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was.  And by
this rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they
got one slave State north of the line at the inception of the
law, they have the right to have another given them north of it
occasionally, now and then, in the indefinite westward extension
of the line.  This demonstrates the absurdity of attempting to
deduce a prospective principle from the Missouri Compromise line.

When we voted for the Wilmot Proviso we were voting to keep
slavery out of the whole Mexican acquisition, and little did we
think we were thereby voting to let it into Nebraska lying
several hundred miles distant.  When we voted against extending
the Missouri line, little did we think we were voting to destroy
the old line, then of near thirty years' standing.

To argue that we thus repudiated the Missouri Compromise is no
less absurd than it would be to argue that because we have so far
forborne to acquire Cuba, we have thereby, in principle,
repudiated our former acquisitions and determined to throw them
out of the Union.  No less absurd than it would be to say that
because I may have refused to build an addition to my house, I
thereby have decided to destroy the existing house! And if I
catch you setting fire to my house, you will turn upon me and say
I instructed you to do it!

The most conclusive argument, however, that while for the Wilmot
Proviso, and while voting against the extension of the Missouri
line, we never thought of disturbing the original Missouri
Compromise, is found in the fact that there was then, and still
is, an unorganized tract of fine country, nearly as large as the
State of Missouri, lying immediately west of Arkansas and south
of the Missouri Compromise line, and that we never attempted to
prohibit slavery as to it.  I wish particular attention to this.
It adjoins the original Missouri Compromise line by its northern
boundary, and consequently is part of the country into which by
implication slavery was permitted to go by that compromise.
There it has lain open ever s, and there it still lies, and yet
no effort has been made at any time to wrest it from the South.
In all our struggles to prohibit slavery within our Mexican
acquisitions, we never so much as lifted a finger to prohibit it
as to this tract.  Is not this entirely conclusive that at all
times we have held the Missouri Compromise as a sacred thing,
even when against ourselves as well as when for us?

Senator Douglas sometimes says the Missouri line itself was in
principle only an extension of the line of the Ordinance of '87--
that is to say, an extension of the Ohio River.  I think this is
weak enough on its face.  I will remark, however, that, as a
glance at the map will show, the Missouri line is a long way
farther south than the Ohio, and that if our Senator in proposing
his extension had stuck to the principle of jogging southward,
perhaps it might not have been voted down so readily.

But next it is said that the compromises of '50, and the
ratification of them by both political parties in '52,
established a new principle which required the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.  This again I deny.  I deny it, and demand
the proof.  I have already stated fully what the compromises of
'50 are.  That particular part of those measures from which the
virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to be
inferred (for it is admitted they contain nothing about it in
express terms) is the provision in the Utah and New Mexico laws
which permits them when they seek admission into the Union as
States to come in with or without slavery, as they shall then see
fit.  Now I insist this provision was made for Utah and New
Mexico, and for no other place whatever.  It had no more direct
reference to Nebraska than it had to the territories of the moon.
But, say they, it had reference to Nebraska in principle.  Let us
see.  The North consented to this provision, not because they
considered it right in itself, but because they were compensated-
-paid for it.

They at the same time got California into the Union as a free
State.  This was far the best part of all they had struggled for
by the Wilmot Proviso.  They also got the area of slavery
somewhat narrowed in the settlement of the boundary of Texas.
Also they got the slave trade abolished in the District of
Columbia.

For all these desirable objects the North could afford to yield
something; and they did yield to the South the Utah and New
Mexico provision.  I do not mean that the whole North, or even a
majority, yielded, when the law passed; but enough yielded--when
added to the vote of the South, to carry the measure.  Nor can it
be pretended that the principle of this arrangement requires us
to permit the same provision to be applied to Nebraska, without
any equivalent at all.  Give us another free State; press the
boundary of Texas still farther back; give us another step toward
the destruction of slavery in the District, and you present us a
similar case.  But ask us not to repeat, for nothing, what you
paid for in the first instance.  If you wish the thing again, pay
again.  That is the principle of the compromises of '50, if,
indeed, they had any principles beyond their specific terms--it
was the system of equivalents.

Again, if Congress, at that time, intended that all future
Territories should, when admitted as States, come in with or
without slavery at their own option, why did it not say so?
With such a universal provision, all know the bills could not
have passed.  Did they, then--could they-establish a principle
contrary to their own intention?  Still further, if they intended
to establish the principle that, whenever Congress had control,
it should be left to the people to do as they thought fit with
slavery, why did they not authorize the people of the District of
Columbia, at their option, to abolish slavery within their
limits?

I personally know that this has not been left undone because it
was unthought of.  It was frequently spoken of by members of
Congress, and by citizens of Washington, six years ago; and I
heard no one express a doubt that a system of gradual
emancipation, with compensation to owners, would meet the
approbation of a large majority of the white people of the
District.  But without the action of Congress they could say
nothing; and Congress said "No."  In the measures of 1850,
Congress had the subject of slavery in the District expressly on
hand.  If they were then establishing the principle of allowing
the people to do as they please with slavery, why did they not
apply the principle to that people?

Again it is claimed that by the resolutions of the Illinois
Legislature, passed in 1851, the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise was demanded.  This I deny also.  Whatever may be
worked out by a criticism of the language of those resolutions,
the people have never understood them as being any more than an
indorsement of the compromises of 1850, and a release of our
senators from voting for the Wilmot Proviso.  The whole people
are living witnesses that this only was their view.  Finally, it
is asked, "If we did not mean to apply the Utah and New Mexico
provision to all future territories, what did we mean when we, in
1852, indorsed the compromises of 1850?"

For myself I can answer this question most easily.  I meant not
to ask a repeal or modification of the Fugitive Slave law.  I
meant not to ask for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia.  I meant not to resist the admission of Utah and New
Mexico, even should they ask to come in as slave States.  I meant
nothing about additional Territories, because, as I understood,
we then had no Territory whose character as to slavery was not
already settled.  As to Nebraska, I regarded its character as
being fixed by the Missouri Compromise for thirty years--as
unalterably fixed as that of my own home in Illinois.  As to new
acquisitions, I said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof."  When we make new acquisitions, we will, as heretofore,
try to manage them somehow.  That is my answer; that is what I
meant and said; and I appeal to the people to say each for
himself whether that is not also the universal meaning of the
free States.

And now, in turn, let me ask a few questions.  If, by any or all
these matters, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was
commanded, why was not the command sooner obeyed?  Why was the
repeal omitted in the Nebraska Bill of 1853?  Why was it omitted
in the original bill of 1854?  Why in the accompanying report was
such a repeal characterized as a departure from the course
pursued in 1850 and its continued omission recommended?

I am aware Judge Douglas now argues that the subsequent express
repeal is no substantial alteration of the bill.  This argument
seems wonderful to me.  It is as if one should argue that white
and black are not different.  He admits, however, that there is a
literal change in the bill, and that he made the change in
deference to other senators who would not support the bill
without.  This proves that those other senators thought the
change a substantial one, and that the Judge thought their
opinions worth deferring to.  His own opinions, therefore, seem
not to rest on a very firm basis, even in his own mind; and I
suppose the world believes, and will continue to believe, that
precisely on the substance of that change this whole agitation
has arisen.

I conclude, then, that the public never demanded the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise

I now come to consider whether the appeal with its avowed
principles, is intrinsically right.  I insist that it is not.
Take the particular case.  A controversy had arisen between the
advocates and opponents of slavery, in relation to its
establishment within the country we had purchased of France.  The
southern, and then best, part of the purchase was already in as a
slave State.  The controversy was settled by also letting
Missouri in as a slave State; but with the agreement that within
all the remaining part of the purchase, north of a certain line,
there should never be slavery.  As to what was to be done with
the remaining part, south of the line, nothing was said; but
perhaps the fair implication was, it should come in with slavery
if it should so choose.  The southern part, except a portion
heretofore mentioned, afterward did come in with slavery, as the
State of Arkansas.  All these many years, since 1820, the
northern part had remained a wilderness.  At length settlements
began in it also.  In due course Iowa came in as a free State,
and Minnesota was given a territorial government, without
removing the slavery restriction.  Finally, the sole remaining
part north of the line--Kansas and Nebraska--was to be organized;
and it is proposed, and carried, to blot out the old dividing
line of thirty-four years' standing, and to open the whole of
that country to the introduction of slavery.  Now this, to my
mind, is manifestly unjust.  After an angry and dangerous
controversy, the parties made friends by dividing the bone of
contention.  The one party first appropriates her own share,
beyond all power to be disturbed in the possession of it, and
then seizes the share of the other party.  It is as if two
starving men had divided their only loaf, the one had hastily
swallowed his half, and then grabbed the other's half just as he
was putting it to his mouth.

Let me here drop the main argument, to notice what I consider
rather an inferior matter.  It is argued that slavery will not go
to Kansas and Nebraska, in any event.  This is a palliation, a
lullaby.  I have some hope that it will not; but let us not be
too confident.  As to climate, a glance at the map shows that
there are five slave States--Delaware, Maryland, Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri, and also the District of Columbia, all
north of the Missouri Compromise line.  The census returns of
1850 show that within these there are eight hundred and sixty-
seven thousand two hundred and seventy-six slaves, being more
than one fourth of all the slaves in the nation.

It is not climate, then, that will keep slavery out of these
Territories.  Is there anything in the peculiar nature of the
country?  Missouri adjoins these Territories by her entire
western boundary, and slavery is already within every one of her
western counties.  I have even heard it said that there are more
slaves in proportion to whites in the northwestern county of
Missouri than within any other county in the State.  Slavery
pressed entirely up to the old western boundary of the State, and
when rather recently a part of that boundary at the northwest was
moved out a little farther west, slavery followed on quite up to
the new line.  Now, when the restriction is removed, what is to
prevent it from going still farther?  Climate will not, no
peculiarity of the country will, nothing in nature will.  Will
the disposition of the people prevent it?  Those nearest the
scene are all in favor of the extension.  The Yankees who are
opposed to it may be most flumerous; but, in military phrase, the
battlefield is too far from their base of operations.

But it is said there now is no law in Nebraska on the subject of
slavery, and that, in such case, taking a slave there operates
his freedom.  That is good book-law, but it is not the rule of
actual practice.  Wherever slavery is it has been first
introduced without law.  The oldest laws we find concerning it
are not laws introducing it, but regulating it as an already
existing thing.  A white man takes his slave to Nebraska now.
Who will inform the negro that he is free?  Who will take him
before court to test the question of his freedom?  In ignorance
of his legal emancipation he is kept chopping, splitting, and
plowing.  Others are brought, and move on in the same track.  At
last, if ever the time for voting comes on the question of
slavery the institution already, in fact, exists in the country,
and cannot well be removed.  The fact of its presence, and the
difficulty of its removal, will carry the vote in its favor.
Keep it out until a vote is taken, and a vote in favor of it
cannot be got in any population of forty thousand on earth, who
have been drawn together by the ordinary motives of emigration
and settlement.  To get slaves into the Territory simultaneously
with the whites in the incipient stages of settlement is the
precise stake played for and won in this Nebraska measure.

The question is asked us: "If slaves will go in notwithstanding
the general principle of law liberates them, why would they not
equally go in against positive statute law--go in, even if the
Missouri restriction were maintained!"  I answer, because it takes
a much bolder man to venture in with his property in the latter
case than in the former; because the positive Congressional
enactment is known to and respected by all, or nearly all,
whereas the negative principle that no law is free law is not
much known except among lawyers.  We have some experience of this
practical difference.  In spite of the Ordinance of  '87, a few
negroes were brought into Illinois, and held in a state of quasi-
slavery, not enough, however, to carry a vote of the people in
favor of the institution when they came to form a constitution.
But into the adjoining Missouri country, where there was no
Ordinance of '87,--was no restriction,--they were carried ten
times, nay, a hundred times, as fast, and actually made a slave
State.  This is fact-naked fact.

Another lullaby argument is that taking slaves to new countries
does not increase their number, does not make any one slave who
would otherwise be free.  There is some truth in this, and I am
glad of it; but it is not wholly true.  The African slave trade
is not yet effectually suppressed; and, if we make a reasonable
deduction for the white people among us who are foreigners and
the descendants of foreigners arriving here since 1808, we shall
find the increase of the black population outrunning that of the
white to an extent unaccountable, except by supposing that some
of them, too, have been coming from Africa.  If this be so, the
opening of new countries to the institution increases the demand
for and augments the price of slaves, and so does, in fact, make
slaves of freemen, by causing them to be brought from Africa and
sold into bondage.

But however this may be, we know the opening of new countries to
slavery tends to the perpetuation of the institution, and so does
keep men in slavery who would otherwise be free.  This result we
do not feel like favoring, and we are under no legal obligation
to suppress our feelings in this respect.

Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to
the extension of slavery to new countries.  That is to say,
inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska,
therefore I must not object to your taking your slave.  Now, I
admit that this is perfectly logical if there is no difference
between hogs and negroes.  But while you thus require me to deny
the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the
South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much?  It is
kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a
small percentage are natural tyrants.  That percentage is no
larger in the slave States than in the free.  The great majority
South, as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can
no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to
physical pain.  These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern
people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong of
slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is
humanity in the negro.  If they deny this, let me address them a
few plain questions.  In 1820 you (the South) joined the North,
almost unanimously, in declaring the African slave trade piracy,
and in annexing to it the punishment of death.  Why did you do
this?  If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join in
providing that men should be hung for it?  The practice was no
more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy
them.  But you never thought of hanging men for catching and
selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears.

Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of
native tyrants known as the "slavedealer."  He watches your
necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating
price.  If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can
help it, you drive him from your door.  You despise him utterly.
You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man.
Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely
with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children.  If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get
through the job without so much as touching him.  It is common
with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-
dealer you avoid the ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the
snaky contact.  If he grows rich and retires from business, you
still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse
upon him and his family.  Now, why is this?  You do not so treat
the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco.

And yet again: There are in the United States and Territories,
including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks.  At five
hundred dollars per head they are worth over two hundred millions
of dollars.  How comes this vast amount of property to be running
about without owners?  We do not see free horses or free cattle
running at large.  How is this?  All these free blacks are the
descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves; and they
would be slaves now but for something which has operated on their
white owners, inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice to
liberate them.  What is that something?  Is there any mistaking
it?  In all these cases it is your sense of justice and human
sympathy continually telling you that the poor negro has some
natural right to himself--that those who deny it and make mere
merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.

And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave,
and estimate him as only the equal of the hog?  Why ask us to do
what you will not do yourselves?  Why ask us to do for nothing
what two hundred millions of dollars could not induce you to do?

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come.  That argument is "the sacred right
of self-government."  It seems our distinguished Senator has found
great difficulty in getting his antagonists, even in the Senate,
to meet him fairly on this argument.  Some poet has said:

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this
quotation, I meet that argument--I rush in--I take that bull by
the horns.  I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of
self-government.  My faith in the proposition that each man
should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively
his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is
in me.  I extend the principle to communities of men as well as
to individuals.  I so extend it because it is politically wise,
as well as naturally just; politically wise in saving us from
broils about matters which do not concern us.  Here, or at
Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of
Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana.  The doctrine of
self-government is right,--absolutely and eternally right,--but
it has no just application as here attempted.  Or perhaps I
should rather say that whether it has such application depends
upon whether a negro is or is not a man.  If he is not a man, in
that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do
just what he pleases with him.  But if the negro is a man, is it
not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say
that he too shall not govern himself?  When the white man governs
himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and
also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that
is despotism.  If the negro is a man, why, then, my ancient faith
teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can
be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another.

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm,
paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska
are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good
enough to govern a few miserable negroes!"

Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will
continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere.  I do
not say the contrary.  What I do say is that no man is good
enough to govern another man without that other's consent.  I say
this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American
republicanism.  Our Declaration of Independence says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS
PROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."

I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according
to our ancient faith, the just powers of government are derived
from the consent of the governed.  Now the relation of master and
slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle.  The
master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he
governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those
which he prescribes for himself.  Allow all the governed an equal
voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-
government.

Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of
political and social equality between the whites and blacks.  I
have already said the contrary.  I am not combating the argument
of necessity, arising from the fact that the blacks are already
among us; but I am combating what is set up as moral argument for
allowing them to be taken where they have never yet been--arguing
against the extension of a bad thing, which, where it already
exists, we must of necessity manage as we best can.

In support of his application of the doctrine of self-government,
Senator Douglas has sought to bring to his aid the opinions and
examples of our Revolutionary fathers.  I am glad he has done
this.  I love the sentiments of those old-time men, and shall be
most happy to abide by their opinions.  He shows us that when it
was in contemplation for the colonies to break off from Great
Britain, and set up a new government for themselves, several of
the States instructed their delegates to go for the measure,
provided each State should be allowed to regulate its domestic
concerns in its own way.  I do not quote; but this in substance.
This was right; I see nothing objectionable in it.  I also think
it probable that it had some reference to the existence of
slavery among them.  I will not deny that it had.  But had it any
reference to the carrying of slavery into new countries?  That is
the question, and we will let the fathers themselves answer it.

This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of
the generation who declared this principle, who declared
independence, who fought the war of the Revolution through, who
afterward made the Constitution under which we still live--these
same men passed the Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery
should never go to the Northwest Territory.

I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent
in this.  It is a question of discrimination between them and
him.  But there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming
that their opinions, their example, their authority, are on his
side in the controversy.

Again, is not Nebraska, while a Territory, a part of us?  Do we
not own the country?  And if we surrender the control of it, do
we not surrender the right of self-government?  It is part of
ourselves.  If you say we shall not control it, because it is
only part, the same is true of every other part; and when all the
parts are gone, what has become of the whole?  What is then left
of us?  What use for the General Government, when there is
nothing left for it to govern?

But you say this question should be left to the people of
Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested.  If this
be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for
himself whether he will have slaves.  What better moral right
have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say that the thirty-
second shall not hold slaves than the people of the thirty-one
States have to say that slavery shall not go into the thirty-
second State at all?

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take
and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy
them where they can buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly,
will be on the coast of Africa, provided you will consent not to
hang them for going there to buy them.  You must remove this
restriction, too, from the sacred right of self-government.  I am
aware you say that taking slaves from the States to Nebraska does
not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader can say
just as much.  He does not catch free negroes and bring them
here.  He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black
captors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton
handkerchief a head.  This is very cheap, and it is a great
abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang men for
engaging in this profitable trade.

Another important objection to this application of the right of
self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the
succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-
government.  The first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent
many cannot easily get it out.  How common is the remark now in
the slave States, "If we were only clear of our slaves, how much
better it would be for us."  They are actually deprived of the
privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the action of
a very few in the beginning.  The same thing was true of the
whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories,
is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go
there.  The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be
made of these Territories.  We want them for homes of free white
people.  This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if
slavery shall be planted within them.  Slave States are places
for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to.  New free
States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their
condition.  For this use the nation needs these Territories.

Still further: there are constitutional relations between the
slave and free States which are degrading to the latter.  We are
under legal obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves
to them: a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as
a general rule, the slaveholders will not perform for one
another.  Then again, in the control of the government--the
management of the partnership affairs--they have greatly the
advantage of us.  By the Constitution each State has two
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to
the number of its people, and each has a number of Presidential
electors equal to the whole number of its senators and
representatives together.  But in ascertaining the number of the
people for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal
to three whites.  The slaves do not vote; they are only counted
and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's
votes.  The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a
comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine.  South
Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine; South
Carolina has eight Presidential electors, and so has Maine.  This
is precise equality so far; and of course they are equal in
senators, each having two.  Thus in the control of the government
the two States are equals precisely.  But how are they in the
number of their white people?  Maine has 581,813, while South
Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina,
and 32,679 over.  Thus, each white man in South Carolina is more
than the double of any man in Maine.  This is all because South
Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 slaves.  The South
Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in
every other free State as well as in Maine.  He is more than the
double of any one of us in this crowd.  The same advantage, but
not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave
States over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth,
without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave State
but who has more legal power in the government than any voter in
any free State.  There is no instance of exact equality; and the
disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through.  This
principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States in the
present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven
more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska
Bill.

Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to
complain of it, in so far as it is already settled.  It is in the
Constitution, and I do not for that cause, or any other cause,
propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the Constitution.  I
stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly.

But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to
say whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the
firm, on the same degrading terms against me, I respectfully
demur.  I insist that whether I shall be a whole man or only the
half of one, in comparison with others is a question in which I
am somewhat concerned, and one which no other man can have a
sacred right of deciding for me.  If I am wrong in this, if it
really be a sacred right of self-government in the man who shall
go to Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or
the double of me, then, after he shall have exercised that right,
and thereby shall have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of
a man than I already am, I should like for some gentleman, deeply
skilled in the mysteries of sacred rights, to provide himself
with a microscope, and peep about, and find out, if he can, what
has become of my sacred rights.  They will surely be too small
for detection with the naked eye.

Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty
of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own,
that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own
liberties and institutions.  And if they shall think as I do,
that the extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all
other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit The
question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere
handful of men bent only on seif-interest.  If this question of
slavery extension were an insignificant one, one having no power
to do harm--it might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as
it is, the great Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the
nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands of such
feeble keepers?

I have done with this mighty argument of self-government.  Go,
sacred thing! Go in peace.

But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure.  Well, I
too go for saving the Union.  Much as I hate slavery, I would
consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union
dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a
greater one.  But when I go to Union-saving, I must believe, at
least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the end.
To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.

"It hath no relish of salvation in it."

It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever
endangers the Union.  When it came upon us, all was peace and
quiet.  The nation was looking to the forming of new bends of
union, and a long course of peace and prosperity seemed to lie
before us.  In the whole range of possibility, there scarcely
appears to me to have been anything out of which the slavery
agitation could have been revived, except the very project of
repealing the Missouri Compromise.  Every inch of territory we
owned already had a definite settlement of the slavery question,
by which all parties were pledged to abide.  Indeed, there was no
uninhabited country on the continent which we could acquire, if
we except some extreme northern regions which are wholly out of
the question.

In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could
scarcely have invented a way of again setting us by the ears but
by turning back and destroying the peace measures of the past.
The counsels of that Genius seem to have prevailed.  The Missouri
Compromise was repealed; and here we are in the midst of a new
slavery agitation, such, I think, as we have never seen before.
Who is responsible for this?  Is it those who resist the measure,
or those who causelessly brought it forward, and pressed it
through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must and
would be so resisted?  It could not but be expected by its author
that it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of
slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of faith.

Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front
and aspect of the measure.  And in this aspect it could not but
produce agitation.  Slavery is founded in the selfishness of
man's nature--opposition to it in his love of justice.  These
principles are at eternal antagonism, and when brought into
collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks
and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.  Repeal the
Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the
Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still
cannot repeal human nature.  It still will be the abundance of
man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the
abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.

The structure, too, of the Nebraska Bill is very peculiar.  The
people are to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but
when they are to decide, or how they are to decide, or whether,
when the question is once decided, it is to remain so or is to be
subject to an indefinite succession of new trials, the law does
not say.  Is it to be decided by the first dozen settlers who
arrive there, or is it to await the arrival of a hundred?  Is it
to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of the
Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort?  To these
questions the law gives no answer.  There is a mystery about
this; for when a member proposed to give the Legislature express
authority to exclude slavery, it was hooted down by the friends
of the bill.  This fact is worth remembering.  Some Yankees in
the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude slavery
from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to
be decided by voting in some way or other.  But the Missourians
are awake, too.  They are within a stone's-throw of the contested
ground.  They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not
the slightest allusion to voting is made.  They resolve that
slavery already exists in the Territory; that more shall go
there; that they, remaining in Missouri, will protect it, and
that abolitionists shall be hung or driven away.  Through all
this bowie knives and six-shooters are seen plainly enough, but
never a glimpse of the ballot-box.

And, really, what is the result of all this?  Each party within
having numerous and determined backers without, is it not
probable that the contest will come to blows and bloodshed?
Could there be a more apt invention to bring about collision and
violence on the slavery question than this Nebraska project is?
I do not charge or believe that such was intended by Congress;
but if they had literally formed a ring and placed champions
within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no
more likely to come off than it is.  And if this fight should
begin, is it likely to take a very peaceful, Union-saving turn?
Will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the
Union?

The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored.  For the sake of
the Union, it ought to be restored.  We ought to elect a House of
Representatives which will vote its restoration.  If by any means
we omit to do this, what follows?  Slavery may or may not be
established in Nebraska.  But whether it be or not, we shall have
repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit
of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national
compromise?  The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which
first gave us the Constitution, and which has thrice saved the
Union--we shall have strangled and cast from us forever.  And
what shall we have in lieu of it?  The South flushed with triumph
and tempted to excess; the North, betrayed as they believe,
brooding on wrong and burning for revenge.  One side will
provoke, the other resent.  The one will taunt, the other defy;
one aggresses, the other retaliates.  Already a few in the North
defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of the
Fugitive Slave law, and even menace the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists.  Already a few in the South claim the
constitutional right to take and to hold slaves in the free
States, demand the revival of the slave trade, and demand a
treaty with Great Britain by which fugitive slaves may be
reclaimed from Canada.  As yet they are but few on either side.
It is a grave question for lovers of the union whether the final
destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of
all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of
these, and fatally increase the number of both.

But restore the compromise, and what then?  We thereby restore
the national faith, the national confidence, the national feeling
of brotherhood.  We thereby reinstate the spirit of concession
and compromise, that spirit which has never failed us in past
perils, and which may be safely trusted for all the future.  The
South ought to join in doing this.  The peace of the nation is as
dear to them as to us.  In memories of the past and hopes of the
future, they share as largely as we.  It would be on their part a
great act--great in its spirit, and great in its effect.  It
would be worth to the nation a hundred years purchase of peace
and prosperity.  And what of sacrifice would they make?  They
only surrender to us what they gave us for a consideration long,
long ago; what they have not now asked for, struggled or cared
for; what has been thrust upon them, not less to their
astonishment than to ours.

But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every
member of the lower House, the Senate is still against us.  It is
quite true that of the senators who passed the Nebraska Bill a
majority of the whole Senate will retain their seats in spite of
the elections of this and the next year.  But if at these
elections their several constituencies shall clearly express
their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their
will?  Will they neither obey nor make room for those who will?

But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is
still a great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the
restoration.  The moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated
too highly.  The authors of Nebraska are not at all satisfied
with the destruction of the compromise--an indorsement of this
principle they proclaim to be the great object.  With them,
Nebraska alone is a small matter--to establish a principle for
future use is what they particularly desire.

The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the
wide world local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it.
Now, if you wish to give them this indorsement, if you wish to
establish this principle, do so.  I shall regret it, but it is
your right.  On the contrary, if you are opposed to the
principle,--intend to give it no such indorsement, let no
wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote
against it.

Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest
they be thrown in company with the abolitionists.  Will they
allow me, as an old Whig, to tell them, good-humoredly, that I
think this is very silly?  Stand with anybody that stands right.
Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes
wrong.  Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri
Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the
Fugitive Slave law.  In the latter case you stand with the
Southern disunionist.  What of that?  You are still right.  In
both cases you are right.  In both cases you oppose the dangerous
extremes.  In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the
ship level and steady.  In both you are national, and nothing
less than national.  This is the good old Whig ground.  To desert
such ground because of any company is to be less than a Whig--
less than a man--less than an American.

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed
principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body
politic.  I object to it because it assumes that there can be
moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.  I object to
it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people--a sad evidence
that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a
principle, we have ceased to revere.  I object to it because the
fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it.  The argument
of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor
of slavery; and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did
they ever go.  They found the institution existing among us,
which they could not help, and they cast blame upon the British
king for having permitted its introduction.

The royally appointed Governor of Georgia in the early 1700's was
threatened by the King with removal if he continued to oppose
slavery in his colony--at that time the King of England made a
small profit on every slave imported to the colonies.  The later
British criticism of the United States for not eradicating
slavery in the early 1800's, combined with their tacit support of
the 'Confederacy' during the Civil War is a prime example of the
irony and hypocracy of politics: that self-interest will ever
overpower right.

Before the Constitution they prohibited its introduction into the
Northwestern Territory, the only country we owned then free from
it.  At the framing and adoption of the Constitution, they
forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in
the whole instrument.  In the provision for the recovery of
fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "person held to service or
labor."  In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave
trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "the migration
or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit," etc.  These are the only provisions
alluding to slavery.  Thus the thing is hid away in the
Constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or cancer
which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death,--with
the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at a
certain time.  Less than this our fathers could not do, and more
they would not do.  Necessity drove them so far, and farther they
would not go.  But this is not all.  The earliest Congress under
the Constitution took the same view of slavery.  They hedged and
hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.

In 1794 they prohibited an outgoing slave trade--that is, the
taking of slaves from the United States to sell.  In 1798 they
prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa into the
Mississippi Territory, this Territory then comprising what are
now the States of Mississippi and Alabama.  This was ten years
before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the
States existing at the adoption of the Constitution.  In 1800
they prohibited American citizens from trading in slaves between
foreign countries, as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.  In
1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two slave-State laws in
restraint of the internal slave trade.  In 1807, in apparent hot
haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance,--to take
effect the first day of 1808, the very first day the Constitution
would permit, prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy
pecuniary and corporal penalties.  In 1820, finding these
provisions ineffectual, they declared the slave trade piracy, and
annexed to it the extreme penalty of death.  While all this was
passing in the General Government, five or six of the original
slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation, by
which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within their
limits.  Thus we see that the plain, unmistakable spirit of that
age toward slavery was hostility to the principle and toleration
only by necessity.

But now it is to be transformed into a "sacred right."  Nebraska
brings it forth, places it on the highroad to extension and
perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it, "Go, and God
speed you."  Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation
the very figure-head of the ship of state.  Little by little, but
steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the
old for the new faith.  Near eighty years ago we began by
declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for
some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-
government."  These principles cannot stand together.  They are as
opposite as God and Mammon; and who ever holds to the one must
despise the other.  When Pettit, in connection with his support
of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of Independence "a
self-evident lie," he only did what consistency and candor
require all other Nebraska men to do.  Of the forty-odd Nebraska
senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him.  Nor
am I apprised that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska
orator, in the whole nation has ever yet rebuked him.  If this
had been said among Marion's men, Southerners though they were,
what would have become of the man who said it?  If this had been
said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would
probably have been hung sooner than Andre was.  If it had been
said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very
doorkeeper would have throttled the man and thrust him into the
street.  Let no one be deceived.  The spirit of seventy-six and
the spirit of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is
being rapidly displaced by the latter.

Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we
make no effort to arrest this?  Already the liberal party
throughout the world express the apprehension that "the one
retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles
of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system
the world ever saw."  This is not the taunt of enemies, but the
warning of friends.  Is it quite safe to disregard it--to despise
it?  Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the
earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith?  In our
greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we
"cancel and tear in pieces" even the white man's charter of
freedom.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust.  Let us
repurify it.  Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not
the blood, of the Revolution.  Let us turn slavery from its
claims of "moral right," back upon its existing legal rights and
its arguments of "necessity."  Let us return it to the position
our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.  Let us
readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it.  Let North and
South, let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere
join in the great and good work.  If we do this, we shall not
only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to
make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.  We shall have
so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy people the
world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest
generations.

At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially
as I have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to
reply to me here, I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing
some of the points he made there.  He commenced by stating I had
assumed all the way through that the principle of the Nebraska
Bill would have the effect of extending slavery.  He denied that
this was intended or that this effect would follow.

I will not reopen the argument upon this point.  That such was
the intention the world believed at the start, and will continue
to believe.  This was the countenance of the thing, and both
friends and enemies instantly recognized it as such.  That
countenance cannot now be changed by argument.  You can as easily
argue the color out of the negro's skin.  Like the "bloody hand,"
you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt still
sticks and stares horribly at you.

Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented
slavery anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern
Territory, nor in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the
Union as a slave State; that the principle of the Nebraska Bill
expelled it from Illinois, from several old States, from
everywhere.

Now this is mere quibbling all the way through.  If the Ordinance
of '87 did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how
happens it that the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely
free from it, while the southeast shore, less than a mile
distant, along nearly the whole length of the river, is entirely
covered with it?

If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it
that made the difference between Illinois and Missouri?  They lie
side by side, the Mississippi River only dividing them, while
their early settlements were within the same latitude.  Between
1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in Missouri increased 7211,
while in Illinois in the same ten years they decreased 51.  This
appears by the census returns.  During nearly all of that ten
years both were Territories, not States.  During this time the
ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing
forbade it to go into Missouri.  It did go into Missouri, and did
not go into Illinois.  That is the fact.  Can any one doubt as to
the reason of it?  But he says Illinois came into the Union as a
slave State.  Silence, perhaps, would be the best answer to this
flat contradiction of the known history of the country.  What are
the facts upon which this bold assertion is based?  When we first
acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves
within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia.  The
territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave
States as indentured servants.  One year after the adoption of
the first State constitution, the whole number of them was--what
do you think?  Just one hundred and seventeen, while the
aggregate free population was 55,094,--about four hundred and
seventy to one.  Upon this state of facts the people framed their
constitution prohibiting the further introduction of slavery,
with a sort of guaranty to the owners of the few indentured
servants, giving freedom to their children to be born thereafter,
and making no mention whatever of any supposed slave for life.
Out of this small matter the Judge manufactures his argument that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.  Let the facts be
the answer to the argument.

The principles of the Nebraska Bill, he says, expelled slavery
from Illinois.  The principle of that bill first planted it here-
-that is, it first came because there was no law to prevent it,
first came before we owned the country; and finding it here, and
having the Ordinance of '87 to prevent its increasing, our people
struggled along, and finally got rid of it as best they could.

But the principle of the Nebraska Bill abolished slavery in
several of the old States.  Well, it is true that several of the
old States, in the last quarter of the last century, did adopt
systems of gradual emancipation by which the institution has
finally become extinct within their limits; but it may or may not
be true that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was the cause
that led to the adoption of these measures.  It is now more than
fifty years since the last of these States adopted its system of
emancipation.

If the Nebraska Bill is the real author of the benevolent works,
it is rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased
working altogether.  Is there not some reason to suspect that it
was the principle of the Revolution, and not the principle of the
Nebraska Bill, that led to emancipation in these old States?
Leave it to the people of these old emancipating States, and I am
quite certain they will decide that neither that nor any other
good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska Bill.

In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me
to say that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was very old; that
it originated when God made man, and placed good and evil before
him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for
the choice he should make.  At the time I thought this was merely
playful, and I answered it accordingly.  But in his reply to me
he renewed it as a serious argument.  In seriousness, then, the
facts of this proposition are not true as stated.  God did not
place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice.
On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree of the fruit
of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death.  I should
scarcely wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in
Nebraska.

But this argument strikes me as not a little remarkable in
another particular--in its strong resemblance to the old argument
for the "divine right of kings."  By the latter, the king is to do
just as he pleases with his white subjects, being responsible to
God alone.  By the former, the white man is to do just as he
pleases with his black slaves, being responsible to God alone.
The two things are precisely alike, and it is but natural that
they should find similar arguments to sustain them.

I had argued that the application of the principle of self-
government, as contended for, would require the revival of the
African slave trade; that no argument could be made in favor of a
man's right to take slaves to Nebraska which could not be equally
well made in favor of his right to bring them from the coast of
Africa.  The Judge replied that the Constitution requires the
suppression of the foreign slave trade, but does not require the
prohibition of slavery in the Territories.  That is a mistake in
point of fact.  The Constitution does not require the action of
Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both.  And
so there is still no difference between the cases.

In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States
have over the free in the matter of representation, the Judge
replied that we in the free States count five free negroes as
five white people, while in the slave States they count five
slaves as three whites only; and that the advantage, at last, was
on the side of the free States.

Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do;
and it so happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many
free negroes as we have, and thirty thousand over.  Thus, their
free negroes more than balance ours; and their advantage over us,
in consequence of their slaves, still remains as I stated it.

In reply to my argument that the compromise measures of 1850 were
a system of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of
them could fairly be carried to other subjects without its
corresponding equivalent being carried with it, the Judge denied
outright that these measures had any connection with or
dependence upon each other.  This is mere desperation.  If they
had no connection, why are they always spoken of in connection?
Why has he so spoken of them a thousand times?  Why has he
constantly called them a series of measures?  Why does everybody
call them a compromise?  Why was California kept out of the Union
six or seven months, if it was not because of its connection with
the other measures?  Webster's leading definition of the verb "to
compromise" is "to adjust and settle a difference, by mutual
agreement, with concessions of claims by the parties."  This
conveys precisely the popular understanding of the word
"compromise."

We knew, before the Judge told us, that these measures passed
separately, and in distinct bills, and that no two of them were
passed by the votes of precisely the same members.  But we also
know, and so does he know, that no one of them could have passed
both branches of Congress but for the understanding that the
others were to pass also.  Upon this understanding, each got
votes which it could have got in no other way.  It is this fact
which gives to the measures their true character; and it is the
universal knowledge of this fact that has given them the name of
"compromises," so expressive of that true character.

I had asked: "If, in carrying the Utah and New Mexico laws to
Nebraska, you could clear away other objection, how could you
leave Nebraska 'perfectly free' to introduce slavery before she
forms a constitution, during her territorial government, while
the Utah and New Mexico laws only authorize it when they form
constitutions and are admitted into the Union?"  To this Judge
Douglas answered that the Utah and New Mexico laws also
authorized it before; and to prove this he read from one of their
laws, as follows: "That the legislative power of said Territory
shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent
with the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of
this act."

Now it is perceived from the reading of this that there is
nothing express upon the subject, but that the authority is
sought to be implied merely for the general provision of "all
rightful subjects of legislation."  In reply to this I insist, as
a legal rule of construction, as well as the plain, popular view
of the matter, that the express provision for Utah and New Mexico
coming in with slavery, if they choose, when they shall form
constitutions, is an exclusion of all implied authority on the
same subject; that Congress having the subject distinctly in
their minds when they made the express provision, they therein
expressed their whole meaning on that subject.

The Judge rather insinuated that I had found it convenient to
forget the Washington territorial law passed in 1853.  This was a
division of Oregon, organizing the northern part as the Territory
of Washington.  He asserted that by this act the Ordinance of
'87, theretofore existing in Oregon, was repealed; that nearly
all the members of Congress voted for it, beginning in the House
of Representatives with Charles Allen of Massachusetts, and
ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he could not
understand how those who now opposed the Nebraska Bill so voted
there, unless it was because it was then too soon after both the
great political parties had ratified the compromises of 1850, and
the ratification therefore was too fresh to be then repudiated.

Now I had seen the Washington act before, and I have carefully
examined it since; and I aver that there is no repeal of the
Ordinance of '87, or of any prohibition of slavery, in it.  In
express terms, there is absolutely nothing in the whole law upon
the subject--in fact, nothing to lead a reader to think of the
subject.  To my judgment it is equally free from everything from
which repeal can be legally implied; but, however this may be,
are men now to be entrapped by a legal implication, extracted
from covert language, introduced perhaps for the very purpose of
entrapping them?  I sincerely wish every man could read this law
quite through, carefully watching every sentence and every line
for a repeal of the Ordinance of '87, or anything equivalent to
it.

Another point on the Washington act: If it was intended to be
modeled after the Utah and New Mexico acts, as Judge Douglas
insists, why was it not inserted in it, as in them, that
Washington was to come in with or without slavery as she may
choose at the adoption of her constitution?  It has no such
provision in it; and I defy the ingenuity of man to give a reason
for the omission, other than that it was not intended to follow
the Utah and New Mexico laws in regard to the question of
slavery.

The Washington act not only differs vitally from the Utah and New
Mexico acts, but the Nebraska act differs vitally from both.  By
the latter act the people are left "perfectly free" to regulate
their own domestic concerns, etc.; but in all the former, all
their laws are to be submitted to Congress, and if disapproved
are to be null.  The Washington act goes even further; it
absolutely prohibits the territorial Legislature, by very strong
and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing money
on the faith of the Territory.  Is this the sacred right of self-
government we hear vaunted so much?  No, sir; the Nebraska Bill
finds no model in the acts of '50 or the Washington act.  It
finds no model in any law from Adam till to-day.  As Phillips
says of Napoleon, the Nebraska act is grand, gloomy and peculiar,
wrapped in the solitude of its own originality, without a model
and without a shadow upon the earth.

In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance
that he had always considered this government was made for the
white people and not for the negroes.  Why, in point of mere
fact, I think so too.  But in this remark of the Judge there is a
significance which I think is the key to the great mistake (if
there is any such mistake) which he has made in this Nebraska
measure.  It shows that the Judge has no very vivid impression
that the negro is human, and consequently has no idea that there
can be any moral question in legislating about him.  In his view
the question of whether a new country shall be slave or free is a
matter of as utter indifference as it is whether his neighbor
shall plant his farm with tobacco or stock it with horned cattle.
Now, whether this view is right or wrong, it is very certain that
the great mass of mankind take a totally different view.  They
consider slavery a great moral wrong, and their feeling against
it is not evanescent, but eternal.  It lies at the very
foundation of their sense of justice, and it cannot be trifled
with.  It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I
think no statesman can safely disregard it.

Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter
do not entirely agree with one another.  He reminds me that in my
firm adherence to the constitutional rights of the slave States I
differ widely from others who are cooperating with me in opposing
the Nebraska Bill, and he says it is not quite fair to oppose him
in this variety of ways.  He should remember that he took us by
surprise--astounded us by this measure.  We were thunderstruck
and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.  But we
rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach--a
scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher's cleaver.  We
struck in the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly closing
in
upon him.  He must not think to divert us from our purpose by
showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons are not
entirely perfect and uniform.  When the storm shall be past he
shall find us still Americans, no less devoted to the continued
union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.

Finally, the Judge invokes against me the memory of Clay and
Webster, They were great men, and men of great deeds.  But where
have I assailed them?  For what is it that their lifelong enemy
shall now make profit by assuming to defend them against me,
their lifelong friend?  I go against the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise; did they ever go for it?  They went for the
Compromise of 1850; did I ever go against them?  They were
greatly devoted to the Union; to the small measure of my ability
was I ever less so?  Clay and Webster were dead before this
question arose; by what authority shall our Senator say they
would espouse his side of it if alive?  Mr. Clay was the leading
spirit in making the Missouri Compromise; is it very credible
that if now alive he would take the lead in the breaking of it?
The truth is that some support from Whigs is now a necessity with
the Judge, and for this it is that the names of Clay and Webster
are invoked.  His old friends have deserted him in such numbers
as to leave too few to live by.  He came to his own, and his own
received him not; and lo! he turns unto the Gentiles.

A word now as to the Judge's desperate assumption that the
compromises of 1850 had no connection with one another; that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State, and some other
similar ones.  This is no other than a bold denial of the history
of the country.  If we do not know that the compromises of 1850
were dependent on each other; if we do not know that Illinois
came into the Union as a free State,--we do not know anything.
If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had a
Revolutionary War or such a chief as Washington.  To deny these
things is to deny our national axioms,--or dogmas, at least,--and
it puts an end to all argument.  If a man will stand up and
assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make
four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
I think I can answer the Judge so long as he sticks to the
premises; but when he flies from them, I cannot work any argument
into the consistency of a mental gag and actually close his mouth
with it.  In such a case I can only commend him to the seventy
thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.




REQUEST FOR SENATE SUPPORT

TO CHARLES HOYT

CLINTON, De WITT Co., Nov.  10, 1854

DEAR SIR:--You used to express a good deal of partiality for me,
and if you are still so, now is the time.  Some friends here are
really for me for the U.S.  Senate, and I should be very grateful
if you could make a mark for me among your members.  Please write
me at all events, giving me the names, post-offices, and
"political position" of members round about you.  Direct to
Springfield.

Let this be confidential.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. J. HENDERSON.

SPRINGFIELD,

November 27, 1854

T. J. HENDERSON, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--It has come round that a whig may, by possibility,
be elected to the United States Senate, and I want the chance of
being the man.  You are a member of the Legislature, and have a
vote to give.  Think it over, and see whether you can do better
than to go for me.

Write me, at all events; and let this be confidential.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec.  1, 1854.

DEAR SIR:--I have really got it into my head to try to be United
States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances
would be reasonably good.  But I know, and acknowledge, that you
have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I
cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a
candidate, yourself.  If, however, you are not, then I should
like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you
make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.

If you know, and have no objection to tell, let me know whether
Trumbull intends to make a push.  If he does, I suppose the two
men in St.  Clair, and one, or both, in Madison, will be for him.
We have the Legislature, clearly enough, on joint ballot, but the
Senate is very close, and Cullom told me to-day that the Nebraska
men will stave off the election, if they can.  Even if we get
into joint vote, we shall have difficulty to unite our forces.
Please write me, and let this be confidential.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN




POLITICAL REFERENCES

TO JUSTICE MCLEAN.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., December 6, 1854.

SIR:--I understand it is in contemplation to displace the present
clerk and appoint a new one for the Circuit and District Courts
of Illinois.  I am very friendly to the present incumbent, and,
both for his own sake and that of his family, I wish him to be
retained so long as it is possible for the court to do so.

In the contingency of his removal, however, I have recommended
William Butler as his successor, and I do not wish what I write
now to be taken as any abatement of that recommendation.

William J.  Black is also an applicant for the appointment, and I
write this at the solicitation of his friends to say that he is
every way worthy of the office, and that I doubt not the
conferring it upon him will give great satisfaction.

Your ob't servant,

A. LINCOLN




TO T. J. HENDERSON.

SPRINGFIELD,  December 15.  1854

HON. T. J. HENDERSON.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 11th was received last night, and for
which I thank you.  Of course I prefer myself to all others; yet
it is neither in my heart nor my conscience to say I am any
better man than Mr. Williams.  We shall have a terrible struggle
with our adversaries.  They are desperate and bent on desperate
deeds.  I accidentally learned of one of the leaders here writing
to a member south of here, in about the following language:

We are beaten.  They have a clean majority of at least nine, on
joint ballot.  They outnumber us, but we must outmanage them.
Douglas must be sustained.  We must elect the Speaker; and we
must elect a Nebraska United States Senator, or "elect none at
all."  Similar letters, no doubt, are written to every Nebraska
member.  Be considering how we can best meet, and foil, and beat
them.  I send you, by mail, a copy of my Peoria speech.  You may
have seen it before, or you may not think it worth seeing now.

Do not speak of the Nebraska letter mentioned above; I do not
wish it to become public, that I received such information.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




1855


LOSS OF PRIMARY FOR SENATOR

TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

SPRINGFIELD, February 9, 1855

MY DEAR SIR:

I began with 44 votes, Shields 41, and Trumbull 5,--yet Trumbull
was elected.  In fact 47 different members voted for me,--getting
three new ones on the second ballot, and losing four old ones.
How came my 47 to yield to Trumbull's 5?  It was Governor
Matteson's work.  He has been secretly a candidate ever since
(before, even) the fall election.

All the members round about the canal were Anti-Nebraska, but
were nevertheless nearly all Democrats and old personal friends
of his.  His plan was to privately impress them with the belief
that he was as good Anti-Nebraska as any one else--at least could
be secured to be so by instructions, which could be easily
passed.

The Nebraska men, of course, were not for Matteson; but when they
found they could elect no avowed Nebraska man, they tardily
determined to let him get whomever of our men he could, by
whatever means he could, and ask him no questions.

The Nebraska men were very confident of the election of Matteson,
though denying that he was a candidate, and we very much
believing also that they would elect him.  But they wanted first
to make a show of good faith to Shields by voting for him a few
times, and our secret Matteson men also wanted to make a show of
good faith by voting with us a few times.  So we led off.  On the
seventh ballot, I think, the signal was given to the Nebraska men
to turn to Matteson, which they acted on to a man, with one
exception.  .  .   Next ballot the remaining Nebraska man and one
pretended Anti went over to him, giving him 46.  The next still
another, giving him 47, wanting only three of an election.  In
the meantime our friends, with a view of detaining our expected
bolters, had been turning from me to Trumbull till he had risen
to 35 and I had been reduced to 15.  These would never desert me
except by my direction; but I became satisfied that if we could
prevent Matteson's election one or two ballots more, we could not
possibly do so a single ballot after my friends should begin to
return to me from Trumbull.  So I determined to strike at once,
and accordingly advised my remaining friends to go for him, which
they did and elected him on the tenth ballot.

Such is the way the thing was done.  I think you would have done
the same under the circumstances.

I could have headed off every combination and been elected, had
it not been for Matteson's double game--and his defeat now gives
me more pleasure than my own gives me pain.  On the whole, it is
perhaps as well for our general cause that Trumbull is elected.
The Nebraska men confess that they hate it worse than anything
that could have happened.  It is a great consolation to see them
worse whipped than I am.

Yours forever,

A. LINCOLN.




RETURN TO LAW PROFESSION

TO SANFORD, PORTER, AND STRIKER, NEW YORK.

SPRINGFIELD, MARCH 10, 1855

GENTLEMEN:--Yours of the 5th is received, as also was that of
15th Dec, last, inclosing bond of Clift to Pray.  When I received
the bond I was dabbling in politics, and of course neglecting
business.  Having since been beaten out I have gone to work
again.

As I do not practice in Rushville, I to-day open a correspondence
with Henry E.  Dummer, Esq., of Beardstown, Ill., with the view
of getting the job into his hands.  He is a good man if he will
undertake it.

Write me whether I shall do this or return the bond to you.

Yours respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TO O.  H.  BROWNING.

SPRINGFIELD, March 23, 1855.

HON.  O.  H.  BROWNING.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Judge Logan has been shown to us by
him; and, with his consent, we answer it.  When it became
probable that there would be a vacancy on the Supreme Bench,
public opinion, on this side of the river, seemed to be
universally directed to Logan as the proper man to fill it.  I
mean public opinion on our side in politics, with very small
manifestation in any different direction by the other side.  The
result is, that he has been a good deal pressed to allow his name
to be used, and he has consented to it, provided it can be done
with perfect cordiality and good feeling on the part of all our
own friends.  We, the undersigned, are very anxious for it; and
the more so now that he has been urged, until his mind is turned
upon the matter.  We, therefore are very glad of your letter,
with the information it brings us, mixed only with a regret that
we can not elect Logan and Walker both.  We shall be glad, if you
will hoist Logan's name, in your Quincy papers.

Very truly your friends,

A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EWARDS,
JOHN T. STUART.




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, June 7, 1855.

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your note containing election news is received; and
for which I thank you.  It is all of no use, however.  Logan is
worse beaten than any other man ever was since elections were
invented--beaten more than twelve hundred in this county.  It is
conceded on all hands that the Prohibitory law is also beaten.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.





RESPONSE TO A PRO-SLAVERY FRIEND

TO JOSHUA. F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, August 24, 1855

DEAR SPEED:--You know what a poor correspondent I am.  Ever since
I received your very agreeable letter of the 22d of May, I have
been intending to write you an answer to it.  You suggest that in
political action, now, you and I would differ.  I suppose we
would; not quite as much, however, as you may think.  You know I
dislike slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.
So far there is no cause of difference.  But you say that sooner
than yield your legal right to the slave, especially at the
bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see
the Union dissolved.  I am not aware that any one is bidding you
yield that right; very certainly I am not.  I leave that matter
entirely to yourself.  I also acknowledge your rights and my
obligations under the Constitution in regard to your slaves.  I
confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught
and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite
my lips and keep quiet.  In 1841 you and I had together a tedious
low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St.  Louis.  You
may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of
the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled
together with irons.  That sight was a continued torment to me,
and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any
other slave border.  It is not fair for you to assume that I have
no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the
power of making me miserable.  You ought rather to appreciate how
much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their
feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution
and the Union.  I do oppose the extension of slavery because my
judgment and feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations
to the contrary.  If for this you and I must differ, differ we
must.  You say, if you were President, you would send an army and
hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas
elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave State
she must be admitted or the Union must be dissolved.  But how if
she votes herself a slave State unfairly, that is, by the very
means for which you say you would hang men?  Must she still be
admitted, or the Union dissolved?  That will be the phase of the
question when it first becomes a practical one.  In your
assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery
question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about
the Nebraska law.  I look upon that enactment not as a law, but
as a violence from the beginning.  It was conceived in violence,
is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence.  I
say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the
Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less
than violence.  It was passed in violence because it could not
have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence
of the known will of their constituents.  It is maintained in
violence, because the elections since clearly demand its repeal;
and the demand is openly disregarded.

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the
law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any
of its antecedents.  It is being executed in the precise way
which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man
express astonishment or condemnation?  Poor Reeder is the only
public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything
like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely
undeceived.

That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it will ask
to be admitted into the Union, I take to be already a settled
question, and so settled by the very means you so pointedly
condemn.  By every principle of law ever held by any court North
or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; yet, in utter
disregard of this,--in the spirit of violence merely,--that
beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang any man who
shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights.  This is the
subject and real object of the law.  If, like Haman, they should
hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among
the mourners for their fate.  In my humble sphere, I shall
advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as
Kansas remains a Territory, and when, by all these foul means, it
seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.
I am very loath in any case to withhold my assent to the
enjoyment of property acquired or located in good faith; but I do
not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held
in slavery is a probability with any man.  Any man who has sense
enough to be the controller of his own property has too much
sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole
Nebraska business.  But I digress.  In my opposition to the
admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we may be
beaten.  If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to
dissolve the Union.  I think it probable, however, we shall be
beaten.  Standing as a unit among yourselves, You can, directly
and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day, as you
could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy.  Get hold
of some man in the North whose position and ability is such that
he can make the support of your measure, whatever it may be, a
Democratic party necessity, and the thing is done.  Apropos of
this, let me tell you an anecdote.  Douglas introduced the
Nebraska Bill in January.  In February afterward there was a
called session of the Illinois Legislature.  Of the one hundred
members composing the two branches of that body, about seventy
were Democrats.  These latter held a caucus in which the Nebraska
Bill was talked of, if not formally discussed.  It was thereby
discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the
measure.  In a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have
resolutions passed approving the bill; and they were passed by
large majorities!!!!   The truth of this is vouched for by a
bolting Democratic member.  The masses, too, Democratic as well
as Whig, were even nearer unanimous against it; but, as soon as
the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way the
Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly
astonishing.

You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a
Christian you will rejoice at it.  All decent slaveholders talk
that way, and I do not doubt their candor.  But they never vote
that way.  Although in a private letter or conversation you will
express your preference that Kansas shall be free, you would vote
for no man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly.
No such man could be elected from any district in a slave State.
You think Stringfellow and company ought to be hung; and yet at
the next Presidential election you will vote for the exact type
and representative of Stringfellow.  The slave-breeders and
slave-traders are a small, odious, and detested class among you;
and yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and
are as completely your masters as you are the master of your own
negroes.  You inquire where I now stand.  That is a disputed
point.  I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs,
and that I am an Abolitionist.  When I was at Washington, I voted
for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard
of any one attempting to un-Whig me for that.  I now do no more
than oppose the extension of slavery.  I am not a Know-Nothing;
that is certain.  How could I be?  How can any one who abhors the
oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white
people?  Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty
rapid.  As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are
created equal."  We now practically read it "all men are created
equal, except negroes."  When the Know-Nothings get control, it
will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and
foreigners and Catholics."  When it comes to this, I shall prefer
emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving
liberty,--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken
pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October.
My kindest regards to Mrs.  Speed.  On the leading subject of
this letter I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours; and
yet let me say I am,

Your friend forever,

A. LINCOLN.




1856


REQUEST FOR A RAILWAY PASS

TO R. P. MORGAN

SPRINGFIELD, February 13, 1856.

R. P. MORGAN, ESQ.:

Says Tom to John, "Here's your old rotten wheelbarrow.  I've
broke it usin' on it.  I wish you would mend it, 'case I shall
want to borrow it this arternoon."  Acting on this as a
precedent, I say, "Here's your old 'chalked hat,--I wish you
would take it and send me a new one, 'case I shall want to use it
the first of March."

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN

(A 'chalked hat' was the common term, at that time, for a
railroad pass.)




SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE FIRST REPUBLICAN
STATE CONVENTION OF ILLINOIS,

HELD AT BLOOMINGTON, ON MAY 29, 1856.

[From the Report by William C.  Whitney.]

(Mr. Whitney's notes were made at the time, but not written out
until 1896.  He does not claim that the speech, as here reported,
is literally correct only that he has followed the argument, and
that in many cases the sentences are as Mr. Lincoln spoke them.)


Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: I was over at [Cries of "Platform!"
"Take the platform!"]--I say, that while I was at Danville Court,
some of our friends of Anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield
and elected me as one delegate to represent old Sangamon with
them in this convention, and I am here certainly as a sympathizer
in this movement and by virtue of that meeting and selection.
But we can hardly be called delegates strictly, inasmuch as,
properly speaking, we represent nobody but ourselves.  I think it
altogether fair to say that we have no Anti-Nebraska party in
Sangamon, although there is a good deal of Anti-Nebraska feeling
there; but I say for myself, and I think I may speak also for my
colleagues, that we who are here fully approve of the platform
and of all that has been done [A voice, "Yes!,"], and even if we
are not regularly delegates, it will be right for me to answer
your call to speak.  I suppose we truly stand for the public
sentiment of Sangamon on the great question of the repeal,
although we do not yet represent many numbers who have taken a
distinct position on the question.

We are in a trying time--it ranges above mere party--and this
movement to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the
help and good counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion
makes itself very strongly felt, and a change is made in our
present course, blood will flow on account of Nebraska, and
brother's hands will be raised against brother!

[The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive, if
not, indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over
me.  Others gave a similar experience.]

I have listened with great interest to the earnest appeal made to
Illinois men by the gentleman from Lawrence [James S.  Emery] who
has just addressed us so eloquently and forcibly.  I was deeply
moved by his statement of the wrongs done to free-State men out
there.  I think it just to say that all true men North should
sympathize with them, and ought to be willing to do any possible
and needful thing to right their wrongs.  But we must not promise
what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we
cannot; we must be calm and moderate, and consider the whole
difficulty, and determine what is possible and just.  We must not
be led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober
judgments would not approve in our cooler moments.  We have
higher aims; we will have more serious business than to dally
with temporary measures.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for
a right.  We know that great political and moral wrongs are done,
and outrages committed, and we denounce those wrongs and
outrages, although we cannot, at present, do much more.  But we
desire to reach out beyond those personal outrages and establish
a rule that will apply to all, and so prevent any future
outrages.

We have seen to-day that every shade of popular opinion is
represented here, with Freedom, or rather Free Soil, as the
basis.  We have come together as in some sort representatives of
popular opinion against the extension of slavery into territory
now free in fact as well as by law, and the pledged word of the
statesmen of the nation who are now no more.  We come--we are
here assembled together--to protest as well as we can against a
great wrong, and to take measures, as well as we now can, to make
that wrong right; to place the nation, as far as it may be
possible now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise; and the plain way to do this is to restore the
Compromise, and to demand and determine that Kansas shall be
free! [Immense applause.] While we affirm, and reaffirm, if
necessary, our devotion to the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, let our practical work here be limited to the
above.  We know that there is not a perfect agreement of
sentiment here on the public questions which might be rightfully
considered in this convention, and that the indignation which we
all must feel cannot be helped; but all of us must give up
something for the good of the cause.  There is one desire which
is uppermost in the mind, one wish common to us all, to which no
dissent will be made; and I counsel you earnestly to bury all
resentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all things work to
a common purpose in which we are united and agreed about, and
which all present will agree is absolutely necessary--which must
be done by any rightful mode if there be such:
Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! [Applause.] The test--the
pinch--is right there.  If we lose Kansas to freedom, an example
will be set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end.  We,
therefore, in the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to the
root of the tree."  Temporizing will not do longer; now is the
time for decision--for firm, persistent, resolute action.
[Applause.]

The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of
wholesome legislation, but was and is an act of legislative
usurpation, whose result, if not indeed intention, is to make
slavery national; and unless headed off in some effective way, we
are in a fair way to see this land of boasted freedom converted
into a land of slavery in fact.  [Sensation.] Just open your two
eyes, and see if this be not so.  I need do no more than state,
to command universal approval, that almost the entire North, as
well as a large following in the border States, is radically
opposed to the planting of slavery in free territory.  Probably
in a popular vote throughout the nation nine tenths of the voters
in the free States, and at least one-half in the border States,
if they could express their sentiments freely, would vote NO on
such an issue; and it is safe to say that two thirds of the votes
of the entire nation would be opposed to it.  And yet, in spite
of this overbalancing of sentiment in this free country, we are
in a fair way to see Kansas present itself for admission as a
slave State.  Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law of Kansas,
to deny that slavery exists there even now.  By every principle
of law, a negro in Kansas is free; yet the bogus Legislature
makes it an infamous crime to tell him that he is free!

Statutes of Kansas, 1555, chapter 151, Sec.  12: If any free
person, by speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that
persons have not the right to hold slaves in this Territory, or
shall introduce into this Territory, print, publish, write,
circulate .  .  .  any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or
circular containing any denial of the right of persons to hold
slaves in this Territory such person shall be deemed guilty of
felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labor for a term of
not less than two years.
Sec.  13.  No person who is conscientiously opposed to holding
slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this
Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution
for any violation of any Sections of this Act.

The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and
liberty; for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and
well known by the most common experience, that men will do things
under the terror of the party lash that they would not on any
account or for any consideration do otherwise; while men who will
march up to the mouth of a loaded cannon without shrinking will
run from the terrible name of "Abolitionist," even when
pronounced by a worthless creature whom they, with good reason,
despise.  For instance--to press this point a little--Judge
Douglas introduced his Nebraska Bill in January; and we had an
extra session of our Legislature in the succeeding February, in
which were seventy-five Democrats; and at a party caucus, fully
attended, there were just three votes, out of the whole seventy-
five, for the measure.  But in a few days orders came on from
Washington, commanding them to approve the measure; the party
lash was applied, and it was brought up again in caucus, and
passed by a large majority.  The masses were against it, but
party necessity carried it; and it was passed through the lower
house of Congress against the will of the people, for the same
reason.  Here is where the greatest danger lies that, while we
profess to be a government of law and reason, law will give way
to violence on demand of this awful and crushing power.  Like the
great Juggernaut--I think that is the name--the great idol, it
crushes everything that comes in its way, and makes a [?]--or, as
I read once, in a blackletter law book, "a slave is a human being
who is legally not a person but a thing."  And if the safeguards
to liberty are broken down, as is now attempted, when they have
made things of all the free negroes, how long, think you, before
they will begin to make things of poor white men?  [Applause.] Be
not deceived.  Revolutions do not go backward.  The founder of
the Democratic party declared that all men were created equal.
His successor in the leadership has written the word "white"
before men, making it read "all white men are created equal."
Pray, will or may not the Know-Nothings, if they should get in
power, add the word "Protestant," making it read "all Protestant
white men...?"

Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals
in other quarters.  John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his
respects to, you will recollect, calls the immortal Declaration
"a self-evident lie"; while at the birthplace of freedom--in the
shadow of Bunker Hill and of the "cradle of liberty," at the home
of the Adamses and Warren and Otis--Choate, from our side of the
house, dares to fritter away the birthday promise of liberty by
proclaiming the Declaration to be "a string of glittering
generalities"; and the Southern Whigs, working hand in hand with
proslavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories practical.
Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element in
slavery, solemnly declared that he trembled for his country when
he remembered that God is just; while Judge Douglas, with an
insignificant wave of the hand, "don't care whether slavery is
voted up or voted down."  Now, if slavery is right, or even
negative, he has a right to treat it in this trifling manner.
But if it is a moral and political wrong, as all Christendom
considers it to be, how can he answer to God for this attempt to
spread and fortify it?  [Applause.]

But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can
maintain a negative, or merely neutral, position on this
question; and, accordingly, he avows that the Union was made by
white men and for white men and their descendants.  As matter of
fact, the first branch of the proposition is historically true;
the government was made by white men, and they were and are the
superior race.  This I admit.  But the corner-stone of the
government, so to speak, was the declaration that "all men are
created equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."  [Applause.]

And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were
particular to keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the
reason being that slavery would ultimately come to an end, and
they did not wish to have any reminder that in this free country
human beings were ever prostituted to slavery.  [Applause.] Nor
is it any argument that we are superior and the negro inferior--
that he has but one talent while we have ten.  Let the negro
possess the little he has in independence; if he has but one
talent, he should be permitted to keep the little he has.
[Applause:] But slavery will endure no test of reason or logic;
and yet its advocates, like Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic,
or noisy assumption it might better be termed, like the above, in
order to prepare the mind for the gradual, but none the less
certain, encroachments of the Moloch of slavery upon the fair
domain of freedom.  But however much you may argue upon it, or
smother it in soft phrase, slavery can only be maintained by
force--by violence.  The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was by
violence.  It was a violation of both law and the sacred
obligations of honor, to overthrow and trample under foot a
solemn compromise, obtained by the fearful loss to freedom of one
of the fairest of our Western domains.  Congress violated the
will and confidence of its constituents in voting for the bill;
and while public sentiment, as shown by the elections of 1854,
demanded the restoration of this compromise, Congress violated
its trust by refusing simply because it had the force of numbers
to hold on to it.  And murderous violence is being used now, in
order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any
other way.  [Sensation.]

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence--
force, instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and
spread slavery, and in time to make it general.  We see it at
both ends of the line.  In Washington, on the very spot where the
outrage was started, the fearless Sumner is beaten to
insensibility, and is now slowly dying; while senators who claim
to be gentlemen and Christians stood by, countenancing the act,
and even applauding it afterward in their places in the Senate.
Even Douglas, our man, saw it all and was within helping
distance, yet let the murderous blows fall unopposed.  Then, at
the other end of the line, at the very time Sumner was being
murdered, Lawrence was being destroyed for the crime of freedom.
It was the most prominent stronghold of liberty in Kansas, and
must give way to the all-dominating power of slavery.  Only two
days ago, Judge Trumbull found it necessary to propose a bill in
the Senate to prevent a general civil war and to restore peace in
Kansas.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we
expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.  Are we in
a healthful political state?  Are not the tendencies plain?  Do
not the signs of the times point plainly the way in which we are
going?  [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by
South and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment
about it was not controlled by geographical lines or
considerations of climate, but by moral and philanthropic views.
Petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the very
first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts alike.  To show the
harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive slave law
was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and
but seven dissenting votes in the House.  It was, however, a wise
law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one.  Twenty-
five years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated;
and thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by
Mason of Virginia, was passed by Northern votes.  I am not, just
now, complaining of this law, but I am trying to show how the
current sets; for the proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive
than the present one.  In 1774 the Continental Congress pledged
itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue the
slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and
less than three months before the passage of the Declaration of
Independence, the same Congress which adopted that declaration
unanimously resolved "that no slave be imported into any of the
thirteen United Colonies."  [Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it
the slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as
"a piratical warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and
as "a cruel war against human nature."  [Applause.] All agreed on
this except South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve
harmony, and from the necessity of the case, these expressions
were omitted.  Indeed, abolition societies existed as far south
as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact that Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton were
qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject
than we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day.
On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its
lands lying northwest of the Ohio River.  Jefferson, Chase of
Maryland, and Howell of Rhode Island, as a committee on that and
territory thereafter to be ceded, reported that no slavery should
exist after the year 1800.  Had this report been adopted, not
only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi also would have been free; but it required the assent
of nine States to ratify it.  North Carolina was divided, and
thus its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey
refused to vote.  In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to
by six States.  Three years later on a square vote to exclude
slavery from the Northwest, only one vote, and that from New
York, was against it.  And yet, thirty-seven years later, five
thousand citizens of Illinois, out of a voting mass of less than
twelve thousand, deliberately, after a long and heated contest,
voted to introduce slavery in Illinois; and, to-day, a large
party in the free State of Illinois are willing to vote to fasten
the shackles of slavery on the fair domain of Kansas,
notwithstanding it received the dowry of freedom long before its
birth as a political community.  I repeat, therefore, the
question: Is it not plain in what direction we are tending?
[Sensation.] In the colonial time, Mason, Pendleton, and
Jefferson were as hostile to slavery in Virginia as Otis, Ames,
and the Adamses were in Massachusetts; and Virginia made as
earnest an effort to get rid of it as old Massachusetts did.  But
circumstances were against them and they failed; but not that the
good will of its leading men was lacking.  Yet within less than
fifty years Virginia changed its tune, and made negro-breeding
for the cotton and sugar States one of its leading industries.
[Laughter and applause.]

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a
more violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding
would desire to make here to-day--a speech which could not be
safely repeated anywhere on Southern soil in this enlightened
year.  But, while there were some differences of opinion on this
subject even then, discussion was allowed; but as you see by the
Kansas slave code, which, as you know, is the Missouri slave
code, merely ferried across the river, it is a felony to even
express an opinion hostile to that foul blot in the land of
Washington and the Declaration of Independence.  [Sensation.]

In Kentucky--my State--in 1849, on a test vote, the mighty
influence of Henry Clay and many other good then there could not
get a symptom of expression in favor of gradual emancipation on a
plain issue of marching toward the light of civilization with
Ohio and Illinois; but the State of Boone and Hardin and Henry
Clay, with a nigger under each arm, took the black trail toward
the deadly swamps of barbarism.  Is there--can there be--any
doubt about this thing?  And is there any doubt that we must all
lay aside our prejudices and march, shoulder to shoulder, in the
great army of Freedom?  [Applause.]

Every Fourth of July our young orators all proclaim this to be
"the land of the free and the home of the brave!"  Well, now, when
you orators get that off next year, and, may be, this very year,
how would you like some old grizzled farmer to get up in the
grove and deny it?  [Laughter.] How would you like that?  But
suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State, and all the "border
ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State men come
trailing back to the dishonored North, like whipped dogs with
their tails between their legs, it is--ain't it ?--evident that
this is no more the "land of the free"; and if we let it go so,
we won't dare to say "home of the brave" out loud.  [Sensation
and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will,
slavery will triumph through violence, unless that will be made
manifest and enforced?  Even Governor Reeder claimed at the
outset that the contest in Kansas was to be fair, but he got his
eyes open at last; and I believe that, as a result of this moral
and physical violence, Kansas will soon apply for admission as a
slave State.  And yet we can't mistake that the people don't want
it so, and that it is a land which is free both by natural and
political law.  No law, is free law! Such is the understanding of
all Christendom.  In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century
ago, the great Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a
nature that it must take its rise in positive (as distinguished
from natural) law; and that in no country or age could it be
traced back to any other source.  Will some one please tell me
where is the positive law that establishes slavery in Kansas?  [A
voice: "The bogus laws."] Aye, the bogus laws! And, on the same
principle, a gang of Missouri horse-thieves could come into
Illinois and declare horse-stealing to be legal [Laughter], and
it would be just as legal as slavery is in Kansas.  But by
express statute, in the land of Washington and Jefferson, we may
soon be brought face to face with the discreditable fact of
showing to the world by our acts that we prefer slavery to
freedom--darkness to light! [Sensation.]

It is, I believe, a principle in law that when one party to a
contract violates it so grossly as to chiefly destroy the object
for which it is made, the other party may rescind it.  I will ask
Browning if that ain't good law.  [Voices: "Yes!"] Well, now if
that be right, I go for rescinding the whole, entire Missouri
Compromise and thus turning Missouri into a free State; and I
should like to know the difference--should like for any one to
point out the difference--between our making a free State of
Missouri and their making a slave State of Kansas.  [Great
applause.] There ain't one bit of difference, except that our way
would be a great mercy to humanity.  But I have never said, and
the Whig party has never said, and those who oppose the Nebraska
Bill do not as a body say, that they have any intention of
interfering with slavery in the slave States.  Our platform says
just the contrary.  We allow slavery to exist in the slave
States, not because slavery is right or good, but from the
necessities of our Union.  We grant a fugitive slave law because
it is so "nominated in the bond"; because our fathers so
stipulated--had to--and we are bound to carry out this agreement.
But they did not agree to introduce slavery in regions where it
did not previously exist.  On the contrary, they said by their
example and teachings that they did not deem it expedient--did
n't consider it right--to do so; and it is wise and
right to do just as they did about it.  [Voices: "Good!"] And
that it what we propose--not to interfere with slavery where it
exists (we have never tried to do it), and to give them a
reasonable and efficient fugitive slave law.  [A voice: "No!"] I
say YES! [Applause.] It was part of the bargain, and I 'm for
living up to it; but I go no further; I'm not bound to do more,
and I won't agree any further.  [Great applause.]

We, here in Illinois, should feel especially proud of the
provision of the Missouri Compromise excluding slavery from what
is now Kansas; for an Illinois man, Jesse B.  Thomas, was its
father.  Henry Clay, who is credited with the authorship of the
Compromise in general terms, did not even vote for that
provision, but only advocated the ultimate admission by a second
compromise; and Thomas was, beyond all controversy, the real
author of the "slavery restriction" branch of the Compromise.  To
show the generosity of the Northern members toward the Southern
side: on a test vote to exclude slavery from Missouri, ninety
voted not to exclude, and eighty-seven to exclude, every vote
from the slave States being ranged with the former and fourteen
votes from the free States, of whom seven were from New England
alone; while on a vote to exclude slavery from what is now
Kansas, the vote was one hundred and thirty-four for, to forty-
two against.  The scheme, as a whole, was, of course, a Southern
triumph.  It is idle to contend otherwise, as is now being done
by the Nebraskites; it was so shown by the votes and quite as
emphatically by the expressions of representative men.  Mr.
Lowndes of South Carolina was never known to commit a political
mistake; his was the great judgment of that section; and he
declared that this measure "would restore tranquillity to the
country--a result demanded by every consideration of discretion,
of moderation, of wisdom, and of virtue."  When the measure came
before President Monroe for his approval, he put to each member
of his cabinet this question: "Has Congress the constitutional
power to prohibit slavery in a Territory?"  And John C.  Calhoun
and William H.  Crawford from the South, equally with John Quincy
Adams, Benjamin Rush, and Smith Thompson from the North, alike
answered, "Yes!" without qualification or equivocation; and this
measure, of so great consequence to the South, was passed; and
Missouri was, by means of it, finally enabled to knock at the
door of the Republic for an open passage to its brood of slaves.
And, in spite of this, Freedom's share is about to be taken by
violence--by the force of misrepresentative votes, not called for
by the popular will.  What name can I, in common decency, give to
this wicked transaction?  [Sensation.]

But even then the contest was not over; for when the Missouri
constitution came before Congress for its approval, it forbade
any free negro or mulatto from entering the State.  In short, our
Illinois "black 1aws" were hidden away in their constitution
[Laughter], and the controversy was thus revived.  Then it was
that Mr. Clay's talents shone out conspicuously, and the
controversy that shook the union to its foundation was finally
settled to the satisfaction of the conservative parties on both
sides of the line, though not to the extremists on either, and
Missouri was admitted by the small majority of six in the lower
House.  How great a majority, do you think, would have been given
had Kansas also been secured for slavery?  [A voice: "A majority
the other way."] "A majority the other way," is answered.  Do you
think it would have been safe for a Northern man to have
confronted his constituents after having voted to consign both
Missouri and Kansas to hopeless slavery?  And yet this man
Douglas, who misrepresents his constituents and who has exerted
his highest talents in that direction, will be carried in triumph
through the State and hailed with honor while applauding that
act.  [Three groans for "Dug!"] And this shows whither we are
tending.  This thing of slavery is more powerful than its
supporters--even than the high priests that minister at its
altar.  It debauches even our greatest men.  It gathers strength,
like a rolling snowball, by its own infamy.  Monstrous crimes are
committed in its name by persons collectively which they would
not dare to commit as individuals.  Its aggressions and
encroachments almost surpass belief.  In a despotism, one might
not wonder to see slavery advance steadily and remorselessly into
new dominions; but is it not wonderful, is it not even alarming,
to see its steady advance in a land dedicated to the proposition
that "all men are created equal"?  [Sensation.]

It yields nothing itself; it keeps all it has, and gets all it
can besides.  It really came dangerously near securing Illinois
in 1824; it did get Missouri in 1821.  The first proposition was
to admit what is now Arkansas and Missouri as one slave State.
But the territory was divided and Arkansas came in, without
serious question, as a slave State; and afterwards Missouri, not,
as a sort of equality, free, but also as a slave State.  Then we
had Florida and Texas; and now Kansas is about to be forced into
the dismal procession.  [Sensation.] And so it is wherever you
look.  We have not forgotten--it is but six years since--how
dangerously near California came to being a slave State.  Texas
is a slave State, and four other slave States may be carved from
its vast domain.  And yet, in the year 1829, slavery was
abolished throughout that vast region by a royal decree of the
then sovereign of Mexico.  Will you please tell me by what right
slavery exists in Texas to-day?  By the same right as, and no
higher or greater than, slavery is seeking dominion in Kansas:
by political force--peaceful, if that will suffice; by the torch
(as in Kansas) and the bludgeon (as in the Senate chamber), if
required.  And so history repeats itself; and even as slavery has
kept its course by craft, intimidation, and violence in the past,
so it will persist, in my judgment, until met and dominated by
the will of a people bent on its restriction.

We have, this very afternoon, heard bitter denunciations of
Brooks in Washington, and Titus, Stringfellow, Atchison, Jones,
and Shannon in Kansas--the battle-ground of slavery.  I certainly
am not going to advocate or shield them; but they and their acts
are but the necessary outcome of the Nebraska law.  We should
reserve our highest censure for the authors of the mischief, and
not for the catspaws which they use.  I believe it was
Shakespeare who said, "Where the offence lies, there let the axe
fall"; and, in my opinion, this man Douglas and the Northern men
in Congress who advocate "Nebraska" are more guilty than a
thousand Joneses and Stringfellows, with all their murderous
practices, can be.  [Applause.]

We have made a good beginning here to-day.  As our Methodist
friends would say, "I feel it is good to be here."  While
extremists may find some fault with the moderation of our
platform, they should recollect that "the battle is not always to
the strong, nor the race to the swift."  In grave emergencies,
moderation is generally safer than radicalism; and as this
struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our
action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but
rather win all that we can to our standard.  We must not belittle
nor overlook the facts of our condition--that we are new and
comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and
relatively strong.  They have the administration and the
political power; and, right or wrong, at present they have the
numbers.  Our friends who urge an appeal to arms with so much
force and eloquence should recollect that the government is
arrayed against us, and that the numbers are now arrayed against
us as well; or, to state it nearer to the truth, they are not yet
expressly and affirmatively for us; and we should repel friends
rather than gain them by anything savoring of revolutionary
methods.  As it now stands, we must appeal to the sober sense and
patriotism of the people.  We will make converts day by day; we
will grow strong by calmness and moderation; we will grow strong
by the violence and injustice of our adversaries.  And, unless
truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the
majority after a while, and then the revolution which we will
accomplish will be none the less radical from being the result of
pacific measures.  The battle of freedom is to be fought out on
principle.  Slavery is a violation of the eternal right.  We have
temporized with it from the necessities of our condition; but as
sure as God reigns and school children read, THAT BLACK FOUL LIE
CAN NEVER BE CONSECRATED INTO GOD'S HALLOWED TRUTH! [Immense
applause lasting some time.]

One of our greatest difficulties is, that men who know that
slavery is a detestable crime and ruinous to the nation are
compelled, by our peculiar condition and other circumstances, to
advocate it concretely, though damning it in the raw.  Henry Clay
was a brilliant example of this tendency; others of our purest
statesmen are compelled to do so; and thus slavery secures actual
support from those who detest it at heart.  Yet Henry Clay
perfected and forced through the compromise which secured to
slavery a great State as well as a political advantage.  Not that
he hated slavery less, but that he loved the whole Union more.
As long as slavery profited by his great compromise, the hosts of
proslavery could not sufficiently cover him with praise; but now
that this compromise stands in their way-

"....they never mention him,
His name is never heard:
Their lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word."

They have slaughtered one of his most cherished measures, and his
ghost would arise to rebuke them.  [Great applause.]

Now, let us harmonize, my friends, and appeal to the moderation
and patriotism of the people: to the sober second thought; to the
awakened public conscience.  The repeal of the sacred Missouri
Compromise has installed the weapons of violence: the bludgeon,
the incendiary torch, the death-dealing rifle, the bristling
cannon--the weapons of kingcraft, of the inquisition, of
ignorance, of barbarism, of oppression.  We see its fruits in the
dying bed of the heroic Sumner; in the ruins of the "Free State"
hotel; in the smoking embers of the Herald of Freedom; in the
free-State Governor of Kansas chained to a stake on freedom's
soil like a horse-thief, for the crime of freedom.  [Applause.]
We see it in Christian statesmen, and Christian newspapers, and
Christian pulpits applauding the cowardly act of a low bully, WHO
CRAWLED UPON HIS VICTIM BEHIND HIS BACK AND DEALT THE DEADLY
BLOW.  [Sensation and applause.] We note our political
demoralization in the catch-words that are coming into such
common use; on the one hand, "freedom-shriekers," and sometimes
"freedom-screechers" [Laughter], and, on the other hand, "border-
ruffians," and that fully deserved.  And the significance of
catch-words cannot pass unheeded, for they constitute a sign of
the times.  Everything in this world "jibes" in with everything
else, and all the fruits of this Nebraska Bill are like the
poisoned source from which they come.  I will not say that we may
not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the
time has not yet come, and, if we are true to ourselves, may
never come.  Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the
bullet.  Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but
let us wait patiently till November and fire ballots at them in
return; and by that peaceful policy I believe we shall ultimately
win.  [Applause.]

It was by that policy that here in Illinois the early fathers
fought the good fight and gained the victory.  In 1824 the free
men of our State, led by Governor Coles (who was a native of
Maryland and President Madison's private secretary), determined
that those beautiful groves should never re-echo the dirge of one
who has no title to himself.  By their resolute determination,
the winds that sweep across our broad prairies shall never cool
the parched brow, nor shall the unfettered streams that bring joy
and gladness to our free soil water the tired feet, of a slave;
but so long as those heavenly breezes and sparkling streams bless
the land, or the groves and their fragrance or memory remain, the
humanity to which they minister SHALL BE FOREVER FREE! [Great
applause] Palmer, Yates, Williams, Browning, and some more in
this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going
to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to
get away from slavery.  They have said so to me, and it is
understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit.
Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early
men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free
men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts?
["No!"  "No!"] Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to
better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska?  ["Yes!"  "Yes!"]
Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the
sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already
oppressed race?  ["No!"  "No!"] "Woe unto them," it is written,
"that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness
which they have prescribed."  Can we afford to sin any more deeply
against human liberty?  ["No!"  "No!"]

One great trouble in the matter is, that slavery is an insidious
and crafty power, and gains equally by open violence of the
brutal as well as by sly management of the peaceful.  Even after
the Ordinance of 1787, the settlers in Indiana and Illinois (it
was all one government then) tried to get Congress to allow
slavery temporarily, and petitions to that end were sent from
Kaskaskia, and General Harrison, the Governor, urged it from
Vincennes, the capital.  If that had succeeded, good-bye to
liberty here.  But John Randolph of Virginia made a vigorous
report against it; and although they persevered so well as to get
three favorable reports for it, yet the United States Senate,
with the aid of some slave States, finally squelched if for good.
[Applause.] And that is why this hall is to-day a temple for free
men instead of a negro livery-stable.  [Great applause and
laughter.] Once let slavery get planted in a locality, by ever so
weak or doubtful a title, and in ever so small numbers, and it is
like the Canada thistle or Bermuda grass--you can't root it out.
You yourself may detest slavery; but your neighbor has five or
six slaves, and he is an excellent neighbor, or your son has
married his daughter, and they beg you to help save their
property, and you vote against your interests and principle to
accommodate a neighbor, hoping that your vote will be on the
losing side.  And others do the same; and in those ways slavery
gets a sure foothold.  And when that is done the whole mighty
Union--the force of the nation--is committed to its support.  And
that very process is working in Kansas to-day.  And you must
recollect that the slave property is worth a billion of dollars;
while free-State men must work for sentiment alone.  Then there
are "blue lodges"--as they call them--everywhere doing their
secret and deadly work.

It is a very strange thing, and not solvable by any moral law
that I know of, that if a man loses his horse, the whole country
will turn out to help hang the thief; but if a man but a shade or
two darker than I am is himself stolen, the same crowd will hang
one who aids in restoring him to liberty.  Such are the
inconsistencies of slavery, where a horse is more sacred than a
man; and the essence of squatter or popular sovereignty--I don't
care how you call it--is that if one man chooses to make a slave
of another, no third man shall be allowed to object.  And if you
can do this in free Kansas, and it is allowed to stand, the next
thing you will see is shiploads of negroes from Africa at the
wharf at Charleston, for one thing is as truly lawful as the
other; and these are the bastard notions we have got to stamp
out, else they will stamp us out.  [Sensation and applause.]

Two years ago, at Springfield, Judge Douglas avowed that Illinois
came into the Union as a slave State, and that slavery was weeded
out by the operation of his great, patent, everlasting principle
of "popular sovereignty."  [Laughter.] Well, now, that argument
must be answered, for it has a little grain of truth at the
bottom.  I do not mean that it is true in essence, as he would
have us believe.  It could not be essentially true if the
Ordinance of '87 was valid.  But, in point of fact, there were
some degraded beings called slaves in Kaskaskia and the other
French settlements when our first State constitution was adopted;
that is a fact, and I don't deny it.  Slaves were brought here as
early as 1720, and were kept here in spite of the Ordinance of
1787 against it.  But slavery did not thrive here.  On the
contrary, under the influence of the ordinance the number
decreased fifty-one from 1810 to 1820; while under the influence
of squatter sovereignty, right across the river in Missouri, they
increased seven thousand two hundred and eleven in the same time;
and slavery finally faded out in Illinois, under the influence of
the law of freedom, while it grew stronger and stronger in
Missouri, under the law or practice of "popular sovereignty."  In
point of fact there were but one hundred and seventeen slaves in
Illinois one year after its admission, or one to every four
hundred and seventy of its population; or, to state it in another
way, if Illinois was a slave State in 1820, so were New York and
New Jersey much greater slave States from having had greater
numbers, slavery having been established there in very early
times.  But there is this vital difference between all these
States and the Judge's Kansas experiment: that they sought to
disestablish slavery which had been already established, while
the Judge seeks, so far as he can, to disestablish freedom, which
had been established there by the Missouri Compromise.  [Voices:
"Good!"]

The Union is under-going a fearful strain; but it is a stout old
ship, and has weathered many a hard blow, and "the stars in their
courses," aye, an invisible Power, greater than the puny efforts
of men, will fight for us.  But we ourselves must not decline the
burden of responsibility, nor take counsel of unworthy passions.
Whatever duty urges us to do or to omit must be done or omitted;
and the recklessness with which our adversaries break the laws,
or counsel their violation, should afford no example for us.
Therefore, let us revere the Declaration of Independence; let us
continue to obey the Constitution and the laws; let us keep step
to the music of the Union.  Let us draw a cordon, so to speak,
around the slave States, and the hateful institution, like a
reptile poisoning itself, will perish by its own infamy.
[Applause.]

But we cannot be free men if this is, by our national choice, to
be a land of slavery.  Those who deny freedom to others deserve
it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot
long retain
it.[Loud applause.]

Did you ever, my friends, seriously reflect upon the speed with
which we are tending downwards?  Within the memory of men now
present the leading statesman of Virginia could make genuine,
red-hot abolitionist speeches in old Virginia! and, as I have
said, now even in "free Kansas" it is a crime to declare that it
is "free Kansas."  The very sentiments that I and others have just
uttered would entitle us, and each of us, to the ignominy and
seclusion of a dungeon; and yet I suppose that, like Paul, we
were "free born."  But if this thing is allowed to continue, it
will be but one step further to impress the same rule in
Illinois.  [Sensation.]

The conclusion of all is, that we must restore the Missouri
Compromise.  We must highly resolve that Kansas must be free!
[Great applause.] We must reinstate the birthday promise of the
Republic; we must reaffirm the Declaration of Independence; we
must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal
that "the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution";
and we must even go further, and decree that only local law, and
not that time-honored instrument, shall shelter a slaveholder.
We must make this a land of liberty in fact, as it is in name.
But in seeking to attain these results--so indispensable if the
liberty which is our pride and boast shall endure--we will be
loyal to the Constitution and to the "flag of our Union," and no
matter what our grievance--even though Kansas shall come in as a
slave State; and no matter what theirs--even if we shall restore
the compromise--WE WILL SAY TO THE SOUTHERN DISUNIONISTS, WE
WON'T GO OUT OF THE UNION, AND YOU SHAN'T!

[This was the climax; the audience rose to its feet en masse,
applauded, stamped, waved handkerchiefs, threw hats in the air,
and ran riot for several minutes.  The arch-enchanter who wrought
this transformation looked, meanwhile, like the personification
of political justice.]

But let us, meanwhile, appeal to the sense and patriotism of the
people, and not to their prejudices; let us spread the floods of
enthusiasm here aroused all over these vast prairies, so
suggestive of freedom.  Let us commence by electing the gallant
soldier Governor (Colonel) Bissell who stood for the honor of our
State alike on the plains and amidst the chaparral of Mexico and
on the floor of Congress, while he defied the Southern Hotspur;
and that will have a greater moral effect than all the border
ruffians can accomplish in all their raids on Kansas.  There is
both a power and a magic in popular opinion.  To that let us now
appeal; and while, in all probability, no resort to force will be
needed, our moderation and forbearance will stand US in good
stead when, if ever, WE MUST MAKE AN APPEAL TO BATTLE AND TO THE
GOD OF HOSTS! [Immense applause and a rush for the orator.]

One can realize with this ability to move people's minds that the
Southern Conspiracy were right to hate this man.  He, better than
any at the time was able to uncover their stratagems and tear
down their sophisms and contradictions.




POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE

TO W. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, July 9, 1856.

DEAR WHITNEY:--I now expect to go to Chicago on the 15th, and I
probably shall remain there or thereabouts for about two weeks.

It turned me blind when I first heard Swett was beaten and
Lovejoy nominated; but, after much reflection, I really believe
it is best to let it stand.  This, of course, I wish to be
confidential.

Lamon did get your deeds.  I went with him to the office, got
them, and put them in his hands myself.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON OUT-OF-STATE CAMPAIGNERS

TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 12, 1856

Your's of the 29th of June was duly received.  I did not answer
it because it plagued me.  This morning I received another from
Judd and Peck, written by consultation with you.  Now let me tell
you why I am plagued:

1.  I can hardly spare the time.

2.  I am superstitious.  I have scarcely known a party preceding
an election to call in help from the neighboring States but they
lost the State.  Last fall, our friends had Wade, of Ohio, and
others, in Maine; and they lost the State.  Last spring our
adversaries had New Hampshire full of South Carolinians, and they
lost the State.  And so, generally, it seems to stir up more
enemies than friends.

Have the enemy called in any foreign help?  If they have a
foreign champion there I should have no objection to drive a nail
in his track.  I shall reach Chicago on the night of the 15th, to
attend to a little business in court.  Consider the things I have
suggested, and write me at Chicago.  Especially write me whether
Browning consents to visit you.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN SPEECH

FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT GALENA, ILLINOIS, IN THE
FREMONT CAMPAIGN, AUGUST 1, 1856.

You further charge us with being disunionists.  If you mean that
it is our aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself answer that it
is untrue; for those who act with me I answer that it is untrue.
Have you heard us assert that as our aim?  Do you really believe
that such is our aim?  Do you find it in our platform, our
speeches, our conventions, or anywhere?  If not, withdraw the
charge.

But you may say that, though it is not our aim, it will be the
result if we succeed, and that we are therefore disunionists in
fact.  This is a grave charge you make against us, and we
certainly have a right to demand that you specify in what way we
are to dissolve the Union.  How are we to effect this?

The only specification offered is volunteered by Mr. Fillmore in
his Albany speech.  His charge is that if we elect a President
and Vice-President both from the free States, it will dissolve
the Union.  This
is open folly.  The Constitution provides that the President and
Vice-President of the United States shall be of different States,
but says nothing as to the latitude and longitude of those
States.  In 1828 Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C.
Calhoun, of South Carolina, were elected President and Vice-
President, both from slave States; but no one thought of
dissolving the Union then on that account.  In 1840 Harrison, of
Ohio, and Tyler, of Virginia, were elected.  In 1841 Harrison
died and John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency, and William R.
King, of Alabama, was elected acting Vice-President by the
Senate; but no one supposed that the Union was in danger.  In
fact, at the very time Mr. Fillmore uttered this idle charge, the
state of things in the United States disproved it.  Mr. Pierce,
of New Hampshire, and Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free
States, are President and Vice-President, and the Union stands
and will stand.  You do not pretend that it ought to dissolve the
Union, and the facts show that it won't; therefore the charge may
be dismissed without further consideration.

No other specification is made, and the only one that could be
made is that the restoration of the restriction of 1820, making
the United States territory free territory, would dissolve the
Union.  Gentlemen, it will require a decided majority to pass
such an act.  We, the majority, being able constitutionally to do
all that we purpose, would have no desire to dissolve the Union.
Do you say that such restriction of slavery would be
unconstitutional, and that some of the States would not submit to
its enforcement?  I grant you that an unconstitutional act is not
a law; but I do not ask and will not take your construction of
the Constitution.  The Supreme Court of the United States is the
tribunal to decide such a question, and we will submit to its
decisions; and if you do also, there will be an end of the
matter.  Will you?  If not, who are the disunionists--you or we?
We, the majority, would not strive to dissolve the Union; and if
any attempt is made, it must be by you, who so loudly stigmatize
us as disunionists.  But the Union, in any event, will not be
dissolved.  We don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it
we won't let you.  With the purse and sword, the army and navy
and treasury, in our hands and at our command, you could not do
it.  This government would be very weak indeed if a majority with
a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury could not
preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined,
unorganized minority.  All this talk about the dissolution of the
Union is humbug, nothing but folly.  We do not want to dissolve
the Union; you shall not.




ON THE DANGER OF THIRD-PARTIES

TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, AUG. 4, 1856

DEAR SIR:--I understand you are a Fillmore man.  If, as between
Fremont and Buchanan, you really prefer the election of Buchanan,
then burn this without reading a line further.  But if you would
like to defeat Buchanan and his gang, allow me a word with you:
Does any one pretend that Fillmore can carry the vote of this
State?  I have not heard a single man pretend so.  Every vote
taken from Fremont and given to Fillmore is just so much in favor
of Buchanan.  The Buchanan men see this; and hence their great
anxiety in favor of the Fillmore movement.  They know where the
shoe pinches.  They now greatly prefer having a man of your
character go for Fillmore than for Buchanan because they expect
several to go with you, who would go for Fremont if you were to
go directly for Buchanan.

I think I now understand the relative strength of the three
parties in this State as well as any one man does, and my opinion
is that to-day Buchanan has alone 85,000, Fremont 78,000, and
Fillmore 21,000.

This gives B. the State by 7000 and leaves him in the minority of
the whole 14,000.

Fremont and Fillmore men being united on Bissell, as they already
are, he cannot be beaten.  This is not a long letter, but it
contains the whole story.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JESSE K. DUBOIS.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 19, 1856.

DEAR DUBOIS: Your letter on the same sheet with Mr. Miller's is
just received.  I have been absent four days.  I do not know when
your court sits.

Trumbull has written the committee here to have a set of
appointments made for him commencing here in Springfield, on the
11th of Sept., and to extend throughout the south half of the
State.  When he goes to Lawrenceville, as he will, I will strain
every nerve to be with you and him.  More than that I cannot
promise now.

Yours as truly as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HARRISON MALTBY.

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, September 8, 1856.

DEAR SIR:--I understand you are a Fillmore man.  Let me prove to
you that every vote withheld from Fremont and given to Fillmore
in this State actually lessens Fillmore's chance of being
President.  Suppose Buchanan gets all the slave States and
Pennsylvania, and any other one State besides; then he is
elected, no matter who gets all the rest.  But suppose Fillmore
gets the two slave States of Maryland and Kentucky; then Buchanan
is not elected; Fillmore goes into the House of Representatives,
and may be made President by a compromise.  But suppose, again,
Fillmore's friends throw away a few thousand votes on him in
Indiana and Illinois; it will inevitably give these States to
Buchanan, which will more than compensate him for the loss of
Maryland and Kentucky, will elect him, and leave Fillmore no
chance in the House of Representatives or out of it.

This is as plain as adding up the weight of three small hogs.  As
Mr. Fillmore has no possible chance to carry Illinois for
himself, it is plainly to his interest to let Fremont take it,
and thus keep it out of the hands of Buchanan.  Be not deceived.
Buchanan is the hard horse to beat in this race.  Let him have
Illinois, and nothing can beat him; and he will get Illinois if
men persist in throwing away votes upon Mr. Fillmore.  Does some
one persuade you that Mr. Fillmore can carry Illinois?  Nonsense!
There are over seventy newspapers in Illinois opposing Buchanan,
only three or four of which support Mr. Fillmore, all the rest
going for Fremont.  Are not these newspapers a fair index of the
proportion of the votes?  If not, tell me why.

Again, of these three or four Fillmore newspapers, two, at least,
are supported in part by the Buchanan men, as I understand.  Do
not they know where the shoe pinches?  They know the Fillmore
movement helps them, and therefore they help it.  Do think these
things over, and then act according to your judgment.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN




TO Dr. R. BOAL.

Sept.  14, 1856.

Dr. R. BOAL, Lacon, Ill.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 8th inviting me to be with [you] at
Lacon on the 30th is received.  I feel that I owe you and our
friends of Marshall a good deal, and I will come if I can; and if
I do not get there, it will be because I shall think my efforts
are now needed farther south.

Present my regards to Mrs. Boal, and believe [me], as ever,

Your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HENRY O'CONNER, MUSCATINE, IOWA.

SPRINGFIELD, Sept.  14, 1856.

DEAR SIR:--Yours, inviting me to attend a mass-meeting on the 23d
inst., is received.  It would be very pleasant to strike hands
with the Fremonters of Iowa, who have led the van so splendidly,
in this grand charge which we hope and believe will end in a most
glorious victory.  All thanks, all honor to Iowa!  But Iowa is
out of all danger, and it is no time for us, when the battle
still rages, to pay holiday visits to Iowa.  I am sure you will
excuse me for remaining in Illinois, where much hard work is
still to be done.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC VICTORY OF BUCHANAN

FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT A REPUBLICAN BANQUET
IN CHICAGO, DECEMBER 10, 1856.

We have another annual Presidential message.  Like a rejected
lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, the President
felicitates himself hugely over the late Presidential election.
He considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and
good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones.  He says the
people did it.  He forgets that the "people," as he complacently
calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the
whole people by about four hundred thousand votes--one full tenth
of all the votes.  Remembering this, he might perceive that the
"rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think--that
the majority may not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that
minority.

The President thinks the great body of us Fremonters, being
ardently attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a
few wicked and designing men.  There is a slight difference of
opinion on this.  We think he, being ardently attached to the
hope of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had
liberty every way.  He is the cat's-paw.  By much dragging of
chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt
off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further
use.  As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters had
turned him out of doors, "He 's a shelled peascod" ("That 's a
sheal'd peascod").

So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the
domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing
everything in our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws
of moral authority," for the whole party on belief, and for
myself on knowledge, I pronounce the charge an unmixed and
unmitigated falsehood.

Our government rests in public opinion.  Whoever can change
public opinion can change the government practically just so
much.  Public opinion, on any subject, always has a "central
idea," from which all its minor thoughts radiate.  That "central
idea" in our political public opinion at the beginning was, and
until recently has continued to be, "the equality of men."  And
although it has always submitted patiently to whatever of
inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity, its
constant working has been a steady progress toward the practical
equality of all men.  The late Presidential election was a
struggle by one party to discard that central idea and to
substitute for it the opposite idea that slavery is right in the
abstract, the workings of which as a central idea may be the
perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all countries
and colors.  Less than a year ago the Richmond Enquirer, an
avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of color, in order to
favor his views, invented the phrase "State equality," and now
the President, in his message, adopts the Enquirer's catch-
phrase, telling us the people "have asserted the constitutional
equality of each and all of the States of the Union as States."
The President flatters himself that the new central idea is
completely inaugurated; and so indeed it is, so far as the mere
fact of a Presidential election can inaugurate it.  To us it is
left to know that the majority of the people have not yet
declared for it, and to hope that they never will.

All of us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are
a majority of four hundred thousand.  But in the late contest we
were divided between Fremont and Fillmore.  Can we not come
together for the future?  Let every one who really believes and
is resolved that free society is not and shall not be a failure,
and who can conscientiously declare that in the last contest he
has done only what he thought best--let every such one have
charity to believe that every other one can say as much.  Thus
let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and
with steady eye on the real issue let us reinaugurate the good
old "central idea" of the republic.  We can do it.  The human
heart is with us; God is with us.  We shall again be able, not to
declare that "all States as States are equal," nor yet that "all
citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew the broader, better
declaration, including both these and much more, that "all men
are created equal."




TO Dr. R. BOAL.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec. 25, 1856.

DEAR SIR:-When I was at Chicago two weeks ago I saw Mr. Arnold,
and from a remark of his I inferred he was thinking of the
speakership, though I think he was not anxious about it.  He
seemed most anxious for harmony generally, and particularly that
the contested seats from Peoria and McDonough might be rightly
determined.  Since I came home I had a talk with Cullom, one of
our American representatives here, and he says he is for you for
Speaker and also that he thinks all the Americans will be for
you, unless it be Gorin, of Macon, of whom he cannot speak.  If
you would like to be Speaker go right up and see Arnold.  He is
talented, a practised debater, and, I think, would do himself
more credit on the floor than in the Speaker's seat.  Go and see
him; and if you think fit, show him this letter.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1857


TO JOHN E.  ROSETTE.
Private.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., February 10, 1857.

DEAR SIR:--Your note about the little paragraph in the Republican
was received yesterday, since which time I have been too unwell
to notice it.  I had not supposed you wrote or approved it.  The
whole originated in mistake.  You know by the conversation with
me that I thought the establishment of the paper unfortunate, but
I always expected to throw no obstacle in its way, and to
patronize it to the extent of taking and paying for one copy.
When the paper was brought to my house, my wife said to me, "Now
are you going to take another worthless little paper?"  I said to
her evasively, "I have not directed the paper to be left."  From
this, in my absence, she sent the message to the carrier.  This
is the whole story.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A DOUGLAS SPEECH

SPEECH IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
JUNE 26, 1857.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am here to-night partly by the invitation of
some of you, and partly by my own inclination.  Two weeks ago
Judge Douglas spoke here on the several subjects of Kansas, the
Dred Scott decision, and Utah.  I listened to the speech at the
time, and have the report of it since.  It was intended to
controvert opinions which I think just, and to assail
(politically, not personally) those men who, in common with me,
entertain those opinions.  For this reason I wished then, and
still wish, to make some answer to it, which I now take the
opportunity of doing.

I begin with Utah.  If it prove to be true, as is probable, that
the people of Utah are in open rebellion to the United States,
then Judge Douglas is in favor of repealing their territorial
organization, and attaching them to the adjoining States for
judicial purposes.  I say, too, if they are in rebellion, they
ought to be somehow coerced to obedience; and I am not now
prepared to admit or deny that the Judge's mode of coercing them
is not as good as any.  The Republicans can fall in with it
without taking back anything they have ever said.  To be sure, it
would be a considerable backing down by Judge Douglas from his
much-vaunted doctrine of self-government for the Territories; but
this is only additional proof of what was very plain from the
beginning, that that doctrine was a mere deceitful pretense for
the benefit of slavery.  Those who could not see that much in the
Nebraska act itself, which forced governors, and secretaries, and
judges on the people of the Territories without their choice or
consent, could not be made to see, though one should rise from
the dead.

But in all this it is very plain the Judge evades the only
question the Republicans have ever pressed upon the Democracy in
regard to Utah.  That question the Judge well knew to be this:
"If the people of Utah peacefully form a State constitution
tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the
Union?"  There is nothing in the United States Constitution or law
against polygamy; and why is it not a part of the Judge's "sacred
right of self-government" for the people to have it, or rather to
keep it, if they choose?  These questions, so far as I know, the
Judge never answers.  It might involve the Democracy to answer
them either way, and they go unanswered.

As to Kansas.  The substance of the Judge's speech on Kansas is
an effort to put the free-State men in the wrong for not voting
at the election of delegates to the constitutional convention.
He says:

"There is every reason to hope and believe that the law will be
fairly interpreted and impartially executed, so as to insure to
every bona fide inhabitant the free and quiet exercise of the
elective franchise."

It appears extraordinary that Judge Douglas should make such a
statement.  He knows that, by the law, no one can vote who has
not been registered; and he knows that the free-State men place
their refusal to vote on the ground that but few of them have
been registered.  It is possible that this is not true, but Judge
Douglas knows it is asserted to be true in letters, newspapers,
and public speeches, and borne by every mail and blown by every
breeze to the eyes and ears of the world.  He knows it is boldly
declared that the people of many whole counties, and many whole
neighborhoods in others, are left unregistered; yet he does not
venture to contradict the declaration, or to point out how they
can vote without being registered; but he just slips along, not
seeming to know there is any such question of fact, and
complacently declares:

 "There is every reason to hope and believe that the law will be
fairly and impartially executed, so as to insure to every bona
fide inhabitant the free and quiet exercise of the elective
franchise."

I readily agree that if all had a chance to vote they ought to
have voted.  If, on the contrary, as they allege, and Judge
Douglas ventures not to particularly contradict, few only of the
free-State men had a chance to vote, they were perfectly right in
staying from the polls in a body.

By the way, since the Judge spoke, the Kansas election has come
off.  The Judge expressed his confidence that all the Democrats
in Kansas would do their duty-including "free-State Democrats,"
of course.  The returns received here as yet are very incomplete;
but so far as they go, they indicate that only about one sixth of
the registered voters have really voted; and this, too, when not
more, perhaps, than one half of the rightful voters have been
registered, thus showing the thing to have been altogether the
most exquisite farce ever enacted.  I am watching with
considerable interest to ascertain what figure "the free-State
Democrats" cut in the concern.  Of course they voted,--all
Democrats do their duty,--and of course they did not vote for
slave-State candidates.  We soon shall know how many delegates
they elected, how many candidates they had pledged to a free
State, and how many votes were cast for them.

Allow me to barely whisper my suspicion that there were no such
things in Kansas as "free-State Democrats"--that they were
altogether mythical, good only to figure in newspapers and
speeches in the free States.  If there should prove to be one
real living free-State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it
might be well to catch him, and stuff and preserve his skin as an
interesting specimen of that soon-to-be extinct variety of the
genus Democrat.

And now as to the Dred Scott decision.  That decision declares
two propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United
States courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit
slavery in the Territories.  It was made by a divided court
dividing differently on the different points.  Judge Douglas does
not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that respect I
shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on
McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision,
as offering violent resistance to it.  But who resists it?  Who
has, in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and
resisted the authority of his master over him?

Judicial decisions have two uses--first, to absolutely determine
the case decided, and secondly, to indicate to the public how
other similar cases will be decided when they arise.  For the
latter use, they are called "precedents" and "authorities."

We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience
to, and respect for, the judicial department of government.  We
think its decisions on constitutional questions, when fully
settled, should control not only the particular cases decided,
but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed
only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that
instrument itself.  More than this would be revolution.  But we
think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous.  We know the court
that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall
do what we can to have it to overrule this.  We offer no
resistance to it.

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents
according to circumstances.  That this should be so accords both
with common sense and the customary understanding of the legal
profession.

If this important decision had been made by the unanimous
concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan
bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation and with
the steady practice of the departments throughout our history,
and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts which
are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been
before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and
reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps
would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in
it as a precedent.

But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to
the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious,
it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite
established a settled doctrine for the country.  But Judge
Douglas considers this view awful.  Hear him:

"The courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Constitution and
created by the authority of the people to determine, expound, and
enforce the law.  Hence, whoever resists the final decision of
the highest judicial tribunal aims a deadly blow at our whole
republican system of government--a blow which, if successful,
would place all our rights and liberties at the mercy of passion,
anarchy, and violence.  I repeat, therefore, that if resistance
to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a
matter like the points decided in the Dred Scott case, clearly
within their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution, shall
be forced upon the country as a political issue, it will become a
distinct and naked issue between the friends and enemies of the
Constitution--the friends and the enemies of the supremacy of the
laws."

Why, this same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be
constitutional; but General Jackson, as President of the United
States, disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a
recharter, partly on constitutional ground, declaring that each
public functionary must support the Constitution "as he
understands it."  But hear the General's own words.  Here they
are, taken from his veto message:

"It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its
constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as
settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court.
To this conclusion I cannot assent.  Mere precedent is a
dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as
deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the
acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as
well settled.  So far from this being the case on this subject,
an argument against the bank might be based on precedent.  One
Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811,
decided against it.  One Congress, in 1815, decided against a
bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor.  Prior to the
present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that
course were equal.  If we resort to the States, the expressions
of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank
have been probably to those in its favor as four to one.  There
is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were
admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me."

I drop the quotations merely to remark that all there ever was in
the way of precedent up to the Dred Scott decision, on the points
therein decided, had been against that decision.  But hear
General Jackson further:

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of
this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of
this government.  The Congress, the executive, and the courts
must, each for itself, be guided by its own opinion of the
Constitution.  Each public officer who takes an oath to support
the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands
it, and not as it is understood by others."

Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank
decision and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it.  It
would be interesting for him to look over his recent speech, and
see how exactly his fierce philippics against us for resisting
Supreme Court decisions fall upon his own head.  It will call to
mind a long and fierce political war in this country, upon an
issue which, in his own language, and, of course, in his own
changeless estimation, "was a distinct issue between the friends
and the enemies of the Constitution," and in which war he fought
in the ranks of the enemies of the Constitution.

I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in
part based on assumed historical facts which were not really
true, and I ought not to leave the subject without giving some
reasons for saying this; I therefore give an instance or two,
which I think fully sustain me.  Chief Justice Taney, in
delivering the opinion of the majority of the court, insists at
great length that negroes were no part of the people who made, or
for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the
Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows
that in five of the then thirteen States--to wit, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina--free
negroes were voters, and in proportion to their numbers had the
same part in making the Constitution that the white people had.
He shows this with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of
its truth; and as a sort of conclusion on that point, holds the
following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of
the United States, through the action, in each State, of those
persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf
of themselves and all other citizens of the State.  In some of
the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those
qualified by law to act on the subject.  These colored persons
were not only included in the body of 'the people of the United
States' by whom the Constitution was ordained and established;
but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and
doubtless did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its
adoption."

Again, Chief Justice Taney says:

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public
opinion, in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in
the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time
of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of
the United States was framed and adopted."

And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says:

"The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole
human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at
this day, would be so understood."

In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly
assumes as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is
more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution.
This assumption is a mistake.  In some trifling particulars the
condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in
this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the
other way, and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so
hopeless as in the last three or four years.  In two of the five
States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free
negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away,
and in a third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it
has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional
State, though the number of the States has more than doubled.  In
those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own
pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then such legal
restraints have been made upon emancipation as to amount almost
to prohibition.  In those days Legislatures held the unquestioned
power to abolish slavery in their respective States, but now it
is becoming quite fashionable for State constitutions to withhold
that power from the Legislatures.  In those days, by common
consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the new
countries was prohibited, but now Congress decides that it will
not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that
it could not if it would.  In those days our Declaration of
Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all;
but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and
eternal, it is assailed and sneered at and construed and hawked
at and torn, till, if its framers could rise from
their graves, they could not at all recognize it.  All the powers
of earth seem rapidly combining against him.  Mammon is after
him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of
the day fast joining the cry.  They have him in his prison house;
they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with
him.  One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors
upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a
lock of hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the
concurrence of every key--the keys in the hands of a hundred
different men, and they scattered to hundred different and
distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in
all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the
impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.

It is grossly incorrect to say or assume that the public estimate
of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of
the government.

Three years and a half ago, Judge Douglas brought forward his
famous Nebraska Bill.  The country was at once in a blaze.  He
scorned all opposition, and carried it through Congress.  Since
then he has seen himself superseded in a Presidential nomination
by one indorsing the general doctrine of his measure, but at the
same time standing clear of the odium of its untimely agitation
and its gross breach of national faith; and he has seen that
successful rival constitutionally elected, not by the strength of
friends, but by the division of adversaries, being in a popular
minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes.  He has seen his
chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically
speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed for an
offence not their own but his.  And now he sees his own case
standing next on the docket for trial.

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white
people at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white
and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief
hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the
benefit of this disgust to himself.  If he can, by much drumming
and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his
adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm.  He
therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last
plank.  He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the
opposition to the Dred Scott decision.  He finds the Republicans
insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men,
black as well as white, and forthwith he boldly denies that it
includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all
who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and
eat, and sleep, and marry with negoes.  He will have it that they
cannot be consistent else.  Now I protest against the counterfeit
logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman
for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.  I need not
have her for either.  I can just leave her alone.  In some
respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right
to eat the bread she earns with her own hands, without asking
leave of any one else, she is my equal and the equal of all
others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case,
admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to
include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue
that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include
negroes, by the fact that they did not at once actually place
them on an equality with the whites.  Now this grave argument
comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they did not
at once, or ever afterward, actually place all white people on an
equality with one another.  And this is the staple argument of
both the Chief Justice and the Senator for doing this obvious
violence to the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to
include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal
in all respects.  They did not mean to say all were equal in
color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity.
They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they
did consider all men created equal--equal with "certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."  This they said, and this they meant.  They
did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then
actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to
confer it immediately upon them.  In fact, they had no power to
confer such a boon.  They meant simply to declare the right, so
that enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances
should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which
should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked
to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly
spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people of all colors
everywhere.  The assertion that "all men are created equal" was
of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great
Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but
for future use.  Its authors meant it to be--as thank God, it is
now proving itself--stumbling-block to all those who in after
times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful
paths of despotism.  They knew the proneness of prosperity to
breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this
fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for
them at least one hard nut to crack.

I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of
that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that
"all men are created equal."

Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the same subject, as I
find it in the printed report of his late speech.  Here it is:

"No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the
hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to
the African, when they declared all men to have been created
equal; that they were speaking of British subjects on this
continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in
Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same inalienable
rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.  The Declaration was adopted for the
purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized
world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and
dissolving their connection with the mother country."

My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and
ponder well upon it; see what a mere wreck--mangled ruin--it
makes of our once glorious Declaration.

"They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being
equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain"!
Why, according to this, not only negroes but white people outside
of Great Britain and America were not spoken of in that
instrument.  The English, Irish, and Scotch, along with white
Americans, were included, to be sure, but the French, Germans,
and other white people of the world are all gone to pot along
with the Judge's inferior races!

I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the
condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we
should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal
condition.  According to that, it gave no promise that, having
kicked off the king and lords of Great Britain, we should not at
once be saddled with a king and lords of our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive
improvement in the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it
merely "was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists
in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their
allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their
connection with the mother country."  Why, that object having been
effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no
practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on the
battlefield after the victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-
morrow week.  What for?  The doings of that day had no reference
to the present; and quite half of you are not even descendants of
those who were referred to at that day.  But I suppose you will
celebrate, and will even go so far as to read the Declaration.
Suppose, after you read it once in the old-fashioned way, you
read it once more with Judge Douglas's version.  It will then run
thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British
subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago were
created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in
Great Britain."

And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you
really willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?
--thus left no more, at most, than an interesting memorial of
the dead past?--thus shorn of its vitality and practical value,
and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the
individual rights of man in it?

But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the
mixing of blood by the white and black races.  Agreed for once--a
thousand times agreed.  There are white men enough to marry all
the white women and black men enough to many all the black women;
and so let them be married.  On this point we fully agree with
the Judge, and when he shall show that his policy is better
adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours, we shall drop ours and
adopt his.  Let us see.  In 1850 there were in the United States
405,751 mulattoes.  Very few of these are the offspring of whites
and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and
white masters.  A separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation; but as an immediate separation is
impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they
are not already together.  If white and black people never get
together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas.  That is
at least one self-evident truth.  A few free colored persons may
get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too
insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood.  In
1850 there were in the free States 56,649 mulattoes; but for the
most part they were not born there--they came from the slave
States, ready made up.  In the same year the slave States had
348,874 mulattoes, all of home production.  The proportion of
free mulattoes to free blacks--the only colored classes in the
free States is much greater in the slave than in the free States.
It is worthy of note, too, that among the free States those which
make the colored man the nearest equal to the white have
proportionably the fewest mulattoes, the least of amalgamation.
In New Hampshire, the State which goes farthest toward equality
between the races, there are just 184 mulattoes, while there are
in Virginia--how many do you think?--79,775, being 23,126 more
than in all the free States together.

These statistics show that slavery is the greatest source of
amalgamation, and next to it, not the elevation, but the
degradation of the free blacks.  Yet Judge Douglas dreads the
slightest restraints on the spread of slavery, and the slightest
human recognition of the negro, as tending horribly to
amalgamation!

The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party
most favors amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-
saving Democracy.  Dred Scott, his wife, and two daughters were
all involved in the suit.  We desired the court to have held that
they were citizens so far at least as to entitle them to a
hearing as to whether they were free or not; and then, also, that
they were in fact and in law really free.  Could we have had our
way, the chances of these black girls ever mixing their blood
with that of white people would have been diminished at least to
the extent that it could not have been without their consent.
But Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves,
and not human enough to have a hearing, even if they were free,
and thus left subject to the forced concubinage of their masters,
and liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of
themselves: the very state of case that produces nine tenths of
all the mulattoes all the mixing of blood in the nation.

Of course, I state this case as an illustration only, not meaning
to say or intimate that the master of Dred Scott and his family,
or any more than a percentage of masters generally, are inclined
to exercise this particular power which they hold over their
female slaves.

I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation.  I have no right to say all the
members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say
that as a party they are in favor of it.  There is nothing in
their platform directly on the subject.  But I can say a very
large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief
plank in their platform--opposition to the spread of slavery--is
most favorable to that separation.

Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by
colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing
anything directly for colonization.  Party operations at present
only favor or retard colonization incidentally.  The enterprise
is a difficult one; but "where there is a will there is a way,"
and what colonization needs most is a hearty will.  Will springs
from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.  Let us
be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time
favorable to, or at least not against, our interest to transfer
the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do
it, however great the task may be.  The children of Israel, to
such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men,
went out of Egyptian bondage in a body.

How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and
Republican parties incidentally, bear on the question of forming
a will--a public sentiment--for colonization, is easy to see.
The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can,
that the negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and
that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged.  The
Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the
wrong of his bondage; so far as possible crush all sympathy for
him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him;
compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the
indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-
government."

The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it
will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to
Liberia, and pay his passage, while they can send him to a new
country--Kansas, for instance--and sell him for fifteen hundred
dollars, and the rise.




TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, August, 1857

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 14th is received, and I am much obliged
for the legal information you give.

You can scarcely be more anxious than I that the next election in
Iowa should result in favor of the Republicans.  I lost nearly
all the working part of last year, giving my time to the canvass;
and I am altogether too poor to lose two years together.  I am
engaged in a suit in the United States Court at Chicago, in which
the Rock Island Bridge Company is a party.  The trial is to
commence on the 8th of September, and probably will last two or
three weeks.  During the trial it is not improbable that all
hands may come over and take a look at the bridge, and, if it
were possible to make it hit right, I could then speak at
Davenport.  My courts go right on without cessation till late in
November.  Write me again, pointing out the more striking points
of difference between your old and new constitutions, and also
whether Democratic and Republican party lines were drawn in the
adoption of it, and which were for and which were against it.
If, by possibility, I could get over among you it might be of
some advantage to know these things in advance.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ARGUMENT IN THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE.

(From the Daily Press of Chicago, Sept.  24, 1857.)

Hurd et al. vs Railroad Bridge Co.

United States Circuit Court,
Hon. John McLean, Presiding Judge.

13th day, Tuesday, Sept.  22, 1857.

Mr. A. Lincoln addressed the jury.  He said he did not purpose to
assail anybody, that he expected to grow earnest as he proceeded
but not ill-natured.  "There is some conflict of testimony in the
case," he said, "but one quarter of such a number of witnesses
seldom agree, and even if all were on one side some discrepancy
might be expected.  We are to try and reconcile them, and to
believe that they are not intentionally erroneous as long as we
can."  He had no prejudice, he said, against steamboats or
steamboat men nor any against St. Louis, for he supposed they
went about this matter as other people would do in their
situation.  "St. Louis," he continued, "as a commercial place may
desire that this bridge should not stand, as it is adverse to her
commerce, diverting a portion of it from the river; and it may be
that she supposes that the additional cost of railroad
transportation upon the productions of Iowa will force them to go
to St. Louis if this bridge is removed.  The meetings in St.
Louis are connected with this case only as some witnesses are in
it, and thus has some prejudice added color to their testimony."
The last thing that would be pleasing to him, Mr. Lincoln said,
would be to have one of these great channels, extending almost
from where it never freezes to where it never thaws, blocked up,
but there is a travel from east to west whose demands are not
less important than those of the river.  It is growing larger and
larger, building up new countries with a rapidity never before
seen in the history of the world.  He alluded to the astonishing
growth of Illinois, having grown within his memory to a
population of a million and a half; to Iowa and the other young
rising communities of the Northwest.

"This current of travel," said he, "has its rights as well as
that of north and south.  If the river had not the advantage in
priority and legislation we could enter into free competition
with it and we could surpass it.  This particular railroad line
has a great importance and the statement of its business during a
little less than a year shows this importance.  It is in evidence
that from September 8, 1856, to August 8, 1857, 12,586 freight
cars and 74,179 passengers passed over this bridge.  Navigation
was closed four days short of four months last year, and during
this time while the river was of no use this road and bridge were
valuable.  There is, too, a considerable portion of time when
floating or thin ice makes the river useless while the bridge is
as useful as ever.  This shows that this bridge must be treated
with respect in this court and is not to be kicked about with
contempt.  The other day Judge Wead alluded to the strike of the
contending interest and even a dissolution of the Union.  The
proper mode for all parties in this affair is to 'live and let
live,' and then we will find a cessation of this trouble about
the bridge.  What mood were the steamboat men in when this bridge
was burned?  Why, there was a shouting and ringing of bells and
whistling on all the boats as it fell.  It was a jubilee, a
greater celebration than follows an excited election.  The first
thing I will proceed to is the record of Mr. Gurney and the
complaint of Judge Wead that the record did not extend back over
all the time from the completion of the bridge.  The principal
part of the navigation after the bridge was burned passed through
the span.  When the bridge was repaired and the boats were a
second time confined to the draw it was provided that this record
should be kept.  That is the simple history of that book.

"From April 19th, 1856, to May 6th--seventeen days--there were
twenty accidents and all the time since then there have been but
twenty hits, including seven accidents, so that the dangers of
this place are tapering off and as the boatmen get cool the
accidents get less.  We may soon expect if this ratio is kept up
that there will be no accidents at all.

"Judge Wead said, while admitting that the floats went straight
through, there was a difference between a float and a boat, but I
do not remember that he indulged us with an argument in support
of this statement.  Is it because there is a difference in size?
Will not a small body and a large one float the same way under
the same influence?  True a flatboat will float faster than an
egg shell and the egg shell might be blown away by the wind, but
if under the same influence they would go the same way.  Logs,
floats, boards, various things the witnesses say all show the
same current.  Then is not this test reliable?  At all depths too
the direction of the current is the same.  A series of these
floats would make a line as long as a boat and would show any
influence upon any part and all parts of the boat.

"I will now speak of the angular position of the piers.  What is
the amount of the angle?  The course of the river is a curve and
the pier is straight.  If a line is produced from the upper end
of the long pier straight with the pier to a distance of 350
feet, and a line is drawn from a point in the channel opposite
this point to the head of the pier, Colonel Nason says they will
form an angle of twenty degrees.  But the angle if measured at
the pier is seven degrees; that is, we would have to move the
pier seven degrees to make it exactly straight with the current.
Would that make the navigation better or worse?  The witnesses of
the plaintiff seem to think it was only necessary to say that the
pier formed an angle with the current and that settled the
matter.  Our more careful and accurate witnesses say that, though
they had been accustomed to seeing the piers placed straight with
the current, yet they could see that here the current had been
made straight by us in having made this slight angle; that the
water now runs just right, that it is straight and cannot be
improved.  They think that if the pier was changed the eddy would
be divided and the navigation improved.

"I am not now going to discuss the question what is a material
obstruction.  We do not greatly differ about the law.  The cases
produced here are, I suppose, proper to be taken into
consideration by the court in instructing a jury.  Some of them I
think are not exactly in point, but I am still willing to trust
his honor, Judge McLean, and take his instructions as law.  What
is reasonable skill and care?  This is a thing of which the jury
are to judge.  I differ from the other side when it says that
they are bound to exercise no more care than was taken before the
building of the bridge.  If we are allowed by the Legislature to
build the bridge which will require them to do more than before,
when a pilot comes along, it is unreasonable for him to dash on
heedless of this structure which has been legally put there.  The
Afton came there on the 5th and lay at Rock Island until next
morning.  When a boat lies up the pilot has a holiday, and would
not any of these jurors have then gone around to the bridge and
gotten acquainted with the place?  Pilot Parker has shown here
that he does not understand the draw.  I heard him say that the
fall from the head to the foot of the pier was four feet; he
needs information.  He could have gone there that day and seen
there was no such fall.  He should have discarded passion and the
chances are that he would have had no disaster at all.  He was
bound to make himself acquainted with the place.

"McCammon says that the current and the swell coming from the
long pier drove her against the long pier.  In other words drove
her toward the very pier from which the current came!  It is an
absurdity, an impossibility.  The only recollection I can find
for this contradiction is in a current which White says strikes
out from the long pier and then like a ram's horn turns back, and
this might have acted somehow in this manner.

"It is agreed by all that the plaintiff's boat was destroyed and
that it was destroyed upon the head of the short pier; that she
moved from the channel where she was with her bow above the head
of the long pier, till she struck the short one, swung around
under the bridge and there was crowded and destroyed.

"I shall try to prove that the average velocity of the current
through the draw with the boat in it should be five and a half
miles an hour; that it is slowest at the head of the pier and
swiftest at the foot of the pier.  Their lowest estimate in
evidence is six miles an hour, their highest twelve miles.  This
was the testimony of men who had made no experiment, only
conjecture.  We have adopted the most exact means.  The water
runs swiftest in high water and we have taken the point of nine
feet above low water.  The water when the Afton was lost was
seven feet above low water, or at least a foot lower than our
time.  Brayton and his assistants timed the instruments, the best
instruments known in measuring currents.  They timed them under
various circumstances and they found the current five miles an
hour and no more.  They found that the water at the upper end ran
slower than five miles; that below it was swifter than five
miles, but that the average was five miles.  Shall men who have
taken no care, who conjecture, some of whom speak of twenty miles
an hour, be believed against those who have had such a favorable.
and well improved opportunity?  They should not even qualify the
result.  Several men have given their opinion as to the distance
of the steamboat Carson, and I suppose if one should go and
measure that distance you would believe him in preference to all
of them.

"These measurements were made when the boat was not in the draw.
It has been ascertained what is the area of the cross section of
this stream and the area of the face of the piers, and the
engineers say that the piers being put there will increase the
current proportionally as the space is decreased.  So with the
boat in the draw.  The depth of the channel was twenty-two feet,
the width one hundred and sixteen feet; multiply these and you
have the square-feet across the water of the draw, viz.: 2552
feet.  The Afton was 35 feet wide and drew 5 feet, making a
fourteenth of the sum.  Now, one-fourteenth of five miles is
five-fourteenths of one mile--about one third of a mile--the
increase of the current.  We will call the current five and a
half miles per hour.  The next thing I will try to prove is that
the plaintiff's (?) boat had power to run six miles an hour in
that current.  It had been testified that she was a strong, swift
boat, able to run eight miles an hour up stream in a current of
four miles an hour, and fifteen miles down stream.  Strike the
average and you will find what is her average--about eleven and a
half miles.  Take the five and a half miles which is the speed of
the current in the draw and it leaves the power of that boat in
that draw at six miles an hour, 528 feet per minute and 8 4/5
feet to the second.

" Next I propose to show that there are no cross currents.  I
know their witnesses say that there are cross currents--that, as
one witness says, there were three cross currents and two eddies;
so far as mere statement, without experiment, and mingled with
mistakes, can go, they have proved.  But can these men's
testimony be compared with the nice, exact, thorough experiments
of our witnesses?  Can you believe that these floats go across
the currents?  It is inconceivable that they could not have
discovered every possible current.  How do boats find currents
that floats cannot discover?  We assume the position then that
those cross currents are not there.  My next proposition is that
the Afton passed between the S. B. Carson and the Iowa shore.
That is undisputed.

"Next I shall show that she struck first the short pier, then the
long pier, then the short one again and there she stopped."
Mr. Lincoln then cited the testimony of eighteen witnesses on
this point.

"How did the boat strike when she went in?  Here is an endless
variety of opinion.  But ten of them say what pier she struck;
three of them testify that she struck first the short, then the
long and then the short for the last time.  None of the rest
substantially contradict this.  I assume that these men have got
the truth because I believe it an established fact.  My next
proposition is that after she struck the short and long pier and
before she got back to the short pier the boat got right with her
bow up.  So says the pilot Parker--that he got her through until
her starboard wheel passed the short pier.  This would make her
head about even with the head of the long pier.  He says her head
was as high or higher than the head of the long pier.  Other
witnesses confirmed this one.  The final stroke was in the splash
door aft the wheel.  Witnesses differ, but the majority say that
she struck thus."

Court adjourned.

14th day, Wednesday, Sept.  23, 1857.

Mr. A. LINCOLN resumed.  He said he should conclude as soon as
possible.  He said the colored map of the plaintiff which was
brought in during one stage of the trial showed itself that the
cross currents alleged did not exist.  That the current as
represented would drive an ascending boat to the long pier but
not to the short pier, as they urge.  He explained from a model
of a boat where the splash door is, just behind the wheel.  The
boat struck on the lower shoulder of the short pier as she swung
around in the splash door; then as she went on around she struck
the point or end of the pier, where she rested.  "Her engineers,"
said Mr. Lincoln, "say the starboard wheel then was rushing
around rapidly.  Then the boat must have struck the upper point
of the pier so far back as not to disturb the wheel.  It is forty
feet from the stern of the Afton to the splash door, and thus it
appears that she had but forty feet to go to clear the pier.  How
was it that the Afton with all her power flanked over from the
channel to the short pier without moving one foot ahead?  Suppose
she was in the middle of the draw, her wheel would have been 31
feet from the short pier.  The reason she went over thus is her
starboard wheel was not working.  I shall try to establish the
fact that the wheel was not running and that after she struck she
went ahead strong on this same wheel.  Upon the last point the
witnesses agree, that the starboard wheel was running after she
struck, and no witnesses say that it was running while she was
out in the draw flanking over."

Mr. Lincoln read from the testimonies of various witnesses to
prove that the starboard wheel was not working while the Afton
was out in the stream.

"Other witnesses show that the captain said something of the
machinery of the wheel, and the inference is that he knew the
wheel was not working.  The fact is undisputed that she did not
move one inch ahead while she was moving this 31 feet sideways.
There is evidence proving that the current there is only five
miles an hour, and the only explanation is that her power was not
all used--that only one wheel was working.  The pilot says he
ordered the engineers to back her up.  The engineers differ from
him and said they kept on going ahead.  The bow was so swung that
the current pressed it over; the pilot pressed the stern over
with the rudder, though not so fast but that the bow gained on
it, and only one wheel being in motion the boat nearly stood
still so far as motion up and down is concerned, and thus she was
thrown upon this pier.  The Afton came into the draw after she
had just passed the Carson, and as the Carson no doubt kept the
true course the Afton going around her got out of the proper way,
got across the current into the eddy which is west of a straight
line drawn down from the long pier, was compelled to resort to
these changes of wheels, which she did not do with sufficient
adroitness to save her.  Was it not her own fault that she
entered wrong, so far wrong that she never got right?  Is the
defence to blame for that?

"For several days we were entertained with depositions about
boats 'smelling a bar.'  Why did the Afton then, after she had
come up smelling so close to the long pier sheer off so
strangely.  When she got to the centre of the very nose she was
smelling she seemed suddenly to have lost her sense of smell and
to have flanked over to the short pier."

Mr. Lincoln said there was no practicability in the project of
building a tunnel under the river, for there "is not a tunnel
that is a successful project in this world.  A suspension bridge
cannot be built so high but that the chimneys of the boats will
grow up till they cannot pass.  The steamboat men will take pains
to make them grow.  The cars of a railroad cannot without immense
expense rise high enough to get even with a suspension bridge or
go low enough to get through a tunnel; such expense is
unreasonable.

"The plaintiffs have to establish that the bridge is a material
obstruction and that they have managed their boat with reasonable
care and skill.  As to the last point high winds have nothing to
do with it, for it was not a windy day.  They must show due skill
and care.  Difficulties going down stream will not do, for they
were going up stream.  Difficulties with barges in tow have
nothing to do with the accident, for they had no barge.  "Mr.
Lincoln said he had much more to say, many things he could
suggest to the jury, but he wished to close to save time.




TO JESSE K.  DUBOIS.

DEAR DUBOIS:

BLOOMINGTON, Dec. 19, 1857.

J. M. Douglas of the I. C. R. R. Co. is here and will carry this
letter.  He says they have a large sum (near $90,000) which they
will pay into the treasury now, if they have an assurance that
they shall not be sued before Jan., 1859--otherwise not.
I really wish you could consent to this.  Douglas says they
cannot pay more, and I believe him.

I do not write this as a lawyer seeking an advantage for a
client; but only as a friend, only urging you to do what I think
I would do if I were in your situation.  I mean this as private
and confidential only, but I feel a good deal of anxiety about
it.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOSEPH GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan. 19, 1858.

MY DEAR SIR:
This morning Col. McClernand showed me a petition for a mandamus
against the Secretary of State to compel him to certify the
apportionment act of last session; and he says it will be
presented to the court to-morrow morning.  We shall be allowed
three or four days to get up a return, and I, for one, want the
benefit of consultation with you.

Please come right up.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb 7, 1858

MY DEAR SIR:
Yesterday morning the court overruled the demurrer to Hatches
return in the mandamus case. McClernand was present; said nothing
about pleading over; and so I suppose the matter is ended.

The court gave no reason for the decision; but Peck tells me
confidentially that they were unanimous in the opinion that even
if the Gov'r had signed the bill purposely, he had the right to
scratch his name off so long as the bill remained in his custody
and control.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, December 18, 1857.

HENRY C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Coming home from Bloomington last night I found
your letter of the 15th.

I know of no express statute or decisions as to what a J.  P.
upon the expiration of his term shall do with his docket books,
papers, unfinished business, etc., but so far as I know, the
practice has been to hand over to the successor, and to cease to
do anything further whatever, in perfect analogo to Sections 110
and 112, and I have supposed and do suppose this is the law.  I
think the successor may forthwith do whatever the retiring J.  P.
might have done.  As to the proviso to Section 114 I think it was
put in to cover possible cases, by way of caution, and not to
authorize the J.  P.  to go forward and finish up whatever might
have been begun by him.

The view I take, I believe, is the Common law principle, as to
retiring officers and their successors, to which I remember but
one exception, which is the case of Sheriff and ministerial
officers of that class.

I have not had time to examine this subject fully, but I have
great confidence I am right.  You must not think of offering me
pay for this.

Mr. John O. Johnson is my friend; I gave your name to him.  He is
doing the work of trying to get up a Republican organization.  I
do not suppose "Long John" ever saw or heard of him.  Let me say
to you confidentially, that I do not entirely appreciate what the
Republican papers of Chicago are so constantly saying against
"Long John."  I consider those papers truly devoted to the
Republican cause, and not unfriendly to me; but I do think that
more of what they say against "Long John" is dictated by personal
malice than themselves are conscious of.  We can not afford to
lose the services of "Long John" and I do believe the unrelenting
warfare made upon him is injuring our cause.  I mean this to be
confidential.

If you quietly co-operate with Mr. J.  O.  Johnson on getting up
an organization, I think it will be right.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1858



ANOTHER POLITICAL PATRONAGE REFERENCE

TO EDWARD G. MINER.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb.19, 1858.

MY DEAR SIR:

Mr, G. A. Sutton is an applicant for superintendent of the
addition of the Insane Asylum, and I understand it partly depends
on you whether he gets it.

Sutton is my fellow-townsman and friend, and I therefore wish to
say for him that he is a man of sterling integrity and as a
master mechanic and builder not surpassed by any in our city, or
any I have known anywhere, as far as I can judge.  I hope you
will consider me as being really interested for Mr. Sutton and
not as writing merely to relieve myself of importunity.  Please
show this to Col. William Ross and let him consider it as much
intended for him as for yourself.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

TO W. H. LAMON, ESQ.

SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 11, 1858

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 9th written at Joliet is just received.
Two or three days ago I learned that McLean had appointed
delegates in favor of Lovejoy, and thenceforward I have
considered his renomination a fixed fact.  My opinion--if my
opinion is of any consequence in this case, in which it is no
business of mine to interfere--remains unchanged, that running an
independent candidate against Lovejoy will not do; that it will
result in nothing but disaster all round.  In the first place,
whosoever so runs will be beaten and will be spotted for life; in
the second place, while the race is in progress, he will be under
the strongest temptation to trade with the Democrats, and to
favor the election of certain of their friends to the
Legislature; thirdly, I shall be held responsible for it, and
Republican members of the Legislature who are partial to Lovejoy
will for that purpose oppose  us; and lastly, it will in the end
lose us the district altogether.  There is no safe way but a
convention; and if in that convention, upon a common platform
which all are willing to stand upon, one who has been known as an
abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground,
can get the majority of the votes to which all look for an
election, there is no safe way but to submit.

As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that
is one of the chances I have to run, and which I intend to run
with patience.

I write in the court room.  Court has opened, and I must close.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY,

JUNE 15, 1858.


The compiler of the Dictionary of Congress states that while
preparing that work for publication, in 1858, he sent to Mr.
Lincoln the usual request for a sketch of his life, and received
the following reply:

Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Education, defective.
Profession, a lawyer.
Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk war.
Postmaster at a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature and was a member
of the lower house of Congress.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v2
By Abraham Lincoln






THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN--VOLUME THREE

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I



POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES of LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS

In the Senatorial Campaign of 1858 in Illinois




SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858

[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the
close of the Republican State Convention held at that time and
place, and by which Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as
their candidate for United States Senator.  Mr. DOUGLAS was not
present.]


Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first
know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better
judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the
fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object
and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only
not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will
not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  "A
house divided against itself cannot stand."  I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the
house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It
will become all one thing, or all the other.  Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will
push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost
complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak
compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.
Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to
do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of
its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he
can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action,
among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half
the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National
territory by Congressional prohibition.  Four days later,
commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that
Congressional prohibition.  This opened all the National
territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the
people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point
already gained, and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided
for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter
sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self-government,"
which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis
of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it
as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave
another, no third man shall be allowed to object.  That argument
was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language
which follows:

"It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government."  "But," said
opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly
declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery."
"Not we," said the friends of the measure, and down they voted
the amendment.

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his
owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and
then into a territory covered by the Congressional Prohibition,
and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing
through the United States Circuit Court for the District of
Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a
decision in the same month of May, 1854.  The negro's name was
"Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made
in the case.  Before the then next Presidential election, the law
case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United
States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the
election.  Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the
floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the
Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a
territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits;
and the latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme
Court."

The election came.  Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the
indorsement, such as it was, secured.  That was the second point
gained.  The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular
majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes,(approximately 10%
of the vote) and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and
satisfactory.  The outgoing President, in his last annual
message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people
the weight and authority of the indorsement.  The Supreme Court
met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a
reargument.  The Presidential inauguration came, and still no
decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his
inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the
forth-coming decision, whatever it might be.  Then, in a few
days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion
to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott
decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it.  The
new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman
letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to
express his astonishment that any different view had ever been
entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the
author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact,
whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just
sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the
latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people,
and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.
I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the
public mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered
so much, and is ready to suffer to the end.  And well may he
cling to that principle!  If he has any parental feeling, well
may he cling to it.  That principle is the only shred left of his
original Nebraska doctrine.  Under the Dred Scott decision
"squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down
like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served
through one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry
an election, and then was kicked to the winds.  His late joint
struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton
Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine.
That struggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make
their own constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have
never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with
Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of
machinery, in its present state of advancement.  This was the
third point gained.  The working points of that machinery are:

Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and
no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State,
in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the
United States.  This point is made in order to deprive the negro,
in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the
United States Constitution which declares that "The citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States."

Secondly, That, "subject to the Constitution of the United
States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can
exclude slavery from any United States Territory.  This point is
made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories
with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus
to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through
all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a
free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United
States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by
the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the
master.  This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but,
if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the
people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott,
in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do
with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in
any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould
public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care
whether slavery is voted down or voted up.  This shows exactly
where we now are; and partially, also, wither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run
the mind over the string of historical facts already stated.
Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they
did when they were transpiring.  The people were to be left
"perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution."  What the
Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see.
Plainly enough now,--it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred
Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all.  Why was the
amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted
down? Plainly enough now,--the adoption of it would have spoiled
the niche for the Dred Scott decision.  Why was the court
decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion
withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough
now,--the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly
free" argument upon which the election was to be carried.  Why
the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the
delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance
exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the
cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to
mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a
fall.  And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the
President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are
the result of preconcert.  But when we see a lot of framed
timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out
at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen,
Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and when we see these
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or
too few,--not omitting even scaffolding,--or, if a single piece
be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and
prepared yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case, we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and
James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow
was struck.

It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people
of a State as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free,"
"subject only to the Constitution."  Why mention a State? They
were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States.
Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to
the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this
lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a
Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and
their relation to the Constitution therefore treated as being
precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief
Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions
of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the
Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States
Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same
Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
exclude it.  Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be
quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the
opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State
to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace
sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a
Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be quite sure
that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had
been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring
the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson.  He
approaches it more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost
the language, too, of the Nebraska Act.  On one occasion, his
exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is restrained
by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is
supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction."  In
what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United
States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the
same question, as to the restraint on the power of the
Territories, was left open in the Nebraska Act.  Put this and
that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we
may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision,
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not
permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits.  And this may
especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public
mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be
maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike
lawful in all the States.  Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is
probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of
the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown We
shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri
are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake
to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a
slave State.  To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is
the work now before all those who would prevent that
consummation.  That is what we have to do.  How can we best do
it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their friends, and yet
whisper to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest
instrument there is with which to effect that object.  They wish
us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel
with the present head of the dynasty, and that he has regularly
voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never
differed.  They remind us that he is a great man, and that the
largest of us are very small ones.  Let this be granted.  But "a
living dog is better than a dead lion."  Judge Douglas, if not a
dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one.
How can he oppose the advances of slavery?  He don't care
anything about it.  His avowed mission is impressing the "public
heart" to care nothing about it.  A leading Douglas Democratic
newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to
resist the revival of the African slave trade.  Does Douglas
believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching?  He has
not said so.  Does he really think so?  But if it is, how can he
resist it?  For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right
of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories.  Can
he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where
they can be bought cheapest?  And unquestionably they can be
bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.  He has done all in
his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a
mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the
foreign slave trade, how can he refuse that trade in that
"property" shall be "perfectly free,"--unless he does it as a
protection to the home production?  And as the home producers
will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a
ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be
wiser to-day than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change
when he finds himself wrong.  But can we, for that reason, run
ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of
which he himself has given no intimation?  Can we safely base our
action upon any such vague inference?  Now, as ever, I wish not
to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives,
or do aught that can be personally offensive to him.  Whenever,
if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our
cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have
interposed no adventitious obstacles.  But clearly he is not now
with us; he does not pretend to be,--he does not promise ever to
be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own
undoubted friends,--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are
in the work, who do care for the result.  Two years ago the
Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand
strong.  We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a
common danger, with every external circumstance against us.  Of
strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from
the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under
the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered
enemy.  Did we brave all then to falter now,--now, when that same
enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?  The result is
not doubtful.  We shall not fail; if we stand firm, we shall not
fail.  Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but,
sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.




SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858.

IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS

DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 10, 1858.

(Mr. DOUGLAS WAS NOT PRESENT.)

[Mr. LINCOLN was introduced by C. L. Wilson, Esq., and as he made
his appearance he was greeted with a perfect storm of applause.
For some moments the enthusiasm continued unabated.  At last,
when by a wave of his hand partial silence was restored, Mr.
LINCOLN said,]

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--On yesterday evening, upon the occasion of
the reception given to Senator Douglas, I was furnished with a
seat very convenient for hearing him, and was otherwise very
courteously treated by him and his friends, and for which I thank
him and them.  During the course of his remarks my name was
mentioned in such a way as, I suppose, renders it at least not
improper that I should make some sort of reply to him.  I shall
not attempt to follow him in the precise order in which he
addressed the assembled multitude upon that occasion, though I
shall perhaps do so in the main.

There was one question to which he asked the attention of the
crowd, which I deem of somewhat less importance--at least of
propriety--for me to dwell upon than the others, which he brought
in near the close of his speech, and which I think it would not
be entirely proper for me to omit attending to, and yet if I were
not to give some attention to it now, I should probably forget it
altogether.  While I am upon this subject, allow me to say that I
do not intend to indulge in that inconvenient mode sometimes
adopted in public speaking, of reading from documents; but I
shall depart from that rule so far as to read a little scrap from
his speech, which notices this first topic of which I shall
speak,--that is, provided I can find it in the paper:

"I have made up my mind to appeal to the people against the
combination that has been made against me; the Republican leaders
having formed an alliance, an unholy and unnatural alliance, with
a portion of unscrupulous Federal office-holders.  I intend to
fight that allied army wherever I meet them.  I know they deny
the alliance; but yet these men who are trying to divide the
Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Republican Senator
in my place are just as much the agents and tools of the
supporters of Mr. Lincoln.  Hence I shall deal with this allied
army just as the Russians dealt with the Allies at Sebastopol,--
that is, the Russians did not stop to inquire, when they fired a
broadside, whether it hit an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Turk.
Nor will I stop to inquire, nor shall I hesitate, whether my
blows shall hit the Republican leaders or their allies, who are
holding the Federal offices, and yet acting in concert with
them."

Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarming?  Just to think
of it! right at the outset of his canvass, I, a poor, kind,
amiable, intelligent gentleman,--I am to be slain in this way!
Why, my friend the Judge is not only, as it turns out, not a dead
lion, nor even a living one,--he is the rugged Russian Bear!

But if they will have it--for he says that we deny it--that there
is any such alliance, as he says there is,--and I don't propose
hanging very much upon this question of veracity,--but if he will
have it that there is such an alliance, that the Administration
men and we are allied, and we stand in the attitude of English,
French, and Turk, he occupying the position of the Russian, in
that case I beg that he will indulge us while we barely suggest
to him that these allies took Sebastopol.

Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this alliance.  For my
part, I have to say that whether there be such an alliance
depends, so far as I know, upon what may be a right definition of
the term alliance.  If for the Republican party to see the other
great party to which they are opposed divided among themselves,
and not try to stop the division, and rather be glad of it,--if
that is an alliance, I confess I am in; but if it is meant to be
said that the Republicans had formed an alliance going beyond
that, by which there is contribution of money or sacrifice of
principle on the one side or the other, so far as the Republican
party is concerned,--if there be any such thing, I protest that I
neither know anything of it, nor do I believe it.  I will,
however, say,--as I think this branch of the argument is lugged
in,--I would before I leave it state, for the benefit of those
concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men did once tell me
of an argument that he made for his opposition to Judge Douglas.
He said that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking to
him, and had, among other things, said to him:

"...why, you don't want to beat Douglas?"  "Yes," said he, "I do
want to beat him, and I will tell you why.  I believe his
original Nebraska Bill was right in the abstract, but it was
wrong in the time that it was brought forward.  It was wrong in
the application to a Territory in regard to which the question
had been settled; it was brought forward at a time when nobody
asked him; it was tendered to the South when the South had not
asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and for
this same reason he forced that question upon our party.  It has
sunk the best men all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when
our President, struggling with the difficulties of this man's
getting up, has reached the very hardest point to turn in the
case, he deserts him and I am for putting him where he will
trouble us no more."

Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument
at all.  I have only been stating to you the argument of a
Buchanan man.  You will judge if there is any force in it.

Popular sovereignty!  Everlasting popular sovereignty!  Let us
for a moment inquire into this vast matter of popular
sovereignty.  What is popular sovereignty?  We recollect that at
an early period in the history of this struggle there was another
name for the same thing,--"squatter sovereignty."  It was not
exactly popular sovereignty, but squatter sovereignty.  What do
those terms mean?  What do those terms mean when used now?  And
vast credit is taken by our friend the Judge in regard to his
support of it, when he declares the last years of his life have
been, and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to
this matter of popular sovereignty.  What is it?  Why, it is the
sovereignty of the people!  What was squatter sovereignty?  I
suppose, if it had any significance at all, it was the right of
the people to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their own
affairs while they were squatted down in a country not their own,
while they had squatted on a Territory that did not belong to
them, in the sense that a State belongs to the people who inhabit
it, when it belonged to the nation; such right to govern
themselves was called "squatter sovereignty."

Now, I wish you to mark: What has become of that squatter
sovereignty? what has become of it?  Can you get anybody to tell
you now that the people of a Territory have any authority to
govern themselves, in regard to this mooted question of slavery,
before they form a State constitution?  No such thing at all;
although there is a general running fire, and although there has
been a hurrah made in every speech on that side, assuming that
policy had given the people of a Territory the right to govern
themselves upon this question, yet the point is dodged.  To-day
it has been decided--no more than a year ago it was decided--by
the Supreme Court of the United States, and is insisted upon
to-day that the people of a Territory have no right to exclude
slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to take
slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right
to keep them out.  This being so, and this decision being made
one of the points that the Judge approved, and one in the
approval of which he says he means to keep me down,--put me down
I should not say, for I have never been up,--he says he is in
favor of it, and sticks to it, and expects to win his battle on
that decision, which says that there is no such thing as squatter
sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a
Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed
to it, and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit
it.  When that is so, how much is left of this vast matter of
squatter sovereignty, I should like to know?

When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people
to make a constitution.  Kansas was settled, for example, in
1854.  It was a Territory yet, without having formed a
constitution, in a very regular way, for three years.  All this
time negro slavery could be taken in by any few individuals, and
by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge approves,
all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they come
to make a constitution, they may say they will not have slavery.
But it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it some way, and
all experience shows it will be so, for they will not take the
negro slaves and absolutely deprive the owners of them.  All
experience shows this to be so.  All that space of time that runs
from the beginning of the settlement of the Territory until there
is sufficiency of people to make a State constitution,--all that
portion of time popular sovereignty is given up.  The seal is
absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge
Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to
the people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular
sovereignty.

Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to
form a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery
or without slavery, if that is anything new, I confess I don't
know it.  Has there ever been a time when anybody said that any
other than the people of a Territory itself should form a
constitution?  What is now in it that Judge Douglas should have
fought several years of his life, and pledge himself to fight all
the remaining years of his life for?  Can Judge Douglas find
anybody on earth that said that anybody else should form a
constitution for a people?  [A voice, "Yes."] Well, I should like
you to name him; I should like to know who he was.  [Same voice,
"John Calhoun."]

No, sir, I never heard of even John Calhoun saying such a thing.
He insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode
of applying it, in fact, was wrong.  It is enough for my purpose
to ask this crowd whenever a Republican said anything against it.
They never said anything against it, but they have constantly
spoken for it; and whoever will undertake to examine the
platform, and the speeches of responsible men of the party, and
of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to find
one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that
popular sovereignty which Judge Douglas thinks that he has
invented.  I suppose that Judge Douglas will claim, in a little
while, that he is the inventor of the idea that the people should
govern themselves; that nobody ever thought of such a thing until
he brought it forward.  We do not remember that in that old
Declaration of Independence it is said that:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

There is the origin of popular sovereignty.  Who, then, shall
come in at this day and claim that he invented it?

The Lecompton Constitution connects itself with this question,
for it is in this matter of the Lecompton Constitution that our
friend Judge Douglas claims such vast credit.  I agree that in
opposing the Lecompton Constitution, so far as I can perceive, he
was right.  I do not deny that at all; and, gentlemen, you will
readily see why I could not deny it, even if I wanted to.  But I
do not wish to; for all the Republicans in the nation opposed it,
and they would have opposed it just as much without Judge
Douglas's aid as with it.  They had all taken ground against it
long before he did.  Why, the reason that he urges against that
constitution I urged against him a year before.  I have the
printed speech in my hand.  The argument that he makes, why that
constitution should not be adopted, that the people were not
fairly represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out in a speech
a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance was
to be given to the people.  ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not
waste your time by trying to read it.  ["Read it, Read it."]
Gentlemen, reading from speeches is a very tedious business,
particularly for an old man that has to put on spectacles, and
more so if the man be so tall that he has to bend over to the
light.

A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and
the Lecompton Constitution.  The Lecompton Constitution, as the
Judge tells us, was defeated.  The defeat of it was a good thing
or it was not.  He thinks the defeat of it was a good thing, and
so do I, and we agree in that.  Who defeated it?

[A voice: Judge Douglas.]

Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the
other Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes;
while the Republicans furnished twenty.

That is what he did to defeat it.  In the House of
Representatives he and his friends furnished some twenty votes,
and the Republicans furnished ninety odd.  Now, who was it that
did the work?

[A voice: Douglas.]

Why, yes, Douglas did it!  To be sure he did.

Let us, however, put that proposition another way.  The
Republicans could not have done it without Judge Douglas.  Could
he have done it without them?  Which could have come the nearest
to doing it without the other?

[A voice: Who killed the bill?]

[Another voice: Douglas.]

Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before
Douglas did it.  The proportion of opposition to that measure is
about five to one.

[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]

You don't know what you are talking about, my friend.  I am quite
willing to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an
intelligent question.

Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of
Judge Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this
main question, that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf
of Judge Trumbull?

[A voice: We have.]

I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic
meeting--I take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed
resolution of a Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of
Judge Trumbull, or any of the five to one Republicans who beat
that bill.  Everything must be for the Democrats!  They did
everything, and the five to the one that really did the thing
they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have
an existence upon the face of the earth.

Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious.  I leave this
branch of the subject to take hold of another.  I take up that
part of Judge Douglas's speech in which he respectfully attended
to me.

Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at
Springfield.  He says they are to be the issues of this campaign.
The first one of these points he bases upon the language in a
speech which I delivered at Springfield, which I believe I can
quote correctly from memory.  I said there that "we are now far
into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed
object, and with the confident promise, of putting an end to
slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented."
"I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed.  'A house divided against itself cannot
stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free."  "I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved,"--I am quoting from my speech, "--I do not expect the
house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It
will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the spread of it and place it where the
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, north as well as
south."

What is the paragraph?  In this paragraph, which I have quoted in
your hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge
Douglas thinks he discovers great political heresy.  I want your
attention particularly to what he has inferred from it.  He says
I am in favor of making all the States of this Union uniform in
all their internal regulations; that in all their domestic
concerns I am in favor of making them entirely uniform.  He draws
this inference from the language I have quoted to you.  He says
that I am in favor of making war by the North upon the South for
the extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting
(as he expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the
purpose of nationalizing slavery.  Now, it is singular enough, if
you will carefully read that passage over, that I did not say
that I was in favor of anything in it.  I only said what I
expected would take place.  I made a prediction only,--it may
have been a foolish one, perhaps.  I did not even say that I
desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate
extinction.  I do say so now, however, so there need be no longer
any difficulty about that.  It may be written down in the great
speech.

Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine
was probably carefully prepared.  I admit that it was.  I am not
master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable
of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you
call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any
such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it.  But I don't
care about a quibble in regard to words.  I know what I meant,
and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to
them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.

I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has
endured eighty-two years half slave and half free.  I know that.
I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the country,
and I know that it has endured eighty-two years half slave and
half free.  I believe--and that is what I meant to allude to
there--I believe it has endured because during all that time,
until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, the public mind did
rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of
ultimate extinction.  That was what gave us the rest that we had
through that period of eighty-two years,--at least, so I believe.
I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any
Abolitionist,--I have been an Old Line Whig,--I have always hated
it; but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of
the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.  I always believed
that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of
ultimate extinction.  [Pointing to Mr. Browning, who stood near
by.] Browning thought so; the great mass of the nation have
rested in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate
extinction.  They had reason so to believe.

The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led
the people to believe so; and that such was the belief of the
framers of the Constitution itself, why did those old men, about
the time of the adoption of the Constitution, decree that slavery
should not go into the new Territory, where it had not already
gone?  Why declare that within twenty years the African slave
trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut off by
Congress?  Why were all these acts?  I might enumerate more of
these acts; but enough.  What were they but a clear indication
that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the
ultimate extinction of that institution?  And now, when I say, as
I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has quoted from, when I
say that I think the opponents of slavery will resist the farther
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest with
the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, I only
mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this
government originally placed it.

I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to
take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be
no inclination, in the people of the free States to enter into
the slave States and interfere with the question of slavery at
all.  I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say it,
if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred
times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with
slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by anything I
have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever
said.  If, by any means, I have ever used language which could
fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I
now correct it.

So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I
am in favor of setting the sections at war with one another.  I
know that I never meant any such thing, and I believe that no
fair mind can infer any such thing from anything I have ever
said.

Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various
States.  I will attend to that for a little while, and try to
inquire, if I can, how on earth it could be that any man could
draw such an inference from anything I said.  I have said, very
many times, in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no man believed more
than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the
bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end.
I have denied that his use of that term applies properly.  But
for the thing itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of
me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in
efficiency in advocating it.  I think that I have said it in your
hearing, that I believe each individual is naturally entitled to
do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far
as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights; that
each community as a State has a right to do exactly as it pleases
with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the
right of no other State; and that the General Government, upon
principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than
that general class of things that does concern the whole.  I have
said that at all times.  I have said, as illustrations, that I do
not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the
cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the
liquor laws of Maine.  I have said these things over and over
again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments.

How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see
slavery put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that
it is in the course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of
Illinois going over and interfering with the cranberry laws of
Indiana?  What can authorize him to draw any such inference?

I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to
draw such an inference that would not be true with me or many
others: that is, because he looks upon all this matter of slavery
as an exceedingly little thing,--this matter of keeping one sixth
of the population of the whole nation in a state of oppression
and tyranny unequaled in the world.  He looks upon it as being an
exceedingly little thing,--only equal to the question of the
cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral question
in it; as something on a par with the question of whether a man
shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco; so
little and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire
that anything should be done to bring about the ultimate
extinction of that little thing, I must be in favor of bringing
about an amalgamation of all the other little things in the
Union.  Now, it so happens--and there, I presume, is the
foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus; and it so
happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that
do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing.
They look upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such
by the writings of those who gave us the blessings of liberty
which we enjoy, and that they so looked upon it, and not as an
evil merely confining itself to the States where it is situated;
and while we agree that, by the Constitution we assented to, in
the States where it exists, we have no right to interfere with
it, because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both duty
and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter
and spirit, from beginning to end,

So much, then, as to my disposition--my wish to have all the
State legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated
government, and a uniformity of domestic regulations in all the
States, by which I suppose it is meant, if we raise corn here, we
must make sugar-cane grow here too, and we must make those which
grow North grow in the South.  All this I suppose he understands
I am in favor of doing.  Now, so much for all this nonsense; for
I must call it so.  The Judge can have no issue with me on a
question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations
of the States.

A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision.
Another of the issues he says that is to be made with me is upon
his devotion to the Dred Scott decision, and my opposition to it.

I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to
the Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the
nature of that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do
so.  What is fairly implied by the term Judge Douglas has used,
"resistance to the decision"?  I do not resist it.  If I wanted
to take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with
property, and that terrible difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks
of, of interfering with property, would arise.  But I am doing no
such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to obey
it as a political rule.  If I were in Congress, and a vote should
come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a
new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote
that it should.

That is what I should do.  Judge Douglas said last night that
before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be
contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made
he would abide by it until it was reversed.  Just so!  We let
this property abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse
that decision.  We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would
not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed.
Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and we
mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

What are the uses of decisions of courts?  They have two uses.
As rules of property they have two uses.  First, they decide upon
the question before the court.  They decide in this case that
Dred Scott is a slave.  Nobody resists that, not only that, but
they say to everybody else that persons standing just as Dred
Scott stands are as he is.  That is, they say that when a
question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided
again, unless the court decides in another way, unless the court
overrules its decision.  Well, we mean to do what we can to have
the court decide the other way.  That is one thing we mean to try
to do.

The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is
a degree of sacredness that has never been before thrown around
any other decision.  I have never heard of such a thing.  Why,
decisions apparently contrary to that decision, or that good
lawyers thought were contrary to that decision, have been made by
that very court before.  It is the first of its kind; it is an
astonisher in legal history.  It is a new wonder of the world.
It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts;
allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in
many instances, and no decision made on any question--the first
instance of a decision made under so many unfavorable
circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held by the profession
as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the lawyers
regarded it as settled law.  But Judge Douglas will have it that
all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in
accordance with it, yield to it, and obey it in every possible
sense.  Circumstances alter cases.  Do not gentlemen here
remember the case of that same Supreme Court some twenty-five or
thirty years ago deciding that a National Bank was
constitutional?  I ask, if somebody does not remember that a
National Bank was declared to be constitutional?  Such is the
truth, whether it be remembered or not.  The Bank charter ran
out, and a recharter was granted by Congress.  That recharter was
laid before General Jackson.  It was urged upon him, when he
denied the constitutionality of the Bank, that the Supreme Court
had decided that it was constitutional; and General Jackson then
said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to
govern a coordinate branch of the government, the members of
which had sworn to support the Constitution; that each member had
sworn to support that Constitution as he understood it.  I will
venture here to say that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he
approved of General Jackson for that act.  What has now become of
all his tirade about "resistance of the Supreme Court"?

My fellow-citizens, getting back a little,--for I pass from these
points,--when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon
the "alliance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of his is
to fall upon the leaders of the Republican party.  Almost every
word he utters, and every distinction he makes, has its
significance.  He means for the Republicans who do not count
themselves as leaders, to be his friends; he makes no fuss over
them; it is the leaders that he is making war upon.  He wants it
understood that the mass of the Republican party are really his
friends.  It is only the leaders that are doing something that
are intolerant, and that require extermination at his hands.  As
this is dearly and unquestionably the light in which he presents
that matter, I want to ask your attention, addressing myself to
the Republicans here, that I may ask you some questions as to
where you, as the Republican party, would be placed if you
sustained Judge Douglas in his present position by a re-election?
I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish; I do not pretend that
I would not like to go to the United States Senate,--I make no
such hypocritical pretense; but I do say to you that in this
mighty issue it is nothing to you--nothing to the mass of the
people of the nation,--whether or not Judge Douglas or myself
shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle to
either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon
which hang the destinies of the nation, perhaps, it is absolutely
nothing: but where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge
Douglas?  Don't you know how apt he is, how exceedingly anxious
he is at all times, to seize upon anything and everything to
persuade you that something he has done you did yourselves?  Why,
he tried to persuade you last night that our Illinois Legislature
instructed him to introduce the Nebraska Bill.  There was nobody
in that Legislature ever thought of such a thing; and when he
first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; but still he
fights furiously for the proposition, and that he did it because
there was a standing instruction to our Senators to be always
introducing Nebraska bills.  He tells you he is for the
Cincinnati platform, he tells you he is for the Dred Scott
decision.  He tells you, not in his speech last night, but
substantially in a former speech, that he cares not if slavery is
voted up or down; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is past;
it may come up again or not, and if it does, he stands where he
stood when, in spite of him and his opposition, you built up the
Republican party.  If you indorse him, you tell him you do not
care whether slavery be voted up or down, and he will close or
try to close your mouths with his declaration, repeated by the
day, the week, the month, and the year.  Is that what you mean?
[Cries of "No," one voice "Yes."] Yes, I have no doubt you who
have always been for him, if you mean that.  No doubt of that,
soberly I have said, and I repeat it.  I think, in the position
in which Judge Douglas stood in opposing the Lecompton
Constitution, he was right; he does not know that it will return,
but if it does we may know where to find him, and if it does not,
we may know where to look for him, and that is on the Cincinnati
platform.  Now, I could ask the Republican party, after all the
hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by all his repeated
charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes; all
his declarations of Black Republicanism,--by the way, we are
improving, the black has got rubbed off,--but with all that, if
he be indorsed by Republican votes, where do you stand?  Plainly,
you stand ready saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to
be driven over to the slavery extension camp of the nation,--just
ready to be driven over, tied together in a lot, to be driven
over, every man with a rope around his neck, that halter being
held by Judge Douglas.  That is the question.  If Republican men
have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they had
better not do it; but I think that the Republican party is made
up of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the
extension of slavery, and who will hope for its ultimate
extinction.  If they believe it is wrong in grasping up the new
lands of the continent and keeping them from the settlement of
free white laborers, who want the land to bring up their families
upon; if they are in earnest, although they may make a mistake,
they will grow restless, and the time will come when they will
come back again and reorganize, if not by the same name, at least
upon the same principles as their party now has.  It is better,
then, to save the work while it is begun.  You have done the
labor; maintain it, keep it.  If men choose to serve you, go with
them; but as you have made up your organization upon principle,
stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns over you, and has
inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and
continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to
these ideas, and you will at last come back again after your
wanderings, merely to do your work over again.

We were often,--more than once, at least,--in the course of Judge
Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this government was
made for white men; that he believed it was made for white men.
Well, that is putting it into a shape in which no one wants to
deny it; but the Judge then goes into his passion for drawing
inferences that are not warranted.  I protest, now and forever,
against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did
not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for
a wife.  My understanding is that I need not have her for either,
but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and
do one another much good thereby.  There are white men enough to
marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all the
black women; and in God's name let them be so married.  The Judge
regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the
mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down.
Why, Judge, if we do not let them get together in the
Territories, they won't mix there.

[A voice: "Three cheers for Lincoln".--The cheers were given
with a hearty good-will.]

I should say at least that that is a self-evident truth.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes
about the 4th of July, for some reason or other.  These 4th of
July gatherings I suppose have their uses.  If you will indulge
me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty
millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one fifteenth
part of the dry land of the whole earth.  We run our memory back
over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we
discover that we were then a very small people in point of
numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less
extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem
desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly
advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon
something that happened away back, as in some way or other being
connected with this rise of prosperity.  We find a race of men
living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers;
they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were
contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it
has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has
come to us.  We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves
of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done
and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it;
and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we
feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to
the country we inhabit.  In every way we are better men in the
age and race and country in which we live, for these
celebrations.  But after we have done all this we have not yet
reached the whole.  There is something else connected with it.
We have--besides these, men descended by blood from our
ancestors--among us perhaps half our people who are not
descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from
Europe, German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,--men that have
come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither
and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.
If they look back through this history to trace their connection
with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot
carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make
themselves feel that they are part of us; but when they look
through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that
those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal"; and then they feel that that
moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to
those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them,
and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood
of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that
Declaration; and so they are.  That is the electric cord in that
Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving
men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as
the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the
world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of
"don't care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining
the Dred Scott decision, for holding that the Declaration of
Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas
giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence
means, and we have him saying that the people of America are
equal to the people of England.  According to his construction,
you Germans are not connected with it.  Now, I ask you in all
soberness if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if
confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated
to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the
country, and to transform this government into a government of
some other form.  Those arguments that are made, that the
inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they
are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as
their condition will allow,--what are these arguments?  They are
the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in
all ages of the world.  You will find that all the arguments in
favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the
necks of the people not that they wanted to do it, but because
the people were better off for being ridden.  That is their
argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent
that says, You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the
fruits of it.  Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come
from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of
his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for
enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old
serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation that is made
for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not
care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the
negro.  I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of
Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon
principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?  If
one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it
does not mean some other man?  If that Declaration is not the
truth, let us get the statute book, in which we find it, and tear
it out!  Who is so bold as to do it?  If it is not true, let us
tear it out!  [Cries of "No, no."] Let us stick to it, then; let
us stand firmly by it, then.

It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make
necessities and impose them upon us; and to the extent that a
necessity is imposed upon a man, he must submit to it.  I think
that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we
established this government.  We had slavery among us, we could
not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in
slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped
for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties.
Let that charter stand as our standard.

My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote
Scripture.  I will try it again, however.  It is said in one of
the admonitions of our Lord, "As your Father in heaven is
perfect, be ye also perfect."  The Savior, I suppose, did not
expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in
heaven; but he said, "As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye
also perfect."  He set that up as a standard; and he who did most
towards reaching that standard attained the highest degree of
moral perfection.  So I say in relation to the principle that all
men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can.  If
we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that
will impose slavery upon any other creature.  Let us then turn
this government back into the channel in which the framers of the
Constitution originally placed it.  Let us stand firmly by each
other.  If we do not do so, we are turning in the contrary
direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes--not
intentionally--as working in the traces tends to make this one
universal slave nation.  He is one that runs in that direction,
and as such I resist him.

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do,
and I have only to say: Let us discard all this quibbling about
this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other
race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an
inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us.
Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people
throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring
that all men are created equal.

My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new
topic, which would detain you too long, continue to-night.  I
thank you for this most extensive audience that you have
furnished me to-night.  I leave you, hoping that the lamp of
liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a
doubt that all men are created free and equal.




SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858.

DELIVERED SATURDAY EVENING

(Mr. Douglas was not present.)

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Another election, which is deemed an important
one, is approaching, and, as I suppose, the Republican party
will, without much difficulty, elect their State ticket.  But in
regard to the Legislature, we, the Republicans, labor under some
disadvantages.  In the first place, we have a Legislature to
elect upon an apportionment of the representation made several
years ago, when the proportion of the population was far greater
in the South (as compared with the North) than it now is; and
inasmuch as our opponents hold almost entire sway in the South,
and we a correspondingly large majority in the North, the fact
that we are now to be represented as we were years ago, when the
population was different, is to us a very great disadvantage.  We
had in the year 1855, according to law, a census, or enumeration
of the inhabitants, taken for the purpose of a new apportionment
of representation.  We know what a fair apportionment of
representation upon that census would give us.  We know that it
could not, if fairly made, fail to give the Republican party from
six to ten more members of the Legislature than they can probably
get as the law now stands.  It so happened at the last session of
the Legislature that our opponents, holding the control of both
branches of the Legislature, steadily refused to give us such an
apportionment as we were rightly entitled to have upon the census
already taken.  The Legislature steadily refused to give us such
an apportionment as we were rightfully entitled to have upon the
census taken of the population of the State.  The Legislature
would pass no bill upon that subject, except such as was at least
as unfair to us as the old one, and in which, in some instances,
two men in the Democratic regions were allowed to go as far
toward sending a member to the Legislature as three were in the
Republican regions.  Comparison was made at the time as to
representative and senatorial districts, which completely
demonstrated that such was the fact.  Such a bill was passed and
tendered to the Republican Governor for his signature; but,
principally for the reasons I have stated, he withheld his
approval, and the bill fell without becoming a law.

Another disadvantage under which we labor is that there are one
or two Democratic Senators who will be members of the next
Legislature, and will vote for the election of Senator, who are
holding over in districts in which we could, on all reasonable
calculation, elect men of our own, if we only had the chance of
an election.  When we consider that there are but twenty-five
Senators in the Senate, taking two from the side where they
rightfully belong, and adding them to the other, is to us a
disadvantage not to be lightly regarded.  Still, so it is; we
have this to contend with.  Perhaps there is no ground of
complaint on our part.  In attending to the many things involved
in the last general election for President, Governor, Auditor,
Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Members of
Congress, of the Legislature, County Officers, and so on, we
allowed these things to happen by want of sufficient attention,
and we have no cause to complain of our adversaries, so far as
this matter is concerned.  But we have some cause to complain of
the refusal to give us a fair apportionment.

There is still another disadvantage under which we labor, and to
which I will ask your attention.  It arises out of the relative
positions of the two persons who stand before the State as
candidates for the Senate.  Senator Douglas is of world-wide
renown.  All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have
been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as
certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United
States.  They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face
post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet
appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions bursting and
sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of
by their greedy hands.  And as they have been gazing upon this
attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little
distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves
to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush
about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries,
and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest
prosperity they could have brought about in his favor.  On the
contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President.  In my
poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages
were sprouting out.  These are disadvantages all, taken together,
that the Republicans labor under.  We have to fight this battle
upon principle, and upon principle alone.  I am, in a certain
sense, made the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans.  I
was made so merely because there had to be some one so placed,--I
being in nowise preferable to any other one of twenty-five,
perhaps a hundred, we have in the Republican ranks.  Then I say I
wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in mind that we
have to fight this battle without many--perhaps without any of
the external aids which are brought to bear against us.  So I
hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to
nerve themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can
be fairly done to bring about the right result.

After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his movements were made
known by the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the
city of New York; and it was heralded that, like another
Napoleon, he was lying by and framing the plan of his campaign.
It was telegraphed to Washington City, and published in the
Union, that he was framing his plan for the purpose of going to
Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and
disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June.
Now, I do suppose that the Judge really spent some time in New
York maturing the plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded
for him.  I have been able, by noting his movements since his
arrival in Illinois, to discover evidences confirmatory of that
allegation.  I think I have been able to see what are the
material points of that plan.  I will, for a little while, ask
your attention to some of them.  What I shall point out, though
not showing the whole plan, are, nevertheless, the main points,
as I suppose.

They are not very numerous.  The first is popular sovereignty.
The second and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th
of June.  Out of these three points--drawing within the range of
popular sovereignty the question of the Lecompton Constitution--
he makes his principal assault.  Upon these his successive
speeches are substantially one and the same.  On this matter of
popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful.  Auxiliary to
these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of cannon,
their marching and music, their fizzlegigs and fireworks; but I
will not waste time with them.  They are but the little trappings
of the campaign.

Coming to the substance,--the first point, "popular sovereignty."
It is to be labeled upon the cars in which he travels; put upon
the hacks he rides in; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes
under, and the banners which wave over him.  It is to be dished
up in as many varieties as a French cook can produce soups from
potatoes.  Now, as this is so great a staple of the plan of the
campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if we
examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be
misled, we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most
arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community.  What
is the matter of popular sovereignty?  The first thing, in order
to understand it, is to get a good definition of what it is, and
after that to see how it is applied.

I suppose almost every one knows that, in this controversy,
whatever has been said has had reference to the question of negro
slavery.  We have not been in a controversy about the right of
the people to govern themselves in the ordinary matters of
domestic concern in the States and Territories.  Mr. Buchanan, in
one of his late messages (I think when he sent up the Lecompton
Constitution) urged that the main point to which the public
attention had been directed was not in regard to the great
variety of small domestic matters, but was directed to the
question of negro slavery; and he asserts that if the people had
had a fair chance to vote on that question there was no
reasonable ground of objection in regard to minor questions.
Now, while I think that the people had not had given, or offered,
them a fair chance upon that slavery question, still, if there
had been a fair submission to a vote upon that main question, the
President's proposition would have been true to the utmost.
Hence, when hereafter I speak of popular sovereignty, I wish to
be understood as applying what I say to the question of slavery
only, not to other minor domestic matters of a Territory or a
State.

Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several of the past years
of his life have been devoted to the question of "popular
sovereignty," and that all the remainder of his life shall be
devoted to it, does he mean to say that he has been devoting his
life to securing to the people of the Territories the right to
exclude slavery from the Territories?  If he means so to say he
means to deceive; because he and every one knows that the
decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes
especial ground of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the
people of a Territory to exclude slavery.  This covers the whole
ground, from the settlement of a Territory till it reaches the
degree of maturity entitling it to form a State Constitution.  So
far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge is not sustaining
popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it.  He sustains the
decision which declares that the popular will of the Territory
has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their
territorial existence.  This being so, the period of time from
the first settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of
forming a State Constitution is not the thing that the Judge has
fought for or is fighting for, but, on the contrary, he has
fought for, and is fighting for, the thing that annihilates and
crushes out that same popular sovereignty.

Well, so much being disposed of, what is left?  Why, he is
contending for the right of the people, when they come to make a
State Constitution, to make it for themselves, and precisely as
best suits themselves.  I say again, that is quixotic.  I defy
contradiction when I declare that the Judge can find no one to
oppose him on that proposition.  I repeat, there is nobody
opposing that proposition on principle.  Let me not be
misunderstood.  I know that, with reference to the Lecompton
Constitution, I may be misunderstood; but when you understand me
correctly, my proposition will be true and accurate.  Nobody is
opposing, or has opposed, the right of the people, when they form
a constitution, to form it for themselves.  Mr. Buchanan and his
friends have not done it; they, too, as well as the Republicans
and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done it; but on the
contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the people
to form a constitution for themselves.  The difference between
the Buchanan men on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the
Republicans on the other, has not been on a question of
principle, but on a question of fact.

The dispute was upon the question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution had been fairly formed by the people or not.  Mr.
Buchanan and his friends have not contended for the contrary
principle any more than the Douglas men or the Republicans.  They
have insisted that whatever of small irregularities existed in
getting up the Lecompton Constitution were such as happen in the
settlement of all new Territories.  The question was, Was it a
fair emanation of the people?  It was a question of fact, and not
of principle.  As to the principle, all were agreed.  Judge
Douglas voted with the Republicans upon that matter of fact.

He and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair
emanation of the people.  The Administration affirmed that it
was.  With respect to the evidence bearing upon that question of
fact, I readily agree that Judge Douglas and the Republicans had
the right on their side, and that the Administration was wrong.
But I state again that, as a matter of principle, there is no
dispute upon the right of a people in a Territory, merging into a
State, to form a constitution for themselves without outside
interference from any quarter.  This being so, what is Judge
Douglas going to spend his life for?  Is he going to spend his
life in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes?
Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity, and go through
his apotheosis and become a god in the maintaining of a principle
which neither man nor mouse in all God's creation is opposing?
Now something in regard to the Lecompton Constitution more
specially; for I pass from this other question of popular
sovereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever been
attempted on an intelligent community.

As to the Lecompton Constitution, I have already said that on the
question of fact, as to whether it was a fair emanation of the
people or not, Judge Douglas, with the Republicans and some
Americans, had greatly the argument against the Administration;
and while I repeat this, I wish to know what there is in the
opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution that
entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it,--as being
par excellence the very quintessence of that opposition.  I agree
to the rightfulness of his opposition.  He in the Senate and his
class of men there formed the number three and no more.  In the
House of Representatives his class of men--the Anti-Lecompton
Democrats--formed a number of about twenty.  It took one hundred
and twenty to defeat the measure, against one hundred and twelve.
Of the votes of that one hundred and twenty, Judge Douglas's
friends furnished twenty, to add to which there were six
Americans and ninety-four Republicans.  I do not say that I am
precisely accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so for
any use I am making of it.

Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the credit of
doing that work, and the hundred none of it?  Why, if, as Judge
Douglas says, the honor is to be divided and due credit is to be
given to other parties, why is just so much given as is consonant
with the wishes, the interests, and advancement of the twenty?
My understanding is, when a common job is done, or a common
enterprise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your one, I
have a right to take out five dollars to your one.  But he does
not so understand it.  He declares the dividend of credit for
defeating Lecompton upon a basis which seems unprecedented and
incomprehensible.

Let us see.  Lecompton in the raw was defeated.  It afterward
took a sort of cooked-up shape, and was passed in the English
bill.  It is said by the Judge that the defeat was a good and
proper thing.  If it was a good thing, why is he entitled to more
credit than others for the performance of that good act, unless
there was something in the antecedents of the Republicans that
might induce every one to expect them to join in that good work,
and at the same time something leading them to doubt that he
would?  Does he place his superior claim to credit on the ground
that he performed a good act which was never expected of him?  He
says I have a proneness for quoting Scripture.  If I should do so
now, it occurs that perhaps he places himself somewhat upon the
ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon
the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the
one that was lost, and threw it upon his shoulders and came home
rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one
sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and
nine in the fold.  The application is made by the Saviour in this
parable, thus: "Verily, I say unto you, there is more rejoicing
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and
nine just persons that need no repentance."

And now, if the Judge claims the benefit of this parable, let him
repent.  Let him not come up here and say: "I am the only just
person; and you are the ninety-nine sinners!"  Repentance before
forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that
condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness.

How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position
in regard to the Lecompton Constitution or any principle in it?
He says he did not make his opposition on the ground as to
whether it was a free or slave constitution, and he would have
you understand that the Republicans made their opposition because
it ultimately became a slave constitution.  To make proof in
favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he opposed
Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State
was to be free or slave.  But he forgets to say that our
Republican Senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton
even before he did.

Why did he oppose it?  Partly, as he declares, because the
members of the convention who framed it were not fairly elected
by the people; that the people were not allowed to vote unless
they had been registered; and that the people of whole counties,
some instances, were not registered.  For these reasons he
declares the Constitution was not an emanation, in any true
sense, from the people.  He also has an additional objection as
to the mode of submitting the Constitution back to the people.
But bearing on the question of whether the delegates were fairly
elected, a speech of his, made something more than twelve months
ago, from this stand, becomes important.  It was made a little
while before the election of the delegates who made Lecompton.
In that speech he declared there was every reason to hope and
believe the election would be fair; and if any one failed to
vote, it would be his own culpable fault.

I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech.  In
that answer I made, substantially, the very argument with which
he combated his Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter.
I pointed to the facts that the people could not vote without
being registered, and that the time for registering had gone by.
I commented on it as wonderful that Judge Douglas could be
ignorant of these facts which every one else in the nation so
well knew.

I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecompton.  I may have
occasion to refer to one or both.

When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Napoleon-like, in New
York, as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since
his arrival in Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of
mine, delivered here on the 16th of June last.  He says that he
carefully read that speech.  He told us that at Chicago a week
ago last night and he repeated it at Bloomington last night.
Doubtless, he repeated it again to-day, though I did not hear
him.  In the first two places--Chicago and Bloomington I heard
him; to-day I did not.  He said he had carefully examined that
speech,--when, he did not say; but there is no reasonable doubt
it was when he was in New York preparing his plan of campaign.  I
am glad he did read it carefully.  He says it was evidently
prepared with great care.  I freely admit it was prepared with
care.  I claim not to be more free from errors than others,--
perhaps scarcely so much; but I was very careful not to put
anything in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any
inferences, which did not appear to me to be true and fully
warrantable.  If I had made any mistake, I was willing to be
corrected; if I had drawn any inference in regard to Judge
Douglas or any one else which was not warranted, I was fully
prepared to modify it as soon as discovered.  I planted myself
upon the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could
be brought to know it.

Having made that speech with the most kindly feelings toward
Judge Douglas, as manifested therein, I was gratified when I
found that he had carefully examined it, and had detected no
error of fact, nor any inference against him, nor any
misrepresentations of which he thought fit to complain.  In
neither of the two speeches I have mentioned did he make any such
complaint.  I will thank any one who will inform me that he, in
his speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated respecting
him as being erroneous.  I presume there is no such thing.  I
have reason to be gratified that the care and caution used in
that speech left it so that he, most of all others interested in
discovering error, has not been able to point out one thing
against him which he could say was wrong.  He seizes upon the
doctrines he supposes to be included in that speech, and declares
that upon them will turn the issues of this campaign.  He then
quotes, or attempts to quote, from my speech.  I will not say
that he wilfully misquotes, but he does fail to quote accurately.
His attempt at quoting is from a passage which I believe I can
quote accurately from memory.  I shall make the quotation now,
with some comments upon it, as I have already said, in order that
the Judge shall be left entirely without excuse for
misrepresenting me.  I do so now, as I hope, for the last time.
I do this in great caution, in order that if he repeats his
misrepresentation it shall be plain to all that he does so
wilfully.  If, after all, he still persists, I shall be compelled
to reconstruct the course I have marked out for myself, and draw
upon such humble resources, as I have, for a new course, better
suited to the real exigencies of the case.  I set out in this
campaign with the intention of conducting it strictly as a
gentleman, in substance at least, if not in the outside polish.
The latter I shall never be; but that which constitutes the
inside of a gentleman I hope I understand, and am not less
inclined to practice than others.  It was my purpose and
expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon principle,
and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not be my fault if
this purpose and expectation shall be given up.

He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of sections; that I
propose all the local institutions of the different States shall
become consolidated and uniform.  What is there in the language
of that speech which expresses such purpose or bears such
construction?  I have again and again said that I would not enter
into any of the States to disturb the institution of slavery.
Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used language most
able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant; and that
while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I
nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw
missiles into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic
institutions.

I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution
of slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the
framers of this government placed it and left it.  I do not
understand that the framers of our Constitution left the people
of the free States in the attitude of firing bombs or shells into
the slave States.  I was not using that passage for the purpose
for which he infers I did use it.  I said:

"We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was
created for the avowed object and with the confident promise of
putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that
policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented.  In my opinion it will not cease till a crisis shall
have been reached and passed.  'A house divided against itself
cannot stand.' I believe that this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free; it will become all one
thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will
arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public
mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as
new, North as well as South."

Now, you all see, from that quotation, I did not express my wish
on anything.  In that passage I indicated no wish or purpose of
my own; I simply expressed my expectation.  Cannot the Judge
perceive a distinction between a purpose and an expectation?  I
have often expressed an expectation to die, but I have never
expressed a wish to die.  I said at Chicago, and now repeat, that
I am quite aware this government has endured, half slave and half
free, for eighty-two years.  I understand that little bit of
history.  I expressed the opinion I did because I perceived--or
thought I perceived--a new set of causes introduced.  I did say
at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread
of slavery arrested, and to see it placed where the public mind
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction.  I said that because I supposed, when the public mind
shall rest in that belief, we shall have peace on the slavery
question.  I have believed--and now believe--the public mind did
rest on that belief up to the introduction of the Nebraska Bill.

Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in
the hope and belief that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction.  For that reason it had been a minor question with
me.  I might have been mistaken; but I had believed, and now
believe, that the whole public mind, that is, the mind of the
great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.  But upon that event I became convinced that
either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was
being placed on a new basis, a basis for making it perpetual,
national, and universal.  Subsequent events have greatly
confirmed me in that belief.  I believe that bill to be the
beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose.  So believing, I have
since then considered that question a paramount one.  So
believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the
power of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be
acknowledged and exercised on the one hand or, on the other, all
resistance be entirely crushed out.  I have expressed that
opinion, and I entertain it to-night.  It is denied that there is
any tendency to the nationalization of slavery in these States.

Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they
were presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers, and the
like, for assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his
opinion that when this Constitution was formed it was the belief
of no man that slavery would last to the present day.  He said,
what I think, that the framers of our Constitution placed the
institution of slavery where the public mind rested in the hope
that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  But he went on
to say that the men of the present age, by their experience, have
become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the
invention of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a
necessity in this country.

As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite
recently in Virginia, a man--the owner of slaves--made a will
providing that after his death certain of his slaves should have
their freedom if they should so choose, and go to Liberia, rather
than remain in slavery.  They chose to be liberated.  But the
persons to whom they would descend as property claimed them as
slaves.  A suit was instituted, which finally came to the Supreme
Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves
upon the ground that a negro cannot make a choice; that they had
no legal power to choose, could not perform the condition upon
which their freedom depended.

I do not mention this with any purpose of criticizing it, but to
connect it with the arguments as affording additional evidence of
the change of sentiment upon this question of slavery in the
direction of making it perpetual and national.  I argue now as I
did before, that there is such a tendency; and I am backed, not
merely by the facts, but by the open confession in the slave
States.

And now as to the Judge's inference that because I wish to see
slavery placed in the course of ultimate extinction,--placed
where our fathers originally placed it,--I wish to annihilate the
State Legislatures, to force cotton to grow upon the tops of the
Green Mountains, to freeze ice in Florida, to cut lumber on the
broad Illinois prairie,--that I am in favor of all these
ridiculous and impossible things.

It seems to me it is a complete answer to all this to ask if,
when Congress did have the fashion of restricting slavery from
free territory; when courts did have the fashion of deciding that
taking a slave into a free country made him free,--I say it is a
sufficient answer to ask if any of this ridiculous nonsense about
consolidation and uniformity did actually follow.  Who heard of
any such thing because of the Ordinance of '87?  because of the
Missouri restriction?  because of the numerous court decisions of
that character?

Now, as to the Dred Scott decision; for upon that he makes his
last point at me.  He boldly takes ground in favor of that
decision.

This is one half the onslaught, and one third of the entire plan
of the campaign.  I am opposed to that decision in a certain
sense, but not in the sense which he puts it.  I say that in so
far as it decided in favor of Dred Scott's master, and against
Dred Scott and his family, I do not propose to disturb or resist
the decision.

I never have proposed to do any such thing.  I think that in
respect for judicial authority my humble history would not suffer
in comparison with that of Judge Douglas.  He would have the
citizen conform his vote to that decision; the member of
Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto power.  He
would make it a rule of political action for the people and all
the departments of the government.  I would not.  By resisting it
as a political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no
disorder, excite no mobs.

When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening of last week, he made
this same point upon me.  On Saturday evening I replied, and
reminded him of a Supreme Court decision which he opposed for at
least several years.  Last night, at Bloomington, he took some
notice of that reply, but entirely forgot to remember that part
of it.

He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting to remember that I
have turned the tables against himself on that very point.  I
renew the effort to draw his attention to it.  I wish to stand
erect before the country, as well as Judge Douglas, on this
question of judicial authority; and therefore I add something to
the authority in favor of my own position.  I wish to show that I
am sustained by authority, in addition to that heretofore
presented.  I do not expect to convince the Judge.  It is part of
the plan of his campaign, and he will cling to it with a
desperate grip.  Even turn it upon him,--the sharp point against
him, and gaff him through,--he will still cling to it till he can
invent some new dodge to take the place of it.

In public speaking it is tedious reading from documents; but I
must beg to indulge the practice to a limited extent.  I shall
read from a letter written by Mr. Jefferson in 1820, and now to
be found in the seventh volume of his correspondence, at page
177.  It seems he had been presented by a gentleman of the name
of Jarvis with a book, or essay, or periodical, called the
Republican, and he was writing in acknowledgment of the present,
and noting some of its contents.  After expressing the hope that
the work will produce a favorable effect upon the minds of the
young, he proceeds to say:

"That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that
reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the
more requiring notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of
many others.  You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the
judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions,-
-a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us
under the despotism of an oligarchy.  Our judges are as honest as
other men, and not more so.  They have, with others, the same
passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.
Their maxim is, 'Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem'; and
their power is the more dangerous as they are in office for life,
and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the
elective control.  The Constitution has erected no such single
tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the
corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and
co-sovereign with themselves."

Thus we see the power claimed for the Supreme Court by Judge
Douglas, Mr. Jefferson holds, would reduce us to the despotism of
an oligarchy.

Now, I have said no more than this,--in fact, never quite so much
as this; at least I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.

Let us go a little further.  You remember we once had a National
Bank.  Some one owed the bank a debt; he was sued, and sought to
avoid payment on the ground that the bank was unconstitutional.
The case went to the Supreme Court, and therein it was decided
that the bank was constitutional.  The whole Democratic party
revolted against that decision.  General Jackson himself asserted
that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a National Bank
to be constitutional, even though the court had decided it to be
so.  He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and
acted upon it under his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a
National Bank.  The declaration that Congress does not possess
this constitutional power to charter a bank has gone into the
Democratic platform, at their National Conventions, and was
brought forward and reaffirmed in their last Convention at
Cincinnati.  They have contended for that declaration, in the
very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a quarter of a
century.  In fact, they have reduced the decision to an absolute
nullity.  That decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the
Cincinnati platform; and still, as if to show that effrontery can
go no further, Judge Douglas vaunts in the very speeches in which
he denounces me for opposing the Dred Scott decision that he
stands on the Cincinnati platform.

Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with
respect to decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in
all its length, breadth, and proportions at his own door.  The
plain truth is simply this: Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court
decisions when he likes and against them when he does not like
them.  He is for the Dred Scott decision because it tends to
nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
combination for that object.  It so happens, singularly enough,
that I never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court
till this, on the contrary, I have no recollection that he was
ever particularly in favor of one till this.  He never was in
favor of any nor opposed to any, till the present one, which
helps to nationalize slavery.

Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere,
judge ye between him and me upon this issue.

He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--
that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I
suppose, at worst, it is but an abstraction.  I submit that the
proposition that the thing which determines whether a man is free
or a slave is rather concrete than abstract.  I think you would
conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon it, and so
would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.  But
suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract
matter, and one of no practical importance.  How has the planting
of slavery in new countries always been effected?  It has now
been decided that slavery cannot be kept out of our new
Territories by any legal means.  In what do our new Territories
now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when slavery was
first planted within them?  It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite
of the wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to
prohibit it, and withholding from the people of the Colonies the
authority to prohibit it for themselves.  Mr. Clay says this was
one of the great and just causes of complaint against Great
Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology we can now make for
having the institution amongst us.  In that precise condition our
Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our own
new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within
them, nor allow the people to prohibit it.

I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which
originally planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy
which now prevails in our new Territories.  If it does not go
into them, it is only because no individual wishes it to go.  The
Judge indulged himself doubtless to-day with the question as to
what I am going to do with or about the Dred Scott decision.
Well, Judge, will you please tell me what you did about the bank
decision?  Will you not graciously allow us to do with the Dred
Scott decision precisely as you did with the bank decision?  You
succeeded in breaking down the moral effect of that decision: did
you find it necessary to amend the Constitution, or to set up a
court of negroes in order to do it?

There is one other point.  Judge Douglas has a very affectionate
leaning toward the Americans and Old Whigs.  Last evening, in a
sort of weeping tone, he described to us a death-bed scene.  He
had been called to the side of Mr. Clay, in his last moments, in
order that the genius of "popular sovereignty" might duly descend
from the dying man and settle upon him, the living and most
worthy successor.  He could do no less than promise that he would
devote the remainder of his life to "popular sovereignty"; and
then the great statesman departs in peace.  By this part of the
"plan of the campaign" the Judge has evidently promised himself
that tears shall be drawn down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as
large as half-grown apples.

Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did not quite come to a
death-bed scene as to him.  It would be amusing, if it were not
disgusting, to see how quick these compromise-breakers administer
on the political effects of their dead adversaries, trumping up
claims never before heard of, and dividing the assets among
themselves.  If I should be found dead to-morrow morning, nothing
but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made on my
authority, before the end of next week.  It so happens that in
that "popular sovereignty" with which Mr. Clay was identified,
the Missouri Compromise was expressly reversed; and it was a
little singular if Mr. Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on
purpose to have that compromise repealed.

Again, the Judge did not keep faith with Mr. Clay when he first
brought in his Nebraska Bill.  He left the Missouri Compromise
unrepealed, and in his report accompanying the bill he told the
world he did it on purpose.  The manes of Mr. Clay must have been
in great agony till thirty days later, when "popular sovereignty"
stood forth in all its glory.

One more thing.  Last night Judge Douglas tormented himself with
horrors about my disposition to make negroes perfectly equal with
white men in social and political relations.  He did not stop to
show that I have said any such thing, or that it legitimately
follows from anything I have said, but he rushes on with his
assertions.  I adhere to the Declaration of Independence.  If
Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by it, let
them come up and amend it.  Let them make it read that all men
are created equal except negroes.  Let us have it decided whether
the Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858,
shall be thus amended.  In his construction of the Declaration
last year, he said it only meant that Americans in America were
equal to Englishmen in England.  Then, when I pointed out to him
that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the Irish, the
Portuguese, and all the other people who have come among us since
the revolution, he reconstructs his construction.  In his last
speech he tells us it meant Europeans.

I press him a little further, and ask if it meant to include the
Russians in Asia; or does he mean to exclude that vast population
from the principles of our Declaration of Independence?  I expect
ere long he will introduce another amendment to his definition.
He is not at all particular.  He is satisfied with anything which
does not endanger the nationalizing of negro slavery.  It may
draw white men down, but it must not lift negroes up.

Who shall say, "I am the superior, and you are the inferior"?

My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be
misrepresented, but cannot be misunderstood.  I have said that I
do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were
created equal in all respects.  They are not our equal in color;
but I suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are equal
in some respects; they are equal in their right to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Certainly the negro is
not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects;
still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own
hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or
black.  In pointing out that more has been given you, you cannot
be justified in taking away the little which has been given him.
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him
alone.  If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

When our government was established we had the institution of
slavery among us.  We were in a certain sense compelled to
tolerate its existence.  It was a sort of necessity.  We had gone
through our struggle and secured our own independence.  The
framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery
amongst their own institutions at the time.  They found that by
an effort to eradicate it they might lose much of what they had
already gained.  They were obliged to bow to the necessity.  They
gave power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of
twenty years.  They also prohibited it in the Territories where
it did not exist.  They did what they could, and yielded to the
necessity for the rest.  I also yield to all which follows from
that necessity.  What I would most desire would be the separation
of the white and black races.

One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas
says he has read so carefully.  I expressed my belief in the
existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slavery.
I did not profess to know it, nor do I now.  I showed the part
Judge Douglas had played in the string of facts constituting to
my mind the proof of that conspiracy.  I showed the parts played
by others.

I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the
last Presidential election, by the impression that the people of
the Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was
known in advance by the conspirators that the court was to decide
that neither Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery.
These charges are more distinctly made than anything else in the
speech.

Judge Douglas has carefully read and reread that speech.  He has
not, so far as I know, contradicted those charges.  In the two
speeches which I heard he certainly did not.  On this own tacit
admission, I renew that charge.  I charge him with having been a
party to that conspiracy and to that deception for the sole
purpose of nationalizing slavery.




CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS

[The following is the correspondence between the two rival
candidates for the United States Senate]

MR. LINCOLN TO MR. DOUGLAS.

CHICAGO, ILL., July 24, 1558.

HON. S.  A.  DOUGLAS:

My dear Sir,--Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement
for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences
the present canvass?  Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is
authorized to receive your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to
enter into the terms of such arrangement.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




Mr. DOUGLAS TO Mr. LINCOLN.

BEMENT,  PIATT Co., ILL., July 30, 1858.

Dear Sir,--Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my proposition
for a joint discussion at one prominent point in each
Congressional District, as stated in my previous letter, was
received this morning.

The times and places designated are as follows:

Ottawa, La Salle County     August    21st, 1858.
Freeport, Stephenson County   "       27th,
Jonesboro, Union County, September 15th,
Charleston, Coles County      "    18th,
Galesburgh, Knox County October 7th,
Quincy, Adams County        "  13th,
Alton, Madison County       "  15th,

I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and
close the discussion.  I will speak at Ottawa one hour, you can
reply, occupying an hour and a half, and I will then follow for
half an hour.  At Freeport, you shall open the discussion and
speak one hour; I will follow for an hour and a half, and you can
then reply for half an hour.  We will alternate in like manner in
each successive place.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S.  A.  DOUGLAS.




Mr. LINCOLN TO Mr. DOUGLAS.

SPRINGFIELD, July 31, 1858.

HON. S.  A.  DOUGLAS:

Dear Sir,--Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms
for joint discussions between us, was received this morning.
Although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings
and closes, to my three, I accede, and thus close the
arrangement.  I direct this to you at Hillsborough, and shall try
to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and
Register of Monday morning.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA,

AUGUST 21, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat
misrepresented, it provokes him, at least, I find it so with
myself; but when misrepresentation becomes very gross and
palpable, it is more apt to amuse him.  The first thing I see fit
to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas alleges, after running
through the history of the old Democratic and the old Whig
parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in
1854, by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the
United States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of
Judge Douglas.  Now, all I have to say upon that subject is that
I think no man not even Judge Douglas can prove it, because it is
not true.  I have no doubt he is "conscientious" in saying it.
As to those resolutions that he took such a length of time to
read, as being the platform of the Republican party in 1854, I
say I never had anything to do with them, and I think Trumbull
never had.  Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did
have anything to do with them.

I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call
for a convention to form a Republican party at Springfield, and I
think that my friend Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand,
had a hand in it.  I think this is true, and I think if he will
remember accurately he will be able to recollect that he tried to
get me into it, and I would not go in.  I believe it is also true
that I went away from Springfield when the convention was in
session, to attend court in Tazewell county.  It is true they did
place my name, though without authority, upon the committee, and
afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee; but I
refused to do so, and I never had anything to do with that
organization.  This is the plain truth about all that matter of
the resolutions.

Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull
bargaining to sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln
agreeing to sell out the old Whig party, I have the means of
knowing about that: Judge Douglas cannot have; and I know there
is no substance to it whatever.  Yet I have no doubt he is
"conscientious" about it.  I know that after Mr. Lovejoy got into
the Legislature that winter, he complained of me that I had told
all the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig party was
good enough for them, and some of them voted against him because
I told them so.  Now, I have no means of totally disproving such
charges as this which the Judge makes.  A man cannot prove a
negative; but he has a right to claim that when a man makes an
affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show the truth of
what he says.  I certainly cannot introduce testimony to show the
negative about things, but I have a right to claim that if a man
says he knows a thing, then he must show how he knows it.  I
always have a right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to
me that he may be "conscientious" on the subject.

Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things; but in
regard to that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes,
when he says that I was engaged at that time in selling out and
Abolitionizing the old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to
read a part of a printed speech that I made then at Peoria, which
will show altogether a different view of the position I took in
that contest of 1854.

[Voice: "Put on your specs."]

Mr. LINCOLN: Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a
young man.

"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  The foregoing
history may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I
am sure it is sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to
make of it, and in it we have before us the chief materials
enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is right or wrong.

"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its
direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and
wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to
every other part of the wide world where men can be found
inclined to take it.

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real
zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.  I hate it
because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.  I hate it
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence
in the world,--enables the enemies of free institutions, with
plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends
of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it
forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war
with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that
there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice
against the Southern people.  They are just what we would be in
their situation.  If slavery did not now exist among them, they
would not introduce it.  If it did now exist among us, we should
not instantly give it up.  This I believe of the masses north and
south.  Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would
not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would
gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence.  We
know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go north, and
become tip-top Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go south
and become most cruel slave-masters.

"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for
the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.  When it
is said that the institution exists, and that it is very
difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can
understand and appreciate the saying.  I will not blame them for
not doing what I should not know how to do myself.  If all
earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to
the existing institution.  My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves and send them to Liberia,--to their own native land.
But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high
hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long term,
its sudden execution is impossible.  If they were all landed
there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and
there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the
world to carry them there in many times ten days.  What then?
Free them all and keep them among us as underlings?  Is it quite
certain that this betters their condition?  I think I would not
hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear
enough to me to denounce people upon.  What next?  Free them, and
make them politically and socially our equals?  My own feelings
will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that
those of the great mass of white people will not.  Whether this
feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole
question, if, indeed, it is any part of it.  A universal feeling,
whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.  We
cannot, then, make them equals.  It does seem to me that systems
of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness
in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I
acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I
would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their
fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to
carry a free man into slavery than Our ordinary criminal laws are
to hang an innocent one.

"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for
permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it
would for reviving the African slave-trade by law.  The law which
forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so
long forbid the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be
distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the
former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter."

I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this.
I think he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to
me.  I do not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he pays
back for it in kind.  I will not answer questions one after
another, unless he reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry,
and I have answered it before, he has got it without my getting
anything in return.  He has got my answer on the Fugitive Slave
law.

Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length; but
this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to
the institution of slavery and the black race.  This is the whole
of it; and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect
social and political equality with the negro is but a specious
and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a
horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse.  I will say here, while
upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or
indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the
States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so.  I have no purpose to
introduce political and social equality between the white and the
black races.  There is a physical difference between the two
which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living
together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it
becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well
as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong
having the superior position.  I have never said anything to the
contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no
reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the
natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I hold
that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.  I agree
with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects, certainly
not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.
But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody
else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little
follies.  The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend
Lincoln being a "grocery-keeper."  I don't know as it would be a
great sin, if I had been; but he is mistaken.  Lincoln never kept
a grocery anywhere in the world.  It is true that Lincoln did
work the latter part of one winter in a little stillhouse, up at
the head of a hollow.  And so I think my friend the Judge is
equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in
Congress of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the
Mexican war.  The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly,
but I can tell you what he can prove, by referring to the record.
You remember I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party
tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun
by the President, I would not do it.  But whenever they asked for
any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers
there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge
Douglas did.  You can think as you please as to whether that was
consistent.  Such is the truth, and the Judge has the right to
make all he can out of it.  But when he, by a general charge,
conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who
were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else to hinder
the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether
mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.

As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I
will dwell a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics
upon which the Judge has spoken.  He has read from my speech in
Springfield, in which I say that "a house divided against itself
cannot stand" Does the Judge say it can stand?  I don't know
whether he does or not.  The Judge does not seem to be attending
to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion
that a house divided against itself can stand.  If he does, then
there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but
between the Judge and an Authority of a somewhat higher
character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the
purpose of saying something seriously.  I know that the Judge may
readily enough agree with me that the maxim which was put forth
by the Savior is true, but he may allege that I misapply it; and
the Judge has a right to urge that, in my application, I do
misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I do not
misapply it, When he undertakes to say that because I think this
nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will all
become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing
about a dead uniformity in the various States, in all their
institutions, he argues erroneously.  The great variety of the
local institutions in the States, springing from differences in
the soil, differences in the face of the country, and in the
climate, are bonds of Union.  They do not make "a house divided
against itself," but they make a house united.  If they produce
in one section of the country what is called for, by the wants of
another section, and this other section can supply the wants of
the first, they are not matters of discord, but bonds of union,
true bonds of union.  But can this question of slavery be
considered as among these varieties in the institutions of the
country?  I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our
government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to
be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of
discord and an element of division in the house.  I ask you to
consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's
minds shall continue to be the same, after this generation and
assemblage shall sink into the grave, and another race shall
arise, with the same moral and intellectual development we have,
whether, if that institution is standing in the same irritating
position in which it now is, it will not continue an element of
division?  If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to
this question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and
when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the
institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some
States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the
fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which
our fathers originally placed it--restricting it from the new
Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its
source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the
seal of legislation against its spread.  The public mind did rest
in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.
But lately, I think--and in this I charge nothing on the Judge's
motives--lately, I think that he, and those acting with him, have
placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the
perpetuity and nationalization of slavery.  And while it is
placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I
believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the
opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place
it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that
its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike
lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South.  Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place
it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would
be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind
would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the
course of ultimate extinction.  The crisis would be past, and the
institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should
live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be
going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the
white races.

[A voice: "Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"]

Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty!  what is
popular sovereignty?  Is it the right of the people to have
slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the Territories?  I
will state--and I have an able man to watch me--my understanding
is that popular sovereignty, as now applied to the question of
slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if
they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do
not want it.  I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people
were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would
be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one; but I do say
that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man
wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man
from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge
complains, and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of
the things which he ascribes to me at all.  I had no thought in
the world that I was doing anything to bring about a war between
the free and slave states.  I had no thought in the world that I
was doing anything to bring about a political and social equality
of the black and white races.  It never occurred to me that I was
doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead
uniformity all the local institutions of the various States.  But
I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing
something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better
that I did not mean it.  It is just as fatal to the country, if I
have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not.
But can it be true that placing this institution upon the
original basis--the basis upon which our fathers placed it--can
have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern States at
war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to make
the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in
Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut
pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because
they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow?  The Judge says
this is a new principle started in regard to this question.  Does
the Judge claim that he is working on the plan of the founders of
government?  I think he says in some of his speeches indeed, I
have one here now--that he saw evidence of a policy to allow
slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of it it
should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of
the country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about
studying the subject upon original principles, and upon original
principles he got up the Nebraska Bill!  I am fighting it upon
these "original principles," fighting it in the Jeffersonian,
Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.

Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while to one
or two other things in that Springfield speech.  My main object
was to show, so far as my humble ability was capable of showing,
to the people of this country what I believed was the truth,--
that there was a tendency, if not a conspiracy, among those who
have engineered this slavery question for the last four or five
years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in this nation.
Having made that speech principally for that object, after
arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my
proposition, I concluded with this bit of comment:

"We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the
result of preconcert; but when we see a lot of framed timbers,
different portions of which we know have been gotten out at
different times and places, and by different workmen--Stephen,
Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,--and when we see these
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or
too few,--not omitting even the scaffolding,--or if a single
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted
and prepared yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case we feel
it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger
and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow
was struck."

When my friend Judge Douglas came to Chicago on the 9th of July,
this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an
harangue there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine,
showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no
attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a
"kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman," notwithstanding I had
said this, he goes on and eliminates, or draws out, from my
speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one
another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the
niggers and white people to marrying together.  Then, as the
Judge had complimented me with these pleasant titles (I must
confess to my weakness), I was a little "taken," for it came from
a great man.  I was not very much accustomed to flattery, and it
came the sweeter to me.  I was rather like the Hoosier, with the
gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better than any
other man, and got less of it.  As the Judge had so flattered me,
I could not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with
me; so I went to work to show him that he misunderstood the whole
scope of my speech, and that I really never intended to set the
people at war with one another.  As an illustration, the next
time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used this expression,
that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had I any
inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with
the institutions of slavery.  He says upon that: Lincoln will not
enter into the slave States, but will go to the banks of the
Ohio, on this side, and shoot over!  He runs on, step by step, in
the horse-chestnut style of argument, until in the Springfield
speech he says: "Unless he shall be successful in firing his
batteries until he shall have extinguished slavery in all the
States the Union shall be dissolved."  Now, I don't think that
was exactly the way to treat "a kind, amiable, intelligent
gentleman."  I know if I had asked the Judge to show when or
where it was I had said that, if I didn't succeed in firing into
the slave States until slavery should be extinguished, the Union
should be dissolved, he could not have shown it.  I understand
what he would do.  He would say: I don't mean to quote from you,
but this was the result of what you say.  But I have the right to
ask, and I do ask now, Did you not put it in such a form that an
ordinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from
me?

In a speech at Springfield, on the night of the 17th, I thought I
might as well attend to my own business a little, and I recalled
his attention as well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to
nationalize slavery.  I called his attention to the fact that he
had acknowledged in my hearing twice that he had carefully read
the speech, and, in the language of the lawyers, as he had twice
read the speech, and still had put in no plea or answer, I took a
default on him.  I insisted that I had a right then to renew that
charge of conspiracy.  Ten days afterward I met the Judge at
Clinton,--that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the
discussion,--and heard him make a speech.  Then he comes in with
his plea to this charge, for the first time; and his plea when
put in, as well as I can recollect it, amounted to this: that he
never had any talk with Judge Taney or the President of the
United States with regard to the Dred Scott decision before it
was made.  I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who makes a
charge without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who
knowingly tells a falsehood; and, lastly, that he would pronounce
the whole thing a falsehood; but, he would make no personal
application of the charge of falsehood, not because of any regard
for the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman," but because of
his own personal self-respect!  I have understood since then (but
[turning to Judge Douglas] will not hold the Judge to it if he is
not willing) that he has broken through the "self-respect," and
has got to saying the thing out.  The Judge nods to me that it is
so.  It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good-humored as I
do, when the Judge acknowledges that he has been trying to make a
question of veracity with me.  I know the Judge is a great man,
while I am only a small man, but I feel that I have got him.  I
demur to that plea.  I waive all objections that it was not filed
till after default was taken, and demur to it upon the merits.
What if Judge Douglas never did talk with Chief Justice Taney and
the President before the Dred Scott decision was made, does it
follow that he could not have had as perfect an understanding
without talking as with it?  I am not disposed to stand upon my
legal advantage.  I am disposed to take his denial as being like
an answer in chancery, that he neither had any knowledge,
information, or belief in the existence of such a conspiracy.  I
am disposed to take his answer as being as broad as though he had
put it in these words.  And now, I ask, even if he had done so,
have not I a right to prove it on him, and to offer the evidence
of more than two witnesses, by whom to prove it; and if the
evidence proves the existence of the conspiracy, does his broader
answer denying all knowledge, information, or belief, disturb the
fact?  It can only show that he was used by conspirators, and was
not a leader of them.

Now, in regard to his reminding me of the moral rule that persons
who tell what they do not know to be true falsify as much as
those who knowingly tell falsehoods.  I remember the rule, and it
must be borne in mind that in what I have read to you, I do not
say that I know such a conspiracy to exist.  To that I reply, I
believe it.  If the Judge says that I do not believe it, then he
says what he does not know, and falls within his own rule, that
he who asserts a thing which he does not know to be true,
falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood.  I want
to call your attention to a little discussion on that branch of
the case, and the evidence which brought my mind to the
conclusion which I expressed as my belief.  If, in arraying that
evidence I had stated anything which was false or erroneous, it
needed but that Judge Douglas should point it out, and I would
have taken it back, with all the kindness in the world.  I do not
deal in that way.  If I have brought forward anything not a fact,
if he will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it
back.  But if he will not point out anything erroneous in the
evidence, is it not rather for him to show, by a comparison of
the evidence, that I have reasoned falsely, than to call the
"kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar?  If I have
reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an able
debater to show by argument that I have wandered to an erroneous
conclusion.  I want to ask your attention to a portion of the
Nebraska Bill, which Judge Douglas has quoted:

 "It being the true intent and meaning of this Act, not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to argue in favor of
"popular sovereignty," the right of the people to have slaves if
they wanted them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want
them.  "But," said, in substance, a Senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase,
I believe), "we more than suspect that you do not mean to allow
the people to exclude slavery if they wish to; and if you do mean
it, accept an amendment which I propose, expressly authorizing
the people to exclude slavery."

I believe I have the amendment here before me, which was offered,
and under which the people of the Territory, through their
representatives, might, if they saw fit, prohibit the existence
of slavery therein.  And now I state it as a fact, to be taken
back if there is any mistake about it, that Judge Douglas and
those acting with him voted that amendment down.  I now think
that those men who voted it down had a real reason for doing so.
They know what that reason was.  It looks to us, since we have
seen the Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that "under the
Constitution" the people cannot exclude slavery, I say it looks
to outsiders, poor, simple, "amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as
though the niche was left as a place to put that Dred Scott
decision in,--a niche which would have been spoiled by adopting
the amendment.  And now, I say again, if this was not the reason,
it will avail the Judge much more to calmly and good-humoredly
point out to these people what that other reason was for voting
the amendment down, than, swelling himself up, to vociferate that
he may be provoked to call somebody a liar.

Again: There is in that same quotation from the Nebraska Bill
this clause: "It being the true intent and meaning of this bill
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State."  I have
always been puzzled to know what business the word "State" had in
that connection.  Judge Douglas knows.  He put it there.  He
knows what he put it there for.  We outsiders cannot say what he
put it there for.  The law they were passing was not about
States, and was not making provisions for States.  What was it
placed there for?  After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which
holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if
another Dred Scott decision shall come, holding that they cannot
exclude it from a State, we shall discover that when the word was
originally put there, it was in view of something which was to
come in due time, we shall see that it was the other half of
something.  I now say again, if there is any different reason for
putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without
calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason was.

When the Judge spoke at Clinton, he came very near making a
charge of falsehood against me.  He used, as I found it printed
in a newspaper, which, I remember, was very nearly like the real
speech, the following language:

"I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before, for the
reason that I did not suppose there was a man in America with a
heart so corrupt as to believe such a charge could be true.  I
have too much respect for Mr. Lincoln to suppose he is serious in
making the charge."

I confess this is rather a curious view, that out of respect for
me he should consider I was making what I deemed rather a grave
charge in fun.  I confess it strikes me rather strangely.  But I
let it pass.  As the Judge did not for a moment believe that
there was a man in America whose heart was so "corrupt" as to
make such a charge, and as he places me among the "men in
America" who have hearts base enough to make such a charge, I
hope he will excuse me if I hunt out another charge very like
this; and if it should turn out that in hunting I should find
that other, and it should turn out to be Judge Douglas himself
who made it, I hope he will reconsider this question of the deep
corruption of heart he has thought fit to ascribe to me.  In
Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858, which I hold in my
hand, he says:

"In this connection there is another topic to which I desire to
allude.  I seldom refer to the course of newspapers, or notice
the articles which they publish in regard to myself; but the
course of the Washington Union has been so extraordinary for the
last two or three months, that I think it well enough to make
some allusion to it.  It has read me out of the Democratic party
every other day, at least for two or three months, and keeps
reading me out, and, as if it had not succeeded, still continues
to read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,' 'renegade,'
'deserter,' and other kind and polite epithets of that nature.
Sir, I have no vindication to make of my Democracy against the
Washington Union, or any other newspapers.  I am willing to allow
my history and action for the last twenty years to speak for
themselves as to my political principles and my fidelity to
political obligations.  The Washington Union has a personal
grievance.  When its editor was nominated for public printer, I
declined to vote for him, and stated that at some time I might
give my reasons for doing so.  Since I declined to give that
vote, this scurrilous abuse, these vindictive and constant
attacks have been repeated almost daily on me.  Will any friend
from Michigan read the article to which I allude?"

This is a part of the speech.  You must excuse me from reading
the entire article of the Washington Union, as Mr. Stuart read it
for Mr. Douglas.  The Judge goes on and sums up, as I think,
correctly:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and
apparently authoritatively; and any man who questions any of them
is denounced as an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic.  The
propositions are, first, that the primary object of all
government at its original institution is the protection of
person and property; second, that the Constitution of the United
States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether
organic or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State
from settling in another with their slave property, and
especially declaring it forfeited, are direct violations of the
original intention of the government and Constitution of the
United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of the slaves
of the Northern States was a gross outrage of the rights of
property, inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the part of
the owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the
17th of November, and on the 18th appeared the first article
giving the adhesion of the Union, to the Lecompton Constitution.
It was in these words:

"KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled.
The problem is saved.  The dead point of danger is passed.  All
serious trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone ..."

And a column nearly of the same sort.  Then, when you come to
look into the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine
incorporated in it which was put forth editorially in the Union.
What is it?

"ARTICLE 7, Section I.  The right of property is before and
higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the
owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and
as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property
whatever."

Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be
amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote:

"But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property
in the ownership of slaves."

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution
that they are identical in spirit with the authoritative article
in the Washington Union of the day previous to its indorsement of
this Constitution."

I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one
who feels interested in this matter will read the entire section
of the speech, and see whether I do the Judge injustice.  He
proceeds:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 10th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be
read.  I have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon.
What is this charge that the Judge thinks I must have a very
corrupt heart to make?  It was a purpose on the part of certain
high functionaries to make it impossible for the people of one
State to prohibit the people of any other State from entering it
with their "property," so called, and making it a slave State.
In other words, it was a charge implying a design to make the
institution of slavery national.  And now I ask your attention to
what Judge Douglas has himself done here.  I know he made that
part of the speech as a reason why he had refused to vote for a
certain man for public printer; but when we get at it, the charge
itself is the very one I made against him, that he thinks I am so
corrupt for uttering.  Now, whom does he make that charge
against?  Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely?
No; he says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton
Constitution, and so the framers of that Constitution are brought
in with the editor of the newspaper in that "fatal blow being
struck."  He did not call it a "conspiracy."  In his language, it
is a "fatal blow being struck."  And if the words carry the
meaning better when changed from a "conspiracy" into a "fatal
blow being struck, "I will change my expression, and call it
"fatal blow being struck."  We see the charge made not merely
against the editor of the Union, but all the framers of the
Lecompton Constitution; and not only so, but the article was an
authoritative article.  By whose authority?  Is there any
question but he means it was by the authority of the President
and his Cabinet,--the Administration?

Is there any sort of question but he means to make that charge?
Then there are the editors of the Union, the framers of the
Lecompton Constitution, the President of the United States and
his Cabinet, and all the supporters of the Lecompton
Constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who are all
involved in this "fatal blow being struck."  I commend to Judge
Douglas's consideration the question of how corrupt a man's heart
must be to make such a charge!

Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the
little time I have left, to which to call your attention; and as
I shall come to a close at the end of that branch, it is probable
that I shall not occupy quite all the time allotted to me.
Although on these questions I would like to talk twice as long as
I have, I could not enter upon another head and discuss it
properly without running over my time.  I ask the attention of
the people here assembled and elsewhere to the course that Judge
Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of
making slavery national.  Not going back to the records, but
taking the speeches he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and
day before, and makes constantly all over the country, I ask your
attention to them.  In the first place, what is necessary to make
the institution national?  Not war.  There is no danger that the
people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young
nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them
upon us.  There is no danger of our going over there and making
war upon them.  Then what is necessary for the nationalization of
slavery?  It is simply the next Dred Scott decision.  It is
merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the
Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided
that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial
Legislature can do it.  When that is decided and acquiesced in,
the whole thing is done.  This being true, and this being the
way, as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us
consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end.  In
the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on
public sentiment.  In this and like communities, public sentiment
is everything.  With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without
it, nothing can succeed.  Consequently, he who moulds public
sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces
decisions.  He makes statutes and decisions possible or
impossible to be executed.  This must be borne in mind, as also
the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast
influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to
believe anything when they once find out Judge Douglas professes
to believe it.  Consider also the attitude he occupies at the
head of a large party,--a party which he claims has a majority of
all the voters in the country.  This man sticks to a decision
which forbids the people of a Territory from excluding slavery,
and he does so, not because he says it is right in itself,--he
does not give any opinion on that,--but because it has been
decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and
you are, bound to take it in your political action as law, not
that he judges at all of its merits, but because a decision of
the court is to him a "Thus saith the Lord."  He places it on
that ground alone; and you will bear in mind that thus committing
himself unreservedly to this decision commits him to the next one
just as firmly as to this.  He did not commit himself on account
of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a "Thus saith
the Lord."  The next decision, as much as this, will be a "Thus
saith the Lord."  There is nothing that can divert or turn him
away from this decision.  It is nothing that I point out to him
that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the
binding force of decisions.  It is nothing to him that Jefferson
did not so believe.  I have said that I have often heard him
approve of Jackson's course in disregarding the decision of the
Supreme Court pronouncing a National Bank constitutional.  He
says I did not hear him say so.  He denies the accuracy of my
recollection.  I say he ought to know better than I, but I will
make no question about this thing, though it still seems to me
that I heard him say it twenty times.  I will tell him, though,
that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati platform, which
affirms that Congress cannot charter a National Bank, in the
teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a
bank.  And I remind him of another piece of history on the
question of respect for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of
Illinois history belonging to a time when the large party to
which Judge Douglas belonged were displeased with a decision of
the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they had decided that a
Governor could not remove a Secretary of State.  You will find
the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois, and I know that
Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of over-
slaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, so
as to vote down the four old ones.  Not only so, but it ended in
the Judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five
new judges to break down the four old ones  It was in this way
precisely that he got his title of judge.  Now, when the Judge
tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a
court will have to be catechized beforehand upon some subject, I
say, "You know, Judge; you have tried it."  When he says a court
of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be
prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, "You know
best, Judge; you have been through the mill."  But I cannot shake
Judge Douglas's teeth loose from the Dred Scott decision.  Like
some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will hang on
when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or
you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold.  And
so I may point out to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered
all over, from the beginning of his political life to the present
time, with attacks upon judicial decisions; I may cut off limb
after limb of his public record, and strive to wrench him from a
single dictum of the court,--yet I cannot divert him from it.  He
hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision.  These things
show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he
adheres to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all
other decisions of the same court.

[A HIBERNIAN: "Give us something besides Dred Scott."]

Yes; no doubt you want to hear something that don't hurt.  Now,
having spoken of the Dred Scott decision, one more word, and I am
done.  Henry Clay, my beau-ideal of a statesman, the man for whom
I fought all my humble life, Henry Clay once said of a class of
men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation that they must, if they would do this, go back to
the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders
its annual joyous return; they must blow out the moral lights
around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could
they perpetuate slavery in this country!  To my thinking, Judge
Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very
thing in this community, when he says that the negro has nothing
in the Declaration of Independence.  Henry Clay plainly
understood the contrary.  Judge Douglas is going back to the era
of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his ability, muzzling
the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return.  When he
invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he
is blowing out the moral lights around us.  When he says he
"cares not whether slavery is voted down or up,"--that it is a
sacred right of self-government,--he is, in my judgment,
penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason
and the love of liberty in this American people.  And now I will
only say that when, by all these means and appliances, Judge
Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact
accordance with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall
echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat
his views and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says
on these mighty questions,--then it needs only the formality of
the second Dred Scott decision, which he indorses in advance, to
make slavery alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new,
North as well as South.

My friends, that ends the chapter.  The Judge can take his
half-hour.




SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT,

AUGUST 27, 1858

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself
first met in public discussion.  He spoke one hour, I an hour and
a half, and he replied for half an hour.  The order is now
reversed.  I am to speak an hour, he an hour and a half, and then
I am to reply for half an hour.  I propose to devote myself
during the first hour to the scope of what was brought within the
range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa.  Of course there was
brought within the scope in that half-hour's speech something of
his own opening speech.  In the course of that opening argument
Judge Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories.  In
my speech of an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts
of his speech, and incidentally, as I thought, intimated to him
that I would answer the rest of his interrogatories on condition
only that he should agree to answer as many for me.  He made no
intimation at the time of the proposition, nor did he in his
reply allude at all to that suggestion of mine.  I do him no
injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply
in dealing with me as though I had refused to answer his
interrogatories.  I now propose that I will answer any of the
interrogatories, upon condition that he will answer questions
from me not exceeding the same number.  I give him an opportunity
to respond.

The Judge remains silent.  I now say that I will answer his
interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not; and that after I
have done so, I shall propound mine to him.

I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican
party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the
platforms of the party, then and since.  If in any
interrogatories which I
shall answer I go beyond the scope of what is within these
platforms, it will be perceived that no one is responsible but
myself.

Having said thus much, I will take up the Judge's interrogatories
as I find them printed in the Chicago Times, and answer them
seriatim.  In order that there may be no mistake about it, I have
copied the interrogatories in writing, and also my answers to
them.  The first one of these interrogatories is in these words:

Question 1.--"I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as
he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the
Fugitive Slave law?"  Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand
in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.

Q.  2.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day,
as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States
into the Union, even if the people want them?"  Answer:--I do not
now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any
more slave States into the Union.

Q.  3.--"I want to know whether he stands pledged against the
admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution
as the people of that State may see fit to make?"  Answer:--I do
not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the
Union, with such a constitution as the people of that State may
see fit to make.

Q.  4.--"I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?"  Answer:--I do
not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.

Q.  5.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the
prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?"
Answer:--I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the
slave-trade between the different States.

Q.  6.--"I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit
slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as
well as south of the Missouri Compromise line?"  Answer:--I am
impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and
duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States
'Territories.

Q.  7.--"I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the
acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first
prohibited therein?"  Answer:--I am not generally opposed to
honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would
or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might
think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
question among ourselves.

Now, my friends, it will be perceived, upon an examination of
these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered
that I was not pledged to this, that, or the other.  The Judge
has not framed his interrogatories to ask me anything more than
this, and I have answered in strict accordance with the
interrogatories, and have answered truly, that I am not pledged
at all upon any of the points to which I have answered.  But I am
not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory.  I
am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions,
and state what I really think upon them.

As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have
never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I
think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of
the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive
Slave law.  Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard
to the existing Fugitive Slave law, further than that I think it
should have been framed so as to be free from some of the
objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency.
And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an
alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general
question of slavery.

In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the
admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you
very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in
a position of having to pass upon that question.  I should be
exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave
State admitted into the Union; but I must add that if slavery
shall be kept out of the Territories during the territorial
existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall,
having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt
the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a
slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the
institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the
country, but to admit them into the Union.

The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second,
it being, as I conceive, the same as the second.

The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.  In relation to that, I have my mind very
distinctly made up.  I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery
abolished in the District of Columbia.  I believe that Congress
possesses the constitutional power to abolish it.  Yet as a
member of Congress, I should not, with my present views, be in
favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia, unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that
the abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a
vote of the majority of qualified voters in the District; and
third, that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.
With these three conditions, I confess I would be exceedingly
glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,
and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from our capital that
foul blot upon our nation."

In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that, as to
the question of the abolition of the slave-trade between the
different States, I can truly answer, as I have, that I am
pledged to nothing about it.  It is a subject to which I have not
given that mature consideration that would make me feel
authorized to state a position so as to hold myself entirely
bound by it.  In other words, that question has never been
prominently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether
we really have the constitutional power to do it.  I could
investigate it if I had sufficient time to bring myself to a
conclusion upon that subject; but I have not done so, and I say
so frankly to you here, and to Judge Douglas.  I must say,
however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does
possess the constitutional power to abolish the slave-trade among
the different States, I should still not be in favor of the
exercise of that power, unless upon some conservative principle
as I conceive it, akin to what I have said in relation to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be
prohibited in all the Territories of the United States is full
and explicit within itself, and cannot be made clearer by any
comments of mine.  So I suppose in regard to the question whether
I am opposed to the acquisition of any more territory unless
slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such that I
could add nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better
understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing.

Now in all this the Judge has me, and he has me on the record.  I
suppose he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining
one set of opinions for one place, and another set for another
place; that I was afraid to say at one place what I uttered at
another.  What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast
audience as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in
the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if
it would be offensive to any persons and render them enemies to
myself, would be offensive to persons in this
audience.

I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrogatories, so
far as I have framed them.  I will bring forward a new
installment when I get them ready.  I will bring them forward now
only reaching to number four.
The first one is:

Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State
constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before
they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the
English bill,--some ninety-three thousand,--will you vote to
admit them?

Q.  2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
constitution?

Q.  3.  If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide
that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in
favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as
a rule of political action?

Q.  4.  Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in
disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the
slavery question?

As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas
propounded to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he
said Judge Trumbull and myself had participated in adopting, in
the first Republican State Convention, held at Springfield in
October, 1854.  He insisted that I and Judge Trumbull, and
perhaps the entire Republican party, were responsible for the
doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and
I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he
deduced the interrogatories which he propounded to me, using
these resolutions as a sort of authority for propounding those
questions to me.  Now, I say here to-day that I do not answer his
interrogatories because of their springing at all from that set
of resolutions which he read.  I answered them because Judge
Douglas thought fit to ask them.  I do not now, nor ever did,
recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of
resolutions.  When I replied to him on that occasion, I assured
him that I never had anything to do with them.  I repeat here to
today that I never in any possible form had anything to do with
that set of resolutions  It turns out, I believe, that those
resolutions were never passed in any convention held in
Springfield.

It turns out that they were never passed at any convention or any
public meeting that I had any part in.  I believe it turns out,
in addition to all this, that there was not, in the fall of 1854,
any convention holding a session in Springfield, calling itself a
Republican State Convention; yet it is true there was a
convention, or assemblage of men calling themselves a convention,
at Springfield, that did pass some resolutions.  But so little
did I really know of the proceedings of that convention, or what
set of resolutions they had passed, though having a general
knowledge that there had been such an assemblage of men there,
that when Judge Douglas read the resolutions, I really did not
know but they had been the resolutions passed then and there.  I
did not question that they were the resolutions adopted.  For I
could not bring myself to suppose that Judge Douglas could say
what he did upon this subject without knowing that it was true.
I contented myself, on that occasion, with denying, as I truly
could, all connection with them, not denying or affirming whether
they were passed at Springfield.  Now, it turns out that he had
got hold of some resolutions passed at some convention or public
meeting in Kane County.  I wish to say here, that I don't
conceive that in any fair and just mind this discovery relieves
me at all.  I had just as much to do with the convention in Kane
County as that at Springfield.  I am as much responsible for the
resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield,--the amount
of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no
more than there would be in regard to a set of resolutions passed
in the moon.

I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some
further purpose than anything yet advanced.  Judge Douglas did
not make his statement upon that occasion as matters that he
believed to be true, but he stated them roundly as being true, in
such form as to pledge his veracity for their truth.  When the
whole matter turns out as it does, and when we consider who Judge
Douglas is, that he is a distinguished Senator of the United
States; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that his
character is not at all limited as an ordinary Senator of the
United States, but that his name has become of world-wide
renown,--it is most extraordinary that he should so far forget
all the suggestions of justice to an adversary, or of prudence to
himself, as to venture upon the assertion of that which the
slightest investigation would have shown him to be wholly false.
I can only account for his having done so upon the supposition
that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead
very many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue
over vice,--I say I can only account for it on the supposition
that that evil genius has as last made up its mind to forsake
him.

And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's
conduct in this canvass--made more extraordinary by this
incident--is, that he is in the habit, in almost all the speeches
he makes, of charging falsehood upon his adversaries, myself and
others.  I now ask whether he is able to find in anything that
Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything that I
have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.

I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my
part that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into
Congress, there was a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and
national.  I have arranged from time to time the evidence which
establishes and proves the truth of this charge.  I recurred to
this charge at Ottawa.  I shall not now have time to dwell upon
it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas, in his
reply of half an hour, made some points upon me in relation to
it, I propose noticing a few of them.

The Judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I
very distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I
was in fun!  that I was playful; that I was not sincere about it;
and that he only grew angry and somewhat excited when he found
that I insisted upon it as a matter of earnestness.  He says he
characterized it as a falsehood so far as I implicated his moral
character in that transaction.  Well, I did not know, till he
presented that view, that I had implicated his moral character.
He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a
position I never thought of occupying, of very cosily saying he
has no doubt Lincoln is "conscientious" in saying so.  He should
remember that I did not know but what he was ALTOGETHER
"CONSCIENTIOUS" in that matter.  I can conceive it possible for
men to conspire to do a good thing, and I really find nothing in
Judge Douglas's course of arguments that is contrary to or
inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to nationalize and
spread slavery as being a good and blessed thing; and so I hope
he will understand that I do not at all question but that in all
this matter he is entirely "conscientious."

But to draw your attention to one of the points I made in this
case, beginning at the beginning:  When the Nebraska Bill was
introduced, or a short time afterward, by an amendment, I
believe, it was provided that it must be considered "the true
intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any
State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their own
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States."  I have called his attention
to the fact that when he and some others began arguing that they
were giving an increased degree of liberty to the people in the
Territories over and above what they formerly had on the question
of slavery, a question was raised whether the law was enacted to
give such unconditional liberty to the people; and to test the
sincerity of this mode of argument, Mr. Chase, of Ohio,
introduced an amendment, in which he made the law--if the
amendment were adopted--expressly declare that the people of the
Territory should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw
fit.  I have asked attention also to the fact that Judge Douglas
and those who acted with him voted that amendment down,
notwithstanding it expressed exactly the thing they said was the
true intent and meaning of the law.  I have called attention to
the fact that in subsequent times a decision of the Supreme Court
has been made, in which it has been declared that a Territorial
Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery.  And
I have argued and said that for men who did, intend that the
people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery
absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's
amendment is wholly inexplicable.  It is a puzzle, a riddle.  But
I have said, that with men who did look forward to such a
decision, or who had it in contemplation that such a decision of
the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that
amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible.  It would
keep Congress from coming in collision with the decision when it
was made.  Anybody can conceive that if there was an intention or
expectation that such a decision was to follow, it would not be a
very desirable party attitude to get into for the Supreme Court--
all or nearly all its members belonging to the same party--to
decide one way, when the party in Congress had decided the other
way.  Hence it would be very rational for men expecting such a
decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it.  After
pointing this out, I tell Judge Douglas that it looks to me as
though here was the reason why Chase's amendment was voted down.
I tell him that, as he did it, and knows why he did it, if it was
done for a reason different from this, he knows what that reason
was and can tell us what it was.  I tell him, also, it will be
vastly more satisfactory to the country for him to give some
other plausible, intelligible reason why it was voted down than
to stand upon his dignity and call people liars.  Well, on
Saturday he did make his answer; and what do you think it was?
He says if I had only taken upon myself to tell the whole truth
about that amendment of Chase's, no explanation would have been
necessary on his part or words to that effect.  Now, I say here
that I am quite unconscious of having suppressed anything
material to the case, and I am very frank to admit if there is
any sound reason other than that which appeared to me material,
it is quite fair for him to present it.  What reason does he
propose?  That when Chase came forward with his amendment
expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery from the
limits of every Territory, General Cass proposed to Chase, if he
(Chase) would add to his amendment that the people should have
the power to introduce or exclude, they would let it go.  This is
substantially all of his reply.  And because Chase would not do
that, they voted his amendment down.  Well, it turns out, I
believe, upon examination, that General Cass took some part in
the little running debate upon that amendment, and then ran away
and did not vote on it at all.  Is not that the fact?  So
confident, as I think, was General Cass that there was a snake
somewhere about, he chose to run away from the whole thing.  This
is an inference I draw from the fact that, though he took part in
the debate, his name does not appear in the ayes and noes.  But
does Judge Douglas's reply amount to a satisfactory answer?

[Cries of "Yes," "Yes," and "No," "No."]

There is some little difference of opinion here.  But I ask
attention to a few more views bearing on the question of whether
it amounts to a satisfactory answer.  The men who were determined
that that amendment should not get into the bill, and spoil the
place where the Dred Scott decision was to come in, sought an
excuse to get rid of it somewhere.  One of these ways--one of
these excuses--was to ask Chase to add to his proposed amendment
a provision that the people might introduce slavery if they
wanted to.  They very well knew Chase would do no such thing,
that Mr. Chase was one of the men differing from them on the
broad principle of his insisting that freedom was better than
slavery,--a man who would not consent to enact a law, penned with
his own hand, by which he was made to recognize slavery on the
one hand, and liberty on the other, as precisely equal; and when
they insisted on his doing this, they very well knew they
insisted on that which he would not for a moment think of doing,
and that they were only bluffing him.  I believe (I have not,
since he made his answer, had a chance to examine the journals or
Congressional Globe and therefore speak from memory)--I believe
the state of the bill at that time, according to parliamentary
rules, was such that no member could propose an additional
amendment to Chase's amendment.  I rather think this is the
truth,--the Judge shakes his head.  Very well.  I would like to
know, then, if they wanted Chase's amendment fixed over, why
somebody else could not have offered to do it?  If they wanted it
amended, why did they not offer the amendment?  Why did they not
put it in themselves?   But to put it on the other ground:
suppose that there was such an amendment offered, and Chase's was
an amendment to an amendment; until one is disposed of by
parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on.  Then all these
gentlemen had to do was to vote Chase's on, and then, in the
amended form in which the whole stood, add their own amendment to
it, if they wanted to put it in that shape.  This was all they
were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes show that there were
thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted in favor of
it.  The thirty-six held entire sway and control.  They could in
some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they
wanted.  If there was a rule preventing their amending it at the
time, they could pass that, and then, Chase's amendment being
merged, put it in the shape they wanted.  They did not choose to
do so, but they went into a quibble with Chase to get him to add
what they knew he would not add, and because he would not, they
stand upon the flimsy pretext for voting down what they argued
was the meaning and intent of their own bill.  They left room
thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make
slavery national throughout the United States.

I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon
expire; but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs
again, as he did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity
of Lincoln, an insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his
ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members
of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to
nationalize slavery.  I want to say that, in the first place, I
have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit.  I have only
arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but
giving you the means of judging whether it proves it or not.
This is precisely what I have done.  I have not placed it upon my
ipse dixit at all.  On this occasion, I wish to recall his
attention to a piece of evidence which I brought forward at
Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made substantially the
same charge against substantially the same persons, excluding his
dear self from the category.  I ask him to give some attention to
the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the
people to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he
assumed as in evidence in an article in the Washington Union,
published "by authority."  I ask by whose authority?  He
discovers a similar or identical provision in the Lecompton
Constitution.  Made by whom?  The framers of that Constitution.
Advocated by whom?  By all the members of the party in the
nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union
under the Lecompton Constitution.  I have asked his attention to
the evidence that he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was
being struck, and to the facts which he brought forward in
support of that charge,--being identical with the one which he
thinks so villainous in me.  He pointed it, not at a newspaper
editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and the
members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and
those framing that instrument.  I must again be permitted to
remind him that although my ipse dixit may not be as great as
his, yet it somewhat reduces the force of his calling my
attention to the enormity of my making a like charge against him.

Go on, Judge Douglas.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half
an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge
Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if
there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to
hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you
will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for
me to go over his whole ground.  I can but take up some of the
points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half-hour specially
on them.

The first thing I have to say to you is a word in regard to Judge
Douglas's declaration about the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in
the audience, that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any
Democrat while I was speaking.  Now, I only wish, by way of reply
on this subject, to say that while I was speaking, I used no
"vulgarity or blackguardism" toward any Democrat.

Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the Judge's
speech,--perhaps half of it,--which he has devoted to the various
resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different
counties in the different Congressional districts, and in the
Illinois legislature, which he supposes are at variance with the
positions I have assumed before you to-day.  It is true that many
of these resolutions are at variance with the positions I have
here assumed.  All I have to ask is that we talk reasonably and
rationally about it.  I happen to know, the Judge's opinion to
the contrary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to conceal
my opinions, nor tried to deceive any one in reference to them.
He may go and examine all the members who voted for me for United
States Senator in 1855, after the election of 1854.  They were
pledged to certain things here at home, and were determined to
have pledges from me; and if he will find any of these persons
who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I say now, I
will resign, or rather retire from the race, and give him no more
trouble.  The plain truth is this: At the introduction of the
Nebraska policy, we believed there was a new era being introduced
in the history of the Republic, which tended to the spread and
perpetuation of slavery.  But in our opposition to that measure
we did not agree with one another in everything.  The people in
the north end of the State were for stronger measures of
opposition than we of the central and southern portions of the
State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine.  We had
that one feeling and that one sentiment in common.  You at the
north end met in your conventions and passed your resolutions.
We in the middle of the State and farther south did not hold such
conventions and pass the same resolutions, although we had in
general a common view and a common sentiment.  So that these
meetings which the Judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he
has read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole
State.  We at last met together in 1886, from all parts of the
State, and we agreed upon a common platform.  You, who held more
extreme notions, either yielded those notions, or, if not wholly
yielding them, agreed to yield them practically, for the sake of
embodying the opposition to the measures which the opposite party
were pushing forward at that time.  We met you then, and if there
was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes.  We agreed
then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of
Illinois, and now we are all bound, as a party, to that platform.

And I say here to you, if any one expects of me--in case of my
election--that I will do anything not signified by our Republican
platform and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly that
person will be deceived.  I do not ask for the vote of any one
who supposes that I have secret purposes or pledges that I dare
not speak out.  Cannot the Judge be satisfied?  If he fears, in
the unfortunate case of my election, that my going to Washington
will enable me to advocate sentiments contrary to those which I
expressed when you voted for and elected me, I assure him that
his fears are wholly needless and groundless.  Is the Judge
really afraid of any such thing?  I'll tell you what he is afraid
of.  He is afraid we'll all pull together.  This is what alarms
him more than anything else.  For my part, I do hope that all of
us, entertaining a common sentiment in opposition to what appears
to us a design to nationalize and perpetuate slavery, will waive
minor differences on questions which either belong to the dead
past or the distant future, and all pull together in this
struggle.  What are your sentiments?  If it be true that on the
ground which I occupy--ground which I occupy as frankly and
boldly as Judge Douglas does his,--my views, though partly
coinciding with yours, are not as perfectly in accordance with
your feelings as his are, I do say to you in all candor, go for
him, and not for me.  I hope to deal in all things fairly with
Judge Douglas, and with the people of the State, in this contest.
And if I should never be elected to any office, I trust I may go
down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation,
notwithstanding the hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to
entertain of me.

The Judge has again addressed himself to the Abolition tendencies
of a speech of mine made at Springfield in June last.  I have so
often tried to answer what he is always saying on that melancholy
theme that I almost turn with disgust from the discussion,--from
the repetition of an answer to it.  I trust that nearly all of
this intelligent audience have read that speech.  If you have, I
may venture to leave it to you to inspect it closely, and see
whether it contains any of those  "bugaboos" which frighten Judge
Douglas.

The Judge complains that I did not fully answer his questions.
If I have the sense to comprehend and answer those questions, I
have done so fairly.  If it can be pointed out to me how I can
more fully and fairly answer him, I aver I have not the sense to
see how it is to be done.  He says I do not declare I would in
any event vote for the admission of a slave State into the Union.
If I have been fairly reported, he will see that I did give an
explicit answer to his interrogatories; I did not merely say that
I would dislike to be put to the test, but I said clearly, if I
were put to the test, and a Territory from which slavery had been
excluded should present herself with a State constitution
sanctioning slavery,--a most extraordinary thing, and wholly
unlikely to happen,--I did not see how I could avoid voting for
her admission.  But he refuses to understand that I said so, and
he wants this audience to understand that I did not say so.  Yet
it will be so reported in the printed speech that he cannot help
seeing it.

He says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I
would be voting for a dissolution of the Union, because I hold
that the Union cannot permanently exist half slave and half free.
I repeat that I do not believe this government can endure
permanently half slave and half free; yet I do not admit, nor
does it at all follow, that the admission of a single slave State
will permanently fix the character and establish this as a
universal slave nation.  The Judge is very happy indeed at
working up these quibbles.  Before leaving the subject of
answering questions, I aver as my confident belief, when you come
to see our speeches in print, that you will find every question
which he has asked me more fairly and boldly and fully answered
than he has answered those which I put to him.  Is not that so?
The two speeches may be placed side by side, and I will venture
to leave it to impartial judges whether his questions have not
been more directly and circumstantially answered than mine.

Judge Douglas says he made a charge upon the editor of the
Washington Union, alone, of entertaining a purpose to rob the
States of their power to exclude slavery from their limits.  I
undertake to say, and I make the direct issue, that he did not
make his charge against the editor of the Union alone.  I will
undertake to prove by the record here that he made that charge
against more and higher dignitaries than the editor of the
Washington Union.  I am quite aware that he was shirking and
dodging around the form in which he put it, but I can make it
manifest that he leveled his "fatal blow" against more persons
than this Washington editor.  Will he dodge it now by alleging
that I am trying to defend Mr. Buchanan against the charge?  Not
at all.  Am I not making the same charge myself?  I am trying to
show that you, Judge Douglas, are a witness on my side.  I am not
defending Buchanan, and I will tell Judge Douglas that in my
opinion, when he made that charge, he had an eye farther north
than he has to-day.  He was then fighting against people who
called him a Black Republican and an Abolitionist.  It is mixed
all through his speech, and it is tolerably manifest that his eye
was a great deal farther north than it is to-day.  The Judge says
that though he made this charge, Toombs got up and declared there
was not a man in the United States, except the editor of the
Union, who was in favor of the doctrines put forth in that
article.  And thereupon I understand that the Judge withdrew the
charge.  Although he had taken extracts from the newspaper, and
then from the Lecompton Constitution, to show the existence of a
conspiracy to bring about a "fatal blow," by which the States
were to be deprived of the right of excluding slavery, it all
went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and told him it was not
true.  It reminds me of the story that John Phoenix, the
California railroad surveyor, tells.  He says they started out
from the Plaza to the Mission of Dolores.  They had two ways of
determining distances.  One was by a chain and pins taken over
the ground.  The other was by a "go-it-ometer,"--an invention of
his own,--a three-legged instrument, with which he computed a
series of triangles between the points.  At night he turned to
the chain-man to ascertain what distance they had come, and found
that by some mistake he had merely dragged the chain over the
ground, without keeping any record.  By the "go-it-ometer," he
found he had made ten miles.  Being skeptical about this, he
asked a drayman who was passing how far it was to the Plaza.  The
drayman replied it was just half a mile; and the surveyor put it
down in his book,--just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made
his calculations and computations, he took Toombs's statement.  I
have no doubt that after Judge Douglas had made his charge, he
was as easily satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of
the drayman's statement of the distance to the Plaza.  Yet it is
a fact that the man who put forth all that matter which Douglas
deemed a "fatal blow" at State sovereignty was elected by the
Democrats as public printer.

Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Douglas's speech of March 22,
1858, beginning about the middle of page 21, and reading to the
bottom of page 24, and you will find the evidence on which I say
that he did not make his charge against the editor of the Union
alone.  I cannot stop to read it, but I will give it to the
reporters.  Judge Douglas said:

"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and
apparently authoritatively, and every man who questions any of
them is denounced as an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic.
The propositions are, first, that the primary object of all
government at its original institution is the protection of
persons and property; second, that the Constitution of the United
States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether
organic or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State
from settling in another with their slave property, and
especially declaring it forfeited, are direct violations of the
original intention of the Government and Constitution of the
United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of the slaves
of the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of
property, in as much as it was involuntarily done on the part of
the owner.

"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the
17th of November, and on the 18th appeared the first article
giving the adhesion of the Union to the Lecompton Constitution.
It was in these words:

"'KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled.
The problem is solved.  The dead point of danger is passed.  All
serious trouble to Kansas affairs is over and gone...."

"And a column, nearly, of the same sort.  Then, when you come to
look into the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine
incorporated in it which was put forth editorially in the Union.
What is it?

"'ARTICLE 7, Section i.  The right of property is before and
higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the
owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and
as invariable as the right of the owner of any property
whatever.'

"Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be
amended after 1864 by a two-thirds vote.

"'But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property
in the ownership of slaves.'

"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution
that they are identical in spirit with this authoritative article
in the Washington Union of the day previous to its indorsement of
this Constitution.

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 18th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

Here he says, "Mr. President, you here find several distinct
propositions advanced boldly, and apparently authoritatively."
By whose authority, Judge Douglas?  Again, he says in another
place, "It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton
Constitution that they are identical in spirit with this
authoritative article."  By whose authority,--who do you mean to
say authorized the publication of these articles?  He knows that
the Washington Union is considered the organ of the
Administration.  I demand of Judge Douglas by whose authority he
meant to say those articles were published, if not by the
authority of the President of the United States and his Cabinet?
I defy him to show whom he referred to, if not to these high
functionaries in the Federal Government.  More than this, he says
the articles in that paper and the provisions of the Lecompton
Constitution are "identical," and, being identical, he argues
that the authors are co-operating and conspiring together.  He
does not use the word "conspiring," but what other construction
can you put upon it?  He winds up:

"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November,
followed by the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on
the 18th of November, and this clause in the Constitution
asserting the doctrine that a State has no right to prohibit
slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a fatal blow
being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."

I ask him if all this fuss was made over the editor of this
newspaper.  It would be a terribly "fatal blow" indeed which a
single man could strike, when no President, no Cabinet officer,
no member of Congress, was giving strength and efficiency to the
movement.  Out of respect to Judge Douglas's good sense I must
believe he did n't manufacture his idea of the "fatal" character
of that blow out of such a miserable scapegrace as he represents
that editor to be.  But the Judge's eye is farther south now.
Then, it was very peculiarly and decidedly north.  His hope
rested on the idea of visiting the great "Black Republican"
party, and making it the tail of his new kite.  He knows he was
then expecting from day to day to turn Republican, and place
himself at the head of our organization.  He has found that these
despised "Black Republicans" estimate him by a standard which he
has taught them none too well.  Hence he is crawling back into
his old camp, and you will find him eventually installed in full
fellowship among those whom he was then battling, and with whom
he now pretends to be at such fearful variance.




THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,

SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--There is very much in the principles that
Judge Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve,
and over which I shall have no controversy with him.  In so far
as he has insisted that all the States have the right to do
exactly as they please about all their domestic relations,
including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.  He places
me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it again
and again, insisting that I have no difference with him upon this
subject.  I have made a great many speeches, some of which have
been printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find
anything that I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say
upon this subject.  I hold myself under constitutional
obligations to allow the people in all the States, without
interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as they please;
and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with them,
even if there were no such constitutional obligation.  I can only
say again that I am placed improperly--altogether improperly, in
spite of all I can say--when it is insisted that I entertain any
other view or purposes in regard to that matter.

While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to
certain propositions that Judge Douglas has put.  He says, "Why
can't this Union endure permanently half slave and half free?"  I
have said that I supposed it could not, and I will try, before
this new audience, to give briefly some of the reasons for
entertaining that opinion.  Another form of his question is, "Why
can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?"  That is the
exact difficulty between us.  I say that Judge Douglas and his
friends have changed it from the position in which our fathers
originally placed it.  I say, in the way our father's originally
left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of
ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief
that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  I say when
this government was first established it was the policy of its
founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new
Territories of the United States, where it had not existed.  But
Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and
placed it upon a new basis, by which it is to become national and
perpetual.  All I have asked or desired anywhere is that it
should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of
our government originally placed it upon.  I have no doubt that
it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but
readopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to the
limits it has already covered, restricting it from the new
Territories.

I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the
subject at this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I
have stated before.  Brooks--the man who assaulted Senator Sumner
on the floor of the Senate, and who was complimented with
dinners, and silver pitchers, and gold-headed canes, and a good
many other things for that feat--in one of his speeches declared
that when this government was originally established, nobody
expected that the institution of slavery would last until this
day.  That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an
opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in
favor of slavery, in the North, at all.  You can sometimes get it
from a Southern man.  He said at the same time that the framers
of our government did not have the knowledge that experience has
taught us; that experience and the invention of the cotton-gin
have taught us that the perpetuation of slavery is a necessity.
He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed from the basis
upon which the fathers of the government left it to the basis of
its perpetuation and nationalization.

I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
myself,--that Judge Douglas is helping that change along.  I
insist upon this government being placed where our fathers
originally placed it.

I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on
the statute books of Congress of a policy in the origin of
government to divide slavery and freedom by a geographical line;
that he saw an indisposition to maintain that policy, and
therefore he set about studying up a way to settle the
institution on the right basis,--the basis which he thought it
ought to have been placed upon at first; and in that speech he
confesses that he seeks to place it, not upon the basis that the
fathers placed it upon, but upon one gotten up on "original
principles."  When he asks me why we cannot get along with it in
the attitude where our fathers placed it, he had better clear up
the evidences that he has himself changed it from that basis,
that he has himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the
policy of the fathers.  Any one who will read his speech of the
22d of last March will see that he there makes an open
confession, showing that he set about fixing the institution upon
an altogether different set of principles.  I think I have fully
answered him when he asks me why we cannot let it alone upon the
basis where our fathers left it, by showing that he has himself
changed the whole policy of the government in that regard.

Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract
that was made between Judge Trumbull and myself, and all that
long portion of Judge Douglas's speech on this subject,--I wish
simply to say what I have said to him before, that he cannot know
whether it is true or not, and I do know that there is not a word
of truth in it.  And I have told him so before.  I don't want any
harsh language indulged in, but I do not know how to deal with
this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be utterly
without truth.  It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a
charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to
establish it, and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was
dropped.  I don't know how to meet this kind of an argument.  I
don't want to have a fight with Judge Douglas, and I have no way
of making an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and
stopping his mouth with it.  All I can do is--good-humoredly--to
say that, from the beginning to the end of all that story about a
bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a word of
truth in it.  I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence of
the truth of his story.  He brings forward here and reads from
what he contends is a speech by James H.  Matheny, charging such
a bargain between Trumbull and myself.  My own opinion is that
Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he
knew nothing about.  I believe he did.  I contradicted it
instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge Trumbull, while
nobody has produced any proof, because there is none.  Now,
whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really
the one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will
pardon me for doubting the genuineness of this document, since
his production of those Springfield resolutions at Ottawa.  I do
not wish to dwell at any great length upon this matter.  I can
say nothing when a long story like this is told, except it is not
true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall produce some
proof.  That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that way,
for I know of no other way of dealing with it.

[In an argument on the lines of: "Yes, you did.--No, I did
not."  It bears on the former to prove his point, not on the
negative to "prove" that he did not--even if he easily can do
so.]

The Judge has gone over a long account of the old Whig and
Democratic parties, and it connects itself with this charge
against Trumbull and myself.  He says that they agreed upon a
compromise in regard to the slavery question in 1850; that in a
National Democratic Convention resolutions were passed to abide
by that compromise as a finality upon the slavery question.  He
also says that the Whig party in National Convention agreed to
abide by and regard as a finality the Compromise of 1850.  I
understand the Judge to be altogether right about that; I
understand that part of the history of the country as stated by
him to be correct I recollect that I, as a member of that party,
acquiesced in that compromise.  I recollect in the Presidential
election which followed, when we had General Scott up for the
presidency, Judge Douglas was around berating us Whigs as
Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day,--not a bit of
difference.  I have often heard him.  We could do nothing when
the old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it
has got an extremely good name since it has passed away.

[It almost a natural law that, when dead--no matter how bad we
were--we  are automatically beatified.]

When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri
Compromise.  It left a region of United States territory half as
large as the present territory of the United States, north of the
line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by
Act of Congress.  This Compromise did not repeal that one.  It
did not affect or propose to repeal it.  But at last it became
Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I find no fault with
him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to bring in a
bill for the organization of a territorial government,--first of
one, then of two Territories north of that line.  When he did so,
it ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the
Missouri Compromise.  That was because the Compromise of 1850 had
not repealed it.  And now I ask why he could not have let that
Compromise alone?  We were quiet from the agitation of the
slavery question.  We were making no fuss about it.  All had
acquiesced in the Compromise measures of 1850.  We never had been
seriously disturbed by any Abolition agitation before that
period.  When he came to form governments for the Territories
north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, why could he not have
let that matter stand as it was standing?  Was it necessary to
the organization of a Territory?  Not at all.  Iowa lay north of
the line, and had been organized as a Territory and come into the
Union as a State without disturbing that Compromise.  There was
no sort of necessity for destroying it to organize these
Territories.  But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to
meet all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Douglas to show
that the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Compromise of
1850.  My own opinion is, that a careful investigation of all the
arguments to sustain the position that that Compromise was
virtually repealed by the Compromise of 1850 would show that they
are the merest fallacies.  I have the report that Judge Douglas
first brought into Congress at the time of the introduction of
the Nebraska Bill, which in its original form did not repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and he there expressly stated that he had
forborne to do so because it had not been done by the Compromise
of 1850.  I close this part of the discussion on my part by
asking him the question again, "Why, when we had peace under the
Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it alone?"

In complaining of what I said in my speech at Springfield, in
which he says I accepted my nomination for the senatorship
(where, by the way, he is at fault, for if he will examine it, he
will find no acceptance in it), he again quotes that portion in
which I said that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Let me say a word in regard to that matter.

He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the
different institutions of the States of the Union; that that
variety necessarily proceeds from the variety of soil, climate,
of the face of the country, and the difference in the natural
features of the States.  I agree to all that.  Have these very
matters ever produced any difficulty amongst us?  Not at all.
Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws in
Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from the
production of sugar?  Or because we have a different class
relative to the production of flour in this State?  Have they
produced any differences?  Not at all.  They are the very cements
of this Union.  They don't make the house a house divided against
itself.  They are the props that hold up the house and sustain
the Union.

But has it been so with this element of slavery?  Have we not
always had quarrels and difficulties over it?  And when will we
cease to have quarrels over it?  Like causes produce like
effects.  It is worth while to observe that we have generally had
comparative peace upon the slavery question, and that there has
been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to
spread it into new territory.  Whenever it has been limited to
its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it,
there has been peace.  All the trouble and convulsion has
proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory.  It was
thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise.  It was so again
with the annexation of Texas; so with the territory acquired by
the Mexican war; and it is so now.  Whenever there has been an
effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.
Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political
friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that
the agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the
causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work?
Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the
Missouri Compromise was formed, that which produced the agitation
upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times, work out the
same results always?  Do you think that the nature of man will be
changed, that the same causes that produced agitation at one time
will not have the same effect at another?

This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery
question and my reading in history extends.  What right have we
then to hope that the trouble will cease,--that the agitation
will come to an end,--until it shall either be placed back where
it originally stood, and where the fathers originally placed it,
or, on the other hand, until it shall entirely master all
opposition?  This is the view I entertain, and this is the reason
why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has read from my
Springfield speech.

Now, my friends, there is one other thing that I feel myself
under some sort of obligation to mention.  Judge Douglas has here
to-day--in a very rambling way, I was about saying--spoken of the
platforms for which he seeks to hold me responsible.  He says,
"Why can't you come out and make an open avowal of principles in
all places alike?"  and he reads from an advertisement that he
says was used to notify the people of a speech to be made by
Judge Trumbull at Waterloo.  In commenting on it he desires to
know whether we cannot speak frankly and manfully, as he and his
friends do.  How, I ask, do his friends speak out their own
sentiments?  A Convention of his party in this State met on the
21st of April at Springfield, and passed a set of resolutions
which they proclaim to the country as their platform.  This does
constitute their platform, and it is because Judge Douglas claims
it is his platform--that these are his principles and purposes--
that he has a right to declare he speaks his sentiments "frankly
and manfully."  On the 9th of June Colonel John Dougherty,
Governor Reynolds, and others, calling themselves National
Democrats, met in Springfield and adopted a set of resolutions
which are as easily understood, as plain and as definite in
stating to the country and to the world what they believed in and
would stand upon, as Judge Douglas's platform  Now, what is the
reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that Colonel Dougherty
and Governor Reynolds should stand upon their own written and
printed platform as well as he upon his?  Why must he look
farther than their platform when he claims himself to stand by
his platform?

Again, in reference to our platform: On the 16th of June the
Republicans had their Convention and published their platform,
which is as clear and distinct as Judge Douglas's.  In it they
spoke their principles as plainly and as definitely to the world.
What is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing I should
stand upon that platform?  Why must he go around hunting for some
one who is supporting me or has supported me at some time in his
life, and who has said something at some time contrary to that
platform?  Does the Judge regard that rule as a good one?  If it
turn out that the rule is a good one for me--that I am
responsible for any and every opinion that any man has expressed
who is my friend,--then it is a good rule for him.  I ask, is it
not as good a rule for him as it is for me?  In my opinion, it is
not a good rule for either of us.  Do you think differently,
Judge?

[Mr. DOUGLAS: I do not.]

Judge Douglas says he does not think differently.  I am glad of
it.  Then can he tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five
or six years ago, and insisting that they were my platform,
notwithstanding my protest that they are not, and never were my
platform, and my pointing out the platform of the State
Convention which he delights to say nominated me for the Senate?
I cannot see what he means by parading these resolutions, if it
is not to hold me responsible for them in some way.  If he says
to me here that he does not hold the rule to be good, one way or
the other, I do not comprehend how he could answer me more fully
if he answered me at greater length.  I will therefore put in as
my answer to the resolutions that he has hunted up against me,
what I, as a lawyer, would call a good plea to a bad declaration.
I understand that it is an axiom of law that a poor plea may be a
good plea to a bad declaration.  I think that the opinions the
Judge brings from those who support me, yet differ from me, is a
bad declaration against me; but if I can bring the same things
against him, I am putting in a good plea to that kind of
declaration, and now I propose to try it.

At Freeport, Judge Douglas occupied a large part of his time in
producing resolutions and documents of various sorts, as I
understood, to make me somehow responsible for them; and I
propose now doing a little of the same sort of thing for him.  In
1850 a very clever gentleman by the name of Thompson Campbell, a
personal friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a political friend
of Judge Douglas and opponent of mine, was a candidate for
Congress in the Galena District.  He was interrogated as to his
views on this same slavery question.  I have here before me the
interrogatories, and Campbell's answers to them--I will read
them:




INTERROGATORIES:

"1st.  Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support a
bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the United States?

"2d.  Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing slavery in
the District of Columbia?

"3d.  Will you oppose the admission of any Slave States which may
be formed out of Texas or the Territories?

"4th.  Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave law passed at the recent session of Congress?

"5th.  Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker
of the House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize
the committees of that House so as to give the Free States their
just influence in the business of legislation?

"6th.  What are your views, not only as to the constitutional
right of Congress to prohibit the slave-trade between the States,
but also as to the expediency of exercising that right
immediately?"




CAMPBELL'S REPLY.

"To the first and second interrogatories, I answer unequivocally
in the affirmative.

"To the third interrogatory I reply, that I am opposed to the
admission of any more Slave States into the Union, that may be
formed out of Texas or any other Territory.

"To the fourth and fifth interrogatories I unhesitatingly answer
in the affirmative.

"To the sixth interrogatory I reply, that so long as the Slave
States continue to treat slaves as articles of commerce, the
Constitution confers power on Congress to pass laws regulating
that peculiar COMMERCE, and that the protection of Human Rights
imperatively demands the interposition of every constitutional
means to prevent this most inhuman and iniquitous traffic.

"T.  CAMPBELL."




I want to say here that Thompson Campbell was elected to Congress
on that platform, as the Democratic candidate in the Galena
District, against  Martin P.  Sweet.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Give me the date of the letter.]

The time Campbell ran was in 1850.  I have not the exact date
here.  It was some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were
put and the answer given.  Campbell was elected to Congress, and
served out his term.  I think a second election came up before he
served out his term, and he was not re-elected.  Whether defeated
or not nominated, I do not know.  [Mr. Campbell was nominated for
re-election by the Democratic party, by acclamation.] At the end
of his term his very good friend Judge Douglas got him a high
office from President Pierce, and sent him off to California.  Is
not that the fact?  Just at the end of his term in Congress it
appears that our mutual friend Judge Douglas got our mutual
friend Campbell a good office, and sent him to California upon
it.  And not only so, but on the 27th of last month, when Judge
Douglas and myself spoke at Freeport in joint discussion, there
was his same friend Campbell, come all the way from California,
to help the Judge beat me; and there was poor Martin P.  Sweet
standing on the platform, trying to help poor me to be elected.
That is true of one of Judge Douglas's friends.

So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional
Convention assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R.  S.  Molony
for Congress, and unanimously adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension
of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground
of interference with the interests of the States where it exists,
yet we moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of
Congress to oppose its extension into Territory now free, by all
means compatible with the obligations of the Constitution, and
with good faith to our sister States; that these principles were
recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which received the sanction
of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to be the great
oracle and expounder of our faith."

Subsequently the same interrogatories were propounded to Dr.
Molony which had been addressed to Campbell as above, with the
exception of the 6th, respecting the interstate slave trade, to
which Dr.  Molony, the Democratic nominee for Congress, replied
as follows:

"I received the written interrogatories this day, and, as you
will see by the La Salle Democrat and Ottawa Free Trader, I took
at Peru on the 5th, and at Ottawa on the 7th, the affirmative
side of interrogatories 1st and 2d; and in relation to the
admission of any more Slave States from Free Territory, my
position taken at these meetings, as correctly reported in said
papers, was emphatically and distinctly opposed to it.  In
relation to the admission of any more Slave States from Texas,
whether I shall go against it or not will depend upon the opinion
that I may hereafter form of the true meaning and nature of the
resolutions of annexation.  If, by said resolutions, the honor
and good faith of the nation is pledged to admit more Slave
States from Texas when she (Texas) may apply for the admission of
such State, then I should, if in Congress, vote for their
admission.  But if not so PLEDGED and bound by sacred contract,
then a bill for the admission of more Slave States from Texas
would never receive my vote.

"To your fourth interrogatory I answer most decidedly in the
affirmative, and for reasons set forth in my reported remarks at
Ottawa last Monday.

"To your fifth interrogatory I also reply in the affirmative most
cordially, and that I will use my utmost exertions to secure the
nomination and election of a man who will accomplish the objects
of said interrogatories.  I most cordially approve of the
resolutions adopted at the Union meeting held at Princeton on the
27th September ult.

"Yours, etc., R. S. MOLONY."




All I have to say in regard to Dr.  Molony is that he was the
regularly nominated Democratic candidate for Congress in his
district; was elected at that time; at the end of his term was
appointed to a land-office at Danville.  (I never heard anything
of Judge Douglas's instrumentality in this.) He held this office
a considerable time, and when we were at Freeport the other day
there were handbills scattered about notifying the public that
after our debate was over R. S. Molony would make a Democratic
speech in favor of Judge Douglas.  That is all I know of my own
personal knowledge.  It is added here to this resolution, and
truly I believe, that among those who participated in the Joliet
Convention, and who supported its nominee, with his platform as
laid down in the resolution of the Convention and in his reply as
above given, we call at random the following names, all of which
are recognized at this day as leading
Democrats:

"Cook County,--E. B. Williams, Charles McDonell, Arno Voss,
Thomas Hoyne, Isaac Cook."

I reckon we ought to except Cook.

"F. C. Sherman.
"Will,--Joel A. Matteson, S. W. Bowen.
"Kane,--B. F. Hall, G. W. Renwick, A. M. Herrington, Elijah
Wilcox.
"McHenry,--W. M. Jackson, Enos W. Smith, Neil Donnelly.
La Salle,--John Hise, William Reddick."

William Reddick!  another one of Judge Douglas's friends that
stood on the stand with him at Ottawa, at the time the Judge says
my knees trembled so that I had to be carried away.  The names
are all here:

"Du Page,--Nathan Allen.
"De Kalb,--Z. B. Mayo."

Here is another set of resolutions which I think are apposite to
the matter in hand.

On the 28th of February of the same year a Democratic District
Convention was held at Naperville to nominate a candidate for
Circuit Judge.  Among the delegates were Bowen and Kelly of Will;
Captain Naper, H. H. Cody, Nathan Allen, of Du Page; W. M.
Jackson, J. M. Strode, P. W. Platt, and Enos W. Smith of McHenry;
J. Horssnan and others of Winnebago.  Colonel Strode presided
over the Convention.  The following resolutions were unanimously
adopted,--the first on motion of P. W. Platt, the second on
motion of William M.  Jackson:

"Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the Wilmot
Proviso, both in Principle and Practice, and that we know of no
good reason why any person should oppose the largest latitude in
Free Soil, Free Territory and Free speech.

"Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the time has
arrived when all men should be free, whites as well as others."


[Judge DOUGLAS: What is the date of those resolutions?]


I understand it was in 1850, but I do not know it.  I do not
state a thing and say I know it, when I do not.  But I have the
highest belief that this is so.  I know of no way to arrive at
the conclusion that there is an error in it.  I mean to put a
case no stronger than the truth will allow.  But what I was going
to comment upon is an extract from a newspaper in De Kalb County;
and it strikes me as being rather singular, I confess, under the
circumstances.  There is a Judge Mayo in that county, who is a
candidate for the Legislature, for the purpose, if he secures his
election, of helping to re-elect Judge Douglas.  He is the editor
of a newspaper [De Kalb County Sentinel], and in that paper I
find the extract I am going to read.  It is part of an editorial
article in which he was electioneering as fiercely as he could
for Judge Douglas and against me.  It was a curious thing, I
think, to be in such a paper.  I will agree to that, and the
Judge may make the most of it:

"Our education has been such that we have been rather in favor of
the equality of the blacks; that is, that they should enjoy all
the privileges of the whites where they reside.  We are aware
that this is not a very popular doctrine.  We have had many a
confab with some who are now strong 'Republicans' we taking the
broad ground of equality, and they the opposite ground.

"We were brought up in a State where blacks were voters, and we
do not know of any inconvenience resulting from it, though
perhaps it would not work as well where the blacks are more
numerous.  We have no doubt of the right of the whites to guard
against such an evil, if it is one.  Our opinion is that it would
be best for all concerned to have the colored population in a
State by themselves [in this I agree with him]; but if within the
jurisdiction of the United States, we say by all means they
should have the right to have their Senators and Representatives
in Congress, and to vote for President.  With us 'worth makes the
man, and want of it the fellow.' We have seen many a 'nigger'
that we thought more of than some white men."

That is one of Judge Douglas's friends.  Now, I do not want to
leave myself in an attitude where I can be misrepresented, so I
will say I do not think the Judge is responsible for this
article; but he is quite as responsible for it as I would be if
one of my friends had said it.  I think that is fair enough.

I have here also a set of resolutions passed by a Democratic
State Convention in Judge Douglas's own good State of Vermont,
that I think ought to be good for him too:

"Resolved, That liberty is a right inherent and inalienable in
man, and that herein all men are equal.
"Resolved, That we claim no authority in the Federal Government
to abolish slavery in the several States, but we do claim for it
Constitutional power perpetually to prohibit the introduction of
slavery into territory now free, and abolish it wherever, under
the jurisdiction of Congress, it exists.
"Resolved, That this power ought immediately to be exercised in
prohibiting the introduction and existence of slavery in New
Mexico and California, in abolishing slavery and the slave-trade
in the District of Columbia, on the high seas, and wherever else,
under the Constitution, it can be reached.
"Resolved, That no more Slave States should be admitted into the
Federal Union.
"Resolved, That the Government ought to return to its ancient
policy, not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit,
localize, and discourage slavery."

At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that had been
propounded to me by Judge Douglas at the Ottawa meeting.  The
Judge has not yet seen fit to find any fault with the position
that I took in regard to those seven interrogatories, which were
certainly broad enough, in all conscience, to cover the entire
ground.  In my answers, which have been printed, and all have had
the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground that those who elect
me must expect that I will do nothing which will not be in
accordance with those answers.  I have some right to assert that
Judge Douglas has no fault to find with them.  But he chooses to
still try to thrust me upon different ground, without paying any
attention to my answers, the obtaining of which from me cost him
so much trouble and concern.  At the same time I propounded four
interrogatories to him, claiming it as a right that he should
answer as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I
would reserve myself for a future instalment when I got them
ready.  The Judge, in answering me upon that occasion, put in
what I suppose he intends as answers to all four of my
interrogatories.  The first one of these interrogatories I have
before me, and it is in these words:

"Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State
constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before
they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the
English bill, "-some ninety-three thousand,-" will you vote to
admit them?"

As I read the Judge's answer in the newspaper, and as I remember
it as pronounced at the time, he does not give any answer which
is equivalent to yes or no,--I will or I won't.  He answers at
very considerable length, rather quarreling with me for asking
the question, and insisting that Judge Trumbull had done
something that I ought to say something about, and finally
getting out such statements as induce me to infer that he means
to be understood he will, in that supposed case, vote for the
admission of Kansas.  I only bring this forward now for the
purpose of saying that if he chooses to put a different
construction upon his answer, he may do it.  But if he does not,
I shall from this time forward assume that he will vote for the
admission of Kansas in disregard of the English bill.  He has the
right to remove any misunderstanding I may have.  I only mention
it now, that I may hereafter assume this to be the true
construction of his answer, if he does not now choose to correct
me.

The second interrogatory that I propounded to him was this:

"Question 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
Constitution?"

To this Judge Douglas answered that they can lawfully exclude
slavery from the Territory prior to the formation of a
constitution.  He goes on to tell us how it can be done.  As I
understand him, he holds that it can be done by the Territorial
Legislature refusing to make any enactments for the protection of
slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting unfriendly
legislation to it.  For the sake of clearness, I state it again:
that they can exclude slavery from the Territory, 1st, by
withholding what he assumes to be an indispensable assistance to
it in the way of legislation; and, 2d, by unfriendly legislation.
If I rightly understand him, I wish to ask your attention for a
while to his position.

In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has
decided that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the
Territories is unconstitutional; that they have reached this
proposition as a conclusion from their former proposition, that
the Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes
property in slaves, and from that other Constitutional provision,
that no person shall be deprived of property without due process
of law.  Hence they reach the conclusion that as the Constitution
of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and
prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due
process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who
owned a slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if
he took him on the other side, is depriving him of that property
without due process of law.  That I understand to be the decision
of the Supreme Court.  I understand also that Judge Douglas
adheres most firmly to that decision; and the difficulty is, how
is it possible for any power to exclude slavery from the
Territory, unless in violation of that decision?  That is the
difficulty.

In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a
speech substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory
to Judge Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the
lawful power to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution.  Judge Douglas then answered at considerable
length, and his answer will be found in the Congressional Globe,
under date of June 9th, 1856.  The Judge said that whether the
people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme
Court.  He put that proposition, as will be seen by the
Congressional Globe, in a variety of forms, all running to the
same thing in substance,--that it was a question for the Supreme
Court.  I maintain that when he says, after the Supreme Court
have decided the question, that the people may yet exclude
slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is
not a question for the Supreme Court.  He shifts his ground.  I
appeal to you whether he did not say it was a question for the
Supreme Court?  Has not the Supreme Court decided that question?
when he now says the people may exclude slavery, does he not make
it a question for the people?  Does he not virtually shift his
ground and say that it is not a question for the Court, but for
the people?  This is a very simple proposition,--a very plain and
naked one.  It seems to me that there is no difficulty in
deciding it.  In a variety of ways he said that it was a question
for the Supreme Court.  He did not stop then to tell us that,
whatever the Supreme Court decides, the people can by withholding
necessary "police regulations" keep slavery out.  He did not make
any such answer  I submit to you now whether the new state of the
case has not induced the Judge to sheer away from his original
ground.  Would not this be the impression of every fair-minded
man?

I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new
country without police regulations is historically false.  It is
not true at all.  I hold that the history of this country shows
that the institution of slavery was originally planted upon this
continent without these "police regulations," which the Judge now
thinks necessary for the actual establishment of it.  Not only
so, but is there not another fact: how came this Dred Scott
decision to be made?  It was made upon the case of a negro being
taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory,
claiming his freedom because the Act of Congress prohibited his
being so held there.  Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was
not held there without police regulations?  There is at least one
matter of record as to his having been held in slavery in the
Territory, not only without police regulations, but in the teeth
of Congressional legislation supposed to be valid at the time.
This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery to plant itself
in a new country even against unfriendly legislation.  It takes
not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out.  That is
the history of this country upon the subject.

I wish to ask one other question.  It being understood that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves
in the Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of
that property, would not the United States courts, organized for
the government of the Territory, apply such remedy as might be
necessary in that case?  It is a maxim held by the courts that
there is no wrong without its remedy; and the courts have a
remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a wrong.

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of
the Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to
do before entering upon your duties?  Swear to support the
Constitution of the United States.  Suppose you believe, as Judge
Douglas does, that the Constitution of the United States
guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves in that
Territory; that they are his property:  how can you clear your
oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to
enable him to enjoy that property?  What do you understand by
supporting the Constitution of a State, or of the United States?
Is it not to give such constitutional helps to the rights
established by that Constitution as may be practically needed?
Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution, and believe
that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath,
without giving it support?  Do you support the Constitution if,
knowing or believing there is a right established under it which
needs specific legislation, you withhold that legislation?  Do
you not violate and disregard your oath?  I can conceive of
nothing plainer in the world.  There can be nothing in the words
"support the Constitution," if you may run counter to it by
refusing support to any right established under the Constitution.
And what I say here will hold with still more force against the
Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly legislation."  How could you,
having sworn to support the Constitution, and believing it
guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in
legislation intended to defeat that right?  That would be
violating your own view of the Constitution.  Not only so, but if
you were to do so, how long would it take the courts to hold your
votes unconstitutional and void?  Not a moment.

Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to
give legislative support to any right that is established under
the United States Constitution?  I repeat the question: Is not
Congress itself bound to give legislative support to any right
that is established in the United States Constitution?  A member
of Congress swears to support the Constitution of the United
States: and if he sees a right established by that Constitution
which needs specific legislative protection, can he clear his
oath without giving that protection?  Let me ask you why many of
us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our
acquiescence to a Fugitive Slave law?   Why do we hold ourselves
under obligations to pass such a law, and abide by it when it is
passed?  Because the Constitution makes provision that the owners
of slaves shall have the right to reclaim them.  It gives the
right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge Douglas
says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one
State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in
consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due," is powerless
without specific legislation to enforce it.  Now, on what ground
would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in the
abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to
do?  Because there is a constitutional right which needs
legislation to enforce it.  And although it is distasteful to me,
I have sworn to support the Constitution; and having so sworn, I
cannot conceive that I do support it if I withhold from that
right any necessary legislation to make it practical.  And if
that is true in regard to a Fugitive Slave law, is the right to
have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the
Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories?
For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as
Judge Douglas thinks.  Is the one right any better than the
other?  Is there any man who, while a member of Congress, would
give support to the one any more than the other?  If I wished to
refuse to give legislative support to slave property in the
Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it, holding
the view that the Constitution establishes that right.  If I did
it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly
construes the Constitution.  But if I acknowledge, with Judge
Douglas, that this decision properly construes the Constitution,
I cannot conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I
should refuse in Congress to give such protection to that
property as in its nature it needed.

At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge
my fifth interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his
leisure.  My fifth interrogatory is this:

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should
need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of
their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of
Congress, vote for or against such legislation?

[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that?  I want to answer that
question.]

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should
need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of
their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of
Congress, vote for or against such legislation?

I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made,
he has spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme
Court had decided that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude
slavery.  Precisely what the Judge would say upon the subject--
whether he would say definitely that he does not understand they
have so decided, or whether he would say he does understand that
the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know that in his
speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it,
so far, again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not
yet been decided.  Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain
that view, I think that he is not mistaken in so far as it can be
said that the court has not decided anything save the mere
question of jurisdiction.  I know the legal arguments that can be
made,--that after a court has decided that it cannot take
jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is before
it, and that is the end of it.  A plausible argument can be made
in favor of that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has
said in one of his speeches that the court went forward, like
honest men as they were, and decided all the points in the case.
If any points are really extra-judicially decided, because not
necessarily before them, then this one as to the power of the
Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery is one of them, as
also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and void.
They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the
court held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the
parties, because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a
suit in that court.  I want, if I have sufficient time, to show
that the court did pass its opinion; but that is the only thing
actually done in the case.  If they did not decide, they showed
what they were ready to decide whenever the matter was before
them.  What is that opinion?  After having argued that Congress
had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United States
Territory, they then used language to this effect:  That inasmuch
as Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed
as a matter of course that it could not authorize a Territorial
government to exercise it; for the Territorial Legislature can do
no more than Congress could do.  Thus it expressed its opinion
emphatically against the power of a Territorial Legislature to
exclude slavery, leaving us in just as little doubt on that point
as upon any other point they really decided.

Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while
longer; my time is nearly out.  I find a report of a speech made
by Judge Douglas at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--
published, I believe, in the Missouri Republican, on the 9th of
this month, in which Judge Douglas says:

"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he
concurred in each and all of the principles set forth in it.  He
would not answer these questions.  At last I said frankly, I wish
you to answer them, because when I get them up here where the
color of your principles are a little darker than in Egypt, I
intend to trot you down to Jonesboro.  The very notice that I was
going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in his knees so
that he had to be carried from the platform.  He laid up seven
days, and in the meantime held a consultation with his political
physicians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders
of the Abolition party, they consulted it all over, and at last
Lincoln came to the conclusion that he would answer, so he came
up to Freeport last Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for
philosophical contemplation.  I have been treating it in that
way, and I have really come to the conclusion that I can explain
it in no other way than by believing the Judge is crazy.  If he
was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he would have risked
disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends who stood
there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform,
that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas
exactly.  He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?"
but he said then "he had to be carried off"; and he said it to
convince the country that he had so completely broken me down by
his speech that I had to be carried away.  Now he seeks to dodge
it, and asks, "Did n't they carry you off?"  Yes, they did.  But,
Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell the truth?  I would like to
know why you did n't tell the truth about it.  And then again "He
laid up seven days."  He put this in print for the people of the
country to read as a serious document.  I think if he had been in
his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in
the presence of thousands of his own friends who knew that I made
speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Marshall County,
Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough County, including
all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end
of the six days.  Now I say there is no charitable way to look at
that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy.
There is another thing in that statement that alarmed me very
greatly as he states it, that he was going to "trot me down to
Egypt."  Thereby he would have you infer that I would not come to
Egypt unless he forced me--that I could not be got here unless
he, giant-like, had hauled me down here.  That statement he
makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the
stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very
reluctant to enter into the stipulation.  More than all this:
Judge Douglas, when he made that statement, must have been crazy
and wholly out of his sober senses, or else he would have known
that when he got me down here, that promise--that windy promise--
of his powers to annihilate me, would n't amount to anything.
Now, how little do I look like being carried away trembling?  Let
the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I want
you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here;
and if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to
the hotel and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot.  I say,
then, here is something extraordinary in this statement.  I ask
you if you know any other living man who would make such a
statement?  I will ask my friend Casey, over there, if he would
do such a thing?  Would he send that out and have his men take it
as the truth?  Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt to
scare me to death?  Why, I know this people better than he does.
I was raised just a little east of here.  I am a part of this
people.  But the Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he
has some horrid idea of what this people might be induced to do.
But really I have talked about this matter perhaps longer than I
ought, for it is no great thing; and yet the smallest are often
the most difficult things to deal with.  The Judge has set about
seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet at
different places I am literally in his clutches--that I am a
poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all.
This is one of the ways he has taken to create that impression.
I don't know any other way to meet it except this.  I don't want
to quarrel with him--to call him a liar; but when I come square
up to him I don't know what else to call him if I must tell the
truth out.  I want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting
powers for necessary occasions.  My time now is very nearly out,
and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, to let him
set my knees trembling again, if he can.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v3
By Abraham Lincoln






VOLUME IV

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES II




LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS FOURTH JOINT DEBATE,

AT CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--It will be very difficult for an audience so
large as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and
consequently it is important that as profound silence be preserved as
possible.

While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me
to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality
between the negroes and white people.  While I had not proposed to
myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the
question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes
in saying something in regard to it.  I will say, then, that I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the
social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of
negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry
with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is
a physical difference between the white and black races which I
believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of
social and political equality.  And in as much as they cannot so
live, while they do remain together there must be the position of
superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of
having the superior position assigned to the white race.  I say upon
this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have
the superior position the negro should be denied everything.  I do
not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I
must necessarily want her for a wife.  My understanding is that I can
just let her alone.  I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly
never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife.  So it
seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either
slaves or wives of negroes.  I will add to this that I have never
seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of
producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes
and white men.  I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I
ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its
correctness, and that is the case of Judge Douglas's old friend
Colonel Richard M. Johnson.  I will also add to the remarks I have
made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject), that I
have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would
marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it; but as Judge
Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they
might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most
solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this
State which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.  I
will add one further word, which is this: that I do not understand
that there is any place where an alteration of the social and
political relations of the negro and the white man can be made,
except in the State Legislature,--not in the Congress of the United
States; and as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such
thing myself, and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror
that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose as the best
means to prevent it that the Judge be kept at home, and placed in the
State Legislature to fight the measure.  I do not propose dwelling
longer at this time on this subject.

When Judge Trumbull, our other Senator in Congress, returned to
Illinois in the month of August, he made a speech at Chicago, in
which he made what may be called a charge against Judge Douglas,
which I understand proved to be very offensive to him.  The Judge was
at that time out upon one of his speaking tours through the country,
and when the news of it reached him, as I am informed, he denounced
Judge Trumbull in rather harsh terms for having said what he did in
regard to that matter.  I was traveling at that time, and speaking at
the same places with Judge Douglas on subsequent days, and when I
heard of what Judge Trumbull had said of Douglas, and what Douglas
had said back again, I felt that I was in a position where I could
not remain entirely silent in regard to the matter.  Consequently,
upon two or three occasions I alluded to it, and alluded to it in no
other wise than to say that in regard to the charge brought by
Trumbull against Douglas, I personally knew nothing, and sought to
say nothing about it; that I did personally know Judge Trumbull; that
I believed him to be a man of veracity; that I believed him to be a
man of capacity sufficient to know very well whether an assertion he
was making, as a conclusion drawn from a set of facts, was true or
false; and as a conclusion of my own from that, I stated it as my
belief if Trumbull should ever be called upon, he would prove
everything he had said.  I said this upon two or three occasions.
Upon a subsequent occasion, Judge Trumbull spoke again before an
audience at Alton, and upon that occasion not only repeated his
charge against Douglas, but arrayed the evidence he relied upon to
substantiate it.  This speech was published at length; and
subsequently at Jacksonville Judge Douglas alluded to the matter.  In
the course of his speech, and near the close of it, he stated in
regard to myself what I will now read:

"Judge Douglas proceeded to remark that he should not hereafter
occupy his time in refuting such charges made by Trumbull, but that,
Lincoln having indorsed the character of Trumbull for veracity, he
should hold him (Lincoln) responsible for the slanders."

I have done simply what I have told you, to subject me to this
invitation to notice the charge.  I now wish to say that it had not
originally been my purpose to discuss that matter at all  But in-as-
much as it seems to be the wish of Judge Douglas to hold me
responsible for it, then for once in my life I will play General
Jackson, and to the just extent I take the responsibility.

I wish to say at the beginning that I will hand to the reporters that
portion of Judge Trumbull's Alton speech which was devoted to this
matter, and also that portion of Judge Douglas's speech made at
Jacksonville in answer to it.  I shall thereby furnish the readers of
this debate with the complete discussion between Trumbull and
Douglas.  I cannot now read them, for the reason that it would take
half of my first hour to do so.  I can only make some comments upon
them.  Trumbull's charge is in the following words:

"Now, the charge is, that there was a plot entered into to have a
constitution formed for Kansas, and put in force, without giving the
people an opportunity to vote upon it, and that Mr. Douglas was in
the plot."

I will state, without quoting further, for all will have an
opportunity of reading it hereafter, that Judge Trumbull brings
forward what he regards as sufficient evidence to substantiate this
charge.

It will be perceived Judge Trumbull shows that Senator Bigler, upon
the floor of the Senate, had declared there had been a conference
among the senators, in which conference it was determined to have an
enabling act passed for the people of Kansas to form a constitution
under, and in this conference it was agreed among them that it was
best not to have a provision for submitting the constitution to a
vote of the people after it should be formed.  He then brings forward
to show, and showing, as he deemed, that Judge Douglas reported the
bill back to the Senate with that clause stricken out.  He then shows
that there was a new clause inserted into the bill, which would in
its nature prevent a reference of the constitution back for a vote of
the people,--if, indeed, upon a mere silence in the law, it could be
assumed that they had the right to vote upon it.  These are the
general statements that he has made.

I propose to examine the points in Judge Douglas's speech in which he
attempts to answer that speech of Judge Trumbull's.  When you come to
examine Judge Douglas's speech, you will find that the first point he
makes is:

"Suppose it were true that there was such a change in the bill, and
that I struck it out,--is that a proof of a plot to force a
constitution upon them against their will?"

His striking out such a provision, if there was such a one in the
bill, he argues, does not establish the proof that it was stricken
out for the purpose of robbing the people of that right.  I would
say, in the first place, that that would be a most manifest reason
for it.  It is true, as Judge Douglas states, that many Territorial
bills have passed without having such a provision in them.  I believe
it is true, though I am not certain, that in some instances
constitutions framed under such bills have been submitted to a vote
of the people with the law silent upon the subject; but it does not
appear that they once had their enabling acts framed with an express
provision for submitting the constitution to be framed to a vote of
the people, then that they were stricken out when Congress did not
mean to alter the effect of the law.  That there have been bills
which never had the provision in, I do not question; but when was
that provision taken out of one that it was in?  More especially does
the evidence tend to prove the proposition that Trumbull advanced,
when we remember that the provision was stricken out of the bill
almost simultaneously with the time that Bigler says there was a
conference among certain senators, and in which it was agreed that a
bill should be passed leaving that out.  Judge Douglas, in answering
Trumbull, omits to attend to the testimony of Bigler, that there was
a meeting in which it was agreed they should so frame the bill that
there should be no submission of the constitution to a vote of the
people.  The Judge does not notice this part of it.  If you take this
as one piece of evidence, and then ascertain that simultaneously
Judge Douglas struck out a provision that did require it to be
submitted, and put the two together, I think it will make a pretty
fair show of proof that Judge Douglas did, as Trumbull says, enter
into a plot to put in force a constitution for Kansas, without giving
the people any opportunity of voting upon it.

But I must hurry on.  The next proposition that Judge Douglas puts is
this:

"But upon examination it turns out that the Toombs bill never did
contain a clause requiring the constitution to be submitted."

This is a mere question of fact, and can be determined by evidence.
I only want to ask this question: Why did not Judge Douglas say that
these words were not stricken out of the Toomb's bill, or this bill
from which it is alleged the provision was stricken out,--a bill
which goes by the name of Toomb's, because he originally brought it
forward?  I ask why, if the Judge wanted to make a direct issue with
Trumbull, did he not take the exact proposition Trumbull made in his
speech, and say it was not stricken out?  Trumbull has given the
exact words that he says were in the Toomb's bill, and he alleges
that when the bill came back, they were stricken out.  Judge Douglas
does not say that the words which Trumbull says were stricken out
were not so stricken out, but he says there was no provision in the
Toomb's bill to submit the constitution to a vote of the people.  We
see at once that he is merely making an issue upon the meaning of the
words.  He has not undertaken to say that Trumbull tells a lie about
these words being stricken out, but he is really, when pushed up to
it, only taking an issue upon the meaning of the words.  Now, then,
if there be any issue upon the meaning of the words, or if there be
upon the question of fact as to whether these words were stricken
out, I have before me what I suppose to be a genuine copy of the
Toomb's bill, in which it can be shown that the words Trumbull says
were in it were, in fact, originally there.  If there be any dispute
upon the fact, I have got the documents here to show they were there.
If there be any controversy upon the sense of the words,--whether
these words which were stricken out really constituted a provision
for submitting the matter to a vote of the people,--as that is a
matter of argument, I think I may as well use Trumbull's own
argument.  He says that the proposition is in these words:

"That the following propositions be and the same are hereby offered
to the said Convention of the people of Kansas when formed, for their
free acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the Convention
and ratified by the people at the election for the adoption of the
constitution, shall be obligatory upon the United States and the said
State of Kansas."

Now, Trumbull alleges that these last words were stricken out of the
bill when it came back, and he says this was a provision for
submitting the constitution to a vote of the people; and his argument
is this:

"Would it have been possible to ratify the land propositions at the
election for the adoption of the constitution, unless such an
election was to be held?"

This is Trumbull's argument.  Now, Judge Douglas does not meet the
charge at all, but he stands up and says there was no such
proposition in that bill for submitting the constitution to be framed
to a vote of the people.  Trumbull admits that the language is not a
direct provision for submitting it, but it is a provision necessarily
implied from another provision.  He asks you how it is possible to
ratify the land proposition at the election for the adoption of the
constitution, if there was no election to be held for the adoption of
the constitution.  And he goes on to show that it is not any less a
law because the provision is put in that indirect shape than it would
be if it were put directly.  But I presume I have said enough to draw
attention to this point, and I pass it by also.

Another one of the points that Judge Douglas makes upon Trumbull, and
at very great length, is, that Trumbull, while the bill was pending,
said in a speech in the Senate that he supposed the constitution to
be made would have to be submitted to the people.  He asks, if
Trumbull thought so then, what ground is there for anybody thinking
otherwise now?  Fellow-citizens, this much may be said in reply: That
bill had been in the hands of a party to which Trumbull did not
belong.  It had been in the hands of the committee at the head of
which Judge Douglas stood.  Trumbull perhaps had a printed copy of
the original Toomb's bill.  I have not the evidence on that point
except a sort of inference I draw from the general course of business
there.  What alterations, or what provisions in the way of altering,
were going on in committee, Trumbull had no means of knowing, until
the altered bill was reported back.  Soon afterwards, when it was
reported back, there was a discussion over it, and perhaps Trumbull
in reading it hastily in the altered form did not perceive all the
bearings of the alterations.  He was hastily borne into the debate,
and it does not follow that because there was something in it
Trumbull did not perceive, that something did not exist.  More than
this, is it true that what Trumbull did can have any effect on what
Douglas did?  Suppose Trumbull had been in the plot with these other
men, would that let Douglas out of it?   Would it exonerate Douglas
that Trumbull did n't then perceive he was in the plot?  He also asks
the question: Why did n't Trumbull propose to amend the bill, if he
thought it needed any amendment?  Why, I believe that everything
Judge Trumbull had proposed, particularly in connection with this
question of Kansas and Nebraska, since he had been on the floor of
the Senate, had been promptly voted down by Judge Douglas and his
friends.  He had no promise that an amendment offered by him to
anything on this subject would receive the slightest consideration.
Judge Trumbull did bring to the notice of the Senate at that time the
fact that there was no provision for submitting the constitution
about to be made for the people of Kansas to a vote of the people.  I
believe I may venture to say that Judge Douglas made some reply to
this speech of Judge Trumbull's, but he never noticed that part of it
at all.  And so the thing passed by.  I think, then, the fact that
Judge Trumbull offered no amendment does not throw much blame upon
him; and if it did, it does not reach the question of fact as to what
Judge Douglas was doing.  I repeat, that if Trumbull had himself been
in the plot, it would not at all relieve the others who were in it
from blame.  If I should be indicted for murder, and upon the trial
it should be discovered that I had been implicated in that murder,
but that the prosecuting witness was guilty too, that would not at
all touch the question of my crime.  It would be no relief to my neck
that they discovered this other man who charged the crime upon me to
be guilty too.

Another one of the points Judge Douglas makes upon Judge Trumbull is,
that when he spoke in Chicago he made his charge to rest upon the
fact that the bill had the provision in it for submitting the
constitution to a vote of the people when it went into his Judge
Douglas's hands, that it was missing when he reported it to the
Senate, and that in a public speech he had subsequently said the
alterations in the bill were made while it was in committee, and that
they were made in consultation between him (Judge Douglas) and
Toomb's.  And Judge Douglas goes on to comment upon the fact of
Trumbull's adducing in his Alton speech the proposition that the bill
not only came back with that proposition stricken out, but with
another clause and another provision in it, saying that "until the
complete execution of this Act there shall be no election in said
Territory,"--which, Trumbull argued, was not only taking the
provision for submitting to a vote of the people out of the bill, but
was adding an affirmative one, in that it prevented the people from
exercising the right under a bill that was merely silent on the
question.  Now, in regard to what he says, that Trumbull shifts the
issue, that he shifts his ground,--and I believe he uses the term
that, "it being proven false, he has changed ground," I call upon all
of you, when you come to examine that portion of Trumbull's speech
(for it will make a part of mine), to examine whether Trumbull has
shifted his ground or not.  I say he did not shift his ground, but
that he brought forward his original charge and the evidence to
sustain it yet more fully,
but precisely as he originally made it.  Then, in addition thereto,
he brought in a new piece of evidence.  He shifted no ground.  He
brought no new piece of evidence inconsistent with his former
testimony; but he brought a new piece, tending, as he thought, and as
I think, to prove his proposition.  To illustrate: A man brings an
accusation against another, and on trial the man making the charge
introduces A and B to prove the accusation.  At a second trial he
introduces the same witnesses, who tell the same story as before, and
a third witness, who tells the same thing, and in addition gives
further testimony corroborative of the charge.  So with Trumbull.
There was no shifting of ground, nor inconsistency of testimony
between the new piece of evidence and what he originally introduced.

But Judge Douglas says that he himself moved to strike out that last
provision of the bill, and that on his motion it was stricken out and
a substitute inserted.  That I presume is the truth.  I presume it is
true that that last proposition was stricken out by Judge Douglas.
Trumbull has not said it was not; Trumbull has himself said that it
was so stricken out.  He says: "I am now speaking of the bill as
Judge Douglas reported it back.  It was amended somewhat in the
Senate before it passed, but I am speaking of it as he brought it
back."  Now, when Judge Douglas parades the fact that the provision
was stricken out of the bill when it came back, he asserts nothing
contrary to what Trumbull alleges.  Trumbull has only said that he
originally put it in, not that he did not strike it out.  Trumbull
says it was not in the bill when it went to the committee.  When it
came back it was in, and Judge Douglas said the alterations were made
by him in consultation with Toomb's.  Trumbull alleges, therefore, as
his conclusion, that Judge Douglas put it in.  Then, if Douglas wants
to contradict Trumbull and call him a liar, let him say he did not
put it in, and not that he did n't take it out again.  It is said
that a bear is sometimes hard enough pushed to drop a cub; and so I
presume it was in this case.  I presume the truth is that Douglas put
it in, and afterward took it out.  That, I take it, is the truth
about it.  Judge Trumbull says one thing, Douglas says another thing,
and the two don't contradict one another at all.  The question is,
what did he put it in for?  In the first place, what did he take the
other provision out of the bill for,--the provision which Trumbull
argued was necessary for submitting the constitution to a vote of the
people?  What did he take that out for; and, having taken it out,
what did he put this in for?  I say that in the run of things it is
not unlikely forces conspire to render it vastly expedient for Judge
Douglas to take that latter clause out again.  The question that
Trumbull has made is that Judge Douglas put it in; and he don't meet
Trumbull at all unless he denies that.

In the clause of Judge Douglas's speech upon this subject he uses
this language toward Judge Trumbull.  He says:

"He forges his evidence from beginning to end; and by falsifying the
record, he endeavors to bolster up his false charge."

Well, that is a pretty serious statement--Trumbull forges his
evidence from beginning to end.  Now, upon my own authority I say
that it is not true.  What is a forgery?  Consider the evidence that
Trumbull has brought forward.  When you come to read the speech, as
you will be able to, examine whether the evidence is a forgery from
beginning to end.  He had the bill or document in his hand like that
[holding up a paper].  He says that is a copy of the Toomb's bill,--
the amendment offered by Toomb's.  He says that is a copy of the bill
as it was introduced and went into Judge Douglas's hands.  Now, does
Judge Douglas say that is a forgery?  That is one thing Trumbull
brought forward.  Judge Douglas says he forged it from beginning to
end!  That is the "beginning," we will say.  Does Douglas say that is
a forgery?  Let him say it to-day, and we will have a subsequent
examination upon this subject.  Trumbull then holds up another
document like this, and says that is an exact copy of the bill as it
came back in the amended form out of Judge Douglas's hands.  Does
Judge Douglas say that is a forgery?  Does he say it in his general
sweeping charge?  Does he say so now?  If he does not, then take this
Toomb's bill and the bill in the amended form, and it only needs to
compare them to see that the provision is in the one and not in the
other; it leaves the inference inevitable that it was taken out.

But, while I am dealing with this question, let us see what
Trumbull's other evidence is.  One other piece of evidence I will
read.  Trumbull says there are in this original Toomb's bill these
words:

"That the following propositions be and the same are hereby offered
to the said Convention of the people of Kansas, when formed, for
their free acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the
Convention and ratified by the people at the election for the
adoption of the constitution, shall be obligatory upon the United
States and the said State of Kansas."

Now, if it is said that this is a forgery, we will open the paper
here and see whether it is or not.  Again, Trumbull says, as he goes
along, that Mr. Bigler made the following statement in his place in
the Senate, December 9, 1857:

"I was present when that subject was discussed by senators before the
bill was introduced, and the question was raised and discussed,
whether the constitution, when formed, should be submitted to a vote
of the people.  It was held by those most intelligent on the subject
that, in view of all the difficulties surrounding that Territory, the
danger of any experiment at that time of a popular vote, it would be
better there should be no such provision in the Toomb's bill; and it
was my understanding, in all the intercourse I had, that the
Convention would make a constitution, and send it here, without
submitting it to the popular vote."

Then Trumbull follows on:

"In speaking of this meeting again on the 21st December, 1857
[Congressional Globe, same vol., page 113], Senator Bigler said:

"'Nothing was further from my mind than to allude to any social or
confidential interview.  The meeting was not of that character.
Indeed, it was semi-official, and called to promote the public good.
My recollection was clear that I left the conference under the
impression that it had been deemed best to adopt measures to admit
Kansas as a State through the agency of one popular election, and
that for delegates to this Convention.  This impression was stronger
because I thought the spirit of the bill infringed upon the doctrine
of non-intervention, to which I had great aversion; but with the hope
of accomplishing a great good, and as no movement had been made in
that direction in the Territory, I waived this objection, and
concluded to support the measure.  I have a few items of testimony as
to the correctness of these impressions, and with their submission I
shall be content.  I have before me the bill reported by the senator
from Illinois on the 7th of March, 1856, providing for the admission
of Kansas as a State, the third section of which reads as follows:

"That the following propositions be, and the same are hereby offered
to the said Convention of the people of Kansas, when formed, for
their free acceptance or rejection; which, if accepted by the
Convention and ratified by the people at the election for the
adoption of the constitution, shall be obligatory upon the United
States and the said State of Kansas."

The bill read in his place by the senator from Georgia on the 25th of
June, and referred to the Committee on Territories, contained the
same section word for word.  Both these bills were under
consideration at the conference referred to; but, sir, when the
senator from Illinois reported the Toombs bill to the Senate with
amendments, the next morning, it did not contain that portion of the
third section which indicated to the Convention that the constitution
should be approved by the people.  The words 'and ratified by the
people at the election for the adoption of the constitution" had been
stricken out.'"

Now, these things Trumbull says were stated by Bigler upon the floor
of the Senate on certain days, and that they are recorded in the
Congressional Globe on certain pages.  Does Judge Douglas say this is
a forgery?  Does he say there is no such thing in the Congressional
Globe?  What does he mean when he says Judge Trumbull forges his
evidence from beginning to end?  So again he says in another place
that Judge Douglas, in his speech, December 9, 1857 (Congressional
Globe, part I., page 15), stated:

"That during the last session of Congress, I [Mr. Douglas] reported a
bill from the Committee on Territories, to authorize the people of
Kansas to assemble and form a constitution for themselves.
Subsequently the senator from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] brought forward a
substitute for my bill, which, after having been modified by him and
myself in consultation, was passed by the Senate."

Now, Trumbull says this is a quotation from a speech of Douglas, and
is recorded in the Congressional Globe.  Is it a forgery?  Is it
there or not?  It may not be there, but I want the Judge to take
these pieces of evidence, and distinctly say they are forgeries if he
dare do it.

[A voice: "He will."]

Well, sir, you had better not commit him.  He gives other quotations,
--another from Judge Douglas.  He says:

"I will ask the senator to show me an intimation, from any one member
of the Senate, in the whole debate on the Toombs bill, and in the
Union, from any quarter, that the constitution was not to be
submitted to the people.  I will venture to say that on all sides of
the chamber it was so understood at the time.  If the opponents of
the bill had understood it was not, they would have made the point on
it; and if they had made it, we should certainly have yielded to it,
and put in the clause.  That is a discovery made since the President
found out that it was not safe to take it for granted that that would
be done, which ought in fairness to have been done."

Judge Trumbull says Douglas made that speech, and it is recorded.
Does Judge Douglas say it is a forgery, and was not true?  Trumbull
says somewhere, and I propose to skip it, but it will be found by any
one who will read this debate, that he did distinctly bring it to the
notice of those who were engineering the bill, that it lacked that
provision; and then he goes on to give another quotation from Judge
Douglas, where Judge Trumbull uses this language:

"Judge Douglas, however, on the same day and in the same debate,
probably recollecting or being reminded of the fact that I had
objected to the Toombs bill when pending that it did not provide for
a submission of the constitution to the people, made another
statement, which is to be found in the same volume of the Globe, page
22, in which he says:
'That the bill was silent on this subject was true, and my attention
was called to that about the time it was passed; and I took the fair
construction to be, that powers not delegated were reserved, and that
of course the constitution would be submitted to the people.'

"Whether this statement is consistent with the statement just before
made, that had the point been made it would have been yielded to, or
that it was a new discovery, you will determine."

So I say.  I do not know whether Judge Douglas will dispute this, and
yet maintain his position that Trumbull's evidence "was forged from
beginning to end."  I will remark that I have not got these
Congressional Globes with me.  They are large books, and difficult to
carry about, and if Judge Douglas shall say that on these points
where Trumbull has quoted from them there are no such passages there,
I shall not be able to prove they are there upon this occasion, but I
will have another chance.  Whenever he points out the forgery and
says, "I declare that this particular thing which Trumbull has
uttered is not to be found where he says it is," then my attention
will be drawn to that, and I will arm myself for the contest, stating
now that I have not the slightest doubt on earth that I will find
every quotation just where Trumbull says it is.  Then the question
is, How can Douglas call that a forgery?  How can he make out that it
is a forgery?  What is a forgery?  It is the bringing forward
something in writing or in print purporting to be of certain effect
when it is altogether untrue.  If you come forward with my note for
one hundred dollars when I have never given such a note, there is a
forgery.  If you come forward with a letter purporting to be written
by me which I never wrote, there is another forgery.  If you produce
anything in writing or in print saying it is so and so, the document
not being genuine, a forgery has been committed.  How do you make
this forgery when every piece of the evidence is genuine?   If Judge
Douglas does say these documents and quotations are false and forged,
he has a full right to do so; but until he does it specifically, we
don't know how to get at him.  If he does say they are false and
forged, I will then look further into it, and presume I can procure
the certificates of the proper officers that they are genuine copies.
I have no doubt each of these extracts will be found exactly where
Trumbull says it is.  Then I leave it to you if Judge Douglas, in
making his sweeping charge that Judge Trumbull's evidence is forged
from beginning to end, at all meets the case,--if that is the way to
get at the facts.  I repeat again, if he will point out which one is
a forgery, I will carefully examine it, and if it proves that any one
of them is really a forgery, it will not be me who will hold to it
any longer.  I have always wanted to deal with everyone I meet
candidly and honestly.  If I have made any assertion not warranted by
facts, and it is pointed out to me, I will withdraw it cheerfully.
But I do not choose to see Judge Trumbull calumniated, and the
evidence he has brought forward branded in general terms "a forgery
from beginning to end."  This is not the legal way of meeting a
charge, and I submit it to all intelligent persons, both friends of
Judge Douglas and of myself, whether it is.

The point upon Judge Douglas is this: The bill that went into his
hands had the provision in it for a submission of the constitution to
the people; and I say its language amounts to an express provision
for a submission, and that he took the provision out.  He says it was
known that the bill was silent in this particular; but I say, Judge
Douglas, it was not silent when you got it.  It was vocal with the
declaration, when you got it, for a submission of the constitution to
the people.  And now, my direct question to Judge Douglas is, to
answer why, if he deemed the bill silent on this point, he found it
necessary to strike out those particular harmless words.  If he had
found the bill silent and without this provision, he might say what
he does now.  If he supposes it was implied that the constitution
would be submitted to a vote of the people, how could these two lines
so encumber the statute as to make it necessary to strike them out?
How could he infer that a submission was still implied, after its
express provision had been stricken from the bill?  I find the bill
vocal with the provision, while he silenced it.  He took it out, and
although he took out the other provision preventing a submission to a
vote of the people, I ask, Why did you first put it in?  I ask him
whether he took the original provision out, which Trumbull alleges
was in the bill.  If he admits that he did take it, I ask him what he
did it for.  It looks to us as if he had altered the bill.  If it
looks differently to him,--if he has a different reason for his
action from the one we assign him--he can tell it.  I insist upon
knowing why he made the bill silent upon that point when it was vocal
before he put his hands upon it.

I was told, before my last paragraph, that my time was within three
minutes of being out.  I presume it is expired now; I therefore
close.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: It follows as a matter of course that a half-hour
answer to a speech of an hour and a half can be but a very hurried
one.  I shall only be able to touch upon a few of the points
suggested by Judge Douglas, and give them a brief attention, while I
shall have to totally omit others for the want of time.

Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from
me an answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro
citizenship.  So far as I know the Judge never asked me the question
before.  He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell
him very frankly that I am not in favor of negro citizenship.  This
furnishes me an occasion for saying a few words upon the subject.  I
mentioned in a certain speech of mine, which has been printed, that
the Supreme Court had decided that a negro could not possibly be made
a citizen; and without saying what was my ground of complaint in
regard to that, or whether I had any ground of complaint, Judge
Douglas has from that thing manufactured nearly everything that he
ever says about my disposition to produce an equality between the
negroes and the white people.  If any one will read my speech, he
will find I mentioned that as one of the points decided in the course
of the Supreme Court opinions, but I did not state what objection I
had to it.  But Judge Douglas tells the people what my objection was
when I did not tell them myself.  Now, my opinion is that the
different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the
Constitution of the United States if they choose.  The Dred Scott
decision decides that they have not that power.  If the State of
Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it.
That is all I have to say about it.

Judge Douglas has told me that he heard my speeches north and my
speeches south; that he had heard me at Ottawa and at Freeport in the
north and recently at Jonesboro in the south, and there was a very
different cast of sentiment in the speeches made at the different
points.  I will not charge upon Judge Douglas that he wilfully
misrepresents me, but I call upon every fair-minded man to take these
speeches and read them, and I dare him to point out any difference
between my speeches north and south.  While I am here perhaps I ought
to say a word, if I have the time, in regard to the latter portion of
the Judge's speech, which was a sort of declamation in reference to
my having said I entertained the belief that this government would
not endure half slave and half free.  I have said so, and I did not
say it without what seemed to me to be good reasons.  It perhaps
would require more time than I have now to set forth these reasons in
detail; but let me ask you a few questions.  Have we ever had any
peace on this slavery question?  When are we to have peace upon it,
if it is kept in the position it now occupies?  How are we ever to
have peace upon it?  That is an important question.  To be sure, if
we will all stop, and allow Judge Douglas and his friends to march on
in their present career until they plant the institution all over the
nation, here and wherever else our flag waves, and we acquiesce in
it, there will be peace.  But let me ask Judge Douglas how he is
going to get the people to do that?  They have been wrangling over
this question for at least forty years.  This was the cause of the
agitation resulting in the Missouri Compromise; this produced the
troubles at the annexation of Texas, in the acquisition of the
territory acquired in the Mexican War.  Again, this was the trouble
which was quieted by the Compromise of 1850, when it was settled
"forever" as both the great political parties declared in their
National Conventions.  That "forever" turned out to be just four
years, when Judge Douglas himself reopened it.  When is it likely to
come to an end?  He introduced the Nebraska Bill in 1854 to put
another end to the slavery agitation.  He promised that it would
finish it all up immediately, and he has never made a speech since,
until he got into a quarrel with the President about the Lecompton
Constitution, in which he has not declared that we are just at the
end of the slavery agitation.  But in one speech, I think last
winter, he did say that he did n't quite see when the end of the
slavery agitation would come.  Now he tells us again that it is all
over and the people of Kansas have voted down the Lecompton
Constitution.  How is it over?  That was only one of the attempts at
putting an end to the slavery agitation--one of these "final
settlements."  Is Kansas in the Union?  Has she formed a constitution
that she is likely to come in under?  Is not the slavery agitation
still an open question in that Territory?  Has the voting down of
that constitution put an end to all the trouble?  Is that more likely
to settle it than every one of these previous attempts to settle the
slavery agitation?  Now, at this day in the history of the world we
can no more foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be
than we can see the end of the world itself.  The Nebraska-Kansas
Bill was introduced four years and a half ago, and if the agitation
is ever to come to an end we may say we are four years and a half
nearer the end.  So, too, we can say we are four years and a half
nearer the end of the world, and we can just as clearly see the end
of the world as we can see the end of this agitation.  The Kansas
settlement did not conclude it.  If Kansas should sink to-day, and
leave a great vacant space in the earth's surface, this vexed
question would still be among us.  I say, then, there is no way of
putting an end to the slavery agitation amongst us but to put it back
upon the basis where our fathers placed it; no way but to keep it out
of our new Territories,--to restrict it forever to the old States
where it now exists.  Then the public mind will rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.  That is one way of
putting an end to the slavery agitation.

The other way is for us to surrender and let Judge Douglas and his
friends have their way and plant slavery over all the States; cease
speaking of it as in any way a wrong; regard slavery as one of the
common matters of property, and speak of negroes as we do of our
horses and cattle.  But while it drives on in its state of progress
as it is now driving, and as it has driven for the last five years, I
have ventured the opinion, and I say to-day, that we will have no end
to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn or the other.  I do
not mean that when it takes a turn toward ultimate extinction it will
be in a day, nor in a year, nor in two years.  I do not suppose that
in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction would occur in less than
a hundred years at least; but that it will occur in the best way for
both races, in God's own good time, I have no doubt.  But, my
friends, I have used up more of my time than I intended on this
point.

Now, in regard to this matter about Trumbull and myself having made a
bargain to sell out the entire Whig and Democratic parties in 1854:
Judge Douglas brings forward no evidence to sustain his charge,
except the speech Matheny is said to have made in 1856, in which he
told a cock-and-bull story of that sort, upon the same moral
principles that Judge Douglas tells it here to-day.  This is the
simple truth.  I do not care greatly for the story, but this is the
truth of it: and I have twice told Judge Douglas to his face that
from beginning to end there is not one word of truth in it.  I have
called upon him for the proof, and he does not at all meet me as
Trumbull met him upon that of which we were just talking, by
producing the record.  He did n't bring the record because there was
no record for him to bring.  When he asks if I am ready to indorse
Trumbull's veracity after he has broken a bargain with me, I reply
that if Trumbull had broken a bargain with me I would not be likely
to indorse his veracity; but I am ready to indorse his veracity
because neither in that thing, nor in any other, in all the years
that I have known Lyman Trumbull, have I known him to fail of his
word or tell a falsehood large or small.  It is for that reason that
I indorse Lyman Trumbull.

[Mr. JAMES BROWN (Douglas postmaster): "What does Ford's History say
about him?"]

Some gentleman asks me what Ford's History says about him.  My own
recollection is that Ford speaks of Trumbull in very disrespectful
terms in several portions of his book, and that he talks a great deal
worse of Judge Douglas.  I refer you, sir, to the History for
examination.

Judge Douglas complains at considerable length about a disposition on
the part of Trumbull and myself to attack him personally.  I want to
attend to that suggestion a moment.  I don't want to be unjustly
accused of dealing illiberally or unfairly with an adversary, either
in court or in a political canvass or anywhere else.  I would despise
myself if I supposed myself ready to deal less liberally with an
adversary than I was willing to be treated myself.  Judge Douglas in
a general way, without putting it in a direct shape, revives the old
charge against me in reference to the Mexican War.  He does not take
the responsibility of putting it in a very definite form, but makes a
general reference to it.  That charge is more than ten years old.  He
complains of Trumbull and myself because he says we bring charges
against him one or two years old.  He knows, too, that in regard to
the Mexican War story the more respectable papers of his own party
throughout the State have been compelled to take it back and
acknowledge that it was a lie.

[Here Mr. LINCOLN turned to the crowd on the platform, and, selecting
HON. ORLANDO B. FICKLIN, led him forward and said:]

I do not mean to do anything with Mr. FICKLIN except to present his
face and tell you that he personally knows it to be a lie!  He was a
member of Congress at the only time I was in Congress, and [FICKLIN]
knows that whenever there was an attempt to procure a vote of mine
which would indorse the origin and justice of the war, I refused to
give such indorsement and voted against it; but I never voted against
the supplies for the army, and he knows, as well as Judge Douglas,
that whenever a dollar was asked by way of compensation or otherwise
for the benefit of the soldiers I gave all the votes that FICKLIN or
Douglas did, and perhaps more.

[Mr. FICKLIN: My friends, I wish to say this in reference to the
matter: Mr. Lincoln and myself are just as good personal friends as
Judge Douglas and myself.  In reference to this Mexican War, my
recollection is that when Ashmun's resolution [amendment] was offered
by Mr. Ashmun of Massachusetts, in which he declared that the Mexican
War was unnecessary and unconstitutionally commenced by the President
-my recollection is that Mr. Lincoln voted for that resolution.]

That is the truth.  Now, you all remember that was a resolution
censuring the President for the manner in which the war was begun.
You know they have charged that I voted against the supplies, by
which I starved the soldiers who were out fighting the battles of
their country.  I say that FICKLIN knows it is false.  When that
charge was brought forward by the Chicago Times, the Springfield
Register [Douglas's organ] reminded the Times that the charge really
applied to John Henry; and I do know that John Henry is now making
speeches and fiercely battling for Judge Douglas.  If the Judge now
says that he offers this as a sort of setoff to what I said to-day in
reference to Trumbull's charge, then I remind him that he made this
charge before I said a word about Trumbull's.  He brought this
forward at Ottawa, the first time we met face to face; and in the
opening speech that Judge Douglas made he attacked me in regard to a
matter ten years old.  Is n't he a pretty man to be whining about
people making charges against him only two years old!

The Judge thinks it is altogether wrong that I should have dwelt upon
this charge of Trumbull's at all.  I gave the apology for doing so in
my opening speech.  Perhaps it did n't fix your attention.  I said
that when Judge Douglas was speaking at place--where I spoke on the
succeeding day he used very harsh language about this charge.  Two or
three times afterward I said I had confidence in Judge Trumbull's
veracity and intelligence; and my own opinion was, from what I knew
of the character of Judge Trumbull, that he would vindicate his
position and prove whatever he had stated to be true.  This I
repeated two or three times; and then I dropped it, without saying
anything more on the subject for weeks--perhaps a month.  I passed it
by without noticing it at all till I found, at Jacksonville, Judge
Douglas in the plenitude of his power is not willing to answer
Trumbull and let me alone, but he comes out there and uses this
language: "He should not hereafter occupy his time in refuting such
charges made by Trumbull but that, Lincoln having indorsed the
character of Trumbull for veracity, he should hold him [Lincoln]
responsible for the slanders."  What was Lincoln to do?  Did he not
do right, when he had the fit opportunity of meeting Judge Douglas
here, to tell him he was ready for the responsibility?  I ask a
candid audience whether in doing thus Judge Douglas was not the
assailant rather than I?  Here I meet him face to face, and say I am
ready to take the responsibility, so far as it rests on me.

Having done so I ask the attention of this audience to the question
whether I have succeeded in sustaining the charge, and whether Judge
Douglas has at all succeeded in rebutting it?  You all heard me call
upon him to say which of these pieces of evidence was a forgery.
Does he say that what I present here as a copy of the original Toombs
bill is a forgery?  Does he say that what I present as a copy of the
bill reported by himself is a forgery, or what is presented as a
transcript from the Globe of the quotations from Bigler's speech is a
forgery?  Does he say the quotations from his own speech are
forgeries?  Does he say this transcript from Trumbull's speech is a
forgery?

["He didn't deny one of them."]

I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of
a story is true the whole story turns out false.  I take it these
people have some sense; they see plainly that Judge Douglas is
playing cuttle-fish, a small species of fish that has no mode of
defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid,
which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it
escapes.  Ain't the Judge playing the cuttle-fish?

Now, I would ask very special attention to the consideration of Judge
Douglas's speech at Jacksonville; and when you shall read his speech
of to-day, I ask you to watch closely and see which of these pieces
of testimony, every one of which he says is a forgery, he has shown
to be such.  Not one of them has he shown to be a forgery.  Then I
ask the original question, if each of the pieces of testimony is
true, how is it possible that the whole is a falsehood?

In regard to Trumbull's charge that he [Douglas] inserted a provision
into the bill to prevent the constitution being submitted to the
people, what was his answer?  He comes here and reads from the
Congressional Globe to show that on his motion that provision was
struck out of the bill.  Why, Trumbull has not said it was not
stricken out, but Trumbull says he [Douglas] put it in; and it is no
answer to the charge to say he afterwards took it out.  Both are
perhaps true.  It was in regard to that thing precisely that I told
him he had dropped the cub.  Trumbull shows you that by his
introducing the bill it was his cub.  It is no answer to that
assertion to call Trumbull a liar merely because he did not specially
say that Douglas struck it out.  Suppose that were the case, does it
answer Trumbull?  I assert that you [pointing to an individual] are
here to-day, and you undertake to prove me a liar by showing that you
were in Mattoon yesterday.  I say that you took your hat off your
head, and you prove me a liar by putting it on your head.  That is
the whole force of Douglas's argument.

Now, I want to come back to my original question.  Trumbull says that
Judge Douglas had a bill with a provision in it for submitting a
constitution to be made to a vote of the people of Kansas.  Does
Judge Douglas deny that fact?  Does be deny that the provision which
Trumbull reads was put in that bill?  Then Trumbull says he struck it
out.  Does he dare to deny that?  He does not, and I have the right
to repeat the question ,--Why Judge Douglas took it out?  Bigler has
said there was a combination of certain senators, among whom he did
not include Judge Douglas, by which it was agreed that the Kansas
Bill should have a clause in it not to have the constitution formed
under it submitted to a vote of the people.  He did not say that
Douglas was among them, but we prove by another source that about the
same time Douglas comes into the Senate with that provision stricken
out of the bill.  Although Bigler cannot say they were all working in
concert, yet it looks very much as if the thing was agreed upon and
done with a mutual understanding after the conference; and while we
do not know that it was absolutely so, yet it looks so probable that
we have a right to call upon the man who knows the true reason why it
was done to tell what the true reason was.  When he will not tell
what the true reason was, he stands in the attitude of an accused
thief who has stolen goods in his possession, and when called to
account refuses to tell where he got them.  Not only is this the
evidence, but when he comes in with the bill having the provision
stricken out, he tells us in a speech, not then but since, that these
alterations and modifications in the bill had been made by HIM, in
consultation with Toombs, the originator of the bill.  He tells us
the same to-day.  He says there were certain modifications made in
the bill in committee that he did not vote for.  I ask you to
remember, while certain amendments were made which he disapproved of,
but which a majority of the committee voted in, he has himself told
us that in this particular the alterations and modifications were
made by him, upon consultation with Toombs.  We have his own word
that these alterations were made by him, and not by the committee.
Now, I ask, what is the reason Judge Douglas is so chary about coming
to the exact question?  What is the reason he will not tell you
anything about How it was made, BY WHOM it was made, or that he
remembers it being made at all?  Why does he stand playing upon the
meaning of words and quibbling around the edges of the evidence?  If
he can explain all this, but leaves it unexplained, I have the right
to infer that Judge Douglas understood it was the purpose of his
party, in engineering that bill through, to make a constitution, and
have Kansas come into the Union with that constitution, without its
being submitted to a vote of the people.  If he will explain his
action on this question, by giving a better reason for the facts that
happened than he has done, it will be satisfactory.  But until he
does that--until he gives a better or more plausible reason than he
has offered against the evidence in the case--I suggest to him it
will not avail him at all that he swells himself up, takes on
dignity, and calls people liars.  Why, sir, there is not a word in
Trumbull's speech that depends on Trumbull's veracity at all.  He has
only arrayed the evidence and told you what follows as a matter of
reasoning.  There is not a statement in the whole speech that depends
on Trumbull's word.  If you have ever studied geometry, you remember
that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a
triangle are equal to two right angles.  Euclid has shown you how to
work it out.  Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and
to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by
calling Euclid a liar?  They tell me that my time is out, and
therefore I close.




FIFTH JOINT DEBATE, AT GALESBURGH,

OCTOBER 7, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS: A very large portion of the speech which Judge
Douglas has addressed to you has previously been delivered and put in
print.  I do not mean that for a hit upon the Judge at all.---  If I
had not been interrupted, I was going to say that such an answer as I
was able to make to a very large portion of it had already been more
than once made and published.  There has been an opportunity afforded
to the public to see our respective views upon the topics discussed
in a large portion of the speech which he has just delivered.  I make
these remarks for the purpose of excusing myself for not passing over
the entire ground that the Judge has traversed.  I however desire to
take up some of the points that he has attended to, and ask your
attention to them, and I shall follow him backwards upon some notes
which I have taken, reversing the order, by beginning where he
concluded.

The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and
insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that
it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that
negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to
believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have
supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the
negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery?  Would he
not at once have freed them?  I only have to remark upon this part of
the Judge's speech (and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not
detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time),
that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the
Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be
searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man,
that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I
think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that
Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any
member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the
whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy
of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that
affirmation.  And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience that
while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was,
in speaking upon this very subject he used the strong language that
"he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just";
and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if
he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at
all akin to that of Jefferson.

The next thing to which I will ask your attention is the Judge's
comments upon the fact, as he assumes it to be, that we cannot call
our public meetings as Republican meetings; and he instances Tazewell
County as one of the places where the friends of Lincoln have called
a public meeting and have not dared to name it a Republican meeting.
He instances Monroe County as another, where Judge Trumbull and Jehu
Baker addressed the persons whom the Judge assumes to be the friends
of Lincoln calling them the "Free Democracy."  I have the honor to
inform Judge Douglas that he spoke in that very county of Tazewell
last Saturday, and I was there on Tuesday last; and when he spoke
there, he spoke under a call not venturing to use the word
"Democrat."  [Turning to Judge Douglas.] what think you of this?

So, again, there is another thing to which I would ask the Judge's
attention upon this subject.  In the contest of 1856 his party
delighted to call themselves together as the "National Democracy";
but now, if there should be a notice put up anywhere for a meeting of
the "National Democracy," Judge Douglas and his friends would not
come.  They would not suppose themselves invited.  They would
understand that it was a call for those hateful postmasters whom he
talks about.

Now a few words in regard to these extracts from speeches of mine
which Judge Douglas has read to you, and which he supposes are in
very great contrast to each other.  Those speeches have been before
the public for a considerable time, and if they have any
inconsistency in them, if there is any conflict in them, the public
have been able to detect it.  When the Judge says, in speaking on
this subject, that I make speeches of one sort for the people of the
northern end of the State, and of a different sort for the southern
people, he assumes that I do not understand that my speeches will be
put in print and read north and south.  I knew all the while that the
speech that I made at Chicago, and the one I made at Jonesboro and
the one at Charleston, would all be put in print, and all the reading
and intelligent men in the community would see them and know all
about my opinions.  And I have not supposed, and do not now suppose,
that there is any conflict whatever between them.  But the Judge will
have it that if we do not confess that there is a sort of inequality
between the white and black races which justifies us in making them
slaves, we must then insist that there is a degree of equality that
requires us to make them our wives.  Now, I have all the while taken
a broad distinction in regard to that matter; and that is all there
is in these different speeches which he arrays here; and the entire
reading of either of the speeches will show that that distinction was
made.  Perhaps by taking two parts of the same speech he could have
got up as much of a conflict as the one he has found.  I have all the
while maintained that in so far as it should be insisted that there
was an equality between the white and black races that should produce
a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility.
This you have seen in my printed speeches, and with it I have said
that in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"
as proclaimed in that old Declaration, the inferior races are our
equals.  And these declarations I have constantly made in reference
to the abstract moral question, to contemplate and consider when we
are legislating about any new country which is not already cursed
with the actual presence of the evil,--slavery.  I have never
manifested any impatience with the necessities that spring from the
actual presence of black people amongst us, and the actual existence
of slavery amongst us where it does already exist; but I have
insisted that, in legislating for new countries where it does not
exist there is no just rule other than that of moral and abstract
right!  With reference to those new countries, those maxims as to the
right of a people to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
were the just rules to be constantly referred to.  There is no
misunderstanding this, except by men interested to misunderstand it.
I take it that I have to address an intelligent and reading
community, who will peruse what I say, weigh it, and then judge
whether I advanced improper or unsound views, or whether I advanced
hypocritical, and deceptive, and contrary views in different portions
of the country.  I believe myself to be guilty of no such thing as
the latter, though, of course, I cannot claim that I am entirely free
from all error in the opinions I advance.

The Judge has also detained us awhile in regard to the distinction
between his party and our party.  His he assumes to be a national
party, ours a sectional one.  He does this in asking the question
whether this country has any interest in the maintenance of the
Republican party.  He assumes that our party is altogether sectional,
that the party to which he adheres is national; and the argument is,
that no party can be a rightful party--and be based upon rightful
principles--unless it can announce its principles everywhere.  I
presume that Judge Douglas could not go into Russia and announce the
doctrine of our national Democracy; he could not denounce the
doctrine of kings and emperors and monarchies in Russia; and it may
be true of this country that in some places we may not be able to
proclaim a doctrine as clearly true as the truth of democracy,
because there is a section so directly opposed to it that they will
not tolerate us in doing so.  Is it the true test of the soundness of
a doctrine that in some places people won't let you proclaim it?  Is
that the way to test the truth of any doctrine?  Why, I understood
that at one time the people of Chicago would not let Judge Douglas
preach a certain favorite doctrine of his.  I commend to his
consideration the question whether he takes that as a test of the
unsoundness of what he wanted to preach.

There is another thing to which I wish to ask attention for a little
while on this occasion.  What has always been the evidence brought
forward to prove that the Republican party is a sectional party?  The
main one was that in the Southern portion of the Union the people did
not let the Republicans proclaim their doctrines amongst them.  That
has been the main evidence brought forward,--that they had no
supporters, or substantially none, in the Slave States.  The South
have not taken hold of our principles as we announce them; nor does
Judge Douglas now grapple with those principles.  We have a
Republican State Platform, laid down in Springfield in June last
stating our position all the way through the questions before the
country.  We are now far advanced in this canvass.  Judge Douglas and
I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the
fifth time met face to face in debate, and up to this day I have not
found either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the
Republican platform, or laying his finger upon anything in it that is
wrong.  I ask you all to recollect that.  Judge Douglas turns away
from the platform of principles to the fact that he can find people
somewhere who will not allow us to announce those principles.  If he
had great confidence that our principles were wrong, he would take
hold of them and demonstrate them to be wrong.  But he does not do
so.  The only evidence he has of their being wrong is in the fact
that there are people who won't allow us to preach them.  I ask
again, is that the way to test the soundness of a doctrine?

I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule of nationality
he is himself fast becoming sectional.  I ask his attention to the
fact that his speeches would not go as current now south of the Ohio
River as they have formerly gone there  I ask his attention to the
fact that he felicitates himself to-day that all the Democrats of the
free States are agreeing with him, while he omits to tell us that the
Democrats of any slave State agree with him.  If he has not thought
of this, I commend to his consideration the evidence in his own
declaration, on this day, of his becoming sectional too.  I see it
rapidly approaching.  Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral
contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly
approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been
thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be
crowded down his own throat.

Now, in regard to what Judge Douglas said (in the beginning of his
speech) about the Compromise of 1850 containing the principles of the
Nebraska Bill, although I have often presented my views upon that
subject, yet as I have not done so in this canvass, I will, if you
please, detain you a little with them.  I have always maintained, so
far as I was able, that there was nothing of the principle of the
Nebraska Bill in the Compromise of 1850 at all,--nothing whatever.
Where can you find the principle of the Nebraska Bill in that
Compromise?  If anywhere, in the two pieces of the Compromise
organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah.  It was expressly
provided in these two acts that when they came to be admitted into
the Union they should be admitted with or without slavery, as they
should choose, by their own constitutions.  Nothing was said in
either of those acts as to what was to be done in relation to slavery
during the Territorial existence of those Territories, while Henry
Clay constantly made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him
as a leader) that, in his opinion, the old Mexican laws would control
that question during the Territorial existence, and that these old
Mexican laws excluded slavery.  How can that be used as a principle
for declaring that during the Territorial existence as well as at the
time of framing the constitution the people, if you please, might
have slaves if they wanted them?  I am not discussing the question
whether it is right or wrong; but how are the New Mexican and Utah
laws patterns for the Nebraska Bill?  I maintain that the
organization of Utah and New Mexico did not establish a general
principle at all.  It had no feature of establishing a general
principle.  The acts to which I have referred were a part of a
general system of Compromises.  They did not lay down what was
proposed as a regular policy for the Territories, only an agreement
in this particular case to do in that way, because other things were
done that were to be a compensation for it.  They were allowed to
come in in that shape, because in another way it was paid for,
considering that as a part of that system of measures called the
Compromise of 1850, which finally included half-a-dozen acts.  It
included the admission of California as a free State, which was kept
out of the Union for half a year because it had formed a free
constitution.  It included the settlement of the boundary of Texas,
which had been undefined before, which was in itself a slavery
question; for if you pushed the line farther west, you made Texas
larger, and made more slave territory; while, if you drew the line
toward the east, you narrowed the boundary and diminished the domain
of slavery, and by so much increased free territory.  It included the
abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.  It
included the passage of a new Fugitive Slave law.  All these things
were put together, and, though passed in separate acts, were
nevertheless, in legislation (as the speeches at the time will show),
made to depend upon each other.  Each got votes with the
understanding that the other measures were to pass, and by this
system of compromise, in that series of measures, those two bills--
the New Mexico and Utah bills--were passed: and I say for that reason
they could not be taken as models, framed upon their own intrinsic
principle, for all future Territories.  And I have the evidence of
this in the fact that Judge Douglas, a year afterward, or more than a
year afterward, perhaps, when he first introduced bills for the
purpose of framing new Territories, did not attempt to follow these
bills of New Mexico and Utah; and even when he introduced this
Nebraska Bill, I think you will discover that he did not exactly
follow them.  But I do not wish to dwell at great length upon this
branch of the discussion.  My own opinion is, that a thorough
investigation will show most plainly that the New Mexico and Utah
bills were part of a system of compromise, and not designed as
patterns for future Territorial legislation; and that this Nebraska
Bill did not follow them as a pattern at all.

The Judge tells, in proceeding, that he is opposed to making any
odious distinctions between free and slave States.  I am altogether
unaware that the Republicans are in favor of making any odious
distinctions between the free and slave States.  But there is still a
difference, I think, between Judge Douglas and the Republicans in
this.  I suppose that the real difference between Judge Douglas and
his friends, and the Republicans on the contrary, is, that the Judge
is not in favor of making any difference between slavery and liberty;
that he is in favor of eradicating, of pressing out of view, the
questions of preference in this country for free or slave
institutions; and consequently every sentiment he utters discards the
idea that there is any wrong in slavery.  Everything that emanates
from him or his coadjutors in their course of policy carefully
excludes the thought that there is anything wrong in slavery.  All
their arguments, if you will consider them, will be seen to exclude
the thought that there is anything whatever wrong in slavery.  If you
will take the Judge's speeches, and select the short and pointed
sentences expressed by him,--as his declaration that he "don't care
whether slavery is voted up or down,"--you will see at once that this
is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that slavery is wrong.  If
you do admit that it is wrong, Judge Douglas cannot logically say he
don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down.  Judge Douglas
declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to
have it.  He can say that logically, if he says that there is no
wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he
cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.  He
insists that upon the score of equality the owners of slaves and
owners of property--of horses and every other sort of property--
should be alike, and hold them alike in a new Territory.  That is
perfectly logical if the two species of property are alike and are
equally founded in right.  But if you admit that one of them is
wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and wrong.
And from this difference of sentiment,--the belief on the part of one
that the institution is wrong, and a policy springing from that
belief which looks to the arrest of the enlargement of that wrong,
and this other sentiment, that it is no wrong, and a policy sprung
from that sentiment, which will tolerate no idea of preventing the
wrong from growing larger, and looks to there never being an end to
it through all the existence of things,--arises the real difference
between Judge Douglas and his friends on the one hand and the
Republicans on the other.  Now, I confess myself as belonging to that
class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and
political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us
and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way,
and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown
about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the
prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as
a wrong it may come to an end.

Judge Douglas has again, for, I believe, the fifth time, if not the
seventh, in my presence, reiterated his charge of a conspiracy or
combination between the National Democrats and Republicans.  What
evidence Judge Douglas has upon this subject I know not, inasmuch as
he never favors us with any.  I have said upon a former occasion, and
I do not choose to suppress it now, that I have no objection to the
division in the Judge's party.  He got it up himself.  It was all his
and their work.  He had, I think, a great deal more to do with the
steps that led to the Lecompton Constitution than Mr. Buchanan had;
though at last, when they reached it, they quarreled over it, and
their friends divided upon it.  I am very free to confess to Judge
Douglas that I have no objection to the division; but I defy the
Judge to show any evidence that I have in any way promoted that
division, unless he insists on being a witness himself in merely
saying so.  I can give all fair friends of Judge Douglas here to
understand exactly the view that Republicans take in regard to that
division.  Don't you remember how two years ago the opponents of the
Democratic party were divided between Fremont and Fillmore?  I guess
you do.  Any Democrat who remembers that division will remember also
that he was at the time very glad of it, and then he will be able to
see all there is between the National Democrats and the Republicans.
What we now think of the two divisions of Democrats, you then thought
of the Fremont and Fillmore divisions.  That is all there is of it.

But if the Judge continues to put forward the declaration that there
is an unholy and unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the
National Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving
him as an entirely competent witness upon that subject.  I want to
call to the Judge's attention an attack he made upon me in the first
one of these
debates, at Ottawa, on the 21st of August.  In order to fix extreme
Abolitionism upon me, Judge Douglas read a set of resolutions which
he declared had been passed by a Republican State Convention, in
October, 1854, at Springfield, Illinois, and he declared I had taken
part in that Convention.  It turned out that although a few men
calling themselves an anti-Nebraska State Convention had sat at
Springfield about that time, yet neither did I take any part in it,
nor did it pass the resolutions or any such resolutions as Judge
Douglas read.  So apparent had it become that the resolutions which
he read had not been passed at Springfield at all, nor by a State
Convention in which I had taken part, that seven days afterward, at
Freeport, Judge Douglas declared that he had been misled by Charles
H.  Lanphier, editor of the State Register, and Thomas L.  Harris,
member of Congress in that district, and he promised in that speech
that when he went to Springfield he would investigate the matter.
Since then Judge Douglas has been to Springfield, and I presume has
made the investigation; but a month has passed since he has been
there, and, so far as I know, he has made no report of the result of
his investigation.  I have waited as I think sufficient time for the
report of that investigation, and I have some curiosity to see and
hear it.  A fraud, an absolute forgery was committed, and the
perpetration of it was traced to the three,--Lanphier, Harris, and
Douglas.  Whether it can be narrowed in any way so as to exonerate
any one of them, is what Judge Douglas's report would probably show.

It is true that the set of resolutions read by Judge Douglas were
published in the Illinois State Register on the 16th of October,
1854, as being the resolutions of an anti-Nebraska Convention which
had sat in that same month of October, at Springfield.  But it is
also true that the publication in the Register was a forgery then,
and the question is still behind, which of the three, if not all of
them, committed that forgery.  The idea that it was done by mistake
is absurd.  The article in the Illinois State Register contains part
of the real proceedings of that Springfield Convention, showing that
the writer of the article had the real proceedings before him, and
purposely threw out the genuine resolutions passed by the Convention
and fraudulently substituted the others.  Lanphier then, as now, was
the editor of the Register, so that there seems to be but little room
for his escape.  But then it is to be borne in mind that Lanphier had
less interest in the object of that forgery than either of the other
two.  The main object of that forgery at that time was to beat Yates
and elect Harris to Congress, and that object was known to be
exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at that time.  Harris and Douglas
were both in Springfield when the Convention was in session, and
although they both left before the fraud appeared in the Register,
subsequent events show that they have both had their eyes fixed upon
that Convention.

The fraud having been apparently successful upon the occasion, both
Harris and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to
put it to new uses.  As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband
was brought home with his body full of eels, said when she was asked
what was to be done with him, "Take the eels out and set him again,"
so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out
of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris's election, and set
the fraud again more than once.  On the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas
attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull on the floor of the Senate
of the United States, as will appear from the appendix of the
Congressional Globe of that date.

On the 9th of August, Harris attempted it again upon Norton in the
House of Representatives, as will appear by the same documents,--the
appendix to the Congressional Globe of that date.  On the 21st of
August last, all three--Lanphier, Douglas, and Harris--reattempted it
upon me at Ottawa.  It has been clung to and played out again and
again as an exceedingly high trump by this blessed trio.  And now
that it has been discovered publicly to be a fraud we find that Judge
Douglas manifests no surprise at it at all.  He makes no complaint of
Lanphier, who must have known it to be a fraud from the beginning.
He, Lanphier, and Harris are just as cozy now and just as active in
the concoction of new schemes as they were before the general
discovery of this fraud.  Now, all this is very natural if they are
all alike guilty in that fraud, and it is very unnatural if any one
of them is innocent.  Lanphier perhaps insists that the rule of honor
among thieves does not quite require him to take all upon himself,
and consequently my friend Judge Douglas finds it difficult to make a
satisfactory report upon his investigation.  But meanwhile the three
are agreed that each is "a most honorable man."

Judge Douglas requires an indorsement of his truth and honor by a
re-election to the United States Senate, and he makes and reports
against me and against Judge Trumbull, day after day, charges which
we know to be utterly untrue, without for a moment seeming to think
that this one unexplained fraud, which he promised to investigate,
will be the least drawback to his claim to belief.  Harris ditto.  He
asks a re-election to the lower House of Congress without seeming to
remember at all that he is involved in this dishonorable fraud!  The
Illinois State Register, edited by Lanphier, then, as now, the
central organ of both Harris and Douglas, continues to din the public
ear with this assertion, without seeming to suspect that these
assertions are at all lacking in title to belief.

After all, the question still recurs upon us, How did that fraud
originally get into the State Register?  Lanphier then, as now, was
the editor of that paper.  Lanphier knows.  Lanphier cannot be
ignorant of how and by whom it was originally concocted.  Can he be
induced to tell, or, if he has told, can Judge Douglas be induced to
tell how it originally was concocted?  It may be true that Lanphier
insists that the two men for whose benefit it was originally devised
shall at least bear their share of it!  How that is, I do not know,
and while it remains unexplained I hope to be pardoned if I insist
that the mere fact of Judge Douglas making charges against Trumbull
and myself is not quite sufficient evidence to establish them!

While we were at Freeport, in one of these joint discussions, I
answered certain interrogatories which Judge Douglas had propounded
to me, and then in turn propounded some to him, which he in a sort of
way answered.  The third one of these interrogatories I have with me,
and wish now to make some comments upon it.  It was in these words:
 "If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that the
States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of
acquiescing in, adhering to, and following such decision as a rule of
political action?"

To this interrogatory Judge Douglas made no answer in any just sense
of the word.  He contented himself with sneering at the thought that
it was possible for the Supreme Court ever to make such a decision.
He sneered at me for propounding the interrogatory.  I had not
propounded it without some reflection, and I wish now to address to
this audience some remarks upon it.

In the second clause of the sixth article, I believe it is, of the
Constitution of the United States, we find the following language:

"This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be
made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme
law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound
thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the
contrary notwithstanding."

The essence of the Dred Scott case is compressed into the sentence
which I will now read:

"Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion,
upon a different point, the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."

I repeat it, "The right of property in a slave is distinctly and
expressly affirmed in the Constitution"!  What is it to be "affirmed"
in the Constitution?  Made firm in the Constitution, so made that it
cannot be separated from the Constitution without breaking the
Constitution; durable as the Constitution, and part of the
Constitution.  Now, remembering the provision of the Constitution
which I have read--affirming that that instrument is the supreme law
of the land; that the judges of every State shall be bound by it, any
law or constitution of any State to the contrary notwithstanding;
that the right of property in a slave is affirmed in that
Constitution, is made, formed into, and cannot be separated from it
without breaking it; durable as the instrument; part of the
instrument;--what follows as a short and even syllogistic argument
from it?  I think it follows, and I submit to the consideration of
men capable of arguing whether, as I state it, in syllogistic form,
the argument has any fault in it:

Nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy a right
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United
States.

The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed
in the Constitution of the United States.

Therefore, nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can
destroy the right of property in a slave.

I believe that no fault can be pointed out in that argument; assuming
the truth of the premises, the conclusion, so far as I have capacity
at all to understand it, follows inevitably.  There is a fault in it
as I think, but the fault is not in the reasoning; but the falsehood
in fact is a fault of the premises.  I believe that the right of
property in a slave is not distinctly and expressly affirmed in the
Constitution, and Judge Douglas thinks it is.  I believe that the
Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain
for the place in the Constitution where the right of property in a
slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed I say, therefore, that I
think one of the premises is not true in fact.  But it is true with
Judge Douglas.  It is true with the Supreme Court who pronounced it.
They are estopped from denying it, and being estopped from denying
it, the conclusion follows that, the Constitution of the United
States being the supreme law, no constitution or law can interfere
with it.  It being affirmed in the decision that the right of
property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the
Constitution, the conclusion inevitably follows that no State law or
constitution can destroy that right.  I then say to Judge Douglas and
to all others that I think it will take a better answer than a sneer
to show that those who have said that the right of property in a
slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, are
not prepared to show that no constitution or law can destroy that
right.  I say I believe it will take a far better argument than a
mere sneer to show to the minds of intelligent men that whoever has
so said is not prepared, whenever public sentiment is so far advanced
as to justify it, to say the other.  This is but an opinion, and the
opinion of one very humble man; but it is my opinion that the Dred
Scott decision, as it is, never would have been made in its present
form if the party that made it had not been sustained previously by
the elections.  My own opinion is, that the new Dred Scott decision,
deciding against the right of the people of the States to exclude
slavery, will never be made if that party is not sustained by the
elections.  I believe, further, that it is just as sure to be made as
to-morrow is to come, if that party shall be sustained.  I have said,
upon a former occasion, and I repeat it now, that the course of
arguement that Judge Douglas makes use of upon this subject (I charge
not his motives in this), is preparing the public mind for that new
Dred Scott decision.  I have asked him again to point out to me the
reasons for his first adherence to the Dred Scott decision as it is.
I have turned his attention to the fact that General Jackson differed
with him in regard to the political obligation of a Supreme Court
decision.  I have asked his attention to the fact that Jefferson
differed with him in regard to the political obligation of a Supreme
Court decision.  Jefferson said that "Judges are as honest as other
men, and not more so."  And he said, substantially, that whenever a
free people should give up in absolute submission to any department
of government, retaining for themselves no appeal from it, their
liberties were gone.  I have asked his attention to the fact that the
Cincinnati platform, upon which he says he stands, disregards a
time-honored decision of the Supreme Court, in denying the power of
Congress to establish a National Bank.  I have asked his attention to
the fact that he himself was one of the most active instruments at
one time in breaking down the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois
because it had made a decision distasteful to him,--a struggle ending
in the remarkable circumstance of his sitting down as one of the new
Judges who were to overslaugh that decision; getting his title of
Judge in that very way.

So far in this controversy I can get no answer at all from Judge
Douglas upon these subjects.  Not one can I get from him, except that
he swells himself up and says, "All of us who stand by the decision
of the Supreme Court are the friends of the Constitution; all you
fellows that dare question it in any way are the enemies of the
Constitution."  Now, in this very devoted adherence to this decision,
in opposition to all the great political leaders whom he has
recognized as leaders, in opposition to his former self and history,
there is something very marked.  And the manner in which he adheres
to it,--not as being right upon the merits, as he conceives (because
he did not discuss that at all), but as being absolutely obligatory
upon every one simply because of the source from whence it comes, as
that which no man can gainsay, whatever it may be,--this is another
marked feature of his adherence to that decision.  It marks it in
this respect, that it commits him to the next decision, whenever it
comes, as being as obligatory as this one, since he does not
investigate it, and won't inquire whether this opinion is right or
wrong.  So he takes the next one without inquiring whether it is
right or wrong.  He teaches men this doctrine, and in so doing
prepares the public mind to take the next decision when it comes,
without any inquiry.  In this I think I argue fairly (without
questioning motives at all) that Judge Douglas is most ingeniously
and powerfully preparing the public mind to take that decision when
it comes; and not only so, but he is doing it in various other ways.
In these general maxims about liberty, in his assertions that he
"don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down,"; that
"whoever wants slavery has a right to have it"; that "upon principles
of equality it should be allowed to go everywhere"; that "there is no
inconsistency between free and slave institutions"--in this he is
also preparing (whether purposely or not) the way for making the
institution of slavery national!  I repeat again, for I wish no
misunderstanding, that I do not charge that he means it so; but I
call upon your minds to inquire, if you were going to get the best
instrument you could, and then set it to work in the most ingenious
way, to prepare the public mind for this movement, operating in the
free States, where there is now an abhorrence of the institution of
slavery, could you find an instrument so capable of doing it as Judge
Douglas, or one employed in so apt a way to do it?

I have said once before, and I will repeat it now, that Mr. Clay,
when he was once answering an objection to the Colonization Society,
that it had a tendency to the ultimate emancipation of the slaves,
said that:

"Those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of the
Colonization Society: they must go back to the era of our liberty and
independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its annual joyous
return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must
penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the
love of liberty!"

And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that
Judge Douglas and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no
share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence,
is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far
as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous
return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he
contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he
is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and
eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is
in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast
influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and
national.

There is, my friends, only one other point to which I will call your
attention for the remaining time that I have left me, and perhaps I
shall not occupy the entire time that I have, as that one point may
not take me clear through it.

Among the interrogatories that Judge Douglas propounded to me at
Freeport, there was one in about this language:

"Are you opposed to the acquisition of any further territory to the
United States, unless slavery shall first be prohibited therein?"

I answered, as I thought, in this way: that I am not generally
opposed to the acquisition of additional territory, and that I would
support a proposition for the acquisition of additional territory
according as my supporting it was or was not calculated to aggravate
this slavery question amongst us.  I then proposed to Judge Douglas
another interrogatory, which was correlative to that: "Are you in
favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how it may
affect us upon the slavery question?"  Judge Douglas answered,--that
is, in his own way he answered it.  I believe that, although he took
a good many words to answer it, it was a little more fully answered
than any other.  The substance of his answer was that this country
would continue to expand; that it would need additional territory;
that it was as absurd to suppose that we could continue upon our
present territory, enlarging in population as we are, as it would be
to hoop a boy twelve years of age, and expect him to grow to man's
size without bursting the hoops.  I believe it was something like
that.  Consequently, he was in favor of the acquisition of further
territory as fast as we might need it, in disregard of how it might
affect the slavery question.  I do not say this as giving his exact
language, but he said so substantially; and he would leave the
question of slavery, where the territory was acquired, to be settled
by the people of the acquired territory.  ["That's the doctrine."]
May be it is; let us consider that for a while.  This will probably,
in the run of things, become one of the concrete manifestations of
this slavery question.  If Judge Douglas's policy upon this question
succeeds, and gets fairly settled down, until all opposition is
crushed out, the next thing will be a grab for the territory of poor
Mexico, an invasion of the rich lands of South America, then the
adjoining islands will follow, each one of which promises additional
slave-fields.  And this question is to be left to the people of those
countries for settlement.  When we get Mexico, I don't know whether
the Judge will be in favor of the Mexican people that we get with it
settling that question for themselves and all others; because we know
the Judge has a great horror for mongrels, and I understand that the
people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels.  I understand
that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure
white, and I suppose from the Judge's previous declaration that when
we get Mexico, or any considerable portion of it, that he will be in
favor of these mongrels settling the question, which would bring him
somewhat into collision with his horror of an inferior race.

It is to be remembered, though, that this power of acquiring
additional territory is a power confided to the President and the
Senate of the United States.  It is a power not under the control of
the representatives of the people any further than they, the
President and the Senate, can be considered the representatives of
the people.  Let me illustrate that by a case we have in our history.
When we acquired the territory from Mexico in the Mexican War, the
House of Representatives, composed of the immediate representatives
of the people, all the time insisted that the territory thus to be
acquired should be brought in upon condition that slavery should be
forever prohibited therein, upon the terms and in the language that
slavery had been prohibited from coming into this country.  That was
insisted upon constantly and never failed to call forth an assurance
that any territory thus acquired should have that prohibition in it,
so far as the House of Representatives was concerned.  But at last
the President and Senate acquired the territory without asking the
House of Representatives anything about it, and took it without that
prohibition.  They have the power of acquiring territory without the
immediate representatives of the people being called upon to say
anything about it, and thus furnishing a very apt and powerful means
of bringing new territory into the Union, and, when it is once
brought into the country, involving us anew in this slavery
agitation.  It is therefore, as I think, a very important question
for due consideration of the American people, whether the policy of
bringing in additional territory, without considering at all how it
will operate upon the safety of the Union in reference to this one
great disturbing element in our national politics, shall be adopted
as the policy of the country.  You will bear in mind that it is to be
acquired, according to the Judge's view, as fast as it is needed, and
the indefinite part of this proposition is that we have only Judge
Douglas and his class of men to decide how fast it is needed.  We
have no clear and certain way of determining or demonstrating how
fast territory is needed by the necessities of the country.  Whoever
wants to go out filibustering, then, thinks that more territory is
needed.  Whoever wants wider slave-fields feels sure that some
additional territory is needed as slave territory.  Then it is as
easy to show the necessity of additional slave-territory as it is to
assert anything that is incapable of absolute demonstration.
Whatever motive a man or a set of men may have for making annexation
of property or territory, it is very easy to assert, but much less
easy to disprove, that it is necessary for the wants of the country.

And now it only remains for me to say that I think it is a very grave
question for the people of this Union to consider, whether, in view
of the fact that this slavery question has been the only one that has
ever endangered our Republican institutions, the only one that has
ever threatened or menaced a dissolution of the Union, that has ever
disturbed us in such a way as to make us fear for the perpetuity of
our liberty,--in view of these facts, I think it is an exceedingly
interesting and important question for this people to consider
whether we shall engage in the policy of acquiring additional
territory, discarding altogether from our consideration, while
obtaining new territory, the question how it may affect us in regard
to this, the only endangering element to our liberties and national
greatness.  The Judge's view has been expressed.  I, in my answer to
his question, have expressed mine.  I think it will become an
important and practical question.  Our views are before the public.
I am willing and anxious that they should consider them fully; that
they should turn it about and consider the importance of the
question, and arrive at a just conclusion as to whether it is or is
not wise in the people of this Union, in the acquisition of new
territory, to consider whether it will add to the disturbance that is
existing amongst us--whether it will add to the one only danger that
has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union or our own liberties.
I think it is extremely important that they shall decide, and rightly
decide, that question before entering upon that policy.

And now, my friends, having said the little I wish to say upon this
head, whether I have occupied the whole of the remnant of my time or
not, I believe I could not enter upon any new topic so as to treat it
fully, without transcending my time, which I would not for a moment
think of doing.  I give way to Judge Douglas.




SIXTH JOINT DEBATE,

AT QUINCY, OCTOBER 13, 1858.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have had no immediate conference with Judge
Douglas, but I will venture to say that he and I will perfectly agree
that your entire silence, both when I speak and when he speaks, will
be most agreeable to us.

In the month of May, 1856, the elements in the State of Illinois
which have since been consolidated into the Republican party
assembled together in a State Convention at Bloomington.  They
adopted at that time what, in political language, is called a
platform.  In June of the same year the elements of the Republican
party in the nation assembled together in a National Convention at
Philadelphia.  They adopted what is called the National Platform.  In
June, 1858,--the present year,--the Republicans of Illinois
reassembled at Springfield, in State Convention, and adopted again
their platform, as I suppose not differing in any essential
particular from either of the former ones, but perhaps adding
something in relation to the new developments of political progress
in the country.

The Convention that assembled in June last did me the honor, if it be
one, and I esteem it such, to nominate me as their candidate for the
United States Senate.  I have supposed that, in entering upon this
canvass, I stood generally upon these platforms.  We are now met
together on the 13th of October of the same year, only four months
from the adoption of the last platform, and I am unaware that in this
canvass, from the beginning until to-day, any one of our adversaries
has taken hold of our platforms, or laid his finger upon anything
that he calls wrong in them.

In the very first one of these joint discussions between Senator
Douglas and myself, Senator Douglas, without alluding at all to these
platforms, or any one of them, of which I have spoken, attempted to
hold me responsible for a set of resolutions passed long before the
meeting of either one of these conventions of which I have spoken.
And as a ground for holding me responsible for these resolutions, he
assumed that they had been passed at a State Convention of the
Republican party, and that I took part in that Convention.  It was
discovered afterward that this was erroneous, that the resolutions
which he endeavored to hold me responsible for had not been passed by
any State Convention anywhere, had not been passed at Springfield,
where he supposed they had, or assumed that they had, and that they
had been passed in no convention in which I had taken part.  The
Judge, nevertheless, was not willing to give up the point that he was
endeavoring to make upon me, and he therefore thought to still hold
me to the point that he was endeavoring to make, by showing that the
resolutions that he read had been passed at a local convention in the
northern part of the State, although it was not a local convention
that embraced my residence at all, nor one that reached, as I
suppose, nearer than one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles of
where I was when it met, nor one in which I took any part at all.  He
also introduced other resolutions, passed at other meetings, and by
combining the whole, although they were all antecedent to the two
State Conventions and the one National Convention I have mentioned,
still he insisted, and now insists, as I understand, that I am in
some way responsible for them.

At Jonesboro, on our third meeting, I insisted to the Judge that I
was in no way rightfully held responsible for the proceedings of this
local meeting or convention, in which I had taken no part, and in
which I was in no way embraced; but I insisted to him that if he
thought I was responsible for every man or every set of men
everywhere, who happen to be my friends, the rule ought to work both
ways, and he ought to be responsible for the acts and resolutions of
all men or sets of men who were or are now his supporters and
friends, and gave him a pretty long string of resolutions, passed by
men who are now his friends, and announcing doctrines for which he
does not desire to be held responsible.

This still does not satisfy Judge Douglas.  He still adheres to his
proposition, that I am responsible for what some of my friends in
different parts of the State have done, but that he is not
responsible for what his have done.  At least, so I understand him.
But in addition to that, the Judge, at our meeting in Galesburgh,
last week, undertakes to establish that I am guilty of a species of
double dealing with the public; that I make speeches of a certain
sort in the north, among the Abolitionists, which I would not make in
the south, and that I make speeches of a certain sort in the south
which I would not make in the north.  I apprehend, in the course I
have marked out for myself, that I shall not have to dwell at very
great length upon this subject.

As this was done in the Judge's opening speech at Galesburgh, I had
an opportunity, as I had the middle speech then, of saying something
in answer to it.  He brought forward a quotation or two from a speech
of mine delivered at Chicago, and then, to contrast with it, he
brought forward an extract from a speech of mine at Charleston, in
which he insisted that I was greatly inconsistent, and insisted that
his conclusion followed, that I was playing a double part, and
speaking in one region one way, and in another region another way.  I
have not time now to dwell on this as long as I would like, and wish
only now to requote that portion of my speech at Charleston which the
Judge quoted, and then make some comments upon it.  This he quotes
from me as being delivered at Charleston, and I believe correctly:

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of
bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the
white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of
making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold
office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in
addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the
white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living
together on terms of social and political equality.  And inasmuch as
they cannot so live while they do remain together, there must be the
position of superior and inferior.  I am as much as any other man in
favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

This, I believe, is the entire quotation from Charleston speech, as
Judge Douglas made it his comments are as follows:

"Yes, here you find men who hurrah for Lincoln, and say he is right
when he discards all distinction between races, or when he declares
that he discards the doctrine that there is such a thing as a
superior and inferior race; and Abolitionists are required and
expected to vote for Mr. Lincoln because he goes for the equality of
races, holding that in the Declaration of Independence the white man
and negro were declared equal, and endowed by divine law with
equality.  And down South, with the old-line Whigs, with the
Kentuckians, the Virginians and the Tennesseeans, he tells you that
there is a physical difference between the races, making the one
superior, the other inferior, and he is in favor of maintaining the
superiority of the white race over the negro."

Those are the Judges comments.  Now, I wish to show you that a month,
or only lacking three days of a month, before I made the speech at
Charleston, which the Judge quotes from, he had himself heard me say
substantially the same thing  It was in our first meeting, at Ottawa-
-and I will say a word about where it was, and the atmosphere it was
in, after a while--but at our first meeting, at Ottawa, I read an
extract from an old speech of mine, made nearly four years ago, not
merely to show my sentiments, but to show that my sentiments were
long entertained and openly expressed; in which extract I expressly
declared that my own feelings would not admit a social and political
equality between the white and black races, and that even if my own
feelings would admit of it, I still knew that the public sentiment of
the country would not, and that such a thing was an utter
impossibility, or substantially that.  That extract from my old
speech the reporters by some sort of accident passed over, and it was
not reported.  I lay no blame upon anybody.  I suppose they thought
that I would hand it over to them, and dropped reporting while I was
giving it, but afterward went away without getting it from me.  At
the end of that quotation from my old speech, which I read at Ottawa,
I made the comments which were reported at that time, and which I
will now read, and ask you to notice how very nearly they are the
same as Judge Douglas says were delivered by me down in Egypt.  After
reading, I added these words:

"Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any great length; but this
is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the
institution of slavery or the black race, and this is the whole of
it: anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and
political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastical
arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be
a chestnut horse.  I will say here, while upon this subject, that I
have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no right
to do so.  I have no inclination to do so.  I have no purpose to
introduce political and social equality between the white and black
races.  There is a physical difference between the two which, in my
judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on the
footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity
that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in
favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.  I
have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that,
notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the
negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration
of Independence,--the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.  I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white
man.  I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many
respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not in intellectual and
moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread, without the
leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and
the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man."

I have chiefly introduced this for the purpose of meeting the Judge's
charge that the quotation he took from my Charleston speech was what
I would say down South among the Kentuckians, the Virginians, etc.,
but would not say in the regions in which was supposed to be more of
the Abolition element.  I now make this comment: That speech from
which I have now read the quotation, and which is there given
correctly--perhaps too much so for good taste--was made away up North
in the Abolition District of this State par excellence, in the
Lovejoy District, in the personal presence of Lovejoy, for he was on
the stand with us when I made it.  It had been made and put in print
in that region only three days less than a month before the speech
made at Charleston, the like of which Judge Douglas thinks I would
not make where there was any Abolition element.  I only refer to this
matter to say that I am altogether unconscious of having attempted
any double-dealing anywhere; that upon one occasion I may say one
thing, and leave other things unsaid, and vice versa, but that I have
said anything on one occasion that is inconsistent with what I have
said elsewhere, I deny, at least I deny it so far as the intention is
concerned.  I find that I have devoted to this topic a larger portion
of my time than I had intended.  I wished to show, but I will pass it
upon this occasion, that in the sentiment I have occasionally
advanced upon the Declaration of Independence I am entirely borne out
by the sentiments advanced by our old Whig leader, Henry Clay, and I
have the book here to show it from but because I have already
occupied more time than I intended to do on that topic, I pass over
it.

At Galesburgh, I tried to show that by the Dred Scott decision,
pushed to its legitimate consequences, slavery would be established
in all the States as well as in the Territories.  I did this because,
upon a former occasion, I had asked Judge Douglas whether, if the
Supreme Court should make a decision declaring that the States had
not the power to exclude slavery from their limits, he would adopt
and follow that decision as a rule of political action; and because
he had not directly answered that question, but had merely contented
himself with sneering at it, I again introduced it, and tried to show
that the conclusion that I stated followed inevitably and logically
from the proposition already decided by the court.  Judge Douglas had
the privilege of replying to me at Galesburgh, and again he gave me
no direct answer as to whether he would or would not sustain such a
decision if made.  I give him his third chance to say yes or no.  He
is not obliged to do either, probably he will not do either; but I
give him the third chance.  I tried to show then that this result,
this conclusion, inevitably followed from the point already decided
by the court.  The Judge, in his reply, again sneers at the thought
of the court making any such decision, and in the course of his
remarks upon this subject uses the language which I will now read.
Speaking of me, the Judge says:

"He goes on and insists that the Dred Scott decision would carry
slavery into the free States, notwithstanding the decision itself
says the contrary."  And he adds:

"Mr. Lincoln knows that there is no member of the Supreme Court that
holds that doctrine.  He knows that every one of them in their
opinions held the reverse."

I especially introduce this subject again for the purpose of saying
that I have the Dred Scott decision here, and I will thank Judge
Douglas to lay his finger upon the place in the entire opinions of
the court where any one of them "says the contrary."  It is very hard
to affirm a negative with entire confidence.  I say, however, that I
have examined that decision with a good deal of care, as a lawyer
examines a decision and, so far as I have been able to do so, the
court has nowhere in its opinions said that the States have the power
to exclude slavery, nor have they used other language substantially
that, I also say, so far as I can find, not one of the concurring
judges has said that the States can exclude slavery, nor said
anything that was substantially that.  The nearest approach that any
one of them has made to it, so far as I can find, was by Judge
Nelson, and the approach he made to it was exactly, in substance, the
Nebraska Bill,--that the States had the exclusive power over the
question of slavery, so far as they are not limited by the
Constitution of the United States.  I asked the question, therefore,
if the non-concurring judges, McLean or Curtis, had asked to get an
express declaration that the States could absolutely exclude slavery
from their limits, what reason have we to believe that it would not
have been voted down by the majority of the judges, just as Chase's
amendment was voted down by Judge Douglas and his compeers when it
was offered to the Nebraska Bill.

Also, at Galesburgh, I said something in regard to those Springfield
resolutions that Judge Douglas had attempted to use upon me at
Ottawa, and commented at some length upon the fact that they were, as
presented, not genuine.  Judge Douglas in his reply to me seemed to
be somewhat exasperated.  He said he would never have believed that
Abraham Lincoln, as he kindly called me, would have attempted such a
thing as I had attempted upon that occasion; and among other
expressions which he used toward me, was that I dared to say forgery,
that I had dared to say forgery [turning to Judge Douglas].  Yes,
Judge, I did dare to say forgery.  But in this political canvass the
Judge ought to remember that I was not the first who dared to say
forgery.  At Jacksonville, Judge Douglas made a speech in answer to
something said by Judge Trumbull, and at the close of what he said
upon that subject, he dared to say that Trumbull had forged his
evidence.  He said, too, that he should not concern himself with
Trumbull any more, but thereafter he should hold Lincoln responsible
for the slanders upon him.  When I met him at Charleston after that,
although I think that I should not have noticed the subject if he had
not said he would hold me responsible for it, I spread out before him
the statements of the evidence that Judge Trumbull had used, and I
asked Judge Douglas, piece by piece, to put his finger upon one piece
of all that evidence that he would say was a forgery!  When I went
through with each and every piece, Judge Douglas did not dare then to
say that any piece of it was a forgery.  So it seems that there are
some things that Judge Douglas dares to do, and some that he dares
not to do.

[A voice: It is the same thing with you.]

Yes, sir, it is the same thing with me.  I do dare to say forgery
when it is true, and don't dare to say forgery when it is false.  Now
I will say here to this audience and to Judge Douglas I have not
dared to say he committed a forgery, and I never shall until I know
it; but I did dare to say--just to suggest to the Judge--that a
forgery had been committed, which by his own showing had been traced
to him and two of his friends.  I dared to suggest to him that he had
expressly promised in one of his public speeches to investigate that
matter, and I dared to suggest to him that there was an implied
promise that when he investigated it he would make known the result.
I dared to suggest to the Judge that he could not expect to be quite
clear of suspicion of that fraud, for since the time that promise was
made he had been with those friends, and had not kept his promise in
regard to the investigation and the report upon it.  I am not a very
daring man, but I dared that much, Judge, and I am not much scared
about it yet.  When the Judge says he would n't have believed of
Abraham Lincoln that he would have made such an attempt as that he
reminds me of the fact that he entered upon this canvass with the
purpose to treat me courteously; that touched me somewhat.  It sets
me to thinking.  I was aware, when it was first agreed that Judge
Douglas and I were to have these seven joint discussions, that they
were the successive acts of a drama, perhaps I should say, to be
enacted, not merely in the face of audiences like this, but in the
face of the nation, and to some extent, by my relation to him, and
not from anything in myself, in the face of the world; and I am
anxious that they should be conducted with dignity and in the good
temper which would be befitting the vast audiences before which it
was conducted.  But when Judge Douglas got home from Washington and
made his first speech in Chicago, the evening afterward I made some
sort of a reply to it.  His second speech was made at Bloomington, in
which he commented upon my speech at Chicago and said that I had used
language ingeniously contrived to conceal my intentions, or words to
that effect.  Now, I understand that this is an imputation upon my
veracity and my candor.  I do not know what the Judge understood by
it, but in our first discussion, at Ottawa, he led off by charging a
bargain, somewhat corrupt in its character, upon Trumbull and
myself,--that we had entered into a bargain, one of the terms of
which was that Trumbull was to Abolitionize the old Democratic party,
and I (Lincoln) was to Abolitionize the old Whig party; I pretending
to be as good an old-line Whig as ever.  Judge Douglas may not
understand that he implicated my truthfulness and my honor when he
said I was doing one thing and pretending another; and I
misunderstood him if he thought he was treating me in a dignified
way, as a man of honor and truth, as he now claims he was disposed to
treat me.  Even after that time, at Galesburgh, when he brings
forward an extract from a speech made at Chicago and an extract from
a speech made at Charleston, to prove that I was trying to play a
double part, that I was trying to cheat the public, and get votes
upon one set of principles at one place, and upon another set of
principles at another place,--I do not understand but what he
impeaches my honor, my veracity, and my candor; and because he does
this, I do not understand that I am bound, if I see a truthful ground
for it, to keep my hands off of him.  As soon as I learned that Judge
Douglas was disposed to treat me in this way, I signified in one of
my speeches that I should be driven to draw upon whatever of humble
resources I might have,--to adopt a new course with him.  I was not
entirely sure that I should be able to hold my own with him, but I at
least had the purpose made to do as well as I could upon him; and now
I say that I will not be the first to cry "Hold."  I think it
originated with the Judge, and when he quits, I probably will.  But I
shall not ask any favors at all.  He asks me, or he asks the
audience, if I wish to push this matter to the point of personal
difficulty.  I tell him, no.  He did not make a mistake, in one of
his early speeches, when he called me an "amiable" man, though
perhaps he did when he called me an "intelligent" man.  It really
hurts me very much to suppose that I have wronged anybody on earth.
I again tell him, no!  I very much prefer, when this canvass shall be
over, however it may result, that we at least part without any bitter
recollections of personal difficulties.

The Judge, in his concluding speech at Galesburgh, says that I was
pushing this matter to a personal difficulty, to avoid the
responsibility for the enormity of my principles.  I say to the Judge
and this audience, now, that I will again state our principles, as
well as I hastily can, in all their enormity, and if the Judge
hereafter chooses to confine himself to a war upon these principles,
he will probably not find me departing from the same course.

We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery.  It is a
matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element.  It is
the opinion of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon
it, that it is a dangerous element.  We keep up a controversy in
regard to it.  That controversy necessarily springs from difference
of opinion; and if we can learn exactly--can reduce to the lowest
elements--what that difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be
better prepared for discussing the different systems of policy that
we would propose in regard to that disturbing element.  I suggest
that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest of terms, is no
other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong
and those who do not think it wrong.  The Republican party think it
wrong; we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong.  We
think it as a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the
States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to
say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole
nation.  Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy
that shall deal with it as a wrong.  We deal with it as with any
other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and
so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of
an end to it.  We have a due regard to the actual presence of it
amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any
satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown about
it.  I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence in the
nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at
all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that
we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to
do it.  We go further than that: we don't propose to disturb it
where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us.
We think the Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the
District of Columbia.  Still, we do not propose to do that, unless it
should be in terms which I don't suppose the nation is very likely
soon to agree to,--the terms of making the emancipation gradual, and
compensating the unwilling owners.  Where we suppose we have the
constitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference to the
actual existence of the institution and the difficulties thrown about
it.  We also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread
itself.  We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its
present limits.  We don't suppose that in doing this we violate
anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or anything
due to the constitutional guaranties thrown around it.

We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which I
ought perhaps to address you a few words.  We do not propose that
when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a
mob, will decide him to be free.  We do not propose that, when any
other one, or one thousand, shall be decided by that court to be
slaves, we will in any violent way disturb the rights of property
thus settled; but we nevertheless do oppose that decision as a
political rule which shall be binding on the voter to vote for nobody
who thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the members of
Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually
concur with the principles of that decision.  We do not propose to be
bound by it as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays
the foundation, not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we
consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil
into the States themselves.  We propose so resisting it as to have it
reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this
subject.

I will add this: that if there be any man who does not believe that
slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in
any one of them, that man is misplaced, and ought to leave us; while
on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is
impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and
is impatient of the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and
would act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with
us.  He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard,
so far as we are capable of understanding them, for all these things.
This, gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of
our principles in all their enormity.
I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to
me,--a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and therefore
it goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a
wrong.  That policy is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is
the Democratic sentiment.  If there be a doubt in the mind of any one
of this vast audience that this is really the central idea of the
Democratic party in relation to this subject, I ask him to bear with
me while I state a few things tending, as I think, to prove that
proposition.  In the first place, the leading man--I think I may do
my friend Judge Douglas the honor of calling him such advocating the
present Democratic policy never himself says it is wrong.  He has the
high distinction, so far as I know, of never having said slavery is
either right or wrong.  Almost everybody else says one or the other,
but the Judge never does.  If there be a man in the Democratic party
who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I suggest to
him, in the first place, that his leader don't talk as he does, for
he never says that it is wrong.  In the second place, I suggest to
him that if he will examine the policy proposed to be carried
forward, he will find that he carefully excludes the idea that there
is anything wrong in it.  If you will examine the arguments that are
made on it, you will find that every one carefully excludes the idea
that there is anything wrong in slavery.  Perhaps that Democrat who
says he is as much opposed to slavery as I am will tell me that I am
wrong about this.  I wish him to examine his own course in regard to
this matter a moment, and then see if his opinion will not be changed
a little.  You say it is wrong; but don't you constantly object to
anybody else saying so?  Do you not constantly argue that this is not
the right place to oppose it?  You say it must not be opposed in the
free States, because slavery is not here; it must not be opposed in
the slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in
politics, because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed in
the pulpit, because it is not religion.  Then where is the place to
oppose it?  There is no suitable place to oppose it.  There is no
place in the country to oppose this evil overspreading the continent,
which you say yourself is coming.  Frank Blair and Gratz Brown tried
to get up a system of gradual emancipation in Missouri, had an
election in August, and got beat, and you, Mr. Democrat, threw up
your hat, and hallooed "Hurrah for Democracy!"  So I say, again, that
in regard to the arguments that are made, when Judge Douglas Says he
"don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down," whether he
means that as an individual expression of sentiment, or only as a
sort of statement of his views on national policy, it is alike true
to say that he can thus argue logically if he don't see anything
wrong in it; but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery
is wrong.  He cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up
as voted down.  When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever
community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is
perfectly logical, if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but
if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody
has a right to do wrong.  When he says that slave property and horse
and hog property are alike to be allowed to go into the Territories,
upon the principles of equality, he is reasoning truly, if there is
no difference between them as property; but if the one is property
held rightfully, and the other is wrong, then there is no equality
between the right and wrong; so that, turn it in anyway you can, in
all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that
policy itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that
there is anything wrong in slavery.  Let us understand this.  I am
not, just here, trying to prove that we are right, and they are
wrong.  I have been stating where we and they stand, and trying to
show what is the real difference between us; and I now say that
whenever we can get the question distinctly stated, can get all these
men who believe that slavery is in some of these respects wrong to
stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong,--then, and not till
then, I think we will in some way come to an end of this slavery
agitation.




Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.

MY FRIENDS:--Since Judge Douglas has said to you in his conclusion
that he had not time in an hour and a half to answer all I had said
in an hour, it follows of course that I will not be able to answer in
half an hour all that he said in an hour and a half.

I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public
annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of
policy in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it
shall last forever.  We are getting a little nearer the true issue of
this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence.
Judge Douglas asks you, Why cannot the institution of slavery, or
rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as
our fathers made it, forever?  In the first place, I insist that our
fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part
slave and part free.  I insist that they found the institution of
slavery existing here.  They did not make it so but they left it so
because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.  When
Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the
fathers of the government made this nation part slave and part free,
he assumes what is historically a falsehood.  More than that: when
the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the
abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it
from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that
they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men
understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when
Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it,
I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our
fathers made it?

It is precisely all I ask of him in relation to the institution of
slavery, that it shall be placed upon the basis that our fathers
placed it upon.  Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, once said, and truly
said, that when this government was established, no one expected the
institution of slavery to last until this day, and that the men who
formed this government were wiser and better than the men of these
days; but the men of these days had experience which the fathers had
not, and that experience had taught them the invention of the
cotton-gin, and this had made the perpetuation of the institution of
slavery a necessity in this country.  Judge Douglas could not let it
stand upon the basis which our fathers placed it, but removed it, and
put it upon the cotton-gin basis.  It is a question, therefore, for
him and his friends to answer, why they could not let it remain where
the fathers of the government originally placed it.  I hope nobody
has understood me as trying to sustain the doctrine that we have a
right to quarrel with Kentucky, or Virginia, or any of the slave
States, about the institution of slavery,--thus giving the Judge an
opportunity to be eloquent and valiant against us in fighting for
their rights.  I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had
neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence
of, the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in
doing as they pleased with slavery Or any other existing institution.
Then what becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the rights of
States, which are assailed by no living man?

But I have to hurry on, for I have but a half hour.  The Judge has
informed me, or informed this audience, that the Washington Union is
laboring for my election to the United States Senate.  This is news
to me,--not very ungrateful news either.  [Turning to Mr. W.  H.
Carlin, who was on the stand]--I hope that Carlin will be elected to
the State Senate, and will vote for me.  [Mr. Carlin shook his head.]
Carlin don't fall in, I perceive, and I suppose he will not do much
for me; but I am glad of all the support I can get, anywhere, if I
can get it without practicing any deception to obtain it.  In respect
to this large portion of Judge Douglas's speech in which he tries to
show that in the controversy between himself and the Administration
party he is in the right, I do not feel myself at all competent or
inclined to answer him.  I say to him, "Give it to them,--give it to
them just all you can!" and, on the other hand, I say to Carlin, and
Jake Davis, and to this man Wogley up here in Hancock, "Give it to
Douglas, just pour it into him!"

Now, in regard to this matter of the Dred Scott decision, I wish to
say a word or two.  After all, the Judge will not say whether, if a
decision is made holding that the people of the States cannot exclude
slavery, he will support it or not.  He obstinately refuses to say
what he will do in that case.  The judges of the Supreme Court as
obstinately refused to say what they would do on this subject.
Before this I reminded him that at Galesburgh he said the judges had
expressly declared the contrary, and you remember that in my Opening
speech I told him I had the book containing that decision here, and I
would thank him to lay his finger on the place where any such thing
was said.  He has occupied his hour and a half, and he has not
ventured to try to sustain his assertion.  He never will.  But he is
desirous of knowing how we are going to reverse that Dred Scott
decision.  Judge Douglas ought to know how.  Did not he and his
political friends find a way to reverse the decision of that same
court in favor of the constitutionality of the National Bank?  Didn't
they find a way to do it so effectually that they have reversed it as
completely as any decision ever was reversed, so far as its practical
operation is concerned?

And let me ask you, did n't Judge Douglas find a way to reverse the
decision of our Supreme Court when it decided that Carlin's father--
old Governor Carlin had not the constitutional power to remove a
Secretary of State?  Did he not appeal to the "MOBS," as he calls
them?  Did he not make speeches in the lobby to show how villainous
that decision was, and how it ought to be overthrown?  Did he not
succeed, too, in getting an act passed by the Legislature to have it
overthrown?  And did n't he himself sit down on that bench as one of
the five added judges, who were to overslaugh the four old ones,
getting his name of "judge" in that way, and no other?  If there is a
villainy in using disrespect or making opposition to Supreme Court
decisions, I commend it to Judge Douglas's earnest consideration.  I
know of no man in the State of Illinois who ought to know so well
about how much villainy it takes to oppose a decision of the Supreme
Court as our honorable friend Stephen A.  Douglas.

Judge Douglas also makes the declaration that I say the Democrats are
bound by the Dred Scott decision, while the Republicans are not.  In
the sense in which he argues, I never said it; but I will tell you
what I have said and what I do not hesitate to repeat to-day.  I have
said that as the Democrats believe that decision to be correct, and
that the extension of slavery is affirmed in the National
Constitution, they are bound to support it as such; and I will tell
you here that General Jackson once said each man was bound to support
the Constitution "as he understood it."  Now, Judge Douglas
understands the Constitution according to the Dred Scott decision,
and he is bound to support it as he understands it.  I understand it
another way, and therefore I am bound to support it in the way in
which I understand it.  And as Judge Douglas believes that decision
to be correct, I will remake that argument if I have time to do so.
Let me talk to some gentleman down there among you who looks me in
the face.  We will say you are a member of the Territorial
Legislature, and, like Judge Douglas, you believe that the right to
take and hold slaves there is a constitutional right The first thing
you do is to swear you will support the Constitution, and all rights
guaranteed therein; that you will, whenever your neighbor needs your
legislation to support his constitutional rights, not withhold that
legislation.  If you withhold that necessary legislation for the
support of the Constitution and constitutional rights, do you not
commit perjury?  I ask every sensible man if that is not so?  That is
undoubtedly just so, say what you please.  Now, that is precisely
what Judge Douglas says, that this is a constitutional right.  Does
the Judge mean to say that the Territorial Legislature in legislating
may, by withholding necessary laws, or by passing unfriendly laws,
nullify that constitutional right?  Does he mean to say that?  Does
he mean to ignore the proposition so long and well established in
law, that what you cannot do directly, you cannot do indirectly?
Does he mean that?  The truth about the matter is this: Judge Douglas
has sung paeans to his "Popular Sovereignty" doctrine until his
Supreme Court, co-operating with him, has squatted his Squatter
Sovereignty out.  But he will keep up this species of humbuggery
about Squatter Sovereignty.  He has at last invented this sort of
do-nothing sovereignty,--that the people may exclude slavery by a
sort of "sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all.  Is
not that running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully?  Has it not
got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the
shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?  But at last, when it
is brought to the test of close reasoning, there is not even that
thin decoction of it left.  It is a presumption impossible in the
domain of thought.  It is precisely no other than the putting of that
most unphilosophical proposition, that two bodies can occupy the same
space at the same time.  The Dred Scott decision covers the whole
ground, and while it occupies it, there is no room even for the
shadow of a starved pigeon to occupy the same ground.

Judge Douglas, in reply to what I have said about having upon a
previous occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an
extract from at Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the
deception twice.  Now, my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to
swallow that?  Judge Douglas had said I had made a speech at
Charleston that I would not make up north, and I turned around and
answered him by showing I had made that same speech up north,--had
made it at Ottawa; made it in his hearing; made it in the Abolition
District,--in Lovejoy's District,--in the personal presence of
Lovejoy himself,--in the same atmosphere exactly in which I had made
my Chicago speech, of which he complains so much.

Now, in relation to my not having said anything about the quotation
from the Chicago speech: he thinks that is a terrible subject for me
to handle.  Why, gentlemen, I can show you that the substance of the
Chicago speech I delivered two years ago in "Egypt," as he calls it.
It was down at Springfield.  That speech is here in this book, and I
could turn to it and read it to you but for the lack of time.  I have
not now the time to read it.  ["Read it, read it."] No, gentlemen, I
am obliged to use discretion in disposing most advantageously of my
brief time.  The Judge has taken great exception to my adopting the
heretical statement in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men
are created equal," and he has a great deal to say about negro
equality.  I want to say that in sometimes alluding to the
Declaration of Independence, I have only uttered the sentiments that
Henry Clay used to hold.  Allow me to occupy your time a moment with
what he said.  Mr. Clay was at one time called upon in Indiana, and
in a way that I suppose was very insulting, to liberate his slaves;
and he made a written reply to that application, and one portion of
it is in these words:

"What is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to liberate
the slaves under my care in Kentucky?  It is a general declaration in
the act announcing to the world the independence of the thirteen
American colonies, that men are created equal.  Now, as an abstract
principle, there is no doubt of the truth of that declaration, and it
is desirable in the original construction of society, and in
organized societies, to keep it in view as a great fundamental
principle."

When I sometimes, in relation to the organization of new societies in
new countries, where the soil is clean and clear, insisted that we
should keep that principle in view, Judge Douglas will have it that I
want a negro wife.  He never can be brought to understand that there
is any middle ground on this subject.  I have lived until my fiftieth
year, and have never had a negro woman either for a slave or a wife,
and I think I can live fifty centuries, for that matter, without
having had one for either.  I maintain that you may take Judge
Douglas's quotations from my Chicago speech, and from my Charleston
speech, and the Galesburgh speech,--in his speech of to-day,--and
compare them over, and I am willing to trust them with you upon his
proposition that they show rascality or double-dealing.  I deny that
they do.

The Judge does not seem at all disposed to have peace, but I find he
is disposed to have a personal warfare with me.  He says that my oath
would not be taken against the bare word of Charles H.  Lanphier or
Thomas L.  Harris.  Well, that is altogether a matter of opinion.  It
is certainly not for me to vaunt my word against oaths of these
gentlemen, but I will tell Judge Douglas again the facts upon which I
"dared" to say they proved a forgery.  I pointed out at Galesburgh
that the publication of these resolutions in the Illinois State
Register could not have been the result of accident, as the
proceedings of that meeting bore unmistakable evidence of being done
by a man who knew it was a forgery; that it was a publication partly
taken from the real proceedings of the Convention, and partly from
the proceedings of a convention at another place, which showed that
he had the real proceedings before him, and taking one part of the
resolutions, he threw out another part, and substituted false and
fraudulent ones in their stead.  I pointed that out to him, and also
that his friend Lanphier, who was editor of the Register at that time
and now is, must have known how it was done.  Now, whether he did it,
or got some friend to do it for him, I could not tell, but he
certainly knew all about it.  I pointed out to Judge Douglas that in
his Freeport speech he had  promised to investigate that matter.
Does he now say that he did not make that promise?   I have a right
to ask why he did not keep it.  I call upon him to tell here to-day
why he did not keep that promise?  That fraud has been traced up so
that it lies between him, Harris, and Lanphier.  There is little room
for escape for Lanphier.  Lanphier is doing the Judge good service,
and Douglas desires his word to be taken for the truth.  He desires
Lanphier to be taken as authority in what he states in his newspaper.
He desires Harris to be taken as a man of vast credibility; and when
this thing lies among them, they will not press it to show where the
guilt really belongs.  Now, as he has said that he would investigate
it, and implied that he would tell us the result of his
investigation, I demand of him to tell why he did not investigate it,
if he did not; and if he did, why he won't tell the result.  I call
upon him for that.

This is the third time that Judge Douglas has assumed that he learned
about these resolutions by Harris's attempting to use them against
Norton on the floor of Congress.  I tell Judge Douglas the public
records of the country show that he himself attempted it upon
Trumbull a month before Harris tried them on Norton; that Harris had
the opportunity of learning it from him, rather than he from Harris.
I now ask his attention to that part of the record on the case.  My
friends, I am not disposed to detain you longer in regard to that
matter.

I am told that I still have five minutes left.  There is another
matter I wish to call attention to.  He says, when he discovered
there was a mistake in that case, he came forward magnanimously,
without my calling his attention to it, and explained it.  I will
tell you how he became so magnanimous.  When the newspapers of our
side had discovered and published it, and put it beyond his power to
deny it, then he came forward and made a virtue of necessity by
acknowledging it.  Now he argues that all the point there was in
those resolutions, although never passed at Springfield, is retained
by their being passed at other localities.  Is that true?  He said I
had a hand in passing them, in his opening speech, that I was in the
convention and helped to pass them.  Do the resolutions touch me at
all?  It strikes me there is some difference between holding a man
responsible for an act which he has not done and holding him
responsible for an act that he has
done.  You will judge whether there is any difference in the "spots."
And he has taken credit for great magnanimity in coming forward and
acknowledging what is proved on him beyond even the capacity of Judge
Douglas to deny; and he has more capacity in that way than any other
living man.

Then he wants to know why I won't withdraw the charge in regard to a
conspiracy to make slavery national, as he has withdrawn the one he
made.  May it please his worship, I will withdraw it when it is
proven false on me as that was proven false on him.  I will add a
little more than that, I will withdraw it whenever a reasonable man
shall be brought to believe that the charge is not true.  I have
asked Judge Douglas's attention to certain matters of fact tending to
prove the charge of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery, and he says
he convinces me that this is all untrue because Buchanan was not in
the country at that time, and because the Dred Scott case had not
then got into the Supreme Court; and he says that I say the
Democratic owners of Dred Scott got up the case.  I never did say
that I defy Judge Douglas to show that I ever said so, for I never
uttered it.  [One of Mr. Douglas's reporters gesticulated
affirmatively at Mr. Lincoln.] I don't care if your hireling does say
I did, I tell you myself that I never said the "Democratic" owners of
Dred Scott got up the case.  I have never pretended to know whether
Dred Scott's owners were Democrats, or Abolitionists, or Freesoilers
or Border Ruffians.  I have said that there is evidence about the
case tending to show that it was a made-up case, for the purpose of
getting that decision.  I have said that that evidence was very
strong in the fact that when Dred Scott was declared to be a slave,
the owner of him made him free, showing that he had had the case
tried and the question settled for such use as could be made of that
decision; he cared nothing about the property thus declared to be his
by that decision.  But my time is out, and I can say no more.



LAST JOINT DEBATE,

AT ALTON, OCTOBER 15, 1858

Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I have been somewhat, in my own mind,
complimented by a large portion of Judge Douglas's speech,--I mean
that portion which he devotes to the controversy between himself and
the present Administration.  This is the seventh time Judge Douglas
and myself have met in these joint discussions, and he has been
gradually improving in regard to his war with the Administration.  At
Quincy, day before yesterday, he was a little more severe upon the
Administration than I had heard him upon any occasion, and I took
pains to compliment him for it.  I then told him to give it to them
with all the power he had; and as some of them were present, I told
them I would be very much obliged if they would give it to him in
about the same way.  I take it he has now vastly improved upon the
attack he made then upon the Administration.  I flatter myself he has
really taken my advice on this subject.  All I can say now is to
re-commend to him and to them what I then commended,--to prosecute
the war against one another in the most vigorous manner.  I say to
them again: "Go it, husband!--Go it, bear!"

There is one other thing I will mention before I leave this branch of
the discussion,--although I do not consider it much of my business,
anyway.  I refer to that part of the Judge's remarks where he
undertakes to involve Mr. Buchanan in an inconsistency.  He reads
something from Mr. Buchanan, from which he undertakes to involve him
in an inconsistency; and he gets something of a cheer for having done
so.  I would only remind the Judge that while he is very valiantly
fighting for the Nebraska Bill and the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, it has been but a little while since he was the valiant
advocate of the Missouri Compromise.  I want to know if Buchanan has
not as much right to be inconsistent as Douglas has?  Has Douglas the
exclusive right, in this country, of being on all sides of all
questions?  Is nobody allowed that high privilege but himself?  Is he
to have an entire monopoly on that subject?

So far as Judge Douglas addressed his speech to me, or so far as it
was about me, it is my business to pay some attention to it.  I have
heard the Judge state two or three times what he has stated to-day,
that in a speech which I made at Springfield, Illinois, I had in a
very especial manner complained that the Supreme Court in the Dred
Scott case had decided that a negro could never be a citizen of the
United States.  I have omitted by some accident heretofore to analyze
this statement, and it is required of me to notice it now.  In point
of fact it is untrue.  I never have complained especially of the Dred
Scott decision because it held that a negro could not be a citizen,
and the Judge is always wrong when he says I ever did so complain of
it.  I have the speech here, and I will thank him or any of his
friends to show where I said that a negro should be a citizen, and
complained especially of the Dred Scott decision because it declared
he could not be one.  I have done no such thing; and Judge Douglas,
so persistently insisting that I have done so, has strongly impressed
me with the belief of a predetermination on his part to misrepresent
me.  He could not get his foundation for insisting that I was in
favor of this negro equality anywhere else as well as he could by
assuming that untrue proposition.  Let me tell this audience what is
true in regard to that matter; and the means by which they may
correct me if I do not tell them truly is by a recurrence to the
speech itself.  I spoke of the Dred Scott decision in my Springfield
speech, and I was then endeavoring to prove that the Dred Scott
decision was a portion of a system or scheme to make slavery national
in this country.  I pointed out what things had been decided by the
court.  I mentioned as a fact that they had decided that a negro
could not be a citizen; that they had done so, as I supposed, to
deprive the negro, under all circumstances, of the remotest
possibility of ever becoming a citizen and claiming the rights of a
citizen of the United States under a certain clause of the
Constitution.  I stated that, without making any complaint of it at
all.  I then went on and stated the other points decided in the case;
namely, that the bringing of a negro into the State of Illinois and
holding him in slavery for two years here was a matter in regard to
which they would not decide whether it would make him free or not;
that they decided the further point that taking him into a United
States Territory where slavery was prohibited by Act of Congress did
not make him free, because that Act of Congress, as they held, was
unconstitutional.  I mentioned these three things as making up the
points decided in that case.  I mentioned them in a lump, taken in
connection with the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, and the
amendment of Chase, offered at the time, declaratory of the right of
the people of the Territories to exclude slavery, which was voted
down by the friends of the bill.  I mentioned all these things
together, as evidence tending to prove a combination and conspiracy
to make the institution of slavery national.  In that connection and
in that way I mentioned the decision on the point that a negro could
not be a citizen, and in no other connection.

Out of this Judge Douglas builds up his beautiful fabrication of my
purpose to introduce a perfect social and political equality between
the white and black races.  His assertion that I made an "especial
objection" (that is his exact language) to the decision on this
account is untrue in point of fact.

Now, while I am upon this subject, and as Henry Clay has been alluded
to, I desire to place myself, in connection with Mr. Clay, as nearly
right before this people as may be.  I am quite aware what the
Judge's object is here by all these allusions.  He knows that we are
before an audience having strong sympathies southward, by
relationship, place of birth, and so on.  He desires to place me in
an extremely Abolition attitude.  He read upon a former occasion, and
alludes, without reading, to-day to a portion of a speech which I
delivered in Chicago.  In his quotations from that speech, as he has
made them upon former occasions, the extracts were taken in such a
way as, I suppose, brings them within the definition of what is
called garbling,--taking portions of a speech which, when taken by
themselves, do not present the entire sense of the speaker as
expressed at the time.  I propose, therefore, out of that same
speech, to show how one portion of it which he skipped over (taking
an extract before and an extract after) will give a different idea,
and the true idea I intended to convey.  It will take me some little
time to read it, but I believe I will occupy the time that way.

You have heard him frequently allude to my controversy with him in
regard to the Declaration of Independence.  I confess that I have had
a struggle with Judge Douglas on that matter, and I will try briefly
to place myself right in regard to it on this occasion.  I said--and
it is between the extracts Judge Douglas has taken from this speech,
and put in his published speeches:

"It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make
necessities and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a
necessity is imposed upon a man he must submit to it.  I think that
was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established
this government.  We had slaves among us, we could not get our
Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could
not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more; and having
by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the
principle that is the charter of our liberties.  Let the charter
remain as our standard."

Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas
against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of
slavery.  You hear me read it from the same speech from which he
takes garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a
disposition to interfere with the institution of slavery, and
establish a perfect social and political equality between negroes and
white people.

Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract
from a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in
discussing this very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his
ground that negroes were, not included in the Declaration of
Independence:

"I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include
all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all
respects.  They did not mean to say all men were equal in color,
size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity.  They defined
with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created
equal,--equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This they said, and this they
meant.  They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were
then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to
confer it immediately upon them.  In fact they had no power to confer
such a boon.  They meant simply to declare the right, so that the
enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should
permit.

"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should
be familiar to all,--constantly looked to, constantly labored for,
and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated,
and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and
augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all
colors, everywhere."

There again are the sentiments I have expressed in regard to the
Declaration of Independence upon a former occasion,--sentiments which
have been put in print and read wherever anybody cared to know what
so humble an individual as myself chose to say in regard to it.

At Galesburgh, the other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas,
that three years ago there never had been a man, so far as I knew or
believed, in the whole world, who had said that the Declaration of
Independence did not include negroes in the term "all men."  I
reassert it to-day.  I assert that Judge Douglas and all his friends
may search the whole records of the country, and it will be a matter
of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to find that one
human being three years ago had ever uttered the astounding sentiment
that the term "all men" in the Declaration did not include the negro.
Do not let me be misunderstood.  I know that more than three years
ago there were men who, finding this assertion constantly in the way
of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and perpetuation of
slavery, denied the truth of it.  I know that Mr. Calhoun and all the
politicians of his school denied the truth of the Declaration.  I
know that it ran along in the mouth of some Southern men for a period
of years, ending at last in that shameful, though rather forcible,
declaration of Pettit of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States
Senate, that the Declaration of Independence was in that respect "a
self-evident lie," rather than a self-evident truth.  But I say, with
a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration without
directly attacking it, that three years ago there never had lived a
man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way of pretending
to believe it, and then asserting it did not include the negro.  I
believe the first man who ever said it was Chief Justice Taney in the
Dred Scott case, and the next to him was our friend Stephen A.
Douglas.  And now it has become the catchword of the entire party.  I
would like to call upon his friends everywhere to consider how they
have come in so short a time to view this matter in a way so entirely
different from their former belief; to ask whether they are not being
borne along by an irresistible current,--whither, they know not.

In answer to my proposition at Galesburgh last week, I see that some
man in Chicago has got up a letter, addressed to the Chicago Times,
to show, as he professes, that somebody had said so before; and he
signs himself "An Old-Line Whig," if I remember correctly.  In the
first place, I would say he was not an old-line Whig.  I am somewhat
acquainted with old-line Whigs from the origin to the end of that
party; I became pretty well acquainted with them, and I know they
always had some sense, whatever else you could ascribe to them.  I
know there never was one who had not more sense than to try to show
by the evidence he produces that some men had, prior to the time I
named, said that negroes were not included in the term "all men" in
the Declaration of Independence.  What is the evidence he produces?
I will bring forward his evidence, and let you see what he offers by
way of showing that somebody more than three years ago had said
negroes were not included in the Declaration.  He brings forward part
of a speech from Henry Clay,--the part of the speech of Henry Clay
which I used to bring forward to prove precisely the contrary.  I
guess we are surrounded to some extent to-day by the old friends of
Mr. Clay, and they will be glad to hear anything from that authority.
While he was in Indiana a man presented a petition to liberate his
negroes, and he (Mr. Clay) made a speech in answer to it, which I
suppose he carefully wrote out himself and caused to be published.  I
have before me an extract from that speech which constitutes the
evidence this pretended "Old-Line Whig" at Chicago brought forward to
show that Mr. Clay did n't suppose the negro was included in the
Declaration of Independence.  Hear what Mr. Clay said:

"And what is the foundation of this appeal to me in Indiana to
liberate the slaves under my care in Kentucky?  It is a general
declaration in the act announcing to the world the independence of
the thirteen American colonies, that all men are created equal.  Now,
as an abstract principle, there is no doubt of the truth of that
declaration; and it is desirable, in the original construction of
society and in organized societies, to keep it in view as a great
fundamental principle.  But, then, I apprehend that in no society
that ever did exist, or ever shall be formed, was or can the equality
asserted among the members of the human race be practically enforced
and carried out.  There are portions, large portions, women, minors,
insane, culprits, transient sojourners, that will always probably
remain subject to the government of another portion of the community.

"That declaration, whatever may be the extent of its import, was made
by the delegations of the thirteen States.  In most of them slavery
existed, and had long existed, and was established by law.  It was
introduced and forced upon the colonies by the paramount law of
England.  Do you believe that in making that declaration the States
that concurred in it intended that it should be tortured into a
virtual emancipation of all the slaves within their respective
limits?  Would Virginia and other Southern States have ever united in
a declaration which was to be interpreted into an abolition of
slavery among them?  Did any one of the thirteen colonies entertain
such a design or expectation?  To impute such a secret and unavowed
purpose, would be to charge a political fraud upon the noblest band
of patriots that ever assembled in council,--a fraud upon the
Confederacy of the Revolution; a fraud upon the union of those States
whose Constitution not only recognized the lawfulness of slavery, but
permitted the importation of slaves from Africa until the year 1808."


This is the entire quotation brought forward to prove that somebody
previous to three years ago had said the negro was not included in
the term "all men" in the Declaration.  How does it do so?  In what
way has it a tendency to prove that?  Mr. Clay says it is true as an
abstract principle that all men are created equal, but that we cannot
practically apply it in all eases.  He illustrates this by bringing
forward the cases of females, minors, and insane persons, with whom
it cannot be enforced; but he says it is true as an abstract
principle in the organization of society as well as in organized
society and it should be kept in view as a fundamental principle.
Let me read a few words more before I add some comments of my own.
Mr. Clay says, a little further on:

"I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution
of slavery.  I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that
we have derived it from the parental government and from our
ancestors.  I wish every slave in the United States was in the
country of his ancestors.  But here they are, and the question is,
How can they be best dealt with?  If a state of nature existed, and
we were about to lay the foundations of society, no man would be more
strongly opposed than I should be to incorporate the institution of
slavery amongst its elements."


Now, here in this same book, in this same speech, in this same
extract, brought forward to prove that Mr. Clay held that the negro
was not included in the Declaration of Independence, is no such
statement on his part, but the declaration that it is a great
fundamental truth which should be constantly kept in view in the
organization of society and in societies already organized.  But if I
say a word about it; if I attempt, as Mr. Clay said all good men
ought to do, to keep it in view; if, in this "organized society," I
ask to have the public eye turned upon it; if I ask, in relation to
the organization of new Territories, that the public eye should be
turned upon it, forthwith I am vilified as you hear me to-day.  what
have I done that I have not the license of Henry Clay's illustrious
example here in doing?  Have I done aught that I have not his
authority for, while maintaining that in organizing new Territories
and societies this fundamental principle should be regarded, and in
organized society holding it up to the public view and recognizing
what he recognized as the great principle of free government?

And when this new principle--this new proposition that no human being
ever thought of three years ago--is brought forward, I combat it as
having an evil tendency, if not an evil design.  I combat it as
having a tendency to dehumanize the negro, to take away from him the
right of ever striving to be a man.  I combat it as being one of the
thousand things constantly done in these days to prepare the public
mind to make property, and nothing but property, of the negro in all
the States of this  Union.

But there is a point that I wish, before leaving this part of the
discussion, to ask attention to.  I have read and I repeat the words
of Henry Clay:

"I desire no concealment of my opinions in regard to the institution
of slavery.  I look upon it as a great evil, and deeply lament that
we have derived it from the parental government and from our
ancestors.  I wish every slave in the United States was in the
country of his ancestors.  But here they are, and the question is,
How can they be best dealt with?  If a state of nature existed, and
we were about to lay the foundations of society, no man would be more
strongly opposed than I should be to incorporate the institution of
slavery amongst its elements."

The principle upon which I have insisted in this canvass is in
relation to laying the foundations of new societies.  I have never
sought to apply these principles to the old States for the purpose of
abolishing slavery in those States.  It is nothing but a miserable
perversion of what I have said, to assume that I have declared
Missouri, or any other slave State, shall emancipate her slaves; I
have proposed no such thing.  But when Mr. Clay says that in laying
the foundations of society in our Territories where it does not
exist, he would be opposed to the introduction of slavery as an
element, I insist that we have his warrant--his license--for
insisting upon the exclusion of that element which he declared in
such strong and emphatic language was most hurtful to  him.

Judge Douglas has again referred to a Springfield speech in which I
said "a house divided against itself cannot stand."  The Judge has so
often made the entire quotation from that speech that I can make it
from memory.  I used this language:

"We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to the
slavery agitation.  Under the operation of this policy, that
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In
my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached
and passed.  'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe
this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.
I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to
be divided.  It will become all one thing, or all the other.  Either
the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as
well as new, North as well as South."

That extract and the sentiments expressed in it have been extremely
offensive to Judge Douglas.  He has warred upon them as Satan wars
upon the Bible.  His perversions upon it are endless.  Here now are
my views upon it in brief:

I said we were now far into the fifth year since a policy was
initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an
end to the slavery agitation.  Is it not so?  When that Nebraska Bill
was brought forward four years ago last January, was it not for the
"avowed object" of putting an end to the slavery agitation?  We were
to have no more agitation in Congress; it was all to be banished to
the Territories.  By the way, I will remark here that, as Judge
Douglas is very fond of complimenting Mr. Crittenden in these days,
Mr. Crittenden has said there was a falsehood in that whole business,
for there was no slavery agitation at that time to allay.  We were
for a little while quiet on the troublesome thing, and that very
allaying plaster of Judge Douglas's stirred it up again.  But was it
not understood or intimated with the "confident promise" of putting
an end to the slavery agitation?  Surely it was.  In every speech you
heard Judge Douglas make, until he got into this "imbroglio," as they
call it, with the Administration about the Lecompton Constitution,
every speech on that Nebraska Bill was full of his felicitations that
we were just at the end of the slavery agitation.  The last tip of
the last joint of the old serpent's tail was just drawing out of
view.  But has it proved so?  I have asserted that under that policy
that agitation "has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented."  When was there ever a greater agitation in Congress than
last winter?  When was it as great in the country as to-day?

There was a collateral object in the introduction of that Nebraska
policy, which was to clothe the people of the Territories with a
superior degree of self-government, beyond what they had ever had
before.  The first object and the main one of conferring upon the
people a higher degree of "self-government" is a question of fact to
be determined by you in answer to a single question.  Have you ever
heard or known of a people anywhere on earth who had as little to do
as, in the first instance of its use, the people of Kansas had with
this same right of "self-government "?  In its main policy and in its
collateral object, it has been nothing but a living, creeping lie
from the time of its introduction till to-day.

I have intimated that I thought the agitation would not cease until a
crisis should have been reached and passed.  I have stated in what
way I thought it would be reached and passed.  I have said that it
might go one way or the other.  We might, by arresting the further
spread of it, and placing it where the fathers originally placed it,
put it where the public mind should rest in the belief that it was in
the course of ultimate extinction.  Thus the agitation may cease.  It
may be pushed forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as South.  I have said, and
I repeat, my wish is that the further spread of it may be arrested,
and that it may be  where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction--I have expressed
that as my wish  I entertain the opinion, upon evidence sufficient to
my mind, that the fathers of this government placed that institution
where the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the
course of ultimate extinction.  Let me ask why they made provision
that the source of slavery--the African slave-trade--should be cut
off at the end of twenty years?  Why did they make provision that in
all the new territory we owned at that time slavery should be forever
inhibited?  Why stop its spread in one direction, and cut off its
source in another, if they did not look to its being placed in the
course of its ultimate extinction?

Again: the institution of slavery is only mentioned in the
Constitution of the United States two or three times, and in neither
of these cases does the word "slavery" or "negro race" occur; but
covert language is used each time, and for a purpose full of
significance.  What is the language in regard to the prohibition of
the African slave-trade?  It runs in about this way:

"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States
now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by
the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight."

The next allusion in the Constitution to the question of slavery and
the black race is on the subject of the basis of representation, and
there the language used is:

"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within this Union, according to
their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the
whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a
term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed,  three-fifths of all
other persons."

It says "persons," not slaves, not negroes; but this "three-fifths"
can be applied to no other class among us than the negroes.

Lastly, in the provision for the reclamation of fugitive slaves, it
is said:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or
regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due."

There again there is no mention of the word "negro" or of slavery.
In all three of these places, being the only allusions to slavery in
the instrument, covert language is used.  Language is used not
suggesting that slavery existed or that the black race were among us.
And I understand the contemporaneous history of those times to be
that covert language was used with a purpose, and that purpose was
that in our Constitution, which it was hoped and is still hoped will
endure forever,--when it should be read by intelligent and patriotic
men, after the institution of slavery had passed from among us,--
there should be nothing on the face of the great charter of liberty
suggesting that such a thing as negro slavery had ever existed among
us.  This is part of the evidence that the fathers of the government
expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end.
They expected and intended that it should be in the course of
ultimate extinction.  And when I say that I desire to see the further
spread of it arrested, I only say I desire to see that done which the
fathers have first done.  When I say I desire to see it placed where
the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, I only say I desire to see it placed where they
placed it.  It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas
assumes, made this government part slave and part free.  Understand
the sense in which he puts it.  He assumes that slavery is a rightful
thing within itself,--was introduced by the framers of the
Constitution.  The exact truth is, that they found the institution
existing among us, and they left it as they found it.  But in making
the government they left this institution with many clear marks of
disapprobation upon it.  They found slavery among them, and they left
it among them because of the difficulty--the absolute impossibility--
of its immediate removal.  And when Judge Douglas asks me why we
cannot let it remain part slave and part free, as the fathers of the
government made it, he asks a question based upon an assumption which
is itself a falsehood; and I turn upon him and ask him the question,
when the policy that the fathers of the government had adopted in
relation to this element among us was the best policy in the world,
the only wise policy, the only policy that we can ever safely
continue upon that will ever give us peace, unless this dangerous
element masters us all and becomes a national institution,--I turn
upon him and ask him why he could not leave it alone.  I turn and ask
him why he was driven to the necessity of introducing a new policy in
regard to it.  He has himself said he introduced a new policy.  He
said so in his speech on the 22d of March of the present year, 1858.
I ask him why he could not let it remain where our fathers placed it.
I ask, too, of Judge Douglas and his friends why we shall not again
place this institution upon the basis on which the fathers left it.
I ask you, when he infers that I am in favor of setting the free and
slave States at war, when the institution was placed in that attitude
by those who made the Constitution, did they make any war?  If we had
no war out of it when thus placed, wherein is the ground of belief
that we shall have war out of it if we return to that policy?  Have
we had any peace upon this matter springing from any other basis?  I
maintain that we have not.  I have proposed nothing more than a
return to the policy of the fathers.

I confess, when I propose a certain measure of policy, it is not
enough for me that I do not intend anything evil in the result, but
it is incumbent on me to show that it has not a tendency to that
result.  I have met Judge Douglas in that point of view.  I have not
only made the declaration that I do not mean to produce a conflict
between the States, but I have tried to show by fair reasoning, and I
think I have shown to the minds of fair men, that I propose nothing
but what has a most peaceful tendency.  The quotation that I happened
to make in that Springfield Speech, that "a house divided against
itself cannot stand," and which has proved so offensive to the judge,
was part and parcel of the same thing.  He tries to show that variety
in the democratic institutions of the different States is necessary
and indispensable.  I do not dispute it.  I have no controversy with
Judge Douglas about that.  I shall very readily agree with him that
it would be foolish for us to insist upon having a cranberry law here
in Illinois, where we have no cranberries, because they have a
cranberry law in Indiana, where they have cranberries.  I should
insist that it would be exceedingly wrong in us to deny to Virginia
the right to enact oyster laws, where they have oysters, because we
want no such laws here.  I understand, I hope, quite as well as Judge
Douglas or anybody else, that the variety in the soil and climate and
face of the country, and consequent variety in the industrial
pursuits and productions of a country, require systems of law
conforming to this variety in the natural features of the country.  I
understand quite as well as Judge Douglas that if we here raise a
barrel of flour more than we want, and the Louisianians raise a
barrel of sugar more than they want, it is of mutual advantage to
exchange.  That produces commerce, brings us together, and makes us
better friends.  We like one another the more for it.  And I
understand as well as Judge Douglas, or anybody else, that these
mutual accommodations are the cements which bind together the
different parts of this Union; that instead of being a thing to
"divide the house,"--figuratively expressing the Union,--they tend to
sustain it; they are the props of the house, tending always to hold
it up.

But when I have admitted all this, I ask if there is any parallel
between these things and this institution of slavery?  I do not see
that there is any parallel at all between them.  Consider it.  When
have we had any difficulty or quarrel amongst ourselves about the
cranberry laws of Indiana, or the oyster laws of Virginia, or the
pine-lumber laws of Maine, or the fact that Louisiana produces sugar,
and Illinois flour?  When have we had any quarrels over these things?
When have we had perfect peace in regard to this thing which I say is
an element of discord in this Union?  We have sometimes had peace,
but when was it?  It was when the institution of slavery remained
quiet where it was.  We have had difficulty and turmoil whenever it
has made a struggle to spread itself where it was not.  I ask, then,
if experience does not speak in thunder-tones telling us that the
policy which has given peace to the country heretofore, being
returned to, gives the greatest promise of peace again.  You may say,
and Judge Douglas has intimated the same thing, that all this
difficulty in regard to the institution of slavery is the mere
agitation of office-seekers and ambitious Northern politicians.  He
thinks we want to get "his place," I suppose.  I agree that there are
office-seekers amongst us.  The Bible says somewhere that we are
desperately selfish.  I think we would have discovered that fact
without the Bible.  I do not claim that I am any less so than the
average of men, but I do claim that I am not more selfish than Judge
Douglas.

But is it true that all the difficulty and agitation we have in
regard to this institution of slavery spring from office-seeking,
from the mere ambition of politicians?  Is that the truth?  How many
times have we had danger from this question?  Go back to the day of
the Missouri Compromise.  Go back to the nullification question, at
the bottom of which lay this same slavery question.  Go back to the
time of the annexation of Texas.  Go back to the troubles that led to
the Compromise of 1850.  You will find that every time, with the
single exception of the Nullification question, they sprung from an
endeavor to spread this institution.  There never was a party in the
history of this country, and there probably never will be, of
sufficient strength to disturb the general peace of the country.
Parties themselves may be divided and quarrel on minor questions, yet
it extends not beyond the parties themselves.  But
does not this question make a disturbance outside of political
circles?  Does it not enter into the churches and rend them asunder?
What divided the great Methodist Church into two parts, North and
South?  What has raised this constant disturbance in every
Presbyterian General Assembly that meets?  What disturbed the
Unitarian Church in this very city two years ago?  What has jarred
and shaken the great American Tract Society recently, not yet
splitting it, but sure to divide it in the end?  Is it not this same
mighty, deep-seated power that somehow operates on the minds of men,
exciting and stirring them up in every avenue of society,--in
politics, in religion, in literature, in morals, in all the manifold
relations of life?  Is this the work of politicians?  Is that
irresistible power, which for fifty years has shaken the government
and agitated the people, to be stifled and subdued by pretending that
it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to talk about it?
If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it, I assure you
I will quit before they have half done so.  But where is the
philosophy or statesmanship which assumes that you can quiet that
disturbing element in our society which has disturbed us for more
than half a century, which has been the only serious danger that has
threatened our institutions,--I say, where is the philosophy or the
statesmanship based on the assumption that we are to quit talking
about it, and that the public mind is all at once to cease being
agitated by it?  Yet this is the policy here in the North that
Douglas is advocating, that we are to care nothing about it!  I ask
you if it is not a false philosophy.  Is it not a false statesmanship
that undertakes to build up a system of policy upon the basis of
caring nothing about the very thing that everybody does care the most
about--a thing which all experience has shown we care a very great
deal about?

The Judge alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the
exclusive right which the States have to decide the whole thing for
themselves.  I agree with him very readily that the different States
have that right.  He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes
that I am contending against the right of the States to do as they
please about it.  Our controversy with him is in regard to the new
Territories.  We agree that when the States come in as States they
have the right and the power to do as they please.  We have no power
as citizens of the free-States, or in our Federal capacity as members
of the Federal Union through the General Government, to disturb
slavery in the States where it exists.  We profess constantly that we
have no more inclination than belief in the power of the government
to disturb it; yet we are driven constantly to defend ourselves from
the assumption that we are warring upon the rights of the Sates.
What I insist upon is, that the new Territories shall be kept free
from it while in the Territorial condition.  Judge Douglas assumes
that we have no interest in them,--that we have no right whatever to
interfere.  I think we have some interest.  I think that as white men
we have.  Do we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if
I may so express myself?  Do we not feel an interest in getting to
that outlet with such institutions as we would like to have prevail
there?  If you go to the Territory opposed to slavery, and another
man comes upon the same ground with his slave, upon the assumption
that the things are equal, it turns out that he has the equal right
all his way, and you have no part of it your way.  If he goes in and
makes it a slave Territory, and by consequence a slave State, is it
not time that those who desire to have it a free State were on equal
ground?  Let me suggest it in a different way.  How many Democrats
are there about here ["A thousand"] who have left slave States and
come into the free State of Illinois to get rid of the institution of
slavery?  [Another voice: "A thousand and one."] I reckon there are a
thousand and one.  I will ask you, if the policy you are now
advocating had prevailed when this country was in a Territorial
condition, where would you have gone to get rid of it?  Where would
you have found your free State or Territory to go to?  And when
hereafter, for any cause, the people in this place shall desire to
find new homes, if they wish to be rid of the institution, where will
they find the place to go to?

Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether
there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor
of our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may
find a home,--may find some spot where they can better their
condition; where they can settle upon new soil and better their
condition in life.  I am in favor of this, not merely (I must say it
here as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born amongst us,
but as an outlet for free white people everywhere the world over--in
which Hans, and Baptiste, and Patrick, and all other men from all the
world, may find new homes and better their conditions in life.

I have stated upon former occasions, and I may as well state again,
what I understand to be the real issue in this controversy between
Judge Douglas and myself.  On the point of my wanting to make war
between the free and the slave States, there has been no issue
between us.  So, too, when he assumes that I am in favor of producing
a perfect social and political equality between the white and black
races.  These are false issues, upon which Judge Douglas has tried to
force the controversy.  There is no foundation in truth for the
charge that I maintain either of these propositions.  The real issue
in this controversy--the one pressing upon every mind--is the
sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of
slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it
as a wrong.  The sentiment that contemplates the institution of
slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican
party.  It is the sentiment around which all their actions, all their
arguments, circle, from which all their propositions radiate.  They
look upon it as being a moral, social, and political wrong; and while
they contemplate it a, such, they nevertheless have due regard for
its actual existence among us, and the difficulties of getting rid of
it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations
thrown about it.  Yet, having a due regard for these, they desire a
policy in regard to it that looks to its not creating any more
danger.  They insist that it should, as far as may be, be treated as
a wrong; and one of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make
provision that it shall grow no larger.  They also desire a policy
that looks to a peaceful end of slavery at some time.  These are the
views they entertain in regard to it as I understand them; and all
their sentiments, all their arguments and propositions, are brought
within this range.  I have said, and I repeat it here, that if there
be a man amongst us who does not think that the institution of
slavery is wrong in any one of the aspects of which I have spoken, he
is misplaced, and ought not to be with us.  And if there be a man
amongst us who is so impatient of it as a wrong as to disregard its
actual presence among us and the difficulty of getting rid of it
suddenly in a satisfactory way, and to disregard the constitutional
obligations thrown about it, that man is misplaced if he is on our
platform.  We disclaim sympathy with him in practical action.  He is
not placed properly with us.

On this subject of treating it as a wrong, and limiting its spread,
let me say a word.  Has anything ever threatened the existence of
this Union save and except this very institution of slavery?  What is
it that we hold most dear amongst us?  Our own liberty and
prosperity.  What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity,
save and except this institution of slavery?  If this is true, how do
you propose to improve the condition of things by enlarging slavery,
by spreading it out and making it bigger?  You may have a wen or
cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut it out, lest you
bleed to death; but surely it is no way to cure it, to engraft it and
spread it over your whole body.  That is no proper way of treating
what you regard a wrong.  You see this peaceful way of dealing with
it as a wrong, restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to
go into new countries where it has not already existed.  That is the
peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers
themselves set us the example.

On the other hand, I have said there is a sentiment which treats it
as not being wrong.  That is the Democratic sentiment of this day.  I
do not mean to say that every man who stands within that range
positively asserts that it is right.  That class will include all who
positively assert that it is right, and all who, like Judge Douglas,
treat it as indifferent and do not say it is either right or wrong.
These two classes of men fall within the general class of those who
do not look upon it as a wrong.  And if there be among you anybody
who supposes that he, as a Democrat, can consider himself "as much
opposed to slavery as anybody," I would like to reason with him.  You
never treat it as a wrong.  What other thing that you consider as a
wrong do you deal with as you deal with that?  Perhaps you say it is
wrong--but your leader never does, and you quarrel with anybody who
says it is wrong.  Although you pretend to say so yourself, you can
find no fit place to deal with it as a wrong.  You must not say
anything about it in the free States, because it is not here.  You
must not say anything about it in the slave States, because it is
there.  You must not say anything about it in the pulpit, because
that is religion, and has nothing to do with it.  You must not say
anything about it in politics, because that will disturb the security
of "my place."  There is no place to talk about it as being a wrong,
although you say yourself it is a wrong.  But, finally, you will
screw yourself up to the belief that if the people of the slave
States should adopt a system of gradual emancipation on the slavery
question, you would be in favor of it.  You would be in favor of it.
You say that is getting it in the right place, and you would be glad
to see it succeed.  But you are deceiving yourself.  You all know
that Frank Blair and Gratz Brown, down there in St.  Louis, undertook
to introduce that system in Missouri.  They fought as valiantly as
they could for the system of gradual emancipation which you pretend
you would be glad to see succeed.  Now, I will bring you to the test.
After a hard fight they were beaten, and when the news came over
here, you threw up your hats and hurrahed for Democracy.  More than
that, take all the argument made in favor of the system you have
proposed, and it carefully excludes the idea that there is anything
wrong in the institution of slavery.  The arguments to sustain that
policy carefully exclude it.  Even here to-day you heard Judge
Douglas quarrel with me because I uttered a wish that it might
sometime come to an end.  Although Henry Clay could say he wished
every slave in the United States was in the country of his ancestors,
I am denounced by those pretending to respect Henry Clay for uttering
a wish that it might sometime, in some peaceful way, come to an end.
The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate
the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong
about it.  Try it by some of Judge Douglas's arguments.  He says he
"don't care whether it is voted up or voted down" in the Territories.
I do not care myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is
intended to be expressive of his individual sentiments on the
subject, or only of the national policy he desires to have
established.  It is alike valuable for my purpose.  Any man can say
that who does not see anything wrong in slavery; but no man can
logically say it who does see a wrong in it, because no man can
logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted
down.  He may say he don't care whether an indifferent thing is voted
up or down, but he must logically have a choice between a right thing
and a wrong thing.  He contends that whatever community wants slaves
has a right to have them.  So they have, if it is not a wrong.  But
if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong.  He
says that upon the score of equality slaves should be allowed to go
in a new Territory, like other property.  This is strictly logical if
there is no difference between it and other property.  If it and
other property are equal, this argument is entirely logical.  But if
you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to
institute a comparison between right and wrong.  You may turn over
everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in
the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the
Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the
shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments,--it everywhere
carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it.

That is the real issue.  That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be
silent.  It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--
right and wrong--throughout the world.  They are the two principles
that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will
ever continue to struggle.  The one is the common right of humanity,
and the other the divine right of kings.  It is the same principle in
whatever shape it develops itself.  It is the same spirit that says,
"You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it."  No matter in
what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to
bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their
labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another
race, it is the same tyrannical principle.  I was glad to express my
gratitude at Quincy, and I re-express it here, to Judge Douglas,--
that he looks to no end of the institution of slavery.  That will
help the people to see where the struggle really is.  It will
hereafter place with us all men who really do wish the wrong may have
an end.  And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the
real question, when we can get Judge Douglas and his friends to avow
a policy looking to its perpetuation,--we can get out from among that
class of men and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a
wrong.  Then there will soon be an end of it, and that end will be
its "ultimate extinction."  Whenever the issue can be distinctly
made, and all extraneous matter thrown out so that men can fairly see
the real difference between the parties, this controversy will soon
be settled, and it will be done peaceably too.  There will be no war,
no violence.  It will be placed again where the wisest and best men
of the world placed it.  Brooks of South Carolina once declared that
when this Constitution was framed its framers did not look to the
institution existing until this day.  When he said this, I think he
stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of the times.
But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of these
days, yet the men of these days had experience which they had not,
and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this
country that slavery should be perpetual.  I now say that, willingly
or unwillingly--purposely or without purpose, Judge Douglas has been
the most prominent instrument in changing the position of the
institution of slavery,--which the fathers of the government expected
to come to an end ere this, and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin
basis; placing it where he openly confesses he has no desire there
shall ever be an end of it.

I understand I have ten minutes yet.  I will employ it in saying
something about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains
the Dred Scott decision, that the people of the Territories can still
somehow exclude slavery.  The first thing I ask attention to is the
fact that Judge Douglas constantly said, before the decision, that
whether they could or not, was a question for the Supreme Court.  But
after the court had made the decision he virtually says it is not a
question for the Supreme Court, but for the people.  And how is it he
tells us they can exclude it?  He says it needs "police regulations,"
and that admits of "unfriendly legislation."  Although it is a right
established by the Constitution of the United States to take a slave
into a Territory of the United States and hold him as property, yet
unless the Territorial Legislature will give friendly legislation,
and more especially if they adopt unfriendly legislation, they can
practically exclude him.  Now, without meeting this proposition as a
matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional
obligation.  Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the face
before me, and let us suppose that he is a member of the Territorial
Legislature.  The first thing he will do will be to swear that he
will support the Constitution of the United States.  His neighbor by
his side in the Territory has slaves and needs Territorial
legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional right.  Can he
withhold the legislation which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment
of a right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitution of the
United States which he has sworn to support?  Can he withhold it
without violating his oath?  And, more especially, can he pass
unfriendly legislation to violate his oath?  Why, this is a monstrous
sort of talk about the Constitution of the United States!  There has
never been as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any
respectable man on earth.  I do not believe it is a constitutional
right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States.  I believe
the decision was improperly made and I go for reversing it.  Judge
Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision.
But he is for legislating it out of all force while the law itself
stands.  I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine
uttered from the mouth of a respectable man.

I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe that the people of
the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave
law,--that is a right fixed in the Constitution.  But it cannot be
made available to them without Congressional legislation.  In the
Judge's language, it is a "barren right," which needs legislation
before it can become efficient and valuable to the persons to whom it
is guaranteed.  And as the right is constitutional, I agree that the
legislation shall be granted to it, and that not that we like the
institution of slavery.  We profess to have no taste for running and
catching niggers, at least, I profess no taste for that job at all.
Why then do I yield support to a Fugitive Slave law?  Because I do
not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right,
can be supported without it.  And if I believed that the right to
hold a slave in a Territory was equally fixed in the Constitution
with the right to reclaim fugitives, I should be bound to give it the
legislation necessary to support it.  I say that no man can deny his
obligation to give the necessary legislation to support slavery in a
Territory, who believes it is a constitutional right to have it
there.  No man can, who does not give the Abolitionists an argument
to deny the obligation enjoined by the Constitution to enact a
Fugitive State law.  Try it now.  It is the strongest Abolition
argument ever made.  I say if that Dred Scott decision is correct,
then the right to hold slaves in a Territory is equally a
constitutional right with the right of a slaveholder to have his
runaway returned.  No one can show the distinction between them.  The
one is express, so that we cannot deny it.  The other is construed to
be in the Constitution, so that he who believes the decision to be
correct believes in the right.  And the man who argues that by
unfriendly legislation, in spite of that constitutional right,
slavery may be driven from the Territories, cannot avoid furnishing
an argument by which Abolitionists may deny the obligation to return
fugitives, and claim the power to pass laws unfriendly to the right
of the slaveholder to reclaim his fugitive.  I do not know how such
an arguement may strike a popular assembly like this, but I defy
anybody to go before a body of men whose minds are educated to
estimating evidence and reasoning, and show that there is an iota of
difference between the constitutional right to reclaim a fugitive and
the constitutional right to hold a slave, in a Territory, provided
this Dred Scott decision is correct, I defy any man to make an
argument that will justify unfriendly legislation to deprive a
slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a Territory, that will
not equally, in all its length, breadth, and thickness, furnish an
argument for nullifying the Fugitive Slave law.  Why, there is not
such an Abolitionist in the nation as Douglas, after all!




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v4
By Abraham Lincoln





THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

VOLUME 5.



TO SYDNEY SPRING, GRAYVILLE, ILL.

SPRINGFIELD, June 19, 1858.

SYDNEY SPRING, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter introducing Mr. Faree was duly received.
There was no opening to nominate him for Superintendent of Public
Instruction, but through him Egypt made a most valuable contribution
to the convention. I think it may be fairly said that he came off the
lion of the day--or rather of the night. Can you not elect him to the
Legislature?  It seems to me he would be hard to beat.  What
objection could be made to him?  What is your Senator Martin saying
and doing?  What is Webb about?

Please write me.
Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, June 24, 1858

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--Your letter enclosing the attack of the Times upon me was
received this morning.  Give yourself no concern about my voting
against the supplies.  Unless you are without faith that a lie can be
successfully contradicted, there is not a word of truth in the
charge, and I am just considering a little as to the best shape to
put a contradiction in.  Show this to whomever you please, but do not
publish it in the paper.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. W. SOMERS.

SPRINGFIELD, June 25, 1858.

JAMES W. SOMERS, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 22nd, inclosing a draft of two hundred
dollars, was duly received. I have paid it on the judgment, and
herewith you have the receipt. I do not wish to say anything as to
who shall be the Republican candidate for the Legislature in your
district, further than that I have full confidence in Dr. Hull.  Have
you ever got in the way of consulting with McKinley in political
matters?  He is true as steel, and his judgment is very good.  The
last I heard from him, he rather thought Weldon, of De Witt, was our
best timber for representative, all things considered.  But you there
must settle it among yourselves.  It may well puzzle older heads than
yours to understand how, as the Dred Scott decision holds, Congress
can authorize a Territorial Legislature to do everything else, and
cannot authorize them to prohibit slavery.  That is one of the things
the court can decide, but can never give an intelligible reason for.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. CAMPBELL.

SPRINGFIELD, June 28, 1858.

A. CAMPBELL, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--In 1856 you gave me authority to draw on you for any
sum not exceeding five hundred dollars.  I see clearly that such a
privilege would be more available now than it was then.  I am aware
that times are tighter now than they were then.  Please write me at
all events, and whether you can now do anything or not I shall
continue grateful for the past.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, July 16, 1858.

HON. JOSEPH GILLESPIE.

MY DEAR SIR:--I write this to say that from the specimens of Douglas
Democracy we occasionally see here from Madison, we learn that they
are making very confident calculation of beating you and your friends
for the lower house, in that county.  They offer to bet upon it.
Billings and Job, respectively, have been up here, and were each as I
learn, talking largely about it. If they do so, it can only be done
by carrying the Fillmore men of 1856 very differently from what they
seem to [be] going in the other party.  Below is the vote of 1856, in
your district:

Counties.

          Counties.   Buchanan.     Fremont.     Fillmore.
     Bond ............  607           153           659
     Madison ......... 1451          1111          1658
     Montgomery ......  992           162           686
                       ----          ----          ----
                       3050          1426          3003

By this you will see, if you go through the calculation, that if they
get one quarter of the Fillmore votes, and you three quarters, they
will beat you 125 votes. If they get one fifth, and you four fifths,
you beat them 179.  In Madison, alone, if our friends get 1000 of the
Fillmore votes, and their opponents the remainder, 658, we win by
just two votes.

This shows the whole field, on the basis of the election of 1856.

Whether, since then, any Buchanan, or Fremonters, have shifted
ground, and how the majority of new votes will go, you can judge
better than I.

Of course you, on the ground, can better determine your line of
tactics than any one off the ground; but it behooves you to be wide
awake and actively working.

Don't neglect it; and write me at your first leisure.
Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN MATHERS, JACKSONVILLE, ILL.

SPRINGFIELD, JULY 20, 1858.

JNO. MATHERS, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your kind and interesting letter of the 19th was duly
received.  Your suggestions as to placing one's self on the offensive
rather than the defensive are certainly correct.  That is a point
which I shall not disregard.  I spoke here on Saturday night. The
speech, not very well reported, appears in the State journal of this
morning.  You doubtless will see it; and I hope that you will
perceive in it that I am already improving.  I would mail you a copy
now, but have not one [at] hand.  I thank you for your letter and
shall be pleased to hear from you again.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOSEPH GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, JULY 25, 1858.

HON. J. GILLESPIE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your doleful letter of the 8th was received on my
return from Chicago last night. I do hope you are worse scared than
hurt, though you ought to know best.  We must not lose the district.
We must make a job of it, and save it.  Lay hold of the proper
agencies, and secure all the Americans you can, at once.  I do hope,
on closer inspection, you will find they are not half gone.  Make a
little test.  Run down one of the poll-books of the Edwardsville
precinct, and take the first hundred known American names.  Then
quietly ascertain how many of them are actually going for Douglas.  I
think you will find less than fifty.  But even if you find fifty,
make sure of the other fifty, that is, make sure of all you can, at
all events.  We will set other agencies to work which shall
compensate for the loss of a good many Americans.  Don't fail to
check the stampede at once.  Trumbull, I think, will be with you
before long.

There is much he cannot do, and some he can.  I have reason to hope
there will be other help of an appropriate kind.  Write me again.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO B. C. COOK.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 2, 1858.

Hon. B. C. COOK.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have a letter from a very true and intelligent man
insisting that there is a plan on foot in La Salle and Bureau to run
Douglas Republicans for Congress and for the Legislature in those
counties, if they can only get the encouragement of our folks
nominating pretty extreme abolitionists.

It is thought they will do nothing if our folks nominate men who are
not very obnoxious to the charge of abolitionism.  Please have your
eye upon this.  Signs are looking pretty fair.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HON. J. M. PALMER.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 5, 1858.

HON. J. M. PALMER.

DEAR SIR:--Since we parted last evening no new thought has occurred
to [me] on the subject of which we talked most yesterday.

I have concluded, however, to speak at your town on Tuesday, August
31st, and have promised to have it so appear in the papers of
to-morrow.  Judge Trumbull has not yet reached here.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO ALEXANDER SYMPSON.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 11, 1858.

ALEXANDER SYMPSON, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 6th received. If life and health continue I
shall pretty likely be at Augusta on the 25th.

Things look reasonably well.  Will tell you more fully when I see
you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. O. CUNNINGHAM.

OTTAWA, August 22, 1858.

J. O. CUNNINGHAM, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 18th, signed as secretary of the
Republican club, is received.  In the matter of making speeches I am
a good deal pressed by invitations from almost all quarters, and
while I hope to be at Urbana some time during the canvass, I cannot
yet say when.  Can you not see me at Monticello on the 6th of
September?

Douglas and I, for the first time this canvass, crossed swords here
yesterday; the fire flew some, and I am glad to know I am yet alive.
There was a vast concourse of people--more than could get near enough
to hear.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




ON SLAVERY IN A DEMOCRACY.

August ??, 1858

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.  This
expresses my idea of democracy.  Whatever differs from this, to the
extent of the difference, is no democracy.

A. LINCOLN.




TO B. C. COOK.

SPRINGFIELD,  August 2, 1858

HON. B. C. COOK.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have a letter from a very true friend, and
intelligent man, writing that there is a plan on foot in La Salle and
Bureau, to run Douglas Republican for Congress and for the
Legislature in those counties, if they can only get the encouragement
of our folks nominating pretty extreme abolitionists.  It is thought
they will do nothing if our folks nominate men who are not very
[undecipherable word looks like "obnoxious"] to the charge of
abolitionism.  Please have your eye upon this.  Signs are looking
pretty fair.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO DR. WILLIAM FITHIAN, DANVILLE, ILL.

BLOOMINGTON, Sept.  3, 1858

DEAR DOCTOR:--Yours of the 1st was received this morning, as also one
from Mr. Harmon, and one from Hiram Beckwith on the same subject.
You will see by the Journal that I have been appointed to speak at
Danville on the 22d of Sept.,--the day after Douglas speaks there.
My recent experience shows that speaking at the same place the next
day after D. is the very thing,--it is, in fact, a concluding speech
on him.  Please show this to Messrs.  Harmon and Beckwith; and tell
them they must excuse me from writing separate letters to them.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN

P. S.--Give full notice to all surrounding country.
A.L.




FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT PARIS, ILL.,

SEPT. 8, 1858.

Let us inquire what Judge Douglas really invented when he introduced
the Nebraska Bill? He called it Popular Sovereignty.  What does that
mean? It means the sovereignty of the people over their own affairs--
in other words, the right of the people to govern themselves.  Did
Judge Douglas invent this? Not quite.  The idea of popular
sovereignty was floating about several ages before the author of the
Nebraska Bill was born--indeed, before Columbus set foot on this
continent.  In the year 1776 it took form in the noble words which
you are all familiar with: "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal," etc.  Was not this the origin of
popular sovereignty as applied to the American people? Here we are
told that governments are instituted among men deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.  If that is not popular
sovereignty, then I have no conception of the meaning of words.  If
Judge Douglas did not invent this kind of popular sovereignty, let us
pursue the inquiry and find out what kind he did invent.  Was it the
right of emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves, and a
lot of "niggers," too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no
invention of his because General Cass put forth the same doctrine in
1848 in his so called Nicholson letter, six years before Douglas
thought of such a thing.  Then what was it that the "Little Giant"
invented? It never occurred to General Cass to call his discovery by
the odd name of popular sovereignty.  He had not the face to say that
the right of the people to govern "niggers" was the right of the
people to govern themselves.  His notions of the fitness of things
were not moulded to the brazenness of calling the right to put a
hundred "niggers" through under the lash in Nebraska a "sacred" right
of self-government.  And here I submit to you was Judge Douglas's
discovery, and the whole of it: He discovered that the right to breed
and flog negroes in Nebraska was popular sovereignty.




SPEECH AT CLINTON, ILLINOIS,

SEPTEMBER 8, 1858.

The questions are sometimes asked "What is all this fuss that is
being made about negroes? What does it amount to? And where will it
end?"  These questions imply that those who ask them consider the
slavery question a very insignificant matter they think that it
amounts to little or nothing and that those who agitate it are
extremely foolish.  Now it must be admitted that if the great
question which has caused so much trouble is insignificant, we are
very foolish to have anything to do with it--if it is of no
importance we had better throw it aside and busy ourselves with
something else.  But let us inquire a little into this insignificant
matter, as it is called by some, and see if it is not important
enough to demand the close attention of every well-wisher of the
Union.  In one of Douglas's recent speeches, I find a reference to
one which was made by me in Springfield some time ago.  The judge
makes one quotation from that speech that requires some little notice
from me at this time.  I regret that I have not my Springfield speech
before me, but the judge has quoted one particular part of it so
often that I think I can recollect it.  It runs I think as follows:

"We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery
agitation.  Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not
only not ceased but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion it will
not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.  I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved.  I do not expect the house to
fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become
all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will
arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as
well as South."

Judge Douglas makes use of the above quotation, and finds a great
deal of fault with it.  He deals unfairly with me, and tries to make
the people of this State believe that I advocated dangerous doctrines
in my Springfield speech.  Let us see if that portion of my
Springfield speech of which Judge Douglas complains so bitterly, is
as objectionable to others as it is to him.  We are, certainly, far
into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed
object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.
On the fourth day of January, 1854, Judge Douglas introduced the
Kansas-Nebraska bill.  He initiated a new policy, and that policy, so
he says, was to put an end to the agitation of the slavery question.
Whether that was his object or not I will not stop to discuss, but at
all events some kind of a policy was initiated; and what has been the
result? Instead of the quiet and good feeling which were promised us
by the self-styled author of Popular Sovereignty, we have had nothing
but ill-feeling and agitation.  According to Judge Douglas, the
passage of the Nebraska bill would tranquilize the whole country--
there would be no more slavery agitation in or out of Congress, and
the vexed question would be left entirely to the people of the
Territories.  Such was the opinion of Judge Douglas, and such were
the opinions of the leading men of the Democratic Party.  Even as
late as the spring of 1856 Mr. Buchanan said, a short time subsequent
to his nomination by the Cincinnati convention, that the territory of
Kansas would be tranquil in less than six weeks.  Perhaps he thought
so, but Kansas has not been and is not tranquil, and it may be a long
time before she may be so.

We all know how fierce the agitation was in Congress last winter, and
what a narrow escape Kansas had from being admitted into the Union
with a constitution that was detested by ninety-nine hundredths of
her citizens.  Did the angry debates which took place at Washington
during the last season of Congress lead you to suppose that the
slavery agitation was settled?

An election was held in Kansas in the month of August, and the
constitution which was submitted to the people was voted down by a
large majority.  So Kansas is still out of the Union, and there is a
probability that she will remain out for some time.  But Judge
Douglas says the slavery question is settled.  He says the bill he
introduced into the Senate of the United States on the 4th day of
January, 1854, settled the slavery question forever! Perhaps he can
tell us how that bill settled the slavery question, for if he is able
to settle a question of such great magnitude he ought to be able to
explain the manner in which he does it.  He knows and you know that
the question is not settled, and that his ill-timed experiment to
settle it has made it worse than it ever was before.

And now let me say a few words in regard to Douglas's great hobby of
negro equality.  He thinks--he says at least--that the Republican
party is in favor of allowing whites and blacks to intermarry, and
that a man can't be a good Republican unless he is willing to elevate
black men to office and to associate with them on terms of perfect
equality.  He knows that we advocate no such doctrines as these, but
he cares not how much he misrepresents us if he can gain a few votes
by so doing.  To show you what my opinion of negro equality was in
times past, and to prove to you that I stand on that question where I
always stood, I will read you a few extracts from a speech that was
made by me in Peoria in 1854.  It was made in reply to one of Judge
Douglas's speeches.

(Mr. Lincoln then read a number of extracts which had the ring of the
true metal.  We have rarely heard anything with which we have been
more pleased.  And the audience after hearing the extracts read, and
comparing their conservative sentiments with those now advocated by
Mr. Lincoln, testified their approval by loud applause.  How any
reasonable man can hear one of Mr. Lincoln's speeches without being
converted to Republicanism is something that we can't account for.
Ed.)

Slavery, continued Mr. Lincoln, is not a matter of little importance,
it overshadows every other question in which we are interested.  It
has divided the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and has sown
discord in the American Tract Society.  The churches have split and
the society will follow their example before long.  So it will be
seen that slavery is agitated in the religious as well as in the
political world.
Judge Douglas is very much afraid in the triumph that the Republican
party will lead to a general mixture of the white and black races.
Perhaps I am wrong in saying that he is afraid, so I will correct
myself by saying that he pretends to fear that the success of our
party will result in the amalgamation of the blacks and whites.  I
think I can show plainly, from documents now before me, that Judge
Douglas's fears are groundless.  The census of 1800 tells us that in
that year there were over four hundred thousand mulattoes in the
United States.  Now let us take what is called an Abolition State--
the Republican, slavery-hating State of New Hampshire--and see how
many mulattoes we can find within her borders.  The number amounts to
just one hundred and eighty-four.  In the Old Dominion--in the
Democratic and aristocratic State of Virginia--there were a few more
mulattoes than the Census-takers found in New Hampshire.  How many do
you suppose there were? Seventy-nine thousand, seven hundred and
seventy-five--twenty-three thousand more than there were in all the
free States!  In the slave States there were in 1800, three
hundred and forty-eight thousand mulattoes all of home production;
and in the free States there were less than sixty thousand mulattoes
--and a large number of them were imported from the South.




FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT EDWARDSVILLE, ILL.,

SEPT. 13, 1858.

I have been requested to give a concise statement of the difference,
as I understand it, between the Democratic and Republican parties, on
the leading issues of the campaign.  This question has been put to me
by a gentleman whom I do not know.  I do not even know whether he is
a friend of mine or a supporter of Judge Douglas in this contest, nor
does that make any difference.  His question is a proper one.  Lest I
should forget it, I will give you my answer before proceeding with
the line of argument I have marked out for this discussion.

The difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties on
the leading issues of this contest, as I understand it, is that the
former consider slavery a moral, social and political wrong, while
the latter do not consider it either a moral, a social or a political
wrong; and the action of each, as respects the growth of the country
and the expansion of our population, is squared to meet these views.
I will not affirm that the Democratic party consider slavery morally,
socially and politically right, though their tendency to that view
has, in my opinion, been constant and unmistakable for the past five
years.  I prefer to take, as the accepted maxim of the party, the
idea put forth by Judge Douglas, that he don't care whether slavery
is voted down or voted up."  I am quite willing to believe that many
Democrats would prefer that slavery should be always voted down, and
I know that some prefer that it be always voted up"; but I have a
right to insist that their action, especially if it be their constant
action, shall determine their ideas and preferences on this subject.
Every measure of the Democratic party of late years, bearing directly
or indirectly on the slavery question, has corresponded with this
notion of utter indifference whether slavery or freedom shall outrun
in the race of empire across to the Pacific--every measure, I say, up
to the Dred Scott decision, where, it seems to me, the idea is boldly
suggested that slavery is better than freedom.  The Republican party,
on the contrary, hold that this government was instituted to secure
the blessings of freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil to
the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the State.
Regarding it as an evil, they will not molest it in the States where
it exists, they will not overlook the constitutional guards which our
fathers placed around it; they will do nothing that can give proper
offence to those who hold slaves by legal sanction; but they will use
every constitutional method to prevent the evil from becoming larger
and involving more negroes, more white men, more soil, and more
States in its deplorable consequences.  They will, if possible, place
it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
course of ultimate peaceable extinction in God's own good time.  And
to this end they will, if possible, restore the government to the
policy of the fathers, the policy of preserving the new Territories
from the baneful influence of human bondage, as the Northwestern
Territories were sought to be preserved by the Ordinance of 1787, and
the Compromise Act of 1820.  They will oppose, in all its length and
breadth, the modern Democratic idea, that slavery is as good as
freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent,
if people can be found to carry it.  All, or nearly all, of Judge
Douglas's arguments are logical, if you admit that slavery is as good
and as right as freedom, and not one of them is worth a rush if you
deny it.  This is the difference, as I understand it, between the
Republican and Democratic parties.

My friends, I have endeavored to show you the logical consequences of
the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people of a Territory
cannot prevent the establishment of slavery in their midst.  I have
stated what cannot be gainsaid, that the grounds upon which this
decision is made are equally applicable to the free States as to the
free Territories, and that the peculiar reasons put forth by Judge
Douglas for indorsing this decision commit him, in advance, to the
next decision and to all other decisions corning from the same
source.  And when, by all these means, you have succeeded in
dehumanizing the negro; when you have put him down and made it
impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you
have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray
of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are you quite
sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you? What
constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is
not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and
our navy.  These are not our reliance against tyranny  All of those
may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle.
Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us.
Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of
all men, in all lands everywhere.  Destroy this spirit and you have
planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.  Familiarize
yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs
to wear them.  Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you
have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit
subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.  And let me
tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings
of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott
decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in by
the people.




VERSE TO "LINNIE "

September 30,? 1858.

TO "LINNIE":

A sweet plaintive song did I hear
And I fancied that she was the singer.
May emotions as pure as that song set astir
Be the wont that the future shall bring her.




NEGROES ARE MEN

TO J. U. BROWN.

SPRINGFIELD, OCT 18, 1858

HON. J. U. BROWN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I do not perceive how I can express myself more plainly
than I have in the fore-going extracts.  In four of them I have
expressly disclaimed all intention to bring about social and
political equality between the white and black races and in all the
rest I have done the same thing by clear implication.

I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in
the word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence.

I believe the declaration that "all men are created equal "is the
great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest;
that negro slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our
frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal
obligation; that by our frame of government, States which have
slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and
that all others--individuals, free States and national Government--
are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it.

I believe our Government was thus framed because of the necessity
springing from the actual presence of slavery, when it was framed.

That such necessity does not exist in the Territories when slavery is
not present.

In his Mendenhall speech Mr. Clay says: "Now as an abstract principle
there is no doubt of the truth of that declaration (all men created
equal), and it is desirable, in the original construction of society,
to keep it in view as a great fundamental principle."

Again, in the same speech Mr. Clay says: "If a state of nature
existed and we were about to lay the foundations of society, no man
would be more strongly opposed than I should to incorporate the
institution of slavery among its elements."

Exactly so.  In our new free Territories, a state of nature does
exist.  In them Congress lays the foundations of society; and in
laying those foundations, I say, with Mr. Clay, it is desirable that
the declaration of the equality of all men shall be kept in view as a
great fundamental principle, and that Congress, which lays the
foundations of society, should, like Mr. Clay, be strongly opposed to
the incorporation of slavery and its elements.

But it does not follow that social and political equality between
whites and blacks must be incorporated because slavery must not.  The
declaration does not so require.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN


[Newspaper cuttings of Lincoln's speeches at Peoria, in 1854, at
Springfield, Ottawa, Chicago, and Charleston, in 1858.  They were
pasted in a little book in which the above letter was also written.]




TO A. SYMPSON.

BLANDINSVILLE, Oct 26, 1858

A. SYMPSON, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Since parting with you this morning I heard some things
which make me believe that Edmunds and Morrill will spend this week
among the National Democrats, trying to induce them to content
themselves by voting for Jake Davis, and then to vote for the Douglas
candidates for senator and representative.  Have this headed off, if
you can.  Call Wagley's attention to it and have him and the National
Democrat for Rep.  to counteract it as far as they can.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SENATORIAL ELECTION LOST AND OUT OF MONEY

TO N. B. JUDD.

SPRINGFIELD, NOVEMBER 16, 1858

HON. N. B. JUDD

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 15th is just received.  I wrote you the same
day.  As to the pecuniary matter, I am willing to pay according to my
ability; but I am the poorest hand living to get others to pay.  I
have been on expenses so long without earning anything that I am
absolutely without money now for even household purposes.  Still, if
you can put in two hundred and fifty dollars for me toward
discharging the debt of the committee, I will allow it when you and I
settle the private matter between us.  This, with what I have already
paid, and with an outstanding note of mine, will exceed my
subscription of five hundred dollars.  This, too, is exclusive of my
ordinary expenses during the campaign, all of which, being added to
my loss of time and business, bears pretty heavily upon one no better
off in [this] world's goods than I; but as I had the post of honor,
it is not for me to be over nice.  You are feeling badly,--"And this
too shall pass away," never fear.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




THE FIGHT MUST GO ON

TO H. ASBURY.

SPRINGFIELD, November 19, 1858.

HENRY ASBURY, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 13th was received some days ago.  The fight
must go on.  The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at
the end of one or even one hundred defeats.  Douglas had the
ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means
to break down and to uphold the slave interest.  No ingenuity can
keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long.  Another explosion
will soon come.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




REALIZATION THAT DEBATES MUST BE SAVED

TO C. H. RAY.

SPRINGFIELD, Nov.20, 1858

DR. C. H. RAY

MY DEAR SIR:--I wish to preserve a set of the late debates (if they
may be called so), between Douglas and myself.  To enable me to do
so, please get two copies of each number of your paper containing the
whole, and send them to me by express; and I will pay you for the
papers and for your trouble.  I wish the two sets in order to lay one
away in the [undecipherable word] and to put the other in a
scrapbook.  Remember, if part of any debate is on both sides of the
sheet it will take two sets to make one scrap-book.

I believe, according to a letter of yours to Hatch, you are "feeling
like h-ll yet."  Quit that--you will soon feel better.  Another "blow
up" is coming; and we shall have fun again.  Douglas managed to be
supported both as the best instrument to down and to uphold the slave
power; but no ingenuity can long keep the antagonism in harmony.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD,  November 30, 1858

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR :--Being desirous of preserving in some permanent form
the late joint discussion between Douglas and myself, ten days ago I
wrote to Dr.  Ray, requesting him to forward to me by express two
sets of the numbers of the Tribune which contain the reports of those
discussions.  Up to date I have no word from him on the subject.
Will you, if in your power, procure them and forward them to me by
express? If you will, I will pay all charges, and be greatly obliged,
to boot.  Hoping to visit you before long, I remain

As ever your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. D. SHARPE.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec.  8, 1858.

H. D. SHARPE, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Your very kind letter of Nov.  9th was duly received.  I
do not know that you expected or desired an answer; but glancing over
the contents of yours again, I am prompted to say that, while I
desired the result of the late canvass to have been different, I
still regard it as an exceeding small matter.  I think we have fairly
entered upon a durable struggle as to whether this nation is to
ultimately become all slave or all free, and though I fall early in
the contest, it is nothing if I shall have contributed, in the least
degree, to the final rightful result.

Respectfully yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. SYMPSON.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec.12, 1858.

ALEXANDER SYMPSON, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--I expect the result of the election went hard with you.
So it did with me, too, perhaps not quite so hard as you may have
supposed.  I have an abiding faith that we shall beat them in the
long run.  Step by step the objects of the leaders will become too
plain for the people to stand them.  I write merely to let you know
that I am neither dead nor dying.  Please give my respects to your
good family, and all inquiring friends.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




ON BANKRUPTCY

NOTES OF AN ARGUMENT.

December [?], 1858.

Legislation and adjudication must follow and conform to the progress
of society.

The progress of society now begins to produce cases of the transfer
for debts of the entire property of railroad corporations; and to
enable transferees to use and enjoy the transferred property,
legislation and adjudication begin to be necessary.

Shall this class of legislation just now beginning with us be general
or special?

Section Ten of our Constitution requires that it should be general,
if possible.  (Read the section.)

Special legislation always trenches upon the judicial department; and
in so far violates Section Two of the Constitution.  (Read it.)

Just reasoning--policy--is in favor of general legislation--else the
Legislature will be loaded down with the investigation of smaller
cases--a work which the courts ought to perform, and can perform much
more perfectly.  How can the Legislature rightly decide the facts
between P. & B. and S.C.

It is said that under a general law, whenever a R. R. Co.  gets tired
of its debts, it may transfer fraudulently to get rid of them.  So
they may--so may individuals; and which--the Legislature or the
courts--is best suited to try the question of fraud in either case?

It is said, if a purchaser have acquired legal rights, let him not be
robbed of them, but if he needs legislation let him submit to just
terms to obtain it.

Let him, say we, have general law in advance (guarded in every
possible way against fraud), so that, when he acquires a legal right,
he will have no occasion to wait for additional legislation; and if
he has practiced fraud let the courts so decide.




A LEGAL OPINION BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The 11th Section of the Act of Congress, approved Feb. 11, 1805,
prescribing rules for the subdivision of sections of land within the
United States system of surveys, standing unrepealed, in my opinion,
is binding on the respective purchasers of different parts of the
same section, and furnishes the true rule for surveyors in
establishing lines between them.  That law, being in force at the
time each became a purchaser, becomes a condition of the purchase.

And, by that law, I think the true rule for dividing into quarters
any interior section or sections, which is not fractional, is to run
straight lines through the section from the opposite quarter section
corners, fixing the point where such straight lines cross, or
intersect each other, as the middle or centre of the section.

Nearly, perhaps quite, all the original surveys are to some extent
erroneous, and in some of the sections, greatly so. In each of the
latter, it is obvious that a more equitable mode of division than the
above might be adopted; but as error is infinitely various perhaps no
better single rules can be prescribed.

At all events I think the above has been prescribed by the competent
authority.

SPRINGFIELD, Jany.  6, 1859.

A. LINCOLN.




TO M. W. DELAHAY.

SPRINGFIELD, March 4, 1859.

M. W. DELAHAY, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR: Your second letter in relation to my being with you at
your Republican convention was duly received.  It is not at hand just
now, but I have the impression from it that the convention was to be
at Leavenworth; but day before yesterday a friend handed me a letter
from Judge M. F. Caraway, in which he also expresses a wish for me to
come, and he fixes the place at Ossawatomie.  This I believe is off
of the river, and will require more time and labor to get to it.  It
will push me hard to get there without injury to my own business; but
I shall try to do it, though I am not yet quite certain I shall
succeed.

I should like to know before coming, that while some of you wish me
to come, there may not be others who would quite as lief I would stay
away. Write me again.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO W. M. MORRIS.

SPRINGFIELD, March 28, 1859.

W. M. MORRIS, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Your kind note inviting me to deliver a lecture at
Galesburg is received. I regret to say I cannot do so now; I must
stick to the courts awhile. I read a sort of lecture to three
different audiences during the last month and this; but I did so
under circumstances which made it a waste of no time whatever.

Yours very truly,




TO H. L. PIERCE AND OTHERS.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 6, 1859.

GENTLEMEN:--Your kind note inviting me to attend a festival in
Boston, on the 28th instant, in honor of the birthday of Thomas
Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I cannot
attend.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political
parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was
the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it
is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend
politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be
celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while
those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to
breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its
supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the
rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and
assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson,
and their opponents the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be equally
interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to
the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely
nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property;
Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar,
but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated
men engaged in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after
a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought
himself out of his own coat and into that of the other.  If the two
leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the
days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the
two drunken men.

But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of
Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with
great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the
simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would
fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free
society.  And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of
success.  One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities."
Another bluntly calls them "self-evident lies."  And others
insidiously argue that they apply to "superior races."  These
expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--
the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring
those of classification, caste, and legitimacy.  They would delight a
convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people.  They are
the vanguard, the miners and sappers, of returning despotism.  We
must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.  This is a world of
compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no
slave.  Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for
themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.  All honor
to Jefferson to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle
for national independence by a single people, had the coolness,
forecast, and capacity to introduce into a mere revolutionary
document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and
so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be
a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing
tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. CANISIUS.

SPRINGFIELD, May 17, 1859.

DR. THEODORE CANISIUS.

DEAR SIR:--Your note asking, in behalf of yourself and other German
citizens, whether I am for or against the constitutional provision in
regard to naturalized citizens, lately adopted by Massachusetts, and
whether I am for or against a fusion of the Republicans and other
opposition elements for the canvass of 1860, is received.

Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no
privilege of mine to scold her for what she does.  Still, if from
what she has done an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I
would do, I may without impropriety speak out.  I say, then, that, as
I understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption
in Illinois, or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it.
Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation
of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.  I have some
little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed negro; and I should
be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing
the existing rights of white men, even though born in different
lands, and speaking different languages from myself.  As to the
matter of fusion, I am for it if it can be had on Republican grounds;
and I am not for it on any other terms.  A fusion on any other terms
would be as foolish as unprincipled.  It would lose the whole North,
while the common enemy would still carry the whole South.  The
question of men is a different one.  There are good, patriotic men
and able statesmen in the South whom I would cheerfully support, if
they would now place themselves on Republican ground, but I am
against letting down the Republican standard a hairsbreadth.

I have written this hastily, but I believe it answers your questions
substantially.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE GOVERNOR, AUDITOR, AND TREASURER OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

GENTLEMEN:

In reply to your inquiry; requesting our written opinion as to what
your duty requires you to do in executing the latter clause of the
Seventh Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the
principal and interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859,
we reply that said last clause of said section is certainly
indefinite, general, and ambiguous in its description of the bonds to
be issued by you; giving no time at which the bonds are to be made
payable, no place at which either principal or interest are to be
paid, and no rate of interest which the bonds are to bear; nor any
other description except that they are to be coupon bonds, which in
commercial usage means interest-paying bonds with obligations or
orders attached to them for the payment of annual or semiannual
interest; there is we suppose no difficulty in ascertaining, if this
act stood alone, what ought to be the construction of the terms
"coupon bonds" and that it, would mean bonds bearing interest from
the time of issuing the same.  And under this act considered by
itself the creditors would have a right to require such bonds.  But
your inquiry in regard to a class of bonds on which no interest is to
be paid or shall begin to run until January 1, 1860, is whether the
Act of February 18, 1857, would not authorize you to refuse to give
bonds with any coupons attached payable before the first day of July,
1860. We have very maturely considered this question and have arrived
at the conclusion that you have a right to use such measures as will
secure the State against the loss of six months' interest on these
bonds by the indefiniteness of the Act of 1859. While it cannot be
denied that the letter of the laws favor the construction claimed by
some of the creditors that interest-bearing bonds were required to be
issued to them, inasmuch as the restriction that no interest is to
run on said bonds until 1st January, 1860, relates solely to the
bonds issued under the Act of 1857.  And the Act of 1859 directing
you to issue new bonds does not contain this restriction, but directs
you to issue coupon bonds.  Nevertheless the very indefiniteness and
generality of the Act of 1859, giving no rate of interest, no time
due, no place of payment, no postponement of the time when interest
commences, necessarily implies that the Legislature intended to
invest you with a discretion to impose such terms and restrictions as
would protect the interest of the State; and we think you have a
right and that it is your duty to see that the State Bonds are so
issued that the State shall not lose six months' interest.  Two plans
present themselves either of which will secure the State.  1st. If in
literal compliance with the law you issue bonds bearing interest from
1st July, 1859, you may deduct from the bonds presented three
thousand from every $100,000 of bonds and issue $97,000 of coupon
bonds; by this plan $3000 out of $100,000 of principal would be
extinguished in consideration of paying $2910 interest on the first
of January, 1860--and the interest on the $3000 would forever cease;
this would be no doubt most advantageous to the State.  But if the
Auditor will not consent to this, then,  2nd. Cut off of each bond
all the coupons payable before 1st July, 1860.

One of these plans would undoubtedly have been prescribed by the
Legislature if its attention had been directed to this question.

May 28, 1859.




ON LINCOLN'S SCRAP BOOK

TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD,  December 25, 1858.

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have just received yours of the 23rd inquiring
whether I received the newspapers you sent me by express.  I did
receive them, and am very much obliged.  There is some probability
that my scrap-book will be reprinted, and if it shall, I will save
you a copy.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.





1859



FIRST SUGGESTION OF A PRESIDENTIAL OFFER.

TO S. GALLOWAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., July 28, 1859.

HON. SAMUEL GALLOWAY.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your very complimentary, not to say flattering, letter
of the 23d inst. is received.  Dr. Reynolds had induced me to expect
you here; and I was disappointed not a little by your failure to
come.  And yet I fear you have formed an estimate of me which can
scarcely be sustained on a personal acquaintance.

Two things done by the Ohio Republican convention--the repudiation of
Judge Swan, and the "plank" for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law--I
very much regretted.  These two things are of a piece; and they are
viewed by many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle
against, and in disregard of, the Constitution itself.  And it is the
very thing that will greatly endanger our cause, if it be not kept
out of our national convention.  There is another thing our friends
are doing which gives me some uneasiness.  It is their leaning toward
"popular sovereignty."  There are three substantial objections to
this: First, no party can command respect which sustains this year
what it opposed last.  Secondly, Douglas (who is the most dangerous
enemy of liberty, because the most insidious one) would have little
support in the North, and by consequence, no capital to trade on in
the South, if it were not for his friends thus magnifying him and his
humbug.  But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's popular sovereignty,
accepted by the public mind as a just principle, nationalizes
slavery, and revives the African slave trade inevitably.

Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are
identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the
argument which establishes one will establish the other.  Try a
thousand years for a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the
people of Kansas from having slaves, and, when you have found it, it
will be an equally good one why Congress should not hinder the people
of Georgia from importing slaves from Africa.

As to Governor Chase, I have a kind side for him.  He was one of the
few distinguished men of the nation who gave us, in Illinois, their
sympathy last year.  I never saw him, but suppose him to be able and
right-minded; but still he may not be the most suitable as a
candidate for the Presidency.

I must say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency.  As you
propose a correspondence with me, I shall look for your letters
anxiously.

I have not met Dr. Reynolds since receiving your letter; but when I
shall, I will present your respects as requested.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




IT IS BAD TO BE POOR.

TO HAWKINS TAYLOR

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. Sept. 6, 1859.

HAWKINS TAYLOR, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 3d is just received.  There is some mistake
about my expected attendance of the U.S. Court in your city on the 3d
Tuesday of this month.  I have had no thought of being there.

It is bad to be poor.  I shall go to the wall for bread and meat if I
neglect my business this year as well as last.  It would please me
much to see the city and good people of Keokuk, but for this year it
is little less than an impossibility.  I am constantly receiving
invitations which I am compelled to decline.  I was pressingly urged
to go to Minnesota; and I now have two invitations to go to Ohio.
These last are prompted by Douglas going there; and I am really
tempted to make a flying trip to Columbus and Cincinnati.

I do hope you will have no serious trouble in Iowa.  What thinks
Grimes about it? I have not known him to be mistaken about an
election in Iowa.  Present my respects to Col.  Carter, and any other
friends, and believe me

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH AT COLUMBUS, OHIO.

SEPTEMBER 16, 1859.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF OHIO: I cannot fail to remember that
I appear for the first time before an audience in this now great
State,--an audience that is accustomed to hear such speakers as
Corwin, and Chase, and Wade, and many other renowned men; and,
remembering this, I feel that it will be well for you, as for me,
that you should not raise your expectations to that standard to which
you would have been justified in raising them had one of these
distinguished men appeared before you.  You would perhaps be only
preparing a disappointment for yourselves, and, as a consequence of
your disappointment, mortification to me.  I hope, therefore, that
you will commence with very moderate expectations; and perhaps, if
you will give me your attention, I shall be able to interest you to a
moderate degree.

Appearing here for the first time in my life, I have been somewhat
embarrassed for a topic by way of introduction to my speech; but I
have been relieved from that embarrassment by an introduction which
the Ohio Statesman newspaper gave me this morning.  In this paper I
have read an article, in which, among other statements, I find the
following:

"In debating with Senator Douglas during the memorable contest of
last fall, Mr. Lincoln declared in favor of negro suffrage, and
attempted to defend that vile conception against the Little Giant."

I mention this now, at the opening of my remarks, for the purpose of
making three comments upon it.  The first I have already announced,--
it furnishes me an introductory topic; the second is to show that the
gentleman is mistaken; thirdly, to give him an opportunity to correct
it.

In the first place, in regard to this matter being a mistake.  I have
found that it is not entirely safe, when one is misrepresented under
his very nose, to allow the misrepresentation to go uncontradicted.
I therefore propose, here at the outset, not only to say that this is
a misrepresentation, but to show conclusively that it is so; and you
will bear with me while I read a couple of extracts from that very
"memorable" debate with Judge Douglas last year, to which this
newspaper refers.  In the first pitched battle which Senator Douglas
and myself had, at the town of Ottawa, I used the language which I
will now read.  Having been previously reading an extract, I
continued as follows:

"Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this
is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the
institution of slavery and the black race.  This is the whole of it;
and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and
political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic
arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be
a chestnut horse.  I will say here, while upon this subject, that I
have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I
have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.  I
have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between
the white and the black races.  There is a physical difference
between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forbid their
ever living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and
inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference,
I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I
belong having the superior position.  I have never said anything to
the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no
reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence,--the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I hold that he is as
much entitled to these as the white man.  I agree with judge Douglas,
he is not my equal in many respects,--certainly not in color, perhaps
not in moral or intellectual endowments.  But in the right to eat the
bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is
my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every
living man."

Upon a subsequent occasion, when the reason for making a statement
like this occurred, I said:

"While I was at the hotel to-day an elderly gentleman called upon me
to know whether I was really in favor of producing perfect equality
between the negroes and white people.  While I had not proposed to
myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet, as the
question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes
in saying something in regard to it.  I will say, then, that I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the
social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of
negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, or intermarry with
the white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a
physical difference between the white and black races which I believe
will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social
and political equality.  And inasmuch as they can not so live, while
they do remain together there must be the position of superior and
inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the
superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this
occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the
superior position, the negro should be denied everything.  I do not
understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I
must necessarily want her for a wife.  My understanding is that I can
just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly
never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife.  So it
seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either
slaves or wives of negroes.  I will add to this that I have never
seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child, who was in favor of
producing perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and
white men.  I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever
heard of so frequently as to be satisfied of its correctness, and
that is the case of Judge Douglas's old friend Colonel Richard M.
Johnson.  I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not
going to enter at large upon this subject), that I have never had the
least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes, if there
was no law to keep them from it; but as judge Douglas and his friends
seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no
law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I
will to the very last stand by the law of the State which forbids the
marrying of white people with negroes."

There, my friends, you have briefly what I have, upon former
occasions, said upon this subject to which this newspaper, to the
extent of its ability, has drawn the public attention.  In it you not
only perceive, as a probability, that in that contest I did not at
any time say I was in favor of negro suffrage, but the absolute proof
that twice--once substantially, and once expressly--I declared
against it.  Having shown you this, there remains but a word of
comment upon that newspaper article.  It is this, that I presume the
editor of that paper is an honest and truth-loving man, and that he
will be greatly obliged to me for furnishing him thus early an
opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he has made, before it
has run so long that malicious people can call him a liar.

The Giant himself has been here recently.  I have seen a brief report
of his speech.  If it were otherwise unpleasant to me to introduce
the subject of the negro as a topic for discussion, I might be
somewhat relieved by the fact that he dealt exclusively in that
subject while he was here.  I shall, therefore, without much
hesitation or diffidence, enter upon this subject.

The American people, on the first day of January, 1854, found the
African slave trade prohibited by a law of Congress.  In a majority
of the States of this Union, they found African slavery, or any other
sort of slavery, prohibited by State constitutions.  They also found
a law existing, supposed to be valid, by which slavery was excluded
from almost all the territory the United States then owned.  This was
the condition of the country, with reference to the institution of
slavery, on the first of January, 1854.  A few days after that, a
bill was introduced into Congress, which ran through its regular
course in the two branches of the national legislature, and finally
passed into a law in the month of May, by which the Act of Congress
prohibiting slavery from going into the Territories of the United
States was repealed.  In connection with the law itself, and, in
fact, in the terms of the law, the then existing prohibition was not
only repealed, but there was a declaration of a purpose on the part
of Congress never thereafter to exercise any power that they might
have, real or supposed, to prohibit the extension or spread of
slavery. This was a very great change; for the law thus repealed was
of more than thirty years' standing.  Following rapidly upon the
heels of this action of Congress, a decision of the Supreme Court is
made, by which it is declared that Congress, if it desires to
prohibit the spread of slavery into the Territories, has no
constitutional power to do so.  Not only so, but that decision lays
down principles which, if pushed to their logical conclusion,--I say
pushed to their logical conclusion,--would decide that the
constitutions of free States, forbidding slavery, are themselves
unconstitutional.  Mark me, I do not say the judges said this, and
let no man say I affirm the judges used these words; but I only say
it is my opinion that what they did say, if pressed to its logical
conclusion, will inevitably result thus.

Looking at these things, the Republican party, as I understand its
principles and policy, believes that there is great danger of the
institution of slavery being spread out and extended until it is
ultimately made alike lawful in all the States of this Union; so
believing, to prevent that incidental and ultimate consummation is
the original and chief purpose of the Republican organization. I say
"chief purpose" of the Republican organization; for it is certainly
true that if the National House shall fall into the hands of the
Republicans, they will have to attend to all the other matters of
national house-keeping, as well as this.  The chief and real purpose
of the Republican party is eminently conservative.  It proposes
nothing save and except to restore this government to its original
tone in regard to this element of slavery, and there to maintain it,
looking for no further change in reference to it than that which the
original framers of the Government themselves expected and looked
forward to.

The chief danger to this purpose of the Republican party is not just
now the revival of the African slave trade, or the passage of a
Congressional slave code, or the declaring of a second Dred Scott
decision, making slavery lawful in all the States.  These are not
pressing us just now.  They are not quite ready yet.  The authors of
these measures know that we are too strong for them; but they will be
upon us in due time, and we will be grappling with them hand to hand,
if they are not now headed off.  They are not now the chief danger to
the purpose of the Republican organization; but the most imminent
danger that now threatens that purpose is that insidious Douglas
popular sovereignty.  This is the miner and sapper.  While it does
not propose to revive the African slave trade, nor to pass a slave
code, nor to make a second Dred Scott decision, it is preparing us
for the onslaught and charge of these ultimate enemies when they
shall be ready to come on, and the word of command for them to
advance shall be given.  I say this "Douglas popular sovereignty";
for there is a broad distinction, as I now understand it, between
that article and a genuine popular sovereignty.

I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty.  I think a
definition of "genuine popular sovereignty," in the abstract, would
be about this: That each man shall do precisely as he pleases with
himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him.
Applied to government, this principle would be, that a general
government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the
local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to
those matters which exclusively concern them.  I understand that this
government of the United States, under which we live, is based upon
this principle; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have
any war to make upon that principle.

Now, what is judge Douglas's popular sovereignty?  It is, as a
principle, no other than that if one man chooses to make a slave of
another man neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to
object.  Applied in government, as he seeks to apply it, it is this:
If, in a new Territory into which a few people are beginning to enter
for the purpose of making their homes, they choose to either exclude
slavery from their limits or to establish it there, however one or
the other may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely
greater number of persons who are afterwards to inhabit that
Territory, or the other members of the families of communities, of
which they are but an incipient member, or the general head of the
family of States as parent of all, however their action may affect
one or the other of these, there is no power or right to interfere.
That is Douglas's popular sovereignty applied.

He has a good deal of trouble with popular sovereignty.  His
explanations explanatory of explanations explained are interminable.
The most lengthy, and, as I suppose, the most maturely considered of
this long series of explanations is his great essay in Harper's
Magazine.  I will not attempt to enter on any very thorough
investigation of his argument as there made and presented.  I will
nevertheless occupy a good portion of your time here in drawing your
attention to certain points in it.  Such of you as may have read this
document will have perceived that the judge early in the document
quotes from two persons as belonging to the Republican party, without
naming them, but who can readily be recognized as being Governor
Seward of New York and myself.  It is true that exactly fifteen
months ago this day, I believe, I for the first time expressed a
sentiment upon this subject, and in such a manner that it should get
into print, that the public might see it beyond the circle of my
hearers; and my expression of it at that time is the quotation that
Judge Douglas makes. He has not made the quotation with accuracy, but
justice to him requires me to say that it is sufficiently accurate
not to change the sense.

The sense of that quotation condensed is this: that this slavery
element is a durable element of discord among us, and that we shall
probably not have perfect peace in this country with it until it
either masters the free principle in our government, or is so far
mastered by the free principle as for the public mind to rest in the
belief that it is going to its end.  This sentiment, which I now
express in this way, was, at no great distance of time, perhaps in
different language, and in connection with some collateral ideas,
expressed by Governor Seward.  Judge Douglas has been so much annoyed
by the expression of that sentiment that he has constantly, I
believe, in almost all his speeches since it was uttered, been
referring to it.  I find he alluded to it in his speech here, as well
as in the copyright essay.  I do not now enter upon this for the
purpose of making an elaborate argument to show that we were right in
the expression of that sentiment.  In other words, I shall not stop
to say all that might properly be said upon this point, but I only
ask your attention to it for the purpose of making one or two points
upon it.

If you will read the copyright essay, you will discover that judge
Douglas himself says a controversy between the American Colonies and
the Government of Great Britain began on the slavery question in
1699, and continued from that time until the Revolution; and, while
he did not say so, we all know that it has continued with more or
less violence ever since the Revolution.

Then we need not appeal to history, to the declarations of the
framers of the government, but we know from judge Douglas himself
that slavery began to be an element of discord among the white people
of this country as far back as 1699, or one hundred and sixty years
ago, or five generations of men,--counting thirty years to a
generation.  Now, it would seem to me that it might have occurred to
Judge Douglas, or anybody who had turned his attention to these
facts, that there was something in the nature of that thing, slavery,
somewhat durable for mischief and discord.

There is another point I desire to make in regard to this matter,
before I leave it. From the adoption of the Constitution down to 1820
is the precise period of our history when we had comparative peace
upon this question,--the precise period of time when we came nearer
to having peace about it than any other time of that entire one
hundred and sixty years in which he says it began, or of the eighty
years of our own Constitution.  Then it would be worth our while to
stop and examine into the probable reason of our coming nearer to
having peace then than at any other time.  This was the precise
period of time in which our fathers adopted, and during which they
followed, a policy restricting the spread of slavery, and the whole
Union was acquiescing in it.  The whole country looked forward to the
ultimate extinction of the institution.  It was when a policy had
been adopted, and was prevailing, which led all just and right-minded
men to suppose that slavery was gradually coming to an end, and that
they might be quiet about it, watching it as it expired.  I think
Judge Douglas might have perceived that too; and whether he did or
not, it is worth the attention of fair-minded men, here and
elsewhere, to consider whether that is not the truth of the case.  If
he had looked at these two facts,--that this matter has been an
element of discord for one hundred and sixty years among this people,
and that the only comparative peace we have had about it was when
that policy prevailed in this government which he now wars upon, he
might then, perhaps, have been brought to a more just appreciation of
what I said fifteen months ago,--that "a house divided against itself
cannot stand.  I believe that this government cannot endure
permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to
fall, I do not expect the Union to dissolve; but I do expect it will
cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it,
and place it where the public mind will rest in the belief that it is
in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as
well as new, North as well as South."  That was my sentiment at that
time.  In connection with it, I said: "We are now far into the fifth
year since a policy was inaugurated with the avowed object and
confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the
operation of the policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but
has constantly augmented."  I now say to you here that we are
advanced still farther into the sixth year since that policy of Judge
Douglas--that popular sovereignty of his--for quieting the slavery
question was made the national policy.  Fifteen months more have been
added since I uttered that sentiment; and I call upon you and all
other right-minded men to say whether that fifteen months have belied
or corroborated my words.

While I am here upon this subject, I cannot but express gratitude
that this true view of this element of discord among us--as I believe
it is--is attracting more and more attention.  I do not believe that
Governor Seward uttered that sentiment because I had done so before,
but because he reflected upon this subject and saw the truth of it.
Nor do I believe because Governor Seward or I uttered it that Mr.
Hickman of Pennsylvania, in, different language, since that time, has
declared his belief in the utter antagonism which exists between the
principles of liberty and slavery.  You see we are multiplying.  Now,
while I am speaking of Hickman, let me say, I know but little about
him.  I have never seen him, and know scarcely anything about the
man; but I will say this much of him: Of all the anti-Lecompton
Democracy that have been brought to my notice, he alone has the true,
genuine ring of the metal.  And now, without indorsing anything else
he has said, I will ask this audience to give three cheers for
Hickman. [The audience responded with three rousing cheers for
Hickman.]

Another point in the copyright essay to which I would ask your
attention is rather a feature to be extracted from the whole thing,
than from any express declaration of it at any point.  It is a
general feature of that document, and, indeed, of all of Judge
Douglas's discussions of this question, that the Territories of the
United States and the States of this Union are exactly alike; that
there is no difference between them at all; that the Constitution
applies to the Territories precisely as it does to the States; and
that the United States Government, under the Constitution, may not do
in a State what it may not do in a Territory, and what it must do in
a State it must do in a Territory.  Gentlemen, is that a true view of
the case?  It is necessary for this squatter sovereignty, but is it
true?

Let us consider.  What does it depend upon?  It depends altogether
upon the proposition that the States must, without the interference
of the General Government, do all those things that pertain
exclusively to themselves,--that are local in their nature, that have
no connection with the General Government.  After Judge Douglas has
established this proposition, which nobody disputes or ever has
disputed, he proceeds to assume, without proving it, that slavery is
one of those little, unimportant, trivial matters which are of just
about as much consequence as the question would be to me whether my
neighbor should raise horned cattle or plant tobacco; that there is
no moral question about it, but that it is altogether a matter of
dollars and cents; that when a new Territory is opened for
settlement, the first man who goes into it may plant there a thing
which, like the Canada thistle or some other of those pests of the
soil, cannot be dug out by the millions of men who will come
thereafter; that it is one of those little things that is so trivial
in its nature that it has nor effect upon anybody save the few men
who first plant upon the soil; that it is not a thing which in any
way affects the family of communities composing these States, nor any
way endangers the General Government. Judge Douglas ignores
altogether the very well known fact that we have never had a serious
menace to our political existence, except it sprang from this thing,
which he chooses to regard as only upon a par with onions and
potatoes.

Turn it, and contemplate it in another view.  He says that, according
to his popular sovereignty, the General Government may give to the
Territories governors, judges, marshals, secretaries, and all the
other chief men to govern them, but they, must not touch upon this
other question.  Why?  The question of who shall be governor of a
Territory for a year or two, and pass away, without his track being
left upon the soil, or an act which he did for good or for evil being
left behind, is a question of vast national magnitude; it is so much
opposed in its nature to locality that the nation itself must decide
it: while this other matter of planting slavery upon a soil,--a thing
which, once planted, cannot be eradicated by the succeeding millions
who have as much right there as the first comers, or, if eradicated,
not without infinite difficulty and a long struggle, he considers the
power to prohibit it as one of these little local, trivial things
that the nation ought not to say a word about; that it affects nobody
save the few men who are there.

Take these two things and consider them together, present the
question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by the
side of a question who shall be Governor of Kansas for a year or two,
and is there a man here, is there a man on earth, who would not say
the governor question is the little one, and the slavery question is
the great one?  I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local,
and the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be governor?
while the durable, the important, and the mischievous one is, Shall
this soil be planted with slavery?

This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind
from his peculiar structure.  I suppose the institution of slavery
really looks small to him.  He is so put up by nature that a lash
upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back
does not hurt him.  That is the build of the man, and consequently he
looks upon the matter of slavery in this unimportant light.

Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is endeavoring to force this
policy upon the American people, that while he is put up in that way,
a good many are not.  He ought to remember that there was once in
this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a
Democrat,--a man whose principles and policy are not very prevalent
amongst Democrats to-day, it is true; but that man did not take
exactly this view of the insignificance of the element of slavery
which our friend judge Douglas does.  In contemplation of this thing,
we all know he was led to exclaim, "I tremble for my country when I
remember that God is just!"  We know how he looked upon it when he
thus expressed himself.  There was danger to this country,--danger of
the avenging justice of God, in that little unimportant popular
sovereignty question of judge Douglas.  He supposed there was a
question of God's eternal justice wrapped up in the enslaving of any
race of men, or any man, and that those who did so braved the arm of
Jehovah; that when a nation thus dared the Almighty, every friend of
that nation had cause to dread his wrath.  Choose ye between
Jefferson and Douglas as to what is the true view of this element
among us.

There is another little difficulty about this matter of treating the
Territories and States alike in all things, to which I ask your
attention, and I shall leave this branch of the case.  If there is no
difference between them, why not make the Territories States at once?
What is the reason that Kansas was not fit to come into the Union
when it was organized into a Territory, in Judge Douglas's view?  Can
any of you tell any reason why it should not have come into the Union
at once?  They are fit, as he thinks, to decide upon the slavery
question,--the largest and most important with which they could
possibly deal: what could they do by coming into the Union that they
are not fit to do, according to his view, by staying out of it?  Oh,
they are not fit to sit in Congress and decide upon the rates of
postage, or questions of ad valorem or specific duties on foreign
goods, or live-oak timber contracts, they are not fit to decide these
vastly important matters, which are national in their import, but
they are fit, "from the jump," to decide this little negro question.
But, gentlemen, the case is too plain; I occupy too much time on this
head, and I pass on.

Near the close of the copyright essay, the judge, I think, comes very
near kicking his own fat into the fire. I did not think, when I
commenced these remarks, that I would read that article, but I now
believe I will:

"This exposition of the history of these measures shows conclusively
that the authors of the Compromise measures of 1850 and of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, as well as the members of the
Continental Congress of 1774., and the founders of our system of
government subsequent to the Revolution, regarded the people of the
Territories and Colonies as political communities which were entitled
to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their provisional
legislatures, where their representation could alone be preserved, in
all cases of taxation and internal polity."

When the judge saw that putting in the word "slavery" would
contradict his own history, he put in what he knew would pass
synonymous with it, "internal polity."  Whenever we find that in one
of his speeches, the substitute is used in this manner; and I can
tell you the reason.  It would be too bald a contradiction to say
slavery; but "internal polity" is a general phrase, which would pass
in some quarters, and which he hopes will pass with the reading
community for the same thing.

"This right pertains to the people collectively, as a law-abiding and
peaceful community, and not in the isolated individuals who may
wander upon the public domain in violation of the law. It can only be
exercised where there are inhabitants sufficient to constitute a
government, and capable of performing its various functions and
duties,--a fact to be ascertained and determined by "who do you
think?  Judge Douglas says "by Congress!"  "Whether the number shall
be fixed at ten, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, does not
affect the principle."

Now, I have only a few comments to make. Popular sovereignty, by his
own words, does not pertain to the few persons who wander upon the
public domain in violation of law.  We have his words for that.  When
it does pertain to them, is when they are sufficient to be formed
into an organized political community, and he fixes the minimum for
that at ten thousand, and the maximum at twenty thousand.  Now, I
would like to know what is to be done with the nine thousand?  Are
they all to be treated, until they are large enough to be organized
into a political community, as wanderers upon the public land, in
violation of law?  And if so treated and driven out, at what point of
time would there ever be ten thousand?  If they were not driven out,
but remained there as trespassers upon the public land in violation
of the law, can they establish slavery there?  No; the judge says
popular sovereignty don't pertain to them then.  Can they exclude it
then?  No; popular sovereignty don't pertain to them then.  I would
like to know, in the case covered by the essay, what condition the
people of the Territory are in before they reach the number of ten
thousand?

But the main point I wish to ask attention to is, that the question
as to when they shall have reached a sufficient number to be formed
into a regular organized community is to be decided "by Congress."
Judge Douglas says so.  Well, gentlemen, that is about all we want.
No, that is all the Southerners want.  That is what all those who are
for slavery want.  They do not want Congress to prohibit slavery from
coming into the new Territories, and they do not want popular
sovereignty to hinder it; and as Congress is to say when they are
ready to be organized, all that the South has to do is to get
Congress to hold off.  Let Congress hold off until they are ready to
be admitted as a State, and the South has all it wants in taking
slavery into and planting it in all the Territories that we now have
or hereafter may have.  In a word, the whole thing, at a dash of the
pen, is at last put in the power of Congress; for if they do not have
this popular sovereignty until Congress organizes them, I ask if it
at last does not come from Congress?  If, at last, it amounts to
anything at all, Congress gives it to them.  I submit this rather for
your reflection than for comment.  After all that is said, at last,
by a dash of the pen, everything that has gone before is undone, and
he puts the whole question under the control of Congress.  After
fighting through more than three hours, if you undertake to read it,
he at last places the whole matter under the control of that power
which he has been contending against, and arrives at a result
directly contrary to what he had been laboring to do.  He at last
leaves the whole matter to the control of Congress.

There are two main objects, as I understand it, of this Harper's
Magazine essay. One was to show, if possible, that the men of our
Revolutionary times were in favor of his popular sovereignty, and the
other was to show that the Dred Scott decision had not entirely
squelched out this popular sovereignty.  I do not propose, in regard
to this argument drawn from the history of former times, to enter
into a detailed examination of the historical statements he has made.
I have the impression that they are inaccurate in a great many
instances,--sometimes in positive statement, but very much more
inaccurate by the suppression of statements that really belong to the
history.  But I do not propose to affirm that this is so to any very
great extent, or to enter into a very minute examination of his
historical statements.  I avoid doing so upon this principle,--that
if it were important for me to pass out of this lot in the least
period of time possible, and I came to that fence, and saw by a
calculation of my known strength and agility that I could clear it at
a bound, it would be folly for me to stop and consider whether I
could or not crawl through a crack.  So I say of the whole history
contained in his essay where he endeavored to link the men of the
Revolution to popular sovereignty.  It only requires an effort to
leap out of it, a single bound to be entirely successful.  If you
read it over, you will find that he quotes here and there from
documents of the Revolutionary times, tending to show that the people
of the colonies were desirous of regulating their own concerns in
their own way, that the British Government should not interfere; that
at one time they struggled with the British Government to be
permitted to exclude the African slave trade,--if not directly, to be
permitted to exclude it indirectly, by taxation sufficient to
discourage and destroy it.  From these and many things of this sort,
judge Douglas argues that they were in favor of the people of our own
Territories excluding slavery if they wanted to, or planting it there
if they wanted to, doing just as they pleased from the time they
settled upon the Territory.  Now, however his history may apply and
whatever of his argument there may be that is sound and accurate or
unsound and inaccurate, if we can find out what these men did
themselves do upon this very question of slavery in the Territories,
does it not end the whole thing?  If, after all this labor and effort
to show that the men of the Revolution were in favor of his popular
sovereignty and his mode of dealing with slavery in the Territories,
we can show that these very men took hold of that subject, and dealt
with it, we can see for ourselves how they dealt with it.  It is not
a matter of argument or inference, but we know what they thought
about it.

It is precisely upon that part of the history of the country that one
important omission is made by Judge Douglas.  He selects parts of the
history of the United States upon the subject of slavery, and treats
it as the whole, omitting from his historical sketch the legislation
of Congress in regard to the admission of Missouri, by which the
Missouri Compromise was established and slavery excluded from a
country half as large as the present United States.  All this is left
out of his history, and in nowise alluded to by him, so far as I can
remember, save once, when he makes a remark, that upon his principle
the Supreme Court were authorized to pronounce a decision that the
act called the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.  All that
history has been left out.  But this part of the history of the
country was not made by the men of the Revolution.

There was another part of our political history, made by the very men
who were the actors in the Revolution, which has taken the name of
the Ordinance of '87.  Let me bring that history to your attention.
In 1784, I believe, this same Mr. Jefferson drew up an ordinance for
the government of the country upon which we now stand, or, rather, a
frame or draft of an ordinance for the government of this country,
here in Ohio, our neighbors in Indiana, us who live in Illinois, our
neighbors in Wisconsin and Michigan.  In that ordinance, drawn up not
only for the government of that Territory, but for the Territories
south of the Ohio River, Mr. Jefferson expressly provided for the
prohibition of slavery.  Judge Douglas says, and perhaps is right,
that that provision was lost from that ordinance.  I believe that is
true.  When the vote was taken upon it, a majority of all present in
the Congress of the Confederation voted for it; but there were so
many absentees that those voting for it did not make the clear
majority necessary, and it was lost.  But three years after that, the
Congress of the Confederation were together again, and they adopted a
new ordinance for the government of this Northwest Territory, not
contemplating territory south of the river, for the States owning
that territory had hitherto refrained from giving it to the General
Government; hence they made the ordinance to apply only to what the
Government owned.  In fact, the provision excluding slavery was
inserted aside, passed unanimously, or at any rate it passed and
became a part of the law of the land.  Under that ordinance we live.
First here in Ohio you were a Territory; then an enabling act was
passed, authorizing you to form a constitution and State Government,
provided it was republican and not in conflict with the Ordinance of
'87.  When you framed your constitution and presented it for
admission, I think you will find the legislation upon the subject
will show that, whereas you had formed a constitution that was
republican, and not in conflict with the Ordinance of '87, therefore
you were admitted upon equal footing with the original States.  The
same process in a few years was gone through with in Indiana, and so
with Illinois, and the same substantially with Michigan and
Wisconsin.

Not only did that Ordinance prevail, but it was constantly looked to
whenever a step was taken by a new Territory to become a State.
Congress always turned their attention to it, and in all their
movements upon this subject they traced their course by that
Ordinance of '87.  When they admitted new States, they advertised
them of this Ordinance, as a part of the legislation of the country.
They did so because they had traced the Ordinance of '87 throughout
the history of this country.  Begin with the men of the Revolution,
and go down for sixty entire years, and until the last scrap of that
Territory comes into the Union in the form of the State of Wisconsin,
everything was made to conform with the Ordinance of '87, excluding
slavery from that vast extent of country.

I omitted to mention in the right place that the Constitution of the
United States was in process of being framed when that Ordinance was
made by the Congress of the Confederation; and one of the first Acts
of Congress itself, under the new Constitution itself, was to give
force to that Ordinance by putting power to carry it out in the hands
of the new officers under the Constitution, in the place of the old
ones, who had been legislated out of existence by the change in the
Government from the Confederation to the Constitution.  Not only so,
but I believe Indiana once or twice, if not Ohio, petitioned the
General Government for the privilege of suspending that provision and
allowing them to have slaves.  A report made by Mr. Randolph, of
Virginia, himself a slaveholder, was directly against it, and the
action was to refuse them the privilege of violating the Ordinance of
'87.

This period of history, which I have run over briefly, is, I presume,
as familiar to most of this assembly as any other part of the history
of our country. I suppose that few of my hearers are not as familiar
with that part of history as I am, and I only mention it to recall
your attention to it at this time.  And hence I ask how extraordinary
a thing it is that a man who has occupied a position upon the floor
of the Senate of the United States, who is now in his third term, and
who looks to see the government of this whole country fall into his
own hands, pretending to give a truthful and accurate history o the
slavery question in this country, should so entirely ignore the whole
of that portion of our history--the most important of all.  Is it not
a most extraordinary spectacle that a man should stand up and ask for
any confidence in his statements who sets out as he does with
portions of history, calling upon the people to believe that it is a
true and fair representation, when the leading part and controlling
feature of the whole history is carefully suppressed?

But the mere leaving out is not the most remarkable feature of this
most remarkable essay. His proposition is to establish that the
leading men of the Revolution were for his great principle of
nonintervention by the government in the question of slavery in the
Territories, while history shows that they decided, in the cases
actually brought before them, in exactly the contrary way, and he
knows it.  Not only did they so decide at that time, but they stuck
to it during sixty years, through thick and thin, as long as there
was one of the Revolutionary heroes upon the stage of political
action.  Through their whole course, from first to last, they clung
to freedom.  And now he asks the community to believe that the men of
the Revolution were in favor of his great principle, when we have the
naked history that they themselves dealt with this very subject
matter of his principle, and utterly repudiated his principle, acting
upon a precisely contrary ground.  It is as impudent and absurd as if
a prosecuting attorney should stand up before a jury and ask them
to convict A as the murderer of B, while B was walking alive before
them.

I say, again, if judge Douglas asserts that the men of the Revolution
acted upon principles by which, to be consistent with themselves,
they ought to have adopted his popular sovereignty, then, upon a
consideration of his own argument, he had a right to make you
believe that they understood the principles of government, but
misapplied them, that he has arisen to enlighten the world as to the
just application of this principle.  He has a right to try to
persuade you that he understands their principles better than they
did, and, therefore, he will apply them now, not as they did, but as
they ought to have done.  He has a right to go before the community
and try to convince them of this, but he has no right to attempt to
impose upon any one the belief that these men themselves approved of
his great principle.  There are two ways of establishing a
proposition.  One is by trying to demonstrate it upon reason, and the
other is, to show that great men in former times have thought so and
so, and thus to pass it by the weight of pure authority.  Now, if
Judge Douglas will demonstrate somehow that this is popular
sovereignty,--the right of one man to make a slave of another,
without any right in that other or any one else to object,-
-demonstrate it as Euclid demonstrated propositions,--there is no
objection.  But when he comes forward, seeking to carry a principle
by bringing to it the authority of men who themselves utterly
repudiate that principle, I ask that he shall not be permitted to do
it.

I see, in the judge's speech here, a short sentence in these words:
"Our fathers, when they formed this government under which we live,
understood this question just as well, and even better than, we do
now."  That is true; I stick to that.  I will stand by Judge Douglas
in that to the bitter end.  And now, Judge Douglas, come and stand by
me, and truthfully show how they acted, understanding it better than
we do.  All I ask of you, Judge Douglas, is to stick to the
proposition that the men of the Revolution understood this subject
better than we do now, and with that better understanding they acted
better than you are trying to act now.

I wish to say something now in regard to the Dred Scott decision, as
dealt with by Judge Douglas.  In that "memorable debate" between
Judge Douglas and myself, last year, the judge thought fit to
commence a process of catechising me, and at Freeport I answered his
questions, and propounded some to him.  Among others propounded to
him was one that I have here now.  The substance, as I remember it,
is, "Can the people of a United States Territory, under the Dred
Scott decision, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of
the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the
formation of a State constitution?"  He answered that they could
lawfully exclude slavery from the United States Territories,
notwithstanding the Dred Scot decision.  There was something about
that answer that has probably been a trouble to the judge ever since.

The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the United
States a right to carry his slaves into the United States
Territories.  And now there was some inconsistency in saying that the
decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the Territory
could lawfully drive slavery out again.  When all the trash, the
words, the collateral matter, was cleared away from it, all the chaff
was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity,--no less than that a
thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to
be.  Clear it of all the verbiage, and that is the naked truth of his
proposition,--that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place
where it has a lawful right to stay.  Well, it was because the judge
could n't help seeing this that he has had so much trouble with it;
and what I want to ask your especial attention to, just now, is to
remind you, if you have not noticed the fact, that the judge does not
any longer say that the people can exclude slavery.  He does not say
so in the copyright essay; he did not say so in the speech that he
made here; and, so far as I know, since his re-election to the Senate
he has never said, as he did at Freeport, that the people of the
Territories can exclude slavery.  He desires that you, who wish the
Territories to remain free, should believe that he stands by that
position; but he does not say it himself.  He escapes to some extent
the absurd position I have stated, by changing his language entirely.
What he says now is something different in language, and we will
consider whether it is not different in sense too.  It is now that
the Dred Scott decision, or rather the Constitution under that
decision, does not carry slavery into the Territories beyond the
power of the people of the Territories to control it as other
property.  He does not say the people can drive it out, but they can
control it as other property.  The language is different; we should
consider whether the sense is different.  Driving a horse out of this
lot is too plain a proposition to be mistaken about; it is putting
him on the other side of the fence.  Or it might be a sort of
exclusion of him from the lot if you were to kill him and let the
worms devour him; but neither of these things is the same as
"controlling him as other property."  That would be to feed him, to
pamper him, to ride him, to use and abuse him, to make the most money
out of him, "as other property"; but, please you, what do the men who
are in favor of slavery want more than this?  What do they really
want, other than that slavery, being in the Territories, shall be
controlled as other property?  If they want anything else, I do not
comprehend it.  I ask your attention to this, first, for the purpose
of pointing out the change of ground the judge has made; and, in the
second place, the importance of the change,--that that change is not
such as to give you gentlemen who want his popular sovereignty the
power to exclude the institution or drive it out at all.  I know the
judge sometimes squints at the argument that in controlling it as
other property by unfriendly legislation they may control it to
death; as you might, in the case of a horse, perhaps, feed him so
lightly and ride him so much that he would die.  But when you come to
legislative control, there is something more to be attended to. I
have no doubt, myself, that if the Territories should undertake to
control slave property as other property that is, control it in such
a way that it would be the most valuable as property, and make it
bear its just proportion in the way of burdens as property, really
deal with it as property,--the Supreme Court of the United States
will say, "God speed you, and amen."  But I undertake to give the
opinion, at least, that if the Territories attempt by any direct
legislation to drive the man with his slave out of the Territory, or
to decide that his slave is free because of his being taken in there,
or to tax him to such an extent that he cannot keep him there, the
Supreme Court will unhesitatingly decide all such legislation
unconstitutional, as long as that Supreme Court is constructed as the
Dred Scott Supreme Court is.  The first two things they have already
decided, except that there is a little quibble among lawyers between
the words "dicta" and "decision."  They have already decided a negro
cannot be made free by Territorial legislation.

What is the Dred Scott decision?  Judge Douglas labors to show that
it is one thing, while I think it is altogether different.  It is a
long opinion, but it is all embodied in this short statement: "The
Constitution of the United States forbids Congress to deprive a man
of his property, without due process of law; the right of property in
slaves is distinctly and expressly affirmed in that Constitution:
therefore, if Congress shall undertake to say that a man's slave is
no longer his slave when he crosses a certain line into a Territory,
that is depriving him of his property without due process of law, and
is unconstitutional."  There is the whole Dred Scott decision.  They
add that if Congress cannot do so itself, Congress cannot confer any
power to do so; and hence any effort by the Territorial Legislature
to do either of these things is absolutely decided against.  It is a
foregone conclusion by that court.

Now, as to this indirect mode by "unfriendly legislation," all
lawyers here will readily understand that such a proposition cannot
be tolerated for a moment, because a legislature cannot indirectly do
that which it cannot accomplish directly.  Then I say any legislation
to control this property, as property, for its benefit as property,
would be hailed by this Dred Scott Supreme Court, and fully
sustained; but any legislation driving slave property out, or
destroying it as property, directly or indirectly, will most
assuredly, by that court, be held unconstitutional.

Judge Douglas says if the Constitution carries slavery into the
Territories, beyond the power of the people of the Territories to
control it as other property; then it follows logically that every
one who swears to support the Constitution of the United States must
give that support to that property which it needs.  And, if the
Constitution carries slavery into the Territories, beyond the power
of the people, to control it as other property, then it also carries
it into the States, because the Constitution is the supreme law of
the land.  Now, gentlemen, if it were not for my excessive modesty, I
would say that I told that very thing to Judge Douglas quite a year
ago.  This argument is here in print, and if it were not for my
modesty, as I said, I might call your attention to it.  If you read
it, you will find that I not only made that argument, but made it
better than he has made it since.

There is, however, this difference: I say now, and said then, there
is no sort of question that the Supreme Court has decided that it is
the right of the slave holder to take his slave and hold him in the
Territory; and saying this, judge Douglas himself admits the
conclusion.  He says if that is so, this consequence will follow; and
because this consequence would follow, his argument is, the decision
cannot, therefore, be that way,--" that would spoil my popular
sovereignty; and it cannot be possible that this great principle has
been squelched out in this extraordinary way.  It might be, if it
were not for the extraordinary consequences of spoiling my humbug."

Another feature of the judge's argument about the Dred Scott case is,
an effort to show that that decision deals altogether in declarations
of negatives; that the Constitution does not affirm anything as
expounded by the Dred Scott decision, but it only declares a want of
power a total absence of power, in reference to the Territories.  It
seems to be his purpose to make the whole of that decision to result
in a mere negative declaration of a want of power in Congress to do
anything in relation to this matter in the Territories.  I know the
opinion of the Judges states that there is a total absence of power;
but that is, unfortunately; not all it states: for the judges add
that the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly
affirmed in the Constitution.  It does not stop at saying that the
right of property in a slave is recognized in the Constitution, is
declared to exist somewhere in the Constitution, but says it is
affirmed in the Constitution.  Its language is equivalent to saying
that it is embodied and so woven in that instrument that it cannot be
detached without breaking the Constitution itself.  In a word, it is
part of the Constitution.

Douglas is singularly unfortunate in his effort to make out that
decision to be altogether negative, when the express language at the
vital part is that this is distinctly affirmed in the Constitution.
I think myself, and I repeat it here, that this decision does not
merely carry slavery into the Territories, but by its logical
conclusion it carries it into the States in which we live.  One
provision of that Constitution is, that it shall be the supreme law
of the land,--I do not quote the language,--any constitution or law
of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.  This Dred Scott
decision says that the right of property in a slave is affirmed in
that Constitution which is the supreme law of the land, any State
constitution or law notwithstanding.  Then I say that to destroy a
thing which is distinctly affirmed and supported by the supreme law
of the land, even by a State constitution or law, is a violation of
that supreme law, and there is no escape from it.  In my judgment
there is no avoiding that result, save that the American people shall
see that constitutions are better construed than our Constitution is
construed in that decision.  They must take care that it is more
faithfully and truly carried out than it is there expounded.

I must hasten to a conclusion. Near the beginning of my remarks I
said that this insidious Douglas popular sovereignty is the measure
that now threatens the purpose of the Republican party to prevent
slavery from being nationalized in the United States.  I propose to
ask your attention for a little while to some propositions in
affirmance of that statement.  Take it just as it stands, and apply
it as a principle; extend and apply that principle elsewhere; and
consider where it will lead you.  I now put this proposition, that
Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty applied will reopen the African
slave trade; and I will demonstrate it by any variety of ways in
which you can turn the subject or look at it.

The Judge says that the people of the Territories have the right, by
his principle, to have slaves, if they want them.  Then I say that
the people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in Africa, if they
want them; and I defy any man on earth to show any distinction
between the two things,--to show that the one is either more wicked
or more unlawful; to show, on original principles, that one is better
or worse than the other; or to show, by the Constitution, that one
differs a whit from the other.  He will tell me, doubtless, that
there is no constitutional provision against people taking slaves
into the new Territories, and I tell him that there is equally no
constitutional provision against buying slaves in Africa.  He will
tell you that a people, in the exercise of popular sovereignty, ought
to do as they please about that thing, and have slaves if they want
them; and I tell you that the people of Georgia are as much entitled
to popular sovereignty and to buy slaves in Africa, if they want
them, as the people of the Territory are to have slaves if they want
them.  I ask any man, dealing honestly with himself, to point out a
distinction.

I have recently seen a letter of Judge Douglas's in which, without
stating that to be the object, he doubtless endeavors to make a
distinction between the two.  He says he is unalterably opposed to
the repeal of the laws against the African slave trade.  And why?  He
then seeks to give a reason that would not apply to his popular
sovereignty in the Territories.  What is that reason?  "The abolition
of the African slave trade is a compromise of the Constitution!"  I
deny it.  There is no truth in the proposition that the abolition of
the African slave trade is a compromise of the Constitution.  No man
can put his finger on anything in the Constitution, or on the line of
history, which shows it.  It is a mere barren assertion, made simply
for the purpose of getting up a distinction between the revival of
the African slave trade and his "great principle."

At the time the Constitution of the United States was adopted, it was
expected that the slave trade would be abolished. I should assert and
insist upon that, if judge Douglas denied it.  But I know that it was
equally expected that slavery would be excluded from the Territories,
and I can show by history that in regard to these two things public
opinion was exactly alike, while in regard to positive action, there
was more done in the Ordinance of '87 to resist the spread of slavery
than was ever done to abolish the foreign slave trade.  Lest I be
misunderstood, I say again that at the time of the formation of the
Constitution, public expectation was that the slave trade would be
abolished, but no more so than the spread of slavery in the
Territories should be restrained.  They stand alike, except that in
the Ordinance of '87 there was a mark left by public opinion, showing
that it was more committed against the spread of slavery in the
Territories than against the foreign slave trade.

Compromise!  What word of compromise was there about it?  Why, the
public sense was then in favor of the abolition of the slave trade;
but there was at the time a very great commercial interest involved
in it, and extensive capital in that branch of trade.  There were
doubtless the incipient stages of improvement in the South in the way
of farming, dependent on the slave trade, and they made a proposition
to Congress to abolish the trade after allowing it twenty years,--a
sufficient time for the capital and commerce engaged in it to be
transferred to other channel.  They made no provision that it should
be abolished in twenty years; I do not doubt that they expected it
would be, but they made no bargain about it.  The public sentiment
left no doubt in the minds of any that it would be done away.  I
repeat, there is nothing in the history of those times in favor of
that matter being a compromise of the constitution.  It was the
public expectation at the time, manifested in a thousand ways, that
the spread of slavery should also be restricted.

Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no wrong
in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it, is a matter
of dollars and cents, a sort of question as to how they shall deal
with brutes, that between us and the negro here there is no sort of
question, but that at the South the question is between the negro and
the crocodile, that is all, it is a mere matter of policy, there is a
perfect right, according to interest, to do just as you please,--when
this is done, where this doctrine prevails, the miners and sappers
will have formed public opinion for the slave trade.  They will be
ready for Jeff. Davis and Stephens and other leaders of that company
to sound the bugle for the revival of the slave trade, for the second
Dred Scott decision, for the flood of slavery to be poured over the
free States, while we shall be here tied down and helpless and run
over like sheep.

It is to be a part and parcel of this same idea to say to men who
want to adhere to the Democratic party, who have always belonged to
that party, and are only looking about for some excuse to stick to
it, but nevertheless hate slavery, that Douglas's popular sovereignty
is as good a way as any to oppose slavery.  They allow themselves to
be persuaded easily, in accordance with their previous dispositions,
into this belief, that it is about as good a way of opposing slavery
as any, and we can do that without straining our old party ties or
breaking up old political associations.  We can do so without being
called negro-worshipers.  We can do that without being subjected to
the jibes and sneers that are so readily thrown out in place of
argument where no arguement can be found.  So let us stick to this
popular sovereignty,--this insidious popular sovereignty.

Now let me call your attention to one thing that has really happened,
which shows this gradual and steady debauching of public opinion,
this course of preparation for the revival of the slave trade, for
the Territorial slave code, and the new Dred Scott decision that is
to carry slavery into the Free States.  Did you ever, five years ago,
hear of anybody in the world saying that the negro had no share in
the Declaration of National Independence; that it does not mean
negroes at all; and when "all men" were spoken of, negroes were not
included?

I am satisfied that five years ago that proposition was not put upon
paper by any living being anywhere.  I have been unable at any time
to find a man in an audience who would declare that he had ever known
of anybody saying so five years ago.  But last year there was not a
Douglas popular sovereign in Illinois who did not say it.  Is there
one in Ohio but declares his firm belief that the Declaration of
Independence did not mean negroes at all? I do not know how this is;
I have not been here much; but I presume you are very much alike
everywhere.  Then I suppose that all now express the belief that the
Declaration of Independence never did mean negroes.  I call upon one
of them to say that he said it five years ago.

If you think that now, and did not think it then, the next thing that
strikes me is to remark that there has been a change wrought in you,-
-and a very significant change it is, being no less than changing the
negro, in your estimation, from the rank of a man to that of a brute.
They are taking him down and placing him, when spoken of, among
reptiles and crocodiles, as Judge Douglas himself expresses it.

Is not this change wrought in your minds a very important change?
Public opinion in this country is everything.  In a nation like ours,
this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already
wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have stated.
There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it.

Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I
ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be
plastered on, layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared to
deal with the negro every where as with the brute.  If public
sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of
the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is
constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular
sovereignty.  You need but one or two turns further, until your
minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all
these things, and you will receive and support, or submit to, the
slave trade, revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in
our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up
into the very heart of the free North.  This, I must say, is but
carrying out those words prophetically spoken by Mr. Clay,--many,
many years ago,--I believe more than thirty years, when he told an
audience that if they would repress all tendencies to liberty and
ultimate emancipation they must go back to the era of our
independence, and muzzle the cannon which thundered its annual joyous
return on the Fourth of July; they must blow out the moral lights
around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the love
of liberty: but until they did these things, and others eloquently
enumerated by him, they could not repress all tendencies to ultimate
emancipation.

I ask attention to the fact that in a pre-eminent degree these
popular sovereigns are at this work: blowing out the moral lights
around us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute;
that the Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with
the crocodile and the reptile; that man, with body and soul, is a
matter of dollars and cents.  I suggest to this portion of the Ohio
Republicans, or Democrats, if there be any present, the serious
consideration of this fact that there is now going on among you a
steady process of debauching public opinion on this subject.  With
this, my friends, I bid you adieu.




SPEECH AT CINCINNATI OHIO, SEPTEMBER 17, 1859

My Fellow-Citizens of the State of Ohio:  This is the first time in
my life that I have appeared before an audience in so great a city as
this: I therefore--though I am no longer a young man--make this
appearance under some degree of embarrassment.  But I have found that
when one is embarrassed, usually the shortest way to get through with
it is to quit talking or thinking about it, and go at something else.

I understand that you have had recently with you my very
distinguished friend Judge Douglas, of Illinois; and I understand,
without having had an opportunity (not greatly sought, to be sure) of
seeing a report of the speech that he made here, that he did me the
honor to mention my humble name.  I suppose that he did so for the
purpose of making some objection to some sentiment at some time
expressed by me.  I should expect, it is true, that judge Douglas had
reminded you, or informed you, if you had never before heard it, that
I had once in my life declared it as my opinion that this government
cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free; that a house
divided against itself cannot stand, and, as I had expressed it, I
did not expect the house to fall, that I did not expect the Union to
be dissolved, but that I did expect that it would cease to be
divided, that it would become all one thing, or all the other; that
either the opponents of slavery would arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind would rest in the belief that
it was in the course of ultimate extinction, or the friends of
slavery will push it forward until it becomes alike lawful in all the
States, old or new, free as well as slave. I did, fifteen months ago,
express that opinion, and upon many occasions Judge Douglas has
denounced it, and has greatly, intentionally or unintentionally,
misrepresented my purpose in the expression of that opinion.

I presume, without having seen a report of his speech, that he did so
here.  I presume that he alluded also to that opinion, in different
language, having been expressed at a subsequent time by Governor
Seward of New York, and that he took the two in a lump and denounced
them; that he tried to point out that there was something couched in
this opinion which led to the making of an entire uniformity of the
local institutions of the various States of the Union, in utter
disregard of the different States, which in their nature would seem
to require a variety of institutions and a variety of laws,
conforming to the differences in the nature of the different States.

Not only so: I presume he insisted that this was a declaration of war
between the free and slave States, that it was the sounding to the
onset of continual war between the different States, the slave and
free States.

This charge, in this form, was made by Judge Douglas on, I believe,
the 9th of July, 1858, in Chicago, in my hearing.  On the next
evening, I made some reply to it.  I informed him that many of the
inferences he drew from that expression of mine were altogether
foreign to any purpose entertained by me, and in so far as he should
ascribe these inferences to me, as my purpose, he was entirely
mistaken; and in so far as he might argue that, whatever might be my
purpose, actions conforming to my views would lead to these results,
he might argue and establish if he could; but, so far as purposes
were concerned, he was totally mistaken as to me.

When I made that reply to him, I told him, on the question of
declaring war between the different States of the Union, that I had
not said that I did not expect any peace upon this question until
slavery was exterminated; that I had only said I expected peace when
that institution was put where the public mind should rest in the
belief that it was in course of ultimate extinction; that I believed,
from the organization of our government until a very recent period of
time, the institution had been placed and continued upon such a
basis; that we had had comparative peace upon that question through a
portion of that period of time, only because the public mind rested
in that belief in regard to it, and that when we returned to that
position in relation to that matter, I supposed we should again have
peace as we previously had. I assured him, as I now, assure you, that
I neither then had, nor have, or ever had, any purpose in any way of
interfering with the institution of slavery, where it exists.  I
believe we have no power, under the Constitution of the United
States, or rather under the form of government under which we live,
to interfere with the institution of slavery, or any other of the
institutions of our sister States, be they free or slave States.  I
declared then, and I now re-declare, that I have as little
inclination to interfere with the institution of slavery where it now
exists, through the instrumentality of the General Government, or any
other instrumentality, as I believe we have no power to do so.  I
accidentally used this expression:  I had no purpose of entering into
the slave States to disturb the institution of slavery.  So, upon the
first occasion that Judge Douglas got an opportunity to reply to me,
he passed by the whole body of what I had said upon that subject, and
seized upon the particular expression of mine that I had no purpose
of entering into the slave States to disturb the institution of
slavery.  "Oh, no," said he, "he [Lincoln] won't enter into the slave
States to disturb the institution of slavery, he is too prudent a man
to do such a thing as that; he only means that he will go on to the
line between the free and slave States, and shoot over at them.  This
is all he means to do.  He means to do them all the harm he can, to
disturb them all he can, in such a way as to keep his own hide in
perfect safety."

Well, now, I did not think, at that time, that that was either a very
dignified or very logical argument but so it was, I had to get along
with it as well as I could.

It has occurred to-me here to-night that if I ever do shoot over the
line at the people on the other side of the line into a slave State,
and purpose to do so, keeping my skin safe, that I have now about the
best chance I shall ever have. I should not wonder if there are some
Kentuckians about this audience--we are close to Kentucky; and
whether that be so or not, we are on elevated ground, and, by
speaking distinctly, I should not wonder if some of the Kentuckians
would hear me on the other side of the river. For that reason I
propose to address a portion of what I have to say to the
Kentuckians.

I say, then, in the first place, to the Kentuckians, that I am what
they call, as I understand it, a "Black Republican."  I think slavery
is wrong, morally and politically.  I desire that it should be no
further spread in--these United States, and I should not object if it
should gradually terminate in the whole Union.  While I say this for
myself, I say to you Kentuckians that I understand you differ
radically with me upon this proposition; that you believe slavery is
a good thing; that slavery is right; that it ought to be extended and
perpetuated in this Union.  Now, there being this broad difference
between us, I do not pretend, in addressing myself to you
Kentuckians, to attempt proselyting you; that would be a vain effort.
I do not enter upon it.  I only propose to try to show you that you
ought to nominate for the next Presidency, at Charleston, my
distinguished friend Judge Douglas.  In all that there is a
difference between you and him, I understand he is sincerely for you,
and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves.  I will try to
demonstrate that proposition.  Understand, now, I say that I believe
he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you, than you are for
yourselves.

What do you want more than anything else to make successful your
views of slavery,--to advance the outspread of it, and to secure and
perpetuate the nationality of it?  What do you want more than
anything else?  What--is needed absolutely?  What is indispensable to
you?  Why, if I may, be allowed to answer the question, it is to
retain a hold upon the North, it is to retain support and strength
from the free States.  If you can get this support and strength from
the free States, you can succeed.  If you do not get this support and
this strength from the free States, you are in the minority, and you
are beaten at once.

If that proposition be admitted,--and it is undeniable,--then the
next thing I say to you is, that Douglas, of all the men in this
nation, is the only man that affords you any hold upon the free
States; that no other man can give you any strength in the free
States.  This being so, if you doubt the other branch of the
proposition, whether he is for you--whether he is really for you, as
I have expressed it,--I propose asking your attention for a while to
a few facts.

The issue between you and me, understand, is, that I think slavery is
wrong, and ought not to be outspread; and you think it is right, and
ought to be extended and perpetuated. [A voice, "Oh, Lord!"]  That is
my Kentuckian I am talking to now.

I now proceed to try to show you that Douglas is as sincerely for you
and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves.

In the first place, we know that in a government like this, in a
government of the people, where the voice of all the men of the
country, substantially, enters into the execution--or administration,
rather--of the government, in such a government, what lies at the
bottom of all of it is public opinion.  I lay down the proposition,
that Judge Douglas is not only the man that promises you in advance a
hold upon the North, and support in the North, but he constantly
moulds public opinion to your ends; that in every possible way he can
he constantly moulds the public opinion of the North to your ends;
and if there are a few things in which he seems to be against you,-
-a, few things which he says that appear to be against you, and a few
that he forbears to say which you would like to have him say you
ought to remember that the saying of the one, or the forbearing to
say the other, would lose his hold upon the North, and, by
consequence, would lose his capacity to serve you.

Upon this subject of moulding public opinion I call your attention to
the fact--for a well established fact it is--that the Judge never
says your institution of slavery is wrong.  There is not a public man
in the United States, I believe, with the exception of Senator
Douglas, who has not, at some time in his life, declared his opinion
whether the thing is right or wrong; but Senator Douglas never
declares it is wrong.  He leaves himself at perfect liberty to do all
in your favor which he would be hindered from doing if he were to
declare the thing to be wrong.  On the contrary, he takes all the
chances that he has for inveigling the sentiment of the North,
opposed to slavery, into your support, by never saying it is right.
This you ought to set down to his credit: You ought to give him full
credit for this much; little though it be, in comparison to the whole
which he does for you.

Some other, things I will ask your attention to. He said upon the
floor of the United States Senate, and he has repeated it, as I
understand, a great many times, that he does not care whether slavery
is "voted up or voted down."  This again shows you, or ought to show
you, if you would reason upon it, that he does not believe it to be
wrong; for a man may say when he sees nothing wrong in a thing; that
he, dues not care whether it be voted up or voted down but no man can
logically say that he cares not whether a thing goes up or goes down
which to him appears to be wrong. You therefore have a demonstration
in this that to Judge Douglas's mind your favorite institution, which
you would have spread out and made perpetual, is no wrong.

Another thing he tells you, in a speech made at Memphis in Tennessee,
shortly after the canvass in Illinois, last year.  He there
distinctly told the people that there was a "line drawn by the
Almighty across this continent, on the one side of which the soil
must always be cultivated by slaves"; that he did not pretend to know
exactly where that line was, but that there was such a line.  I want
to ask your attention to that proposition again; that there is one
portion of this continent where the Almighty has signed the soil
shall always be cultivated by slaves; that its being cultivated by
slaves at that place is right; that it has the direct sympathy and
authority of the Almighty.  Whenever you can get these Northern
audiences to adopt the opinion that slavery is right on the other
side of the Ohio, whenever you can get them, in pursuance of
Douglas's views, to adopt that sentiment, they will very readily make
the other argument, which is perfectly logical, that that which is
right on that side of the Ohio cannot be wrong on this, and that if
you have that property on that side of the Ohio, under the seal and
stamp of the Almighty, when by any means it escapes over here it is
wrong to have constitutions and laws "to devil" you about it. So
Douglas is moulding the public opinion of the North, first to say
that the thing is right in your State over the Ohio River, and hence
to say that that which is right there is not wrong here, and that all
laws and constitutions here recognizing it as being wrong are
themselves wrong, and ought to be repealed and abrogated.  He will
tell you, men of Ohio, that if you choose here to have laws against
slavery, it is in conformity to the idea that your climate is not
suited to it, that your climate is not suited to slave labor, and
therefore you have constitutions and laws against it.

Let us attend to that argument for a little while and see if it be
sound.  You do not raise sugar-cane (except the new-fashioned
sugar-cane, and you won't raise that long), but they do raise it in
Louisiana.  You don't raise it in Ohio, because you can't raise it
profitably, because the climate don't suit it.  They do raise it in
Louisiana, because there it is profitable.  Now, Douglas will tell
you that is precisely the slavery question: that they do have slaves
there because they are profitable, and you don't have them here
because they are not profitable.  If that is so, then it leads to
dealing with the one precisely as with the other.  Is there, then,
anything in the constitution or laws of Ohio against raising
sugar-cane?  Have you found it necessary to put any such provision in
your law?  Surely not!  No man desires to raise sugar-cane in Ohio,
but if any man did desire to do so, you would say it was a tyrannical
law that forbids his doing so; and whenever you shall agree with
Douglas, whenever your minds are brought to adopt his argument, as
surely you will have reached the conclusion that although it is not
profitable in Ohio, if any man wants it, is wrong to him not to let
him have it.

In this matter Judge Douglas is preparing the public mind for you of
Kentucky to make perpetual that good thing in your estimation, about
which you and I differ.

In this connection, let me ask your attention to another thing.  I
believe it is safe to assert that five years ago no living man had
expressed the opinion that the negro had no share in the Declaration
of Independence.  Let me state that again: five years ago no living
man had expressed the opinion that the negro had no share in the
Declaration of Independence.  If there is in this large audience any
man who ever knew of that opinion being put upon paper as much as
five years ago, I will be obliged to him now or at a subsequent time
to show it.

If that be true I wish you then to note the next fact: that within
the space of five years Senator Douglas, in the argument of this
question, has got his entire party, so far as I know, without
exception, in saying that the negro has no share in the Declaration
of Independence.  If there be now in all these United States one
Douglas man that does not say this, I have been unable upon any
occasion to scare him up.  Now, if none of you said this five years
ago, and all of you say it now, that is a matter that you Kentuckians
ought to note.  That is a vast change in the Northern public
sentiment upon that question.

Of what tendency is that change?  The tendency of that change is to
bring the public mind to the conclusion that when men are spoken of,
the negro is not meant; that when negroes are spoken of, brutes alone
are contemplated.  That change in public sentiment has already
degraded the black man in the estimation of Douglas and his followers
from the condition of a man of some sort, and assigned him to the
condition of a brute.  Now, you Kentuckians ought to give Douglas
credit for this.  That is the largest possible stride that can be
made in regard to the perpetuation of your thing of slavery.

A voice:  Speak to Ohio men, and not to Kentuckians!

Mr. LINCOLN: I beg permission to speak as I please.

In Kentucky perhaps, in many of the slave States certainly, you are
trying to establish the rightfulness of slavery by reference to the
Bible.  You are trying to show that slavery existed in the Bible
times by divine ordinance.  Now, Douglas is wiser than you, for your
own benefit, upon that subject.  Douglas knows that whenever you
establish that slavery was--right by the Bible, it will occur that
that slavery was the slavery of the white man, of men without
reference to color; and he knows very well that you may entertain
that idea in Kentucky as much as you please, but you will never win
any Northern support upon it.  He makes a wiser argument for you: he
makes the argument that the slavery of the black man; the slavery of
the man who has a skin of a different color from your own, is right.
He thereby brings to your support Northern voters who could not for a
moment be brought by your own argument of the Bible right of slavery.
Will you give him credit for that?  Will you not say that in this
matter he is more wisely for you than you are for yourselves?

Now, having established with his entire party this doctrine, having
been entirely successful in that branch of his efforts in your
behalf, he is ready for another.

At this same meeting at Memphis he declared that in all contests
between the negro and the white man he was for the white man, but
that in all questions between the negro and the crocodile he was for
the negro.  He did not make that declaration accidentally at Memphis.
He made it a great many times in the canvass in Illinois last year
(though I don't know that it was reported in any of his speeches
there, but he frequently made it).  I believe he repeated it at
Columbus, and I should not wonder if be repeated it here.  It is,
then, a deliberate way of expressing himself upon that subject.  It
is a matter of mature deliberation with him thus to express himself
upon that point of his case.  It therefore requires deliberate
attention.

The first inference seems to be that if you do not enslave the negro,
you are wronging the white man in some way or other, and that whoever
is opposed to the negro being enslaved, is, in some way or other,
against the white man.  Is not that a falsehood?  If there was a
necessary conflict between the white man and the negro, I should be
for the white man as much as Judge Douglas; but I say there is no
such necessary conflict.  I say that there is room enough for us all
to be free, and that it not only does not wrong the white man that
the negro should be free, but it positively wrongs the mass of the
white men that the negro should be enslaved; that the mass of white
men are really injured by the effects of slave labor in the vicinity
of the fields of their own labor.

But I do not desire to dwell upon this branch of the question more
than to say that this assumption of his is false, and I do hope that
that fallacy will not long prevail in the minds of intelligent white
men.  At all events, you ought to thank Judge Douglas for it; it is
for your benefit it is made.

The other branch of it is, that in the struggle between the negro and
the crocodile; he is for the negro.  Well, I don't know that there is
any struggle between the negro and the crocodile, either.  I suppose
that if a crocodile (or, as we old Ohio River boatmen used to call
them, alligators) should come across a white man, he would kill him
if he could; and so he would a negro.  But what, at last, is this
proposition?  I believe it is a sort of proposition in proportion,
which may be stated thus: "As the negro is to the white man, so is
the crocodile to the negro; and as the negro may rightfully treat the
crocodile as a beast or reptile, so the white man may rightfully
treat the negro as a beast or a reptile."  That is really the "knip"
of all that argument of his.

Now, my brother Kentuckians, who believe in this, you ought to thank
Judge Douglas for having put that in a much more taking way than any
of yourselves have done.

Again, Douglas's great principle, "popular sovereignty," as he calls
it, gives you, by natural consequence, the revival of the slave trade
whenever you want it.  If you question this, listen awhile, consider
awhile what I shall advance in support of that proposition.

He says that it is the sacred right of the man who goes into the
Territories to have slavery if he wants it.  Grant that for
argument's sake.  Is it not the sacred right of the man who don't go
there equally to buy slaves in Africa, if he wants them?  Can you
point out the difference?  The man who goes into the Territories of
Kansas and Nebraska, or any other new Territory, with the sacred
right of taking a slave there which belongs to him, would certainly
have no more right to take one there than I would, who own no slave,
but who would desire to buy one and take him there.  You will not say
you, the friends of Judge Douglas but that the man who does not own a
slave has an equal right to buy one and take him to the Territory as
the other does.

A voice: I want to ask a question. Don't foreign nations interfere
with the slave trade?

Mr. LINCOLN:  Well! I understand it to be a principle of Democracy to
whip foreign nations whenever, they interfere with us.

Voice: I only asked for information.  I am a Republican myself.

Mr. LINCOLN: You and I will be on the best terms in the world, but
I do not wish to be diverted from the point I was trying to press.

I say that Douglas's popular sovereignty, establishing his sacred
right in the people, if you please, if carried to its logical
conclusion gives equally the sacred right to the people of the States
or the Territories themselves to buy slaves wherever they can buy
them cheapest; and if any man can show a distinction, I should like
to hear him try it.  If any man can show how the people of Kansas
have a better right to slaves, because they want them, than the
people of Georgia have to buy them in Africa, I want him to do it.
I think it cannot be done. If it is "popular sovereignty" for the
people to have slaves because they want them, it is popular
sovereignty for them to buy them in Africa because they desire to do
so.

I know that Douglas has recently made a little effort, not seeming to
notice that he had a different theory, has made an effort to get rid
of that.  He has written a letter, addressed to somebody, I believe,
who resides in Iowa, declaring his opposition to the repeal of the
laws that prohibit the Africa slave trade.  He bases his opposition
to such repeal upon the ground that these laws are themselves one of
the compromises of the Constitution of the United States.  Now, it
would be very interesting to see Judge Douglas or any of his friends
turn, to the Constitution of the United States and point out that
compromise, to show where there is any compromise in the
Constitution, or provision in the Constitution; express or implied,
by which the administrators of that Constitution are under any
obligation to repeal the African slave trade.  I know, or at least I
think I know, that the framers of that Constitution did expect the
African slave trade would be abolished at the end of twenty years, to
which time their prohibition against its being abolished extended.
there is abundant contemporaneous history to show that the framers of
the Constitution expected it to be abolished. But while they so
expected, they gave nothing for that expectation, and they put no
provision in the Constitution requiring it should be so abolished.
The migration or importation of such persons as the States shall see
fit to admit shall not be prohibited, but a certain tax might be
levied upon such importation.  But what was to be done after that
time?  The Constitution is as silent about that as it is silent,
personally, about myself.  There is absolutely nothing in it about
that subject; there is only the expectation of the framers of the
Constitution that the slave trade would be abolished at the end of
that time; and they expected it would be abolished, owing to public
sentiment, before that time; and the put that provision in, in order
that it should not be abolished before that time, for reasons which I
suppose they thought to be sound ones, but which I will not now try
to enumerate before you.

But while, they expected the slave trade would be abolished at that
time, they expected that the spread of slavery into the new
Territories should also be restricted.  It is as easy to prove that
the framers of the Constitution of the United States expected that
slavery should be prohibited from extending into the new Territories,
as it is to prove that it was expected that the slave trade should be
abolished.  Both these things were expected.  One was no more
expected than the other, and one was no more a compromise of the
Constitution than the other.  There was nothing said in the
Constitution in regard to the spread of slavery into the Territory.
I grant that; but there was something very important said about it by
the same generation of men in the adoption of the old Ordinance of
'87, through the influence of which you here in Ohio, our neighbors
in Indiana, we in Illinois, our neighbors in Michigan and Wisconsin,
are happy, prosperous, teeming millions of free men.  That generation
of men, though not to the full extent members of the convention that
framed the Constitution, were to some extent members of that
convention, holding seats at the same time in one body and the other,
so that if there was any compromise on either of these subjects, the
strong evidence is that that compromise was in favor of the
restriction of slavery from the new Territories.

But Douglas says that he is unalterably opposed to the repeal of
those laws because, in his view, it is a compromise of the
Constitution.  You Kentuckians, no doubt, are somewhat offended with
that.  You ought not to be!  You ought to be patient!  You ought to
know that if he said less than that, he would lose the power of
"lugging" the Northern States to your support.  Really, what you
would push him to do would take from him his entire power to serve
you.  And you ought to remember how long, by precedent, Judge Douglas
holds himself obliged to stick by compromises.  You ought to remember
that by the time you yourselves think you are ready to inaugurate
measures for the revival of the African slave trade, that sufficient
time will have arrived, by precedent, for Judge Douglas to break
through, that compromise.  He says now nothing more strong than he
said in 1849 when he declared in favor of Missouri Compromise,--and
precisely four years and a quarter after he declared that Compromise
to be a sacred thing, which "no ruthless hand would ever daze to
touch," he himself brought forward the measure ruthlessly to destroy
it.  By a mere calculation of time it will only be four years more
until he is ready to take back his profession about the sacredness of
the Compromise abolishing the slave trade.  Precisely as soon as you
are ready to have his services in that direction, by fair
calculation, you may be sure of having them.

But you remember and set down to Judge Douglas's debt, or discredit,
that he, last year, said the people of Territories can, in spite of
the Dred Scott decision, exclude your slaves from those Territories;
that he declared, by "unfriendly legislation" the extension of your
property into the new Territories may be cut off, in the teeth of the
decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

He assumed that position at Freeport on the 27th of August, 1858.  He
said that the people of the Territories can exclude slavery, in so
many words: You ought, however, to bear in mind that he has never
said it since.  You may hunt in every speech that he has since made,
and he has never used that expression once.  He has never seemed to
notice that he is stating his views differently from what he did
then; but by some sort of accident, he has always really stated it
differently.  He has always since then declared that "the
Constitution does not carry slavery into the Territories of the
United States beyond the power of the people legally to control it,
as other property."  Now, there is a difference in the language used
upon that former occasion and in this latter day.  There may or may
not be a difference in the meaning, but it is worth while considering
whether there is not also a difference in meaning.

What is it to exclude?  Why, it is to drive it out.  It is in some
way to put it out of the Territory.  It is to force it across the
line, or change its character so that, as property, it is out of
existence.  But what is the controlling of it "as other property"?
Is controlling it as other property the same thing as destroying it,
or driving it away?  I should think not.  I should think the
controlling of it as other property would be just about what you in
Kentucky should want.  I understand the controlling of property means
the controlling of it for the benefit of the owner of it.  While I
have no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would say "God
speed" to any of the Territorial Legislatures that should thus
control slave property, they would sing quite a different tune if, by
the pretence of controlling it, they were to undertake to pass laws
which virtually excluded it,--and that upon a very well known
principle to all lawyers, that what a Legislature cannot directly do,
it cannot do by indirection; that as the Legislature has not the
power to drive slaves out, they have no power, by indirection, by
tax, or by imposing burdens in any way on that property, to effect
the same end, and that any attempt to do so would be held by the Dred
Scott court unconstitutional.

Douglas is not willing to stand by his first proposition that they
can exclude it, because we have seen that that proposition amounts to
nothing more nor less than the naked absurdity that you may lawfully
drive out that which has a lawful right to remain. He admitted at
first that the slave might be lawfully taken into the Territories
under the Constitution of the United States, and yet asserted that he
might be lawfully driven out.  That being the proposition, it is the
absurdity I have stated.  He is not willing to stand in the face of
that direct, naked, and impudent absurdity; he has, therefore,
modified his language into that of being "controlled as other
property."

The Kentuckians don't like this in Douglas! I will tell you where it
will go. He now swears by the court.  He was once a leading man in
Illinois to break down a court, because it had made a decision he did
not like. But he now not only swears by the court, the courts having
got to working for you, but he denounces all men that do not swear by
the courts, as unpatriotic, as bad citizens.  When one of these acts
of unfriendly legislation shall impose such heavy burdens as to, in
effect, destroy property in slaves in a Territory, and show plainly
enough that there can be no mistake in the purpose of the Legislature
to make them so burdensome, this same Supreme Court will decide that
law to be unconstitutional, and he will be ready to say for your
benefit "I swear by the court; I give it up"; and while that is going
on he has been getting all his men to swear by the courts, and to
give it up with him. In this again he serves you faithfully, and, as
I say, more wisely than you serve yourselves.

Again: I have alluded in the beginning of these remarks to the fact
that Judge Douglas has made great complaint of my having expressed
the opinion that this government "cannot endure permanently, half
slave and half free."  He has complained of Seward for using
different language, and declaring that there is an "irrepressible
conflict" between the principles of free and slave labor.  [A voice:
" He says it is not original with Seward.  That it is original with
Lincoln."]  I will attend to that immediately, sir. Since that time,
Hickman of Pennsylvania expressed the same sentiment. He has never
denounced Mr. Hickman: why?  There is a little chance,
notwithstanding that opinion in the mouth of Hickman, that he may yet
be a Douglas man.  That is the difference!  It is not unpatriotic to
hold that opinion if a man is a Douglas man.

But neither I, nor Seward, nor Hickman is entitled to the enviable or
unenviable distinction of having first expressed that idea.  That
same idea was expressed by the Richmond Enquirer, in Virginia, in
1856,--quite two years before it was expressed by the first of us.
And while Douglas was pluming himself that in his conflict with my
humble self, last year, he had "squelched out" that fatal heresy, as
he delighted to call it, and had suggested that if he only had had a
chance to be in New York and meet Seward he would have "squelched" it
there also, it never occurred to him to breathe a word against Pryor.
I don't think that you can discover that Douglas ever talked of going
to Virginia to "squelch" out that idea there.  No.  More than that.
That same Roger A. Pryor was brought to Washington City and made the
editor of the par excellence Douglas paper, after making use of that
expression, which, in us, is so unpatriotic and heretical.  From all
this, my Kentucky friends may see that this opinion is heretical in
his view only when it is expressed by men suspected of a desire that
the country shall all become free, and not when expressed by those
fairly known to entertain the desire that the whole country shall
become slave. When expressed by that class of men, it is in nowise
offensive to him. In this again, my friends of Kentucky, you have
Judge Douglas with you.

There is another reason why you Southern people ought to nominate
Douglas at your convention at Charleston.  That reason is the
wonderful capacity of the man,--the power he has of doing what would
seem to be impossible. Let me call your attention to one of these
apparently impossible things:

Douglas had three or four very distinguished men of the most extreme
anti-slavery views of any men in the Republican party expressing
their desire for his re-election to the Senate last year.  That
would, of itself, have seemed to be a little wonderful; but that
wonder is heightened when we see that Wise of Virginia, a man exactly
opposed to them, a man who believes in the divine right of slavery,
was also expressing his desire that Douglas should be reelected; that
another man that may be said to be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge,
the Vice-President, and of your own State, was also agreeing with the
anti-slavery men in the North that Douglas ought to be re-elected.
Still to heighten the wonder, a senator from Kentucky, whom I have
always loved with an affection as tender and endearing as I have ever
loved any man, who was opposed to the anti-slavery men for reasons
which seemed sufficient to him, and equally opposed to Wise and
Breckinridge, was writing letters into Illinois to secure the
reelection of Douglas.  Now, that all these conflicting elements
should be brought, while at daggers' points with one another, to
support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider.
It is quite probable that each of these classes of men thought, by
the re-election of Douglas, their peculiar views would gain
something: it is probable that the anti-slavery men thought their
views would gain something; that Wise and Breckinridge thought so
too, as regards their opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought that his
views would gain something, although he was opposed to both these
other men.  It is probable that each and all of them thought that
they were using Douglas; and it is yet an unsolved problem whether he
was not using them all.  If he was, then it is for you to consider
whether that power to perform wonders is one for you lightly to throw
away.

There is one other thing that I will say to you, in this relation. It
is but my opinion, I give it to you without a fee.  It is my opinion
that it is for you to take him or be defeated; and that if you do
take him you may be beaten.  You will surely be beaten if you do not
take him.  We, the Republicans and others forming the opposition of
the country, intend to "stand by our guns," to be patient and firm,
and in the long run to beat you, whether you take him or not.  We
know that before we fairly beat you we have to beat you both
together.  We know that you are "all of a feather," and that we have
to beat you all together, and we expect to do it.  We don't intend to
be very impatient about it.  We mean to be as deliberate and calm
about it as it is possible to be, but as firm and resolved as it is
possible for men to be.  When we do as we say,--beat you,--you
perhaps want to know what we will do with you.

I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to speak for the
opposition, what we mean to do with you. We mean to treat you, as
near as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison
treated you.  We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere
with your institution; to abide by all and every compromise of the
Constitution, and, in a word, coming back to the original
proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerated men (if we have
degenerated) may, according to the examples of those noble fathers,
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.  We mean to remember that you are
as good as we; that there is no difference between us other than the
difference of circumstances.  We mean to recognize and bear in mind
always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people,
or as we claim to have, and treat you accordingly.  We mean to marry
your girls when we have a chance, the white ones I mean; and I have
the honor to inform you that I once did have a chance in that way.

I have told you what we mean to do. I want to know, now, when that
thing takes place, what do you mean to do?  I often hear it intimated
that you mean to divide the Union whenever a Republican, or anything
like it, is elected President of the United States.  [A voice: "That
is so."]  "That is so," one of them says; I wonder if he is a
Kentuckian?  [A voice: "He is a Douglas man."]  Well, then, I want to
know what you are going to do with your half of it?  Are you going to
split the Ohio down through, and push your half off a piece?  Or are
you going to keep it right alongside of us outrageous fellows?  Or
are you going to build up a wall some way between your country and
ours, by which that movable property of yours can't come over here
any more, to the danger of your losing it?  Do you think you can
better yourselves, on that subject, by leaving us here under no
obligation whatever to return those specimens of your movable
property that come hither?  You have divided the Union because we
would not do right with you, as you think, upon that subject; when we
cease to be under obligations to do anything for you, how much better
off do you think you will be?  Will you make war upon us and kill us
all?  Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as
live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as
any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of
this upon various occasions: but, man for man, you are not better
than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. You
will never make much of a hand at whipping us.  If we were fewer in
numbers than you, I think that you could whip us; if we were equal,
it would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you
will make nothing by attempting to master us.

But perhaps I have addressed myself as long, or longer, to the
Kentuckians than I ought to have done, inasmuch as I have said that
whatever course you take we intend in the end to beat you.  I propose
to address a few remarks to our friends, by way of discussing with
them the best means of keeping that promise that I have in good faith
made.

It may appear a little episodical for me to mention the topic of
which I will speak now. It is a favorite position of Douglas's that
the interference of the General Government, through the Ordinance of
'87, or through any other act of the General Government never has
made or ever can make a free State; the Ordinance of '87 did not make
free States of Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois; that these States are free
upon his "great principle" of popular sovereignty, because the people
of those several States have chosen to make them so.  At Columbus,
and probably here, he undertook to compliment the people that they
themselves have made the State of Ohio free, and that the Ordinance
of '87 was not entitled in any degree to divide the honor with them.
I have no doubt that the people of the State of Ohio did make her
free according to their own will and judgment, but let the facts be
remembered.

In 1802, I believe, it was you who made your first constitution, with
the clause prohibiting slavery, and you did it, I suppose, very
nearly unanimously; but you should bear in mind that you--speaking of
you as one people--that you did so unembarrassed by the actual
presence of the, institution amongst you; that you made it a free
State not with the embarrassment upon you of already having among you
many slaves, which if they had been here, and you had sought to make
a free State, you would not know what to do with.  If they had been
among you, embarrassing difficulties, most probably, would have
induced you to tolerate a slave constitution instead of a free one,
as indeed these very difficulties have constrained every people on
this continent who have adopted slavery.

Pray what was it that made you free?  What kept you free?  Did you
not find your country free when you came to decide that Ohio should
be a free State?  It is important to inquire by what reason you found
it so.  Let us take an illustration between the States of Ohio and
Kentucky.  Kentucky is separated by this River Ohio, not a mile wide.
A portion of Kentucky, by reason of the course of the Ohio, is
farther north than this portion of Ohio, in which we now stand.
Kentucky is entirely covered with slavery; Ohio is entirely free from
it: What made that difference?  Was it climate?  No.  A portion of
Kentucky was farther north than this portion of Ohio.  Was it soil?
No.  There is nothing in the soil of the one more favorable to slave
than the other. It was not climate or soil that mused one side of the
line to be entirely covered with slavery, and the other side free of
it.  What was it?  Study over it.  Tell us, if you can, in all the
range of conjecture, if there be anything you can conceive of that
made that difference, other than that there was no law of any sort
keeping it out of Kentucky, while the Ordinance of '87 kept it out of
Ohio.  If there is any other reason than this, I confess that it is
wholly beyond my power to conceive of it.  This, then, I offer to
combat the idea that that Ordinance has never made any State free.

I don't stop at this illustration. I come to the State of Indiana;
and what I have said as between Kentucky and Ohio, I repeat as
between Indiana and Kentucky: it is equally applicable. One
additional argument is applicable also to Indiana.  In her
Territorial condition she more than once petitioned Congress to
abrogate the Ordinance entirely, or at least so far as to suspend its
operation for a, time, in order that they should exercise the
"popular sovereignty" of having slaves if they wanted them. The men
then controlling the General Government, imitating the men of the
Revolution, refused Indiana that privilege.  And so we have the
evidence that Indiana supposed she could have slaves, if it were not
for that Ordinance; that she besought Congress to put that barrier
out of the way; that Congress refused to do so; and it all ended at
last in Indiana being a free State.  Tell me not then that the
Ordinance of '87 had nothing to do with making Indiana a free State,
when we find some men chafing against, and only restrained by, that
barrier.

Come down again to our State of Illinois.  The great Northwest
Territory, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin, was acquired first, I believe, by the British Government,
in part at least, from the French.  Before the establishment of our
independence it became a part of Virginia, enabling Virginia
afterward to transfer it to the General Government.  There were
French settlements in what is now Illinois, and at the same time
there were French settlements in what is now Missouri, in the tract
of country that was not purchased till about 1803.  In these French
settlements negro slavery had existed for many years, perhaps more
than a hundred; if not as much as two hundred years,--at Kaskaskia,
in Illinois, and at St. Genevieve, or Cape Girardeau, perhaps, in
Missouri.  The number of slaves was not very great, but there was
about the same number in each place.  They were there when we
acquired the Territory.  There was no effort made to break up the
relation of master and slave, and even the Ordinance of 1787 was not
so enforced as to destroy that slavery in Illinois; nor did the
Ordinance apply to Missouri at all.

What I want to ask your attention to; at this point, is that Illinois
and Missouri came into the Union about the same time, Illinois in the
latter part of 1818, and Missouri, after a struggle, I believe
sometime in 1820.  They had been filling up with American people
about the same period of time; their progress enabling them to come
into the Union about the same time.  At the end of that ten years, in
which they had been so preparing (for it was about that period of
time), the number of slaves in Illinois had actually decreased; while
in Missouri, beginning with very few, at the end of that ten years
there were about ten thousand.  This being so, and it being
remembered that Missouri and Illinois are, to a certain extent, in
the same parallel of latitude, that the northern half of Missouri and
the southern half of Illinois are in the same parallel of latitude,
so that climate would have the same effect upon one as upon the
other, and that in the soil there is no material difference so far as
bears upon the question of slavery being settled upon one or the
other,--there being none of those natural causes to produce a
difference in filling them, and yet there being a broad difference to
their filling up, we are led again to inquire what was the cause of
that difference.

It is most natural to say that in Missouri there was no law to keep
that country from filling up with slaves, while in Illinois there was
the Ordinance of The Ordinance being there, slavery decreased during
that ten years; the Ordinance not being in the other, it increased
from a few to ten thousand. Can anybody doubt the reason of the
difference?

I think all these facts most abundantly prove that my friend Judge
Douglas's proposition, that the Ordinance of '87, or the national
restriction of slavery, never had a tendency to make a free State, is
a fallacy,--a proposition without the shadow or substance of truth
about it.

Douglas sometimes says that all the States (and it is part of this
same proposition I have been discussing) that have become free have
become so upon his "great principle"; that the State of Illinois
itself came into the Union as a slave State, and that the people,
upon the "great principle" of popular sovereignty, have since made it
a free State.  Allow me but a little while to state to you what facts
there are to justify him in saying that Illinois came into the Union
as a slave State.

I have mentioned to you that there were a few old French slaves
there.  They numbered, I think, one or two hundred.  Besides that,
there had been a Territorial law for indenturing black persons.
Under that law, in violation of the Ordinance of '87, but without any
enforcement of the Ordinance to overthrow the system, there had been
a small number of slaves introduced as indentured persons.  Owing to
this, the clause for the prohibition of slavery was slightly
modified.  Instead of running like yours, that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except for crime, of which the party shall
have been duly convicted, should exist in the State, they said that
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should thereafter be
introduced; and that the children of indentured servants should be
born free; and nothing was said about the few old French slaves.  Out
of this fact, that the clause for prohibiting slavery was modified
because of the actual presence of it, Douglas asserts again and again
that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.  How far the
facts sustain the conclusion that he draws, it is for intelligent and
impartial men to decide.  I leave it with you, with these remarks,
worthy of being remembered, that that little thing, those few
indentured servants being there, was of itself sufficient to modify a
constitution made by a people ardently desiring to have a free
constitution; showing the power of the actual presence of the
institution of slavery to prevent any people, however anxious to make
a free State, from making it perfectly so.

I have been detaining you longer, perhaps, than I ought to do.

I am in some doubt whether to introduce another topic upon which I
could talk a while. [Cries of "Go on," and "Give us it."] It is this,
then: Douglas's  Popular sovereignty, as a principle, is simply this:
If one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that man
nor anybody else has a right to object.  Apply it to government, as
he seeks to apply it, and it is this: If, in a new Territory into
which a few people are beginning to enter for the purpose of making
their homes, they choose to either exclude slavery from their limits,
or to establish it there, however one or the other may affect the
persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely greater number of persons
who are afterward to inhabit that Territory, or the other members of
the family of communities of which they are but an incipient member,
or the general head of the family of States as parent of all, however
their action may affect one or the other of these, there is no power
or right to interfere.  That is Douglas's popular sovereignty
applied.  Now, I think that there is a real popular sovereignty in
the world.  I think the definition of popular sovereignty, in the
abstract, would be about this: that each man shall do precisely as he
pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively
concern him.  Applied in government, this principle would be that a
general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and
all the local governments shall do precisely as they please in
respect to those matters which exclusively concern them.

Douglas looks upon slavery as so insignificant that the people must
decide that question for themselves; and yet they are not fit to
decide who shall be their governor, judge, or secretary, or who shall
be any of their officers.  These are vast national matters in his
estimation; but the little matter in his estimation is that of
planting slavery there.  That is purely of local interest, which
nobody should be allowed to say a word about.

Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human
comforts and necessities are drawn. There is a difference in opinion
about the elements of labor in society.  Some men assume that there
is necessary connection between capital and labor, and that
connection draws within it the whole of the labor of the community.
They assume that nobody works unless capital excites them to work.
They begin next to consider what is the best way.  They say there are
but two ways: one is to hire men, and to allure them to labor by
their consent; the other is to buy the men, and drive them, to it,
and that is slavery.  Having assumed that, they proceed to discuss
the question of whether the laborers themselves are better off in the
condition of slaves or of hired laborers, and they usually decide
that they are better off in the condition of slaves.

In the first place, I say that the whole thing is a mistake.  That
there is a certain relation between capital and labor, I admit.  That
it does exist, and rightfully exists, I think is true.  That men who
are industrious, and sober, and honest in the pursuit of their own
interests should after a while accumulate capital, and after that
should be allowed to enjoy it in peace, and also, if they should
choose, when they have accumulated it, to use it to save themselves
from actual labor, and hire other people to labor for them, is right.
In doing so they do not wrong the man they employ, for they find men
who have not of their own land to work upon, or shops to work in, and
who are benefited by working for others, hired laborers, receiving
their capital for it.  Thus a few men, that own capital, hire a few
others, and these establish the relation of capital and labor
rightfully, a relation of which I make no complaint. But I insist
that that relation, after all, does not embrace more than one eighth
of the labor of the country.

[The speaker proceeded to argue that the hired laborer, with his
ability to become an employer, must have every precedence over him
who labors under the inducement of force. He continued:]

I have taken upon myself in the name of some of you to say that we
expect upon these principles to ultimately beat them. In order to do
so, I think we want and must have a national policy in regard to the
institution of slavery that acknowledges and deals with that
institution as being wrong.  Whoever desires the prevention of the
spread of slavery and the nationalization of that institution yields
all when he yields to any policy that either recognizes slavery as
being right or as being an indifferent thing.  Nothing will make you
successful but setting up a policy which shall treat the thing as
being wrong: When I say this, I do not mean to say that this General
Government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all
the wrongs in the world, but I do think that it is charged with
preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.
This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for
the general welfare.  We believe that the spreading out and
perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare.
We believe--nay, we know--that that is the only thing that has ever
threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.  The only thing which
has ever menaced the destruction of the government under which we
live is this very thing. To repress this thing, we think, is,
Providing for the general welfare. Our friends in Kentucky differ
from us.  We need not make our argument for them, but we who think it
is wrong in all its relations, or in some of them at least, must
decide as to our own actions and our own course, upon our own
judgment.

I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and
the general welfare does not require us to do so.  We must not
withhold an efficient Fugitive Slave law, because the Constitution
requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law.  But we
must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the
Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it.  We must
prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by
Congress of a Territorial slave code.  We must prevent each of these
things being done by either Congresses or courts.  The people of
these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and
courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men
who pervert the Constitution.

To do these things we must employ instrumentalities.  We must hold
conventions; we must adopt platforms, if we conform to ordinary
custom; we must nominate candidates; and we must carry elections.  In
all these things, I think that we ought to keep in view our real
purpose, and in none do anything that stands adverse to our purpose.
If we shall adopt a platform that fails to recognize or express our
purpose, or elect a man that declares himself inimical to our
purpose, we not only take nothing by our success, but we tacitly
admit that we act upon no other principle than a desire to have "the
loaves and fishes," by which, in the end, our apparent success is
really an injury to us.

I know that this is very desirable with me, as with everybody else,
that all the elements of the opposition shall unite in the next
Presidential election and in all future time. I am anxious that that
should be; but there are things seriously to be considered in
relation to that matter.  If the terms can be arranged, I am in favor
of the union.  But suppose we shall take up some man, and put him
upon one end or the other of the ticket, who declares himself against
us in regard to the prevention of the spread of slavery, who turns up
his nose and says he is tired of hearing anything more about it, who
is more against us than against the enemy, what will be the issue?
Why, he will get no slave States, after all,--he has tried that
already until being beat is the rule for him.  If we nominate him
upon that ground, he will not carry a slave State; and not only so,
but that portion of our men who are high-strung upon the principle we
really fight for will not go for him, and he won't get a single
electoral vote anywhere, except, perhaps, in the State of Maryland.
There is no use in saying to us that we are stubborn and obstinate
because we won't do some such thing as this.  We cannot do it.  We
cannot get our men to vote it.  I speak by the card, that we cannot
give the State of Illinois in such case by fifty thousand.  We would
be flatter down than the "Negro Democracy" themselves have the heart
to wish to see us.

After saying this much let me say a little on the other side. There
are plenty of men in the slave States that are altogether good enough
for me to be either President or Vice-President, provided they will
profess their sympathy with our purpose, and will place themselves on
the ground that our men, upon principle, can vote for them.  There
are scores of them, good men in their character for intelligence and
talent and integrity.  If such a one will place himself upon the
right ground, I am for his occupying one place upon the next
Republican or opposition ticket.  I will heartily go for him.  But
unless he does so place himself, I think it a matter of perfect
nonsense to attempt to bring about a union upon any other basis; that
if a union be made, the elements will scatter so that there can be no
success for such a ticket, nor anything like success.  The good old
maxims of the Bible axe applicable, and truly applicable, to human
affairs, and in this, as in other things, we may say here that he who
is not for us is against us; he who gathereth not with us,
scattereth.  I should be glad to have some of the many good and able
and noble men of the South to place themselves where we can confer
upon them the high honor of an election upon one or the other end of
our ticket.  It would do my soul good to do that thing.  It would
enable us to teach them that, inasmuch as we select one of their own
number to carry out our principles, we are free from the charge that
we mean more than we say.

But, my friends, I have detained you much longer than I expected to
do.  I believe I may do myself the compliment to say that you have
stayed and heard me with great patience, for which I return you my
most sincere thanks.




ON PROTECTIVE TARIFFS

TO EDWARD WALLACE.

CLINTON, October 11, 1859

Dr. EDWARD WALLACE.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am here just now attending court.  Yesterday, before
I left Springfield, your brother, Dr. William S. Wallace, showed me a
letter of yours, in which you kindly mention my name, inquiring for
my tariff views, and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter
upon the subject.  I was an old Henry-Clay-Tariff Whig.  In old times
I made more speeches on that subject than any other.

I have not since changed my views.  I believe yet, if we could have a
moderate, carefully adjusted protective tariff, so far acquiesced in
as not to be a perpetual subject of political strife, squabbles
changes, and uncertainties, it would be better for us.  Still it is
my opinion that just now the revival of that question will not
advance the cause itself, or the man who revives it.

I have not thought much on the subject recently, but my general
impression is that the necessity for a protective tariff will ere
long force its old opponents to take it up; and then its old friends
can join in and establish it on a more firm and durable basis.  We,
the Old Whigs, have been entirely beaten out on the tariff question,
and we shall not be able to re-establish the policy until the absence
of it shall have demonstrated the necessity for it in the minds of
men heretofore opposed to it.  With this view, I should prefer to not
now write a public letter on the subject.  I therefore wish this to
be considered confidential.   I shall be very glad to receive a
letter from you.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




ON MORTGAGES

TO W. DUNGY.

SPRINGFIELD, November, 2, 1859.

WM. DUNGY, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of October 27 is received.  When a mortgage is given
to secure two notes, and one of the notes is sold and assigned, if
the mortgaged premises are only sufficient to pay one note, the one
assigned will take it all.  Also, an execution from a judgment on the
assigned note may take it all; it being the same thing in substance.
There is redemption on execution sales from the United States Court
just as from any other court.

You did not mention the name of the plaintiff or defendant in the
suit, and so I can tell nothing about it as to sales, bids, etc.
Write again.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS,
DECEMBER, 1859.

.............  But you Democrats are for the Union; and you greatly
fear the success of the Republicans would destroy the Union.  Why? Do
the Republicans declare against the Union? Nothing like it.  Your own
statement of it is that if the Black Republicans elect a President,
you "won't stand it."  You will break up the Union.  If we shall
constitutionally elect a President, it will be our duty to see that
you submit.  Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a
State.  We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking
slavery wrong.  That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.
It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right.  So, if
we constitutionally elect a President, and therefore you undertake to
destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John
Brown has been dealt with.  We shall try to do our duty.  We hope and
believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such
extreme measures necessary.




TO G. W. DOLE, G. S. HUBBARD, AND W. H. BROWN.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec. 14, 1859

MESSRS. DOLE, HUBBARD & BROWN.

GENT.:--Your favor of the 12th is at hand, and it gives me pleasure
to be able to answer it.  It is not my intention to take part in any
of the rivalries for the gubernatorial nomination; but the fear of
being misunderstood upon that subject ought not to deter me from
doing justice to Mr. Judd, and preventing a wrong being done to him
by the use of nay name in connection with alleged wrongs to me.

In answer to your first question, as to whether Mr. Judd was guilty
of any unfairness to me at the time of Senator Trumbull's election, I
answer unhesitatingly in the negative; Mr. Judd owed no political
allegiance to any party whose candidate I was.  He was in the Senate,
holding over, having been elected by a Democratic Constituency.  He
never was in any caucus of the friends who sought to make me U. S.
Senator, never gave me any promises or pledges to support me, and
subsequent events have greatly tended to prove the wisdom,
politically, of Mr. Judd's course.  The election of Judge Trumbull
strongly tended to sustain and preserve the position of that lion of
the Democrats who condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
and left them in a position of joining with us in forming the
Republican party, as was done at the Bloomington convention in 1856.

During the canvass of 1858 for the senatorship my belief was, and
still is, that I had no more sincere and faithful friend than Mr.
Judd--certainly none whom I trusted more.  His position as chairman
of the State Central Committee led to my greater intercourse with
him, and to my giving him a larger share of my confidence, than with
or to almost any other friend; and I have never suspected that that
confidence was, to any degree, misplaced.

My relations with Mr. Judo since the organization of the Republican
party, in, our State, in 1856, and especially since the adjournment
of the Legislature in Feb., 1857, have been so very intimate that I
deem it an impossibility that he could have been dealing
treacherously with me. He has also, at all times, appeared equally
true and faithful to the party. In his position as chairman of the
committee, I believe he did all that any man could have done. The
best of us are liable to commit errors, which become apparent by
subsequent developments; but I do not know of a single error, even,
committed by Mr. Judd, since he and I have acted together
politically.

I, had occasionally heard these insinuations against Mr. Judd, before
the receipt of your letter; and in no instance have I hesitated to
pronounce them wholly unjust, to the full extent of my knowledge and
belief. I have been, and still am, very anxious to take no part
between the many friends, all good and true, who are mentioned as
candidates for a Republican gubernatorial nomination; but I can not
feel that my own honor is quite clear if I remain silent when I hear
any one of them assailed about matters of which I believe I know more
than his assailants.

I take pleasure in adding that, of all the avowed friends I had in
the canvass of last year, I do not suspect any of having acted
treacherously to me, or to our cause; and that there is not one of
them in whose honesty, honor, and integrity I, today, have greater
confidence than I have in those of Mr. Judd.

I dislike to appear before the public in this matter; but you are at
liberty to make such use of this letter as you may think justice
requires.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO G. M. PARSONS AND OTHERS.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 19, 1859.

MESSRS. G. M. PARSONS AND OTHERS, CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, ETC.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter of the 7th instant, accompanied by a similar
one from the governor-elect, the Republican State officers, and the
Republican members of the State Board of Equalization of Ohio, both
requesting of me, for publication in permanent form, copies of the
political debates between Senator Douglas and myself last year, has
been received.  With my grateful acknowledgments to both you and them
for the very flattering terms in which the request is communicated, I
transmit you the copies.  The copies I send you are as reported and
printed by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself, at
the time--that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine.  It would be
an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his,
and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only,
and very few in number.  I wish the reprint to be precisely as the
copies I send, without any comment whatever.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

TO J. W. FELL,

SPRINGFIELD, December 20, 1859.

J. W. FELL, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested.  There
is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much
of me.  If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and
not to go beyond the material.  If it were thought necessary to
incorporate anything from any of my speeches I suppose there would be
no objection.  Of course it must not appear to have been written by
myself.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN

-----------------------

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.  My parents
were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second
families, perhaps I should say.  My mother, who died in my tenth
year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside
in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois.  My paternal
grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County,
Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later
he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he
was laboring to open a farm in the forest.  His ancestors, who were
Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania.  An effort
to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended
in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both
families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the
like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and
he grew up literally without education.  He removed from Kentucky to
what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year.  We reached
our new home about the time that State came into the Union.  It was a
wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the
woods.  There I grew up.  There were some schools, so called, but no
qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin',
writin', and cipherin"' to the Rule of Three.  If a straggler
supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood
he was looked upon as a wizard.  There was absolutely nothing to
excite ambition for education.  Of course, when I came of age I did
not know much.  Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to
the Rule of Three, but that was all.  I have not been to school
since.  The little advance I now have upon this store of education I
have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two.
At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County.  Then I got to New
Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I
remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store.  Then came the Black
Hawk war; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which
gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.  I went the
campaign, was elected, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832),
and was beaten--the only time I ever have been beaten by the people.
The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the
Legislature.  I was not a candidate afterward.  During this
legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to
practice it.  In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of
Congress.  Was not a candidate for re-election.  From 1849 to 1854,
both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before.
Always a Whig in politics; and generally on the Whig electoral
tickets, making active canvasses.  I was losing interest in politics
when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.  What I
have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be
said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh,
weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark
complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes.  No other marks or
brands recollected.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON NOMINATION TO THE NATIONAL TICKET

To N. B. JUDD.

SPRINGFIELD, FEBRUARY 9, 1859

HON. N. B. JUDD.

DEAR Sir:--I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to
not be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt
some for me to not get the Illinois delegates.  What I expected when
I wrote the letter to Messrs.  Dole and others is now happening.
Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against me; and they
will, for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates egg in the South, and to
the Seward egg in the North, and go far toward squeezing me out in
the middle with nothing.   Can you help me a little in this matter in
your end of the vineyard.   I mean this to be private.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN





1860


SPEECH AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 27, 1860


MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YORK:--The facts with which
I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there
anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall
be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and
the inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New
York Times, Senator Douglas said:

"Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live,
understood this question just as well, and even better than we do
now."

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse.
I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting-
point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the
Democracy headed by Senator Douglas.  It simply leaves the inquiry:
What was the understanding those fathers had of the question
mentioned?

What is the frame of Government under which we live?

The answer must be--the Constitution of the United States.  That
Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787 (and under
which the present Government first went into operation), and twelve
subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in
1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution?  I suppose the
"thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may be fairly called
our fathers who framed that part of the present Government.  It is
almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true
to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole
nation at that time.

Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite
all, need not now be repeated.

I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being our "fathers
who framed the Government under which we live."

What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers
understood "just as well, and even better than we do now"?

It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal authority,
or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to
control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the
negative.  This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this issue-
-this question is precisely what the text declares our fathers
understood "better than we."

Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or any of them, acted
upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it--how they
expressed that better understanding.

In 1784, three years before the Constitution--the United States then
owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other--the Congress of the
Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in
that Territory; and four of the "thirty nine" who afterward framed
the Constitution were in that Congress and voted on that question.
Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted
for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no
line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else,
properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
Federal territory.  The other of the four--James McHenry voted
against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it
improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the convention was
in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was
the only Territory owned by the United States, the same question of
prohibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the Congress
of the Confederation; and two more of the "thirty-nine" who afterward
signed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on the
question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both
voted for the prohibition thus showing that, in their understanding,
no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else,
properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part
of what is now well known as the Ordinance of '87.

The question of Federal control of slavery in the Territories seems
not to have been directly before the convention which framed the
original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the
"thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that instrument,
expressed any opinion on that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an
act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, including the
prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory.  The bill for
this act was reported by one of the "thirty-nine," Thomas
Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from
Pennsylvania.  It went through all its stages without a word of
opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays,
which is equivalent to a unanimous passage.  In this Congress there
were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original
Constitution.  They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S.
Johnnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William
Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Claimer,
Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James
Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from
Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade
Congress to prohibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both
their fidelity to correct principles and their oath to support the
Constitution would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again: George Washington, another of the "thirty nine," was then
President of the United States, and, as such, approved and signed the
bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that,
in his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority,
nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to
control as to slavery in Federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North
Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting
the State of Tennessee; and, a few years later, Georgia ceded that
which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama.  In both
deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that
the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded
country.  Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded
country.  Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of
these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them.
But they did interfere with it--take control of it--even there, to a
certain extent.  In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of
Mississippi: In the act of organization they prohibited the bringing
of slaves into the Territory from any place without the United
States, by fine and giving freedom to slaves so brought.  This act
passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays.  In that
Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the original
Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham
Baldwin.  They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have
placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their
understanding, any line dividing local from Federal authority, or
anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government
to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country.  Our
former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States;
but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation.  In
1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it
which now constitutes the State of Lousiana.  New Orleans, lying
within that part, was an old and comparatively large city.  There
were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was
extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people.  Congress
did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did
interfere with it take control of it--in a more marked and extensive
way than they did in the case of Mississippi.  The substance of the
provision therein made in relation to slaves was:

First. That no slave should be imported into the Territory from
foreign parts.

Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported
into the United States since the first day of May, 1798.

Third. That no slave should be carried into it except by the owner,
and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being
a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.

This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which
passed it there were two of the "thirty-nine."  They were Abraham
Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton.  As stated in the case of Mississippi,
it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it
to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their
understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local
from Federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.

In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question.  Many votes were
taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the
various phases of the general question. Two of the "thirty-nine"-
-Rufus King and Charles Pinckney were members of that Congress.  Mr.
King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all
compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery
prohibition, and against all compromises.  By this, Mr. King showed
that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal
authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress
prohibiting slavery in Federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his
vote, showed that in his understanding there was some sufficient
reason for opposing such prohibition in that case.

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the "thirty-nine," or
of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to
discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two
in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in
1819-20--there would be thirty of them.  But this would be counting,
John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George
Read, each twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times.  The true number
of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon
the question which, by the text, they understood better than we, is
twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any
way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers "who
framed the Government under which we live," who have, upon their
official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very
question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and
even better than we do now"; and twenty-one of them--a clear majority
of the whole "thirty-nine"--so acting upon it as to make them guilty
of gross political impropriety and wilful perjury, if, in their
understanding, any proper division between local and Federal.
authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves,
and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in the Federal Territories.  Thus the twenty-one acted; and,
as actions speak louder than words, so actions under such
responsibilities speak still louder.

Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of
slavery in the Federal Territories, in the instances in which they
acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not
known.  They may have done so because they thought a proper division
of local from Federal authority, or some provision or principle of
the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such
question, have voted against the prohibition on what appeared to them
to be sufficient grounds of expediency.  No one who has sworn to
support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he
understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he
may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which
he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it
inexpedient.  It therefore would be unsafe to set down even the two
who voted against the prohibition as having done so because, in their
understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority,
or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to
control as to slavery in Federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have
discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the
direct question of Federal control on slavery in the Federal
Territories. But there is much reason to believe that their
understanding upon that question would not have appeared different
from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at
all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely
omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any
person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who
framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have
also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any
of the "thirty tine" even on any other phase of the general question
of slavery.  If we should look into their acts and declarations on
those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and
policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct
question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories, the
sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as
the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most
noted anti-slavery men of those times--as Dr. Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris while there was not one now known to
have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South
Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed
the original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from
Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories;
whilst all the rest probably had the same understanding.  Such,
unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the
original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the
question "better than we."

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the
question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution.  In
and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it;
and, as I have already stated, the present frame of "the Government
under which we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory
articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that Federal
control of slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitution,
point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and,
as I understand, they all fix upon provisions in these amendatory
articles, and not in the original instrument.  The Supreme Court, in
the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which
provides that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty, or
property without due process of law"; while Senator Douglas and his
peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment,
providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution"  "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people."

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first
Congress which sat under the Constitution--the identical Congress
which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of
slavery in the Northwestern Territory.  Not only was it the same
Congress, but they were the identical same individual men who, at the
same session, and at the same time within the session, had under
consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional
amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the
nation then owned.  The Constitutional amendments were introduced
before and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so
that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance,
the Constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the
framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were
pre-eminently our fathers who framed that part of "the Government
under which we live," which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal
Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that
the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried
to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each
other?  And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when
coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those
who did the two things alleged to be inconsistent understood whether
they really were inconsistent better than we--better than he who
affirms that they are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress
which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly
include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live."  And, so assuming, I defy any man to
show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in
his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal
authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories.  I go
a step further.  I defy any one to show that any living man in the
world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I
might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the
present century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper
division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the
Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery
in the Federal Territories.  To those who now so declare, I give not
only "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live," but
with them all other living men within the century in which it was
framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the
evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Now and here let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do
not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our
fathers did.  To do so would be to discard all the lights of current
experience to reject all progress, all improvement.  What I do say is
that, if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in
any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument
so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and
weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we
ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that proper division of
local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the
Federal Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his
position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can.
But he has no right to mislead others who have less access to
history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that
"our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of
the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and deception for
truthful evidence and fair argument.  If any man at this day
sincerely believes "our fathers, who framed the Government under
which we live," used and applied principles, in other cases, which
ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local
from Federal authority, or some part of the Constitution, forbids the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal
Territories, he is right to say so.  But he should, at the same time,
brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he
understands their principles better than they did themselves; and
especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that
they "understood the question just as well, and even better than we
do now."

But enough!  Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the
Government under which we live, understood this question just as
well, and even better than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act
as they acted upon it.  This is all Republicans ask--all Republicans
desire--in relation to slavery.  As those fathers marked it, so let
it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be
tolerated and protected only because of, and so far as, its actual
presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.
Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but
fully and fairly maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with
this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

And now, if they would listen--as I suppose they will not--I would
address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just
people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and
justice you are not inferior to any other people.  Still, when you
speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles,
or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.  You will grant a hearing
to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans."
In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an
unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first
thing to be attended to.  Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be
an indispensable prerequisite license, so to speak among you, to be
admitted or permitted to speak at all: Now; can you, or not, be
prevailed upon to pause, and to consider whether this is quite just
to us, or even to yourselves?  Bring forward your charges and
specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or
justify.

You say we are sectional.  We deny it.  That makes an issue; and the
burden of proof is upon you.  You produce your proof; and what is it?
Why, that our party has no existence in your section--gets no votes
in your section.  The fact is substantially true; but does it prove
the issue?  If it does, then in case we should, without change of
principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby
cease to be sectional.  You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet,
are you willing to abide by it?  If you are, you will probably soon
find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in
your section this very year.  You will then begin to discover, as the
truth plainly is, that your proof, does not touch the issue. The fact
that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and
not of ours.  And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is
primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by,
some wrong principle or practice.  If we do repel you by any wrong
principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to
where you ought to have started to a discussion of the right or wrong
of our principle.  If our principle, put in practice, would wrong
your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then
our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed
and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our
principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet us
as if it were possible that something may be said on our side.  Do
you accept the challenge?  No!  Then you really believe that the
principle which "our fathers who framed the Government under which we
live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again
and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as
to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against
sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address.  Less
than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as
President of the United States, approved and signed an act of
Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern
Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that
subject up to, and at, the very moment he penned that warning; and
about one year after he penned it, he wrote La Fayette that he
considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same
connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of
free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen
upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands
against us, or in our hands against you?  Could Washington himself
speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who
sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it?  We respect that
warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his
example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we
are revolutionary, destructive, or something, of the sort.  What is
conservatism?  Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against a
new and untried?  We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy
on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who
framed the Government under which we live"; while you with one accord
reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy and insist upon
substituting something new.  True, you disagree among yourselves as
to what that substitute shall be.  You are divided on new
propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and
denouncing the old policy of the fathers.  Some of you are for
reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional slave code
for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to
prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in
the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat
pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man
should object," fantastically called "popular sovereignty"; but never
a man among you in favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal
Territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live."  Not one of all your various plans
can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our
Government originated.  Consider, then, whether your claim of
conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness
against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

Again: You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than
it formerly was.  We deny it.  We admit that it is more prominent,
but we deny that we made it so.  It was not we, but you, who
discarded the old policy of the fathers.  We resisted and still
resist your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of
the question.  Would you have that question reduced to its former
proportions?  Go back to that old policy.  What has been will be
again, under the same conditions.  If you would have the peace of the
old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves.  We deny
it; and what is your proof'?  Harper's Ferry!  John Brown!!  John
Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single
Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise.  If any member of our
party is guilty in that matter you know it or you do not know it.  If
you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and
proving the fact.  If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for
asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after
you have tried and failed to make the proof.  You need not be told
that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is
simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results.  We do not believe it.
We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were
not held to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under
which we live.  You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this
affair.  When it occurred, some important State elections were near
at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by
charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those
elections.   The elections came, and your expectations were not quite
fulfilled.  Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least,
your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast
his vote in your favor.  Republican doctrines and declarations are
accompanied with a continued protest against any interference
whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.  Surely,
this does not encourage them to revolt.  True, we do, in common with
"our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare
our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us
declare even this.  For any thing we say or do, the slaves would
scarcely know there is a Republican party.  I believe they would not,
in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in
their hearing.  In your political contests among yourselves, each
faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and
then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to
simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the
Republican party was organized.  What induced the Southampton
insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times
as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely
stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton
was "got up by Black Republicanism."  In the present state of things
in the United States, I do not think a general or even a very
extensive slave insurrection is possible.  The indispensable concert
of action cannot be attained.  The slaves have no means of rapid
communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it.
The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither
are, nor can be supplied the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for
their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true.  A
plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to
twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a
favorite master or mistress, would divulge it.  This is the rule; and
the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case
occurring under peculiar circumstances.  The gunpowder plot of
British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point.
In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet
one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to
that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity.  Occasional
poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in
the field, and local revolts, extending to a score or so, will
continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general
insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a
long time.  Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an event will
be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is
still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and
deportation peaceably, and in such slow degrees as that the evil will
wear off insensibly, and their places be, pari passu, filled up by
free white laborers.  If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up."

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government.  He spoke of Virginia;
and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slave holding
States only.  The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the
power of restraining the extension of the institution--the power to
insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American
soil which is now free from slavery.

John Brown's effort was peculiar.  It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
which the slaves refused to participate.  In fact, it was so absurd
that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it
could not succeed.  That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with
the many attempts related in history at the assassination of kings
and emperors.  An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people
till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them.  He
ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own
execution.  Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's
attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the
same.  The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case,
and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of
the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John
Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican
organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human
nature cannot be changed.  There is a judgment and a feeling against
slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of
votes.  You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling--that sentiment-
-by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it.
You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed
into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how
much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of
the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel?
What would that other channel probably be?  Would the number of John
Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of
your constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not
fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to
deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution.
But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-
understood allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to
take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as
property.  But no such right is specifically written in the
Constitution.  That instrument is literally silent about any such
right.  We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence
in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the
Government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the
Constitution as you please on all points in dispute between you and
us.  You will rule or ruin, in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language.  Perhaps you will say the
Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in
your favor.  Not quite so.  But, waiving the lawyer's distinction
between dictum and decision, the court have decided the question for
you in a sort of way.  The court have substantially said it is your
constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and
to hold them there as property.  When I say, the decision was made in
a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a bare
majority of the judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another
in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed
supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it
was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact--the statement in
the opinion that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and
expressly affirmed in the Constitution."

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of
property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.
Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that
such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge
their veracity that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there-
-"distinctly," that is, not mingled with anything else; "expressly,"
that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any
inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others
to show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in
the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection
with language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that
wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a
"person"; and wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is
alluded to, it is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due,"
as a debt payable in service or labor.  Also, it would be open to
show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to
slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on
purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be
property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their
notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the
mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers; who framed the
Government under which we live",--the men who made the Constitution--
decided this same constitutional question in our favor, long ago;
decided it without division among themselves, when making the
decision, without division among themselves about the meaning of it
after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without
basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves
justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as
yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule
of political action?  But you will not abide the election of a
Republican President!  In that supposed event, you say, you will
destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having
destroyed it will be upon us!  That is cool.  A highwayman holds a
pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand and deliver,
or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I
had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote
is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the
threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely
be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans: It is exceedingly desirable that all
parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one
with another.  Let us Republicans do our part to have it so.  Even
though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill
temper.  Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen
to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in
our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.  Judging by all
they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy
with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally
surrendered to them?  We know they will not.  In all their present
complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned.
Invasions and insurrections are the rage now.  Will it satisfy them
if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and,
insurrections?  We know it will not.  We so know because we know we
never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet
this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the
denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them?  Simply this: We must
not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we
do let them alone.  This, we know by experience, is no easy task.
We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of
our organization, but with no success.  In all our platforms and
speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone;
but this has had no tendency to convince them.  Alike unavailing to
convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us
in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them?  This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and
join them in calling it right.  And this must be done thoroughly--
done in acts as well as in words.  Silence will not be tolerated--we
must place ourselves avowedly with them.  Senator Douglas's new
sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all
declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in
presses, in pulpits; or in private.  We must arrest and return their
fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure.  We must pull down our free
State constitutions.  The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from
all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way.
Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to
us, and say what you please about slavery."  But we do let them alone
have never disturbed them--so that after all it is what we say which
dissatisfies them.  They will continue to accuse us of doing, until
we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the
overthrow of our free State constitutions.  Yet those constitutions
declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all
other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have
been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded,
and nothing be left to resist the demand.  It is nothing to the
contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now.
Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can
voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation.  Holding, as
they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they
cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal
right and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our
conviction that slavery is wrong.  If slavery is right, all words,
acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and
should be silenced and swept away.  If it is right, we cannot justly
object to its nationality its universality; if it is wrong, they
cannot justly insist upon its extension--its enlargement.  All they
ask we could readily grant if we thought slavery right; all we ask
they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong.  Their
thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon
which depends the whole controversy.  Thinking it right, as they do,
they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being
right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them?  Can we
cast our votes with their view, and against our own?  In view of our
moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?  Wrong
as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it
is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual
presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it,
allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us
here in these free States?  If our sense of duty forbids this, then
let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively.  Let us be
diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are
so industriously plied and belabored-contrivances such as groping for
some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the
search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead
man-such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all
true men do care--such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to
yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not
the sinners, but the righteous to repentance--such as invocations to
Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo
what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the
Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT
MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR
DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.




SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, MARCH 6, 1860

MR. PRESIDENT, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW HAVEN:--If the Republican
party of this nation shall ever have the national House entrusted to
its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the
affairs of national housekeeping.  Whatever matters of importance may
come up, whatever difficulties may arise in its way of administration
of the Government, that party will then have to attend to.  It will
then be compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question
which now assumes an overwhelming importance--the question of
slavery.  It is true that in the organization of the Republican party
this question of slavery was more important than any other: indeed,
so much more important has it become that no more national question
can even get a hearing just at present.  The old question of tariff-
-a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national
house-keeping to all time; the question of the management of
financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the public
domain how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well
settled, and of making there the homes of a free and happy people?
these will remain open and require attention for a great while yet,
and these questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has
the control of the Government.  Yet, just now, they cannot even
obtain a hearing, and I do not propose to detain you upon these
topics or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity
shall come.

For, whether we will or not, the question of slavery is the question,
the all-absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us--and by
that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American
people, here and elsewhere--all of us wish this question settled,
wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the
adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions
of national house-keeping. The people of the whole nation agree that
this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled.  And
the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled.
All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a
third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different
directions, and none of them, having a decided majority, are able to
accomplish the common object.

In the beginning of the year 1854, a new policy was inaugurated with
the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and
forever put an end to the slavery agitation.  It was again and again
declared that under this policy, when once successfully established,
the country would be forever rid of this whole question.  Yet under
the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased,
but it has been constantly augmented.  And this too, although, from
the day of its introduction, its friends, who promised that it would
wholly end all agitation, constantly insisted, down to the time that
the Lecompton Bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and
that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question forever from
the politics of the country.  Can you call to mind any Democratic
speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, down to the
time of the Lecompton Bill, in which it was not predicted that the
slavery agitation was just at an end, that "the abolition excitement
was played out," "the Kansas question was dead," "they have made the
most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled"?
But since the Lecompton Bill no Democrat, within my experience, has
ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped.
They themselves do not pretend, now, that the agitation of this
subject has come to an end yet.

The truth is that this question is one of national importance, and we
cannot help dealing with it; we must do something about it, whether
we will or not.  We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot
avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live
without eating.  It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as
much and closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies.
Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in
earnest, and really settled: And one way to bring about a true
settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude.

There have been many efforts made to settle it.  Again and again it
has been fondly hoped that it was settled; but every time it breaks
out afresh, and more violently than ever.  It was settled, our
fathers hoped, by the Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay
settled.  Then the compromises of 1850 were declared to be a full and
final settlement of the question.  The two great parties, each in
national convention, adopted resolutions declaring that the
settlement made by the Compromise of 1850 was a finality that it
would last forever.  Yet how long before it was unsettled again?
It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged more
furiously than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since.

These repeated settlements must have some faults about them.  There
must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose to which
they were designed.  We can only speculate as to where that fault,
that inadequacy, is, but we may perhaps profit by past experiences.

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our
best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this
question.  They have constantly brought forward small cures for great
sores--plasters too small to cover the wound.  That is one reason
that all settlements have proved temporary--so evanescent.

Look at the magnitude of this subject: One sixth of our population,
in round numbers--not quite one sixth, and yet more than a seventh,--
about one sixth of the whole population of the United States are
slaves.  The owners of these slaves consider them property.  The
effect upon the minds of the owners is that of property, and nothing
else it induces them to insist upon all that will favorably affect
its value as property, to demand laws and institutions and a public
policy that shall increase and secure its value, and make it durable,
lasting, and universal.  The effect on the minds of the owners is to
persuade them that there is no wrong in it.  The slaveholder does not
like to be considered a mean fellow for holding that species of
property, and hence, he has to struggle within himself and sets about
arguing himself into the belief that slavery is right.  The property
influences his mind.  The dissenting minister who argued some
theological point with one of the established church was always met
with the reply, "I can't see it so."  He opened a Bible and pointed
him a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, "I can't see it
so."  Then he showed him a single word--"Can you see that?"  "Yes, I
see it," was the reply.  The dissenter laid a guinea over the word
and asked, "Do you see it now?"  So here.  Whether the owners of this
species of property do really see it as it is, it is not for me to
say, but if they do, they see it as it is through two thousand
millions of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating.  Certain it
is that they do not see it as we see it.  Certain it is that this two
thousand millions of dollars, invested in this species of property,
all so concentrated that the mind can grasp it at once--this immense
pecuniary interest--has its influence upon their minds.

But here in Connecticut and at the North slavery does not exist, and
we see it through no such medium.

To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men,
not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in
the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us.
I say we think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to
the slaves as well as to ourselves; that the class of arguments put
forward to batter down that idea are also calculated to break down
the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to
undermine the very foundations of free society.  We think slavery a
great moral wrong, and, while we do not claim the right to touch it
where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories,
where our votes will reach it.  We think that a respect for
ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made
us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly
reach it.  We think that species of labor an injury to free white men
--in short, we think slavery a great moral, social, and political
evil, tolerable only because, and so far as, its actual existence
makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that it ought to
be treated as a wrong.

Now these two ideas, the property idea that slavery is right, and the
idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually produce
that irrepressible conflict which Mr. Seward has been so roundly
abused for mentioning.  The two ideas conflict, and must conflict.

Again, in its political aspect, does anything in any way endanger the
perpetuity of this Union but that single thing, slavery?  Many of our
adversaries are anxious to claim that they are specially devoted to
the Union, and take pains to charge upon us hostility to the Union.
Now we claim that we are the only true Union men, and we put to them
this one proposition: Whatever endangers this Union, save and except
slavery?  Did any other thing ever cause a moment's fear?  All men
must agree that this thing alone has ever endangered the perpetuity
of the Union.  But if it was threatened by any other influence, would
not all men say that the best thing that could be done, if we could
not or ought not to destroy it, would be at least to keep it from
growing any larger?  Can any man believe, that the way to save the
Union is to extend and increase the only thing that threatens the
Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and bigger?

Whenever this question shall be settled, it must be settled on some
philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some
philosophical opinion can be permanently maintained.  And hence there
are but two policies in regard to slavery that can be at all
maintained.  The first, based on the property view that slavery is
right, conforms to that idea throughout, and demands that we shall do
everything for it that we ought to do if it were right.  We must
sweep away all opposition, for opposition to the right is wrong; we
must agree that slavery is right, and we must adopt the idea that
property has persuaded the owner to believe that slavery is morally
right and socially elevating.  This gives a philosophical basis for a
permanent policy of encouragement.

The other policy is one that squares with the idea that slavery is
wrong, and it consists in doing everything that we ought to do if it
is wrong.  Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood, nor to leave a gap
down to be misrepresented, even.  I don't mean that we ought to
attack it where it exists.  To me it seems that if we were to form a
government anew, in view of the actual presence of slavery we should
find it necessary to frame just such a government as our fathers did-
-giving to the slaveholder the entire control where the system was
established, while we possessed the power to restrain it from going
outside those limits.  From the necessities of the case we should be
compelled to form just such a government as our blessed fathers gave
us; and, surely, if they have so made it, that adds another reason
why we should let slavery alone where it exists.

If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I
might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake
in bed with my children, that would be another question.  I might
hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them.  Much
more if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had
bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children
under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular
mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone.  But if there was a bed
newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was
proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with
them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought
to decide!

That is just the case.  The new Territories are the newly made bed to
which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say
whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not.  It does
not seem as if there could be much hesitation what our policy should
be!

Now I have spoken of a policy based on the idea that slavery is
wrong, and a policy based on the idea that it is right.  But an
effort has been made for a policy that shall treat it as neither
right nor wrong.  It is based upon utter indifference.  Its leading
advocate [Douglas] has said, "I don't care whether it be voted up or
down."  "It is merely a matter of dollars and cents."  "The Almighty
has drawn a line across this continent, on one side of which all soil
must forever be cultivated by slave labor, and on the other by free."
"When the struggle is between the white man and the negro, I am for
the white man; when it is between the negro and the crocodile, I am
for the negro."  Its central idea is indifference.   It holds that it
makes no more difference to us whether the Territories become free or
slave States than whether my neighbor stocks his farm with horned
cattle or puts in tobacco.  All recognize this policy, the plausible
sugar-coated name of which is "popular sovereignty."

This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of
the question.  I believe there is no danger of its becoming the
permanent policy of the country, for it is based on a public
indifference.  There is nobody that "don't care."  All the people do
care one way or the other!  I do not charge that its author, when he
says he "don't care," states his individual opinion; he only
expresses his policy for the government.  I understand that he has
never said as an individual whether he thought slavery right or
wrong--and he is the only man in the nation that has not! Now such a
policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as necessary to the
political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly baseless:
the people are not indifferent, and it can therefore have no
durability or permanence.

But suppose it could: Then it could be maintained only by a public
opinion that shall say, "We don't care."  There must be a change in
public opinion; the public mind must be so far debauched as to square
with this policy of caring not at all.  The people must come to
consider this as "merely a question of dollars and cents," and to
believe that in some places the Almighty has made slavery necessarily
eternal.  This policy can be brought to prevail if the people can be
brought round to say honestly, "We don't care"; if not, it can never
be maintained.  It is for you to say whether that can be done.

You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a
long stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise! Do you know of any Democrat, of either branch of the
party--do you know one who declares that he believes that the
Declaration of Independence has any application to the negro? Judge
Taney declares that it has not, and Judge Douglas even vilifies me
personally and scolds me roundly for saying that the Declaration
applies to all men, and that negroes are men.   Is there a Democrat
here who does not deny that the Declaration applies to the negro? Do
any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before perhaps fifty
audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such
Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him
right in that.  I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not
one of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago! I
venture to defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered
the belief that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all
thought negroes were men, and that when "all men" were named, negroes
were included.  But the whole Democratic party has deliberately taken
negroes from the class of men and put them in the class of brutes.
Turn it as you will it is simply the truth! Don't be too hasty, then,
in saying that the people cannot be brought to this new doctrine, but
note that long stride.  One more as long completes the journey from
where negroes are estimated as men to where they are estimated as
mere brutes--as rightful property!

That saying "In the struggle between white men and the negro," etc.,
which I know came from the same source as this policy--that saying
marks another step.  There is a falsehood wrapped up in that
statement.  "In the struggle between the white man and the negro"
assumes that there is a struggle, in which either the white man must
enslave the negro or the negro must enslave the white.  There is no
such struggle! It is merely the ingenious falsehood to degrade and
brutalize the negro.  Let each let the other alone, and there is no
struggle about it.  If it was like two wrecked seamen on a narrow
plank, when each must push the other off or drown himself, I would
push the negro off or a white man either, but it is not; the plank is
large enough for both.  This good earth is plenty broad enough for
white man and negro both, and there is no need of either pushing the
other off.

So that saying, "In the struggle between the negro and the
crocodile," etc., is made up from the idea that down where the
crocodile inhabits, a white man can't labor; it must be nothing else
but crocodile or negro; if the negro does not the crocodile must
possess the earth; in that case he declares for the negro.  The
meaning of the whole is just this: As a white man is to a negro, so
is a negro to a crocodile; and as the negro may rightfully treat the
crocodile, so may the white man rightfully treat the negro.   This
very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear that he
deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still
further brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point
of utter indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not.
When that time shall come, if ever, I think that policy to which I
refer may prevail.  But I hope the good freemen of this country will
never allow it to come, and until then the policy can never be
maintained.

Now consider the effect of this policy.  We in the States are not to
care whether freedom or slavery gets the better, but the people in
the Territories may care.  They are to decide, and they may think
what they please; it is a matter of dollars and cents! But are not
the people of the Territories detailed from the States? If this
feeling of indifference this absence of moral sense about the
question prevails in the States, will it not be carried into the
Territories? Will not every man say, "I don't care, it is nothing to
me"? If any one comes that wants slavery, must they not say, "I don't
care whether freedom or slavery be voted up or voted down"? It
results at last in nationalizing the institution of slavery.  Even if
fairly carried out, that policy is just as certain to nationalize
slavery as the doctrine of Jeff Davis himself.  These are only two
roads to the same goal, and "popular sovereignty" is just as sure and
almost as short as the other.

What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think
slavery wrong.  But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed
to it, but yet act with the Democratic party--where are they? Let us
apply a few tests.  You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you
denounce all attempts to restrain it.  Is there anything else that
you think wrong that you are not willing to deal with as wrong? Why
are you so careful, so tender, of this one wrong and no other? You
will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no
place where you will even allow it to be called wrong! We must not
call it wrong in the free States, because it is not there, and we
must not call it wrong in the slave States, because it is there; we
must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality
into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because
that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into
the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such
unsuitable places--and there is no single place, according to you,
where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!

Perhaps you will plead that if the people of the slave States should
themselves set on foot an effort for emancipation, you would wish
them success, and bid them God-speed.  Let us test that: In 1858 the
emancipation party of Missouri, with Frank Blair at their head, tried
to get up a movement for that purpose, and having started a party
contested the State.  Blair was beaten, apparently if not truly, and
when the news came to Connecticut, you, who knew that Frank Blair was
taking hold of this thing by the right end, and doing the only thing
that you say can properly be done to remove this wrong--did you bow
your heads in sorrow because of that defeat? Do you, any of you, know
one single Democrat that showed sorrow over that result? Not one! On
the contrary every man threw up his hat, and hallooed at the top of
his lungs, "Hooray for Democracy!"

Now, gentlemen, the Republicans desire to place this great question
of slavery on the very basis on which our fathers placed it, and no
other.  It is easy to demonstrate that "our fathers, who framed this
Government under which we live," looked on slavery as wrong, and so
framed it and everything about it as to square with the idea that it
was wrong, so far as the necessities arising from its existence
permitted.  In forming the Constitution they found the slave trade
existing, capital invested in it, fields depending upon it for labor,
and the whole system resting upon the importation of slave labor.
They therefore did not prohibit the slave trade at once, but they
gave the power to prohibit it after twenty years.  Why was this? What
other foreign trade did they treat in that way? Would they have done
this if they had not thought slavery wrong?

Another thing was done by some of the same men who framed the
Constitution, and afterwards adopted as their own the act by the
first Congress held under that Constitution, of which many of the
framers were members, that prohibited the spread of slavery into
Territories.  Thus the same men, the framers of the Constitution, cut
off the supply and prohibited the spread of slavery, and both acts
show conclusively that they considered that the thing was wrong.

If additional proof is wanted it can be found in the phraseology of
the Constitution.  When men are framing a supreme law and chart of
government, to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations
yet to come, they use language as short and direct and plain as can
be found, to express their meaning  In all matters but this of
slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest,
shortest, and most direct language.  But the Constitution alludes to
slavery three times without mentioning it once  The language used
becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical.  They speak of the
"immigration of persons," and mean the importation of slaves, but do
not say so.  In establishing a basis of representation they say "all
other persons," when they mean to say slaves--why did they not use
the shortest phrase? In providing for the return of fugitives they
say "persons held to service or labor."  If they had said slaves it
would have been plainer, and less liable to misconstruction.  Why did
n't they do it? We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose.  Only
one reason is possible, and that is supplied us by one of the framers
of the Constitution--and it is not possible for man to conceive of
any other--they expected and desired that the system would come to an
end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution should not show
that there ever had been a slave in this good free country of ours.

I will dwell on that no longer.  I see the signs of approaching
triumph of the Republicans in the bearing of their political
adversaries.   A great deal of their war with us nowadays is mere
bushwhacking.  At the battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had
charged again and again upon the unbroken squares of British
infantry, at last they were giving up the attempt, and going off in
disorder, when some of the officers in mere vexation and complete
despair fired their pistols at those solid squares.  The Democrats
are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing else.  I will
take up a few of these arguments.

There is "the irrepressible conflict."  How they rail at Seward for
that saying! They repeat it constantly; and, although the proof has
been thrust under their noses again and again that almost every good
man since the formation of our Government has uttered that same
sentiment, from General Washington, who "trusted that we should yet
have a confederacy of free States," with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down
to the latest days, yet they refuse to notice that at all, and
persist in railing at Seward for saying it.  Even Roger A. Pryor,
editor of the Richmond Enquirer, uttered the same sentiment in almost
the same language, and yet so little offence did it give the
Democrats that he was sent for to Washington to edit the States--the
Douglas organ there--while Douglas goes into hydrophobia and spasms
of rage because Seward dared to repeat it.  This is what I call
bushwhacking, a sort of argument that they must know any child can
see through.

Another is John Brown: "You stir up insurrections, you invade the
South; John Brown! Harper's Ferry!"  Why, John Brown was not a
Republican!  You have never implicated a single Republican in that
Harper's Ferry enterprise.  We tell you that if any member of the
Republican party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not
know it.  If you do know it, you are inexcusable not to designate the
man and prove the fact.  If you do not know it, you are inexcusable
to assert it, and especially to persist in the assertion after you
have tried and failed to make the proof.  You need not be told that
persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply
malicious slander.  Some of you admit that no Republican designedly
aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that
our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results.  We
do not believe it.  We know we hold to no doctrines, and make no
declarations, which were not held to and made by our fathers who
framed the Government 'under which we live, and we cannot see how
declarations that were patriotic when they made them are villainous
when we make them.  You never dealt fairly by us in relation to that
affair--and I will say frankly that I know of nothing in your
character that should lead us to suppose that you would.  You had
just been soundly thrashed in elections in several States, and others
were soon to come.  You rejoiced at the occasion, and only were
troubled that there were not three times as many killed in the
affair.  You were in evident glee; there was no sorrow for the killed
nor for the peace of Virginia disturbed; you were rejoicing that by
charging Republicans with this thing you might get an advantage of us
in New York, and the other States.  You pulled that string as tightly
as you could, but your very generous and worthy expectations were not
quite fulfilled.  Each Republican knew that the charge was a slander
as to himself at least, and was not inclined by it to cast his vote
in your favor.  It was mere bushwhacking, because you had nothing
else to do.  You are still on that track, and I say, go on! If you
think you can slander a woman into loving you or a man into voting
for you, try it till you are satisfied!

Another specimen of this bushwhacking, that "shoe strike."  Now be it
understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter.  I am
merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases.  And at
the outset, I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New
England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they
are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied
down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! I like the
system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might
prevail everywhere.  One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery
is just here.  What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it
that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as
fast as he can.  Some will get wealthy.  I don't believe in a law to
prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
So, while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow
the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.
When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is
such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there
is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.  I am not ashamed
to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling
rails, at work on a flatboat--just what might happen to any poor
man's son! I want every man to have a chance--and I believe a Black
man is entitled to it--in which he can better his condition; when he
may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the
next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for
him!  That is the system.  Up here in New England, you have a soil
that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, and yet where will you find
wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity? There is
not another such place on earth! I desire that if you get too thick
here, and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may
have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may not be
degraded, nor have your families corrupted, by forced rivalry with
negro slaves.  I want you to have a clean bed and no snakes in it!
Then you can better your condition, and so it may go on and on in one
endless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!

Now, to come back to this shoe strike,--if, as the senator from
Illinois asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes,
consider briefly how you will meet the difficulty.  You have done
nothing, and have protested that you have done nothing, to injure the
South.  And yet, to get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing
something which you are now doing.  What is it? You must stop
thinking slavery wrong! Let your institutions be wholly changed; let
your State constitutions be subverted; glorify slavery, and so you
will get back the shoe trade--for what? You have brought owned labor
with it, to compete with your own labor, to underwork you, and to
degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms?

But the statement is not correct.  You have not lost that trade;
orders were never better than now! Senator Mason, a Democrat, comes
into the Senate in homespun, a proof that the dissolution of the
Union has actually begun! but orders are the same.  Your factories
have not struck work, neither those where they make anything for
coats, nor for pants nor for shirts, nor for ladies' dresses.  Mr.
Mason has not reached the manufacturers who ought to have made him a
coat and pants! To make his proof good for anything he should have
come into the Senate barefoot!

Another bushwhacking contrivance; simply that, nothing else! I find a
good many people who are very much concerned about the loss of
Southern trade.  Now either these people are sincere or they are not.
I will speculate a little about that.   If they are sincere, and are
moved by any real danger of the loss of Southern trade, they will
simply get their names on the white list, and then, instead of
persuading Republicans to do likewise, they will be glad to keep you
away! Don't you see that they cut off competition? They would not be
whispering around to Republicans to come in and share the profits
with them.  But if they are not sincere, and are merely trying to
fool Republicans out of their votes, they will grow very anxious
about your pecuniary prospects; they are afraid you are going to get
broken up and ruined; they do not care about Democratic votes, oh,
no, no, no! You must judge which class those belong to whom you meet:
I leave it to you to determine from the facts.

Let us notice some more of the stale charges against Republicans.
You say we are sectional.  We deny it.  That makes an issue; and the
burden of proof is upon you.  You produce your proof; and what is it?
Why, that our party has no existence in your section--gets no votes
in your section.  The fact is substantially true; but does it prove
the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of
principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby
cease to be sectional.  You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet,
are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon
find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in
your section this very year.  The fact that we get no votes in your
section is a fact of your making and not of ours.  And if there be
fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so
until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice.
 If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is
ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started--to a
discussion of the right or wrong of our principle.  If our principle,
put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or
for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are
sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such.  Meet us,
then, on the question of whether our principle put in practice would
wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that
something may be said on our side.  Do you accept the challenge? No?
Then you really believe that the principle which our fathers who
framed the Government under which we live thought so clearly right as
to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official
oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand our condemnation
without a moment's consideration.  Some of you delight to flaunt in
our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington
in his Farewell Address.  Less than eight years before Washington
gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States,
approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of
slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy
of government upon that subject, up to and at the very moment he
penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it he wrote
La Fayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure,
expressing in the same connection his hope that we should sometime
have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen
upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands
against us, or in our hands against you?  Could Washington himself
speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who
sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that
warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his
example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we
are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort.  What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the
new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy
on the point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who
framed the Government under which we live; while you with one accord
reject and scout and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon
substituting something new.

True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall
be.  You have considerable variety of new propositions and plans, but
you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the
fathers.  Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some
for a congressional slave code for the Territories; some for Congress
forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits;
some for maintaining slavery in the Territories through the
judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that if one man would
enslave another, no third man should object--fantastically called
"popular sovereignty."  But never a man among you in favor of
prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the
practice of our fathers who framed the Government under which we
live.  Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated.   And
yet you draw yourselves up and say, "We are eminently conservative."

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy
shall be at peace, and in harmony one with another.  Let us
Republicans do our part to have it so.  Even though much provoked,
let us do nothing through passion and ill-temper.  Even though the
Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view
of our duty, we possibly can.  Judging by all they say and do, and by
the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us
determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally
surrendered to them? We know they will not.  In all their present
complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned.
Invasions and insurrections are the rage now.  Will it satisfy them,
in the future, if we have nothing to do with invasions and
insurrections? We know it will not.  We so know because we know we
never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet
this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the
denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not
only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do
let them alone.  This, we know by experience, is no easy task.  We
have been so trying to convince them, from the very beginning of our
organization, but with no success.  In all our platforms and
speeches, we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone;
but this had no tendency to convince them.  Alike unavailing to
convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us
in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and
join them in calling it right.  And this must be done thoroughly--
done in acts as well as in words.  Silence will not be tolerated--we
must place ourselves avowedly with them.  Douglas's new sedition law
must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that
slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits,
or in private.   We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with
greedy pleasure.  We must pull down our free State constitutions.
The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of all taint of opposition
to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles
proceed from us.  So long as we call slavery wrong, whenever a slave
runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that be ran away
because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off.  Whenever a
master cuts his slaves with a lash, and they cry out under it, he
will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they
are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally
abolitionist.

I am quite aware that they do not state their case precisely in this
way.  Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do
nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery."  But we do let
them alone--have never disturbed them--so that, after all, it is what
we say which dissatisfies them.  They will continue to accuse us of
doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware that they have not as yet in terms demanded the
overthrow of our free-State constitutions.  Yet those constitutions
declare the wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis than do all
other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have
been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded.
It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand the whole of
this just now.  Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do,
they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation.
Holding as they do that slavery is morally right, and socially
elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of
it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our
conviction that slavery is wrong.  If slavery is right, all words,
acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong and
should be silenced and swept away.  If it is right, we cannot justly
object to its nationality--its universality: if it is wrong, they
cannot justly insist upon its extension--its enlargement.  All they
ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask,
they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong.  Their
thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact on
which depends the whole controversy.  Thinking it right as they do,
they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being
right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we
cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our
moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where
it is because that much is due to the necessity arising from its
actual presence m the nation; but can we, while our votes will
prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to
overrun us here in these free States?

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty,
fearlessly and effectively.  Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and
belabored--contrivances such as groping for some middle ground
between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who
would be neither a living man nor a dead man--such as a policy of
"don't care" on a question about which all free men do care--such as
Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists,
reversing the divine rule, and caning, not the sinners, but the
righteous to repentance--such as invocations of Washington, imploring
men to unsay what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the
Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.  Let us have faith that
right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do
our duty as we understand it.

[As Mr. Lincoln concluded his address, there was witnessed the
wildest scene of enthusiasm and excitement that has been in New Haven
for years.  The Palladium editorially says: "We give up most of our
space to-day to a very full report of the eloquent speech of the HON.
Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, delivered last night at Union Hall."]




RESPONSE TO AN ELECTOR'S REQUEST FOR MONEY

TO ________________
March 16, 1860

As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I cannot enter the
ring on the money basis--first, because in the main it is wrong; and
secondly, I have not and cannot get the money.

I say, in the main, the use of money is wrong; but for certain
objects in a political contest, the use of some is both right and
indispensable.  With me, as with yourself, the long struggle has been
one of great pecuniary loss.

I now distinctly say this--if you shall be appointed a delegate to
Chicago, I will furnish one hundred dollars to bear the expenses of
the trip.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

[Extract from a letter to a Kansas delegate.]




TO J. W. SOMERS.

SPRINGFIELD, March 17, 1860

JAMES W. SOMERS, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Reaching home three days ago, I found your letter of
February 26th.   Considering your difficulty of hearing, I think you
had better settle in Chicago, if, as you say, a good man already in
fair practice there will take you into partnership.  If you had not
that difficulty, I still should think it an even balance whether you
would not better remain in Chicago, with such a chance for
copartnership.

If I went west, I think I would go to Kansas, to Leavenworth or
Atchison.  Both of them are and will continue to be fine growing
places.

I believe I have said all I can, and I have said it with the deepest
interest for your welfare.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ACCUSATION OF HAVING BEEN PAID FOR A
POLITICAL SPEECH

TO C. F. McNEIL.

SPRINGFIELD, April 6, 1860

C. F. MCNEIL, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Reaching home yesterday, I found yours of the 23d March,
inclosing a slip from The Middleport Press.  It is not true that I
ever charged anything for a political speech in my life; but this
much is true: Last October I was requested by letter to deliver some
sort of speech in Mr. Beecher's church, in Brooklyn--two hundred
dollars being offered in the first letter.  I wrote that I could do
it in February, provided they would take a political speech if I
could find time to get up no other.  They agreed; and subsequently I
informed them the speech would have to be a political one.  When I
reached New York, I for the first time learned that the place was
changed to "Cooper Institute."  I made the speech, and left for New
Hampshire, where I have a son at school, neither asking for pay nor
having any offered me.  Three days after a check for two hundred
dollars was sent to me at New Hampshire; and I took it, and did not
know it was wrong.  My understanding now is--though I knew nothing of
it at the time--that they did charge for admittance to the Cooper
Institute, and that they took in more than twice two hundred dollars.

I have made this explanation to you as a friend; but I wish no
explanation made to our enemies.  What they want is a squabble and a
fuss, and that they can have if we explain; and they cannot have it
if we don't.

When I returned through New York from New England, I was told by the
gentlemen who sent me the Check that a drunken vagabond in the club,
having learned something about the two hundred dollars, made the
exhibition out of which The Herald manufactured the article quoted by
The Press of your town.

My judgment is, and therefore my request is, that you give no denial
and no explanation.

Thanking you for your kind interest in the matter, I remain,
Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. TAYLOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., April 21, 1860.

HAWKINS TAYLOR, Esq.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 15th is just received.  It surprises me that
you have written twice, without receiving an answer.  I have answered
all I ever received from you; and certainly one since my return from
the East.

Opinions here, as to the prospect of Douglas being nominated, are
quite conflicting--some very confident he will, and others that he
will not be.  I think his nomination possible, but that the chances
are against him.

I am glad there is a prospect of your party passing this way to
Chicago.  Wishing to make your visit here as pleasant as we can, we
wish you to notify us as soon as possible whether you come this way,
how many, and when you will arrive.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO A MEMBER OF THE ILLINOIS DELEGATION
AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION.
SPRINGFIELD, May 17? 1860.

I authorize no bargains and will be bound by none.

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO THE COMMITTEE SENT BY THE CHICAGO CONVENTION TO INFORM
LINCOLN OF HIS
NOMINATION,

MAY 19, 1860.


Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:--I tender to you, and
through you to the Republican National Convention, and all the people
represented in it, my profoundest thanks for the high honor done me,
which you now formally announce.  Deeply and even painfully sensible
of the great responsibility which is inseparable from this high
honor--a responsibility which I could almost wish had fallen upon
some one of the far more eminent men and experienced statesmen whose
distinguished names were before the convention--I shall, by your
leave, consider more fully the resolutions of the convention,
denominated their platform, and without any unnecessary or
unreasonable delay respond to you, Mr. Chairman, in writing--not
doubting that the platform will be found satisfactory, and the
nomination gratefully accepted.

And now I will not longer defer the pleasure of taking you, and each
of you, by the hand.




ACCEPTANCE OF NOMINATION AS REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE
 FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

TO GEORGE ASHMUN AND OTHERS.

SPRINGFIELD  ILLINOIS, May 23, 1860

HON. GEORGE ASHMUN,
President of Republican National Convention.

SIR:--I accept the nomination tendered me by the convention over
which you presided, and of which I am formally apprised in the letter
of yourself and others, acting as a committee of the convention for
that purpose.

The declaration of principles and sentiments which accompanies your
letter meets my approval; and it shall be my care not to violate or
disregard it in any part.

Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due regard to
the views and feelings of all who were represented in the convention,
to the rights of all the States and Territories and people of the
nation, to the inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual
union, harmony, and prosperity of all--I am most happy to co-operate
for the practical success of the principles declared by the
convention.

Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen,

A. LINCOLN.




To C. B. SMITH.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., May 26, 1860.

HON. C. B. SMITH.

MY DEAR SIR:-Yours of the 21st was duly received, but have found no
time until now to say a word in the way of answer.  I am indeed much
indebted to Indiana; and, as my home friends tell me, much to you
personally.  Your saying, you no longer consider Ia. a doubtful State
is very gratifying.  The thing starts well everywhere--too well, I
almost fear, to last.  But we are in, and stick or go through must be
the word.

Let me hear from Indiana occasionally.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




FORM OF REPLY PREPARED BY MR. LINCOLN, WITH WHICH HIS PRIVATE
SECRETARY WAS INSTRUCTED TO ANSWER A NUMEROUS CLASS OF LETTERS IN
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1860.

(Doctrine.)

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, _______, 1860

DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Mr. Lincoln of and by which you seek to
obtain his opinions on certain political points, has been received by
him.  He has received others of a similar character, but he also has
a greater number of the exactly opposite character.  The latter class
beseech him to write nothing whatever upon any point of political
doctrine.  They say his positions were well known when he was
nominated, and that he must not now embarrass the canvass by
undertaking to shift or modify them.  He regrets that he cannot
oblige all, but you perceive it is impossible for him to do so.

Yours, etc.,

JNO. J. NICOLAY.




TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
MAY 26, 1860

HON. E. B. WASHBURNE.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have several letters from you written since the
nomination, but till now have found no moment to say a word by way of
answer.  Of course I am glad that the nomination is well received by
our friends, and I sincerely thank you for so informing me.  So far
as I can learn, the nominations start well everywhere; and, if they
get no back-set, it would seem as if they are going through.  I hope
you will write often; and as you write more rapidly than I do, don't
make your letters so short as mine.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO S. HAYCRAFT.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 4, 1860.

HON. SAMUEL HAYCRAFT.

MY DEAR SIR:--Like yourself I belonged to the old Whig party from its
origin to its close.  I never belonged to the American party
organization, nor ever to a party called a Union party; though I hope
I neither am or ever have been less devoted to the Union than
yourself or any other patriotic man.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ABRAHAM OR "ABRAM"

TO G. ASHMUN.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL.   June 4, 1860

HON. GEORGE ASHMUN.

MY DEAR SIR:--It seems as if the question whether my first name is
"Abraham" or "Abram" will never be settled.  It is "Abraham," and if
the letter of acceptance is not yet in print, you may, if you think
fit, have my signature thereto printed "Abraham Lincoln."  Exercise
your judgment about this.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY

TO S. GALLOWAY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 19, 1860

HON. SAM'L GALLOWAY.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your very kind letter of the 15th is received.  Messrs.
Follett, Foster, & Co.'s Life of me is not by my authority; and I
have scarcely been so much astounded by anything, as by their public
announcement that it is authorized by me.  They have fallen into some
strange misunderstanding.  I certainly knew they contemplated
publishing a biography, and I certainly did not object to their doing
so, upon their own responsibility.  I even took pains to facilitate
them.  But, at the same time, I made myself tiresome, if not hoarse,
with repeating to Mr. Howard, their only agent seen by me, my protest
that I authorized nothing--would be responsible for nothing.   How
they could so misunderstand me, passes comprehension.   As a matter
wholly my own, I would authorize no biography, without time and
opportunity [sic] to carefully examine and consider every word of it
and, in this case, in the nature of things, I can have no such time
and Opportunity [sic].  But, in my present position, when, by the
lessons of the past, and the united voice of all discreet friends, I
can neither write nor speak a word for the public, how dare I to send
forth, by my authority, a volume of hundreds of pages, for
adversaries to make points upon without end? Were I to do so, the
convention would have a right to re-assemble and substitute another
name for mine.

For these reasons, I would not look at the proof sheets--I am
determined to maintain the position of [sic] truly saying I never saw
the proof sheets, or any part of their work, before its publication.

Now, do not mistake me--I feel great kindness for Messrs.  F., F., &
Co.--do not think they have intentionally done wrong.  There may be
nothing wrong in their proposed book--I sincerely hope there will
not.  I barely suggest that you, or any of the friends there, on the
party account, look it over, and exclude what you may think would
embarrass the party bearing in mind, at all times, that I authorize
nothing--will be responsible for nothing.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

[The custom then, and it may be a good one, was for the Presidential
candidate to do no personal canvassing or speaking--or as we have it
now "running for election."  He stayed at home and kept his mouth
shut.  D.W.]




TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 18, 1860.

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.
MY DEAR SIR:--It appears to me that you and I ought to be acquainted,
and accordingly I write this as a sort of introduction of myself to
you.  You first entered the Senate during the single term I was a
member of the House of Representatives, but I have no recollection
that we were introduced.  I shall be pleased to receive a line from
you.

The prospect of Republican success now appears very flattering, so
far as I can perceive.  Do you see anything to the contrary?

Yours truly,    A. LINCOLN.




TO A. JONAS.

(Confidential.)

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JULY 21, 1860.

HON. A. JONAS.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or
even better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing
lodges; but in point of fact, I never was in one at Quincy or
elsewhere.  I was never in Quincy but one day and two nights while
Know-Nothing lodges were in existence, and you were with me that day
and both those nights.  I had never been there before in my life, and
never afterward, till the joint debate with Douglas in 1858.  It was
in 1854 when I spoke in some hall there, and after the speaking, you,
with others, took me to an oyster-saloon, passed an hour there, and
you walked with me to, and parted with me at, the Quincy House, quite
late at night.  I left by stage for Naples before daylight in the
morning, having come in by the same route after dark the evening,
previous to the speaking, when I found you waiting at the Quincy
House to meet me.  A few days after I was there, Richardson, as I
understood, started this same story about my having been in a
Know-Nothing lodge.  When I heard of the charge, as I did soon after;
I taxed my recollection for some incident which could have suggested
it; and I remembered that on parting with you the last night I went
to the office of the hotel to take my stage-passage for the morning,
was told that no stage-office for that line was kept there, and that
I must see the driver before retiring, to insure his calling for me
in the morning; and a servant was sent with me to find the driver,
who, after taking me a square or two, stopped me, and stepped perhaps
a dozen steps farther, and in my hearing called to some one, who
answered him, apparently from the upper part of a building, and
promised to call with the stage for me at the Quincy House.
I returned, and went to bed, and before day the stage called and took
me. This is all.

That I never was in a Know-Nothing lodge in Quincy, I should expect
could be easily proved by respectable men who were always in the
lodges and never saw me there.  An affidavit of one or two such would
put the matter at rest.

And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a
point if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some
degree of offence would be given to the Americans.  For this reason
it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the
charge.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN B. FRY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, August 15, 1860.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 9th, inclosing the letter of HON. John
Minor Botts, was duly received.  The latter is herewith returned
according to your request.  It contains one of the many assurances I
receive from the South, that in no probable event will there be any
very formidable effort to break up the Union.  The people of the
South have too much of good sense and good temper to attempt the ruin
of the government rather than see it administered as it was
administered by the men who made it.  At least so I hope and believe.
I thank you both for your own letter and a sight of that of Mr.
Botts.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THURLOW WEED

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. August 17 1860.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 13th was received this morning.  Douglas
is managing the Bell element with great adroitness.  He had his men
in Kentucky to vote for the Bell candidate, producing a result which
has badly alarmed and damaged Breckenridge, and at the same time has
induced the Bell men to suppose that Bell will certainly be
President, if they can keep a few of the Northern States away from us
by throwing them to Douglas.  But you, better than I, understand all
this.

I think there will be the most extraordinary effort ever made to
carry New York for Douglas.  You and all others who write me from
your State think the effort cannot succeed, and I hope you are right.
Still, it will require close watching and great efforts on the other
side.

Herewith I send you a copy of a letter written at New York, which
sufficiently explains itself, and which may or may not give you a
valuable hint.  You have seen that Bell tickets have been put on the
track both here and in Indiana.  In both cases the object has been, I
think, the same as the Hunt movement in New York--to throw States to
Douglas.  In our State, we know the thing is engineered by Douglas
men, and we do not believe they can make a great deal out of it.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




SLOW TO LISTEN TO CRIMINATIONS

TO HON. JOHN ______________

(Private.)

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Aug.  31, 1860

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 27th is duly received.  It consists almost
exclusively of a historical detail of some local troubles, among some
of our friends in Pennsylvania; and I suppose its object is to guard
me against forming a prejudice against Mr. McC___________, I have not
heard near so much upon that subject as you probably suppose; and I
am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expose
their quarrels on either side.  My sincere wish is that both sides
will allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present and future
only.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, September 4, 1860

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am annoyed some by a letter from a friend in Chicago,
in which the following passage occurs: "Hamlin has written Colfax
that two members of Congress will, he fears, be lost in Maine, the
first and sixth districts; and that Washburne's majority for governor
will not exceed six thousand."

I had heard something like this six weeks ago, but had been assured
since that it was not so.  Your secretary of state,--Mr. Smith, I
think,--whom you introduced to me by letter, gave this assurance;
more recently, Mr. Fessenden, our candidate for Congress in one of
those districts, wrote a relative here that his election was sure by
at least five thousand, and that Washburne's majority would be from
14,000 to 17,000; and still later, Mr. Fogg, of New Hampshire, now at
New York serving on a national committee, wrote me that we were
having a desperate fight in Maine, which would end in a splendid
victory for us.

Such a result as you seem to have predicted in Maine, in your letter
to Colfax, would, I fear, put us on the down-hill track, lose us the
State elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana, and probably ruin us on
the main turn in November.

You must not allow it.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
September 9, 1860

HON. E. B. WASHBURNE.

MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 5th was received last evening.  I was right
glad to see it.  It contains the freshest "posting" which I now have.
It relieved me some from a little anxiety I had about Maine.  Jo
Medill, on August 3oth, wrote me that Colfax had a letter from Mr.
Hamlin saying we were in great danger of losing two members of
Congress in Maine, and that your brother would not have exceeding six
thousand majority for Governor.  I addressed you at once, at Galena,
asking for your latest information.  As you are at Washington, that
letter you will receive some time after the Maine election.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO W. H. HERNDON.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., OCTOBER 10, 1860

DEAR WILLIAM:--I cannot give you details, but it is entirely certain
that Pennsylvania and Indiana have gone Republican very largely.
Pennsylvania 25,000, and Indiana 5000 to 10,000.  Ohio of course is
safe.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO L. M. BOND.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., October 15, 1860

L. MONTGOMERY BOND, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:     I certainly am in no temper and have no purpose to
embitter the feelings of the South, but whether I am inclined to such
a course as would in fact embitter their feelings you can better
judge by my published speeches than by anything I would say in a
short letter if I were inclined now, as I am not, to define my
position anew.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




LETTER SUGGESTING A BEARD

TO MISS GRACE BEDELL, RIPLEY N.Y.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., October 19, 1860

MISS GRACE BEDELL.

MY DEAR LITTLE MISS:--Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is
received.  I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter.  I
have three sons--one seventeen, one nine, and one seven.  They with
their mother constitute my whole family.  As to the whiskers, as I
have never worn any, do you not think that people would call it a
piece of silly affectation were I to begin wearing them now?

I am your true friend and sincere well-wisher,

A. LINCOLN.




EARLY INFORMATION ON ARMY DEFECTION IN SOUTH

TO D. HUNTER.

(Private and Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, October 26, 1860

MAJOR DAVID HUNTER

MY DEAR SIR:--Your very kind letter of the 20th was duly received,
for which please accept my thanks.  I have another letter, from a
writer unknown to me, saying the officers of the army at Fort Kearny
have determined in case of Republican success at the approaching
Presidential election, to take themselves, and the arms at that
point, south, for the purpose of resistance to the government.  While
I think there are many chances to one that this is a humbug, it
occurs to me that any real movement of this sort in the Army would
leak out and become known to you.  In such case, if it would not be
unprofessional or dishonorable (of which you are to be judge), I
shall be much obliged if you will apprise me of it.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN

(Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD. ILLINOIS, November 8, 1860

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am anxious for a personal interview with you at as
early a day as possible.  Can you, without much inconvenience, meet
me at Chicago? If you can, please name as early a day as you
conveniently can, and telegraph me, unless there be sufficient time
before the day named to communicate by mail.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO SAMUEL HAYCRAFT.

(Private and Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Nov.13, 1860

HON. SAMUEL HAYCRAFT.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 9th is just received.  I can only answer
briefly.  Rest fully assured that the good people of the South who
will put themselves in the same temper and mood towards me which you
do will find no cause to complain of me.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




REMARKS AT THE MEETING AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS
TO CELEBRATE LINCOLN'S ELECTION,

NOVEMBER 20, 1860

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Please excuse me on this occasion from
making a speech.  I thank you in common with all those who have
thought fit by their votes to indorse the Republican cause.  I
rejoice with you in the success which has thus far attended that
cause.  Yet in all our rejoicings let us neither express nor cherish
any hard feelings toward any citizen who by his vote has differed
with us.  Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are
brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds
of fraternal feeling.  Let me again beg you to accept my thanks, and
to excuse me from further speaking at this time.




TO ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS

SPRINGFIELD, ILL.  NOV. 30, 1860

HON. A. H. STEPHENS.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have read in the newspapers your speech recently
delivered (I think) before the Georgia Legislature, or its assembled
members.  If you have revised it, as is probable, I shall be much
obliged if you will send me a copy.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN

(Private)
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 8, 1860

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 4th was duly received.  The inclosed to
Governor Seward covers two notes to him, copies of which you find
open for your inspection.  Consult with Judge Trumbull; and if you
and he see no reason to the contrary, deliver the letter to Governor
Seward at once.  If you see reason to the contrary write me at once.

I have an intimation that Governor Banks would yet accept a place in
the Cabinet.  Please ascertain and write me how this is,

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




BLOCKING "COMPROMISE" ON SLAVERY ISSUE

TO E. B. WASHBURNE

(Private and Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., December 13, 1860

HON. E. B. WASHBURNE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your long letter received.  Prevent, as far as
possible, any of our friends from demoralizing themselves and our
cause by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort on
"slavery extension."  There is no possible compromise upon it but
which puts us under again, and leaves all our work to do over again.
Whether it be a Missouri line or Eli Thayer's popular sovereignty, it
is all the same.  Let either be done, and immediately filibustering
and extending slavery recommences.  On that point hold firm, as with
a chain of steel.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




OPINION ON SECESSION

TO THURLOW WEED

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, DECEMBER 17, 1860

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 11th was received two days ago.  Should
the convocation of governors of which you speak seem desirous to know
my views on the present aspect of things, tell them you judge from my
speeches that I will be inflexible on the territorial question; but I
probably think either the Missouri line extended, or Douglas's and
Eli Thayer's popular sovereignty would lose us everything we gain by
the election; that filibustering for all south of us and making slave
States of it would follow in spite of us, in either case; also that I
probably think all opposition, real and apparent, to the fugitive
slave clause of the Constitution ought to be withdrawn.

I believe you can pretend to find but little, if anything, in my
speeches, about secession.  But my opinion is that no State can in
any way lawfully get out of the Union without the consent of the
others; and that it is the duty of the President and other government
functionaries to run the machine as it is.

Truly yours,

A. LINCOLN.




SOME FORTS SURRENDERED TO THE SOUTH

TO E. B. WASHBURNE

(Confidential)
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 21, 1860

HON. E. B. WASHBURNE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Last night I received your letter giving an account of
your interview with General Scott, and for which I thank you.  Please
present my respects to the General, and tell him, confidentially, I
shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either
hold or retake the forts, as the case may require, at and after the
inauguration.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. H. STEPHENS.

(For your own eye only)

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, DECEMBER 22, 1860

HON. ALEXANDER STEVENS

MY DEAR SIR:--Your obliging answer to my short note is just received,
and for which please accept my thanks.  I fully appreciate the
present peril the country is in, and the weight of responsibility on
me.  Do the people of the South really entertain fear that a
Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere
with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If they do, I wish to
assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that
there is no cause for such fears.  The South would be in no more
danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.  I
suppose, however, this does not meet the case.  You think slavery is
right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought
to be restricted.  That, I suppose, is the rub.  It certainly is the
only substantial difference between us.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




SUPPORT OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE CLAUSE

MEMORANDUM

December [22?], 1860

Resolved:
That the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be
enforced by a law of Congress, with efficient provisions for that
object, not obliging private persons to assist in its execution, but
punishing all who resist it, and with the usual safeguards to
liberty, securing free men against being surrendered as slaves.

That all State laws, if there be such, really or apparently in
conflict with such law of Congress, ought to be repealed; and no
opposition to the execution of such law of Congress ought to be made.

That the Federal Union must be preserved.


Prepared for the consideration of the Republican members of the
Senate Committee of Thirteen.




TO D. HUNTER.

(Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS December 22, 1860

MAJOR DAVID HUNTER.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am much obliged by the receipt of yours of the 18th.
The most we can do now is to watch events, and be as well prepared as
possible for any turn things may take.  If the forts fall, my
judgment is that they are to be retaken.  When I shall determine
definitely my time of starting to Washington, I will notify you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO I. N. MORRIS

(Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Dec 24, 1860

HON. I. N. MORRIS.

MY DEAR SIR:--Without supposing that you and I are any nearer
together, politically, than heretofore, allow me to tender you my
sincere thanks for your Union resolution, expressive of views upon
which we never were, and, I trust, never will be at variance.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.




ATTEMPT TO FORM A COALITION CABINET

TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 14, 1860.

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I need a man of Democratic antecedents from New
England.  I cannot get a fair share of that element in without.  This
stands in the way of Mr. Adams.  I think of Governor Banks, Mr.
Welles, and Mr. Tuck.  Which of them do the New England delegation
prefer?  Or shall I decide for myself?

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.






1861


TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

(Private.)
SPRINGFIELD. ILL., January 3, 1861.

HON. W. H. SEWARD.

DEAR SIR:--Yours without signature was received last night.  I have
been considering your suggestions as to my reaching Washington
somewhat earlier than is usual.  It seems to me the inauguration is
not the most dangerous point for us.  Our adversaries have us now
clearly at disadvantage on the second Wednesday of February, when the
votes should be officially counted.  If the two houses refuse to meet
at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?  I do
not think that this counting is constitutionally essential to the
election, but how are we to proceed in the absence of it? In view of
this, I think it is best for me not to attempt appearing in
Washington till the result of that ceremony is known.

It certainly would be of some advantage if you could know who are to
be at the heads of the War and Navy departments, but until I can
ascertain definitely whether I can get any suitable men from the
South, and who, and how many, I can not well decide.  As yet, I have
no word from Mr. Gilmer in answer to my request for an interview with
him.  I look for something on the subject, through you, before long.
Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO W. H. SEWARD.
(Private.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., January 12, 1861

HON. W. H. SEWARD.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 8th received.  I still hope Mr. Gilmer
will, on a fair understanding with us, consent to take a place in the
Cabinet.  The preference for him over Mr. Hunt or Mr. Gentry is that,
up to date--he has a living position in the South, while they have
not.  He is only better than Winter Davis in that he is farther
south.   I fear, if we could get, we could not safely take more than
one such man--that is, not more than one who opposed us in the
election--the danger being to lose the confidence of our own friends.
Your selection for the State Department having become public, I am
happy to find scarcely any objection to it.  I shall have trouble
with every other Northern Cabinet appointment--so much so that I
shall have to defer them as long as possible to avoid being teased
into insanity, to make changes.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN




TO E. D. MORGAN

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. FEB. 4, 1861

SIR:--Your letter of the 30th ult. inviting me, on behalf of the
Legislature of New York, to pass through that State on my way to
Washington, and tendering me the hospitalities of her authorities and
people, has been duly received.  With the feelings of deep gratitude
to you and them for this testimonial of regard and esteem I beg you
to notify them that I accept the invitation so kindly tendered.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN

P.S.--Please let the ceremonies be only such as to take the least
time possible.          A. L.




PATRONAGE CLAIMS

TO THURLOW WEED

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., February 4, 1861

DEAR SIR:--I have both your letter to myself and that to Judge Davis,
in relation to a certain gentleman in your State claiming to dispense
patronage in my name, and also to be authorized to use my name to
advance the chances of Mr. Greeley for an election to the United
States Senate.

It is very strange that such things should be said by any one.  The
gentleman you mention did speak to me of Mr. Greeley in connection
with the senatorial election, and I replied in terms of kindness
toward Mr. Greeley, which I really feel, but always with an expressed
protest that my name must not be used in the senatorial election in
favor of or against any one.  Any other representation of me is a
misrepresentation.

As to the matter of dispensing patronage, it perhaps will surprise
you to learn that I have information that you claim to have my
authority to arrange that matter in New York.  I do not believe you
have so claimed; but still so some men say.  On that subject you know
all I have said to you is "justice to all," and I have said nothing
more particular to any one.  I say this to reassure you that I have
not changed my position.

In the hope, however, that you will not use my name in the matter, I
am,

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
FEBRUARY 11, 1861

MY FRIENDS:--One who has never been placed in a like position cannot
understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I
feel at this parting.  For more than twenty-five years I have lived
among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but
kindness at your hands.  Here the most cherished ties of earth were
assumed.  Here my children were born, and here one of them lies
buried.  To you, my friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am.
All the strange checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind.  To-day I
leave you.  I go to assume a task more difficult than that which
devolved upon General Washington.  Unless the great God who assisted
him shall be with and aid me I cannot prevail; but if the same
almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support
me I shall not fail; I shall succeed.  Let us pray that the God of
our fathers may not forsake us now.  To Him I commend you all.
Permit me to ask that with equal sincerity and faith you will all
invoke His wisdom and goodness for me.

With these words I must leave you; for how long I know not.  Friends,
one and all, I must now wish you an affectionate farewell.




REMARKS AT TOLONO, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 11, 1861

I am leaving you on an errand of national importance, attended, as
you are aware, with considerable difficulties.   Let us believe, as
some poet has expressed it, "Behind the cloud the sun is still
shining."  I bid you an affectionate farewell.




REPLY TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME, INDIANAPOLIS,

INDIANA, FEBRUARY 11, 1861

GOVERNOR MORTON AND FELLOW CITIZENS
OF THE STATE OF INDIANA:

Most heartily do I thank you for this magnificent reception, and
while I cannot take to myself any share of the compliment thus paid,
more than that which pertains to a mere instrument, an accidental
instrument, perhaps I should say, of a great cause, I yet must look
upon it as a most magnificent reception, and as such most heartily do
thank you for it.  You have been pleased to address yourself to me
chiefly in behalf of this glorious Union in which we live, in all of
which you have my hearty sympathy, and, as far as may be within my
power, will have, one and inseparable, my hearty consideration.
While I do not expect, upon this occasion, or until I get to
Washington, to attempt any lengthy speech, I will only say to the
salvation of the Union there needs but one single thing--the hearts
of a people like yours.

The people--when they rise in mass in behalf of the Union and the
liberties of their country, truly may it be said, "The gates of hell
cannot prevail against them."  In all trying positions in which I
shall be
placed--and, doubtless, I shall be placed in many such--my reliance
will be placed upon you and the people of the United States; and I
wish you to remember, now and forever, that it is your business, and
not mine; that if the union of these States and the liberties of this
people shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two
years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who
inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming
time.  It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and
liberty for yourselves, and not for me.

I desire they should be constitutionally performed.  I, as already
intimated, am but an accidental instrument, temporary, and to serve
but for a limited time; and I appeal to you again to constantly bear
in mind that with you, and not with politicians, not with Presidents,
not with office-seekers, but with you is the question, Shall the
Union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the
latest generations?




ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF INDIANA, AT INDIANAPOLIS,

FEBRUARY 12, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF INDIANA:--I am here to thank you much
for this magnificent welcome, and still more for the generous support
given by your State to that political cause which I think is the true
and just cause of the whole country and the whole world.

Solomon says there is "a time to keep silence," and when men wrangle
by the mouth with no certainty that they mean the same thing while
using the same word, it perhaps were as well if they would keep
silence.

The words "coercion" and "invasion" are much used in these days, and
often with some temper and hot blood.  Let us make sure, if we can,
the meaning of those who use them.  Let us get the exact definitions
of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves,
who certainly deprecate the things they would represent by the use of
the words.

What, then, is coercion? What is invasion? Would the marching of an
army into South Carolina, without the consent of her people, and with
hostile intent toward them, be invasion? I certainly think it would,
and it would be coercion also, if the South Carolinians were forced
to submit.  But if the United States should merely hold and retake
its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign
importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were
habitually violated, would any or all of these things be invasion or
coercion? Do our professed lovers of the Union, who spitefully
resolve that they will resist coercion and invasion, understand that
such things as these, on the part of the United States, would be
coercion or invasion of a State? If so, their idea of means to
preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be
exceedingly thin and airy.  If sick, the little pills of the
homoeopathist would be much too large for it to swallow.  In their
view, the Union, as a family relation, would seem to be no regular
marriage, but rather a sort of "free-love" arrangement, to be
maintained on passional attraction.

By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State? I
speak not of the position assigned to a State in the Union by the
Constitution, for that is a bond we all recognize.  That position,
however, a State cannot carry out of the Union with it.  I speak of
that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than
itself, and to ruin all which is larger than itself.  If a State and
a county, in a given case, should be equal in number of inhabitants,
in what, as a matter of principle, is the State better than the
county? Would an exchange of name be an exchange of rights? Upon what
principle, upon what rightful principle, may a State, being no more
than one fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up
the nation, and then coerce a proportionably large subdivision of
itself in the most arbitrary way? What mysterious right to play
tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by
merely calling it a State? Fellow-citizens, I am not asserting
anything.  I am merely asking questions for you to consider.  And now
allow me to bid you farewell.




INTENTIONS TOWARD THE SOUTH

ADDRESS TO THE MAYOR AND CITIZENS OF

CINCINNATI, OHIO, FEBRUARY 12, 1861

Mr. MAYOR, AND GENTLEMEN:--Twenty-four hours ago, at the capital of
Indiana, I said to myself, "I have never seen so many people
assembled together in winter weather."  I am no longer able to say
that.  But it is what might reasonably have been expected--that this
great city of Cincinnati would thus acquit herself on such an
occasion.  My friends, I am entirely overwhelmed by the magnificence
of the reception which has been given, I will not say to me, but to
the President-elect of the United States of America.  Most heartily
do I thank you, one and all, for it.

I have spoken but once before this in Cincinnati.  That was a year
previous to the late Presidential election.  On that occasion, in a
playful manner, but with sincere words, I addressed much of what I
said to the Kentuckians.  I gave my opinion that we, as Republicans,
would ultimately beat them as Democrats, but that they could postpone
that result longer by nominating Senator Douglas for the Presidency
than they could by any other way.  They did not, in any true sense of
the word, nominate Mr. Douglas, and the result has come certainly as
soon as ever I expected.  I also told them how I expected they would
be treated after they should have been beaten, and I now wish to call
their attention to what I then said upon that subject.  I then said:

"When we do as we say, beat you, you perhaps want to know what we
will do with you.  I will tell you, as far as I am authorized to
speak for the Opposition, what we mean to do with you.  We mean to
treat you, as near as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and
Madison treated you.  We mean to leave you alone, and in no way to
interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every
compromise of the Constitution, and, in a word, coming back to the
original proposition, to treat you so far as degenerate men, if we
have degenerated, may, according to the example of those noble
fathers, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.

"We mean to remember that you are as good as we; that there is no
difference between us other than the difference of circumstances.  We
mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good
hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and
treat you accordingly."

Fellow-citizens of Kentucky--friends and brethren, may I call you in
my new position?--I see no occasion and feel no inclination to
retract a word of this.  If it shall not be made good, be assured the
fault shall not be mine.




ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN CLUB OF CINCINNATI, OHIO,

FEBRUARY 12, 1861


Mr. CHAIRMAN:--I thank you and those whom you represent for the
compliment you have paid me by tendering me this address.  In so far
as there is an allusion to our present national difficulties, which
expresses, as you have said, the views of the gentlemen present, I
shall have to beg pardon for not entering fully upon the questions
which the address you have now read suggests.

I deem it my duty--a duty which I owe to my constituents--to you,
gentlemen, that I should wait until the last moment for a development
of the present national difficulties before I express myself
decidedly as to what course I shall pursue.  I hope, then, not to be
false to anything that you have expected of me.

I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that the working men are the basis of
all governments, for the plain reason that they are all the more
numerous, and as you added that those were the sentiments of the
gentlemen present, representing not only the working class, but
citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic, I am happy to
concur with you in these sentiments, not only of the native-born
citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other
countries.

Mr. Chairman, I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve
not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating the
condition of mankind; and therefore, without entering upon the
details of the question, I will simply say that I am for those means
which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

In regard to the Homestead law, I have to say that, in so far as the
government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the
wild lands into parcels, so that every poor man may have a home.

In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than
other people, nor any worse.  It is not my nature, when I see a
people borne down by the weight of their shackles--the oppression of
tyranny--to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater
burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than
to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Inasmuch as our own country is extensive and new, and the countries
of Europe are densely populated, if there are any abroad who desire
to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to
throw aught in their way to prevent them from coming to the United
States.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I will bid you an affectionate farewell.




ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF OHIO AT COLUMBUS
FEBRUARY 13, 1861

Mr. PRESIDENT AND Mr. SPEAKER, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
OF OHIO:--It is true, as has been said by the president of the
Senate, that very great responsibility rests upon me in the position
to which the votes of the American people have called me.  I am
deeply sensible of that weighty responsibility.  I cannot but know
what you all know, that without a name, perhaps without a reason why
I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not
rest even upon the Father of his Country; and so feeling, I can turn
and look for that support without which it will be impossible for me
to perform that great task.  I turn, then, and look to the American
people and to that God who has never forsaken them.  Allusion has
been made to the interest felt in relation to the policy of the new
administration.  In this I have received from some a degree of credit
for having kept silence, and from others some deprecation.  I still
think that I was right.

In the varying and repeatedly shifting scenes of the present, and
without a precedent which could enable me to judge by the past, it
has seemed fitting that before speaking upon the difficulties of the
country I should have gained a view of the whole field, being at
liberty to modify and change the course of policy as future events
may make a change necessary.

I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety.  It is a
good thing that there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing
going wrong.  It is a consoling circumstance that when we look out
there is nothing that really hurts anybody.  We entertain different
views upon political questions, but nobody is suffering anything.
This is a most consoling circumstance, and from it we may conclude
that all we want is time, patience, and a reliance on that God who
has never forsaken this people.

Fellow-citizens, what I have said I have said altogether
extemporaneously, and I will now come to a close.




ADDRESS AT STEUBENVILLE, OHIO,

FEBRUARY 14, 1861

I fear that the great confidence placed in my ability is unfounded.
Indeed, I am sure it is.  Encompassed by vast difficulties as I am,
nothing shall be wanting on my part, if sustained by God and the
American people.  I believe the devotion to the Constitution is
equally great on both sides of the river.  It is only the different
understanding of that instrument that causes difficulty.  The only
dispute on both sides is, "What are their rights?"  If the majority
should not rule, who would be the judge? Where is such a judge to be
found? We should all be bound by the majority of the American people;
if not, then the minority must control.  Would that be right? Would
it be just or generous? Assuredly not.  I reiterate that the majority
should rule.  If I adopt a wrong policy, the opportunity for
condemnation will occur in four years' time.  Then I can be turned
out, and a better man with better views put in my place.




ADDRESS AT PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
FEBRUARY 15, 1861

I most cordially thank his Honor Mayor Wilson, and the citizens of
Pittsburg generally, for their flattering reception.  I am the more
grateful because I know that it is not given to me alone, but to the
cause I represent, which clearly proves to me their good-will, and
that sincere feeling is at the bottom of it.  And here I may remark
that in every short address I have made to the people, in every crowd
through which I have passed of late, some allusion has been made to
the present distracted condition of the country.  It is natural to
expect that I should say something on this subject; but to touch upon
it at all would involve an elaborate discussion of a great many
questions and circumstances, requiring more time than I can at
present command, and would, perhaps, unnecessarily commit me upon
matters which have not yet fully developed themselves.  The condition
of the country is an extraordinary one, and fills the mind of every
patriot with anxiety.  It is my intention to give this subject all
the consideration I possibly can before specially deciding in regard
to it, so that when I do speak it may be as nearly right as possible.
When I do speak I hope I may say nothing in opposition to the spirit
of the Constitution, contrary to the integrity of the Union, or which
will prove inimical to the liberties of the people, or to the peace
of the whole country.  And furthermore, when the time arrives for me
to speak on this great subject, I hope I may say nothing to
disappoint the people generally throughout the country, especially if
the expectation has been based upon anything which I may have
heretofore said.  Notwithstanding the troubles across the river [the
speaker pointing southwardly across the Monongahela, and smiling],
there is no crisis but an artificial one.  What is there now to
warrant the condition of affairs presented by our friends over the
river? Take even their own view of the questions involved, and there
is nothing to justify the course they are pursuing.  I repeat, then,
there is no crisis, excepting such a one as may be gotten up at any
time by turbulent men aided by designing politicians, My advice to
them, under such circumstances, is to keep cool.  If the great
American people only keep their temper on both sides of the line, the
troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts
the country will be settled, just as surely as all other difficulties
of a like character which have originated in this government have
been adjusted.  Let the people on both sides keep their
self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due
time, so will this great nation continue to prosper as heretofore.
But, fellow-citizens, I have spoken longer on this subject than I
intended at the outset.

It is often said that the tariff is the specialty of Pennsylvania.
Assuming that direct taxation is not to be adopted, the tariff
question must be as durable as the government itself.   It is a
question of national housekeeping.   It is to the government what
replenishing the meal-tub is to the family.  Every varying
circumstances will require frequent modifications as to the amount
needed and the sources of supply.  So far there is little difference
of opinion among the people.  It is as to whether, and how far,
duties on imports shall be adjusted to favor home production in the
home market, that controversy begins.  One party insists that such
adjustment oppresses one class for the advantage of another; while
the other party argues that, with all its incidents, in the long run
all classes are benefited.  In the Chicago platform there is a plank
upon this subject which should be a general law to the incoming
administration.  We should do neither more nor less than we gave the
people reason to believe we would when they gave us their votes.
Permit me, fellow-citizens, to read the tariff plank of the Chicago
platform, or rather have it read in your hearing by one who has
younger eyes.

[Mr. Lincoln's private secretary then read Section 12 of the Chicago
platform, as follows:]

"That, while providing revenue for the support of the General
Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an
adjustment of these imposts as will encourage the development of the
industrial interest of the whole country; and we commend that policy
of national exchanges which secures to working-men liberal wages, to
agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers
adequate return for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the
nation commercial prosperity and independence."

As with all general propositions, doubtless, there will be shades of
difference in construing this.  I have by no means a thoroughly
matured judgment upon this subject, especially as to details; some
general ideas are about all.  I have long thought it would be to our
advantage to produce any necessary article at home which can be made
of as good quality and with as little labor at home as abroad, at
least by the difference of the carrying from abroad.  In such case
the carrying is demonstrably a dead loss of labor.  For instance,
labor being the true standard of value, is it not plain that if equal
labor get a bar of railroad iron out of a mine in England and another
out of a mine in Pennsylvania, each can be laid down in a track at
home cheaper than they could exchange countries, at least by the
carriage? If there be a present cause why one can be both made and
carried cheaper in money price than the other can be made without
carrying, that cause is an unnatural and injurious one, and ought
gradually, if not rapidly, to be removed.  The condition of the
treasury at this time would seem to render an early revision of the
tariff indispensable.  The Morrill [tariff] bill, now pending before
Congress, may or may not become a law.  I am not posted as to its
particular provisions, but if they are generally satisfactory, and
the bill shall now pass, there will be an end for the present.  If,
however, it shall not pass, I suppose the whole subject will be one
of the most pressing and important for the next Congress.  By the
Constitution, the executive may recommend measures which he may think
proper, and he may veto those he thinks improper, and it is supposed
that he may add to these certain indirect influences to affect the
action of Congress.  My political education strongly inclines me
against a very free use of any of these means by the executive to
control the legislation of the country.  As a rule, I think it better
that Congress should originate as well as perfect its measures
without external bias.  I therefore would rather recommend to every
gentleman who knows he is to be a member of the next Congress to take
an enlarged view, and post himself thoroughly, so as to contribute
his part to such an adjustment of the tariff as shall produce a
sufficient revenue, and in its other bearings, so far as possible, be
just and equal to all sections of the country and classes of the
people.




ADDRESS AT CLEVELAND, OHIO,

FEBRUARY 15, 1861

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF CLEVELAND:--We have been marching
about two miles through snow, rain, and deep mud.   The large numbers
that have turned out under these circumstances testify that you are
in earnest about something or other.  But do I think so meanly of you
as to suppose that that earnestness is about me personally? I would
be doing you an injustice to suppose you did.  You have assembled to
testify your respect for the Union, the Constitution, and the laws;
and here let me say that it is with you, the people, to advance the
great cause of the Union and the Constitution, and not with any one
man.  It rests with you alone.  This fact is strongly impressed upon
my mind at present.  In a community like this, whose appearance
testifies to their intelligence, I am convinced that the cause of
liberty and the Union can never be in danger.  Frequent allusion is
made to the excitement at present existing in our national politics,
and it is as well that I should also allude to it here.  I think that
there is no occasion for any excitement.  'The crisis, as it is
called, is altogether an artificial crisis.  In all parts of the
nation there are differences of opinion on politics.  There are
differences of opinion even here.  You did not all vote for the
person who now addresses you.  What is happening now will not hurt
those who are farther away from here.  Have they not all their rights
now as they ever have had? Do they not have their fugitive slaves
returned now as ever? Have they not the same Constitution that they
have lived under for seventy-odd years? Have they not a position as
citizens of this common country, and have we any power to change that
position? What, then, is the matter with them? Why all this
excitement? Why all these complaints?

As I said before, this crisis is all artificial! It has no foundation
in facts.  It is not argued up, as the saying is, and cannot,
therefore, be argued down.  Let it alone and it will go down of
itself.

[Mr. Lincoln then said that they must be content with a few words
from him, as he was tired, etc.  Having been given to understand that
the crowd was not all Republican, but consisted of men of all
parties, he continued:]

This is as it should be.  If Judge Douglas had been elected and had
been here on his way to Washington, as I am to-night, the Republicans
should have joined his supporters in welcoming him, just as his
friends have joined with mine tonight.  If all do not join now to
save the good old ship of the Union this voyage, nobody will have a
chance to pilot her on another voyage.




ADDRESS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK,
FEBRUARY 16, 1861

Mr. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BUFFALO AND THE STATE OF NEW YORK:--
I am here to thank you briefly for this grand reception given to me,
not personally, but as the representative of our great and beloved
country.  Your worthy mayor has been pleased to mention, in his
address to me, the fortunate and agreeable journey which I have had
from home, on my rather circuitous route to the Federal capital.  I
am very happy that he was enabled in truth to congratulate myself and
company on that fact.  It is true we have had nothing thus far.  to
mar the pleasure of the trip.  We have not been met alone by those
who assisted in giving the election to me--I say not alone by them,
but by the whole population of the country through which we have
passed.  This is as it should be.  Had the election fallen to any
other of the distinguished candidates instead of myself, under the
peculiar circumstances, to say the least, it would have been proper
for all citizens to have greeted him as you now greet me.  It is an
evidence of the devotion of the whole people to the Constitution, the
Union, and the perpetuity of the liberties of this country.  I am
unwilling on any occasion that I should be so meanly thought of as to
have it supposed for a moment that these demonstrations are tendered
to me personally.  They are tendered to the country, to the
institutions of the country, and to the perpetuity of the liberties
of the country, for which these institutions were made and created.

Your worthy mayor has thought fit to express the hope that I may be
able to relieve the country from the present, or, I should say, the
threatened difficulties.  I am sure I bring a heart true to the work.
For the ability to perform it, I must trust in that Supreme Being who
has never forsaken this favored land, through the instrumentality of
this great and intelligent people.  Without that assistance I shall
surely fail; with it, I cannot fail.  When we speak of threatened
difficulties to the Country, it is natural that it should be expected
that something should be said by myself with regard to particular
measures.  Upon more mature reflection, however, others will agree
with me that, when it is considered that these difficulties are
without precedent, and have never been acted upon by any individual
situated as I am, it is most proper I should wait and see the
developments, and get all the light possible, so that when I do speak
authoritatively, I may be as near right as possible.  When I shall
speak authoritatively, I hope to say nothing inconsistent with the
Constitution, the Union, the rights of all the States, of each State,
and of each section of the country, and not to disappoint the
reasonable expectations of those who have confided to me their votes.
In this connection allow me to say that you, as a portion of the
great American people, need only to maintain your composure, stand up
to your sober convictions of right, to your obligations to the
Constitution, and act in accordance with those sober convictions, and
the clouds now on the horizon will be dispelled, and we shall have a
bright and glorious future; and when this generation has passed away,
tens of thousands will inhabit this country where only thousands
inhabit it now.  I do not propose to address you at length; I have no
voice for it.  Allow me again to thank you for this magnificent
reception, and bid you farewell.




ADDRESS AT ROCHESTER, NEW YORK,

FEBRUARY 18, 1861

I confess myself, after having seen many large audiences since
leaving home, overwhelmed with this vast number of faces at this hour
of the morning.  I am not vain enough to believe that you are here
from any wish to see me as an individual, but because I am for the
time being the representative of the American people.  I could not,
if I would, address you at any length.  I have not the strength, even
if I had the time, for a speech at each of these many interviews that
are afforded me on my way to Washington.  I appear merely to see you,
and to let you see me, and to bid you. farewell.  I hope it will be
understood that it is from no disinclination to oblige anybody that I
do not address you at greater length.




ADDRESS AT SYRACUSE, NEW YORK,

FEBRUARY 18, 1861.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I See you have erected a very fine and
handsome platform here for me, and I presume you expected me to speak
from it.  If I should go upon it, you would imagine that I was about
to deliver you a much longer speech than I am.  I wish you to
understand that I mean no discourtesy to you by thus declining.  I
intend discourtesy to no one.  But I wish you to understand that,
though I am unwilling to go upon this platform, you are not at
liberty to draw inferences concerning any other platform with which
my name has been or is connected.  I wish you long life and
prosperity individually, and pray that with the perpetuity of those
institutions under which we have all so long lived and prospered, our
happiness may be secured, our future made brilliant, and the glorious
destiny of our country established forever.  I bid you a kind
farewell.




ADDRESS AT UTICA, NEW YORK,

FEBRUARY 18, 1860

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I have no speech to make to you; and no time
to speak in.  I appear before you that I may see you, and that you
may see me; and I am willing to admit that so far as the ladies are
concerned I have the best of the bargain, though I wish it to be
understood that I do not make the same acknowledgment concerning the
men.




REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF ALBANY, NEW YORK

FEBRUARY 18, 1861.

MR. MAYOR:--I can hardly appropriate to myself the flattering terms
in which you communicate the tender of this reception, as personal to
myself.  I most gratefully accept the hospitalities tendered to me,
and will not detain you or the audience with any extended remarks at
this time.  I presume that in the two or three courses through which
I shall have to go, I shall have to repeat somewhat, and I will
therefore only express to you my thanks for this kind reception.




REPLY TO GOVERNOR MORGAN OF NEW YORK, AT ALBANY,

FEBRUARY 18, 1861.

GOVERNOR MORGAN:--I was pleased to receive an invitation to visit the
capital of the great Empire State of this nation while on my way to
the Federal capital.  I now thank you, Mr. Governor, and you, the
people of the capital of the State of New York, for this most hearty
and magnificent welcome.  If I am not at fault, the great Empire
State at this time contains a larger population than did the whole of
the United States of America at the time they achieved their national
independence, and I was proud--to be invited to visit its capital, to
meet its citizens, as I now have the honor to do. I am notified by
your governor that this reception is tendered by citizens without
distinction of party.  Because of this I accept it the more gladly.
In this country, and in any country where freedom of thought is
tolerated, citizens attach themselves to political parties.  It is
but an ordinary degree of charity to attribute this act to the
supposition that, in thus attaching themselves to the various
parties, each man in his own judgment supposes he thereby best
advances the interests of the whole country.  And when an election is
past it is altogether befitting a free people, as I suppose, that,
until the next election, they should be one people.  The reception
you have extended me to-day is not given to me personally,--it should
not be so,--but as the representative, for the time being, of the
majority of the nation.  If the election had fallen to any of the
more distinguished citizens who received the support of the people,
this same honor should have greeted him that greets me this day, in
testimony of the universal, unanimous devotion of the whole people to
the Constitution, the Union, and to the perpetual liberties of
succeeding generations in this country.

I have neither the voice nor the strength to address you at any
greater length.  I beg you will therefore accept my most grateful
thanks for this manifest devotion--not to me, but the institutions of
this great and glorious country.




ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK, AT ALBANY,

FEBRUARY 18, 1861.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF
NEW YORK:--It is with feelings of great diffidence, and, I may say,
with feelings of awe, perhaps greater than I have recently
experienced, that I meet you here in this place.  The history of this
great State, the renown of those great men who have stood here, and
have spoken here, and have been heard here, all crowd around my
fancy, and incline me to shrink from any attempt to address you.  Yet
I have some confidence given me by the generous manner in which you
have invited me, and by the still more generous manner in which you
have received me, to speak further.  You have invited and received me
without distinction of party.  I cannot for a moment suppose that
this has been done in any considerable degree with reference to my
personal services, but that it is done in so far as I am regarded, at
this time, as the representative of the majesty of this great nation.
I doubt not this is the truth, and the whole truth of the case, and
this is as it should be.  It is much more gratifying to me that this
reception has been given to me as the elected representative of a
free people, than it could possibly be if tendered merely as an
evidence of devotion to me, or to any one man personally.

And now I think it were more fitting that I should close these hasty
remarks.  It is true that, while I hold myself, without mock modesty,
the humblest of all individuals that have ever been elevated to the
Presidency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any one of
them.

You have generously tendered me the support--the united support--of
the great Empire State.  For this, in behalf of the nation--in behalf
of the present and future of the nation--in behalf of civil and
religious liberty for all time to come, most gratefully do I thank
you.  I do not propose to enter into an explanation of any particular
line of policy, as to our present difficulties, to be adopted by the
incoming administration.  I deem it just to you, to myself, to all,
that I should see everything, that I should hear everything, that I
should have every light that can be brought within my reach, in order
that, when I do so speak, I shall have enjoyed every opportunity to
take correct and true ground; and for this reason I do not propose to
speak at this time of the policy of the Government.  But when the
time comes, I shall speak, as well as I am able, for the good of the
present and future of this country for the good both of the North and
of the South--for the good of the one and the other, and of all
sections of the country.  In the meantime, if we have patience, if we
restrain ourselves, if we allow ourselves not to run off in a
passion, I still have confidence that the Almighty, the Maker of the
universe, will, through the instrumentality of this great and
intelligent people, bring us through this as He has through all the
other difficulties of our country. Relying on this, I again thank you
for this generous reception.




ADDRESS AT TROY, NEW YORK,

FEBRUARY 19, 1861

MR. MAYOR AND CITIZENS OF TROY:--I thank you very kindly for this
great reception.  Since I left my home it has not been my fortune to
meet an assemblage more numerous and more orderly than this.  I am
the more gratified at this mark of your regard since you assure me it
is tendered, not to the individual but to the high office you have
called me to fill.  I have neither strength nor time to make any
extended remarks on this occasion, and I can only repeat to you my
sincere thanks for the kind reception you have thought proper to
extend to me.




ADDRESS AT POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK,

FEBRUARY 19, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It is altogether impossible I should make myself
heard by any considerable portion of this vast assemblage; but,
although I appear before you mainly for the purpose of seeing you,
and to let you see rather than hear me, I cannot refrain from saying
that I am highly gratified--as much here, indeed, under the
circumstances, as I have been anywhere on my route--to witness this
noble demonstration--made, not in honor of an individual, but of the
man who at this time humbly, but earnestly, represents the majesty of
the nation.

This reception, like all the others that have been tendered to me,
doubtless emanates from all the political parties, and not from one
alone.  As such I accept it the more gratefully, since it indicates
an earnest desire on the part of the whole people, with out regard to
political differences, to save--not the country, because the country
will save itself but to save the institutions of the country, those
institutions under which, in the last three quarters of a century, we
have grown to a great, and intelligent, and a happy people--the
greatest, the most intelligent, and the happiest people in the world.
These noble manifestations indicate, with unerring certainty, that
the whole people are willing to make common cause for this object;
that if, as it ever must be, some have been successful in the recent
election and some have been beaten, if some are satisfied and some
are dissatisfied, the defeated party are not in favor of sinking the
ship, but are desirous of running it through the tempest in safety,
and willing, if they think the people have committed an error in
their verdict now, to wait in the hope of reversing it and setting it
right next time.  I do not say that in the recent election the people
did the wisest thing, that could have been done--indeed, I do not
think they did; but I do say that in accepting the great trust
committed to me, which I do with a determination to endeavor to prove
worthy of it, I must rely upon you, upon the people of the whole
country, for support; and with their sustaining aid, even I, humble
as I am, cannot fail to carry the ship of state safely through the
storm.

I have now only to thank you warmly for your kind attendance, and bid
you all an affectionate farewell.




ADDRESS AT HUDSON, NEW YORK,.

FEBRUARY 19, 1860

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I see that you are providing a platform for me.  I
shall have to decline standing upon it, because the president of the
company tells me that I shall not have time to wait until it is
brought to me.  As I said yesterday, under similar circumstances at
another gathering, you must not draw the inference that I have any
intention of deserting any platform with which I have a legitimate
connection because I do not stand on yours.  Allow me to thank you
for this splendid reception, and I now bid you farewell.




ADDRESS AT PEEKSKILL, NEW YORK,
FEBRUARY 19, 1861

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I have but a moment to stand before you to
listen to and return your kind greeting. I thank you for this
reception, and for the pleasant manner in which it is tendered to me
by our mutual friends. I will say in a single sentence, in regard to
the difficulties that lie before me and our beloved country, that if
I can only be as generously and unanimously sustained as the
demonstrations I have witnessed indicate I shall be, I shall not
fail; but without your sustaining hands I am sure that neither I nor
any other man can hope to surmount these difficulties.  I trust that
in the course I shall pursue I shall be sustained not only by the
party that elected me, but by the patriotic people of the whole
country.




ADDRESS AT FISHKILL LANDING

FEBRUARY 19, 1861

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I appear before you not to make a speech.  I
have not sufficient time, if I had the strength, to repeat speeches
at every station where the people kindly gather to welcome me as we
go along.  If I had the strength, and should take the time, I should
not get to Washington until after the inauguration, which you must be
aware would not fit exactly.  That such an untoward event might not
transpire, I know you will readily forego any further remarks; and I
close by bidding you farewell.




REMARKS AT THE ASTOR HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 19, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I have stepped before you merely in compliance with
what appears to be your wish, and not with the purpose of making a
speech.  I do not propose making a speech this afternoon.  I could
not be heard by any but a small fraction of you, at best; but, what
is still worse than that, I have nothing just now to say that is
worthy of your hearing.  I beg you to believe that I do not now
refuse to address you from any disposition to disoblige you, but to
the contrary.  But, at the same time, I beg of you to excuse me for
the present.




ADDRESS AT NEW YORK CITY,

FEBRUARY 19, 1861

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I am rather an old man to avail myself
of such an excuse as I am now about to do.  Yet the truth is so
distinct, and presses itself so distinctly upon me, that I cannot
well avoid it--and that is, that I did not understand when I was
brought into this room that I was to be brought here to make a
speech.  It was not intimated to me that I was brought into the room
where Daniel Webster and Henry Clay had made speeches, and where one
in my position might be expected to do something like those men or
say something worthy of myself or my audience.  I therefore beg you
to make allowance for the circumstances in which I have been by
surprise brought before you.  Now I have been in the habit of
thinking and sometimes speaking upon political questions that have
for some years past agitated the country; and, if I were disposed to
do so, and we could take up some one of the issues, as the lawyers
call them, and I were called upon to make an argument about it to the
best of my ability, I could do so without much preparation.  But that
is not what you desire to have done here to-night.

I have been occupying a position, since the Presidential election, of
silence--of avoiding public speaking, of avoiding public writing.  I
have been doing so because I thought, upon full consideration, that
was the proper course for me to take.   I am brought before you now,
and required to make a speech, when you all approve more than
anything else of the fact that I have been keeping silence.  And now
it seems to me that the response you give to that remark ought to
justify me in closing just here.  I have not kept silence since the
Presidential election from any party wantonness, or from any
indifference to the anxiety that pervades the minds of men about the
aspect of the political affairs of this country.  I have kept silence
for the reason that I supposed it was peculiarly proper that I should
do so until the time came when, according to the custom of the
country, I could speak officially.

I still suppose that, while the political drama being enacted in this
country at this time is rapidly shifting its scenes--forbidding an
anticipation with any degree of certainty to-day of what we shall see
to-morrow--it is peculiarly fitting that I should see it all, up to
the last minute, before I should take ground that I might be
disposed, by the shifting of the scenes afterward, also to shift.  I
have said several times upon this journey, and I now repeat it to
you, that when the time does come, I shall then take the ground that
I think is right--right for the North, for the South, for the East,
for the West, for the whole country.  And in doing so I hope to feel
no necessity pressing upon me to say anything in conflict with the
Constitution, in conflict with the continued union of these States,
in conflict with the perpetuation of the liberties of this people, or
anything in conflict with anything whatever that I have ever given
you reason to expect from me.  And now, my friends, have I said
enough? [Loud cries of "No, no!" and, "Three cheers for LINCOLN!"]
Now, my friends, there appears to be a difference of opinion between
you and me, and I really feel called upon to decide the question
myself.




REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY,
FEBRUARY 20, 1861

Mr. MAYOR:--It is with feelings of deep gratitude that I make my
acknowledgments for the reception that has been given me in the great
commercial city of New York.  I cannot but remember that it is done
by the people who do not, by a large majority, agree with me in
political sentiment.  It is the more grateful to me because in this I
see that for the great principles of our Government the people are
pretty nearly or quite unanimous.  In regard to the difficulties that
confront us at this time, and of which you have seen fit to speak so
becomingly and so justly, I can only say I agree with the sentiments
expressed.  In my devotion to the Union I hope I am behind no man in
the nation.  As to my wisdom in conducting affairs so as to tend to
the preservation of the Union, I fear too great confidence may have
been placed in me.  I am sure I bring a heart devoted to the work.
There is nothing that could ever bring me to consent--willingly to
consent--to the destruction of this Union (in which not only the
great city of New York, but the whole country, has acquired its
greatness), unless it would be that thing for which the Union itself
was made.  I understand that the ship is made for the carrying and
preservation of the cargo; and so long as the ship is safe with the
cargo, it shall not be abandoned.  This Union shall never be
abandoned, unless the possibility of its existence shall cease to
exist without the necessity of throwing passengers and cargo
overboard.  So long, then, as it is possible that the prosperity and
liberties of this people can be preserved within this Union, it shall
be my purpose at all tunes to preserve it.  And now, Mr. Mayor,
renewing my thanks for this cordial reception, allow me to come to a
close.




ADDRESS AT JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY

FEBRUARY 21, 1860

MR. DAYTON AND GENTLEMEN OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY:--I shall only
thank you briefly for this very kind reception given me, not
personally, but as the temporary representative of the majesty of the
nation.  To the kindness of your hearts, and of the hearts of your
brethren in your State, I should be very proud to respond, but I
shall not have strength to address you or other assemblages at
length, even if I had the time to do so.  I appear before you,
therefore, for little else than to greet you, and to briefly say
farewell. You have done me the very high honor to present your
reception courtesies to me through your great man a man with whom it
is an honor to be associated anywhere, and in owning whom no State
can be poor.  He has said enough, and by the saying of it suggested
enough, to require a response of an hour, well considered.  I could
not in an hour make a worthy response to it.  I therefore, ladies and
gentlemen of New Jersey, content myself with saying, most heartily do
I indorse all the sentiments he has expressed.  Allow me, most
gratefully, to bid you farewell.




REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY,

FEBRUARY 21, 1861.

MR. MAYOR:--I thank you for this reception at the city of Newark.
With regard to the great work of which you speak, I will say that I
bring to it a heart filled with love for my country, and an honest
desire to do what is right.  I am sure, however, that I have not the
ability to do anything unaided of God, and that without His support
and that of this free, happy, prosperous, and intelligent people, no
man can succeed in doing that the importance of which we all
comprehend.  Again thanking you for the reception you have given me,
I will now bid you farewell, and proceed upon my journey.




ADDRESS IN TRENTON AT THE TRENTON HOUSE,

FEBRUARY 21, 1861

I have been invited by your representatives to the Legislature to
visit this the capital of your honored State, and in acknowledging
their kind invitation, compelled to respond to the welcome of the
presiding officers of each body, and I suppose they intended I should
speak to you through them, as they are the representatives of all of
you; and if I were to speak again here, I should only have to repeat
in a great measure much that I have said, which would be disgusting
to my friends around me who have met here.  I have no speech to make,
but merely appear to see you and let you look at me; and as to the
latter I think I have greatly the best of the bargain.  My friends,
allow me to bid you farewell.




ADDRESS TO THE SENATE OF NEW JERSEY

FEBRUARY 21, 1861

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW
JERSEY:--I am very grateful to you for the honorable reception of
which I have been the object.  I cannot but remember the place that
New Jersey holds in our early history.  In the Revolutionary struggle
few of the States among the Old Thirteen had more of the battle-
fields of the country within their limits than New Jersey. May I be
pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my
childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of
a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen
Weems's Life of Washington.  I remember all the accounts there given
of the battle-fields and struggles for the liberties of the country;
and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the
struggle here at Trenton, New Jersey.  The crossing of the river, the
contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time,
all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single Revolutionary
event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early
impressions last longer than any others.  I recollect thinking then,
boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than
common that these men struggled for.  I am exceedingly anxious that
that thing that something even more than national independence, that
something that held out a great promise to all the people of the
world to all time to come--I am exceedingly anxious that this Union,
the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be
perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that
struggle was made; and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a
humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this his
almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great
struggle.  You give me this reception, as I understand, without
distinction of party.  I learn that this body is composed of a
majority of gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in
the choice of a chief magistrate, did not think I was the man.  I
understand, nevertheless, that they come forward here to greet me as
the constitutionally elected President of the United States--as
citizens of the United States to meet the man who, for the time
being, is the representative of the majesty of the nation--united by
the single purpose to perpetuate the Constitution, the union, and the
liberties of the people.  As such, I accept this reception more
gratefully than I could do did I believe it were tendered to me as an
individual.




ADDRESS TO THE ASSEMBLY OF NEW JERSEY,

FEBRUARY 21, 1861

MR. SPEAKER AND GENTLEMEN: I have just enjoyed the honor of a
reception by the other branch of this Legislature, and I return to
you and them my thanks for the reception which the people of New
Jersey have given through their chosen representatives to me as the
representative, for the time being, of the majesty of the people of
the United States.  I appropriate to myself very little of the
demonstrations of respect with which I have been greeted.  I think
little should be given to any man, but that it should be a
manifestation of adherence to the Union and the Constitution.
I understand myself to be received here by the representatives of the
people of New Jersey, a majority of whom differ in opinion from those
with whom I have acted.  This manifestation is therefore to be
regarded by me as expressing their devotion to the Union, the
Constitution, and the liberties of the people.

You, Mr. Speaker, have well said that this is a time when the bravest
and wisest look with doubt and awe upon the aspect presented by our
national affairs.  Under these circumstances you will readily see why
I should not speak in detail of the course I shall deem it best to
pursue.  It is proper that I should avail myself of all the
information and all the time at my command, in order that when the
time arrives in which I must speak officially, I shall be able to
take the ground which I deem best and safest, and from which I may
have no occasion to swerve.  I shall endeavor to take the ground I
deem most just to the North, the East, the West, the South, and the
whole country.  I shall take it, I hope, in good temper, certainly
with no malice toward, any section.  I shall do all that may be in my
power to promote a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties.  The
man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, none who
would do more to preserve it, but it may be necessary to put the foot
down firmly.  And if I do my duty and do right, you will sustain me,
will you not?  [Loud cheers, and cries of "Yes, yes; we will."]
Received as I am by the members of a Legislature the majority of whom
do not agree with me in political sentiments, I trust that I may have
their assistance in piloting the ship of state through this voyage,
surrounded by perils as it is; for if it should suffer wreck now,
there will be no pilot ever needed for another voyage.

Gentlemen, I have already spoken longer than I intended, and must beg
leave to stop here.




REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA,
FEBRUARY 21, 1861

MR. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF PHILADELPHIA:--I appear before you
to make no lengthy speech, but to thank you for this reception. The
reception you have given me to-night is not to me, the man, the
individual, but to the man who temporarily represents, or should
represent, the majesty of the nation.  It is true, as your worthy
mayor has said, that there is great anxiety amongst the citizens of
the United States at this time.  I deem it a happy circumstance that
this dissatisfied portion of our fellow-citizens does not point us to
anything in which they are being injured or about to be injured; for
which reason I have felt all the while justified in concluding that
the crisis, the panic, the anxiety of the country at this time is
artificial.  If there be those who differ with me upon this subject,
they have not pointed out the substantial difficulty that exists.
I do not mean to say that an artificial panic may not do considerable
harm; that it has done such I do not deny.  The hope that has been
expressed by your mayor, that I may be able to restore peace,
harmony, and prosperity to the country, is most worthy of him; and
most happy, indeed, will I be if I shall be able to verify and fulfil
that hope.  I promise you that I bring to the work a sincere heart.
Whether I will bring a head equal to that heart will be for future
times to determine.  It were useless for me to speak of details of
plans now; I shall speak officially next Monday week, if ever. If I
should not speak then, it were useless for me to do so now.  If I do
speak then, it is useless for me to do so now.  When I do speak, I
shall take such ground as I deem best calculated to restore peace,
harmony, and prosperity to the country, and tend to the perpetuity of
the nation and the liberty of these States and these people.  Your
worthy mayor has expressed the wish, in which I join with him, that
it were convenient for me to remain in your city long enough to
consult your merchants and manufacturers; or, as it were, to listen
to those breathings rising within the consecrated walls wherein the
Constitution of the United States and, I will add, the Declaration of
Independence, were originally framed and adopted.  I assure you and
your mayor that I had hoped on this occasion, and upon all occasions
during my life, that I shall do nothing inconsistent with the
teachings of these holy and most sacred walls.  I have never asked
anything that does not breathe from those walls.  All my political
warfare has been in favor of the teachings that come forth from these
sacred walls.  May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever I prove false to those
teachings.  Fellow-citizens, I have addressed you longer than I
expected to do, and now allow me to bid you goodnight.




ADDRESS IN THE HALL OF INDEPENDENCE, PHILADELPHIA,

FEBRUARY 22, 1861

MR. CUYLER:--I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing
here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the
devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which
we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task
of restoring peace to the present distracted condition of the
country. I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments
I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them,
from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from
this hall.  I have never had a feeling politically that did not
spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of
Independence.  I have often pondered over the dangers which were
incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that
Declaration of Independence.  I have pondered over the toils that
were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved
that independence.  I have often inquired of myself what great
principle or idea it was that kept the confederacy so long together.
It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the
motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence
which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I
hope, to the world for all future time.  It was that which gave
promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the
shoulders of all men.  This is the sentiment embodied in the
Declaration of Independence.  Now, my friends, can the country be
saved upon that basis?  If it can, I will consider myself one of the
happiest men in the world if I can help to save it.  If it cannot be
saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful.  But if this
country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about
to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.
Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there need be no
bloodshed or war.  There is no necessity for it.  I am not in favor
of such a course, and I may say, in advance, that there will be no
bloodshed unless it is forced upon the Government, and then it will
be compelled to act in self-defence.

My friends; this is wholly an unexpected speech, and I did not expect
to be called upon to say a word when I came here.  I supposed it was
merely to do something toward raising the flag.  I may, therefore,
have said something indiscreet.  I have said nothing but what I am
willing to live by and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die
by.




REPLY TO THE WILMINGTON DELEGATION,

FEBRUARY 22, 1861

MR. CHAIRMAN:--I feel highly flattered by the encomiums you have seen
fit to bestow upon me.  Soon after the nomination of General Taylor,
I attended a political meeting in the city of Wilmington, and have
since carried with me a fond remembrance of the hospitalities of the
city on that occasion.  The programme established provides for my
presence in Harrisburg in twenty-four hours from this time.  I expect
to be in Washington on Saturday.  It is, therefore, an impossibility
that I should accept your kind invitation.  There are no people whom
I would more gladly accommodate than those of Delaware; but
circumstances forbid, gentlemen.  With many regrets for the character
of the reply I am compelled to give you, I bid you adieu.




ADDRESS AT LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA,

FEBRUARY 22, 1860

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF OLD LANCASTER:--I appear not to make a
speech. I have not time to make a speech at length, and not strength
to make them on every occasion; and, worse than all, I have none to
make.  There is plenty of matter to speak about in these times, but
it is well known that the more a man speaks the less he is
understood--the more he says one thing, the more his adversaries
contend he meant something else. I shall soon have occasion to speak
officially, and then I will endeavor to put my thoughts just as plain
as I can express myself--true to the Constitution and Union of all
the States, and to the perpetual liberty of all the people.  Until I
so speak, there is no need to enter upon details.  In conclusion, I
greet you most heartily, and bid you an affectionate farewell.




ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA, AT HARRISBURG,

FEBRUARY 22, 1861

MR. SPEAKER OF THE SENATE, AND ALSO MR. SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE
OF PENNSYLVANIA:--I appear before you only for a very few brief
remarks in response to what has been said to me.  I thank you most
sincerely for this reception, and the generous words in which support
has been promised me upon this occasion.  I thank your great
commonwealth for the overwhelming support it recently gave, not me
personally, but the cause which I think a just one, in the late
election.

Allusion has been made to the fact--the interesting fact perhaps we
should say--that I for the first time appear at the capital of the
great commonwealth of Pennsylvania upon the birthday of the Father of
his Country.  In connection with that beloved anniversary connected
with the history of this country, I have already gone through one
exceedingly interesting scene this morning in the ceremonies at
Philadelphia.  Under the kind conduct of gentlemen there, I was for
the first time allowed the privilege of standing in old Independence
Hall to have a few words addressed to me there, and opening up to me
an opportunity of manifesting my deep regret that I had not more time
to express something of my own feelings excited by the occasion, that
had been really the feelings of my whole life.

Besides this, our friends there had provided a magnificent flag of
the country.  They had arranged it so that I was given the honor of
raising it to the head of its staff, and when it went up I was
pleased that it went to its place by the strength of my own feeble
arm.  When, according to the arrangement, the cord was pulled, and it
floated gloriously to the wind, without an accident, in the bright,
glowing sunshine of the morning, I could not help hoping that there
was in the entire success of that beautiful ceremony at least
something of an omen of what is to come.  Nor could I help feeling
then, as I have often felt, that in the whole of that proceeding I
was a very humbled instrument.  I had not provided the flag; I had
not made the arrangements for elevating it to its place; I had
applied but a very small portion of even my feeble strength in
raising it.  In the whole transaction I was in the hands of the
people who had arranged it, and if I can have the same generous
co-operation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our
country may yet be kept flaunting gloriously.

I recur for a moment but to repeat some words uttered at the hotel in
regard to what has been said about the military support which the
General Government may expect from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania
in a proper emergency.  To guard against any possible mistake do I
recur to this.  It is not with any pleasure that I contemplate the
possibility that a necessity may arise in this country for the use of
the military arm.  While I am exceedingly gratified to see the
manifestation upon your streets of your military force here, and
exceedingly gratified at your promise to use that force upon a proper
emergency--while I make these acknowledgments I desire to repeat, in
order to preclude any possible misconstruction, that I do most
sincerely hope that we shall have no use for them; that it will never
become their duty to shed blood, and most especially never to shed
fraternal blood.  I promise that so far as I may have wisdom to
direct, if so painful a result shall in any wise be brought about, it
shall he through no fault of mine.

Allusion has also been made by one of your honored speakers to some
remarks recently made by myself at Pittsburg in regard to what is
supposed to be the especial interest of this great commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.  I now wish only to say in regard to that matter, that
the few remarks which I uttered on that occasion were rather
carefully worded.  I took pains that they should be so.  I have seen
no occasion since to add to them or subtract from them.  I leave them
precisely as they stand, adding only now that I am pleased to have an
expression from you, gentlemen of Pennsylvania, signifying that they
are satisfactory to you.

And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, allow me again to return to you my most sincere thanks.




REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF WASHINGTON, D.C.,

FEBRUARY 27, 1861

Mr. MAYOR:--I thank you, and through you the municipal authorities of
this city who accompany you, for this welcome.  And as it is the
first time in my life, since the present phase of politics has
presented itself in this country, that I have said anything publicly
within a region of country where the institution of slavery exists, I
will take this occasion to say that I think very much of the ill
feeling that has existed and still exists between the people in the
section from which I came and the people here, is dependent upon a
misunderstanding of one another.  I therefore avail myself of this
opportunity to assure you, Mr. Mayor, and all the gentlemen present,
that I have not now, and never have had, any other than as kindly
feelings toward you as to the people of my own section.  I have not
now, and never have had, any disposition to treat you in any respect
otherwise than as my own neighbors.  I have not now any purpose to
withhold from you any of the benefits of the Constitution, under any
circumstances, that I would not feel myself constrained to withhold
from my own neighbors; and I hope, in a word, that when we shall
become better acquainted--and I say it with great confidence--we
shall like each other better.  I thank you for the kindness of this
reception.




REPLY TO A SERENADE AT WASHINGTON, D.C.,
FEBRUARY 28, 1861

MY FRIENDS:--I suppose that I may take this as a compliment paid to
me, and as such please accept my thanks for it.  I have reached this
city of Washington under circumstances considerably differing from
those under which any other man has ever reached it.  I am here for
the purpose of taking an official position amongst the people, almost
all of whom were politically opposed to me, and are yet opposed to
me, as I suppose.

I propose no lengthy address to you.  I only propose to say, as I did
on yesterday, when your worthy mayor and board of aldermen called
upon me, that I thought much of the ill feeling that has existed
between you and the people of your surroundings and that people from
among whom I came, has depended, and now depends, upon a
misunderstanding.

I hope that, if things shall go along as prosperously as I believe we
all desire they may, I may have it in my power to remove something of
this misunderstanding; that I may be enabled to convince you, and the
people of your section of the country, that we regard you as in all
things our equals, and in all things entitled to the same respect and
the same treatment that we claim for ourselves; that we are in no
wise disposed, if it were in our power, to oppress you, to deprive
you of any of your rights under the Constitution of the United
States, or even narrowly to split hairs with you in regard to these
rights, but are determined to give you, as far as lies in our hands,
all your rights under the Constitution--not grudgingly, but fully and
fairly.  I hope that, by thus dealing with you, we will become better
acquainted, and be better friends.

And now, my friends, with these few remarks, and again returning my
thanks for this compliment, and expressing my desire to hear a little
more of your good music, I bid you good-night.




WASHINGTON, SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 1861

[During the struggle over the appointments of LINCOLN's Cabinet, the
President-elect spoke as follows:]

Gentlemen, it is evident that some one must take the responsibility
of these appointments, and I will do it.  My Cabinet is completed.
The positions are not definitely assigned, and will not be until I
announce them privately to the gentlemen whom I have selected as my
Constitutional advisers.




FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS,
MARCH 4, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES:--In compliance with a custom as
old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you
briefly, and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the
Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President
"before he enters on the execution of his office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or
excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States
that by the accession of a Republican administration their property
and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.  There
has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.  Indeed,
the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and
been open to their inspection.  It is found in nearly all the
published speeches of him who now addresses you.  I do but quote from
one of those speeches when I declare that

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I
have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I
had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted
them.  And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my
acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and
emphatic resolution which I now read:

"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the
States, and especially the right of each State to order and control
its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment
exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the
perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we
denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State
or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as amongst the gravest of
crimes."

I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon
the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case
is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section
are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming administration.
I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the
Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to
all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause--as
cheerfully to one section as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from
service or labor.  The clause I now read is as plainly written in the
Constitution as any other of its provisions:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or
regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due."

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those
who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and
the intention of the lawgiver is the law.  All members of Congress
swear their support to the whole Constitution--to this provision as
much as to any other.  To the proposition, then, that slaves whose
cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up,"
their oaths are unanimous.  Now, if they would make the effort in
good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and
pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by national or by State authority; but surely that
difference is not a very material one.  If the slave is to be
surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others
by which authority it is done.  And should any one in any case be
content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial
controversy as to how it shall be kept?

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced,
so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And
might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the
enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that
"the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States"?

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with
no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical
rules.  And, while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of
Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much
safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to
and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate
any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be
unconstitutional.

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President
under our national Constitution.  During that period fifteen
different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession,
administered the executive branch of the Government.  They have
conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success.
Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task
for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and
peculiar difficulty.  A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore
only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the
Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.  Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments.  It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had
a provision in its organic law for its own termination.  Continue to
execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and
the Union will endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it
except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it as a
contract be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made
it? One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak;
but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the
history of the Union itself.  The Union is much older than the
Constitution.  It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association
in 1774.  It was matured and continued by the Declaration of
Independence in 1776.  It was further matured, and the faith of all
the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it
should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778.  And,
finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and
establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the
States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before
the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion
can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to
that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any
State or States, against the authority of the United States, are
insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.  Doing
this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform
it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American
people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative
manner direct the contrary.  I trust this will not be regarded as a
menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will
constitutionally defend and maintain itself.

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there
shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority.  The
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the
duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these
objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or
among the people anywhere.  Where hostility to the United States, in
any interior locality, shall be so great and universal as to prevent
competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there
will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for
that object.  While the strict legal right may exist in the
government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to
do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal,
that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such
offices.

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all
parts of the Union.  So far as possible, the people everywhere shall
have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm
thought and reflection.  The course here indicated will be followed
unless current events and experience shall show a modification or
change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best
discretion will be exercised according to circumstances actually
existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the
national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and
affections.

That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy
the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will
neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word
to them.  To those, however, who really love the Union may I not
speak?

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our
national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes,
would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you
hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any
portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you,
while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones
you fly from--will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?

All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights
can be maintained.  Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written
in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not.  Happily the human
mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of
doing this.  Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a
plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied.
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority
of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral
point of view, justify revolution--certainly would if such a right
were a vital one.  But such is not our case.  All the vital rights of
minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by
affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the
Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them.  But no
organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically
applicable to every question which may occur in practical
administration.  No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of
reasonable length contain, express provisions for all possible
questions.  Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or
by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say.  May
Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does
not expressly say.  Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories?
The Constitution does not expressly say.

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional
controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and
minorities.  If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must,
or the Government must cease.   There is no other alternative; for
continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other.

If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they
make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a
minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority
refuses to be controlled by such minority.  For instance, why may not
any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily
secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to
secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being
educated to the exact temper of doing this.

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to
compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed
secession?

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.  A
majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations,
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular
opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to
despotism.  Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a
permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the
majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is
left.

I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that
such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a
suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to
very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all
other departments of the government.  And, while it is obviously
possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still
the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case,
with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent
for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a
different practice.  At the same time, the candid citizen must
confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions
affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions
of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary
litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have
ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically
resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.  Nor
is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges.   It
is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly
brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to
turn their decisions to political purposes.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be
extended.  This is the only substantial dispute.  The fugitive slave
clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the
foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law
can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people
imperfectly supports the law itself.  The great body of the people
abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over
in each.  This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be
worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before.
The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be
ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while
fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be
surrendered at all by the other.

Physically speaking, we cannot separate.  We cannot remove our
respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall
between them.  A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the
presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts
of our country cannot do this.  They cannot but remain face to face,
and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between
them.  Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more
advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can
aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties
be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among
friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when,
after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease
fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are
again upon you.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending
it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.  I
cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic
citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended.
While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the
rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be
exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself,
and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose
a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.  I will
venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in
that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves,
instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions
originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which
might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or
refuse.  I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which
amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the
effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the
domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held
to service.  To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart
from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to
say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional
law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and
they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of
the States.  The people themselves can do this also if they choose;
but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it.  His duty is
to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to
transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successors.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice
of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our
present differences is either party without faith of being in the
right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and
justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that
truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this
great tribunal of the American people.

By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people
have wisely given their public servants but little power for
mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of
that little to their own hands at very short intervals.  While the
people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any
extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the
government in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole
subject.  Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.  If there be
an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would
never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking
time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.  Such of you as are
now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on
the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the
new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to
change either.  If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied
hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good
reason for precipitate action.  Intelligence, patriotism,
Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken
this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all
our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war.  The government will not assail
you.  You can have no conflict without being yourselves the
aggressors.  You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve,
protect, and defend" it.

I am loath to close.  We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not
be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our
bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of
the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature.




REFUSAL OF SEWARD RESIGNATION

TO WM. H. SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 4, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your note of the 2d instant, asking to withdraw your
acceptance of my invitation to take charge of the State Department,
was duly received.  It is the subject of the most painful solicitude
with me, and I feel constrained to beg that you will countermand the
withdrawal.  The public interest, I think, demands that you should;
and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction.
Please consider and answer by 9 A.M. to-morrow.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO THE PENNSYLVANIA DELEGATION,

WASHINGTON, MARCH 5, 1861

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE PENNSYLVANIAN  DELEGATION:--As I
have so frequently said heretofore, when I have had occasion to
address the people of the Keystone, in my visits to that State, I can
now but repeat the assurance of my gratification at the support you
gave me at the election, and at the promise of a continuation of that
support which is now tendered to me.

Allusion has been made to the hope that you entertain that you have a
President and a government.  In respect to that I wish to say to you
that in the position I have assumed I wish to do more than I have
ever given reason to believe I would do.  I do not wish you to
believe that I assume to be any better than others who have gone
before me.  I prefer rather to have it understood that if we ever
have a government on the principles we profess, we should remember,
while we exercise our opinion, that others have also rights to the
exercise of their opinions, and that we should endeavor to allow
these rights, and act in such a manner as to create no bad feeling.
I hope we have a government and a President.  I hope, and wish it to
be understood, that there may he no allusion to unpleasant
differences.

We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to
all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several
States.  We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say
nothing insulting or irritating.  I would inculcate this idea, so
that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than
other people.

Now, my friends, my public duties are pressing to-day, and will
prevent my giving more time to you.  Indeed, I should not have left
them now, but I could not well deny myself to so large and
respectable a body.




REPLY TO THE MASSACHUSETTS DELEGATION,

WASHINGTON, MARCH 5, 1861

I am thankful for this renewed assurance of kind feeling and
confidence, and the support of the old Bay State, in so far as you,
Mr. Chairman, have expressed, in behalf of those whom you represent,
your sanction of what I have enunciated in my inaugural address.
This is very grateful to my feelings.  The object was one of great
delicacy, in presenting views at the opening of an administration
under the peculiar circumstances attending my entrance upon the
official duties connected with the Government.  I studied all the
points with great anxiety, and presented them with whatever of
ability and sense of justice I could bring to bear.  If it met the
approbation of our good friends in Massachusetts, I shall be
exceedingly gratified, while I hope it will meet the approbation of
friends everywhere.  I am thankful for the expressions of those who
have voted with us; and like every other man of you, I like them as
certainly as I do others.  As the President in the administration of
the Government, I hope to be man enough not to know one citizen of
the United States from another, nor one section from another.  I
shall be gratified to have good friends of Massachusetts and others
who have thus far supported me in these national views still to
support me in carrying them out.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD

EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, MARCH 7, 1861

MY DEAR SIR:--Herewith is the diplomatic address and my reply.  To
whom the reply should be addressed--that is, by what title or style--
I do not quite understand, and therefore I have left it blank.

Will you please bring with you to-day the message from the War
Department, with General Scott's note upon it, which we had here
yesterday? I wish to examine the General's opinion, which I have not
yet done.

Yours very truly
A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS

WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1861

Mr. FIGANIERE AND GENTLEMEN OF THE DIPLOMATIC BODY:--Please accept my
sincere thanks for your kind congratulations.  It affords me pleasure
to confirm the confidence you so generously express in the friendly
disposition of the United States, through me, towards the sovereigns
and governments you respectively represent.  With equal satisfaction
I accept the assurance you are pleased to give, that the same
disposition is reciprocated by your sovereigns, your governments, and
yourselves.

Allow me to express the hope that these friendly relations may remain
undisturbed, arid also my fervent wishes for the health and happiness
of yourselves personally.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 11,1861

HON. SECRETARY OF STATE.
DEAR SIR:--What think you of sending ministers at once as follows:
Dayton to England; Fremont to France; Clay to Spain; Corwin to
Mexico?

We need to have these points guarded as strongly and quickly as
possible.  This is suggestion merely, and not dictation.

Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.




TO J. COLLAMER

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 12, 1861

HON. JACOB COLLAMER.
MY DEAR SIR:--God help me.  It is said I have offended you.  I hope
you will tell me how.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.


March 14, 1861.
DEAR SIR:--I am entirely unconscious that you have any way offended
me.  I cherish no sentiment towards you but that of kindness and
confidence.
Your humble servant,
J. COLLAMER

 [Returned with indorsement:]

Very glad to know that I have n't.
A. LINCOLN.




TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 13, 1861

HON. P. M. G.

DEAR SIR:--The bearer of this, Mr. C. T. Hempstow, is a Virginian who
wishes to get, for his son, a small place in your Dept.  I think
Virginia should be heard, in such cases.

LINCOLN.




NOTE ASKING CABINET OPINIONS ON FORT SUMTER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 15, 1861

THE HONORABLE SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort
Sumter, under all the circumstances is it wise to attempt it?  Please
give me your opinion in writing on this question.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

[Same to other members of the Cabinet.]




ON ROYAL ARBITRATION OF AMERICAN BOUNDARY LINE

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

The Senate has transmitted to me a copy of the message sent by my
predecessor to that body on the 21st of February last, proposing to
take its advice on the subject of a proposition made by the British
Government through its minister here to refer the matter in
controversy between that government and the Government of the United
States to the arbitrament of the King of Sweden and Norway, the King
of the Netherlands, or the Republic of the Swiss Confederation.

In that message my predecessor stated that he wished to present to
the Senate the precise questions following, namely:

"Will the Senate approve a treaty referring to either of the
sovereign powers above named the dispute now existing between the
governments of the United States and Great Britain concerning the
boundary line between Vancouver's Island and the American continent?
In case the referee shall find himself unable to decide where the
line is by the description of it in the treaty of June 15, 1846,
shall he be authorized to establish a line according to the treaty as
nearly as possible? Which of the three powers named by Great Britain
as an arbiter shall be chosen by the United States?"

I find no reason to disapprove of the course of my predecessor in
this important matter; but, on the contrary, I not only shall receive
the advice of the Senate thereon cheerfully, but I respectfully ask
the Senate for their advice on the three questions before recited

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
WASHINGTON, March 16, 1861




AMBASSADORIAL APPOINTMENTS

TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 18, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF STATE.

MY DEAR SIR:--I believe it is a necessity with us to make the
appointments I mentioned last night--that is, Charles F. Adams to
England, William L. Dayton to France, George P. Marsh to Sardinia,
and Anson Burlingame to Austria.  These gentlemen all have my highest
esteem, but no one of them is originally suggested by me except Mr.
Dayton.  Mr. Adams I take because you suggested him, coupled with his
eminent fitness for the place.  Mr. Marsh and Mr. Burlingame I take
because of the intense pressure of their respective States, and their
fitness also.

The objection to this card is that locally they are so huddled up--
three being in New England and two from a single State.  I have
considered this, and will not shrink from the responsibility.  This,
being done, leaves but five full missions undisposed of--Rome, China,
Brazil, Peru, and Chili.  And then what about Carl Schurz; or, in
other words, what about our German friends?

Shall we put the card through, and arrange the rest afterward? What
say you?

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO G. E. PATTEN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 19, 1861.

TO MASTER GEO. EVANS PATTEN.

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:--I did see and talk with Master Geo. Evans
Patten last May at Springfield, Ill.

Respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.

[Written because of a denial that any interview with young Patten,
then a schoolboy, had ever taken place.]




RESPONSE TO SENATE INQUIRY RE. FORT SUMTER

MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:--I have received a copy of the
resolution of the Senate, passed on the 25th instant, requesting me,
if in my opinion not incompatible with the public interest, to
communicate to the Senate the despatches of Major Robert Anderson to
the War Department during the time he has been in command of Fort
Sumter.  On examination of the correspondence thus called for, I
have, with the highest respect for the Senate, come to the conclusion
that at the present moment the publication of it would be
inexpedient.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WASHINGTON, MARCH 16, 1861




PREPARATION OF FIRST NAVAL ACTION

TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MARCH 29, 1861

HONORABLE SECRETARY OF WAR.

SIR:--I desire that an expedition to move by sea be got ready to sail
as early as the 6th of April next, the whole according to memorandum
attached, and that you cooperate with the Secretary of the Navy for
that object.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.


[Inclosure.]

Steamers Pocahontas at Norfolk, Paunee at Washington, Harriet Lane at
New York, to be under sailing orders for sea, with stores, etc., for
one month.  Three hundred men to be kept ready for departure from on
board the receiving-ships at New York. Two hundred men to be ready to
leave Governor's Island in New York. Supplies for twelve months for
one hundred men to be put in portable shape, ready for instant
shipping. A large steamer and three tugs conditionally engaged.




TO ______ STUART.

WASHINGTON, March 30, 1861

DEAR STUART:

Cousin Lizzie shows me your letter of the 27th.  The question of
giving her the Springfield post-office troubles me.  You see I have
already appointed William Jayne a Territorial governor and Judge
Trumbull's brother to a land-office.  Will it do for me to go on and
justify the declaration that Trumbull and I have divided out all the
offices among our relatives?  Dr. Wallace, you know, is needy, and
looks to me; and I personally owe him much.

I see by the papers, a vote is to be taken as to the post-office.
Could you not set up Lizzie and beat them all?  She, being here, need
know nothing of it, so therefore there would be no indelicacy on her
part. Yours as ever,




TO THE COMMANDANT OF THE NEW YORK NAVY-YARD.

NAVY DEPT., WASHINGTON, April 1, 1861

TO THE COMMANDANT OF THE NAVY-YARD,
Brooklyn, N. Y.

Fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earnest possible moment
under sealed orders.  Orders by a confidential messenger go forward
to-morrow.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO LIEUTENANT D. D. PORTER

EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1861

LIEUTENANT D. D. PORTER, United States Navy.


SIR:--You will proceed to New York, and with the least possible
delay, assuming command of any naval steamer available, proceed to
Pensacola Harbor, and at any cost or risk prevent any expedition from
the mainland reaching Fort Pickens or Santa Rosa Island.

You will exhibit this order to any naval officer at Pensacola, if you
deem it necessary, after you have established yourself within the
harbor, and will request co-operation by the entrance of at least one
other steamer.

This order, its object, and your destination will be communicated to
no person whatever until you reach the harbor of Pensacola.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Recommended, WILLIAM H. SEWARD.




RELIEF EXPEDITION FOR FORT SUMTER

ORDER TO OFFICERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.

WASHINGTON, EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1861.

All officers of the army and navy to whom this order may be exhibited
will aid by every means in their power the expedition under the
command of Colonel Harvey Brown, supplying him with men and material,
and co-operating with him as he may desire.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ORDER TO CAPTAIN SAMUEL MERCER.
(Confidential.)

WASHINGTON CITY,
April 1, 1861

SIR:--Circumstances render it necessary to place in command of your
ship (and for a special purpose) an officer who is fully informed and
instructed in relation to the wishes of the Government, and you will
therefore consider yourself detached.  But in taking this step the
Government does not in the least reflect upon your efficiency or
patriotism; on the contrary, have the fullest confidence in your
ability to perform any duty required of you.  Hoping soon to be able
to give you a better command than the one you now enjoy, and trusting
that you will have full confidence in the disposition of the
Government toward you,
I remain, etc.,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




SECRETARY SEWARD'S BID FOR POWER

MEMORANDUM FROM SECRETARY SEWARD,
APRIL 1, 1861

Some thoughts for the President's Consideration,

First.  We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet
without a policy either domestic or foreign.

Second.  This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been
unavoidable.  The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet
applications for patronage, have prevented attention to other and
more grave matters.

Third.  But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for
both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the
administration, but danger upon the country.

Fourth.  To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office.  But
how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leaving
foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action.

Fifth.  The policy at home.  I am aware that my views are singular,
and perhaps not sufficiently explained.  My system is built upon this
idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must
CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT
SLAVERY, for a question upon UNION OR DISUNION:
In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to
one of patriotism or union.

The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a
slavery or a party question, is so regarded.  Witness the temper
manifested by the Republicans in the free States, and even by the
Union men in the South.

I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the
issue.  I deem it fortunate that the last administration created the
necessity.

For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and reinforce all the
ports in the gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations
to be prepared for a blockade.  Put the island of Key West under
martial law.

This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion.  I
would maintain every fort and possession in the South.


FOR FOREIGN NATIONS,

I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at
once.

I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send
agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to rouse a vigorous
continental spirit of independence on this continent against European
intervention.

And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and
France,

Would convene Congress and declare war against them.

But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution
of it.

For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct
it incessantly.

Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active
in it, or Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet.  Once adopted,
debates on it must end, and all agree and abide.

It is not in my especial province; But I neither seek to evade nor
assume responsibility.




REPLY TO SECRETARY SEWARD'S MEMORANDUM

EXECUTIVE MANSION, APRIL 1, 1861

HON. W. H. SEWARD.

MY DEAR SIR:--Since parting with you I have been considering your
paper dated this day, and entitled "Some Thoughts for the President's
Consideration."  The first proposition in it is, "First, We are at
the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy either
domestic or foreign."

At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, I said: "The power
confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property
and places belonging to the Government, and to Collect the duties and
imposts."  This had your distinct approval at the time; and, taken in
connection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, directing
him to employ every means in his power to strengthen and hold the
forts, comprises the exact domestic policy you now urge, with the
single exception that it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumter.

Again, I do not perceive how the reinforcement of Fort Sumter would
be done on a slavery or a party issue, while that of Fort Pickens
would be on a more national and patriotic one.

The news received yesterday in regard to St. Domingo certainly brings
a new item within the range of our foreign policy; but up to that
time we have been preparing circulars and instructions to ministers
and the like, all in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion that
we had no foreign policy.

Upon your Closing propositions--that,

"Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of
it.

"For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct
it incessantly.

"Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active
in it, or,

"Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet.  Once adopted, debates on
it must end, and all agree and abide"--

I remark that if this must be done, I must do it.  When a general
line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its
being changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of
unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising in its progress I
wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the
Cabinet.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE FROM THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION, APRIL 13, 1861

HON. WILLIAM BALLARD PRESTON, ALEXANDER H.
H. STUART, GEORGE W. RANDOLPH, Esq.

GENTLEMEN:--As a committee of the Virginia Convention now in Session,
you present me a preamble and resolution in these words:

"Whereas, in the opinion of this Convention, the uncertainty which
prevails in the public mind as to the policy which the Federal
Executive intends to pursue toward the seceded States is extremely
injurious to the industrial and commercial interests of the country,
tends to keep up an excitement which is unfavorable to the adjustment
of pending difficulties, and threatens a disturbance of the public
peace: therefore

"Resolved, that a committee of three delegates be appointed by this
Convention to wait upon the President of the United States, present
to him this preamble and resolution, and respectfully ask him to
communicate to this Convention the policy which the Federal Executive
intends to pursue in regard to the Confederate States.

"Adopted by the Convention of the State of Virginia, Richmond, April
8, 1861."

In answer I have to say that, having at the beginning of my official
term expressed my intended policy as plainly as I was able, it is
with deep regret and some mortification I now learn that there is
great and injurious uncertainty in the public mind as to what that
policy is, and what course I intend to pursue.  Not having as yet
seen occasion to change, it is now my purpose to pursue the course
marked out in the inaugural address.   I commend a careful
consideration of the whole document as the best expression I can give
of my purposes.

As I then and therein said, I now repeat: "The power confided to me
will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and imposts;
but beyond what is necessary for these objects, there will be no
invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."  By
the words "property and places belonging to the Government," I
chiefly allude to the military posts and property which were in the
possession of the Government when it came to my hands.

But if, as now appears to be true, in pursuit of a purpose to drive
the United States authority from these places, an unprovoked assault
has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to
repossess, if I can, like places which had been seized before the
Government was devolved upon me.  And in every event I shall, to the
extent of my ability, repel force by force.  In case it proves true
that Fort Sumter has been assaulted, as is reported, I shall perhaps
cause the United States mails to be withdrawn from all the States
which claim to have seceded, believing that the commencement of
actual war against the Government justifies and possibly demands
this.

I scarcely need to say that I consider the military posts and
property situated within the States which claim to have seceded as
yet belonging to the Government of the United States as much as they
did before the supposed secession.

Whatever else I may do for the purpose, I shall not attempt to
collect the duties and imposts by any armed invasion of any part of
the country; not meaning by this, however, that I may not land a
force deemed necessary to relieve a fort upon a border of the
country.

From the fact that I have quoted a part of the inaugural address, it
must not be inferred that I repudiate any other part, the whole of
which I reaffirm, except so far as what I now say of the mails may be
regarded as a modification.




PROCLAMATION CALLING FOR 75,000 MILITIA, AND CONVENING CONGRESS IN
EXTRA SESSION,  APRIL 15, 1861.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past
and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the
States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed
by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers
vested in the marshals bylaw:

Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States,
in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws,
have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia
of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of
seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to
cause the laws to be duly executed.

The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the
State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this
effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our
National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to
redress wrongs already long enough endured.

I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces
hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places,
and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every
event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects
aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or
interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens
in any part of the country.

And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid
to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective abodes within
twenty days from date.

Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an
extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me
vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress.
Senators and Representatives are therefore summoned to assemble at
their respective chambers, at twelve o'clock noon, on Thursday, the
fourth day of July next, then and there to consider and determine
such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may
seem to demand.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this fifteenth day of April, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION OF BLOCKADE, APRIL 19, 1861

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States
has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the
United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually
executed therein conformably to that provision of the Constitution
which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States:

And Whereas a combination of persons engaged in such insurrection
have threatened to grant pretended letters of marque to authorize the
bearers thereof to commit assaults on the lives, vessels, and
property of good citizens of the country lawfully engaged in commerce
on the high seas, and in waters of the United States:

And Whereas an executive proclamation has been already issued
requiring the persons engaged in these disorderly proceedings to
desist therefrom, calling out a militia force for the purpose of
repressing the same, and convening Congress in extraordinary session
to deliberate and determine thereon:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham LINCOLN, President of the United States,
with a view to the same purposes before mentioned, and to the
protection of the public peace, and the lives and property of quiet
and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations, until
Congress shall have assembled and deliberated on the said unlawful
proceedings, or until the same shall have ceased, have further deemed
it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States
aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and of the
law of nations in such case provided.  For this purpose a competent
force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels
from the ports aforesaid.  If, therefore, with a view to violate such
blockade, a vessel shall approach or shall attempt to leave either of
the said ports, she will be duly warned by the commander of one of
the blockading vessels, who will indorse on her register the fact and
date of such warning, and if the same vessel shall again attempt to
enter or leave the blockaded port, she will be captured and sent to
the nearest convenient port, for such proceedings against her and her
cargo, as prize, as may be deemed advisable.

And I hereby proclaim and declare that if any person, under the
pretended authority of the said States, or under any other pretense,
shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo
on board of her, such person will be held amenable to the laws of the
United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this nineteenth day of April, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




TO GOVERNOR HICKS AND MAYOR BROWN.

WASHINGTON, April 20, 1861

GOVERNOR HICKS AND MAYOR BROWN.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter by Messrs.  Bond, Dobbin, and Brune is
received.  I tender you both my sincere thanks for your efforts to
keep the peace in the trying situation in which you are placed.

For the future troops must be brought here, but I make no point of
bringing them through Baltimore.  Without any military knowledge
myself, of course I must leave details to General Scott.  He hastily
said this morning in the presence of these gentlemen, "March them
around Baltimore, and not through it."  I sincerely hope the General,
on fuller reflection, will consider this practical and proper, and
that you will not object to it.  By this a collision of the people of
Baltimore with the troops will be avoided, unless they go out of
their way to seek it.  I hope you will exert your influence to
prevent this.

Now and ever I shall do all in my power for peace consistently with
the maintenance of the Government.

Your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR HICKS.

WASHINGTON, April 20, 1861

GOVERNOR HICKS:

I desire to consult with you and the Mayor of Baltimore relative to
preserving the peace of Maryland.  Please come immediately by special
train, which you can take at Baltimore; or, if necessary, one can be
sent from here.  Answer forthwith.

LINCOLN.




ORDER TO DEFEND FROM A MARYLAND INSURRECTION

ORDER TO GENERAL SCOTT.
WASHINGTON, April 25, 1861

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SCOTT.

MY DEAR SIR--The Maryland Legislature assembles to-morrow at
Annapolis, and not improbably will take action to arm the people
of that State against the United States.  The question has been
submitted to and considered by me whether it would not be
justifiable, upon the ground of necessary defense, for you, as
General in Chief of the United States Army, to arrest or disperse the
members of that body.  I think it would not be justifiable nor
efficient for the desired object.

First.  They have a clearly legal right to assemble, and we cannot
know in advance that their action will not be lawful and peaceful,
and if we wait until they shall have acted their arrest or dispersion
will not lessen the effect of their action.

Secondly.  We cannot permanently prevent their action.   If we arrest
them, we cannot long hold them as prisoners, and when liberated they
will immediately reassemble and take their action; and precisely the
same if we simply disperse them--they will immediately reassemble in
some other place.

I therefore conclude that it is only left to the Commanding General
to watch and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their
people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt and
efficient means to counteract, even, if necessary, to the bombardment
of their cities and, in the extremist necessity, the suspension of
the writ of habeas corpus.

Your obedient servant,   ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION OF BLOCKADE, APRIL 27, 1861

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, for the reasons assigned in my proclamation of the
nineteenth instant, a blockade of the ports of the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Texas was ordered to be established:

And whereas, since that date, public property of the United States
has been seized, the collection of the revenue obstructed, and duly
commissioned officers of the United States, while engaged in
executing the orders of their superiors, have been arrested and held
in custody as prisoners, or have been impeded in the discharge of
their official duties, without due legal process, by persons claiming
to act under authorities of the States of Virginia and North
Carolina:

An efficient blockade of the ports of those States will also be
established

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twenty  seventh day of April, in
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of
the independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




REMARKS TO A MILITARY COMPANY, WASHINGTON,
APRIL 27, 1861

I have desired as sincerely as any man, and I sometimes think more
than any other man, that our present difficulties might be settled
without the shedding of blood.  I will not say that all hope has yet
gone; but if the alternative is presented whether the Union is to be
broken in fragments and the liberties of the people lost, or blood be
shed, you will probably make the choice with which I shall not be
dissatisfied.




LOCALIZED REPEAL OF WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

TO GENERAL SCOTT.

TO THE COMMANDING GENERAL,
ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES.

You are engaged in suppressing an insurrection against the laws of
the United States.  If at any point on or in the vicinity of any
military line which is now or which shall be used between the City of
Philadelphia and the city of Washington you find resistance which
renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the
public safety, you personally, or through the officer in command at
the point at which resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that
writ.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WASHINGTON, April 17, 1861




MILITARY ENROLLMENT OF ST. LOUIS CITIZENS

FROM THE SECRETARY OF WAR
WAR DEPARTMENT, April 30, 1861

TO CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON.

CAPT. NATHANIEL LYON,
Commanding Department of the West.

SIR:--The President of the United States directs that you enroll in
the military service of the United States the loyal citizens of Saint
Louis and vicinity, not exceeding, with those heretofore enlisted,
ten thousand in number, for the purpose of maintaining the authority
of the United States; for the protection of the peaceful inhabitants
of Missouri; and you will, if deemed necessary for that purpose by
yourself, by Messrs.  Oliver F. Ferny, John How, James O. Broadhead,
Samuel T. Glover, J. Wilzie, Francis P. Blair, Jr., proclaim martial
law in the city of Saint Louis.

The additional force hereby authorized shall be discharged in part or
in whole, if enlisted.  As soon as it appears to you and the
gentlemen above mentioned that there is no danger of an attempt on
the part of the enemies of the Government to take military possession
of the city of Saint Louis, or put the city in control of the
combination against the Government of the United States; and whilst
such additional force remains in the service the same shall be
governed by the Rules and Articles of War, and such special
regulations as you may prescribe.  I shall like the force hereafter
directed to be enrolled to be under your command.

The arms and other military stores in the Saint Louis Arsenal not
needed for the forces of the United States in Missouri must be
removed to Springfield, or some other safe place of deposit in the
State of Illinois, as speedily as practicable, by the ordnance
officers in charge at Saint Louis.

(Indorsement.)

It is revolutionary times, and therefore I do not object to the
irregularity of this.  W. S.

Approved, April 30, 1861.  A. LINCOLN.

Colonel Thomas will make this order.
SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War.




CONDOLENCE OVER FAILURE OF FT. SUMTER RELIEF

TO GUSTAVUS V. FOX.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 1, 1861

CAPTAIN G. V. Fox.

MY DEAR SIR:--I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt
to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to
you.

The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test.
By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible and not
improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached
the ground; while, by an accident for which you were in no wise
responsible, and possibly I to some extent was, you were deprived of
a war vessel, with her men, which you deemed of great importance to
the enterprise.

I most cheerfully and truly declare that the failure of the
undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you
developed in the effort have greatly heightened you in my estimation.

For a daring and dangerous enterprise of a similar character you
would to-day be the man of all my acquaintances whom I would select.
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be
advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it
should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our
anticipation is justified by the result.

Very truly your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CALLING FOR 42,034 VOLUNTEERS,

MAY 3, 1861

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

A Proclamation..

Whereas existing exigencies demand immediate and adequate measures
for the protection of the National Constitution and the preservation
of the National Union by the suppression of the insurrectionary
combinations now existing in several States for opposing the laws of
the Union and obstructing the execution thereof, to which end a
military force in addition to that called forth by my proclamation of
the 15th day of April in the present year appears to be indispensably
necessary:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States
and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy thereof and of the
militia of the several States when called into actual service, do
hereby call into the service of the United States 42,034 volunteers
to serve for the period of three years, unless sooner discharged, and
to be mustered into service as infantry and cavalry.  The proportions
of each arm and the details of enrollment and organization will be
made known through the Department of War.

And I also direct that the Regular Army of the United States be
increased by the addition of eight regiments of infantry, one
regiment of cavalry, and one regiment of artillery, making altogether
a maximum aggregate increase of 22,714 officers and enlisted men, the
details of which increase will also be made known through the
Department of War.

And I further direct the enlistment for not less than one or more
than three years of 18,000 seamen, in addition to the present force,
for the naval service of the United States.  The details of the
enlistment and organization will be made known through the Department
of the Navy.

The call for volunteers hereby made and the direction for the
increase of the Regular Army and for the enlistment of seamen hereby
given, together with the plan of organization adopted for the
volunteer and for the regular forces hereby authorized, will be
submitted to Congress as soon as assembled.

In the meantime I earnestly invoke the co-operation of all good
citizens in the measures hereby adopted for the effectual suppression
of unlawful violence, for the impartial enforcement of constitutional
laws, and for the speediest possible restoration of peace and order,
and with these of happiness and prosperity, throughout our country.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my band and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




COMMUNICATION WITH VICE-PRESIDENT

TO VICE-PRESIDENT HAMLIN.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 1861

HON. H. HAMLIN, New York.

MY DEAR SIR:-Please advise me at the close of each day what troops
left during the day, where going, and by what route; what remaining
at New York, and what expected in the next day.  Give the numbers, as
near as convenient, and what corps they are.  This information,
reaching us daily, will be very useful as well as satisfactory.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER TO COLONEL ANDERSON,
MAY 7, 1861

TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING:

Know ye that, reposing special trust and confidence in the
patriotism, valor, fidelity, and ability of Colonel Robert Anderson,
U. S. Army, I have empowered him, and do hereby empower him, to
receive into the army of the United States as many regiments of
volunteer troops from the State of Kentucky and from the western part
of the State of Virginia as shall be willing to engage in the Service
of the United States for the term of three years, upon the terms and
according to the plan proposed by the proclamation of May 3, 1861,
and General Orders No.   15, from the War Department, of May 4, 1861.

The troops whom he receives shall be on the same footing in every
respect as those of the like kind called for in the proclamation
above cited, except that the officers shall be commissioned by the
United States.  He is therefore carefully and diligently to discharge
the duty hereby devolved upon him by doing and performing all manner
of things thereunto belonging.

Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, this 7th day of May,
A. D. 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the independence of the
United States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War,




PROCLAMATION SUSPENDING THE WRIT OF HABEAS
CORPUS IN FLORIDA, MAY 10, 1861.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas an insurrection exists in the State of Florida, by which the
lives, liberty, and property of loyal citizens of the United States
are endangered:

And whereas it is deemed proper that all needful measures should be
taken for the protection of such citizens and all officers of the
United States in the discharge of their public duties in the State
aforesaid:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham LINCOLN, President of the
United States, do hereby direct the commander of the forces of the
United States on the Florida coast to permit no person to exercise
any office or authority upon the islands of Key West, the Tortugas,
and Santa Rosa, which may be inconsistent with the laws and
Constitution of the United States, authorizing him at the same time,
if he shall find it necessary, to suspend there the writ of habeas
corpus, and to remove from the vicinity of the United States
fortresses all dangerous or suspected persons.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.....................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TO SECRETARY WELLES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 11, 1861

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

SIR:-Lieut.  D. D. Porter was placed in command of the steamer
Powhatan, and Captain Samuel Mercer was detached therefrom, by my
special order, and neither of them is responsible for any apparent or
real irregularity on their part or in connection with that vessel.

Hereafter Captain Porter is relieved from that special service and
placed under the direction of the Navy Department, from which he will
receive instructions and to which he will report.

Very respectfully,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S CORRECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIC DESPATCH WRITTEN BY
THE SECRETARY OF STATE TO MINISTER ADAMS

NO. 10.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE.
WASHINGTON, May 21, 1861

SIR:---Mr. Dallas, in a brief despatch of May 2d (No. 333), tells us
that Lord John Russell recently requested an interview with him on
account of the solicitude which his lordship felt concerning the
effect of certain measures represented as likely to be adopted by the
President.  In that conversation the British secretary told Mr.
Dallas that the three representatives of the Southern Confederacy
were then in London, that Lord John Russell had not yet seen them,
but that he was not unwilling to see them unofficially.  He further
informed Mr. Dallas that an understanding exists between the British
and French governments which would lead both to take one and the same
course as to recognition.  His lordship then referred to the rumor of
a meditated blockade by us of Southern ports, and a discontinuance of
them as ports of entry.  Mr. Dallas answered that he knew nothing on
those topics, and therefore

     (The President's corrections, both in notes and text, are in
     caps. All matter between brackets was to be marked out.)

could say nothing.  He added that you were expected to arrive in two
weeks.  Upon this statement Lord John Russell acquiesced in the
expediency of waiting for the full knowledge you were expected to
bring.

Mr. Dallas transmitted to us some newspaper reports of ministerial
explanations made in Parliament.

You will base no proceedings on parliamentary debates further than to
seek explanations when necessary and communicate them to this
department. [We intend to have a clear and simple record of whatever
issue may arise between us and Great Britain.]

The President [is surprised and grieved] regrets that Mr. Dallas did
not protest against the proposed unofficial intercourse between the
British Government and the missionaries of the insurgents [as well as
against the demand for explanations made by the British Government].
It is due, however, to Mr. Dallas to say that our instructions had
been given only to you and not to him, and that his loyalty and
fidelity, too rare in these times [among our late representatives
abroad, are confessed and]  are appreciated.

Intercourse of any kind with the so-called commissioners is liable to
be construed as a recognition of the authority which appointed them.
Such intercourse would be none the less [wrongful] hurtful to us for
being called unofficial, and it might be even more injurious, because
we should have no means of knowing what points might be resolved by
it.  Moreover, unofficial intercourse is useless and meaningless if
it is not expected to ripen into official intercourse and direct
recognition.  It is left doubtful here whether the proposed
unofficial intercourse has yet actually begun. Your own [present]
antecedent instructions are deemed explicit enough, and it is hoped
that you have not misunderstood them.  You will in any event desist
from all intercourse whatever, unofficial as well as official, with
the British Government, so long as it shall continue intercourse of
either kind with the domestic enemies of this country [confining
yourself to a delivery of a copy of this paper to the Secretary of
State. After doing this.]  When intercourse shall have been arrested
for this cause, you will communicate with this department and receive
further directions.

Lord John Russell has informed us of an understanding between the
British and French governments that they will act together in regard
to our affairs.  This communication, however, loses something of its
value from the circumstance that the communication was withheld until
after knowledge of the fact had been acquired by us from other
sources.  We know also another fact that has not yet been officially
communicated to us--namely, that other European States are apprised
by France and England of their agreement, and are expected to concur
with or follow them in whatever measures they adopt on the subject of
recognition. The United States have been impartial and just in all
their conduct toward the several nations of Europe.  They will not
complain, however, of the combination now announced by the two
leading powers, although they think they had a right to expect a more
independent, if not a more friendly, course from each of them.  You
will take no notice of that or any other alliance.  Whenever the
European governments shall see fit to communicate directly with us,
we shall be, as heretofore, frank and explicit in our reply.

As to the blockade, you will say that by [the] our own laws [of
nature] and the laws of nature and the laws of nations, this
Government has a clear right to suppress insurrection.  An exclusion
of commerce from national ports which have been seized by the
insurgents, in the equitable form of blockade, is the proper means to
that end.  You will [admit] not insist that our blockade is [not] to
be respected if it be not maintained by a competent force; but
passing by that question as not now a practical, or at least an
urgent, one, you will add that [it] the blockade is now, and it will
continue to be so maintained, and therefore we expect it to be
respected by Great Britain.  You will add that we have already
revoked the exequatur of a Russian consul who had enlisted in the
military service of the insurgents, and we shall dismiss or demand
the recall of every foreign agent, consular or diplomatic, who shall
either disobey the Federal laws or disown the Federal authority.

As to the recognition of the so-called Southern Confederacy, it is
not to be made a subject of technical definition.  It is, of course,
[quasi] direct recognition to publish an acknowledgment of the
sovereignty and independence of a new power. It is [quasi] direct
recognition to receive its ambassadors, ministers, agents, or
commissioners officially.  A concession of belligerent rights is
liable to be construed as a recognition of them.  No one of these
proceedings will [be borne] pass [unnoticed] unquestioned by the
United States in this case.

Hitherto recognition has been moved only on the assumption that the
so-called Confederate States are de facto a self-sustaining power.
Now, after long forbearance, designed to soothe discontent and avert
the need of civil war, the land and naval forces of the United States
have been put in motion to repress the insurrection.  The true
character of the pretended new State is at once revealed.  It is seen
to be a power existing in pronunciamento only, It has never won a
field.  It has obtained no forts that were not virtually betrayed
into its hands or seized in breach of trust.  It commands not a
single port on the coast nor any highway out from its pretended
capital by land.  Under these circumstances Great Britain is called
upon to intervene and give it body and independence by resisting our
measures of suppression.  British recognition would be British
intervention to create within our own territory a hostile state by
overthrowing this republic itself.  [When this act of intervention is
distinctly performed, we from that hour shall cease to be friends,
and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be,
enemies of Great Britain.]

As to the treatment of privateers in the insurgent service, you will
say that this is a question exclusively our own.  We treat them as
pirates.  They are our own citizens, or persons employed by our
citizens, preying on the commerce of our country.  If Great Britain
shall choose to recognize them as lawful belligerents, and give them
shelter from our pursuit and punishment, the laws of nations afford
an adequate and proper remedy [and we shall avail ourselves of it.
And while you need not say this in advance, be sure that you say
nothing inconsistent with it.]

Happily, however, her Britannic Majesty's government can avoid all
these difficulties.  It invited us in 1856 to accede to the
declaration of the Congress of Paris, of which body Great Britain was
herself a member, abolishing privateering everywhere in all cases and
forever.  You already have our authority to propose to her our
accession to that declaration.  If she refuse to receive it, it can
only be because she is willing to become the patron of privateering
when aimed at our devastation.

These positions are not elaborately defended now, because to
vindicate them would imply a possibility of our waiving them.


1 We are not insensible of the grave importance of

1 (Drop all from this line to the end, and in lieu of it write, "This
paper is for your own guidance only, and not [sic] to be read or
shown to any one.)

(Secretary Seward, when the despatch was returned to him, added an
introductory paragraph stating that the document was strictly
confidential. For this reason these last two paragraphs remained as
they are here printed.)

this occasion. We see how, upon the result of the debate in which we
are engaged, a war may ensue between the United States and one, two,
or even more European nations.  War in any case is as exceptionable
from the habits as it is revolting from the sentiments of the
American people. But if it come, it will be fully seen that it
results from the action of Great Britain, not our own; that Great
Britain will have decided to fraternize with our domestic enemy,
either without waiting to hear from you our remonstrances and our
warnings, or after having heard them.  War in defense of national
life is not immoral, and war in defense of independence is an
inevitable part of the discipline of nations.

The dispute will be between the European and the American branches of
the British race.  All who belong to that race will especially
deprecate it, as they ought.  It may well be believed that men of
every race and kindred will deplore it.  A war not unlike it between
the same parties occurred at the close of the last century.  Europe
atoned by forty years of suffering for the error that Great Britain
committed in provoking that contest.  If that nation shall now repeat
the same great error, the social convulsions which will follow may
not be so long, but they will be more general.  When they shall have
ceased, it will, we think, be seen, whatever may have been the
fortunes of other nations, that it is not the United States that will
have come out of them with its precious Constitution altered or its
honestly obtained dominion in any degree abridged.  Great Britain has
but to wait a few months and all her present inconveniences will
cease with all our own troubles.  If she take a different course, she
will calculate for herself the ultimate as well as the immediate
consequences, and will consider what position she will hold when she
shall have forever lost the sympathies and the affections of the only
nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim.
In making that calculation she will do well to remember that in the
controversy she proposes to open we shall be actuated by neither
pride, nor passion, nor cupidity, nor ambition; but we shall stand
simply on the principle of self-preservation, and that our cause will
involve the independence of nations and the rights of human nature.

I am, Sir, respectfully your obedient servant,
W. H. S.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq., etc,




TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 21, 1861.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.
MY DEAR SIR:--Why cannot Colonel Small's Philadelphia regiment be
received?  I sincerely wish it could.  There is something strange
about it.  Give these gentlemen an interview, and take their
regiment.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR MORGAN.

WASHINGTON, May 12, 1861

GOVERNOR E. D. MORGAN, Albany, N.Y.

I wish to see you face to face to clear these difficulties about
forwarding troops from New York.

A. LINCOLN.




TO CAPTAIN DAHLGREEN.

EXECUTIVE, MANSION, May 23, 1863.

CAPT. DAHLGREEN.

MY DEAR SIR:--Allow me to introduce Col. J. A. McLernand, M.C. of my
own district in Illinois.  If he should desire to visit Fortress
Monroe, please introduce him to the captain of one of the vessels in
our service, and pass him down and back.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




LETTER OF CONDOLENCE TO ONE OF FIRST CASUALTIES

TO COLONEL ELLSWORTH'S PARENTS,
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 25, 1861

TO THE FATHER AND MOTHER
OF COL. ELMER E. ELLSWORTH.

MY DEAR SIR AND MADAME:--In the untimely loss of your noble son, our
affliction here is scarcely less than your own.  So much of promised
usefulness to one's country, and of bright hopes for one's self and
friends, have never been so suddenly dashed as in his fall.  In size,
in years, and in youthful appearance a boy only, his power to command
men was surpassingly great.   This power, combined with a fine
intellectual and indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military,
constituted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent in that
department I ever knew.  And yet he was singularly modest and
deferential in social intercourse.  My acquaintance with him began
less than two years ago; yet, through the latter half of the
intervening period, it was as intense as the disparity of our ages
and my engrossing engagements would permit.  To me he appeared to
have no indulgences or pastimes, and I never heard him utter a
profane or an intemperate word.  What was conclusive of his good
heart, he never forgot his parents.  The honors he labored for so
laudably, and for which, in the sad end, he so gallantly gave his
life, he meant for them no less than for himself.

In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your
sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of
my young friend and your brave and early fallen son.

May God give you the consolation which is beyond all early power.


Sincerely your friend in common affliction,
A. LINCOLN.




TO COLONEL BARTLETT.

WASHINGTON, May 27, 1861

COL. W. A. BARTLETT, New York.

The Naval Brigade was to go to Fort Monroe without trouble to the
government, and must so go or not at all.

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM ABOUT INDIANA REGIMENTS.

WASHINGTON, JUNE 11, 1861

 The government has already accepted ten regiments from the State of
Indiana.  I think at least six more ought to be received from that
State, two to be those of Colonel James W. McMillan and Colonel
William L. Brown, and the other four to be designated by the Governor
of the State of Indiana, and to be received into the volunteer
service of the United States according to the "Plan of Organization"
in the General Orders of the War Department, No.15.  When they report
to Major-General McClellan in condition to pass muster according to
that order, and with the approval of the Secretary of War to be
indorsed hereon, and left in his department, I direct that the whole
six, or any smaller number of such regiments, be received.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, JUNE 13, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--There is, it seems, a regiment in Massachusetts
commanded by Fletcher Webster, and which HON. Daniel Webster's old
friends very much wish to get into the service.  If it can be
received with the approval of your department and the consent of the
Governor of Massachusetts I shall indeed be much gratified.  Give Mr.
Ashmun a chance to explain fully.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, JUNE 13, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR--I think it is entirely safe to accept a fifth regiment
from Michigan, and with your approbation I should say a regiment
presented by Col. T. B. W. Stockton, ready for service within two
weeks from now, will be received.  Look at Colonel Stockton's
testimonials.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 17, 1861

HON. SECRETARY Of WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--With your concurrence, and that of the Governor of
Indiana, I am in favor of accepting into what we call the three
years' service any number not exceeding four additional regiments
from that State.  Probably they should come from the triangular
region between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, including my own old
boyhood home.  Please see HON. C. M. Allen, Speaker of the Indiana
House of Representatives, and unless you perceive good reason to the
contrary, draw up an order for him according to the above.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, JUNE 17,1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.
MY DEAR SIR:--With your concurrence, and that of the Governor of
Ohio, I am in favor of receiving into what we call the three years'
service any number not exceeding six additional regiments from that
State, unless you perceive good reasons to the contrary.  Please see
HON. John A. Gurley, who bears this, and make an order corresponding
with the above.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO N. W. EDWARDS

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 19, 1861

Hon. N. W. EDWARDS
MY DEAR SIR:
.............
.............
When you wrote me some time ago in reference to looking up something
in the departments here, I thought I would inquire into the thing and
write you, but the extraordinary pressure upon me diverted me from
it, and soon it passed out of my mind.  The thing you proposed, it
seemed to me, I ought to understand myself before it was set on foot
by my direction or permission; and I really had no time to make
myself acquainted with it.  Nor have I yet.  And yet I am unwilling,
of course, that you should be deprived of a chance to make something,
if it can be done without injustice to the Government, or to any
individual.  If you choose to come here and point out to me how this
can be done I shall not only not object, but shall be gratified to be
able to oblige you.

Your friend as ever

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 20, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:--Since you spoke to me yesterday about General J. H.
Lane, of Kansas, I have been reflecting upon the subject, and have
concluded that we need the service of such a man out there at once;
that we had better appoint him a brigadier-general of volunteers
to-day, and send him off with such authority to raise a force (I
think two regiments better than three, but as to this I am not
particular) as you think will get him into actual work quickest.
Tell him, when he starts, to put it through not to be writing or
telegraphing back here, but put it through.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

[Indorsement.]

General Lane has been authorized to raise two additional regiments of
volunteers.

SIMON CAMERON, Secretary o f War.




TO THE KENTUCKY DELEGATION.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 29, 1861.

GENTLEMEN OF THE KENTUCKY DELEGATION WHO ARE FOR THE UNION:

I somewhat wish to authorize my friend Jesse Bayles to raise a
Kentucky regiment, but I do not wish to do it without your consent.
If you consent, please write so at the bottom of this.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

We consent:
R. MALLORY.
H. GRIDER.
G. W. DUNLAP.
J. S. JACKSON.
C. A. WICKLIFFE.




August 5, 1861.

I repeat, I would like for Col. Bayles to raise a regiment of cavalry
whenever the Union men of Kentucky desire or consent to it.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER AUTHORIZING GENERAL SCOTT TO SUSPEND THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS,
JULY 2, 1861

TO THE COMMANDING GENERAL,
ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES:

You are engaged in suppressing an insurrection against the laws of
the United States.  If at any point on or in the vicinity of any
military line which is now or which shall be used between the city of
New York and the city of Washington you find resistance which renders
it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public
safety, you personally, or through the officer in command at the
point where resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that writ.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States at the city of
Washington, this second day of July, A.D. 1861, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, JULY 3, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF STATE.

MY DEAR SIR:--General Scott had sent me a copy of the despatch of
which you kindly sent one.  Thanks to both him and you.  Please
assemble the Cabinet at twelve to-day to look over the message and
reports.

And now, suppose you step over at once and let us see General Scott
(and) General Cameron about assigning a position to General Fremont.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS IN SPECIAL SESSION,
JULY 4, 1861.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--Having
been convened on an extraordinary occasion, as authorized by the
Constitution, your attention is not called to any ordinary subject of
legislation.

At the beginning of the present Presidential term, four months ago,
the functions of the Federal Government were found to be generally
suspended within the several States of South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, excepting only those of
the Post-Office Department.

Within these States all the forts, arsenals, dockyards,
custom-houses, and the like, including the movable and stationary
property in and about them, had been seized, and were held in open
hostility to this government, excepting only Forts Pickens, Taylor,
and Jefferson, on and near the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter, in
Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.  The forts thus seized had been
put in improved condition, new ones had been built, and armed forces
had been organized and were organizing, all avowedly with the same
hostile purpose.

The forts remaining in the possession of the Federal Government in
and near these States were either besieged or menaced by warlike
preparations, and especially Fort Sumter was nearly surrounded by
well-protected hostile batteries, with guns equal in quality to the
best of its own, and outnumbering the latter as perhaps ten to one.
A disproportionate share of the Federal muskets and rifles had
somehow found their way into these States, and had been seized to be
used against the government.  Accumulations of the public revenue
lying within them had been seized for the same object.  The navy was
scattered in distant seas, leaving but a very small part of it within
the immediate reach of the government.  Officers of the Federal army
and navy had resigned in great numbers; and of those resigning a
large proportion had taken up arms against the government.
Simultaneously, and in connection with all this, the purpose to sever
the Federal Union was openly avowed.  In accordance with this
purpose, an ordinance had been adopted in each of these States,
declaring the States respectively to be separated from the national
Union.  A formula for instituting a combined government of these
States had been promulgated; and this illegal organization, in the
character of confederate States, was already invoking recognition,
aid, and intervention from foreign powers.

Finding this condition of things, and believing it to be an
imperative duty upon the incoming executive to prevent, if possible,
the consummation of such attempt to destroy the Federal Union, a
choice of means to that end became indispensable.  This choice was
made and was declared in the inaugural address.  The policy chosen
looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful measures before a resort to
any stronger ones.  It sought only to hold the public places and
property not already wrested from the government, and to collect the
revenue, relying for the rest on time, discussion, and the
ballot-box.  It promised a continuance of the mails, at government
expense, to the very people who were resisting the government; and it
gave repeated pledges against any disturbance to any of the people,
or any of their rights.  Of all that which a President might
constitutionally and justifiably do in such a case, everything was
forborne without which it was believed possible to keep the
government on foot.

On the 5th of March (the present incumbent's first full day in
office), a letter of Major Anderson, commanding at Fort Sumter,
written on the 28th of February and received at the War Department on
the 4th of March, was by that department placed in his hands.  This
letter expressed the professional opinion of the writer that
reinforcements could not be thrown into that fort within the time for
his relief, rendered necessary by the limited supply of provisions,
and with a view of holding possession of the same, with a force of
less than twenty thousand good and well-disciplined men.  This
opinion was concurred in by all the officers of his command, and
their memoranda on the subject were made inclosures of Major
Anderson's letter.  The whole was immediately laid before
Lieutenant-General Scott, who at once concurred with Major Anderson
in opinion.  On reflection, however, he took full time, consulting
with other officers, both of the army and the navy, and at the end of
four days came reluctantly but decidedly to the same conclusion as
before.  He also stated at the same time that no such sufficient
force was then at the control of the government, or could be raised
and brought to the ground within the time when the provisions in the
fort would be exhausted.  In a purely military point of view, this
reduced the duty of the administration in the case to the mere matter
of getting the garrison safely out of the fort.

It was believed, however, that to so abandon that position, under the
circumstances, would be utterly ruinous; that the necessity under
which it was to be done would not be fully understood; that by many
it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy; that at home
it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its
adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter a recognition abroad;
that in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated.  This
could not be allowed.  Starvation was not yet upon the garrison, and
ere it would be reached Fort Pickens might be reinforced.  This last
would be a clear indication of policy, and would better enable the
country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter as a military
necessity.  An order was at once directed to be sent for the landing
of the troops from the steamship Brooklyn into Fort Pickens.  This
order could not go by land, but must take the longer and slower route
by sea.  The first return news from the order was received just one
week before the fall of Fort Sumter.  The news itself was that the
officer commanding the Sabine, to which vessel the troops had been
transferred from the Brooklyn, acting upon some quasi armistice of
the late administration (and of the existence of which the present
administration, up to the time the order was despatched, had only too
vague and uncertain rumors to fix attention), had refused to land the
troops.  To now reinforce Fort Pickens before a crisis would be
reached at Fort Sumter was impossible--rendered so by the near
exhaustion of provisions in the latter-named fort.  In precaution
against such a conjuncture, the government had, a few days before,
commenced preparing an expedition as well adapted as might be to
relieve Fort Sumter, which expedition was intended to be ultimately
used, or not, according to circumstances.  The strongest anticipated
case for using it was now presented, and it was resolved to send it
forward.  As had been intended in this contingency, it was also
resolved to notify the governor of South Carolina that he might
expect an attempt would be made to provision the fort; and that, if
the attempt should not be resisted, there would be no effort to throw
in men, arms, or ammunition, without further notice, or in case of an
attack upon the fort.  This notice was accordingly given; whereupon
the fort was attacked and bombarded to its fall, without even
awaiting the arrival of the provisioning expedition.

It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter
was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the
assailants.  They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no
possibility commit aggression upon them.  They knew--they were
expressly notified--that the giving of bread to the few brave and
hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be
attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke
more.  They knew that this government desired to keep the garrison in
the fort, not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible
possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate
dissolution--trusting, as hereinbefore stated, to time, discussion,
and the ballot-box for final adjustment; and they assailed and
reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object--to drive out the
visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to
immediate dissolution.  That this was their object the executive well
understood; and having said to them in the inaugural address, "You
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors," he
took pains not only to keep this declaration good, but also to keep
the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry that the world
should not be able to misunderstand it.  By the affair at Fort
Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached.
Then and thereby the assailants of the government began the conflict
of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their
fire, save only the few in the fort sent to that harbor years before
for their own protection, and still ready to give that protection in
whatever was lawful.  In this act, discarding all else, they have
forced upon the country the distinct issue, "immediate dissolution or
blood."

And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States.
It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a
constitutional republic or democracy--a government of the people by
the same people--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity
against its own domestic foes.  It presents the question whether
discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control
administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon
the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or
arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus
practically put an end to free government upon the earth.  It forces
us to ask: Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal
weakness?  Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the
liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own
existence?

So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war
power of the government, and so to resist force employed for its
destruction by force for its preservation.

The call was made, and the response of the country was most
gratifying, surpassing in unanimity and spirit the most sanguine
expectation.  Yet none of the States commonly called slave States,
except Delaware, gave a regiment through regular State organization.
A few regiments have been organized within some others of those
States by individual enterprise, and received into the government
service.  Of course the seceded States, so called (and to which Texas
had been joined about the time of the inauguration), gave no troops
to the cause of the Union.

The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some
of them being almost for the Union, while in others--as Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas--the Union sentiment was
nearly repressed and silenced.  The course taken in Virginia was the
most remarkable--perhaps the most important.  A convention elected by
the people of that State to consider this very question of disrupting
the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort
Sumter fell.  To this body the people had chosen a large majority of
professed Union men.  Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter,
many members of that majority went over to the original disunion
minority, and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the
State from the Union.  Whether this change was wrought by their great
approval of the assault upon Sumter, or their great resentment at the
government's resistance to that assault, is not definitely known.
Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of
the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month
distant, the convention and the Legislature (which was also in
session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State
not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State
were already out of the Union.  They pushed military preparations
vigorously forward all over the State.  They seized the United States
armory at Harper's Ferry, and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk.
They received perhaps invited--into their State large bodies of
troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded
States.  They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance
and co-operation with the so-called "Confederate States," and sent
members to their congress at Montgomery.  And finally, they permitted
the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their capital at
Richmond.

The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to
make its nest within her borders; and this government has no choice
left but to deal with it where it finds it.  And it has the less
regret as the loyal citizens have, in due form, claimed its
protection.  Those loyal citizens this government is bound to
recognize and protect, as being Virginia.

In the border States, so called,--in fact, the middle States,--there
are those who favor a policy which they call "armed neutrality"; that
is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one
way, or the disunion the other, over their soil.  This would be
disunion completed.  Figuratively speaking, it would be the building
of an impassable wall along the line of separation--and yet not quite
an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the
hands of Union men and freely pass supplies from among them to the
insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy.  At a
stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession,
except only what proceeds from the external blockade.  It would do
for the disunionists that which, of all things, they most desire--
feed them well and give them disunion without a struggle of their
own.  It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to
maintain the Union; and while very many who have favored it are
doubtless loyal citizens, it is, nevertheless, very injurious in
effect.

Recurring to the action of the government, it may be stated that at
first a call was made for 75,000 militia; and, rapidly following
this, a proclamation was issued for closing the ports of the
insurrectionary districts by proceedings in the nature of blockade.
So far all was believed to be strictly legal.  At this point the
insurrectionists announced their purpose to enter upon the practice
of privateering.

Other calls were made for volunteers to serve for three years, unless
sooner discharged, and also for large additions to the regular army
and navy.  These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were
ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand and a
public necessity; trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily
ratify them.  It is believed that nothing has been done beyond the
constitutional competency of Congress.

Soon after the first call for militia, it was considered a duty to
authorize the commanding general in proper cases, according to his
discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus,
or, in other words, to arrest and detain, without resort to the
ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might
deem dangerous to the public safety.  This authority has purposely
been exercised but very sparingly.  Nevertheless, the legality and
propriety of what has been done under it are questioned, and the
attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one
who has sworn to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed"
should not himself violate them.  Of course some consideration was
given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was
acted upon.  The whole of the laws which were required to be
faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in
nearly one third of the States.  Must they be allowed to finally fail
of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the
means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such
extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that, practically, it
relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very
limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are
all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go
to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not
the official oath be broken if the government should be overthrown
when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to
preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was
presented.  It was not believed that any law was violated.  The
provision of the Constitution that "the privilege of the writ of
habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of
rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it," is
equivalent to a provision--is a provision--that such privilege may be
suspended when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety
does require it.  It was decided that we have a case of rebellion,
and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of
the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made.  Now it is
insisted that Congress, and not the executive, is vested with this
power.  But the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is
to exercise the power; and as the provision was plainly made for a
dangerous emergency, it cannot be believed the framers of the
instrument intended that in every case the danger should run its
course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling
of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case, by the
rebellion.

No more extended argument is now offered, as an opinion at some
length will probably be presented by the attorney-general.  Whether
there shall be any legislation upon the subject, and if any, what, is
submitted entirely to the better judgment of Congress.

The forbearance of this government had been so extraordinary and so
long continued as to lead some foreign nations to shape their action
as if they supposed the early destruction of our national Union was
probable.  While this, on discovery, gave the executive some concern,
he is now happy to say that the sovereignty and rights of the United
States are now everywhere practically respected by foreign powers;
and a general sympathy with the country is manifested throughout the
world.

The reports of the Secretaries of the Treasury, War, and the Navy
will give the information in detail deemed necessary and convenient
for your deliberation and action; while the executive and all the
departments will stand ready to supply omissions, or to communicate
new facts considered important for you to know.

It is now recommended that you give the legal means for making this
contest a short and decisive one: that you place at the control of
the government for the work at least four hundred thousand men and
$400,000,000.  That number of men is about one-tenth of those of
proper ages within the regions where, apparently, all are willing to
engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-third part of the money
value owned by the men who seem ready to devote the whole.  A debt of
$600,000,000 now is a less sum per head than was the debt of our
Revolution when we came out of that struggle; and the money value in
the country now bears even a greater proportion to what it was then
than does the population.  Surely each man has as strong a motive now
to preserve our liberties as each had then to establish them.

A right result at this time will be worth more to the world than ten
times the men and ten times the money.  The evidence reaching us from
the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is
abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it
legal sanction, and the hand of the executive to give it practical
shape and efficiency.  One of the greatest perplexities of the
government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide
for them.  In a word, the people will save their government if the
government itself will do its part only indifferently well.

It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference whether
the present movement at the South be called "secession" or
"rebellion."  The movers, however, well understand the difference.  At
the beginning they knew they could never raise their treason to any
respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law.
They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of
devotion to law and order, and as much pride in and reverence for the
history and government of their common country as any other civilized
and patriotic people.  They knew they could make no advancement
directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments.
Accordingly, they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public
mind.  They invented an ingenious sophism which, if conceded, was
followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to
the complete destruction of the Union.  The sophism itself is that
any State of the Union may consistently with the national
Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from
the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State.
The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only
for just cause, themselves to be the sole judges of its justice, is
too thin to merit any notice.

With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have been drugging the public
mind of their section for more than thirty years, and until at length
they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms
against the government the day after some assemblage of men have
enacted the farcical pretense of taking their State out of the Union,
who could have been brought to no such thing the day before.

This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from
the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy
pertaining to a State--to each State of our Federal Union.  Our
States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in
the Union by the Constitution--no one of them ever having been a
State out of the Union.  The original ones passed into the Union even
before they cast off their British colonial dependence; and the new
ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of
dependence, excepting Texas.  And even Texas in its temporary
independence was never designated a State.  The new ones only took
the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name
was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of
Independence.  Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be
"free and independent States"; but even then the object plainly was
not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union, but
directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action
before, at the time, and afterward, abundantly show.  The express
plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the
Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be
perpetual, is most conclusive.  Having never been States either in
substance or in name outside of the Union, whence this magical
omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to
lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the
"sovereignty" of the States; but the word even is not in the national
Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions.
What is "sovereignty" in the political sense of the term? Would it be
far wrong to define it as "a political community without a political
superior"? Tested by this, no one of our States except Texas ever was
a sovereignty.  And even Texas gave up the character on coming into
the Union; by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the
United States, and the laws and treaties of the United States made in
pursuance of the Constitution, to be for her the supreme law of the
land.  The States have their status in the Union, and they have no
other legal status.  If they break from this, they can only do so
against law and by revolution.  The Union, and not themselves
separately, procured their independence and their liberty.  By
conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of
independence or liberty it has.  The Union is older than any of the
States, and, in fact, it created them as States.  Originally some
dependent colonies made the Union, and, in turn, the Union threw off
their old dependence for them, and made them States, such as they
are.  Not one of them ever had a State constitution independent of
the Union.  Of course, it is not forgotten that all the new States
framed their constitutions before they entered the Union
nevertheless, dependent upon and preparatory to coming into the
Union.

Unquestionably the States have the powers and rights reserved to them
in and by the national Constitution; but among these surely are not
included all conceivable powers, however mischievous or destructive,
but, at most, such only as were known in the world at the time as
governmental powers; and certainly a power to destroy the government
itself had never been known as a governmental, as a merely
administrative power.  This relative matter of national power and
State rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of
generality and locality.  Whatever concerns the whole should be
confided to the whole--to the General Government; while whatever
concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State.
This is all there is of original principle about it.  Whether the
national Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has
applied the principle with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned.
We are all bound by that defining, without question.

What is now combated is the position that secession is consistent
with the Constitution--is lawful and peaceful.  It is not contended
that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be
implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences.  The
nation purchased with money the countries out of which several of
these States were formed.  Is it just that they shall go off without
leave and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums (in the
aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida
of the aboriginal tribes.  Is it just that she shall now be off
without consent or without making any return? The nation is now in
debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding
States in common with the rest.  Is it just either that creditors
shall go unpaid or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the
present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas.
Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself?

Again, if one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall
have seceded, none is left to pay the debts.  Is this quite just for
creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we
borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing
the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if
others choose to go or to extort terms upon which they will promise
to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession.  They
have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which
of necessity they have either discarded or retained the right of
secession as they insist it exists in ours.   If they have discarded
it, they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours.
If they have retained it, by their own construction of ours, they
show that to be consistent they must secede from one another whenever
they shall find it the easiest way of settling their debts, or
effecting any other selfish or unjust object.  The principle itself
is one of disintegration and upon which no government can possibly
endure.

If all the States save one should assert the power to drive that one
out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder
politicians would at once deny the power and denounce the act as the
greatest outrage upon State rights.  But suppose that precisely the
same act, instead of being called "driving the one out," should be
called "the seceding of the others from that one," it would be
exactly what the seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, they make the
point that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what
the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do.
These politicians are subtle and profound on the rights of
minorities.  They are not partial to that power which made the
Constitution and speaks from the preamble calling itself "We, the
People."

It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the
legally qualified voters of any State except perhaps South Carolina
in favor of disunion.  There is much reason to believe that the Union
men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-
called seceded States.  The contrary has not been demonstrated in any
one of them.  It is ventured to affirm this even of Virginia and
Tennessee; for the result of an election held in military camps,
where the bayonets are all on one side of the question voted upon,
can scarcely be considered as demonstrating popular sentiment.  At
such an election, all that large class who are at once for the Union
and against coercion would be coerced to vote against the Union.

It may be affirmed without extravagance that the free institutions we
enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our
whole people beyond any example in the world.  Of this we now have a
striking and an impressive illustration.  So large an army as the
government has now on foot was never before known without a soldier
in it but who has taken his place there of his own free choice.  But
more than this, there are many single regiments whose members, one
and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts,
sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant,
is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there
could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps
a court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.
Nor do I say this is not true also in the army of our late friends,
now adversaries in this contest; but if it is, so much better the
reason why the government which has conferred such benefits on both
them and us should not be broken up.  Whoever in any section proposes
to abandon such a government would do well to consider in deference
to what principle it is that he does it; what better he is likely to
get in its stead; whether the substitute will give, or be intended to
give, so much of good to the people.  There are some foreshadowings
on this subject.  Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of
independence in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson,
they omit the words "all men are created equal."  Why? They have
adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which,
unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit "We, the
People," and substitute, "We, the deputies of the sovereign and
independent States."  Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view
the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people's contest.  On the side of the Union it
is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of
government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men to
lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of
laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a
fair chance in the race of life.  Yielding to partial and temporary
departures, from necessity; this is the leading object of the
government for whose existence we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and
appreciate this.  It is worthy of note that, while in this the
government's hour of trial large numbers of those in the army and
navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved
false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or
common sailor is known to have deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the
example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and
most important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common
soldiers and common sailors.  To the last man, so far as known, they
have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose
commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law.  This is
the patriotic instinct of the plain people.  They understand, without
an argument, that the destroying of the government which was made by
Washington means no good to them.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment.  Two
points in it our people have already settled--the successful
establishing and the successful administering of it.  One still
remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable internal
attempt to overthrow it.  It is now for them to demonstrate to the
world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a
rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of
bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally
decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that
there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at
succeeding elections.  Such will be a great lesson of peace:
teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can
they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners
of a war.

Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what
is to be the course of the government toward the Southern States
after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the executive deems
it proper to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided
by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no
different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal
Government relatively to the rights of the States and the people,
under the Constitution, than that expressed in the inaugural address.

He desires to preserve the government, that it may be administered
for all as it was administered by the men who made it.  Loyal
citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their government,
and the government has no right to withhold or neglect it.  It is not
perceived that in giving it there is any coercion, any conquest, or
any subjugation, in any just sense of those terms.

The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the
provision, that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in
this Union a republican form of government."  But if a State may
lawfully go out of the Union, having done so it may also discard the
republican form of government, so that to prevent its going out is an
indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guarantee
mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the
indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory.

It was with the deepest regret that the executive found the duty of
employing the war power in defense of the government forced upon him.
He could but perform this duty or surrender the existence of the
government.  No compromise by public servants could, in this case, be
a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no
popular government can long survive a marked precedent that those who
carry an election can only save the government from immediate
destruction by giving up the main point upon which the people gave
the election.  The people themselves, and not their servants, can
safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

As a private citizen the executive could not have consented that
these institutions shall perish; much less could he in betrayal of so
vast and so sacred a trust as these free people had confided to him.
He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to count the
chances of his own life, in what might follow.  In full view of his
great responsibility he has, so far, done what he has deemed his
duty.  You will now, according to your own judgment, perform yours.
He sincerely hopes that your views and your action may so accord with
his as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in
their rights of a certain and speedy restoration to them, under the
Constitution and the laws.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure
purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear
and with manly hearts.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,   July 4, 1861




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 6, 1861.

HON. SEC. OF INTERIOR.

MY DEAR SIR:--Please ask the Comr. of Indian Affairs, and of the
Gen'l Land Office to come with you, and see me at once. I want the
assistance of all of you in overhauling the list of appointments a
little before I send them to the Senate.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
9th instant, requesting a copy of correspondence upon the subject of
the incorporation of the Dominican republic with the Spanish
monarchy, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State; to whom
the resolution was referred.

WASHINGTON, July 11, 1861.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I transmit to Congress a copy of correspondence between the Secretary
of State and her Britannic Majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister
plenipotentiary accredited to this government, relative to the
exhibition of the products of industry of all nations, which is to
take place at London in the course of next year.  As citizens of the
United States may justly pride themselves upon their proficiency in
industrial arts, it is desirable that they should have proper
facilities toward taking part in the exhibition.  With this view I
recommend such legislation by Congress at this session as may be
necessary for that purpose.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WASHINGTON, July 16, 1861




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

As the United States have, in common with Great Britain and France, a
deep interest in the preservation and development of the fisheries
adjacent to the northeastern coast and islands of this continent, it
seems proper that we should concert with the governments of those
countries such measures as may be conducive to those important
objects.  With this view I transmit to Congress a copy of a
correspondence between the Secretary of State and the British
minister here, in which the latter proposes, on behalf of his
government, the appointment of a joint commission to inquire into the
matter, in order that such ulterior measures may be adopted as may be
advisable for the objects proposed. Such legislation recommended as
may be necessary to enable the executive to provide for a commissioner
on behalf of the United States:

WASHINGTON, JULY 19, 1861.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL

WASHINGTON, JULY 19, 1861

ADJUTANT-GENERAL:

I have agreed, and do agree, that the two Indian regiments named
within shall be accepted if the act of Congress shall admit it.  Let
there be no further question about it.

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDA OF MILITARY POLICY SUGGESTED BY THE
BULL RUN DEFEAT.

JULY 23, 1861

1. Let the plan for making the blockade effective be pushed forward
with all possible despatch.

2. Let the volunteer forces at Fort Monroe and vicinity under
General Butler be constantly drilled, disciplined, and instructed
without more for the present.

3. Let Baltimore be held as now, with a gentle but firm and certain
hand.

4. Let the force now under Patterson or Banks be strengthened and made
secure in its position.

5. Let the forces in Western Virginia act till further orders
according to instructions or orders from General McClellan.

6. [Let] General Fremont push forward his organization and operations
in the West as rapidly as possible, giving rather special attention
to Missouri.

7. Let the forces late before Manassas, except the three-months men,
be reorganized as rapidly as possible in their camps here and about
Arlington.

8. Let the three-months forces who decline to enter the longer service
be discharged as rapidly as circumstances will permit.

9. Let the new volunteer forces be brought forward as fast as
possible, and especially into the camps on the two sides of the river
here.

When the foregoing shall be substantially attended to:

1. Let Manassas Junction (or some point on one or other of the
railroads near it) and Strasburg be seized, and permanently held,
with an open line from Washington to Manassas, and an open line from
Harper's Ferry to Strasburg the military men to find the way of doing
these.

2. This done, a joint movement from Cairo on Memphis; and from
Cincinnati on East Tennessee.




TO THE GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 24, 1861

THE GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY.

SIR:--Together with the regiments of three years' volunteers which
the government already has in service in your State, enough to make
eight in all, if tendered in a reasonable time, will be accepted, the
new regiments to be taken, as far as convenient, from the three
months' men and officers just discharged, and to be organized,
equipped, and sent forward as fast as single regiments are ready, On
the same terms as were those already in the service from that State.

Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.

[Indorsement.]

This order is entered in the War Department, and the Governor of New
Jersey is authorized to furnish the regiments with wagons and horses.

S.  CAMERON, Secretary of War.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
22d instant; requesting a copy of the correspondence between this,
government and foreign powers with reference to maritime right, I
transmit a report from the Secretary of State.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WASHINGTON, July 25, 1861




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
15th instant, requesting a copy of the correspondence between this
government and foreign powers on the subject of the existing
insurrection in the United States, I transmit a report from the
Secretary of State.

WASHINGTON, July 25, 1861.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CHASE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, JULY 16, 1861

MR CHASE:--The bearer, Mr._____ , wants ________in the custom house
at Baltimore.  If his recommendations are satisfactory, and I
recollect them to have been so, the fact that he is urged by the
Methodists should be in his favor, as they complain of us some.

LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
24th instant, asking the grounds, reasons, and evidence upon which
the police Commissioners of Baltimore were arrested and are now
detained as prisoners at Port McHenry, I have to state that it is
judged to be incompatible with the public interest at this time to
furnish the information called for by the resolution.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WASHINGTON, JULY 27, 1861




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the 19th instant
requesting information concerning the quasi armistice alluded to in
my message of the 4th instant, I transmit a report from the Secretary
of the Navy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
JULY 30, 1861




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the 23d instant
requesting information concerning the imprisonment of Lieutenant John
J. Worden (John L. Worden) of the United States navy, I transmit a
report from the Secretary of the Navy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
July 30, 1861




ORDER TO UNITED STATES MARSHALS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C.,
JULY 31, 1861

The Marshals of the United States in the vicinity of forts where
political prisoners are held will supply decent lodging and
sustenance for such prisoners unless they shall prefer to provide in
those respects for themselves, in which case they will be allowed to
do so by the commanding officer in charge.

Approved, and the Secretary of the State will transmit the order to
the Marshals, to the Lieutenant-General, and the Secretary of the
Interior.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of
yesterday, requesting information regarding the imprisonment of loyal
citizens of the United States by the forces now in rebellion against
this government, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, and
the copy of a telegraphic despatch by which it was accompanied.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WASHINGTON, August 2, 1861.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In answer to the resolution of your honorable body of date July 31,
1861, requesting the President to inform the Senate whether the Hon.
James H. Lane, a member of that body from Kansas, has been appointed
a brigadier-general in the army of the United States, and if so,
whether he has accepted such appointment, I have the honor to
transmit herewith certain papers, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7,
which, taken together, explain themselves, and which contain all the
information I possess upon the questions propounded.

It was my intention, as shown by my letter of June 20, 1861, to
appoint Hon. James H. Lane, of Kansas, a brigadier-general of United
States volunteers in anticipation of the act of Congress, since
passed, for raising such volunteers; and I have no further knowledge
upon the subject, except as derived from the papers herewith
enclosed.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 5, 1861




TO SECRETARY CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, AUGUST 7, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR

MY DEAR SIR:--The within paper, as you see, is by HON. John S. Phelps
and HON. Frank P. Blair, Jr., both members of the present Congress
from Missouri.  The object is to get up an efficient force of
Missourians in the southwestern part of the State.  It ought to be
done, and Mr. Phelps ought to have general superintendence of it.
I see by a private report to me from the department that eighteen
regiments are already accepted from Missouri.  Can it not be arranged
that part of them (not yet organized, as I understand) may be taken
from the locality mentioned and put under the control of Mr. Phelps,
and let him have discretion to accept them for a shorter term than
three years--or the war--understanding, however, that he will get
them for the full term if he can? I hope this can be done, because
Mr. Phelps is too zealous and efficient and understands his ground
too well for us to lose his service.  Of course provision for arming,
equipping, etc., must be made.  Mr. Phelps is here, and wishes to
carry home with him authority for this matter.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN




PROCLAMATION OF A NATIONAL FAST-DAY,
AUGUST 12, 1861.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA

A Proclamation.

Whereas a joint committee of both houses of Congress has waited on
the President of the United States and requested him to "recommend a
day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting to be observed by the
people of the United States with religious solemnities and the
offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and
welfare of these States, His blessings on their arms, and a speedy
restoration of peace"; and

Whereas it is fit and becoming in all people at all times to
acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God, to bow in
humble submission to His chastisements, to confess and deplore their
sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to pray with all fervency and
contrition for the pardon of their past offences and for a blessing
upon their present and prospective action; and

Whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God,
united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and
civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God
in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own
faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves
before Him and to pray for His mercy-to pray that we may be spared
further punishment, though most justly deserved, that our arms may be
blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of order, law,
and peace throughout the wide extent of our country, and that the
inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His
guidance and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers,
may be restored in all its original excellence

Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do
appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation,
prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation.  And I do
earnestly recommend to all the people, and especially to all
ministers and teachers of religion of all denominations and to all
heads of families, to observe and keep that day according to their
several creeds and modes of worship in all humility and with all
religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer of the nation
may ascend to the Throne of Grace and bring down plentiful blessings
upon our country.

          In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand
          and caused the seal of the United States to
[SEAL.]   be affixed, this twelfth day of August, A. D.
          1861, and of the independence of the United
          States of America the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary o f State.




TO JAMES POLLOCK.

WASHINGTON, AUGUST 15, 1861

HON. JAMES POLLOCK.

MY DEAR SIR:--You must make a job for the bearer of this--make a job
of it with the collector and have it done.  You can do it for me and
you must.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON.

WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 15, 1861

GOVERNOR MORTON, Indiana:
Start your four regiments to St.  Louis at the earliest moment
possible.  Get such harness as may be necessary for your rifled gums.
Do not delay a single regiment, but hasten everything forward as soon
as any one regiment is ready.  Have your three additional regiments
organized at once.  We shall endeavor to send you the arms this week.
A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FREMONT,

WASHINGTON, August 15, 1861

TO MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

Been answering your messages since day before yesterday.  Do you
receive the answers?  The War Department has notified all the
governors you designate to forward all available force.  So
telegraphed you.  Have you received these messages? Answer
immediately.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION FORBIDDING INTERCOURSE WITH
REBEL STATES, AUGUST 16, 1861.
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas on the fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-
one, the President of the United States, in view of an insurrection
against the laws, Constitution, and government of the United States
which had broken out within the States of South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and in pursuance
of the provisions of the act entitled "An act to provide for calling
forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress
insurrections, and repel invasions, and to repeal the act now in
force for that purpose," approved February twenty-eighth, seventeen
hundred and ninety-five, did call forth the militia to suppress said
insurrection, and to cause the laws of the Union to be duly executed,
and the insurgents have failed to disperse by the time directed by
the President; and whereas such insurrection has since broken out and
yet exists within the States of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Arkansas; and whereas the insurgents in all the said States claim
to act under the authority thereof, and such claim is not disclaimed
or repudiated by the persons exercising the functions of government
in such State or States, or in the part or parts thereof in which
such combinations exist, nor has such insurrection been suppressed by
said States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
in pursuance of an act of Congress approved July thirteen, eighteen
hundred and sixty-one, do hereby declare that the inhabitants of the
said States of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and
Florida (except the inhabitants of that part of the State of Virginia
lying west of the Allegheny Mountains, and of such other parts of
that State, and the other States hereinbefore named, as may maintain
a loyal adhesion to the Union and the Constitution, or may be time to
time occupied and controlled by forces of the United States engaged
in the dispersion of said insurgents), are in a state of insurrection
against the United States, and that all commercial intercourse
between the same and the inhabitants thereof, with the exceptions
aforesaid, and the citizens of other States and other parts of the
United States, is unlawful, and will remain unlawful until such
insurrection shall cease or has been suppressed; that all goods and
chattels, wares and merchandise, coming from any of said States, with
the exceptions aforesaid, into other parts of the United States,
without the special license and permission of the President, through
the Secretary of the Treasury, or proceeding to any of said States,
with the exceptions aforesaid, by land or water, together with the
vessel or vehicle conveying the same, or conveying persons to or from
said States, with said exceptions, will be forfeited to the United
States; and that from and after fifteen days from the issuing of this
proclamation all ships and vessels belonging in whole or in part to
any citizen or inhabitant of any of said States, with said
exceptions, found at sea, or in any port of the United States, will
be forfeited to the United States; and I hereby enjoin upon all
district attorneys, marshals, and officers of the revenue and of the
military and naval forces of the United States to be vigilant in the
execution of said act, and in the enforcement of the penalties and
forfeitures imposed or declared by it; leaving any party who may
think himself aggrieved thereby to his application to the Secretary
of the Treasury for the remission of any penalty or forfeiture, which
the said Secretary is authorized by law to grant if, in his judgment,
the special circumstances of any case shall require such remission.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand,...................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of Sate.




TO SECRETARY CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 17, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--Unless there be reason to the contrary, not known to
me, make out a commission for Simon B. Buckner, of Kentucky, as a
brigadier-general of volunteers. It is to be put into the hands of
General Anderson, and delivered to General Buckner or not, at the
discretion of General Anderson.  Of course it is to remain a secret
unless and until the commission is delivered.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN

Same day made.

[Indorsement.]




TO GOVERNOR MAGOFFIN,

WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 24, 1861

To HIS EXCELLENCY B. MAGOFFIN,
Governor of the State of Kentucky.

SIR:--Your letter of the 19th instant, in which you urge the "removal
from the limits of Kentucky of the military force now organized and
in camp within that State," is received.

I may not possess full and precisely accurate knowledge upon this
subject; but I believe it is true that there is a military force in
camp within Kentucky, acting by authority of the United States, which
force is not very large, and is not now being augmented.

I also believe that some arms have been furnished to this force by
the United States.

I also believe this force consists exclusively of Kentuckians, having
their camp in the immediate vicinity of their own homes, and not
assailing or menacing any of the good people of Kentucky.

In all I have done in the premises I have acted upon the urgent
solicitation of many Kentuckians, and in accordance with what I
believed, and still believe, to be the wish of a majority of all the
Union-loving people of Kentucky.

While I have conversed on this subject with many eminent men of
Kentucky, including a large majority of her members of Congress, I do
not remember that any one of them, or any other person, except your
Excellency and the bearers of your Excellency's letter, has urged me
to remove the military force from Kentucky or to disband it.  One
other very worthy citizen of Kentucky did solicit me to have the
augmenting of the force suspended for a time.

Taking all the means within my reach to form a judgment, I do not
believe it is the popular wish of Kentucky that this force shall be
removed beyond her limits; and, with this impression, I must
respectfully decline to so remove it.

I most cordially sympathize with your Excellency in the wish to
preserve the peace of my own native State, Kentucky.  It is with
regret I search, and cannot find, in your not very short letter, any
declaration or intimation that you entertain any desire for the
preservation of the Federal Union.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 2, 1861

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT.

MY DEAR SIR:--Two points in your proclamation of August 30 give me
some anxiety.

First.  Should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the
Confederates would very certainly shoot our best men in their hands
in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely.  It is, therefore,
my order that you allow no man to be shot under the proclamation
without first having my approbation or consent.

Second.  I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, in
relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating slaves of
traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn
them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky.
Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion,
modify that paragraph so as to conform to the first and fourth
sections of the act of Congress entitled "An act to confiscate
property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6, 1861,
and a copy of which act I herewith send you.

This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure.  I
send it by special messenger, in order that it may certainly and
speedily reach you.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNORS WASHBURN OF MAINE, FAIRBANKS OF VERMONT, BERRY
OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, ANDREW OF MASSACHUSETTS, BUCKINGHAM OF CONNECTICUT,
AND SPRAGUE OF RHODE ISLAND.

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 11, 1861.

General Butler proposes raising in New England six regiments, to be
recruited and commanded by himself, and to go on special service.

I shall be glad if you, as governor of ______, will answer by
telegraph if you consent.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 11, 1861

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT.

SIR:-Yours of the 8th, in answer to mine of the 2d instant, is just
received.  Assuming that you, upon the ground, could better judge of
the necessities of your position than I could at this distance, on
seeing your proclamation of August 30 I perceived no general objection
to it.  The particular clause, however, in relation to the
confiscation of property and the liberation of slaves appeared to me
to be objectionable in its nonconformity to the act of Congress
passed the 6th of last August upon the same subjects; and hence I
wrote you, expressing my wish that that clause should be modified
accordingly.  Your answer, just received, expresses the preference on
your part that I should make an open order for the modification,
which I very cheerfully do.  It is therefore ordered that the said
clause of said proclamation be so modified, held, and construed as to
conform to, and not to transcend, the provisions on the same subject
contained in the act of Congress entitled "An act to confiscate
property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6, 1861,
and that said act be published at length with this order.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO MRS. FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, D.C.,
September 12, 1861

Mrs. GENERAL FREMONT.

MY DEAR MADAM:--Your two notes of to-day are before me.  I answered
the letter you bore me from General Fremont on yesterday, and not
hearing from you during the day, I sent the answer to him by mail.
It is not exactly correct, as you say you were told by the elder Mr.
Blair, to say that I sent Postmaster-General Blair to St.  Louis to
examine into that department and report.  Postmaster-General Blair
did go, with my approbation, to see and converse with General Fremont
as a friend.  I do not feel authorized to furnish you with copies of
letters in my possession without the consent of the writers.  No
impression has been made on my mind against the honor or integrity of
General Fremont, and I now enter my protest against being understood
as acting in any hostility toward him.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOSEPH HOLT,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, SEPTEMBER 12, 1861

HON. JOSEPH HOLT.

DEAR SIR:-Yours of this day in relation to the late proclamation of
General Fremont is received yesterday I addressed a letter to him, by
mail, on the same subject, and which is to be made public when he
receives it.  I herewith send you a copy of that letter, which
perhaps shows my position as distinctly as any new one I could write.
I will thank you not to make it public until General Fremont shall
have had time to receive the original.

Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL SCOTT

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 16, 1861.

DEAR SIR:--Since conversing with you I have concluded to request you
to frame an order for recruiting North Carolinians at Fort Hatteras.
I suggest it to be so framed as for us to accept a smaller force--
even a company--if we cannot get a regiment or more.  What is
necessary to now say about officers you will judge.   Governor Seward
says he has a nephew (Clarence A. Seward, I believe) who would be
willing to go and play colonel and assist in raising the force.
Still it is to be considered whether the North Carolinians will not
prefer officers of their own.  I should expect they would.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 18, 1861

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.
MY DEAR SIR:--To guard against misunderstanding, I think fit to say
that the joint expedition of the army and navy agreed upon some time
since, and in which General T. W. Sherman was and is to bear a
conspicuous part, is in no wise to be abandoned, but must be ready to
move by the 1st of, or very early in, October.   Let all preparations
go forward accordingly.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL FREMONT,

WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 12, 1861

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

Governor Morton telegraphs as follows: "Colonel Lane, just arrived by
special train, represents Owensborough, forty miles above Evansville,
in possession of secessionists.  Green River is navigable.
Owensborough must be seized.  We want a gunboat sent up from Paducah
for that purpose."  Send up the gunboat if, in your discretion, you
think it right.  Perhaps you had better order those in charge of the
Ohio River to guard it vigilantly at all points.

A. LINCOLN.




To O. H. BROWNING.

(Private and Confidential)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
SEPTEMBER 22, 1861

HON. O. H. BROWNING.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 17th is just received; and coming from you,
I confess it astonishes me.  That you should object to my adhering to
a law which you had assisted in making and presenting to me less than
a month before is odd enough.  But this is a very small part.
General Fremont's proclamation as to confiscation of property and the
liberation of slaves is purely political and not within the range of
military law or necessity.  If a commanding general finds a necessity
to seize the farm of a private owner for a pasture, an encampment, or
a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it as long
as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because
within military necessity.  But to say the farm shall no longer
belong to the owner, or his heirs forever, and this as well when the
farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely
political, without the savor of military law about it.  And the same
is true of slaves.  If the general needs them, he can seize them and
use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their
permanent future condition.   That must be settled according to laws
made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations.  The
proclamation in the point in question is simply "dictatorship."  It
assumes that the general may do anything he pleases confiscate the
lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal
ones.  And going the whole figure, I have no doubt, would be more
popular with some thoughtless people than that which has been done,
But I cannot assume this reckless position, nor allow others to
assume it on my responsibility.

You speak of it as being the only means of saving the government.  On
the contrary, it is itself the surrender of the government.  Can it
be pretended that it is any longer the Government of the United
States--any government of constitution and laws wherein a general or
a president may make permanent rules of property by proclamation? I
do not say Congress might not with propriety pass a law on the point,
just such as General Fremont proclaimed.

I do not say I might not, as a member of Congress, vote for it.  What
I object to is, that I, as President, shall expressly or impliedly
seize and exercise the permanent legislative functions of the
government.

So much as to principle.  Now as to policy.  No doubt the thing was
popular in some quarters, and would have been more so if it had been
a general declaration of emancipation.  The Kentucky Legislature
would not budge till that proclamation was modified; and General
Anderson telegraphed me that on the news of General Fremont having
actually issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our
volunteers threw down their arms and disbanded.  I was so assured as
to think it probable that the very arms we had furnished Kentucky
would be turned against us.  I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the
same as to lose the whole game.  Kentucky gone, we cannot hold
Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland.  These all against us, and the
job on our hands is too large for us.  We would as well consent to
separation at once, including the surrender of this Capital.  On the
contrary, if you will give up your restlessness for new positions,
and back me manfully on the grounds upon which you and other kind
friends gave me the election and have approved in my public
documents, we shall go through triumphantly.  You must not understand
I took my course on the proclamation because of Kentucky.  I took the
same ground in a private letter to General Fremont before I heard
from Kentucky.

You think I am inconsistent because I did not also forbid General
Fremont to shoot men under the proclamation.  I understand that part
to be within military law, but I also think, and so privately wrote
General Fremont, that it is impolitic in this, that our adversaries
have the power, and will certainly exercise it, to shoot as many of
our men as we shoot of theirs.   I did not say this in the public
letter, because it is a subject I prefer not to discuss in the
hearing of our enemies.

There has been no thought of removing General Fremont on any ground
connected with his proclamation, and if there has been any wish for
his removal on any ground, our mutual friend Sam.  Glover can
probably tell you what it was.  I hope no real necessity for it
exists on any ground.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN




MEMORANDUM FOR A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
[OCTOBER 1?] 1861

On or about the 5th of October (the exact date to be determined
hereafter) I wish a movement made to seize and hold a point on the
railroad connecting Virginia and Tennessee near the mountain-pass
called Cumberland Gap.  That point is now guarded against us by
Zollicoffer, with 6000 or 8000 rebels at Barboursville Ky.,--say
twenty-five miles from the Gap, toward Lexington.   We have a force
of 5000 or 6000 under General Thomas, at Camp Dick Robinson, about
twenty-five miles from Lexington and seventy-five from Zollicoffer's
camp, On the road between the two.  There is not a railroad anywhere
between Lexington and the point to be seized, and along the whole
length of which the Union sentiment among the people largely
predominates.  We have military possession of the railroad from
Cincinnati to Lexington, and from Louisville to Lexington, and some
home guards, under General Crittenden, are on the latter line.   We
have possession of the railroad from Louisville to Nashville, Tenn.,
so far as Muldraugh's Hill, about forty miles, and the rebels have
possession of that road all south of there.  At the Hill we have a
force of 8000, under General Sherman, and about an equal force of
rebels is a very short distance south, under General Buckner.

We have a large force at Paducah, and a smaller at Port Holt, both on
the Kentucky side, with some at Bird's Point, Cairo, Mound City,
Evansville, and New Albany, all on the other side, and all which,
with the gunboats on the river, are perhaps sufficient to guard the
Ohio from Louisville to its mouth.

About supplies of troops, my general idea is that all from Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, not now elsewhere,
be left to Fremont.  All from Indiana and Michigan, not now
elsewhere, be sent to Anderson at Louisville.  All from Ohio needed
in western Virginia be sent there, and any remainder be sent to
Mitchell at Cincinnati, for Anderson.  All east of the mountains be
appropriated to McClellan and to the coast.

As to movements, my idea is that the one for the coast and that on
Cumberland Gap be simultaneous, and that in the meantime preparation,
vigilant watching, and the defensive only be acted upon; this,
however, not to apply to Fremont's operations in northern and middle
Missouri.  That before these movements Thomas and Sherman shall
respectively watch but not attack Zollicoffer and Buckner.  That when
the coast and Gap movements shall be ready Sherman is merely to stand
fast, while all at Cincinnati and all at Louisville, with all on the
line, concentrate rapidly at Lexington, and thence to Thomas's camp,
joining him, and the whole thence upon the Gap.  It is for the
military men to decide whether they can find a pass through the
mountains at or near the Gap which cannot be defended by the enemy
with a greatly inferior force, and what is to be done in regard to
this.

The coast and Gap movements made, Generals McClellan and Fremont, in
their respective departments, will avail themselves of any advantages
the diversions may present.

[He was entirely unable to get this started, Sherman would have taken
an active part if given him, the others were too busy getting lines
of communication guarded--and discovering many "critical" supply
items that had not been sent them.   Also the commanding general did
not like it.   D.W.]




TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, October 4, 1861

HONORABLE SECRETARY OF STATE.

DEAR SIR:--Please see Mr. Walker, well vouched as a Union man and
son-in-law of Governor Morehead, and pleading for his release.  I
understand the Kentucky arrests were not made by special direction
from here, and I am willing if you are that any of the parties may be
released when James Guthrie and James Speed think they should be.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO THE VICEROY OF EGYPT.

WASHINGTON, October 11, 1861.

GREAT AND GOOD FRIEND:--I have received from Mr. Thayer, Consul-
General of the United States at Alexandria, a full account of the
liberal, enlightened, and energetic proceedings which, on his
complaint, you have adopted in bringing to speedy and condign
punishment the parties, subjects of your Highness in Upper Egypt, who
were concerned in an act of criminal persecution against Faris, an
agent of certain Christian missionaries in Upper Egypt.  I pray your
Highness to be assured that these proceedings, at once so prompt and
so just, will be regarded as a new and unmistakable proof equally of
your Highness's friendship for the United States and of the firmness,
integrity and wisdom, with which the government of your Highness is
conducted.  Wishing you great prosperity and success, I am your
friend,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

HIS HIGHNESS MOHAMMED SAID PACHA,
Viceroy of Egypt and its Dependencies, etc.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




ORDER AUTHORIZING SUSPENSION OF THE WRIT OF
HABEAS CORPUS.

October 14 1861

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT:

The military line of the United States for the suppression of the
insurrection may be extended so far as Bangor, in Maine.  You and any
officer acting under your authority are hereby authorized to suspend
the writ of habeas corpus in any place between that place and the
city of Washington.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TO SECRETARY OF INTERIOR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, October 14, 1861

HON. SEC. OF INTERIOR.

DEAR SIR:--How is this? I supposed I was appointing for register of
wills a citizen of this District.  Now the commission comes to me
"Moses Kelly, of New Hampshire."  I do not like this.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TWO SONS WHO WANT TO WORK

TO MAJOR RAMSEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, October 17, 1861

MAJOR RAMSEY.

MY DEAR SIR:--The lady bearer of this says she has two sons who want
to work.  Set them at it if possible.  Wanting to work is so rare a
want that it should be encouraged.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL THOMAS W. SHERMAN.

WASHINGTON, October 18, 1861.

GENERAL THOMAS SHERMAN, Annapolis, Md.:

Your despatch of yesterday received and shown to General McClellan.
I have promised him not to direct his army here without his consent.
I do not think I shall come to Annapolis.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL CURTIS, WITH INCLOSURES.

WASHINGTON, October 24, 1861

BRIGADIER-GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

MY DEAR SIR:--Herewith is a document--half letter, half order--which,
wishing you to see, but not to make public, I send unsealed.  Please
read it and then inclose it to the officer who may be in command of
the Department of the West at the time it reaches him.  I cannot now
know whether Fremont or Hunter will then be in command.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




WASHINGTON, October 24, 1861

BRIGADIER-GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

DEAR SIR:--On receipt of this, with the accompanying inclosures, you
will take safe, certain, and suitable measures to have the inclosure
addressed to Major-General Fremont delivered to him with all
reasonable despatch, subject to these conditions only:  that if, when
General Fremont shall be reached by the messenger--yourself or any
one sent by you--he shall then have, in personal command, fought and
won a battle, or shall then be actually in a battle, or shall then be
in the immediate presence of the enemy in expectation of a battle, it
is not to be delivered, but held for further orders.  After, and not
till after, the delivery to General Fremont, let the inclosure
addressed to General Hunter be delivered to him.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.



(General Orders No.  18.)
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,

WASHINGTON, October 24, 1861

Major-General Fremont, of the United States Army, the present
commander of the Western Department of the same, will, on the receipt
of this order, call Major-General Hunter, of the United States
Volunteers, to relieve him temporarily in that command, when he
(Major-General Fremont) will report to general headquarters by letter
for further orders.

WINFIELD SCOTT.
By command: E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General.




WASHINGTON, October 24, 1861

TO THE COMMANDER OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF THE WEST.

SIR:--The command of the Department of the West having devolved upon
you, I propose to offer you a few suggestions.  Knowing how hazardous
it is to bind down a distant commander in the field to specific lines
and operations, as so much always depends on a knowledge of
localities and passing events, it is intended, therefore, to leave a
considerable margin for the exercise of your judgment and discretion.

The main rebel army (Price's) west of the Mississippi is believed to
have passed Dade County in full retreat upon northwestern Arkansas,
leaving Missouri almost freed from the enemy, excepting in the
southeast of the State.  Assuming this basis of fact, it seems
desirable, as you are not likely to overtake Price, and are in danger
of making too long a line from your own base of supplies and
reinforcements, that you should give up the pursuit, halt your main
army, divide it into two corps of observation, one occupying Sedalia
and the other Rolla, the present termini of railroads; then recruit
the condition of both corps by re-establishing and improving their
discipline and instructions, perfecting their clothing and
equipments, and providing less uncomfortable quarters.  Of course,
both railroads must be guarded and kept open, judiciously employing
just so much force as is necessary for this.  From these two points,
Sedalia and Rolla, and especially in judicious cooperation with Lane
on the Kansas border, it would be so easy to concentrate and repel
any army of the enemy returning on Missouri from the southwest, that
it is not probable any such attempt will be made before or during the
approaching cold weather.  Before spring the people of Missouri will
probably be in no favorable mood to renew for next year the troubles
which have so much afflicted and impoverished them during this.  If
you adopt this line of policy, and if, as I anticipate, you will see
no enemy in great force approaching, you will have a surplus of force
which you can withdraw from these points and direct to others as may
be needed, the railroads furnishing ready means of reinforcing these
main points if occasion requires.  Doubtless local uprisings will for
a time continue to occur, but these can be met by detachments and
local forces of our own, and will ere long tire out of themselves.

While, as stated in the beginning of the letter, a large discretion
must be and is left with yourself, I feel sure that an indefinite
pursuit of Price or an attempt by this long and circuitous route to
reach Memphis will be exhaustive beyond endurance, and will end in
the loss of the whole force engaged in it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER RETIRING GENERAL SCOTT AND APPOINTING
GENERAL McCLELLAN HIS SUCCESSOR.
(General Orders, No.94.)

WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE

WASHINGTON, November 1, 1861

The following order from the President of the United States,
announcing the retirement from active command of the honored veteran
Lieutenant general Winfield Scott, will be read by the army with
profound regret:




EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON.

November 1, 1861

On the 1st day of November, A.D. 1861, upon his own application to
the President of the United States, Brevet Lieutenant-General
Winfield Scott is ordered to be placed, and hereby is placed, upon
the list of retired officers of the army of the United States,
without reduction in his current pay, subsistence, or allowances.

The American people will hear with sadness and deep emotion that
General Scott has withdrawn from the active control of the army,
while the President and a unanimous Cabinet express their own and the
nation's sympathy in his personal affliction and their profound sense
of the important public services rendered by him to his country
during his long and brilliant career, among which will ever be
gratefully distinguished his faithful devotion to the Constitution,
the Union, and the flag when assailed by parricidal rebellion.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN



The President is pleased to direct that Major general George B.
McClellan assume the command of the army of the United States.  The
headquarters of the army will be established in the city of
Washington.  All communications intended for the commanding general
will hereafter be addressed direct to the adjutant-general.  The
duplicate returns, orders, and other papers heretofore sent to the
assistant adjutant-general, headquarters of the army, will be
discontinued.

By order of the Secretary of War:
L. THOMAS, Adjutant General.




ORDER APPROVING THE PLAN OF GOVERNOR GAMBLE
OF MISSOURI.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

November 5, 1861.

The Governor of the State of Missouri, acting under the direction of
the convention of that State, proposes to the Government of the
United States that he will raise a military force to serve within the
State as State militia during the war there, to cooperate with the
troops in the service of the United States in repelling the invasion
of the State and suppressing rebellion therein; the said State
militia to be embodied and to be held in the camp and in the field,
drilled, disciplined, and governed according to the Army Regulations
and subject to the Articles of War; the said State militia not to be
ordered out of the State except for the immediate defense of the
State of Missouri, but to co-operate with the troops in the service
of the United States in military operations within the State or
necessary to its defense, and when officers of the State militia act
with officers in the service of the United States of the same grade
the officers of the United States service shall command the combined
force; the State militia to be armed, equipped, clothed, subsisted,
transported, and paid by the United States during such time as they
shall be actually engaged as an embodied military force in service in
accordance with regulations of the United States Army or general
orders as issued from time to time.

In order that the Treasury of the United States may not be burdened
with the pay of unnecessary officers, the governor proposes that,
although the State law requires him to appoint upon the general staff
an adjutant-general, a commissary-general, an inspector-general, a
quartermaster-general, a paymaster-general, and a surgeon-general,
each with the rank of colonel of cavalry, yet he proposes that the
Government of the United States pay only the adjutant-general, the
quartermaster-general, and inspector-general, their services being
necessary in the relations which would exist between the State
militia and the United States.  The governor further proposes that
while he is allowed by the State law to appoint aides-de-camp to the
governor at his discretion, with the rank of colonel, three only
shall be reported to the United States for payment.  He also proposes
that the State militia shall be commanded by a single major-general
and by such number of brigadier-generals as shall allow one for a
brigade of not less than four regiments, and that no greater number
of staff officers shall be appointed for regimental, brigade, and
division duties than as provided for in the act of Congress of the
22d July, 1861; and that, whatever be the rank of such officers as
fixed by the law of the State, the compensation that they shall
receive from the United States shall only be that which belongs to
the rank given by said act of Congress to officers in the United
States service performing the same duties.

The field officers of a regiment in the State militia are one
colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, and one major, and the company
officers are a captain, a first lieutenant, and a second lieutenant.
The governor proposes that, as the money to be disbursed is the money
of the United States, such staff officers in the service of the
United States as may be necessary to act as disbursing officers for
the State militia shall be assigned by the War Department for that
duty; or, if such cannot be spared from their present duty, he will
appoint such persons disbursing officers for the State militia as the
President of the United States may designate.  Such regulations as
may be required, in the judgment of the President, to insure
regularity of returns and to protect the United States from any
fraudulent practices shall be observed and obeyed by all in office in
the State militia.

The above propositions are accepted on the part of the United States,
and the Secretary of War is directed to make the necessary orders
upon the Ordnance, Quartermaster's, Commissary, Pay, and Medical
departments to carry this agreement into effect.  He will cause the
necessary staff officers in the United States service to be detailed
for duty in connection with the Missouri State militia, and will
order them to make the necessary provision in their respective
offices for fulfilling this agreement.  All requisitions upon the
different officers of the United States under this agreement to be
made in substance in the same mode for the Missouri State militia as
similar requisitions are made for troops in the service of the United
States; and the Secretary of War will cause any additional
regulations that may be necessary to insure regularity and economy in
carrying this agreement into effect to be adopted and communicated to
the Governor of Missouri for the government of the Missouri State
militia.

[Indorsement.]

November 6, 1861.

This plan approved, with the modification that the governor
stipulates that when he commissions a major-general of militia it
shall be the same person at the time in command of the United States
Department of the West; and in case the United States shall change
such commander of the department, he (the governor) will revoke the
State commission given to the person relieved and give one to the
person substituted to the United States command of said department.

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO THE MINISTER FROM SWEDEN.

November 8, 1861.

SIR:--I receive with great pleasure a Minister from Sweden.  That
pleasure is enhanced by the information which preceded your arrival
here, that his Majesty, your sovereign, had selected you to fill the
mission upon the grounds of your derivation from an ancestral stock
identified with the most glorious era of your country's noble
history, and your own eminent social and political standing in
Sweden.  This country, sir, maintains, and means to maintain, the
rights of human nature, and the capacity of men for self-government.
The history of Sweden proves that this is the faith of the people of
Sweden, and we know that it is the faith and practice of their
respected sovereign.  Rest assured, therefore, that we shall be found
always just and paternal in our transactions with your government,
and that nothing will be omitted on my part to make your residence in
this capital agreeable to yourself and satisfactory to your
government.




INDORSEMENT AUTHORIZING MARTIAL LAW IN SAINT LOUIS.

St. Louis, November 20, 1861.
(Received Nov. 20th.)

GENERAL McCLELLAN,

For the President of the United States.

No written authority is found here to declare and enforce martial law
in this department. Please send me such written authority and
telegraph me that it has been sent by mail.

H. W. HALLECK,
Major-General.


[Indorsement.]
November 21, 1861.

If General McClellan and General Halleck deem it necessary to declare
and maintain martial law in Saint Louis, the same is hereby
authorized.

A. LINCOLN.




OFFER TO COOPERATE AND GIVE SPECIAL LINE OF INFORMATION TO HORACE
GREELEY

TO GOVERNOR WALKER.

WASHINGTON, November 21, 1861

DEAR GOVERNOR:--I have thought over the interview which Mr. Gilmore
has had with Mr. Greeley, and the proposal that Greeley has made to
Gilmore, namely, that he [Gilmore] shall communicate to him [Greeley]
all that he learns from you of the inner workings of the
administration, in return for his [Greeley's] giving such aid as he
can to the new magazine, and allowing you [Walker] from time to time
the use of his [Greeley's] columns when it is desirable to feel of,
or forestall, public opinion on important subjects.   The arrangement
meets my unqualified approval, and I shall further it to the extent
of my ability, by opening to you--as I do now--fully the policy of
the Government,--its present views and future intentions when formed,
giving you permission to communicate them to Gilmore for Greeley; and
in case you go to Europe I will give these things direct to Gilmore.
But all this must be on the express and explicit understanding that
the fact of these communications coming from me shall be absolutely
confidential,--not to be disclosed by Greeley to his nearest friend,
or any of his subordinates.  He will be, in effect, my mouthpiece,
but I must not be known to be the speaker.

I need not tell you that I have the highest confidence in Mr.
Greeley.  He is a great power.  Having him firmly behind me will be
as helpful to me as an army of one hundred thousand men.

This was to be most severely regretted, when Greeley became a traitor
to the cause, editorialized for compromise and separation--and
promoted McClellan as Democratic candidate for the Presidency.

That he has ever kicked the traces has been owing to his not being
fully informed.  Tell Gilmore to say to him that, if he ever objects
to my policy, I shall be glad to have him state to me his views
frankly and fully.  I shall adopt his if I can.  If I cannot, I will
at least tell him why.  He and I should stand together, and let no
minor differences come between us; for we both seek one end, which is
the saving of our country.  Now, Governor, this is a longer letter
than I have written in a month,--longer than I would have written for
any other man than Horace Greeley.

Your friend, truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

P. S.--The sooner Gilmore sees Greeley the better, as you may before
long think it wise to ventilate our policy on the Trent affair.




ORDER AUTHORIZING GENERAL HALLECK TO SUSPEND
THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS,

DECEMBER 2, 1861.

MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. HALLECK,
Commanding in the Department of Missouri.

GENERAL:--As an insurrection exists in the United States, and is in
arms in the State of Missouri, you are hereby authorized and
empowered to suspend the writ of habeas corpus within the limits of
the military division under your command, and to exercise martial law
as you find it necessary in your discretion to secure the public
safety and the authority of the United States.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the
seal of the United States to be affixed at Washington, this second
day of December, A.D. 1861.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.
WASHINGTON,  December 3, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--In the
midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great
gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests.

You will not be surprised to learn that in the peculiar exigencies of
the times our intercourse with foreign nations has been attended with
profound solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs.

A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year
been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union.  A nation
which endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect
abroad, and one party, if not both, is sure sooner or later to invoke
foreign intervention.

Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the
counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although
measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate
and injurious to those adopting them.

The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin
of our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have
invoked abroad have received less patronage and encouragement than
they probably expected.  If it were just to suppose, as the
insurgents have seemed to assume, that foreign nations in this case,
discarding all moral, social, and treaty obligations, would act
solely and selfishly for the most speedy restoration of commerce,
including especially the acquisition of cotton, those nations appear
as yet not to have seen their way to their object more directly or
clearly through the destruction than through the preservation of the
Union.  If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated
by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument
could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily
and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving
encouragement to it.

The principal lever relied on by the insurgents for exciting foreign
nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the
embarrassment of commerce.  Those nations, however, not improbably
saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our
foreign as our domestic commerce.  They can scarcely have failed to
perceive that the effort for disunion produces the existing
difficulty, and that one strong nation promises more durable peace
and a more extensive, valuable, and reliable commerce than can the
same nation broken into hostile fragments.

It is not my purpose to review our discussions with foreign states,
because, whatever might be their wishes or dispositions, the
integrity of our country and the stability of our government mainly
depend not upon them, but on the loyalty, virtue, patriotism, and
intelligence of the American people.  The correspondence itself, with
the usual reservations, is herewith submitted.

I venture to hope it will appear that we have practiced prudence and
liberality toward foreign powers, averting causes of irritation and
with firmness maintaining our own rights and honor.

Since, however, it is apparent that here, as in every other state,
foreign dangers necessarily attend domestic difficulties, I recommend
that adequate and ample measures be adopted for maintaining the
public defenses on every side.  While under this general
recommendation provision for defending our seacoast line readily
occurs to the mind, I also in the same connection ask the attention
of Congress to our great lakes and rivers.  It is believed that some
fortifications and depots of arms and munitions, with harbor and
navigation improvements, all at well-selected points upon these,
would be of great importance to the national defense and preservation
I ask attention to the views of the Secretary of War, expressed in
his report, upon the same general subject.

I deem it of importance that the loyal regions of east Tennessee and
western North Carolina should be connected with Kentucky and other
faithful parts of the Union by rail-road.   I therefore recommend, as
a military measure, that Congress provide for the construction of
such rail-road as speedily as possible.  Kentucky will no doubt
co-operate, and through her Legislature make the most judicious
selection of a line.  The northern terminus must connect with some
existing railroad, and whether the route shall be from Lexington or
Nicholasville to the Cumberland Gap, or from Lebanon to the Tennessee
line, in the direction of Knoxville, or on some still different line,
can easily be determined.  Kentucky and the General Government
co-operating, the work can be completed in a very short time, and
when done it will be not only of vast present usefulness but also a
valuable permanent improvement, worth its cost in all the future.

Some treaties, designed chiefly for the interests of commerce, and
having no grave political importance, have been negotiated, and will
be submitted to the Senate for their consideration.

Although we have failed to induce some of the commercial powers to
adopt a desirable melioration of the rigor of maritime war, we have
removed all obstructions from the way of this humane reform except
such as are merely of temporary and accidental occurrence.

I invite your attention to the correspondence between her Britannic
Majesty's minister accredited to this government and the Secretary of
State relative to the detention of the British ship Perthshire in
June last by the United States steamer Massachusetts for a supposed
breach of the blockade.  As this detention was occasioned by an
obvious misapprehension of the facts, and as justice requires that we
should commit no belligerent act not founded in strict right as
sanctioned by public law, I recommend that an appropriation be made
to satisfy the reasonable demand of the owners of the vessel for her
detention.

I repeat the recommendation of my predecessor in his annual message
to Congress in December last in regard to the disposition of the
surplus which will probably remain after satisfying the claims of
American citizens against China, pursuant to the awards of the
commissioners under the act of the 3d of March, 1859.  If, however,
it should not be deemed advisable to carry that recommendation into
effect, I would suggest that authority be given for investing the
principal, or the proceeds of the surplus referred to, in good
securities, with a view to the satisfaction of such other just claims
of our citizens against China as are not unlikely to arise hereafter
in the course of our extensive trade with that empire.

By the act of the 5th of August last Congress authorized the
President to instruct the commanders of suitable vessels to defend
themselves against and to capture pirates.  His authority has been
exercised in a single instance only.  For the more effectual
protection of our extensive and valuable commerce in the Eastern seas
especially, it seems to me that it would also be advisable to
authorize the commanders of sailing vessels to recapture any prizes
which pirates may make of United States vessels and their cargoes,
and the consular courts now established by law in Eastern countries
to adjudicate the cases in the event that this should not be objected
to by the local authorities.

If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in
withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of
Haiti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it.  Unwilling, however, to
inaugurate a novel policy in regard to them without the approbation
of Congress, I submit for your consideration the expediency of an
appropriation for maintaining a charge d'affaires near each of those
new States.  It does not admit of doubt that important commercial
advantages might be secured by favorable treaties with them.

The operations of the treasury during the period which has elapsed
since your adjournment have been conducted with signal success.  The
patriotism of the people has placed at the disposal of the government
the large means demanded by the public exigencies.  Much of the
national loan has been taken by citizens of the industrial classes,
whose confidence in their country's faith and zeal for their
country's deliverance from present peril have induced them to
contribute to the support of the government the whole of their
limited acquisitions.  This fact imposes peculiar obligations to
economy in disbursement and energy in action.

The revenue from all sources, including loans, for the financial year
ending on the 30th of June, 1861, was $86,835,900.27, and the
expenditures for the same period, including payments on account of
the public debt, were $84,578,834.47, leaving a balance in the
treasury on the 1st of July of $2,257,065.80.  For the first quarter
of the financial year ending on the 3oth of September, 1861, the
receipts from all sources, including the balance of the 1st of July,
were $102,532,509.27, and the expenses $98,239733.09, leaving a
balance on the 1st of October, 1861, of $4,292,776.18.

Estimates for the remaining three quarters of the year and for the
financial year 1863, together with his views of ways and means for
meeting the demands contemplated by them, will be submitted to
Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury.  It is gratifying to know
that the expenditures made necessary by the rebellion are not beyond
the resources of the loyal people, and to believe that the same
patriotism which has thus far sustained the government will continue
to sustain it till peace and union shall again bless the land.

I respectfully refer to the report of the Secretary of War for
information respecting the numerical strength of the army and for
recommendations having in view an increase of its efficiency and the
well-being of the various branches of the service intrusted to his
care.  It is gratifying to know that the patriotism of the people has
proved equal to the occasion, and that the number of troops tendered
greatly exceeds the force which Congress authorized me to call into
the field.

I refer with pleasure to those portions of his report which make
allusion to the creditable degree of discipline already attained by
our troops and to the excellent sanitary condition of the entire
army.

The recommendation of the Secretary for an organization of the
militia upon a uniform basis is a subject of vital importance to the
future safety of the country, and is commended to the serious
attention of Congress.

The large addition to the regular army, in connection with the
defection that has so considerably diminished the number of its
officers, gives peculiar importance to his recommendation for
increasing the corps of cadets to the greatest capacity of the
Military Academy.

By mere omission, I presume, Congress has failed to provide chaplains
for hospitals occupied by volunteers.  This subject was brought to my
notice, and I was induced to draw up the form of a letter, one copy
of which, properly addressed, has been delivered to each of the
persons, and at the dates respectively named and stated in a
schedule, containing also the form of the letter, marked A, and
herewith transmitted.

These gentlemen, I understand, entered upon the duties designated at
the times respectively stated in the schedule, and have labored
faithfully therein ever since.  I therefore recommend that they be
compensated at the same rate as chaplains in the army.   I further
suggest that general provision be made for chaplains to serve at
hospitals, as well as with regiments.

The report of the Secretary of the Navy presents in detail the
operations of that branch of the service, the activity and energy
which have characterized its administration, and the results of
measures to increase its efficiency and power such have been the
additions, by construction and purchase, that it may almost be said a
navy has been created and brought into service since our difficulties
commenced.

Besides blockading our extensive coast, squadrons larger than ever
before assembled under our flag have been put afloat and performed
deeds which have increased our naval renown.

I would invite special attention to the recommendation of the
Secretary for a more perfect organization of the navy by introducing
additional grades in the service.

The present organization is defective and unsatisfactory, and the
suggestions submitted by the department will, it is believed, if
adopted, obviate the difficulties alluded to, promote harmony, and
increase the efficiency of the navy.

There are three vacancies on the bench of the Supreme Court--two by
the decease of Justices Daniel and McLean and one by the resignation
of Justice Campbell.  I have so far forborne making nominations to
fill these vacancies for reasons which I will now state.  Two of the
outgoing judges resided within the States now overrun by revolt, so
that if successors were appointed in the same localities they could
not now serve upon their circuits; and many of the most competent men
there probably would not take the personal hazard of accepting to
serve, even here, upon the Supreme bench.  I have been unwilling to
throw all the appointments north-ward, thus disabling myself from
doing justice to the South on the return of peace; although I may
remark that to transfer to the North one which has heretofore been in
the South would not, with reference to territory and population, be
unjust.

During the long and brilliant judicial career of Judge McLean his
circuit grew into an empire-altogether too large for any one judge to
give the courts therein more than a nominal attendance--rising in
population from 1,470,018 in 1830 to 6,151,405 in 1860.

Besides this, the country generally has outgrown our present judicial
system.  If uniformity was at all intended, the system requires that
all the States shall be accommodated with circuit courts, attended by
Supreme judges, while, in fact, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas,
Florida, Texas, California, and Oregon have never had any such
courts.  Nor can this well be remedied without a change in the
system, because the adding of judges to the Supreme Court, enough for
the accommodation of all parts of the country with circuit courts,
would create a court altogether too numerous for a judicial body of
any sort.  And the evil, if it be one, will increase as new States
come into the Union.  Circuit courts are useful or they are not
useful.  If useful, no State should be denied them; if not useful, no
State should have them.  Let them be provided for all or abolished as
to all.

Three modifications occur to me, either of which, I think, would be
an improvement upon our present system.  Let the Supreme Court be of
convenient number in every event; then, first, let the whole country
be divided into circuits of convenient size, the Supreme judges to
serve in a number of them corresponding to their own number, and
independent circuit judges be provided for all the rest; or,
secondly, let the Supreme judges be relieved from circuit duties and
circuit judges provided for all the circuits; or, thirdly, dispense
with circuit courts altogether, leaving the judicial functions wholly
to the district courts and an independent Supreme Court.

I respectfully recommend to the consideration of Congress the present
condition of the statute laws, with the hope that Congress will be
able to find an easy remedy for many of the inconveniences and evils
which constantly embarrass those engaged in the practical
administration of them.  Since the Organization of the government,
Congress has enacted some 5000 acts and joint resolutions, which fill
more than 6000 closely printed pages and are scattered through many
volumes.  Many of these acts have been drawn in haste and without
sufficient caution, so that their provisions are often obscure in
themselves or in conflict with each other, or at least so doubtful as
to render it very difficult for even the best-informed persons to
ascertain precisely what the statute law really is.

It seems to me very important that the statute laws should be made as
plain and intelligible as possible, and be reduced to as small a
compass as may consist with the fullness and precision of the will of
the Legislature and the perspicuity of its language.  This well done
would, I think, greatly facilitate the labors of those whose duty it
is to assist in the administration of the laws, and would be a
lasting benefit to the people, by placing before them in a more
accessible and intelligible form the laws which so deeply concern
their interests arid their duties.

I am informed by some whose opinions I respect that all the acts of
Congress now in force and of a permanent and general nature might be
revised and rewritten so as to be embraced in one volume (or at most
two volumes) of ordinary and convenient size; and I respectfully
recommend to Congress to consider of the subject, and if my
suggestion be approved to devise such plan as to their wisdom shall
seem most proper for the attainment of the end proposed.

One of the unavoidable consequences of the present insurrection is
the entire suppression in many places of all the ordinary means of
administering civil justice by the officers and in the forms of
existing law.  This is the case, in whole or in part, in all the
insurgent States; and as our armies advance upon and take possession
of parts of those States the practical evil becomes more apparent.
There are no courts or officers to whom the citizens of other States
may apply for the enforcement of their lawful claims against citizens
of the insurgent States, and there is a vast amount of debt
constituting such claims.  Some have estimated it as high as
$200,000,000, due in large part from insurgents in open rebellion to
loyal citizens who are even now making great sacrifices in the
discharge of their patriotic duty to support the government.


Under these circumstances I have been urgently solicited to
establish, by military power, courts to administer summary justice in
such cases.  I have thus far declined to do it, not because I had any
doubt that the end proposed--the collection of the debts--was just
and right in itself, but because I have been unwilling to go beyond
the pressure of necessity in the unusual exercise of power.  But the
powers of Congress, I suppose, are equal to the anomalous occasion,
and therefore I refer the whole matter to Congress, with the hope
that a plan maybe devised for the administration of justice in all
such parts of the insurgent States and Territories as may be under
the control of this government, whether by a voluntary return to
allegiance and order or by the power of our arms; this, however, not
to be a permanent institution, but a temporary substitute, and to
cease as soon as the ordinary courts can be reestablished in peace.

It is important that some more convenient means should be provided,
if possible, for the adjustment of claims against the government,
especially in view of their increased number by reason of the war.
It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against
itself in favor of citizens as it is to administer the same between
private individuals.  The investigation and adjudication of claims in
their nature belong to the judicial department.  Besides, it is
apparent that the attention of Congress will be more than usually
engaged for some time to come with great national questions.  It was
intended by the organization of the Court of Claims mainly to remove
this branch of business from the halls of Congress; but, while the
court has proved to be an effective and valuable means of
investigation, it in great degree fails to effect the object of its
creation for want of power to make its judgments final.

Fully aware of the delicacy, not to say the danger of the subject, I
commend to your careful consideration whether this power of making
judgments final may not properly be given to the court, reserving the
right of appeal on questions of law to the Supreme Court, with such
other provisions as experience may have shown to be necessary.

I ask attention to the report of the Postmaster general, the
following being a summary statement of the condition of the
department:

The revenue from all sources during the fiscal year ending June 30,
1861, including the annual permanent appropriation of $700,000 for
the transportation of "free mail matter," was $9,049,296.40, being
about 2 per cent. less than the revenue for 1860.

The expenditures were $13,606,759.11, showing a decrease of more than
8 per cent. as compared with those of the previous year and leaving
an excess of expenditure over the revenue for the last fiscal year
of $4,557,462.71.

The gross revenue for the year ending June 30, 1863, is estimated at
an increase of 4 per cent. on that of 1861, making $8,683,000, to
which should be added the earnings of the department in carrying free
matter, viz., $700,000, making $9,383,000.

The total expenditures for 1863 are estimated at $12,528,000, leaving
an estimated deficiency of $3,145,000 to be supplied from the
treasury in addition to the permanent appropriation.

The present insurrection shows, I think, that the extension of this
District across the Potomac River at the time of establishing the
capital here was eminently wise, and consequently that the
relinquishment of that portion of it which lies within the State of
Virginia was unwise and dangerous.  I submit for your consideration
the expediency of regaining that part of the District and the
restoration of the original boundaries thereof through negotiations
with the State of Virginia.

The report of the Secretary of the Interior, with the accompanying
documents, exhibits the condition of the several branches of the
public business pertaining to that department.   The depressing
influences of the insurrection have been specially felt in the
operations of the Patent and General Land Offices.  The cash receipts
from the sales of public lands during the past year have exceeded the
expenses of our land system only about $200,000.  The sales have been
entirely suspended in the Southern States, while the interruptions to
the business of the country and the diversion of large numbers of men
from labor to military service have obstructed settlements in the new
States and Territories of the Northwest.

The receipts of the Patent Office have declined in nine months about
$100,000.00 rendering a large reduction of the force employed
necessary to make it self-sustaining.

The demands upon the Pension Office will be largely increased by the
insurrection.   Numerous applications for pensions, based upon the
casualties of the existing war, have already been made.  There is
reason to believe that many who are now upon the pension rolls and in
receipt of the bounty of the government are in the ranks of the
insurgent army or giving them aid and comfort.  The Secretary of the
Interior has directed a suspension of the payment of the pensions of
such persons upon proof of their disloyalty.  I recommend that
Congress authorize that officer to cause the names of such persons to
be stricken from the pension rolls.

The relations of the government with the Indian tribes have been
greatly disturbed by the insurrection, especially in the southern
superintendency and in that of New Mexico.  The Indian country south
of Kansas is in the possession of insurgents from Texas and Arkansas.
The agents of the United States appointed since the 4th of March for
this superintendency have been unable to reach their posts, while the
most of those who were in office before that time have espoused the
insurrectionary cause, and assume to exercise the powers of agents by
virtue of commissions from the insurrectionists.  It has been stated
in the public press that a portion of those Indians have been
organized as a military force and are attached to the army of the
insurgents.  Although the government has no official information upon
this subject, letters have been written to the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs by several prominent chiefs giving assurance of their loyalty
to the United States and expressing a wish for the presence of
Federal troops to protect them.  It is believed that upon the
repossession of the country by the Federal forces the Indians will
readily cease all hostile demonstrations and resume their former
relations to the government.

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not
a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in
the government.  While it is fortunate that this great interest is so
independent in its nature as not to have demanded and extorted more
from the government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether
something more cannot be given voluntarily with general advantage.

Annual reports exhibiting the condition of our agriculture, commerce,
and manufactures would present a fund of information of great
practical value to the country.  While I make no suggestion as to
details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical
bureau might profitably be organized.

The execution of the laws for the suppression of  the African slave
trade has been confided to the Department of the Interior.   It is a
subject of gratulation that the efforts which have been made for the
suppression of this inhuman traffic have been recently attended with
unusual success.  Five vessels being fitted out for the slave trade
have been seized and condemned.  Two mates of vessels engaged in the
trade and one person in equipping a vessel as a slaver have been
convicted and subjected to the penalty of fine and imprisonment, and
one captain, taken with a cargo of Africans on board his vessel, has
been convicted of the highest grade of offense under our laws, the
punishment of which is death.

The Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada, created by the last
Congress, have been organized, and civil administration has been
inaugurated therein under auspices especially gratifying when it is
considered that the leaven of treason was found existing in some of
these new countries when the Federal officers arrived there.

The abundant natural resources of these Territories, with the
security and protection afforded by organized government, will
doubtless invite to them a large immigration when peace shall restore
the business of the country to its accustomed channels.  I submit the
resolutions of the Legislature of Colorado, which evidence the
patriotic spirit of the people of the Territory.  So far the
authority of the United States has been upheld in all the
Territories, as it is hoped it will be in the future.  I commend
their interests and defense to the enlightened and generous care of
Congress.

I recommend to the favorable consideration of Congress the interests
of the District of Columbia.  The insurrection has been the cause of
much suffering and sacrifice to its inhabitants, and as they have no
representative in Congress that body should not overlook their just
claims upon the government.

At your late session a joint resolution was adopted authorizing the
President to take measures for facilitating a proper representation
of the industrial interests of the United States at the exhibition of
the industry of all nations to be holden at London in the year 1862.
I regret to say I have been unable to give personal attention to this
subject--a subject at once so interesting in itself and so
extensively and intimately connected with the material prosperity of
the world.  Through the Secretaries of State and of the Interior a
plan or system has been devised and partly matured, and which will be
laid before you.

Under and by virtue of the act of Congress entitled "An act to
confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved
August 6, 1861, the legal claims of certain persons to the labor and
service of certain other persons have become forfeited, and numbers
of the latter thus liberated are already dependent on the United
States, and must be provided for in some way.  Besides this, it is
not impossible that some of the States will pass similar enactments
for their own benefit respectively, and by operation of which persons
of the same class will be thrown upon them for disposal.  In such
case I recommend that Congress provide for accepting such persons
from such States, according to some mode of valuation, in lieu, pro
tanto, of direct taxes, or upon some other plan to be agreed on with
such States respectively; that such persons, on such acceptance by
the General Government, be at once deemed free, and that in any event
steps be taken for colonizing both classes (or the one first
mentioned if the other shall not be brought into existence) at some
place or places in a climate congenial to them.  It might be well to
consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United
States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in
such colonization.

To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring of
territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be
expended in the territorial acquisition.  Having practised the
acquisition of territory for nearly sixty years, the question of
constitutional power to do so is no longer an open one with us.  The
power was questioned at first by Mr. Jefferson, who, however, in the
purchase of Louisiana, yielded his scruples on the plea of great
expediency.  If it be said that the only legitimate object of
acquiring territory is to furnish homes for white men, this measure
effects that object, for emigration of colored men leaves additional
room for white men remaining or coming here.  Mr. Jefferson, however,
placed the importance of procuring Louisiana more on political and
commercial grounds than on providing room for population.

On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of money with
the acquisition of territory, does not the expediency amount to
absolute necessity--that without which the government itself cannot
be perpetuated?

The war continues.  In considering the policy to be adopted for
suppressing the insurrection I have been anxious and careful that the
inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a
violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.  I have therefore in
every case thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union
prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving
all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more
deliberate action of the Legislature.

In the exercise of my best discretion I have adhered to the blockade
of the ports held by the insurgents, instead of putting in force by
proclamation the law of Congress enacted at the late session for
closing those ports.

So also, obeying the dictates of prudence, as well as the obligations
of law, instead of transcending I have adhered to the act of Congress
to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes.  If a new
law upon the same subject shall be proposed, its propriety will be
duly considered.  The Union must be preserved, and hence all
indispensable means must be employed.  We should not be in haste to
determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the
loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable.

The inaugural address at the beginning of the Administration and the
message to Congress at the late special session were both mainly
devoted to topics domestic controversy out of which the insurrection
and consequent war have sprung.  Nothing now occurs to add or
subtract to or from the principles or general purposes stated and
expressed in those documents.

The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at
the assault upon Fort Sumter, and a general review of what has
occurred since may not be unprofitable.  What was painfully uncertain
then is much better defined and more distinct now, and the progress
of events is plainly in the right direction.  The insurgents
confidently claimed a strong support from north of Mason and Dixon's
line, and the friends of the Union were not free from apprehension on
the point.  This, however, was soon settled definitely, and on the
right side.  South of the line noble little Delaware led off right
from the first.  Maryland was made to seem against the Union.  Our
soldiers were assaulted, bridges were burned, and railroads torn up
within her limits, and we were many days at one time without the
ability to bring a single regiment over her soil to the capital.  Now
her bridges and railroads are repaired and open to the government;
she already gives seven regiments to the cause of the Union, and none
to the enemy; and her people, at a regular election, have sustained
the Union by a larger majority and a larger aggregate vote than they
ever before gave to any candidate or any question.  Kentucky, too,
for some time in doubt, is now decidedly and, I think, unchangeably
ranged on the side of the Union.  Missouri is comparatively quiet,
and, I believe, can, not again be overrun by the insurrectionists.
These three States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, neither of
which would promise a single soldier at first, have now an aggregate
of not less than forty thousand in the field for the Union, while of
their citizens certainly not more than a third of that number, and
they of doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms
against us.  After a somewhat bloody struggle of months, winter
closes on the Union people of western Virginia, leaving them masters
of their own country.

An insurgent force of about fifteen hundred, for months dominating
the narrow peninsular region constituting the counties of Accomac and
Northampton, and known as Eastern Shore of Virginia, together with
some contiguous parts of Maryland, have laid down their arms, and the
people there have renewed their allegiance to and accepted the
protection of the old flag.  This leaves no armed insurrectionist
north of the Potomac or east of the Chesapeake.

Also we have obtained a footing at each of the isolated points on the
southern coast of Hatteras, Port Royal, Tybee Island (near Savannah),
and Ship Island; and we likewise have some general accounts of
popular movements in behalf of the Union in North Carolina and
Tennessee.

These things demonstrate that the cause of the Union is advancing
steadily and certainly southward.

Since your last adjournment Lieutenant-General Scott has retired from
the head of the army.  During his long life the nation has not been
unmindful of his merit; yet on calling to mind how faithfully, ably,
and brilliantly he has served the country, from a time far back in
our history, when few of the now living had been born, and
thenceforward continually, I cannot but think we are still his
debtors.  I submit, therefore, for your consideration what further
mark of recognition is due to him, and to ourselves as a grateful
people.

With the retirement of General Scott came the Executive duty of
appointing in his stead a general-in-chief of the army.  It is a
fortunate circumstance that neither in council nor country was there,
so far as I know, any difference of opinion as to the proper person
to be selected.  The retiring chief repeatedly expressed his judgment
in favor of General McClellan for the position, and in this the
nation seemed to give a unanimous concurrence.  The designation of
General McClellan is therefore in considerable degree the selection
of the country as well as of the Executive, and hence there is better
reason to hope there will be given him the confidence and cordial
support thus by fair implication promised, and without which he
cannot with so full efficiency serve the country.

It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones,
and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is
better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two
superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.

And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged
can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the
choice of means.  In a storm at sea no one on hoard can wish the ship
to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too
many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.

It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not
exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government--
the rights of the people.  Conclusive evidence of this is found in
the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as
in the general tone of the insurgents.  In those documents we find
the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to
the people of all right to participate in the selection of public
officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored
arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is
the source of all political evil.  Monarchy itself is sometimes
hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit
raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be
made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with
its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a
brief attention.  It is the effort to place capital on an equal
footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government.  It
is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital;
that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by
the use of it induces him to labor.  This assumed, it is next
considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and
thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive
them to it without their consent.  Having proceeded so far, it is
naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or
what we call slaves.  And further, it is assumed that whoever is once
a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed,
nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the
condition of a hired laborer.  Both these assumptions are false, and
all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital.  Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed.  Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the
higher consideration.  Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of
protection as any other rights.  Nor is it denied that there is, and
probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital
producing mutual benefits.  The error is in assuming that the whole
labor of community exists within that relation.  A few men own
capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital
hire or buy another few to labor for them.  A large majority belong
to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for
them.  In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people
of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a
large majority are neither hirers nor hired.  Men, with their
families--wives, sons, and daughters,--work for themselves on their
farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product
to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of
hired laborers or slaves on the other.  It is not forgotten that a
considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital;
that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others
to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class.
No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed
class.

Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such
thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for
life.  Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years
back in their lives were hired laborers.  The prudent, penniless
beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with
which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own
account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to
help him.  This is the just and generous and prosperous system which
opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and
progress and improvement of condition to all.  No men living are more
worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less
inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned.
Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already
possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the
door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities
and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

From the first taking of our national census to the last are seventy
years, and we find our population at the end of the period eight
times as great as it was at the beginning.  The increase of those
other things which men deem desirable has been even greater.  We thus
have at one view what the popular principle, applied to government
through the machinery of the States and the Union, has produced in a
given time, and also what if firmly maintained it promises for the
future.  There are already among us those who if the Union be
preserved will live to see it contain 200,000,000.  The struggle of
to-day is not altogether for to-day; it is for a vast future also.
With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us
proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, December 20, 1861.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I transmit to Congress a letter from the secretary of the executive
committee of the commission appointed to represent the interests of
those American citizens who may desire to become exhibitors at the
industrial exhibition to be held in London in 1862, and a memorial of
that commission, with a report of the executive committee thereof and
copies of circulars announcing the decisions of Her Majesty's
commissioners in London, giving directions to be observed in regard
to articles intended for exhibition, and also of circular forms of
application, demands for space, approvals, etc., according to the
rules prescribed by the British commissioners.

As these papers fully set forth the requirements necessary to enable
those citizens of the United States who may wish to become exhibitors
to avail themselves of the privileges of the exhibition, I commend
them to your early consideration, especially in view of the near
approach of the time when the exhibition will begin.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




LETTER OF REPRIMAND TO GENERAL HUNTER

TO GENERAL HUNTER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

Dec.31, 1861

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 23d is received, and I am constrained to say
it is difficult to answer so ugly a letter in good temper.  I am, as
you intimate, losing much of the great confidence I placed in you,
not from any act or omission of yours touching the public service, up
to the time you were sent to Leavenworth, but from the flood of
grumbling despatches and letters I have seen from you since.  I knew
you were being ordered to Leavenworth at the time it was done; and I
aver that with as tender a regard for your honor and your
sensibilities as I had for my own, it never occurred to me that you
were being "humiliated, insulted, and disgraced"; nor have I, up to
this day, heard an intimation that you have been wronged, coming from
any one but yourself.  No one has blamed you for the retrograde
movement from Springfield, nor for the information you gave General
Cameron; and this you could readily understand, if it were not for
your unwarranted assumption that the ordering you to Leavenworth must
necessarily have been done as a punishment for some fault.  I thought
then, and think yet, the position assigned to you is as responsible,
and as honorable, as that assigned to Buell--I know that General
McClellan expected more important results from it.  My impression is
that at the time you were assigned to the new Western Department, it
had not been determined to replace General Sherman in Kentucky; but
of this I am not certain, because the idea that a command in Kentucky
was very desirable, and one in the farther West undesirable, had
never occurred to me.  You constantly speak of being placed in
command of only 3000.   Now, tell me, is this not mere impatience?
Have you not known all the while that you are to command four or five
times that many.

I have been, and am sincerely your friend; and if, as such, I dare to
make a suggestion, I would say you are adopting the best possible way
to ruin yourself.  "Act well your part, there all the honor lies."  He
who does something at the head of one regiment, will eclipse him who
does nothing at the head of a hundred.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 31, 1861

GENERAL H. W. HALLECK, St.  Louis, Missouri:

General McClellan is sick.  Are General Buell and yourself in
concert? When he moves on Bowling Green, what hinders it being
reinforced from Columbus? A simultaneous movement by you on Columbus
might prevent it.

A. LINCOLN.

[Similar despatch to Buell same date.]






1862


TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. C. BUELL.

WASHINGTON CITY, January 1, 1862

BRIGADIER-GENERAL BUELL, Louisville:

General McClellan should not yet be disturbed with business.  I think
you better get in concert with General Halleck at once.  I write you
to-night.  I also telegraph and write Halleck.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 1, 1862

DEAR GENERAL HALLECK:

General McClellan is not dangerously ill, as I hope, but would better
not be disturbed with business.  I am very anxious that, in case of
General Buell's moving toward Nashville, the enemy shall not be
greatly reinforced, and I think there is danger he will be from
Columbus.  It seems to me that a real or feigned attack upon Columbus
from up the river at the same time would either prevent this or
compensate for it by throwing Columbus into our hands.  I wrote
General Buell a letter similar to this, meaning that he and you shall
communicate and act in concert, unless it be your judgment and his
that there is no necessity for it.  You and he will understand much
better than I how to do it.  Please do not lose time in this matter.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE PEOPLE OF MARYLAND,

In view of the recent declaration of the people of Maryland of their
adhesion to the Union, so distinctly made in their recent election,
the President directs that all the prisoners who having heretofore
been arrested in that State are now detained in military custody by
the President's authority, be released from their imprisonment on the
following conditions, namely: that if they were holding any civil or
military offices when arrested, the terms of which have expired, they
shall not resume or reclaim such office; and secondly, all persons
availing themselves of this proclamation shall engage by oath or
parole of honor to maintain the Union and the Constitution of the
United States, and in no way to aid or abet by arms, counsel,
conversation, or information of any kind the existing insurrection
against the Government of the United States.

To guard against misapprehension it is proper to state that this
proclamation does not apply to prisoners of war.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, January 2, 1862

To THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

I transmit to Congress a copy of a letter to the Secretary of State
from James R. Partridge, secretary to the executive committee to the
in exhibition to be held in London in the course present year, and a
copy of the correspond which it refers, relative to a vessel for the
of taking such articles as persons in this country may wish to
exhibit on that occasion. As it appears no naval vessel can be spared
for the purpose, I recommend that authority be given to charter a
suitable merchant vessel, in order that facilities similar to those
afforded by the government exhibition of 1851 may also be extended to
citizens of the United States who may desire to contribute to the
exhibition of this year.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN




MESSAGES OF DISAPPOINTMENT WITH HIS GENERALS

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. C. BUELL.

WASHINGTON, January 4, 1862.

GENERAL BUELL:

Have arms gone forward for East Tennessee?  Please tell me the
progress and condition of the movement in that direction.  Answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL D. C. BUELL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

January 6, 1862.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL BUELL.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your despatch of yesterday has been received, and it
disappoints and distresses me.  I have shown it to General McClellan,
who says he will write you to-day.  I am not competent to criticize
your views, and therefore what I offer is in justification of myself.
Of the two, I would rather have a point on the railroad south of
Cumberland Gap than Nashville.  First, because it cuts a great artery
of the enemy's communication, which Nashville does not; and secondly,
because it is in the midst of loyal people who would rally around it,
while Nashville is not.  Again, I cannot see why the movement on East
Tennessee would not be a diversion in your favor rather than a
disadvantage, assuming that a movement toward Nashville is the main
object.  But my distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are
being hanged and driven to despair, and even now, I fear, are
thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection.
In this we lose the most valuable stake we have in the South.  My
despatch, to which yours is an answer, was sent with the knowledge of
Senator Johnson and Representative Maynard of East Tennessee, and
they will be upon me to know the answer, which I cannot safely show
them.  They would despair, possibly resign to go and save their
families somehow, or die with them.  I do not intend this to be an
order in any sense, but merely, as intimated before, to show you the
grounds of my anxiety.

Yours very truly,

 A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUELL.

WASHINGTON, January 7, 1862.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL D.C. BUELL, Louisville:

Please name as early a day as you safely can on or before which you
can be ready to move southward in concert with Major-General Halleck.
Delay is ruining us, and it is indispensable for me to have something
definite.  I send a like despatch to Major-General Halleck.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, January 10, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I transmit to Congress a translation of an instruction to the
minister of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria accredited to this
government, and a copy of a note to that minister from the Secretary
of State relative to the questions involved in the taking from the
British steamer Trent of certain citizens of the United States by
order of Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy.  This
correspondence may be considered as a sequel to that previously
communicated to Congress relating to the same subject.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON LETTER FROM GENERAL HALLECK,
JANUARY 10, 1862.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI
ST. Louis, January 6, 1862.

To His EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT:

In reply to your Excellency's letter of the 1st instant, I have to
state that on receiving your telegram I immediately communicated with
General Buell and have since sent him all the information I could
obtain of the enemy's movements about Columbus and Camp Beauregard.
No considerable force has been sent from those places to Bowling
Green.  They have about 22,000 men at Columbus, and the place is
strongly fortified.  I have at Cairo, Port Holt, and Paducah only
about 15,000, which, after leaving guards at these places, would give
me but little over 10,000 men with which to assist General Buell.  It
would be madness to attempt anything serious with such a force, and I
cannot at the present time withdraw any from Missouri without risking
the loss of this State.  The troops recently raised in other States
of this department have, without my knowledge, been sent to Kentucky
and Kansas.

I am satisfied that the authorities at Washington do not appreciate
the difficulties with which we have to contend here.  The operations
of Lane, Jennison, and others have so enraged the people of Missouri
that it is estimated that there is a majority of 80,000 against the
government.  We are virtually in an enemy's country.  Price and
others have a considerable army in the southwest, against which I am
operating with all my available force.

This city and most of the middle and northern counties are
insurrectionary,--burning bridges, destroying telegraph lines, etc.,-
-and can be kept down only by the presence of troops.  A large
portion of the foreign troops organized by General Fremont are
unreliable; indeed, many of them are already mutinous.  They have
been tampered with by politicians, and made to believe that if they
get up a mutiny and demand Fremont's return the government will be
forced to restore him to duty here.  It is believed that some high
officers are in the plot I have already been obliged to disarm
several of these organizations, and I am daily expecting more serious
outbreaks.  Another grave difficulty is the want of proper general
officers to command the troops and enforce order and discipline, and
especially to protect public property from robbery and plunder.  Some
of the brigadier-generals assigned to this department are entirely
ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command.  I assure you,
Mr. President, it is very difficult to accomplish much with such
means.  I am in the condition of a carpenter who is required to build
a bridge with a dull axe, a broken saw, and rotten timber.  It is
true that I have some very good green timber, which will answer the
purpose as soon as I can get it into shape and season it a little.

I know nothing of General Buell's intended operations, never having
received any information in regard to the general plan of campaign.
If it be intended that his column shall move on Bowling Green while
another moves from Cairo or Paducah on Columbus or Camp Beauregard,
it will be a repetition of the same strategic error which produced
the disaster of Bull Run.  To operate on exterior lines against an
enemy occupying a central position will fail, as it always has
failed, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.  It is condemned by
every military authority I have ever read.

General Buell's army and the forces at Paducah occupy precisely the
same position in relation to each other and to the enemy as did the
armies of McDowell and Patterson before the battle of Bull Run.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK, Major-General


[Indorsement]

The within is a copy of a letter just received from General Halleck.
It is exceedingly discouraging.  As everywhere else, nothing can be
done.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR ANDREW.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
January 11, 1862

GOVERNOR JOHN A. ANDREW, Boston:

I will be greatly obliged if you will arrange; somehow with General
Butler to officer his two un-officered regiments.

A. LINCOLN




TO GENERAL D. C. BUELL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 13, 1861

BRIGADIER-GENERAL BUELL.

MY DEAR SIR--Your despatch of yesterday is received, in which you
say, "I received your letter and General McClellan's, and will at
once devote my efforts to your views and his."  In the midst of my
many cares I have not seen, nor asked to see, General McClellan's
letter to you.  For my own views, I have not offered and do not now
offer them as orders; and while I am glad to have them respectfully
considered, I would blame you to follow them contrary to your own
clear judgment, unless I should put them in the form of orders.  As
to General McClellan's views, you understand your duty in regard to
them better than I do.

With this preliminary I state my general idea of this war to be, that
we have the greater numbers and the enemy has the greater facility of
concentrating forces upon points of collision; that we must fail
unless we can find some way of making our advantage an overmatch for
his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior
forces at different points at the same time, so that we can safely
attack one or both if he makes no change; and if he weakens one to
strengthen the other, forbear to attack the strengthened one, but
seize and hold the weakened one, gaining so much.

To illustrate: Suppose last summer, when Winchester ran away to
reinforce Manassas, we had forborne to attack Manassas, but had
seized and held Winchester.  I mention this to illustrate and not to
criticise.  I did not lose confidence in McDowell, and I think less
harshly of Patterson than some others seem to.  .  .  .  Applying the
principle to your case, my idea is that Halleck shall menace Columbus
and "down river" generally, while you menace Bowling Green and East
Tennessee.  If the enemy shall concentrate at Bowling Green, do not
retire from his front, yet do not fight him there either, but seize
Columbus and East Tennessee, one or both, left exposed by the
concentration at Bowling Green.  It is a matter of no small anxiety
to me, and which I am sure you will not overlook, that the East
Tennessee line is so long and over so bad a road.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.

(Indorsement.)

Having to-day written General Buell a letter, it occurs to me to send
General Halleck a copy of it.
A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 1 , 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK.

MY DEAR SIR:--The Germans are true and patriotic and so far as they
have got cross in Missouri it is upon mistake and misunderstanding.
Without a knowledge of its contents, Governor Koerner, of Illinois,
will hand you this letter.  He is an educated and talented German
gentleman, as true a man as lives.  With his assistance you can set
everything right with the Germans.  .  .  .  My clear judgment is
that, with reference to the German element in your command, you
should have Governor Koerner with you; and if agreeable to you and
him, I will make him a brigadier-general, so that he can afford to
give his time.  He does not wish to command in the field, though he
has more military knowledge than some who do.  If he goes into the
place, he will simply be an efficient, zealous, and unselfish
assistant to you.  I say all this upon intimate personal acquaintance
with Governor Koerner.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, January 17, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I transmit to Congress a translation of an instruction to the
minister of his Majesty the King of Prussia accredited to this
government, and a copy of a note to that minister from the Secretary
of State relating to the capture and detention of certain citizens of
the United States, passengers on board the British steamer Trent, by
order of Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN




TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON.

January 20, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN,

Commanding Armies of the United States:

You or any officer you may designate will in your discretion suspend
the writ of habeas corpus so far as may relate to Major Chase, lately
of the Engineer Corps of the Army of the United States, now alleged
to be guilty of treasonable practices against this government.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.




PRESIDENT'S GENERAL WAR ORDER NO. 1

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON , January 27, 1862.

Ordered, That the 22d day of February, 1862, be the day for a general
movement of the land and the naval forces of the United States
against the insurgent forces.

That especially the army at and about Fortress Monroe, the Army of
the Potomac, the Army of Western Virginia, the army near
Munfordville, Kentucky, the army and flotilla at Cairo, and a naval
force in the Gulf of Mexico, be ready for a movement on that day.

That all other forces, both land and naval, with their respective
commanders, obey existing orders for the time, and be ready to obey
additional orders when duly given.

That the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries of War
and of the Navy, with all their subordinates, and the
General-in-chief, with all other commanders and subordinates of land
and naval forces, will severally be held to their strict and full
responsibilities for the prompt execution of this order.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON,

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, January 31, 1862

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--It is my wish that the expedition commonly called the
"Lane Expedition" shall be, as much as has been promised at the
adjutant-general's office, under the supervision of General
McClellan, and not any more.  I have not intended, and do not now
intend, that it shall be a great, exhausting affair, but a snug,
sober column of 10,000 or 15,000.  General Lane has been told by me
many times that he is under the command of General Hunter, and
assented to it as often as told.  It was the distinct agreement
between him and me, when I appointed him, that he was to be under
Hunter.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




PRESIDENT'S SPECIAL WAR ORDER NO. 1.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 31, 1862.

Ordered, That all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac,
after providing safely for the defence of Washington, be formed into
an expedition for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a
point upon the railroad southwestward of what is known as Manassas
Junction, all details to be in the discretion of the
commander-in-chief, and the expedition to move before or on the 22d
day of February next.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




OPPOSITION TO McCLELLAN'S PLANS

TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 3, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN.

DEAR SIR--You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement
of the Army of the Potomac--yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the
Rappahannock to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the
railroad on the York River; mine to move directly to a point on the
railroad southwest of Manassas.

If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions,
I shall gladly yield my plan to yours.

First.   Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of
time and money than mine?

Second.  Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine?

Third.  Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine?

Fourth.  In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that it
would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine
would?

Fifth.  In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by
your plan than mine?

Yours truly,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




Memorandum accompanying Letter of President Lincoln to General
McClellan, dated February 3,1862.

First.  Suppose the enemy should attack us in force before we reach
the Occoquan, what?

Second.  Suppose the enemy in force shall dispute the crossing of the
Occoquan, what? In view of this, might it not be safest for us to
cross the Occoquan at Coichester, rather than at the village of
Occoquan? This would cost the enemy two miles of travel to meet us,
but would, on the contrary, leave us two miles farther from our
ultimate
destination.

Third.  Suppose we reach Maple Valley without an attack, will we not
be attacked there in force by the enemy marching by the several roads
from Manassas; and if so, what?




TO WM. H. HERNDON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 3, 1862.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Yours of January 30th just received. Do just as you
say about the money matter.

As you well know, I have not time to write a letter of respectable
length. God bless you, says

Your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




RESPITE FOR NATHANIEL GORDON

February 4, 1862

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
To all to whom these Presents shall come, Greeting:

Whereas it appears that at a term of the Circuit Court of the United
States of America for the Southern District of New York held in the
month of November, A.D. 1861, Nathaniel Gordon was indicted and
convicted for being engaged in the slave trade, and was by the said
court sentenced to be put to death by hanging by the neck, on Friday
the 7th day of February, AD. 1862:

And whereas a large number of respectable citizens have earnestly
besought me to commute the said sentence of the said Nathaniel Gordon
to a term of imprisonment for life, which application I have felt it
to be my duty to refuse:

And whereas it has seemed to me probable that the unsuccessful
application made for the commutation of his sentence may have
prevented the said Nathaniel Gordon from making the necessary
preparation for the awful change which awaits him;

Now, therefore, be it known, that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of
the United States of America, have granted and do hereby grant unto
him, the said Nathaniel Gordon, a respite of the above recited
sentence, until Friday the twenty-first day of February, A.D. 1862,
between the hours of twelve o'clock at noon and three o'clock in the
afternoon of the said day, when the said sentence shall be executed.

In granting this respite, it becomes my painful duty to admonish the
prisoner that, relinquishing all expectation of pardon by human
authority, he refer himself alone to the mercy of the common God and
Father of all men.

In testimony whereof  I have hereunto signed my name and caused the
seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this fourth day of February, A.D.
1862, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,  Secretary of State.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON CITY, February 4.  1862

To THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

The third section of the "Act further to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," approved December 21, 1862, provides:

"That the President of the United States, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the
retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single
ships such officers as he may believe that the good of the service
requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon
the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall
receive a vote of thanks of Congress for their services and gallantry
in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not
otherwise."

In conformity with this law, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, of the navy,
was nominated to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer in
command of the squadron which recently rendered such important
service to the Union in the expedition to the coast of South
Carolina.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully
correspond with the intention of the law, or be more pregnant with
happy influence as an example, I cordially recommend that Captain
Samuel F. Du Pont receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his
services and gallantry displayed in the capture of Forts Walker and
Beauregard, commanding the entrance of Port Royal Harbor, on the 7th
of November, 1861.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERALS D. HUNTER AND J. H. LANE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 4, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER AND BRIGADIER-GENERAL LANE,
Leavenworth, Kansas:

My wish has been and is to avail the government of the services of
both General Hunter and General Lane, and, so far as possible, to
personally oblige both.  General Hunter is the senior officer, and
must command when they serve together; though in so far as he can
consistently with the public service and his own honor oblige General
Lane, he will also oblige me.  If they cannot come to an amicable
understanding, General Lane must report to General Hunter for duty,
according to the rules, or decline the service.
A. LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 1, RELATING TO POLITICAL
PRISONERS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON,
February 14,1862.

The breaking out of a formidable insurrection based on a conflict of
political ideas, being an event without precedent in the United
States, was necessarily attended by great confusion and perplexity of
the public mind.  Disloyalty before unsuspected suddenly became bold,
and treason astonished the world by bringing at once into the field
military forces superior in number to the standing army of the United
States.

Every department of the government was paralyzed by treason.
Defection appeared in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in
the Cabinet, in the Federal courts; ministers and consuls returned
from foreign countries to enter the insurrectionary councils of land
or naval forces; commanding and other officers of the army and in the
navy betrayed our councils or deserted their posts for commands in
the insurgent forces.  Treason was flagrant in the revenue and in the
post-office service, as well as in the Territorial governments and in
the Indian reserves.

Not only governors, judges, legislators, and ministerial officers in
the States, but even whole States rushed one after another with
apparent unanimity into rebellion.  The capital was besieged and its
connection with all the States cut off.  Even in the portions of the
country which were most loyal, political combinations and secret
societies were formed furthering tile work of disunion, while, from
motives of disloyalty or cupidity or from excited passions or
perverted sympathies, individuals were found furnishing men, money,
and materials of war and supplies to the insurgents' military and
naval forces.  Armies, ships, fortifications, navy yards, arsenals,
military posts, and garrisons one after another were betrayed or
abandoned to the insurgents.

Congress had not anticipated, and so had not provided for, the
emergency.  The municipal authorities were powerless and inactive.
The judicial machinery seemed as if it had been designed, not to
sustain the government, but to embarrass and betray it.

Foreign intervention, openly invited and industriously instigated by
the abettors of the insurrection, became imminent, and has only been
prevented by the practice of strict and impartial justice, with the
most perfect moderation, in our intercourse with nations.

The public mind was alarmed and apprehensive, though fortunately not
distracted or disheartened.  It seemed to be doubtful whether the
Federal Government, which one year before had been thought a model
worthy of universal acceptance, had indeed the ability to defend and
maintain itself.

Some reverses, which, perhaps, were unavoidable, suffered by newly
levied and inefficient forces, discouraged the loyal and gave new
hopes to the insurgents.  Voluntary enlistments seemed about to cease
and desertions commenced.  Parties speculated upon the question
whether conscription had not become necessary to fill up the armies
of the United States.

In this emergency the President felt it his duty to employ with
energy the extraordinary powers which the Constitution confides to
him in cases of insurrection.  He called into the field such military
and naval forces, unauthorized by the existing laws, as seemed
necessary.  He directed measures to prevent the use of the post-
office for treasonable correspondence.  He subjected passengers to
and from foreign countries to new passport regulations, and he
instituted a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in various
places, and caused persons who were represented to him as being or
about to engage in disloyal and treasonable practices to be arrested
by special civil as well as military agencies and detained in
military custody when necessary to prevent them and deter others from
such practices.  Examinations of such cases were instituted, and some
of the persons so arrested have been discharged from time to time
under circumstances or upon conditions compatible, as was thought,
with the public safety.

Meantime a favorable change of public opinion has occurred.  The line
between loyalty and disloyalty is plainly defined.  The whole
structure of the government is firm and stable.  Apprehension of
public danger and facilities for treasonable practices have
diminished with the passions which prompted heedless persons to adopt
them.  The insurrection is believed to have culminated and to be
declining.

The President, in view of these facts, and anxious to favor a return
to the normal course of the administration as far as regard for the
public welfare will allow, directs that all political prisoners or
state prisoners now held in military custody be released on their
subscribing to a parole engaging them to render no aid or comfort to
the enemies in hostility to the United States.

The Secretary of War will, however, in his discretion, except from
the effect of this order any persons detained as spies in the service
of the insurgents, or others whose release at the present moment may
be deemed incompatible with the public safety.

To all persons who shall be so released, and who shall keep their
parole, the President grants an amnesty for any past offences of
treason or disloyalty which they may have comminuted.

Extraordinary arrests will hereafter be made under the direction of
the military authorities alone.

By order of the President
EDWIN M. STANTON,   Secretary of War.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.
WASHINGTON CITY, February 15, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES:
The third section of the "Act further to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," approved December 21, 1861, provides

"That the President of the United States, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the
retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single
ships such officers as he may believe that the good of the service
requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon
the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall
receive a vote of thanks of Congress for their services and gallantry
in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not
otherwise."

In conformity with this law, Captain Louis M. Goldsborough, of the
navy, was nominated to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer
in command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which recently
rendered such important service to the Union in the expedition to the
coast of North Carolina.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully
correspond with the intention of the law or be more pregnant with
happy influence as an example, I cordially recommend that Captain
Louis M. Goldsborough receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his
services and gallantry displayed in the combined attack of the forces
commanded by him and Brigadier-General Burnside in the capture of
Roanoke Island and the destruction of rebel gunboats On the 7th, 8th,
and 10th of February, 1862.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




FIRST WRITTEN NOTICE OF GRANT

TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

February 16, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, St.  Louis, Missouri:

You have Fort Donelson safe, unless Grant shall be overwhelmed from
outside; to prevent which latter will, I think, require all the
vigilance, energy, and skill of yourself and Buell, acting in full
co-operation.  Columbus will not get at Grant, but the force from
Bowling Green will.  They hold the railroad from Bowling Green to
within a few miles of Fort Donelson, with the bridge at Clarksville
undisturbed.  It is unsafe to rely that they will not dare to expose
Nashville to Buell.  A small part of their force can retire slowly
toward Nashville, breaking up the railroad as they go, and keep Buell
out of that city twenty days.  Meanwhile Nashville will be abundantly
defended by forces from all South and perhaps from hers at Manassas.
Could not a cavalry force from General Thomas on the upper Cumberland
dash across, almost unresisted, and cut the railroad at or near
Knoxville, Tennessee?  In the midst of a bombardment at Fort
Donelson, why could not a gunboat run up and destroy the bridge at
Clarksville? Our success or failure at Fort Donelson is vastly
important, and I beg you to put your soul in the effort.  I send a
copy of this to Buell.

A. LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 2.--IN RELATION TO STATE PRISONERS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY,
FEBRUARY 27, 1862

It is ordered:

First.  That a special commission of two persons, one of military
rank and the other in civil life, be appointed to examine the cases
of the state prisoners remaining in the military custody of the
United States, and to determine whether in view of the public Safety
and the existing rebellion they should be discharged, or remain in
military custody, or be remitted to the civil tribunals for trial.

Second.  That Major-General John A. Dix, commanding in Baltimore, and
the HON. Edwards Pierrepont, of New York, be, and they are hereby,
appointed commissioners for the purpose above mentioned; and they are
authorized to examine, hear, and determine the cases aforesaid ex
parte and in a summary manner, at such times and places as in their
discretion they may appoint, and make full report to the War
Department.

By order of the President
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




ORDER RELATING TO COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE.

Considering that the existing circumstances of the country allow a
partial restoration of commercial intercourse between the inhabitants
of those parts of the United States heretofore declared to be in
insurrection and the citizens of the loyal States of the Union, and
exercising the authority and discretion confided to me by the act of
Congress, approved July 13, 1861, entitled "An act further to provide
for the collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes," I
hereby license and permit such commercial intercourse in all cases
within the rules and regulations which have been or may be prescribed
by the Secretary of the Treasury for conducting and carrying on the
same on the inland waters arid ways of the United States.

WASHINGTON, February 28, 1862.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




SPEECH TO THE PERUVIAN MINISTER,

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
MARCH 4, 1862

The United States have no enmities, animosities, or rivalries, and no
interests which conflict with the welfare, safety, and rights or
interests of any other nation.  Their own prosperity, happiness, and
aggrandizement are sought most safely and advantageously through the
preservation not only of peace on their own part, but peace among all
other nations.  But while the United States are thus a friend to all
other nations, they do not seek to conceal the fact that they cherish
especial sentiments of friendship for, and sympathies with, those
who, like themselves, have founded their institutions on the
principle of the equal rights of men; and such nations being more
prominently neighbors of the United States, the latter are
co-operating with them in establishing civilization and culture on
the American continent. Such being the general principles which
govern the United States in their foreign relations, you may be
assured, sir, that in all things this government will deal justly,
frankly, and, if it be possible, even liberally with Peru, whose
liberal sentiments toward us you have so kindly expressed.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS RECOMMENDING COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION.

March 6, 1862

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:--
I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honorable
bodies which shall be substantially as follows:

"Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State
which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State
pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to
compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by
such change of system."

If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the
approval of Congress and the country, there is the end; but if it
does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the States
and people immediately interested should be at once distinctly
notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to
accept or reject it.  The Federal Government would find its highest
interest in such a measure, as one of the most efficient means of
self-preservation.  The leaders of the existing insurrection
entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be forced to
acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region,
and that all the slave States north of such part will then say, "The
Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose
to go with the Southern section."  To deprive them of this hope
substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation
completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it.
The point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very
soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that, while the offer is
equally made to all, the more northern shall by such initiation make
it certain to the more southern that in no event will the former ever
join the latter in their proposed confederacy.  I say "initiation"
because, in my judgment, gradual and not sudden emancipation is
better for all.  In the mere financial or pecuniary view, any member
of Congress with the census tables and treasury reports before him
can readily see for himself how very soon the current expenditures of
this war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any
named State.  Such a proposition on the part of the General
Government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to
interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does,
the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its
people immediately interested.  It is proposed as a matter of
perfectly free choice with them.

In the annual message last December, I thought fit to say, "The Union
must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be
employed."  I said this not hastily, but deliberately.  War has been
made and continues to be an indispensable means to this end.  A
practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the
war unnecessary, and it would at once cease.  If, however, resistance
continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to
foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may
follow it.  Such as may seem indispensable or may obviously promise
great efficiency toward ending the struggle must and will come.

The proposition now made (though an offer only), I hope it may be
esteemed no offense to ask whether the pecuniary consideration
tendered would not be of more value to the States and private persons
concerned than are the institution and property in it in the present
aspect of affairs.

While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would
be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it
is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead to important
practical results.  In full view of my great responsibility to my God
and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the
people to the subject.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON LETTER FROM GOVERNOR YATES.

STATE OF ILLINOIS, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,
SPRINGFIELD, ILL., March 1, 1862

HON. EDWIN M. STANTON,
SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D. C.

SIR:--The government at my special request a few months since
contracted for fourteen batteries of the James rifled gun, 6-pounder
calibre, and a limited quantity of the James projectiles, weighing
about fourteen pounds each. The reports showing the superiority of
this gun and projectile, both as regards range, accuracy, and
execution, for field service over that of all others at the battle of
Fort Donelson, leads me to request that there be furnished to the
State of Illinois in the shortest time practicable seven batteries of
12-pounder calibre James rifled guns, with carriages, harness,
implements, etc., complete and ready for field service, together with
the following fixed ammunition to each gun, viz., 225 shells, 225
canister, and 50 solid projectiles, weighing about 24 pounds each,
and also 200 shells, 100 canister, and 100 solid projectiles for each
of the guns of the fourteen batteries named above, weighing about
14 pounds each, all to be of the James model.

Very respectfully,

RICHARD YATES,
Governor of Illinois.

[Indorsement.]

March 8, 1862.

The within is from the Governor of Illinois. I understand the seven
additional batteries now sought are to be 6-gun batteries, and the
object is to mix them with the fourteen batteries they already have
so as to make each battery consist of four 6-pounders and two
12-pounders. I shall be very glad to have the requisition filled if
it can be without detriment to the service.

A. LINCOLN.




PRESIDENT'S GENERAL WAR ORDER NO.2.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON

March 8, 1862.

Ordered:
1.  That the major-general commanding the Army of the Potomac proceed
forthwith to organize that part of the said army destined to enter
upon active operations (including the reserve, but excluding the
troops to be left in the fortifications about Washington) into four
army corps, to be commanded according to seniority of rank, as
follows:

First Corps to consist of four divisions, and to be commanded by
Major-General I. McDowell.
Second Corps to consist of three divisions, and to be commanded by
Brigadier-General E. V. Sumner.
Third Corps to consist of three divisions, and to be commanded by
Brigadier-General S. P. Heintzelman.
Fourth Corps to consist of three divisions, and to be commanded by
Brigadier-General E. D. Keyes.

2.   That the divisions now commanded by the officers above assigned
to the commands of army corps shall be embraced in and form part of
their respective corps.

3.   The forces left for the defense of Washington will be placed in
command of Brigadier-General James S. Wadsworth, who shall also be
military governor of the District of Columbia.

4.   That this order be executed with such promptness and dispatch as
not to delay the commencement of the operations already directed to
be underwritten by the Army of the Potomac.

5.  A fifth army corps, to be commanded by Major general N. P. Banks,
will be formed from his own and General Shields's (late General
Lander's) divisions.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PRESIDENT'S GENERAL WAR ORDER NO.3.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, MARCH 8,1862

Ordered: That no change of the base of operations of the Army of the
Potomac shall be made without leaving in and about Washington such a
force as in the opinion of the general-in-chief and the commanders of
all the army corps shall leave said city entirely secure.

That no more than two army corps (about 50,000 troops) of said Army
of the Potomac shall be moved en route for a new base of operations
until the navigation of the Potomac from Washington to the Chesapeake
Bay shall be freed from enemy's batteries and other obstructions, or
until the President shall hereafter give express permission.

That any movements as aforesaid en route for a new base of operations
which may be ordered by the general-in-chief, and which may be
intended to move upon the Chesapeake Bay, shall begin to move upon
the bay as early as the 18th day of March instant, and the
general-in-chief shall be responsible that it so move as early as
that day.

Ordered, That the army and navy co-operate in an immediate effort to
capture the enemy's batteries upon the Potomac between Washington and
the Chesapeake Bay.

A. LINCOLN




MEMORANDUM OF AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND SOME BORDER
SLAVE STATE REPRESENTATIVES, BY HON. J. W. CRISFIELD.

"DEAR SIR:--I called, at the request of the President, to ask you to
come to the White House tomorrow morning, at nine o'clock, and bring
such of your colleagues as are in town."

WASHINGTON, March 10, 1862.

Yesterday, on my return from church, I found Mr. Postmaster-General
Blair in my room, writing the above note, which he immediately
suspended, and verbally communicated the President's invitation, and
stated that the President's purpose was to have some conversation
with the delegations of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Virginia, and
Delaware, in explanation of his message of the 6th instant.

This morning these delegations, or such of them as were in town,
assembled at the White House at the appointed time, and after some
little delay were admitted to an audience.  Mr. Leary and myself were
the only members from Maryland present, and, I think, were the only
members of the delegation at that time in the city.  I know that Mr.
Pearoe, of the Senate, and Messrs.  Webster and Calvert, of the
House, were absent.

After the usual salutations, and we were seated, the President said,
in substance, that he had invited us to meet him to have some
conversation with us in explanation of his message of the 6th; that
since he had sent it in several of the gentlemen then present had
visited him, but had avoided any allusion to the message, and he
therefore inferred that the import of the message had been
misunderstood, and was regarded as inimical to the interests we
represented; and he had resolved he would talk with us, and disabuse
our minds of that erroneous opinion.

The President then disclaimed any intent to injure the interests or
wound the sensibilities of the slave States.  On the contrary, his
purpose was to protect the one and respect the other; that we were
engaged in a terrible, wasting, and tedious war; immense armies were
in the field, and must continue in the field as long as the war
lasts; that these armies must, of necessity, be brought into contact
with slaves in the States we represented and in other States as they
advanced; that slaves would come to the camps, and continual
irritation was kept up; that he was constantly annoyed by conflicting
and antagonistic complaints: on the one side a certain class
complained if the slave was not protected by the army; persons were
frequently found who, participating in these views, acted in a way
unfriendly to the slaveholder; on the other hand, slaveholders
complained that their rights were interfered with, their slaves
induced to abscond and protected within the lines; these complaints
were numerous, loud and deep; were a serious annoyance to him and
embarrassing to the progress of the war; that it kept alive a spirit
hostile to the government in the States we represented; strengthened
the hopes of the Confederates that at some day the border States
would unite with them, and thus tend to prolong the war; and he was
of opinion, if this resolution should be adopted by Congress and
accepted by our States, these causes of irritation and these hopes
would be removed, and more would be accomplished toward shortening
the war than could be hoped from the greatest victory achieved by
Union armies; that he made this proposition in good faith, and
desired it to be accepted, if at all, voluntarily, and in the same
patriotic spirit in which it was made; that emancipation was a
subject exclusively under the control of the States, and must be
adopted or rejected by each for itself; that he did not claim nor had
this government any right to coerce them for that purpose; that such
was no part of his purpose in making this proposition, and he wished
it to be clearly understood; that he did not expect us there to be
prepared to give him an answer, but he hoped we would take the
subject into serious consideration, confer with one another, and then
take such course as we felt our duty and the interests of our
constituents required of us.

Mr. Noell, of Missouri, said that in his State slavery was not
considered a permanent institution; that natural causes were there in
operation which would at no distant day extinguish it, and he did not
think that this proposition was necessary for that; and, besides
that, he and his friends felt solicitous as to the message on account
of the different constructions which the resolution and message had
received.  The New York Tribune was for it, and understood it to mean
that we must accept gradual emancipation according to the plan
suggested, or get something worse.

The President replied that he must not be expected to quarrel with
the New York Tribune before the right time; he hoped never to have to
do it; he would not anticipate events.  In respect to emancipation in
Missouri, he said that what had been observed by Mr. Noell was
probably true, but the operation of these natural causes had not
prevented the irritating conduct to which he had referred, or
destroyed the hopes of the Confederates that Missouri would at some
time merge herself alongside of them, which, in his judgment, the
passage of this resolution by Congress and its acceptance by Missouri
would accomplish.

Mr. Crisfield, of Maryland, asked what would be the effect of the
refusal of the State to accept this proposal, and he desired to know
if the President looked to any policy beyond the acceptance or
rejection of this scheme.

The President replied that he had no designs beyond the actions of
the States on this particular subject.  He should lament their
refusal to accept it, but he had no designs beyond their refusal of
it.

Mr. Menzies, of Kentucky, inquired if the President thought there was
any power except in the States themselves to carry out his scheme of
emancipation.

The President replied that he thought there could not be.  He then
went off into a course of remarks not qualifying the foregoing
declaration nor material to be repeated to a just understanding of
his meaning.

Mr. Crisfield said he did not think the people of Maryland looked
upon slavery as a permanent institution; and he did not know that
they would be very reluctant to give it up if provision was made to
meet the loss and they could be rid of the race; but they did not
like to be coerced into emancipation, either by the direct action of
the government or by indirection, as through the emancipation of
slaves in this District, or the confiscation of Southern property as
now threatened; and he thought before they would consent to consider
this proposition they would require to be informed on these points.
The President replied that, unless he was expelled by the act of God
or the Confederate armies he should occupy that house for three
years; and as long as he remained there Maryland had nothing to fear
either for her institutions or her interests on the points referred
to.

Mr. Crisfield immediately added: "Mr. President, if what you now say
could be heard by the people of Maryland, they would consider your
proposition with a much better feeling than I fear without it they
will be inclined to do."

The President: "That [meaning a publication of what he said] will not
do; it would force me into a quarrel before the proper time "; and,
again intimating, as he had before done, that a quarrel with the
"Greeley faction" was impending, he said he did not wish to encounter
it before the proper time, nor at all if it could be avoided.

[The Greely faction wanted an immediate Emancipation Proclamation.
D.W.]

Governor Wickliffe, of Kentucky, then asked him respecting the
constitutionality of his scheme.

The President replied: "As you may suppose, I have considered that;
and the proposition now submitted does not encounter any
constitutional difficulty.  It proposes simply to co-operate with any
State by giving such State pecuniary aid"; and he thought that the
resolution, as proposed by him, would be considered rather as the
expression of a sentiment than as involving any constitutional
question.

Mr. Hall, of Missouri, thought that if this proposition was adopted
at all it should be by the votes of the free States, and come as a
proposition from them to the slave States, affording them an
inducement to put aside this subject of discord; that it ought not to
be expected that members representing slaveholding constituencies
should declare at once, and in advance of any proposition to them,
for the emancipation of slavery.

The President said he saw and felt the force of the objection; it was
a fearful responsibility, and every gentleman must do as he thought
best; that he did not know how this scheme was received by the
members from the free States; some of them had spoken to him and
received it kindly; but for the most part they were as reserved and
chary as we had been, and he could not tell how they would vote.  And
in reply to some expression of Mr. Hall as to his own opinion
regarding slavery, he said he did not pretend to disguise his anti-
slavery feeling; that he thought it was wrong, and should continue to
think so; but that was not the question we had to deal with now.
Slavery existed, and that, too, as well by the act of the North as of
the South; and in any scheme to get rid of it the North as well as
the South was morally bound to do its full and equal share.  He
thought the institution wrong and ought never to have existed; but
yet he recognized the rights of property which had grown out of it,
and would respect those rights as fully as similar rights in any
other property; that property can exist and does legally exist.  He
thought such a law wrong, but the rights of property resulting must
be respected; he would get rid of the odious law, not by violating
the rights, but by encouraging the proposition and offering
inducements to give it up.

Here the interview, so far as this subject is concerned, terminated
by Mr. Crittenden's assuring the President that, whatever might be
our final action, we all thought him solely moved by a high
patriotism and sincere devotion to the happiness and glory of his
country; and with that conviction we should consider respectfully the
important suggestions he had made.

After some conversation on the current war news, we retired, and I
immediately proceeded to my room and wrote out this paper.

J. W. CRISFIELD.


We were present at the interview described in the foregoing paper of
Mr. Crisfield, and we certify that the substance of what passed on
the occasion is in this paper faithfully and fully given.

J. W. MENZIES,
J. J. CRITTENDEN,
R. MALLORY.

March 10, 1862.




PRESIDENT'S SPECIAL WAR ORDER NO.3.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 11, 1862.

Major-General McClellan having personally taken the field at the head
of the Army of the Potomac, until otherwise ordered he is relieved
from the command of the other military departments, he retaining
command of the Department of the Potomac.

Ordered further, That the departments now under the respective
commands of Generals Halleck and Hunter, together with so much of
that under General Buell as lies west of a north and south line
indefinitely drawn through Knoxville, Tenn., be consolidated and
designated the Department of the Mississippi, and that until
otherwise ordered Major General Halleck have command of said
department.

Ordered also, That the country west of the Department of the Potomac
and east of the Department of the Mississippi be a military
department, to be called the Mountain Department, and that the same
be commanded by Major-General Fremont.

That all the commanders of departments, after the receipt of this
order by them, respectively report severally and directly to the
Secretary of War, and that prompt, full, and frequent reports will be
expected of all and each of them.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




FROM SECRETARY STANTON TO GENERAL MCCLELLAN.
WAR DEPARTMENT, March 13, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN:

The President, having considered the plan of operations agreed upon
by yourself and the commanders of army corps, makes no objection to
the same but gives the following directions as to its execution:

1.   Leave such force at Manassas Junction as shall make it entirely
certain that the enemy shall no repossess himself of that position
and line of communication.

2.   Leave Washington entirely secure.

3.   Move the remainder of the force down the Potomac, choosing a new
base at Fortress Monroe or anywhere between here and there, or, at
all events, move such remainder of the army at once in pursuit of the
enemy by some route.

EDWARD M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.




SPEECH TO A PARTY OF MASSACHUSETTS GENTLEMAN

WASHINGTON, MARCH 13, 1862

I thank you, Mr. Train, for your kindness in presenting me with this
truly elegant and highly creditable specimen of the handiwork of the
mechanics of your State of Massachusetts, and I beg of you to express
my hearty thanks to the donors.  It displays a perfection of
workmanship which I really wish I had time to acknowledge in more
fitting words, and I might then follow your idea that it is
suggestive, for it is evidently expected that a good deal of whipping
is to be done.  But as we meet here socially let us not think only of
whipping rebels, or of those who seem to think only of whipping
negroes, but of those pleasant days, which it is to be hoped are in
store for us, when seated behind a good pair of horses we can crack
our whips and drive through a peaceful, happy, and prosperous land.
With this idea, gentlemen, I must leave you for my business duties.
[It was likely a Buggy-Whip D.W.]




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON CITY, March 20, 1862.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The third section of the "Act further to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," approved December 21, 1861, provides:

"That the President of the United States, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the
retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single
ships such officers as he may believe the good of the service
requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon
the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall
receive a vote of thanks cf Congress for their services and gallantry
in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not
otherwise."

In conformity with this law, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, of the navy,
was nominated to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer in
command of the squadron which recently rendered such important
service to the Union in the expedition to the coasts of South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully
correspond with the intention of the law or be more pregnant with
happy influence as an example, I cordially recommend that Captain
Samuel F. Du Pont receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his
service and gallantry displayed in the capture since the 21st
December, 1861, of various ports on the coasts of Georgia and
Florida, particularly Brunswick, Cumberland Island and Sound, Amelia
Island, the towns of St. Mary's, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville and
Fernandina.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, MARCH 31, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN.

MY DEAR SIR:-This morning I felt constrained to order Blenker's
division to Fremont, and I write this to assure you I did so with
great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise.  If you
could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident that you
would justify it, even beyond a mere acknowledgment that the
commander-in-chief may order what he pleases.

Yours very truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




GIFT OF SOME RABBITS

TO MICHAEL CROCK.
360 N. Fourth St., Philadelphia.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 2, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR:-Allow me to thank you in behalf of my little son for
your present of white rabbits.  He is very much pleased with them.

Yours truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




INSTRUCTION TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 3, 1862.

The Secretary of War will order that one or the other of the corps of
General McDowell and General Sumner remain in front of Washington
until further orders from the department, to operate at or in the
direction of Manassas Junction, or otherwise, as occasion may
require; that the other Corps not so ordered to remain go forward to
General McClellan as speedily as possible; that General McClellan
commence his forward movements from his new base at once, and that
such incidental modifications as the foregoing may render proper be
also made.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, April 6, 1862.

GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN:

Yours of 11 A. M. today received.  Secretary of War informs me that
the forwarding of transportation, ammunition, and Woodbury's brigade,
under your orders, is not, and will not be, interfered with.  You now
have over one hundred thousand troops with you, independent of
General Wool's command.  I think you better break the enemy's line
from Yorktown to Warwick River at once.  This will probably use time
as advantageously as you can.

A. LINCOLN, President




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, April 9, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN.

MY DEAR SIR+--Your despatches, complaining that you are not properly
sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.

Blenker's division was withdrawn from you before you left here, and
you knew the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought,
acquiesced in it certainly not without reluctance.

After you left I ascertained that less than 20,000 unorganized men,
without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for
the defense of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this
even to go to General Hooker's old position; General Banks's corps,
once designed for Manassas Junction, was divided and tied up on the
line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without
again exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
This presented (or would present when McDowell and Sumner should be
gone) a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the
Rappahannock and sack Washington.  My explicit order that Washington
should, by the judgment of all the Commanders of corps, be left
entirely secure, had been neglected.  It was precisely this that
drove me to detain McDowell.

I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave
Banks at Manassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up
and nothing substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied.  I was
constrained to substitute something for it myself.

And now allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line
from Richmond via Manaasas Junction to this city to be entirely open,
except what resistance could be presented by less than 20,000
unorganized troops?  This is a question which the country will not
allow me to evade.

There is a curious mystery about the number of the troops now with
you.  When I telegraphed you on the 6th, saying you had over 100,000
with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War a statement,
taken as he said from your own returns, making 108,000 then with you
and en route to you.  You now say you will have but 85,000 when all
enroute to you shall have reached you.  How can this discrepancy of
23,000 be accounted for?

As to General Wool's command, I understand it is doing for you
precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that
command was away.  I suppose the whole force which has gone forward
to you is with you by this time; and if so, I think it is the precise
time for you to strike a blow.  By delay the enemy will relatively
gain upon you--that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and
reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone.

And once more let me tell you it is indispensable to you that you
strike a blow.  I am powerless to help this.  You will do me the
justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting and not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the
same enemy and the same or equal entrenchments at either place.  The
country will not fail to note--is noting now--that the present
hesitation to move upon an entrenched enemy is but the story of
Manassas repeated.

I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in
greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to
sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment I consistently
can; but you must act.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.



TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 9, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Saint Louis, Mo.:
If the rigor of the confinement of Magoffin (Governor of Kentucky) at
Alton is endangering his life, or materially impairing his health, I
wish it mitigated as far as it can be consistently with his safe
detention.
A. LINCOLN.

Please send above, by order of the President.
JOHN HAY.




PROCLAMATION RECOMMENDING THANKSGIVING FOR VICTORIES,

APRIL 10, 1862.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

It has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the land
and naval forces engaged in suppressing, an internal rebellion, and
at the same time to avert from our country the dangers of foreign
intervention and invasion.

It is therefore recommended to the people of the United States that
at their next weekly assemblages in their accustomed places of public
worship which shall occur after notice of this proclamation shall
have been received, they especially acknowledge and render thanks to
our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings, that they then
and there implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all who have
been brought into affliction by the casualties and calamities of
sedition and civil war, and that they reverently invoke the divine
guidance for our national counsels, to the end that they may speedily
result in the restoration of peace, harmony, and unity throughout our
borders and hasten the establishment of fraternal relations among all
the countries of the earth.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this tenth day of April, A.D. 1862,
and of the independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




ABOLISHING SLAVERY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.
April 16, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
The act entitled "An act for the relief of certain persons held to
service or labor in the District of Columbia" has this day been
approved and signed.

I have never doubted the constitutional authority of Congress to
abolish slavery in this District, and I have ever desired to see the
national capital freed from the institution in some satisfactory way.
Hence there has never been in my mind any question on the subject
except the one of expediency, arising in view of all the
circumstances.  If there be matters within and about this act which
might have taken a course or shape more satisfactory to my judgment,
I do not attempt to specify them.  I am gratified that the two
principles of compensation and colonization are both recognized and
practically applied in the act.

In the matter of compensation, it is provided that claims may be
presented within ninety days from the passage of the act, "but not
thereafter"; and there is no saving for minors, femmes covert, insane
or absent persons.  I presume this is an omission by mere oversight,
and I recommend that it be supplied by an amendatory or supplemental
act.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, April 21, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch of the 19th was received that day.  Fredericksburg is
evacuated and the bridges destroyed by the enemy, and a small part of
McDowell's command occupies this side of the Rappahannock, opposite
the town.  He purposes moving his whole force to that point.

A. LINCOLN.




TO POSTMASTER-GENERAL

A. LINCOLN. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 24, 1862.

Hon. POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

MY DEAR SIR:--The member of Congress from the district including
Tiffin, O., calls on me about the postmaster at that place.
I believe I turned over a despatch to you from some persons there,
asking a suspension, so as for them to be heard, or something of the
sort.  If nothing, or nothing amounting to anything, has been done, I
think the suspension might now be suspended, and the commission go
forward.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, April 29, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Would it derange or embarrass your operations if I were to appoint
Captain Charles Griffin a brigadier-general of volunteers?  Please
answer.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE, MAY 1, 1862.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In answer to the resolution of the Senate [of April 22] in relation
to Brigadier-General Stone, I have the honor to state that he was
arrested and imprisoned under my general authority, and upon evidence
which whether he be guilty or innocent, required, as appears to me,
such proceedings to be had against him for the public safety.   I
deem it incompatible with the public interest, as also, perhaps,
unjust to General Stone, to make a more particular statement of the
evidence.

He has not been tried because, in the state of military operations at
the time of his arrest and since, the officers to constitute a court
martial and for witnesses could not be withdrawn from duty without
serious injury to the service.  He will be allowed a trial without
any unnecessary delay; the charges and specifications will be
furnished him in due season, and every facility for his defense will
be afforded him by the War Department.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
WASHINGTON, MAY 1, 1862





TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, MAY 1, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me, chiefly because
it argues indefinite procrastination.  Is anything to be done?

A LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, MAY 1, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee:

I am pressed by the Missouri members of Congress to give General
Schofield independent command in Missouri.  They insist that for want
of this their local troubles gradually grow worse.  I have forborne,
so far, for fear of interfering with and embarrassing your
operations.  Please answer telling me whether anything, and what, I
can do for them without injuriously interfering with you.

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO EVANGELICAL LUTHERANS, MAY 6, 1862

GENTLEMEN:--I welcome here the representatives of the Evangelical
Lutherans of the United States.  I accept with gratitude their
assurances of the sympathy and support of that enlightened,
influential, and loyal class of my fellow citizens in an important
crisis which involves, in my judgment, not only the civil and
religious liberties of our own dear land, but in a large degree the
civil and religious liberties of mankind in many countries and
through many ages.  You well know, gentlemen, and the world knows,
how reluctantly I accepted this issue of battle forced upon me on my
advent to this place by the internal enemies of our country.  You all
know, the world knows, the forces and the resources the public agents
have brought into employment to sustain a government against which
there has been brought not one complaint of real injury committed
against society at home or abroad.  You all may recollect that in
taking up the sword thus forced into our hands this government
appealed to the prayers of the pious and the good, and declared that
it placed its whole dependence on the favor of God.  I now humbly and
reverently, in your presence, reiterate the acknowledgment of that
dependence, not doubting that, if it shall please the Divine Being
who determines the destinies of nations, this shall remain a united
people, and that they will, humbly seeking the divine guidance, make
their prolonged national existence a source of new benefits to
themselves and their successors, and to all classes and conditions of
mankind.




TELEGRAM TO FLAG-OFFICER L. M. GOLDSBOROUGH.

FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, MAY 7, 1862

FLAG-OFFICER GOLDSBOROUGH.

SIR:--Major-General McClellan telegraphs that he has ascertained by a
reconnaissance that the battery at Jamestown has been abandoned, and
he again requests that gunboats may be sent up the James River.

If you have tolerable confidence that you can successfully contend
with the Merrimac without the help of the Galena and two accompanying
gunboats, send the Galena and two gunboats up the James River at
once.  Please report your action on this to me at once.  I shall be
found either at General Wool's headquarters or on board the Miami.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




FURTHER REPRIMAND OF McCLELLAN

TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, May 9, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

MY DEAR SIR:--I have just assisted the Secretary of War in framing
part of a despatch to you relating to army corps, which despatch, of
course, will have reached you long before this will.  I wish to say a
few words to you privately on this subject.  I ordered the army corps
organization not only on the unanimous opinion of the twelve generals
whom you had selected and assigned as generals of divisions, but also
on the unanimous opinion of every military man I could get an opinion
from, and every modern military book, yourself only excepted.  Of
course, I did not on my own judgment pretend to understand the
subject.  I now think it indispensable for you to know how your
struggle against it is received in quarters which we cannot entirely
disregard.  It is looked upon as merely an effort to pamper one or
two pets, and to persecute and degrade their supposed rivals.  I have
had no word from Sumner, Heintzleman, or Keyes the commanders of
these corps are, of course, the three highest officers with you; but
I am constantly told that you have no consultation or communication
with them; that you consult and communicate with nobody but General
Fitz John Porter, and perhaps General Franklin.  I do not say these
complaints are true or just; but at all events, it is proper you
should know of their existence.  Do the commanders of corps disobey
your orders in anything?

When you relieved General Hamilton of his command the other day, you
thereby lost the confidence of at least one of your best friends in
the Senate.  And here let me say, not as applicable to you
personally, that Senators and Representatives speak of me in their
places without question, and that officers of the army must cease
addressing insulting letters to them for taking no greater liberty
with them.

But to return.  Are you strong enough--are you strong enough even
with my help--to set your foot upon the necks of Sumner, Heintzelman,
and Keyes all at once? This is a practical and very serious question
to you?

The success of your army and the cause of the country are the same,
and, of course, I only desire the good of the cause.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO FLAG-OFFICER L. M. GOLDSBOROUGH,

FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, May 10, 1862

FLAG-OFFICER GOLDSBOROUGH.

MY DEAR SIR:--I send you this copy of your report of yesterday for
the purpose of saying to you in writing that you are quite right in
supposing the movement made by you and therein reported was made in
accordance with my wishes verbally expressed to you in advance.  I
avail myself of the occasion to thank you for your courtesy and all
your conduct, so far as known to me, during my brief visit here.

Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION RAISING THE BLOCKADE OF CERTAIN PORTS.
May 12, 1862.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, by my proclamation of the 19th of April, one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one, it was declared that the ports of certain
States, including those of Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina,
Port Royal, in the State of South Carolina, and New Orleans, in the
State of Louisiana, were, for reasons therein set forth, intended to
be placed under blockade; and whereas the said ports of Beaufort,
Port Royal, and New Orleans have since been blockaded; but as the
blockade of the same ports may now be safely relaxed with advantage
to the interests of commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth
section of the act of Congress approved on the 13th of July last,
entitled "An act further to provide for the collection of duties on
imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade
of the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans shall so
far cease and determine, from and after the first day of June next,
that commercial intercourse with those ports, except as to persons,
things, and information contraband of war, may from that time be
carried on, subject to the laws of the United States, and to the
limitations and in pursuance of the regulations which are prescribed
by the Secretary of the Treasury in his order of this date, which is
appended to this proclamation.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twelfth day of May, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v5
By Abraham Lincoln






VOLUME SIX

WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1862-1863



RECOMMENDATION OF NAVAL OFFICERS

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 14, 1862.

TO SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The third section of the "Act further to promote the efficiency of
the Navy," approved 21st of December, 1861, provides:

"That the President of the United States by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the
retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single
ships such officers as he may believe that the good of the service
requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon
the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall
receive a vote of thanks of Congress for their services and gallantry
in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not
otherwise."

In conformity with this law, Captain David G. Farragut was nominated
to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer in command of the
squadron which recently rendered such important service to the Union
by his successful operations on the lower Mississippi and capture of
New Orleans.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully
correspond with the intention of the law or be more pregnant with
happy influence as an example, I cordially recommend that Captain D.
G. Farragut receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his services and
gallantry displayed in the capture since 21st December, 1861, of
Forts Jackson and St. Philip, city of New Orleans, and the
destruction of various rebel gunboats, rams, etc............




TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I submit herewith a list of naval officers who commanded vessels
engaged in the recent brilliant operations of the squadron commanded
by Flag-officer Farragut which led to the capture of Forts Jackson
and St.  Philip, city of New Orleans, and the destruction of rebel
gunboats, rams, etc., in April 1862.  For their services and
gallantry on those occasions I cordially recommend that they should,
by name, receive a vote of thanks of Congress:

LIST:
Captain Theodorus Bailey.
Captain Henry W. Morris.
Captain Thomas T. Craven.
Commander Henry H. Bell.
Commander Samuel Phillips Lee.
Commander Samuel Swartwout.
Commander Melancton Smith.
Commander Charles Stewart Boggs
Commander John De Camp
Commander James Alden.
Commander David D. Porter.
Commander Richard Wainwright.
Commander William B. Renshaw.
Lieutenant Commanding Abram D. Harrell.
Lieutenant Commanding Edward Donaldson.
Lieutenant Commanding George H. Preble.
Lieutenant Commanding Edward T. Nichols.
Lieutenant Commanding Jonathan M. Wainwright.
Lieutenant Commanding John Guest.
Lieutenant Commanding Charles H. B. Caldwell.
Lieutenant Commanding Napoleon B. Harrison.
Lieutenant Commanding Albert N. Smith.
Lieutenant Commanding Pierce Crosby.
Lieutenant Commanding George M. Ransom.
Lieutenant Commanding Watson Smith.
Lieutenant Commanding John H. Russell.
Lieutenant Commanding Walter W. Queen.
Lieutenant Commanding K. Randolph Breese.
Acting Lieutenant Commanding Seliin E. Woolworth.
Acting Lieutenant Commanding Charles H. Baldwin.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 14, 1862




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, May 15, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Cumberland, Virginia:

Your long despatch of yesterday is just received.  I will answer more
fully soon.  Will say now that all your despatches to the Secretary
of War have been promptly shown to me.  Have done and shall do all I
could and can to sustain you.  Hoped that the opening of James River
and putting Wool and Burnside in communication, with an open road to
Richmond, or to you, had effected something in that direction.  I am
still unwilling to take all our force off the direct line between
Richmond and here.

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH TO THE  12TH INDIANA  REGIMENT,
MAY [15?] 1862

SOLDIERS, OF THE TWELFTH INDIANA REGIMENT: It
has not been customary heretofore, nor will it be hereafter, for me
to say something to every regiment passing in review.  It occurs too
frequently for me to have speeches ready on all occasions.  As you
have paid such a mark of respect to the chief magistrate, it appears
that I should say a word or two in reply.  Your colonel has thought
fit, on his own account and in your name, to say that you are
satisfied with the manner in which I have performed my part in the
difficulties which have surrounded the nation.  For your kind
expressions I am extremely grateful, but on the other hand I assure
you that the nation is more indebted to you, and such as you, than to
me.  It is upon the brave hearts and strong arms of the people of the
country that our reliance has been placed in support of free
government and free institutions.

For the part which you and the brave army of which you are a part
have, under Providence, performed in this great struggle, I tender
more thanks especially to this regiment, which has been the subject
of good report.  The thanks of the nation will follow you, and may
God's blessing rest upon you now and forever.  I hope that upon your
return to your homes you will find your friends and loved ones well
and happy.  I bid you farewell.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 16, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL:

What is the strength of your force now actually with you?

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM OF PROPOSED ADDITIONS TO INSTRUCTIONS OF ABOVE DATE TO
GENERAL McDOWELL, AND GENERAL MEIGS'S INDORSEMENT THEREON.

May 17, 1862.
You will retain the separate command of the forces taken with you;
but while co-operating with General McClellan you will obey his
orders, except that you are to judge, and are not to allow your force
to be disposed otherwise than so as to give the greatest protection
to this capital which may be possible from that distance.

[Indorsement.]
TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR:

The President having shown this to me, I suggested that it is
dangerous to direct a subordinate not to obey the orders of his
superior in any case, and that to give instructions to General
McClellan to this same end and furnish General McDowell with a copy
thereof would effect the object desired by the President.  He desired
me to say that the sketch of instructions to General McClellan
herewith he thought made this addition unnecessary.

Respectfully,
M. C. M.




INDORSEMENT RELATING TO GENERAL DAVID HUNTER'S
ORDER OF MILITARY EMANCIPATION,

MAY 17, 1862

No commanding general shall do such a thing upon my responsibility
without consulting me.

A. LINCOLN.




FROM SECRETARY STANTON TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 18, 1862.

GENERAL:
Your despatch to the President, asking reinforcements, has been
received and carefully considered.

The President is not willing to uncover the capital entirely; and it
is believed that, even if this were prudent, it would require more
time to effect a junction between your army and that of the
Rappahannock by the way of the Potomac and York rivers than by a land
march.  In order, therefore, to increase the strength of the attack
upon Richmond at the earliest moment, General McDowell has been
ordered to march upon that city by the shortest route.  He is
ordered, keeping himself always in position to save the capital from
all possible attack, so to operate as to put his left wing in
communication with your right wing, and you are instructed to co-
operate so as to establish this communication as soon as possible by
extending your right-wing to the north of Richmond.

It is believed that this communication can be safely established
either north or south of the Pamunkey River.

In any event, you will be able to prevent the main body of the
enemy's forces from leaving Richmond and falling in overwhelming
force upon General McDowell.  He will move with between thirty-five
and forty thousand men.

A copy of the instructions to General McDowell are with this.  The
specific task assigned to his command has been to provide against any
danger to the capital of the nation.

At your earnest call for reinforcements, he is sent forward to co-
operate in the reduction of Richmond, but charged, in attempting
this, not to uncover the city of Washington; and you will give no
order, either before or after your junction, which can put him out of
position to cover this city.  You and he will communicate with each
other by telegraph or otherwise as frequently as may be necessary for
efficient cooperation.  When General McDowell is in position on your
right, his supplies must be drawn from West Point, and you will
instruct your staff-officers to be prepared to supply him by that
route.

The President desires that General McDowell retain the command of the
Department of the Rappahannock and of the forces with which he moves
forward.

By order of the President:
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN,
Commanding Army of the Potomac, before Richmond.




PROCLAMATION REVOKING
GENERAL HUNTER'S ORDER
OF MILITARY EMANCIPATION, MAY 19, 1862.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

Whereas there appears in the public prints what purports to be a
proclamation of Major general Hunter, in the words and figures
following, to wit:

(General Orders No.  11)
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, HILTON HEAD, PORT ROYAL, S. C.,
May 9, 1862.

"The three States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, comprising
the military department of the South, having deliberately declared
themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of
America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it
became a military necessity to declare martial law.  This was
accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862.  Slavery and martial
law in a free country are altogether incompatible.  The persons in
these three States: Georgia Florida, and South Carolina--heretofore
held as slaves are therefore declared forever free.
"By command of Major-General D. Hunter:
"(Official.)ED. W. SMITH,
"Acting Assistant Adjutant-General."

And whereas the same is producing some excitement and
misunderstanding: therefore,

I,  Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and
declare that the Government of the United States, had no knowledge,
information, or belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter
to issue such a proclamation; nor has it yet any authentic
information that the document is genuine.  And further, that neither
General Hunter nor any other commander or person has been authorized
by the Government of the United States to make a proclamation
declaring the slaves of any State free; and that the supposed
proclamation now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether
void so far as respects such a declaration.

I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any
State or States free, and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall
have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the
government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which under
my responsibility I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel
justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field.

These are totally different questions from those of police
regulations in armies and camps.

On the sixth day of March last, by special message, I recommended to
Congress the adoption of a joint resolution, to be substantially as
follows:

Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State
which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State
pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to
compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by
such change of system.

The resolution in the language above quoted was adopted by large
majorities in both branches of Congress, and now stands an authentic,
definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people
most immediately interested in the subject-matter.  To the people of
those States I now earnestly appeal.  I do not argue--I beseech you
to make arguments for yourselves.  You cannot, if you would, be blind
to the signs of the times.  I beg of you a calm and enlarged
consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and
partisan politics.  This proposal makes common cause for a common
object, casting no reproaches upon any.  It acts not the Pharisee.
The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven,
not rending or wrecking anything.  Will you not embrace it?  So much
good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the
providence of God it is now your high privilege to do.  May the vast
future not have to lament that you have neglected it.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this nineteenth day of May, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred  and sixty-two, and of
the independence of the United States the eighty-sixth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. E. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 21, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I have just been waited on by a large committee who present a
petition signed by twenty-three senators and eighty-four
representatives asking me to restore General Hamilton to his
division.  I wish to do this, and yet I do not wish to be understood
as rebuking you.  Please answer at once.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, May 22, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your long despatch of yesterday just received.  You will have just
such control of General McDowell and his forces as you therein
indicate.  McDowell can reach you by land sooner than he could get
aboard of boats, if the boats were ready at Fredericksburg, unless
his march shall be resisted, in which case the force resisting him
will certainly not be confronting you at Richmond.  By land he can
reach you in five days after starting, whereas by water he would not
reach you in two weeks, judging by past experience.  Franklin's
single division did not reach you in ten days after I ordered it.

A. LINCOLN,
President United States.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 24, 1862.  4 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN:

In consequence of General Banks's critical position, I have been
compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you.  The
enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are
trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General
McDowell's in their rear.

A. LINCOLN, President.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN

WASHINGTON May 24, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

I left General McDowell's camp at dark last evening.  Shields's
command is there, but it is so worn that he cannot move before Monday
morning, the 26th.  We have so thinned our line to get troops for
other places that it was broken yesterday at Front Royal, with a
probable loss to us of one regiment infantry, two Companies cavalry,
putting General Banks in some peril.

The enemy's forces under General Anderson now opposing General
McDowell's advance have as their line of supply and retreat the road
to Richmond.

If, in conjunction with McDowell's movement against Anderson, you
could send a force from your right to cut off the enemy's supplies
from Richmond, preserve the railroad bridges across the two forks of
the Pamunkey, and intercept the enemy's retreat, you will prevent the
army now opposed to you from receiving an accession of numbers of
nearly 15,000 men; and if you succeed in saving the bridges you will
secure a line of railroad for supplies in addition to the one you now
have.  Can you not do this almost as well as not while you are
building the Chickahominy bridges?  McDowell and Shields both say
they can, and positively will, move Monday morning.  I wish you to
move cautiously and safely.

You will have command of McDowell, after he joins you, precisely as
you indicated in your long despatch to us of the 21st.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL RUFUS SAXTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May, 24 1862.  2 P.M.

GENERAL SAXTON:

Geary reports Jackson with 20,000 moving from Ashby's Gap by the
Little River turnpike, through Aldie, toward Centreville.  This he
says is reliable.  He is also informed of large forces south of him.
We know a force of some 15,000 broke up Saturday night from in front
of Fredericksburg and went we know not where.  Please inform us, if
possible, what has become of the force which pursued Banks yesterday;
also any other information you have.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL D. S. MILES.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 24, 1862.   1.30 P.M.

COLONEL MILES, Harper's Ferry, Virginia

Could you not send scouts from Winchester who would tell whether
enemy are north of Banks, moving on Winchester?  What is the latest
you have?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 24, 1862.  4 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Franklin:

You are authorized to purchase the 400 horses, or take them wherever
or however you can get them.  The exposed condition of General Banks
makes his immediate relief a point of paramount importance.  You are
therefore directed by the President to move against Jackson at
Harrisonburg and operate against the enemy in such way as to relieve
Banks.  This movement must be made immediately.  You will acknowledge
the receipt of this order, and specify the hour it is received by
you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 24, 1862.  7.15 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Franklin, Virginia:

Many thanks for the promptness with which you have answered that you
will execute the order.  Much--perhaps all--depends upon the celerity
with which you can execute it.  Put the utmost speed into it.  Do not
lose a minute.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 24, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, near Corinth, Mississippi:

Several despatches from Assistant Secretary Scott and one from
Governor Morton asking reinforcements for you have been received.  I
beg you to be assured we do the best we can.  I mean to cast no blame
where I tell you each of our commanders along our line from Richmond
to Corinth supposes himself to be confronted by numbers superior to
his own.  Under this pressure We thinned the line on the upper
Potomac, until yesterday it was broken with heavy loss to us, and
General Banks put in great peril, out of which he is not yet
extricated, and may be actually captured.  We need men to repair this
breach, and have them not at hand.  My dear General, I feel justified
to rely very much on you.  I believe you and the brave officers and
men with you can and will get the victory at Corinth.

A. LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 24, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Fredricksburg:

General Fremont has been ordered by telegraph to move from Franklin
on Harrisonburg to relieve General Banks, and capture or destroy
Jackson's and Ewell's forces.  You are instructed, laying aside for
the present the movement on Richmond, to put 20,000 men in motion at
once for the Shenandoah, moving on the line or in advance of the line
of the Manassas Gap railroad.  Your object will be to capture the
forces of Jackson and Ewell, either in co-operation with General
Fremont, or, in case want of supplies or of transportation,
interferes with his movements, it is believed that the force which
you move will be sufficient to accomplish this object alone.  The
information thus far received here makes it probable that if the
enemy operate actively against General Banks, you will not be able to
count upon much assistance from him, but may even have to release
him.   Reports received this moment are that Banks is fighting with
Ewell eight miles from Winchester.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL  McDOWELL.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., May 24, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL I. McDOWELL:

I am highly gratified by your alacrity in obeying my order.  The
change was as painful to me as it can possibly be to you or to any
one.  Everything now depends upon the celerity and vigor of your
movement.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. W. GEARY.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862  1.45 P.M.

GENERAL GEARY, White Plains:

Please give us your best present impression as to the number of the
enemy's forces north of Strasburg and Front Royal.  Are the forces
still moving north through the gap at Front Royal and between you and
there?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 25, 1862.  2 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

The enemy is moving north in sufficient force to drive General Banks
before him--precisely in what force we cannot tell.  He is also
threatening Leesburg and Geary, on the Manassas Gap railroad, from
both north and south--in precisely what force we cannot tell.  I
think the movement is a general and concerted one, such as would not
be if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defense of
Richmond.  I think the time is near when you must either attack
Richmond or give up the job and come to the defense of Washington.
Let me hear from you instantly.

A. LINCOLN,  President.




ORDER TAKING MILITARY POSSESSION OF RAILROADS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862.

Ordered: By virtue of the authority vested by act of Congress,  the
President takes military possession of all the railroads in the
United States from and after this date until further order, and
directs that the respective railroad companies, their officers and
servants, shall hold themselves in readiness for the transportation
of such troops and munitions of war as may be ordered by the military
authorities, to the exclusion of all other business.

By order of the Secretary of War.
M. C. MEIGS




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY CHASE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862.

SECRETARY CHASE, Fredericksburg, Virginia:

It now appears that Banks got safely into Winchester last night, and
is this morning retreating on Harper's Ferry.  This justifies the
inference that he is pressed by numbers superior to his own.  I think
it not improbable that Ewell, Jackson, and Johnson are pouring
through the gap they made day before yesterday at Front Royal, making
a dash northward.  It will be a very valuable and very honorable
service for General McDowell to cut them off.  I hope he will put all
possible energy and speed into the effort.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. SAXTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862.

GENERAL SAXTON, Harper's Ferry:

If Banks reaches Martinsburg, is he any the better for it?  Will not
the enemy cut him from thence to Harper's Ferry?  Have you sent
anything to meet him and assist him at Martinsburg?  This is an
inquiry, not an order.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. SAXTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862.  6.30 P.M.

GENERAL SAXTON, Harper's Ferry:

One good six-gun battery, complete in its men and appointments, is
now on its way to you from Baltimore.  Eleven other guns, of
different sorts, are on their way to you from here.  Hope they will
all reach you before morning.  As you have but 2500 men at Harper's
Ferry, where are the rest which were in that vicinity and which we
have sent forward?  Have any of them been cut off?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. SAXTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 25, 1862.

GENERAL SAXTON, Harper's Ferry:

I fear you have mistaken me.  I did not mean to question the
correctness of your conduct; on the contrary! I approve what you have
done.  As the 2500 reported by you seemed small to me, I feared some
had got to Banks and been cut off with him.  Please tell me the exact
number you now have in hand.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
[Sent in cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C., May 25,1862.  8.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch received.  General Banks was at Strasburg, with about
6,000 men, Shields having been taken from him to swell a column for
McDowell to aid you at Richmond, and the rest of his force scattered
at various places.  On the 23d a rebel force of 7000 to 10,000 fell
upon one regiment and two companies guarding the bridge at Front
Royal, destroying it entirely; crossed the Shenandoah, and on the
24th (yesterday) pushed to get north of Banks, on the road to
Winchester.  Banks ran a race with them, beating them into Winchester
yesterday evening.  This morning a battle ensued between the two
forces, in which Banks was beaten back into full retreat toward
Martinsburg, and probably is broken up into a total rout.  Geary, on
the Manassas Gap railroad, just now reports that Jackson is now near
Front Royal, With 10,000, following up and supporting, as I
understand, the forces now pursuing Banks, also that another force of
10,000 is near Orleans, following on in the same direction.  Stripped
here, as we are here, it will be all we can do to prevent them
crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry or above.  We have about
20,000 of McDowell's force moving back to the vicinity of Front
Royal, and General Fremont, who was at Franklin, is moving to
Harrisonburg; both these movements intended to get in the enemy's
rear.

One more of McDowell's brigades is ordered through here to Harper's
Ferry; the rest of his force remains for the present at
Fredericksburg.  We are sending such regiments and dribs from here
and Baltimore as we can spare to Harper's Ferry, supplying their
places in some sort by calling in militia from the adjacent States.
We also have eighteen cannon on the road to Harper's Ferry, of which
arm there is not a single one yet at that point.  This is now our
situation.

If McDowell's force was now beyond our reach, we should be utterly
helpless.  Apprehension of something like this, and no unwillingness
to sustain you, has always been my reason for withholding McDowell's
force from you.  Please understand this, and do the best you can with
the force you have.

A. LINCOLN.




HISTORY OF CONSPIRACY OF REBELLION

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

MAY 16, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The insurrection which is yet existing in the United States and aims
at the overthrow of the Federal Constitution and the Union, was
clandestinely prepared during the Winter of 1860 and 1861, and
assumed an open organization in the form of a treasonable provisional
government at Montgomery, in Alabama on the 18th day of February,
1861.  On the 12th day of April, 1861, the insurgents committed the
flagrant act of civil war by the bombardment and the capture of Fort
Sumter, Which cut off the hope of immediate conciliation.
Immediately afterward all the roads and avenues to this city were
obstructed, and the capital was put into the condition of a siege.
The mails in every direction were stopped and the lines of telegraph
cut off by the insurgents, and military and naval forces which had
been called out by the government for the defense of Washington were
prevented from reaching the city by organized and combined
treasonable resistance in the State of Maryland.  There was no
adequate and effective organization for the public defense.  Congress
had indefinitely adjourned.  There was no time to convene them.  It
became necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing
means, agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should
let the government fall at once into ruin or whether, availing myself
of the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of
insurrection, I would make an effort to save it, with all its
blessings, for the present age and for posterity.

I thereupon summoned my constitutional advisers, the heads of all the
departments, to meet on Sunday, the 20th day of April, 1861, at the
office of the Navy Department, and then and there, with their
unanimous concurrence, I directed that an armed revenue cutter should
proceed to sea to afford protection to the commercial marine, and
especially the California treasure ships then on their way to this
coast.  I also directed the commandant of the navy-yard at Boston to
purchase or charter and arm as quickly as possible five steamships
for purposes of public defense.  I directed the commandant of the
navy-yard at Philadelphia to purchase or charter and arm an equal
number for the same purpose.  I directed the commandant at New York
to purchase or charter and arm an equal number.  I directed Commander
Gillis to purchase or charter and arm and put to sea two other
vessels.  Similar directions were given to Commodore Dupont, with a
view to the opening of passages by water to and from the capital.  I
directed the several officers to take the advice and obtain the aid
and efficient services, in the matter, of his Excellency Edwin D.
Morgan, the Governor of New York, or in his absence George D. Morgan,
William M. Evarts, R. M. Blatchford, and Moses H. Grinnell, who were
by my directions especially empowered by the Secretary of the Navy to
act for his department in that crisis in matters pertaining to the
forwarding of troops and supplies for the public defense.

The several departments of the government at that time contained so
large a number of disloyal persons that it would have been impossible
to provide safely through official agents only for the performance of
the duties thus confided to citizens favorably known for their
ability, loyalty, and patriotism.

The several orders issued upon these occurrences were transmitted by
private messengers, who pursued a circuitous way to the seaboard
cities, inland across the States of Pennsylvania and Ohio and the
northern lakes.  I believe by these and other similar measures taken
in that crisis, some of which were without any authority of law, the
government was saved from overthrow.  I am not aware that a dollar of
the public funds thus confided without authority of law to unofficial
persons was either lost or wasted, although apprehensions of such
misdirection occurred to me as objections to those extraordinary
proceedings, and were necessarily overruled.

I recall these transactions now because my attention has been
directed to a resolution which was passed by the House of
Representatives on the 30th day of last month, which is in these
words:

"Resolved, That Simon Cameron, late Secretary of War by investing
Alexander Cummings with the control of large sums of the public money
and authority to purchase military supplies without restriction,
without requiring from him any guaranty for the faithful performance
of his duties, when the services of competent public officers were
available, and by involving the government in a vast number of
contracts with persons not legitimately engaged in the business
pertaining to the subject-matter of such contracts, especially in the
purchase of arms for future delivery, has adopted a policy highly
injurious to the public service, and deserves the censure of the
House."

Congress will see that I should be wanting equally in candor and in
justice if I should leave the censure expressed in this resolution to
rest exclusively or chiefly upon Mr. Cameron.  The same sentiment is
unanimously entertained by the heads of department who participated
in the proceedings which the House of Representatives have censured.
It is due to Mr. Cameron to say that although he fully approved the
proceedings they were not moved nor suggested by himself, and that
not only the President, but all the other heads of departments, were
at least equally responsible with him for whatever error, wrong, or
fault was committed in the premises.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 26, 1862.  12.40

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

We have General Banks's official report.  He has saved his army and
baggage, and has made a safe retreat to the river, and is probably
safe at Williamsport.  He reports the attacking force at 15,000.

A. LINCOLN, President.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 26, 1862.  1 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Falmouth, Virginia:

Despatches from Geary just received have been sent you.  Should not
the remainder of your forces, except sufficient to hold the point at
Fredericksburg, move this way--to Manassas Junction or Alexandria?
As commander of this department, should you not be here?  I ask these
questions.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 26, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

Can you not cut the Alula Creek railroad?  Also, what impression have
you as to intrenched works for you to contend with in front of
Richmond?  Can you get near enough to throw shells into the city?

A. LINCOLN, President.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

May 27.1862.  9.58 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

I see that you are at Moorefield.  You were expressly ordered to
march to Harrisonburg.  What does this mean?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON
TO GOVERNOR ANDREW.

WASHINGTON, May 27, 1862.

GOVERNOR ANDREW, Boston:

The President directs that the militia be relieved, and the
enlistments made for three years, or during the war.  This, I think,
will practically not be longer than for a year.  The latest
intelligence from General Banks states that he has saved nearly his
whole command with small loss.

Concentrations of our force have been made, which it is hoped will
capture the enemy.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON
TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT,

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Moorefield

The President directs you to halt at Moorefield and await orders,
unless you hear of the enemy being in the general direction of
Rodney, in which case you will move upon him.  Acknowledge the
receipt of this order, and the hour it is received.

EDWIN M. STANTON,  Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1862.

GENERAL McDOWELL, Manassas Junction:

General McClellan at 6.30 P.M. yesterday telegraphed that Fitz-John
Porter's division had fought and driven 13,000 of the enemy, under
General Branch, from Hanover Court-House, and was driving them from a
stand they had made on the railroad at the time the messenger left.
Two hours later he telegraphed that Stoneman had captured an engine
and six cars on the Virginia Central, which he at once sent to
communicate with  Porter.  Nothing further from McClellan.

If Porter effects a lodgment on both railroads near Hanover
Court-House, consider whether your forces in front of Fredericksburg
should not push through and join him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

What of F.J. Porter's expedition?  Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON. May 28, 1862.  4 P.M.

GENERAL McDOWELL, Manassas Junction:

You say General Geary's scouts report that they find no enemy this
side of the Blue Ridge.  Neither do I. Have they been to the Blue
Ridge looking for them.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1862.   5.40 P.M.

GENERAL McDOWELL, Manassas Junction:

I think the evidence now preponderates that Ewell and Jackson are
still about Winchester.  Assuming this, it is for you a question of
legs.  Put in all the speed you can.  I have told Fremont as much,
and directed him to drive at them as fast as possible.  By the way, I
suppose you know Fremont has got up to Moorefield, instead of going
into Harrisonburg.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN

WASHINGTON May 28, 1862.  8.40 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I am very glad of General F. J. Porter's victory.  Still, if it was a
total rout of the enemy, I am puzzled to know why the Richmond and
Fredericksburg railroad was not seized again, as you say you have all
the railroads but the Richmond and Fredericksburg.  I am puzzled to
see how, lacking that, you can have any, except the scrap from
Richmond to West Point.  The scrap of the Virginia Central from
Richmond to Hanover Junction, without more, is simply nothing.  That
the whole of the enemy is concentrating on Richmond, I think cannot
be certainly known to you or me.  Saxton, at Harper's Ferry informs
us that large forces, supposed to be Jackson's and Ewells, forced his
advance from Charlestown today.  General King telegraphs us from
Fredericksburg that contrabands give certain information that 15,000
left Hanover Junction Monday morning to reinforce Jackson.  I am
painfully impressed with the importance of the struggle before you,
and shall aid you all I can consistently with my view of due regard
to all points.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON
TO GENERAL FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT, Moorefield:

The order to remain at Moorefield was based on the supposition that
it would find you there.

Upon subsequent information that the enemy were still operating in
the vicinity of Winchester and Martinsburg, you were directed to move
against the enemy.

The President now again directs you to move against the enemy without
delay.   Please acknowledge the receipt of this, and the time
received.

EDWIN M. STANTON,  Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MARCY.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1862.  10 A.M.

GENERAL R. B. MARCY, McClellan's Headquarters:

Yours just received.  I think it cannot be certainly known whether
the force which fought General Porter is the same which recently
confronted McDowell.  Another item of evidence bearing on it is that
General Branch commanded against Porter, while it was General
Anderson who was in front of McDowell.  He and McDowell were in
correspondence about prisoners.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
May 29, 1862.  10.30 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I think we shall be able within three days to tell you certainly
whether any considerable force of the enemy--Jackson or any one else
--is moving on to Harper's Ferry or vicinity.  Take this expected
development into your calculations.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS, Williamsport, Maryland:

General McDowell's advance should, and probably will, be at or near
Front Royal at twelve (noon) tomorrow.  General Fremont will be at or
near Strasburg as soon.  Please watch the enemy closely, and follow
and harass and detain him if he attempts to retire.  I mean this for
General Saxton's force as well as that immediately with you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL  FREMONT

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1862.  12 M.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Moorefield, Virginia:

General McDowell's advance, if not checked by the enemy, should, and
probably will, be at Front Royal by twelve (noon) to-morrow.  His
force, when up, will be about 20,000.  Please have your force at
Strasburg, or, if the route you are moving on does not lead to that
point, as near Strasburg as the enemy may be by the same time.  Your
despatch No.30 received and satisfactory.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Manassas Junction:

General Fremont's force should, and probably will, be at or near
Strasburg by twelve (noon) tomorrow.  Try to have your force, or the
advance of it, at Front Royal as soon.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MARCY.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1862.  1.20 P.M.

GENERAL R. B. MARCY:

Your despatch as to the South Anna and Ashland being seized by our
forces this morning is received.  Understanding these points to be on
the Richmond and Fredericksburg railroad, I heartily congratulate the
country, and thank General McClellan and his army for their seizure.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 30, 1862.  10 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Manassas Junction:

I somewhat apprehend that Fremont's force, in its present condition,
may not be quite strong enough in case it comes in collision with the
enemy.  For this additional reason I wish you to push forward your
column as rapidly as possible.  Tell me what number your force
reaching Front Royal will amount to.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

WASHINGTON, May 30, 1862.  10.15 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS,
Williamsport, Maryland, via Harper's Ferry:

If the enemy in force is in or about Martinsburg, Charlestown, and
Winchester, Or any or all of them, he may come in collision with
Fremont, in which case I am anxious that your force, with you and at
Harper's Ferry, should so operate as to assist Fremont if possible;
the same if the enemy should engage McDowell.  This was the meaning
of my despatch yesterday.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, May 30, 1862.  12.40.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Rectortown:

Your despatch of to-day received and is satisfactory.   Fremont has
nominally  22,000, really about 17,000.  Blenker's division is part
of it.  I have a despatch from Fremont this morning, not telling me
where he is; but he says:
"Scouts and men from Winchester represent Jackson's force variously
at 30,000 to 60,000.  With him Generals Ewell and Longstreet."

The high figures erroneous, of course.  Do you know where Longstreet
is?  Corinth is evacuated and occupied by us.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL  FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, May 30, 1862.  2.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Moorefield, Virginia:

Yours, saying you will reach Strasburg or vicinity at 5 P.M.
Saturday, has been received and sent to General McDowell, and he
directed to act in view of it.  You must be up to the time you
promised, if possible.

Corinth was evacuated last night, and is occupied by our troops to-
day; the enemy gone south to Okolotia, on the railroad to Mobile.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON CITY, May 30, 1862.9.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Rectortown, Va.:

I send you a despatch just received from Saxton at Harper's Ferry:
"The rebels are in line of battle in front of our lines.  They have
nine pieces of artillery, and in position, and cavalry.   I shelled
the woods in which they were, and they in return threw a large number
of shells into the lines and tents from which I moved last night to
take up a stronger position.  I expect a great deal from the battery
on the mountain, having three 9 inch Dahlgren bearing directly on the
enemy's approaches.  The enemy appeared this morning and then
retired, with the intention of drawing us on.  I shall act on the
defensive, as my position is a strong one.  In a skirmish which took
place this afternoon I lost one horse, The enemy lost two men killed
and seven wounded.

"R. SAXTON, Brigadier General."

It seems the game is before you.  Have sent a copy to General
Fremont.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, May 31, 1862.   10.20 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

A circle whose circumference shall pass through Harper's Ferry, Front
Royal, and Strasburg, and whose center shall be a little northeast of
Winchester, almost certainly has within it this morning the forces of
Jackson, Ewell, and Edward Johnson.  Quite certainly they were within
it two days ago.  Some part of their forces attacked Harper's Ferry
at dark last evening, and are still in sight this morning.  Shields,
with McDowell's advance, retook Front Royal at 11 A.M. yesterday,
with a dozen of our own prisoners taken there a week ago, 150 of the
enemy, two locomotives, and eleven cars, some other property and
stores, and saved the bridge.

General Fremont, from the direction of Moorefield, promises to be at
or near Strasburg at 5 P.M. to-day.  General Banks at Williamsport,
with his old force and his new force at Harper's Ferry, is directed
to co-operate.  Shields at Front Royal reports a rumor of still an
additional force of the enemy, supposed to be Anderson's, having
entered the valley of Virginia.  This last may or may not be true.
Corinth is certainly in the hands of General Halleck.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON

TO GENERAL G. A. McCALL, WASHINGTON, May 31, 1562.

GENERAL McCALL:

The President directs me to say to you that there can be nothing to
justify a panic at Fredericksburg.  He expects you to maintain your
position there as becomes a soldier and a general.

EDWIN M. STANTON,  Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., June 1, 1862.  9.30.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

You are probably engaged with the enemy.  I suppose he made the
attack.  Stand well on your guard, hold all your ground, or yield any
only inch by inch and in good order.  This morning we merge General
Wool's department into yours, giving you command of the whole, and
sending General Dix to Port Monroe and General Wool to Fort McHenry.
We also send General Sigel to report to you for duty.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, June 3, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

With these continuous rains I am very anxious about the Chickahominy
so close in your rear and crossing your line of communication.
Please look to it.

A. LINCOLN, President.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL I. McDOWELL.

WASHINGTON, June 3, 1862.  6.15 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McDOWELL, Front Royal, Virginia:

Anxious to know whether Shields can head or flank Jackson.  Please
tell about where Shields and Jackson, respectively, are at the time
this reaches you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, June 4, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth:

Your despatch of to-day to Secretary of War received.  Thanks for the
good news it brings.

Have you anything from Memphis or other parts of the Mississippi
River?  Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
[cipher.]
WASHINGTON, June 4, 1862.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tennessee:

Do you really wish to have control of the question of releasing rebel
prisoners so far as they may be Tennesseeans?  If you do, please tell
us so.  Your answer not to be made public.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., June 7, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch about Chattanooga and Dalton was duly received and sent
to General Halleck.  I have just received the following answer from
him:

We have Fort Pillow, Randolph, and Memphis.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, June 8, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

We are changing one of the departmental lines, so as to give you all
of Kentucky and Tennessee.  In your movement upon Chattanooga I think
it probable that you include some combination of the force near
Cumberland Gap under General Morgan.

Do you?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

WASHINGTON, June 9, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS, Winchester:

We are arranging a general plan for the valley of the Shenandoah, and
in accordance with this you will move your main force to the
Shenandoah at or opposite Front Royal as soon as possible.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, June 9, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

Halt at Harrisonburg, pursuing Jackson no farther.  Get your force
well in hand and stand on the defensive, guarding against a movement
of the enemy either back toward Strasburg or toward Franklin, and
await further orders, which will soon be sent you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
[Cipher.]
WASHINGTON, June 9, 1862.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, 'Tennessee:

Your despatch about seizing seventy rebels to exchange for a like
number of Union men was duly received.  I certainly do not disapprove
the proposition.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.
WASHINGTON, June 12, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

Accounts, which we do not credit, represent that Jackson is largely
reinforced and turning upon you.  Get your forces well in hand and
keep us well and frequently advised; and if you find yourself really
pressed by a superior force of the enemy, fall back cautiously toward
or to Winchester, and we will have in due time Banks in position to
sustain you.  Do not fall back upon Harrisonburg unless upon
tolerably clear necessity.  We understand Jackson is on the other
side of the Shenandoah from you, and hence cannot in any event press
you into any necessity of a precipitate withdrawal.

A. LINCOLN.

P.S.--Yours, preferring Mount Jackson to Harrisonburg, is just
received.   On this point use your discretion, remembering that our
object is to give such protection as you can to western Virginia.
Many thanks to yourself, officers, and men for the gallant battle of
last Sunday.
A. L.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

June 13, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:   I herewith transmit a memorial addressed and
presented to me in behalf of the State of New York in favor of
enlarging the locks of the Erie and Oswego Canal.  While I have not
given nor have leisure to give the subject a careful examination, its
great importance is obvious and unquestionable.  The large amount of
valuable statistical information which is collated and presented in
the memorial will greatly facilitate the mature consideration of the
subject, which I respectfully ask for it at your hands.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

WASHINGTON; June 13.  1862

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

We cannot afford to keep your force and Banks's and McDowell's
engaged in keeping Jackson south of Strasburg and Front Royal.  You
fought Jackson alone and worsted him.  He can have no substantial
reinforcements so long as a battle is pending at Richmond.  Surely
you and Banks in supporting distance are capable of keeping him from
returning to Winchester.  But if Sigel be sent forward to you, and
McDowell (as he must) be put to other work, Jackson will break
through at Front Royal again.  He is already on the right side of the
Shenandoah to do it, and on the wrong side of it to attack you.  The
orders already sent you and Banks place you and him in the proper
positions for the work assigned you.  Jackson cannot move his whole
force on either of you before the other can learn of it and go to his
assistance.  He cannot divide his force, sending part against each of
you, because he will be too weak for either.  Please do as I directed
in the order of the 8th and my despatch of yesterday, the 12th, and
neither you nor Banks will be overwhelmed by Jackson.  By proper
scout lookouts, and beacons of smoke by day and fires by night you
can always have timely notice of the enemy's's approach.  I know not
as to you, but by some this has been too much neglected.

A. LINCOLN.



TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C., June 15, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT:

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter of the 12th by Colonel Zagonyi is just
received.  In answer to the principal part of it, I repeat the
substance of an order of the 8th and one or two telegraphic
despatches sent you since.

We have no definite power of sending reinforcements; so that we are
compelled rather to consider the proper disposal of the forces we
have than of those we could wish to have.  We may be able to send you
some dribs by degrees, but I do not believe we can do more.  As you
alone beat Jackson last Sunday, I argue that you are stronger than he
is to-day, unless he has been reinforced; and that he cannot have
been materially reinforced, because such reinforcement could only
have come from Richmond, and he is much more likely to go to Richmond
than Richmond is to come to him.   Neither is very likely.  I think
Jackson's game--his assigned work--now is to magnify the accounts of
his numbers and reports of his movements, and thus by constant alarms
keep three or four times as many of our troops away from Richmond as
his own force amounts to.  Thus he helps his friends at Richmond
three or four times as much as if he were there.  Our game is not to
allow this.  Accordingly, by the order of the 8th, I directed you to
halt at Harrisonburg, rest your force, and get it well in hand, the
objects being to guard against Jackson's returning by the same route
to the upper Potomac over which you have just driven him out, and at
the same time give some protection against a raid into West Virginia.

Already I have given you discretion to occupy Mount Jackson instead,
if, on full consideration, you think best.  I do not believe Jackson
will attack you, but certainly he cannot attack you by surprise; and
if he comes upon you in superior force, you have but to notify us,
fall back cautiously, and Banks will join you in due time.  But while
we know not whether Jackson will move at all, or by what route, we
cannot safely put you and Banks both on the Strasburg line, and leave
no force on the Front Royal line--the very line upon which he
prosecuted his late raid.  The true policy is to place one of you on
one line and the other on the other in such positions that you can
unite once you actually find Jackson moving upon it.  And this is
precisely what we are doing.  This protects that part of our
frontier, so to speak, and liberates McDowell to go to the assistance
of McClellan.  I have arranged this, and am very unwilling to have it
deranged.  While you have only asked for Sigel, I have spoken only of
Banks, and this because Sigel's force is now the principal part of
Bank's force.

About transferring General Schenck's commands,  the purchase of
supplies, and the promotion and appointment of officers, mentioned in
your letter, I will consult with the Secretary of War to-morrow.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. C. FREMONT.

WASHINGTON, June 16, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL FREMONT, Mount Jackson, Virginia:

Your despatch of yesterday, reminding me of a supposed understanding
that I would furnish you a corps of 35,000 men, and asking of me the
"fulfilment of this understanding," is received.  I am ready to come
to a fair settlement of accounts with you on the fulfilment of
understandings.

Early in March last, when I assigned you to the command of the
Mountain Department, I did tell you I would give you all the force I
could, and that I hoped to make it reach 35,000.  You at the same
time told me that within a reasonable time you would seize the
railroad at or east of Knoxville, Tenn., if you could.  There was
then in the department a force supposed to be 25,000, the exact
number as well known to you as to me.  After looking about two or
three days, you called and distinctly told me that if I would add the
Blenker division to the force already in the department, you would
undertake the job.  The Blenker division contained 10,000, and at the
expense of great dissatisfaction to General McClellan I took it from
his army and gave it to you.  My promise was literally fulfilled.  I
have given you all I could, and I have given you very nearly, if not
quite, 35,000.

Now for yours.  On the 23d of May, largely over two months afterward,
you were at Franklin, Va., not within 300 miles of Knoxville, nor
within 80 miles of any part of the railroad east of it, and not
moving forward, but telegraphing here that you could not move for
lack of everything.  Now, do not misunderstand me.  I do not say you
have not done all you could.  I presume you met unexpected
difficulties; and I beg you to believe that as surely as you have
done your best, so have I. I have not the power now to fill up your
Corps to 35,000.  I am not demanding of you to do the work of 35,000.
I am only asking of you to stand cautiously on the defensive, get
your force in order, and give such protection as you can to the
valley of the Shenandoah and to western Virginia.

Have you received the orders, and will you act upon them?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL C. SCHURZ.

WASHINGTON, June 16, 1862

BRIGADIER-GENERAL SCHURZ, Mount Jackson, Virginia:

Your long letter is received.  The information you give is valuable.
You say it is fortunate that Fremont did not intercept Jackson; that
Jackson had the superior force, and would have overwhelmed him.  If
this is so, how happened it that Fremont fairly fought and routed him
on the 8th?  Or is the account that he did fight and rout him false
and fabricated?  Both General Fremont and you speak of Jackson having
beaten Shields.  By our accounts he did not beat Shields.  He had no
engagement with Shields.  He did meet and drive back with disaster
about 2000 of Shields's advance till they were met by an additional
brigade of Shields's, when Jackson himself turned and retreated.
Shields himself and more than half his force were not nearer than
twenty miles to any of it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, June 18, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

It would be of both interest and value to us here to know how the
expedition toward East Tennessee is progressing, if in your judgment
you can give us the information with safety.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 18, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Yours of to-day, making it probable that Jackson has been reinforced
by about 10,000 from Richmond, is corroborated by a despatch from
General King at Fredericksburg, saying a Frenchman, just arrived from
Richmond by way of Gordonsville, met 10,000 to 15,000 passing through
the latter place to join Jackson.

If this is true, it is as good as a reinforcement to you of an equal
force.  I could better dispose of things if I could know about what
day you can attack Richmond, and would be glad to be informed, if you
think you can inform me with safety.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, JUNE 19, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Yours of last night just received, and for which I thank you.

If large reinforcements are going from Richmond to Jackson, it proves
one of two things: either they are very strong at Richmond, or do not
mean to defend the place desperately.

On reflection, I do not see how reinforcements from Richmond to
Jackson could be in Gordonsville, as reported by the Frenchman and
your deserters.  Have not all been sent to deceive?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, June  20, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

In regard to the contemplated execution of Captains Spriggs and
Triplett the government has no information whatever, but will inquire
and advise you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, June 20, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

We have this morning sent you a despatch of General Sigel
corroborative of the proposition that Jackson is being reinforced
from Richmond.  This may be reality, and yet may only be contrivance
for deception, and to determine which is perplexing.  If we knew it
was not true, we could send you some more force; but as the case
stands we do not think we safely can.  Still, we will watch the signs
and do so if possible.

In regard to a contemplated execution of Captains Spriggs and
Triplett the government has no information whatever, but will inquire
and advise you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, June 21 1862  6 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

Your despatch of yesterday (2 P. M.) was received this morning.  If
it would not divert too much of your time and attention from the army
under your immediate command, I would be glad to have your views as
to the present state of military affairs throughout the whole
country, as you say you would be glad to give them.  I would rather
it should be by letter than by telegraph, because of the better
chance of secrecy.  As to the numbers and positions of the troops not
under your command in Virginia and elsewhere, even if I could do it
with accuracy, which I cannot, I would rather not transmit either by
telegraph or by letter, because of the chances of its reaching the
enemy.  I would be very glad to talk with you, but you cannot leave
your camp, and I cannot well leave here.

A. LINCOLN, President




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 22, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS, Middletown:

I am very glad you are looking well to the west for a movement of the
enemy in that direction.  You know my anxiety on that point.

All was quiet at General McClellan's headquarters at two o'clock
to-day.

A. LINCOLN.




TREATY WITH MEXICO

MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON, June 23, 1862.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

On the 7th day of December, 1861, I submitted to the Senate the
project of a treaty between the United States and Mexico which had
been proposed to me by Mr. Corwin, our minister to Mexico, and
respectfully requested the advice of the Senate thereupon.

On the 25th day of February last a resolution was adopted by the
Senate to the effect:

"that it is not advisable to negotiate a treaty that will require the
United States to assume any portion of the principal or interest of
the debt of Mexico, or that will require the concurrence of European
powers."

This resolution having been duly communicated to me, notice thereof
was immediately given by the Secretary of State to Mr. Corwin, and he
was informed that he was to consider his instructions upon the
subject referred to modified by this resolution and would govern his
course accordingly.  That despatch failed to reach Mr. Corwin, by
reason of the disturbed condition of Mexico, until a very recent
date, Mr. Corwin being without instructions, or thus practically left
without instructions, to negotiate further with Mexico.

In view of the very important events Occurring there, he has thought
that the interests of the United States would be promoted by the
conclusion of two treaties which should provide for a loan to that
republic.   He has therefore signed such treaties, and they having
been duly ratified by the Government of Mexico, he has transmitted
them to me for my consideration.  The action of the Senate is of
course conclusive against an acceptance of the treaties On my part.
I have, nevertheless, thought it just to our excellent minister in
Mexico and respectful to the Government of that republic to lay the
treaties before the Senate, together with the correspondence which
has occurred in relation to them.  In performing this duty I have
only to add that the importance of the subject thus submitted to the
Senate, can not be over estimated, and I shall cheerfully receive and
consider with the highest respect any further advice the Senate may
think proper to give upon the subject.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




VETO OF A CURRENCY BILL

MESSAGE TO THE SENATE, JUNE 23, 1862.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

The bill which has passed the House of Representatives and the
Senate, entitled "An act to repeal that part of an act of Congress
which prohibits the circulation of bank-notes of a less denomination
than five dollars in the District of Columbia," has received my
attentive consideration, and I now return it to the Senate, in which
it originated, with the following objections:

1.  The bill proposes to repeal the existing legislation prohibiting
the circulation of bank-notes of a less denomination than five
dollars within the District of Columbia, without permitting the
issuing of such bills by banks not now legally authorized to issue
them.  In my judgment, it will be found impracticable,  in the
present condition of the currency, to make such a discrimination.
The banks have generally suspended specie payments, and a legal
sanction given to the circulation of the irredeemable notes of one
class of them will almost certainly be so extended, in practical
operation, as to include those of all classes, whether authorized or
unauthorized.  If this view be correct, the currency of the District,
should this act become a law, will certainly and greatly deteriorate,
to the serious injury of honest trade and honest labor.

2.  This bill seems to contemplate no end which cannot be otherwise
more certainly and beneficially attained.  During the existing war it
is peculiarly the duty of the National Government to secure to the
people a sound circulating medium.  This duty has been, under
existing circumstances, satisfactorily performed, in part at least,
by authorizing the issue of United States notes, receivable for all
government dues except customs, and made a legal tender for all
debts, public and private, except interest on public debt.  The
object of the bill submitted to me--namely, that of providing a small
note currency during the present suspension--can be fully
accomplished by authorizing the issue, as part of any new emission of
United States notes made necessary by the circumstances of the
country, of notes of a similar character, but of less denomination
than five dollars.   Such an issue would answer all the beneficial
purposes of the bill, would save a considerable amount to the
treasury in interest, would greatly facilitate payments to soldiers
and other creditors of small sums, and would furnish; to the people a
currency as safe as their own government.

Entertaining these objections to the bill, I feel myself constrained
to withhold from it my approval and return it for the further
consideration and action of Congress.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN




SPEECH AT JERSEY CITY, JUNE 24, 1862.

When birds and animals are looked at through a fog, they are seen to
disadvantage, and so it might be with you if I were to attempt to
tell you why I went to see General Scott.  I can only say that my
visit to West Point did not have the importance which has been
attached to it; but it concerned matters that you understand quite as
well as if I were to tell you all about them.  Now, I can only remark
that it had nothing whatever to do with making or unmaking any
general in the country.  The Secretary of War, you know, holds a
pretty tight rein on the press, so that they shall not tell more than
they ought to; and I 'm afraid that if I blab too much, he might draw
a tight rein on me.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, June 26, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your three despatches of yesterday in relation to the affair, ending
with the statement that you completely succeeded in making your
point, are very gratifying.

The later one of 6.15 P.M., suggesting the probability of your being
overwhelmed by two hundred thousand, and talking of where the
responsibility will belong, pains me very much.  I give you all I
can, and act on the presumption that you will do the best you can
with what you have, while you continue, ungenerously I think, to
assume that I could give you more if I would.  I have omitted, and
shall omit, no opportunity to send you reinforcements whenever I
possibly can.

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.  General Pope thinks if you fall back it would be much better
towards York River than towards the James.  As Pope now has charge of
the capital, please confer with him through the telegraph.




ORDER CONSTITUTING THE ARMY OF VIRGINIA.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
June 26, 1862.

Ordered:
1st.  The forces under Major-Generals Fremont, Banks, and McDowell,
including the troops now under Brigadier-General Sturgis at
Washington, shall be consolidated and form one army, to be called the
Army of Virginia.

2d.  The command of the Army of Virginia is specially assigned to
Major-General John Pope, as commanding general.  The troops of the
Mountain Department, heretofore under command of General Fremont,
shall constitute the First Army Corps, under the command of General
Fremont; the troops of the Shenandoah Department, now under General
Banks, shall constitute the Second Army Corps, and be commanded by
him; the troops under the command of General McDowell, except those
within the fortifications and city of Washington, shall form the
Third Army Corps, and be under his command.

3d.  The Army of Virginia shall operate in such manner as, while
protecting western Virginia and the national capital from danger or
insult, it shall in the speediest manner attack and overcome the
rebel forces under Jackson and Ewell, threaten the enemy in the
direction of Charlottesville, and render the most effective aid to
relieve General McClellan and capture Richmond.

4th.  When the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Virginia shall be
in position to communicate and directly co-operate at or before
Richmond, the chief command, while so operating together, shall be
governed, as in like cases, by the Rules and Articles of War.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON
TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 28, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

The enemy have concentrated in such force at Richmond as to render it
absolutely necessary, in the opinion of the President, for you
immediately to detach 25,000 of your force and forward it by the
nearest and quickest route by way of Baltimore and Washington to
Richmond.  It is believed that the quickest route would be by way of
Columbus, Ky., and up the Ohio River.  But in detaching your force
the President directs that it be done in such a way as to enable you
to hold your ground and not interfere with the movement against
Chattanooga and East Tennessee.  This condition being observed, the
forces to be detached and the routes they are to be sent are left to
your own judgment.

The direction to send these forces immediately is rendered imperative
by a serious reverse suffered by General McClellan before Richmond
yesterday, the full extent of which is not yet known.

You will acknowledge the receipt of this despatch, stating the day
and hour it is received, and inform me what your action will be, so
that we may take measures to aid in river and railroad
transportation.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




TELEGRAMS TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WASHINGTON, June 28, 1862.

GENERAL BURNSIDE:

I think you had better go, with any reinforcements you can spare, to
General McClellan.

A. LINCOLN.




WAR DEPARTMENT, June, 28, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Newbern:

We have intelligence that General McClellan has been attacked in
large force and compelled to fall back toward the James River.  We
are not advised of his exact condition, but the President directs
that you shall send him all the reinforcements from your command to
the James River that you can safely do without abandoning your own
position.  Let it be infantry entirely, as he said yesterday that he
had cavalry enough.

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY,  June 28, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Save your army, at all events.  Will send reinforcements as fast as
we can.  Of course they cannot reach you to-day, to-morrow, or next
day.  I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed
reinforcements.  I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did
not send them as fast as I could.  I feel any misfortune to you and
your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself.  If you have had a
drawn battle, or a repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not
being in Washington.  We protected Washington, and the enemy
concentrated on you.  Had we stripped Washington, he would have been
upon us before the troops could have gotten to you.  Less than a week
ago you notified us that reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come
in front of us.  It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor
the government is to blame.  Please tell at once the present
condition and aspect of things.

A. LINCOLN




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 28, 1862

HON. W. H. SEWARD.

MY DEAR SIR:--My view of the present condition of the war is about as
follows:

The evacuation of Corinth and our delay by the flood in the
Chickahominy have enabled the enemy to concentrate too much force in
Richmond for McClellan to successfully attack.  In fact there soon
will be no substantial rebel force anywhere else.  But if we send all
the force from here to McClellan, the enemy will, before we can know
of it, send a force from Richmond and take Washington.  Or if a large
part of the western army be brought here to McClellan, they will let
us have Richmond, and retake Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, etc.
What should be done is to hold what we have in the West, open the
Mississippi, and take Chattanooga and East Tennessee without more.  A
reasonable force should in every event be kept about Washington for
its protection.  Then let the country give us a hundred thousand new
troops in the shortest possible time, which, added to McClellan
directly or indirectly, will take Richmond without endangering any
other place which we now hold, and will substantially end the war.  I
expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or
am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsake
me; and I would publicly appeal to the country for this new force
were it not that I fear a general panic and stampede would follow, so
hard it is to have a thing understood as it really is.  I think the
new force should be all, or nearly all, infantry, principally because
such can be raised most cheaply and quickly.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.,  June 28,1862.

GENERAL DIX:

Communication with McClellan by White House is cut off.  Strain every
nerve to open communication with him by James River, or any other way
you can.  Report to me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO FLAG-OFFICER L. M. GOLDSBOROUGH.

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 28, 1862.

FLAG-OFFICER GOLDS BOROUGH, Fort Monroe:

Enemy has cut McClellan's communication with White House, and is
driving Stoneman back on that point.  Do what you can for him with
gunboats at or near that place.  McClellan's main force is between
the Chickahominy and the James.  Also do what you can to communicate
with him and support him there.

A. LINCOLN




To GOVERNOR MORTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.
June 28, 1862.


GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON, Indianapolis, Ind:

Your despatch of to-day is just received.  I have no recollection of
either John R. Cravens or Cyrus M. Allen having been named to me for
appointment under the tax law.  The latter particularly has been my
friend, and I am sorry to learn that he is not yours.  No appointment
has been or will be made by me for the purpose of stabbing you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 29, 1862.6 P.M.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Astor House, New York:

Not much more than when you left.  Fulton of Baltimore American is
now with us.   He left White House at 11 A.M. yesterday.  He
conversed fully with a paymaster who was with Porter's force during
the fight of Friday and fell back to nearer McClellan's quarters just
a little sooner than Porter did, seeing the whole of it; stayed on
the Richmond side of the Chickahominy over night, and left for White
House at 5 A.M. Saturday.  He says Porter retired in perfect order
under protection of the guns arranged for the purpose, under orders
and not from necessity; and with all other of our forces, except what
was left on purpose to go to White House, was safely in pontoons over
the Chickahominy before morning, and that there was heavy firing on
the Richmond side, begun at 5 and ceased at 7 A.M. Saturday.  On the
whole, I think we have had the better of it up to that point of time.
What has happened since we still know not, as we have no
communication with General McClellan.  A despatch from Colonel
Ingalls shows that he thinks McClellan is fighting with the enemy at
Richmond to-day, and will be to-morrow.  We have no means of knowing
upon what Colonel Ingalls founds his opinion.  Confirmed about saving
all property.  Not a single unwounded straggler came back to White
House from the field, and the number of wounded reaching there up to
11 A.M. Saturday was not large.

A. LINCOLN.


To what the President has above stated I will only add one or two
points that may be satisfactory for you to know.

First.  All the sick and wounded were safely removed

Second.  A despatch from Burnside shows that he is from White House;
not a man left behind in condition to afford efficient support, and
is probably doing so.

Third.  The despatch from Colonel Ingalls impresses me with the
conviction that the movement was made by General McClellan to
concentrate on Richmond, and was successful to the latest point of
which we have any information.

Fourth.  Mr. Fulton says that on Friday night, between twelve and one
o'clock, General McClellan telegraphed Commodore Goldsborough that
the result of the movement was satisfactory to him.

Fifth.  From these and the facts stated by the President, my
inference is that General McClellan will probably be in Richmond
within two days.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

[Unfortunately McClellan did not do any of the things he was ordered,
and that it was very likely possible to do.   It is still some
mystery what he was doing all these days other than hiding in the
woods and staying out of communication so he would not receive any
more uncomfortable orders.   This was another place where the North
was close to wining the war and did not.  D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 30, 1862.

HON. WM. H. SEWARD, New York:

We are yet without communication with General McClellan, and this
absence of news is our point of anxiety.  Up to the latest point to
which we are posted he effected everything in such exact accordance
with his plan, contingently announced to us before the battle began,
that we feel justified to hope that he has not failed since.  He had
a severe engagement in getting the part of his army on this side of
the Chickahominy over to the other side, in which the enemy lost
certainly as much as we did.  We are not dissatisfied with this, only
that the loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.
The enemy cannot come below White House; certainly is not there now,
and probably has abandoned the whole line.  Dix's pickets are at New
Kent Court-House.

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR TROOPS.

NEW YORK, June 30, 1862.

TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE SEVERAL STATES:

The capture of New Orleans, Norfolk, and Corinth by the national
forces has enabled the insurgents to concentrate a large force at and
about Richmond, which place we must take with the least possible
delay; in fact, there will soon be no formidable insurgent force
except at Richmond.  With so large an army there, the enemy can
threaten us on the Potomac and elsewhere.  Until we have
re-established the national authority, all these places must be held,
and we must keep a respectable force in front of WASHINGTON. But
this, from the diminished strength of our army by sickness and
casualties, renders an addition to it necessary in order to close the
struggle which has been prosecuted for the last three months with
energy and success.  Rather than hazard the misapprehension of our
military condition and of groundless alarm by a call for troops by
proclamation, I have deemed it best to address you in this form.  To
accomplish the object stated we require without delay 150,000 men,
including those recently called for by the Secretary of War.  Thus
reinforced our gallant army will be enabled to realize the hopes and
expectations of the government and the people.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, June 30, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

Is it not probable that the enemy has abandoned the line between
White House and McClellan's rear?  He could have but little object to
maintain it, and nothing to subsist upon.  Would not Stoneman better
move up and see about it?  I think a telegraphic communication can at
once be opened to White House from Williamsburg.  The wires must be
up still.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAMS TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, JUNE 30, 1862.  3 P. M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth:

Your telegram of this date just received.  The Chattanooga expedition
must not on any account be given up.  The President regards that and
the movement against East Tennessee as one of the most important
movements of the war, and its occupation nearly as important as the
capture of Richmond.  He is not pleased with the tardiness of the
movement toward Chattanooga, and directs that no force be sent here
if you cannot do it without breaking up the operations against that
point and East Tennessee.  Infantry only are needed; our cavalry and
artillery are strong enough.  The first reports from Richmond were
more discouraging than the truth warranted.  If the advantage is not
on our side, it is balanced.  General McClellan has moved his whole
force on the line of the James River, and is supported there by our
gunboats; but he must be largely strengthened before advancing, and
hence the call on you, which I am glad you answered so promptly.  Let
me know to what point on the river you will send your forces, so as
to provide immediately for transportation.

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.




WASHINGTON, D.C., June 30, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

Would be very glad of 25,000 infantry; no artillery or cavalry; but
please do not send a man if it endangers any place you deem important
to hold, or if it forces you to give up or weaken or delay the
expedition against Chattanooga.  To take and hold the railroad at or
east of Cleveland, in East Tennessee, I think fully as important as
the taking and holding of Richmond.

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR 300,000 VOLUNTEERS, JULY 1, 1862.

June 28, 1861.

The undersigned, governors of States of the Union, impressed with the
belief that the citizens of the States which they respectively
represent are of one accord in the hearty desire that the recent
successes of the Federal arms may be followed up by measures which
must insure the speedy restoration of the Union, and believing that,
in view of the present state of the important military movements now
in progress, and the reduced condition of our effective forces in the
field, resulting from the usual and unavoidable casualties in the
service, the time has arrived for prompt and vigorous measures to be
adopted by the people in support of the great interests committed to
your charge, respectfully request, if it meets with your entire
approval, that you at once call upon the several States for such
number of men as may be required to fill up all military
organizations now in the field, and add to the armies heretofore
organized such additional number of men as may, in your judgment, be
necessary to garrison and hold all the numerous cities and military
positions that have been captured by our armies, and to speedily
crush the rebellion that still exists in several of the Southern
States, thus practically restoring to the civilized world our great
and good government.  All believe that the decisive moment is near at
hand, and to that end the people of the United States are desirous to
aid promptly in furnishing all reinforcements that you may deem
needful to sustain our government.

ISRAEL WASHBURN, JR., Governor of Maine.
H. S. BERRY, Governor of New Hampshire.
FREDERICK HOLBROOK, Governor of Vermont.
WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM, Governor of Connecticut.
E. D. MORGAN, Governor of New York.
CHARLES S. OLDEN, Governor of New Jersey.
A. G. CURTIN, Governor of Pennsylvania.
A. W. BRADFORD, Governor of Maryland.
F. H. PIERPOINT, Governor of Virginia.
AUSTIN BLAIR, Governor of Michigan.
J. B. TEMPLE, President Military Board of Kentucky.
ANDREW JOHNSON, Governor of Tennessee.
H. R. GAMBLE, Governor of Missouri.
O. P. MORTON, Governor of Indiana.
DAVID TODD, Governor of Ohio.
ALEXANDER RAMSEY, Governor of Minnesota.
RICHARD YATES, Governor of Illinois.
EDWARD SALOMON, Governor of Wisconsin.

THE PRESIDENT




EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 1, 1862

GENTLEMEN:--Fully concurring in the wisdom of the views expressed to
me in so patriotic a manner by you, in the communication of the
twenty-eighth day of June, I have decided to call into the service an
additional force of 300,000 men.  I suggest and recommend that the
troops should be chiefly of infantry.  The quota of your State would
be ______  .  I trust that they may be enrolled without delay, so as
to bring this unnecessary and injurious civil war to a speedy and
satisfactory conclusion.  An order fixing the quotas of the
respective States will be issued by the War Department to-morrow.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING TAXES IN
REBELLIOUS STATES, JULY 1, 1862.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas in and by the second section of an act of Congress passed on
the 7th day of June, A. D. 1862, entitled "An act for the collection
of direct taxes in insurrectionary districts within the United
States, and for other purposes," it is made the duty of the President
to declare, on or before the first day of July then next following,
by his proclamation, in what States and parts of States insurrection
exists:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States of America, do hereby declare and proclaim that the
States of South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana,
Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and the
State of Virginia except the following counties-Hancock, Brooke,
Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel, Marion, Monongalia, Preston, Taylor,
Pleasants, Tyler, Ritchie, Doddridge, Harrison, Wood, Jackson, Wirt,
Roane, Calhoun, Gilmer, Barbour, Tucker, Lewis, Braxton, Upsbur,
Randolph, Mason, Putnam, Kanawha, Clay, Nicholas, Cabell, Wayne,
Boone, Logan, Wyoming, Webster, Fayette, and Raleigh-are now in
insurrection and rebellion, and by reason thereof the civil authority
of the United States is obstructed so that the provisions of the "Act
to provide increased revenue from imports, to pay the interest on the
public debt, and for other purposes," approved August 5, 1861, can
not be peaceably executed; and that the taxes legally chargeable upon
real estate under the act last aforesaid lying within the States and
parts of States as aforesaid, together with a penalty of 50 per
centum of said taxes, shall be a lien upon the tracts or lots of the
same, severally charged, till paid.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed..............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
F. W. SEWARD, Acting Secretary of State.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, JULY 1, 1862.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

I most cordially recommend that Captain Andrew H. Foote, of the
United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his
eminent services in Organizing the flotilla on the western Waters,
and for his gallantry at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Island Number
Ten, and at various other places, whilst in command of the naval
forces, embracing a period of nearly ten months.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
WASHINGTON, D. C. July 1, 1862




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, JULY 1,1862.   3.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

It is impossible to reinforce you for your present emergency.  If we
had a million of men, We could not get them to you in time.  We have
not the men to send.   If you are not strong enough to face the
enemy, you must find a place of security, and wait, rest, and repair.
Maintain your ground if you can, but save the army at all events,
even if you fall back to Fort Monroe.  We still have strength enough
in the country, and will bring it out.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., July 2, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch of Tuesday morning induces me to hope your army is
having some rest.  In this hope allow me to reason with you a moment.
When you ask for 50,000 men to be promptly sent you, you surely labor
under some gross mistake of fact.  Recently you sent papers showing
your disposal of forces made last spring for the defense of
WASHINGTON, and advising a return to that plan.  I find it included
in and about WASHINGTON 75,000 men.  Now, please be assured I have
not men enough to fill that very plan by 15,000.  All of Fremont's in
the valley, all of Banks's, all of McDowell's not with you, and all
in WASHINGTON, taken together, do not exceed, if they reach, 60,000.
With Wool and Dix added to those mentioned, I have not, outside of
your army, 75,000 men east of the mountains.  Thus the idea of
sending you 50,000, or any other considerable force, promptly, is
simply absurd.  If, in your frequent mention of responsibility, you
have the impression that I blame you for not doing more than you can,
please be relieved of such impression.  I only beg that in like
manner you will not ask impossibilities of me.   If you think you are
not strong enough to take Richmond just now, I do not ask you to try
just now.  Save the army, material and personal, and I will
strengthen it for the offensive again as fast as I can.  The
governors of eighteen States offer me a new levy of 300,000, which I
accept.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, D.C. July 2, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

Your several despatches of yesterday to Secretary of War and myself
received.   I did say, and now repeat, I would be exceedingly glad
for some reinforcements from you.  Still do not send a man if in your
judgment it will endanger any point you deem important to hold, or
will force you to give up or weaken or delay the Chattanooga
expedition.

Please tell me could you not make me a flying visit for consultation
without endangering the Service in your department.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 2, 1862.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

I herewith return to your honorable body, in which it originated, an
act entitled "An act to provide for additional medical officers of
the volunteer service," without my approval.

My reason for so doing is that I have approved an act of the same
title passed by Congress after the passage of the one first mentioned
for the express purpose of correcting errors in and superseding the
same, as I am informed.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




CIRCULAR LETTER TO THE GOVERNORS.
(Private and Confidential.)

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 3, 1862.10.30 A.M.

GOVERNOR WASHBURN, Maine [and other governors] I should not want the
half of 300,000 new troops if I could have them now.  If I had 50,000
additional troops here now, I believe I could substantially close the
war in two weeks.  But time is everything, and if I get 50,000 new
men in a month, I shall have lost 20,000 old ones during the same
month, having gained only 30,000, with the difference between old and
new troops still against me.  The quicker you send, the fewer you
will have to send.  Time is everything.  Please act in view of this.
The enemy having given up Corinth, it is not wonderful that he is
thereby enabled to check us for a time at Richmond.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 3, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

Yours of 5.30 yesterday is just received.  I am satisfied that
yourself, officers, and men have done the best you could.  All
accounts say better fighting was never done.  Ten thousand thanks for
it.

On the 28th we sent General Burnside an order to send all the force
he could spare to you.  We then learned that you had requested him to
go to Goldsborough; upon which we said to him our order was intended
for your benefit, and we did not wish to be in conflict with your
views.

We hope you will have help from him soon.  Today we have ordered
General Hunter to send you all he can spare.  At last advices General
Halleck thinks he cannot send reinforcements without endangering all
he has gained.

A. LINCOLN, President




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., July 4, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I understand your position as stated in your letter and by General
Marcy.  To reinforce you so as to enable you to resume the offensive
within a month, or even six weeks, is impossible.  In addition to
that arrived and now arriving from the Potomac (about 10,000 men, I
suppose), and about 10,000 I hope you will have from Burnside very
soon, and about 5000 from Hunter a little later, I do not see how I
can send you another man within a month.  Under these circumstances
the defensive for the present must be your only care.  Save the army
first, where you are, if you can; secondly, by removal, if you must.
You, on the ground, must be the judge as to which you will attempt,
and of the means for effecting it.  I but give it as my opinion that
with the aid of the gunboats and the reinforcements mentioned above
you can hold your present position--provided, and so long as, you can
keep the James River open below you.  If you are not tolerably
confident you can keep the James River open, you had better remove as
soon as possible.  I do not remember that you have expressed any
apprehension as to the danger of having your communication cut on the
river below you, yet I do not suppose it can have escaped your
attention.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

P.S.--If at any time you feel able to take the offensive, you are not
restrained from doing so.
A.L.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 4, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

You do not know how much you would oblige us if, without abandoning
any of your positions or plans, you could promptly send us even
10,000 infantry.  Can you not?  Some part of the Corinth army is
certainly fighting McClellan in front of Richmond.  Prisoners are in
our hands from the late Corinth army.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WASHINGTON CITY, July 4,1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

Send forward the despatch to Colonel Hawkins and this also.  Our
order and General McClellan's to General Burnside being the same, of
course we wish it executed as promptly as possible.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, July 5, 1862.  9 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN:

A thousand thanks for the relief your two despatches of 12 and 1 P.M.
yesterday gave me.  Be assured the heroism and skill of yourself and
officers and men is, and forever will be, appreciated.

If you can hold your present position, we shall have the enemy yet.

A. LINCOLN




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., July 6, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi.

MY DEAR SIR:--This introduces Governor William Sprague, of Rhode
Island.  He is now Governor for the third time, and senator-elect of
the United States.

I know the object of his visit to you.  He has my cheerful consent to
go, but not my direction.  He wishes to get you and part of your
force, one or both, to come here.  You already know I should be
exceedingly glad of this if, in your judgment, it could be without
endangering positions and operations in the southwest; and I now
repeat what I have more than once said by telegraph: "Do not come or
send a man if, in your judgment, it will endanger any point you deem
important to hold, or endangers or delays the Chattanooga
expedition."

Still, please give my friend, Governor Sprague, a full and fair
hearing.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM OF AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL
McCLELLAN AND OTHER OFFICERS DURING A VISIT TO THE ARMY OF THE
POTOMAC AT HARRISON'S LANDING, VIRGINIA.

July 9, 1862.

THE PRESIDENT: What amount of force have you now?


GENERAL McCLELLAN: About 80,000, can't vary much, certainly 75,000.

THE PRESIDENT:[to the corps commanders]
What is the whole amount of your corps with you now.

GENERAL SUMNER: About 15,000.
GENERAL HEINTZELMAN: 15,000 for duty.
GENERAL KEYES: About 12,500.
GENERAL PORTER: About 23,000--fully 20,000 fit for duty.
GENERAL FRANKLIN: About 15,000.

THE PRESIDENT: What is likely to be your condition as to health in
this camp?

GENERAL McCLELLAN: Better than in any encampment since landing at
Fortress Monroe.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN:[to the corps commanders]
In your present encampment what is the present and prospective
condition as to health?

GENERAL SUMNER: As good as any part of Western Virginia.

GENERAL HEINTZELMAN: Excellent for health, and present health
improving.

GENERAL KEYES: A little improved, but think camp is getting worse.

GENERAL PORTER: Very good.

GENERAL FRANKLIN:  Not good.

THE PRESIDENT: Where is the enemy now?

GENERAL McCLELLAN: From four to five miles from us on all the roads--
I think nearly the whole army--both Hills, Longstreet, Jackson,
Magruder, Huger.

THE PRESIDENT: [to the corps commanders] Where and in what condition
do you believe the enemy to be now?

GENERAL SUMNER: I think they have retired from our front; were very
much damaged, especially in their best troops, in the late actions,
from superiority of arms.

GENERAL HEINTZELMAN:  Don't think they are in force in our vicinity.

GENERAL KEYES: Think he has withdrawn, and think preparing to go to
WASHINGTON.

GENERAL PORTER: Believe he is mainly near Richmond.  He feels he dare
not attack us here.

GENERAL FRANKLIN: I learn he has withdrawn from our front and think
that is probable.

THE PRESIDENT: [to the corps commanders] What is the aggregate of
your killed, wounded, and missing from the attack on the 26th ultimo
till now?

GENERAL SUMNER:     1175.
GENERAL HEINTZELMAN: Not large  745.
GENERAL KEYES: Less than 500.
GENERAL PORTER:       Over 5000.
GENERAL FRANKLIN: Not over 3000.

THE PRESIDENT: If you desired could you remove the army safely?

GENERAL McCLELLAN: It would be a delicate and very difficult matter.

THE PRESIDENT: [to the corps commanders] If it were desired to get
the army away, could it be safely effected?

GENERAL SUMNER: I think we could, but I think we give up the cause if
we do.

GENERAL HEINTZELMAN: Perhaps we could, but I think it would be
ruinous to the country.

GENERAL KEYES: I think it could if done quickly.

GENERAL PORTER: Impossible--move the army and ruin the country.

GENERAL FRANKLIN: I think we could, and that we had better--think
Rappahannock the true line.

THE PRESIDENT: [to the corps commanders] Is the army secure in its
present position?

GENERAL SUMNER: Perfectly so, in my judgment.
GENERAL HEINTZELMAN: I think it is safe.
GENERAL KEYES: With help of General B. [Burnside] can hold position.
GENERAL PORTER: Perfectly so.  Not only, but we are ready to begin
moving forward.
GENERAL FRANKLIN: Unless river can be closed it is.




ORDER MAKING HALLECK GENERAL-IN-CHIEF.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 11,1862.

Ordered, That Major-General Henry W. Halleck be assigned to command
the whole land forces of the United States, as general-in-chief, and
that he repair to this capital so soon as he can with safety to the
positions and operations within the department now under his charge.

A. LINCOLN




ORDER CONCERNING THE SOUTHWEST BRANCH
OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

Whereas, in the judgment of the President, the public safety does
require that the railroad line called and known as the Southwest
Branch of the Pacific Railroad in the State of Missouri be repaired,
extended, and completed from Rolla to Lebanon, in the direction to
Springfield, in the said State, the same being necessary to the
successful and economical conduct of the war and to the maintenance
of the authority of the government in the Southwest:

Therefore, under and in virtue of the act of Congress entitled "An
act to authorize the President of the United States in certain cases
to take possession of railroad and telegraph lines, and for other
purposes," approved January 31, 1862, it is ordered, That the portion
of the said railroad line which reaches from Rolla to Lebanon be
repaired, extended, and completed, so as to be made available for the
military uses of the government, as speedily as may be.  And,
inasmuch as upon the part of the said line from Rolla to the stream
called Little Piney a considerable portion of the necessary work has
already been done by the railroad company, and the road to this
extent may be completed at comparatively small cost, it is ordered
that the said line from Rolla to and across Little Piney be first
completed, and as soon as possible.

The Secretary of War is charged with the execution of this order.
And to facilitate the speedy execution of the work, he is directed,
at his discretion, to take possession and control of the whole or
such part of the said railroad line, and the whole or such part of
the rolling stock, offices, shops, buildings, and all their
appendages and appurtenances, as he may judge necessary or convenient
for the early completion of the road from Rolla to Lebanon.

Done at the city of WASHINGTON, July 11, 1862.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, D C., July 11, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I recommend that the thanks of Congress be given to the following
officers of the United States Navy:
Captain James L. Lardner, for meritorious conduct at the battle of
Port Royal and distinguished services on the coast of the United
States against the enemy.

Captain Charles Henry Davis, for distinguished services in conflict
with the enemy at Fort Pillow, at Memphis, and for successful
operations at other points in the waters of the Mississippi River.

Commander John A. Dahlgren, for distinguished services in the line of
his profession, improvements in ordnance, and zealous and efficient
labors in the ordnance branch of the service.

Commander Stephen C. Rowan, for distinguished services in the waters
of North Carolina, and particularly in the capture of Newbern, being
in chief command of the naval forces.

Commander David D. Porter, for distinguished services in the
conception and preparation of the means used for the capture of the
forts below New Orleans, and for highly meritorious conduct in the
management of the mortar flotilla during the bombardment of Forts
Jackson and St.  Philip.

Captain Silas H. Stringharn, now on the retired list, for
distinguished services in the capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 11, 1862.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of yesterday is received.  Do you not, my good
friend, perceive that what you ask is simply to put you in command in
the West?  I do not suppose you desire this.  You only wish to
control in your own localities; but this you must know may derange
all other posts.  Can you not, and will you not, have a full
conference with General Halleck?  Telegraph him, and meet him at such
place as he and you can agree upon.  I telegraph him to meet you and
confer fully with you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 11, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth:

Governor Johnson, at Nashville, is in great trouble and anxiety about
a raid into Kentucky.  The governor is a true and valuable man--
indispensable to us in Tennessee.  Will you please get in
communication with him, and have a full conference with him before
you leave for here?  I have telegraphed him on the subject.

A. LINCOLN.




APPEAL TO BORDER-STATE REPRESENTATIVES IN FAVOR OF
COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION.

July 12, 1862.

GENTLEMEN:--After the adjournment of Congress now very near, I shall
have no opportunity of seeing you for several months.  Believing that
you of the border States hold more power for good than any other
equal number of members, I feel it a duty which I cannot justifiably
waive to make this appeal to you.  I intend no reproach or complaint
when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you all had voted for the
resolution in the gradual-emancipation message of last March, the war
would now be substantially ended.  And the plan therein proposed is
yet one of the most potent and swift means of ending it.  Let the
States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no
event will the States you represent ever join their proposed
confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest.  But
you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them
so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution
within your own States.    Beat them at elections, as you have
overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as
their own.  You and I know what the lever of their power is.  Break
that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more
forever.  Most of you have treated me with kindness and consideration
and I trust you will not now think I improperly touch what is
exclusively your own, when, for the sake of the whole country, I ask,
Can you, for your States, do better than to take the course I urge?
Discarding punctilio and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and
looking only to the unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you
do better in any possible event?  You prefer that the constitutional
relation of the States to the nation shall be practically restored
without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my
whole duty in this respect, under the Constitution and my oath of
office, would be performed.  But it is not done, and we are trying to
accomplish it by war.  The incidents of the war cannot be avoided.
If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner
attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere
friction and abrasion--by the mere incidents of the war.  It will be
gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.  Much of its
value is gone already.  How much better for you and for your people
to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures
substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in
any other event! How much better to thus save the money which else we
sink forever in war! How much better to do it while we can, lest the
war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better
for you as seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out
that without which the war could never have been, than to sink both
the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's
throats! I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at
once to emancipate gradually.  Room in South America for colonization
can be obtained cheaply and in abundance, and when numbers shall be
large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the
freed people will not be so reluctant to go.

I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned--one which threatens
division among those who, united, are none too strong.  An instance
of it is known to you.  General Hunter is an honest man.  He was, and
I hope still is, my friend.  I valued him none the less for his
agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere could be
free.  He proclaimed all men free within certain States, and I
repudiated the proclamation.   He expected more good and less harm
from the measure than I could believe would follow.  Yet, in
repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offence, to many whose
support the country cannot afford to lose.  And this is not the end
of it.  The pressure in this direction is still upon me, and is
increasing.  By conceding what I now ask you can relieve me, and,
much more, can relieve the country in this important point.

Upon these considerations, I have again begged your attention to the
message of March last.  Before leaving the Capital, consider and
discuss it among yourselves.  You are patriots and statesmen, and as
such I pray you consider this proposition; and, at the least, commend
it to the consideration of your States and people.  As you would
perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world, I
beseech you that you do in nowise omit this.  Our common country is
in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to
bring a speedy relief.  Once relieved, its form of government is
saved to the world; its beloved history and cherished memories are
vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered
inconceivably grand.  To you, more than to any others, the privilege
is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to
link your own names therewith forever.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 13, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

MY DEAR SIR:--I am told that over 160,000 men have gone into your
army on the Peninsula.  When I was with you the other day we made out
86,500 remaining, leaving 73,500 to be accounted for.  I believe
23,500 will cover all the killed, wounded, and missing in all your
battles and skirmishes, leaving 50,000 who have left otherwise.  No
more than 5000 of these have died, leaving 45,000 of your army still
alive and not with it.  I believe half or two-thirds of them are fit
for duty to-day.  Have you any more perfect knowledge of this than I
have?  If I am right, and you had these men with you, you could go
into Richmond in the next three days.  How can they be got to you,
and how can they be prevented from getting away in such numbers for
the future?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 13, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

They are having a stampede in Kentucky.  Please look to it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WASHINGTON, July 13, 1862.

GENERAL J. T. BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

Your several despatches received.  You should call on General
Halleck.  Telegraph him at once.  I have telegraphed him that you are
in trouble.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 13, 1862.

GENERAL J. T. BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

We cannot venture to order troops from General Buell.  We know not
what condition he is in.  He maybe attacked himself.  You must call
on General Halleck, who commands, and whose business it is to
understand and care for the whole field If you cannot telegraph to
him, send a messenger to him.  A dispatch has this moment come from
Halleck at Tuscombia, Alabama.

A. LINCOLN.




ACT OF COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

July 4, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

Herewith is the draft of the bill to compensate any State which may
abolish slavery within its limits, the passage of which,
substantially as presented, I respectfully and earnestly recommend.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled:--That whenever the
President of the United States shall be satisfied that any State
shall have lawfully abolished slavery within and through-out such
State, either immediately or gradually, it shall be the duty of the
President, assisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, to prepare and
deliver to each State an amount of six per cent. interest-bearing
bonds of the United States equal to the aggregate value at ______
dollars per head of all the slaves within such State, as reported by
the census of 1860; the whole amount for any one State to be
delivered at once if the abolishment be immediate, or in equal annual
instalments if it be gradual, interest to begin running on each bond
at the time of delivery, and not before.

And be it further enacted, That if any State, having so received any
such bonds, shall at any time afterwards by law reintroduce or
tolerate slavery within its limits, contrary to the act of
abolishment upon which such bonds shall have been received, said
bonds so received by said State shall at once be null and void, in
whosesoever hands they may be, and such State shall refund to the
United States all interest which may have been paid on such bonds.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 14, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth, Mississippi:

I am very anxious--almost impatient--to have you here.  Have due
regard to what you leave behind.  When can you reach here?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, July 14, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

General Burnside's force is at Newport News, ready to move, on short
notice, one way or the other, when ordered.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SOLOMON FOOT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 15, 1862.

HON. SOLOMON FOOT,  President pro tempore of the Senate.

SIR:--Please inform the Senate that I shall be obliged if they will
postpone the adjournment at least one day beyond the time which I
understand to be now fixed for it.

Your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

[The same message was addressed to Hon. Galusha A. Grow Speaker of
the House of Representatives.]




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

July 17, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:

I have inadvertently omitted so long to inform you that in March last
Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, of New York, gratuitously presented to the
United States the ocean steamer Vanderbilt, by many esteemed the
finest merchant ship in the world.  She has ever since been and still
is doing valuable service to the government.  For the patriotic act
of making this magnificent and valuable present to the country I
recommend that some suitable acknowledgment be made.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

July 17, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:

Considering the bill for "An act to suppress insurrection, to punish
treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of
rebels, and for other purposes," and the joint resolution explanatory
of said act as being substantially one, I have approved and signed
both.

Before I was informed of the passage of the resolution I had prepared
the draft of a message stating objections to the bill becoming a law,
a copy of which draft is herewith transmitted.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I herewith return to your honorable body, in which it originated, the
bill for an act entitled "An act to suppress treason and rebellion,
to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other
purposes," together with my objections to its becoming a law.

There is much in the bill to which I perceive no objection.  It is
wholly prospective, and touches neither person nor property of any
loyal citizen, in which particulars it is just and proper.  The first
and second sections provide for the conviction and punishment of
persons Who shall be guilty of treason and persons who shall "incite,
set on foot, assist, or  engage in any rebellion or insurrection
against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or
shall give aid and comfort thereto, or shall engage in or give aid
and comfort to any such existing rebellion or insurrection."  By fair
construction persons within these sections are not to be punished
without regular trials in duly constituted courts, under the forms
and all the substantial provisions of law and of the Constitution
applicable to their several cases.  To this I perceive no objection,
especially as such persons would be within the general pardoning
power and also the special provision for pardon and amnesty contained
in this act.

It is also provided that the slaves of persons convicted under these
sections shall be free.  I think there is an unfortunate form of
expression rather than a substantial objection in this.  It is
startling to say that Congress can free a slave within a State, and
yet if it were said the ownership of the slave had first been
transferred to the nation and that Congress had then liberated him
the difficulty would at once vanish.  And this is the real case.  The
traitor against the General Government forfeits his slave at least as
justly as he does any other property, and he forfeits both to the
government against which be offends.  The government, so far as there
can be ownership, thus owns the forfeited slaves, and the question
for Congress in regard to them is, "Shall they be made free or be
sold to new masters?"  I perceive no objection to Congress deciding in
advance that they shall be free.   To the high honor of Kentucky, as
I am informed, she is the owner of some slaves by escheat, and has
sold none, but liberated all.  I hope the same is true of some other
States.  Indeed, I do not believe it will be physically possible for
the General Government to return persons so circumstanced to actual
slavery.  I believe there would be physical resistance to it which
could neither be turned aside by argument nor driven away by force.
In this view I have no objection to this feature of the bill.
Another matter involved in these two sections, and running through
other parts of the act, will be noticed hereafter.

I perceive no objection to the third or fourth sections.

So far as I wish to notice the fifth and sixth sections, they may be
considered together.  That the enforcement of these sections would do
no injustice to the persons embraced within them, is clear.  That
those who make a causeless war should be compelled to pay the cost of
it, is too obviously just to be called in question.  To give
governmental protection to the property of persons who have abandoned
it, and gone on a crusade to overthrow the same government, is
absurd, if considered in the mere light of justice.  The severest
justice may not always be the best policy.  The principle of seizing
and appropriating the property of the persons embraced within these
sections is certainly not very objectionable, but a justly
discriminating application of it would be very difficult and, to a
great extent, impossible.  And would it not be wise to place a power
of remission somewhere, so that these persons may know they have
something to lose by persisting and something to gain by desisting?

[A man without hope is a most dangerous man--he has nothing to lose!]

I am not sure whether such power of remission is or is not in section
thirteen.  Without any special act of Congress, I think our military
commanders, when--in military phrase, "they are within the enemy's
country," should, in an orderly manner, seize and use whatever of
real or personal property may be necessary or convenient for their
commands; at the same time preserving, in some way, the evidence of
what they do.

What I have said in regard to slaves, while commenting on the first
and second sections, is applicable to the ninth, with the difference
that no provision is made in the whole act for determining whether a
particular individual slave does or does not fall within the classes
defined in that section.  He is to be free upon certain conditions
but whether those conditions do or do not pertain to him no mode of
ascertaining is provided.  This could be easily supplied.

To the tenth section I make no objection.  The oath therein required
seems to be proper, and the remainder of the section is substantially
identical with a law already existing.

The eleventh section simply assumes to confer discretionary power
upon the executive.   Without the law, I have no hesitation to go as
far in the direction indicated as I may at any time deem expedient.
And I am ready to say now--I think it is proper for our military
commanders to employ, as laborers, as many persons of African descent
as can be used to advantage.

The twelfth and thirteenth sections are something better than
unobjectionable; and the fourteenth is entirely proper, if all other
parts of the act shall stand.

That to which I chiefly object pervades most parts of the act, but
more distinctly appears in the first, second, seventh, and eighth
sections.  It is the sum of those provisions which results in the
divesting of title forever.

For the causes of treason and ingredients of treason, not amounting
to the full crime, it declares forfeiture extending beyond the lives
of the guilty parties; whereas the Constitution of the United States
declares that "no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood
or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted."  True,
there is to be no formal attainder in this case; still, I think the
greater punishment cannot be constitutionally inflicted, in a
different form, for the same offence.

With great respect I am constrained to say I think this feature of
the act is unconstitutional.  It would not be difficult to modify it.

I may remark that the provision of the Constitution, put in language
borrowed from Great Britain, applies only in this country, as I
understand, to real or landed estate.

Again, this act in rem forfeits property for the ingredients of
treason without a conviction of the supposed criminal, or a personal
hearing given him in any proceeding.  That we may not touch property
lying within our reach, because we cannot give personal notice to an
owner who is absent endeavoring to destroy the government, is
certainly not satisfactory.  Still, the owner may not be thus
engaged; and I think a reasonable time should be provided for such
parties to appear and have personal hearings.  Similar provisions are
not uncommon in connection with proceedings in rem.

For the reasons stated, I return the bill to the House in which it
originated.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., July 21, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

This is Monday.  I hope to be able to tell you on Thursday what is to
be done with Burnside.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER IN REGARD TO BEHAVIOR OF ALIENS
WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, July 21, 1862.

The following order has been received from the President of the
United States:

Representations have been made to the President by the ministers of
various foreign powers in amity with the United States that subjects
of such powers have during the present insurrection been obliged or
required by military authorities to take an oath of general or
qualified allegiance to this government.  It is the duty of all
aliens residing in the United States to submit to and obey the laws
and respect the authority of the government.  For any proceeding or
conduct inconsistent with this obligation and subversive of that
authority they may rightfully be subjected to military restraints
when this may be necessary.  But they cannot be required to take an
oath of allegiance to this government, because it conflicts with the
duty they owe to their own sovereigns.  All such obligations
heretofore taken are therefore remitted and annulled.  Military
commanders will abstain from imposing similar obligations in future,
and will in lieu thereof adopt such other restraints of the character
indicated as they shall find necessary, convenient, and effectual for
the public safety.  It is further directed that whenever any order
shall be made affecting the personal liberty of an alien reports of
the same and of the causes thereof shall be made to the War
Department for the consideration of the Department of State.

By order of the Secretary of War:
L. THOMAS,  Adjutant-General.




ORDER AUTHORIZING EMPLOYMENT OF "CONTRABANDS."

WAR DEPARTMENT, July 22, 1862.

Ordered:
1.  That military commanders within the States of Virginia, South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
and Arkansas in an orderly manner seize and use any property, real or
personal, which may be necessary or convenient for their several
commands as supplies or for other military purposes; and that while
property may be destroyed for proper military objects, none shall be
destroyed in wantonness or malice.

2.  That military and naval commanders shall employ as laborers
within and from said States so many persons of African descent as can
be advantageously used for military or naval purposes, giving them
reasonable wages for their labor.

3.  That as to both property and persons of African descent accounts
shall be kept sufficiently accurate and in detail to show quantities
and amounts and from whom both property and such persons shall have
come, as a basis upon which compensation can be made in proper cases;
and the several departments of this government shall attend to and
perform their appropriate parts toward the execution of these orders.

By order of the President:
EDWIN M. STANTON,  Secretary of War.




WARNING TO REBEL SYMPATHIZERS

PROCLAMATION, JULY 25, 1862.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

In pursuance of the sixth section of the act of Congress entitled "An
act to suppress insurrection and to punish treason and rebellion, to
seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes,"
approved July 17, 1862, and which act and the joint resolution
explanatory thereof are herewith published, I, Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States, do hereby proclaim to and warn all
persons within the contemplation of said sixth section to cease
participating in, aiding, countenancing, or abetting the existing
rebellion or any rebellion against the Government of the United
States and to return to their proper allegiance to the United States,
on pain of the forfeitures and seizures as within and by said sixth
section provided.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-fifth day of July, A.D.
1862, and of the independence of the United States the
eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




HOLD MY HAND WHILST THE ENEMY STABS ME

TO REVERDY JOHNSON.

(Private.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 26, 1862.

HON. REVERDY JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 16th is received...........

You are ready to say I apply to friends what is due only to enemies.
I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold
my hands while my enemies stab me.  This appeal of  professed friends
has paralyzed me more in this struggle than any other one thing.  You
remember telling me, the day after the Baltimore mob in April, 1861,
that it would crush all Union feeling in Maryland for me to attempt
bringing troops over Maryland soil to Washington.  I brought the
troops notwithstanding, and yet there was Union feeling enough left
to elect a Legislature the next autumn, which in turn elected a very
excellent Union United States senator! I am a patient man--always
willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to
give ample time for repentance.  Still, I must save this government,
if possible.  What I cannot do, of course, I will not do; but it may
as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this
game leaving any available card unplayed.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO CUTHBERT BULLITT.
(Private.)
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 28, 1862.


CUTHBERT BULLITT, Esq., New Orleans, Louisiana.

SIR:--The copy of a letter addressed to yourself by Mr. Thomas J.
Durant has been shown to me.  The writer appears to be an able, a
dispassionate, and an entirely sincere man.  The first part of the
letter is devoted to an effort to show that the secession ordinance
of Louisiana was adopted against the will of a majority of the
people.  This is probably true, and in that fact may be found some
instruction.  Why did they allow the ordinance to go into effect?
Why did they not assert themselves?  Why stand passive and allow
themselves to be trodden down by minority?  Why did they not hold
popular meetings and have a convention of their own to express and
enforce the true sentiment of the State?  If preorganization was
against them then, why not do this now that the United States army is
present to protect them?  The paralysis--the dead palsy--of the
government in this whole struggle is that this class of men will do
nothing for the government, nothing for themselves, except demanding
that the government shall not strike its open enemies, lest they be
struck by accident!

Mr. Durant complains that in various ways the relation of master and
slave is disturbed by the presence of our army, and he considers it
particularly vexatious that this, in part, is done under cover of an
act of Congress, while constitutional guaranties are suspended on the
plea of military necessity.  The truth is, that what is done and
omitted about slaves is done and omitted on the same military
necessity.  It is a military necessity to have men and money; and we
can get neither in sufficient numbers or amounts if we keep from or
drive from our lines slaves coming to them.   Mr. Durant cannot be
ignorant of the pressure in this direction, nor of my efforts to hold
it within bounds till he and such as he shall have time to help
themselves.

I am not posted to speak understandingly on all the police
regulations of which Mr. Durant complains.  If experience shows any
one of them to be wrong, let them be set right.  I think I can
perceive in the freedom of trade which Mr. Durant urges that he would
relieve both friends and enemies from the pressure of the blockade.
By this he would serve the enemy more effectively than the enemy is
able to serve himself.  I do not say or believe that to serve the
enemy is the purpose, of Mr. Durant, or that he is conscious of any
purpose other than national and patriotic ones.  Still, if there were
a class of men who, having no choice of sides in the contest, were
anxious only to have quiet and comfort for themselves while it rages,
and to fall in with the victorious side at the end of it without loss
to themselves, their advice as to the mode of conducting the contest
would be precisely such as his is.   He speaks of no duty--apparently
thinks of none--resting upon Union men.  He even thinks it injurious
to the Union cause that they should be restrained in trade and
passage without taking sides.  They are to touch neither a sail nor a
pump, but to be merely passengers--deadheads at that--to be carried
snug and dry throughout the storm, and safely landed right side up.
Nay, more: even a mutineer is to go untouched, lest these sacred
passengers receive an accidental wound.  Of course the rebellion will
never be suppressed in Louisiana if the professed Union men there
will neither help to do it nor permit the government to do it without
their help.  Now, I think the true remedy is very different from what
is suggested by Mr. Durant.  It does not lie in rounding the rough
angles of the war, but in removing the necessity for the war.  The
people of Louisiana who wish protection to person and property have
but to reach forth their hands and take it.  Let them in good faith
reinaugurate the national authority, and set up a State government
conforming thereto under the Constitution.  They know how to do it
and can have the protection of the army while doing it.  The army
will be withdrawn so soon as such State government can dispense with
its presence; and the people of the State can then, upon the old
constitutional terms, govern themselves to their own liking.  This is
very simple and easy.

If they will not do this--if they prefer to hazard all for the sake
of destroying the government--it is for them to consider whether it
is probable I will surrender the government to save them from losing
all.  If they decline what I suggest, you scarcely need to ask what I
will do.  What would you do in my position?  Would you drop the war
where it is?  Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk
squirts charged with rose water?  Would you deal lighter blows rather
than heavier ones?  Would you give up the contest, leaving any
available means unapplied?  I am in no boastful mood.  I shall not do
more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government,
which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination.  I shall
do nothing in malice.  What I deal with is too vast for malicious
dealing.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO LOYAL GOVERNORS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.,

July 28, 1862.

GOVERNORS OF ALL LOYAL STATES:

It would be of great service here for us to know, as fully as you can
tell, what progress is made and making in recruiting for old
regiments in your State.  Also about what day the first regiments can
move with you, what the second, what the third, and so on.  This
information is important to us in making calculations.   Please give
it as promptly and accurately as you call.

A. LINCOLN.




BROKEN EGGS CANNOT BE MENDED

EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO AUGUST BELMONT.

July 31, 1862.

Broken eggs cannot be mended; but Louisiana has nothing to do now but
to take her place in the Union as it was, barring the already broken
eggs.  The sooner she does so, the smaller will be the amount of that
which will be past mending.  This government cannot much longer play
a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing.  Those
enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years
trying to destroy the government, and if they fail, still come back
into the Union unhurt.  If they expect in any contingency to ever
have the Union as it was, I join with the writer in saying, "Now is
the time."

How much better it would have been for the writer to have gone at
this, under the protection of the army at New Orleans, than to have
sat down in a closet writing complaining letters northward!

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO COUNT GASPARIN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

August 4, 1863.

TO COUNT A. DE GASPARIN.

DEAR SIR--Your very acceptable letter, dated Orbe, Canton de Vaud,
Switzerland, 18th of July, 1862, is received.  The moral effect was
the worst of the affair before Richmond, and that has run its course
downward.  We are now at a stand, and shall soon be rising again, as
we hope.  I believe it is true that, in men and material, the enemy
suffered more than we in that series of conflicts, while it is
certain that he is less able to bear it.

With us every soldier is a man of character, and must be treated with
more consideration than is customary in Europe.  Hence our great
army, for slighter causes than could have prevailed there, has
dwindled rapidly, bringing the necessity for a new call earlier than
was anticipated.  We shall easily obtain the new levy, however.  Be
not alarmed if you shall learn that we shall have resorted to a draft
for part of this.  It seems strange even to me, but it is true, that
the government is now pressed to this course by a popular demand.
Thousands who wish not to personally enter the service are
nevertheless anxious to pay and send substitutes, provided they can
have assurance that unwilling persons, similarly situated, will be
compelled to do likewise.  Besides this, volunteers mostly choose to
enter newly forming regiments, while drafted men can be sent to fill
up the old ones, wherein man for man they are quite doubly as
valuable.

You ask, "Why is it that the North with her great armies so often is
found with inferiority of numbers face to face with the armies of the
South?"  While I painfully know the fact, a military man, which I am
not, would better answer the question.  The fact I know has not been
overlooked, and I suppose the cause of its continuance lies mainly in
the other facts that the enemy holds the interior and we the exterior
lines, and that we operate where the people convey information to the
enemy, while he operates where they convey none to us.

I have received the volume and letter which you did me the honor of
addressing to me, and for which please accept my sincere thanks.  You
are much admired in America for the ability of your writings, and
much loved for your generosity to us and your devotion to liberal
principles generally.

You are quite right as to the importance to us, for its bearing upon
Europe, that we should achieve military successes, and the same is
true for us at home as well as abroad.  Yet it seems unreasonable
that a series of successes, extending through half a year, and
clearing more than 100,000 square miles of country, should help us so
little, while a single half-defeat should hurt us so much.  But let
us be patient.

I am very happy to know that my course has not conflicted with your
judgment of propriety and policy I can only say that I have acted
upon my best convictions, without selfishness or malice, and that by
the help of God I shall continue to do so.

Please be assured of my highest respect and esteem.

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH AT A WAR MEETING,

WASHINGTON, AUGUST 6, 1862

FELLOW CITIZENS: I believe there is no precedent for my appearing
before you on this occasion, but it is also true that there is no
precedent for your being here yourselves, and I offer in
justification of myself and of you that, upon examination, I have
found nothing in the Constitution against it.  I, however, have an
impression that; there are younger gentlemen who will entertain you
better and better address your understanding than I will or could,
and therefore I propose but to detain you a moment longer.  I am very
little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to
produce some good by it.  The only thing I think of just now not
likely to be better said by some one else is a matter in which we
have heard some other persons blamed for what I did myself There has
been a very widespread attempt to have a quarrel between General
McClellan and the Secretary of War  Now, I occupy a position that
enables me to believe that these two gentlemen are not nearly so deep
in the quarrel as some presuming to be their friends.  General
McClellan's attitude is such that in the very selfishness of his
nature he cannot but wish to be successful--and I hope he will--and
the Secretary of War is precisely in the same situation.  If the
military commanders in the field cannot be successful, not only the
Secretary of War, but myself, for the time being the master of both,
cannot but be failures.  I know General McClellan wishes to be
successful, and I know he does not wish it any more than the
Secretary of War for him, and both of them together no more than I
wish it.  Sometimes we have a dispute about how many men General
McClellan has had, and those who would disparage him say he has had a
very large number, and those who would disparage the Secretary of War
insist that General McClellan has had a very small number.  The basis
for this is, there is always a wide difference, and on this occasion
perhaps a wider one, between the grand total on McClellan's rolls and
the men actually fit for duty; and those who would disparage him talk
of the grand total on paper, and those who would disparage the
Secretary of War talk of those at present fit for duty.  General
McClellan has sometimes asked for things that the Secretary of War
did not give him.  General McClellan is not to blame for asking for
what he wanted and needed, and the Secretary of War is not to blame
for not giving when he had none to give.  And I say here, so far as I
know, the Secretary of War has withheld no one thing at any time in
my power to give him.  I have no accusation against him.  I believe
he is a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me
to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of
War as withholding from him.  I have talked longer than I expected to
do, and now I avail myself of my privilege of saying no more.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR ANDREW.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., August 12, 1862.

GOVERNOR ANDREW, Boston, Mass.:

Your despatch saying "I can't get those regiments off because I can't
get quick work out of the V. S. disbursing officer and the paymaster"
is received.  Please say to these gentlemen that if they do not work
quickly I will make quick work with them.  In the name of all that is
reasonable, how long does it take to pay a couple of regiments?  We
were never more in need of the arrival of regiments than now--even
to-day.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., August 12, 1862.

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

It is very important for some regiments to arrive here at once.  What
lack you from us?  What can we do to expedite matters?  Answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 12, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Would the completion of the railroad some distance farther in the
direction of Springfield, Mo., be of any military advantage to you?
Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS ON COLONIZATION TO A DEPUTATION OF COLORED MEN.

WASHINGTON,  Thursday, August 14, 1862.

This afternoon the President of the United States gave an audience to
a committee of colored men at the White House.  They were introduced
by Rev.  J. Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration,  E. M. Thomas, the
chairman, remarked that they were there by invitation to hear what
the Executive had to say to them.

Having all been seated, the President, after a few preliminary
observations, informed them that a sum of money had been appropriated
by Congress, and placed at his disposition, for the purpose of aiding
the colonization, in some country, of the people, or a portion of
them, of African descent, thereby making it his duty, as it had for a
long time been his inclination, to favor that cause.  And why, he
asked, should the people of your race be colonized, and where?  Why
should they leave this country?  This is, perhaps, the first question
for proper consideration.  You and we are different races.  We have
between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other
two races.  Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this
physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think.
Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us,
while ours suffer from your presence.  In a word, we suffer on each
side.  If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we
should be separated.  You here are free men, I suppose.

[A voice--"Yes, sir!"]

Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives.  Your race are
suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any
people.  But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far
removed from being placed on an equality with the white race.  You
are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys.
The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free,
but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the
equal of a single man of ours.  Go where you are treated the best,
and the ban is still upon you.  I do not propose to discuss this, but
to present it as a fact, with which we have to deal.  I cannot alter
it if I would.  It is a fact about which we all think and feel alike,
I and you.  We look to our condition.  Owing to the existence of the
two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the effects
upon white men, growing out of the institution of slavery.

I believe in its general evil effects on the white race.  See our
present condition--the country engaged in war--white men cutting one
another's throats--none knowing how far it will extend--and then
consider what we know to be the truth: But for your race among us
there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do
not care for you one way or the other.  Nevertheless I repeat,
without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis,
the war could not have an existence.   It is better for us both,
therefore, to be separated.  I know that there are free men among
you, who, even if they could better their condition, are not as much
inclined to go out of the country as those who, being slaves, could
obtain their freedom on this condition.  I suppose one of the
principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free
colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it.  You
may believe that you can live in WASHINGTON, or elsewhere in the
United States, the remainder of your life, as easily, perhaps more
so, than you can in any foreign Country; and hence you may come to
the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to
a foreign country.

This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the
case.  You ought to do something to help those who are not so
fortunate as yourselves.  There is an unwillingness on the part of
our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain
with us.  Now, if you could give a start to the white people, you
would open a wide door for many to be made free.  If we deal with
those who are not free at the beginning, and whose intellects are
clouded by slavery, we have very poor material to start with.  If
intelligent colored men, such as are before me, would move in this
matter, much might be accomplished.

It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable
of thinking as white men, and not those who have been systematically
oppressed.  There is much to encourage you.  For the sake of your
race you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the
purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people.  It is
a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to
ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard
usages of the world.  It is difficult to make a man miserable while
he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God
who made him.  In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made
by men engaged in it, but they were cheered by the future.  General
WASHINGTON himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had
remained a British subject, yet he was a happy man because he had
engaged in benefiting his race, in doing something for the children
of his neighbors, having none of his own.

The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time.  In a
certain sense it is a success.  The old President of Liberia,
Roberts, has just been with me--the first time I ever saw him.  He
says they have within the bounds of that colony between three and
four hundred thousand people, or more than in some of our old States,
such as Rhode Island or Delaware, or in some of our newer States, and
less than in some of our larger ones.  They are not all American
colonists or their descendants.  Something less than 12,000 have been
sent thither from this country.  Many of the original settlers have
died; yet, like people else-where, their offspring outnumber those
deceased.  The question is, if the colored people are persuaded to go
anywhere, why not there?

One reason for unwillingness to do so is that some of you would
rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity.  I do not
know how much attachment you may have toward our race.  It does not
strike me that you have the greatest reason to love them.  But still
you are attached to them, at all events.

The place I am thinking about for a colony is in Central America.  It
is nearer to us than Liberia not much more than one fourth as far as
Liberia, and within seven days' run by steamers.  Unlike Liberia, it
is a great line of travel--it is a highway.  The country is a very
excellent one for any people, and with great natural resources and
advantages, and especially because of the similarity of climate with
your native soil, thus being suited to your physical condition.  The
particular place I have in view is to be a great highway from the
Atlantic or Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and this particular
place has all the advantages for a colony.  On both sides there are
harbors--among the finest in the world.  Again, there is evidence of
very rich coal-mines.  A certain amount of coal is valuable in any
country.  Why I attach so much importance to coal is, it will afford
an opportunity to the inhabitants for immediate employment till they
get ready to settle permanently in their homes.  If you take
colonists where there is no good landing, there is a bad show; and so
where there is nothing to cultivate and of which to make a farm.  But
if something is started so that you can get your daily bread as soon
as reach you there, it is a great advantage.  Coal land is the best
thing I know of with which to commence an enterprise.  To return--you
have been talked to upon this subject, and told that a speculation is
intended by gentlemen who have an interest in the country, including
the coal-mines.  We have been mistaken all our lives if we do not
know whites, as well as blacks, look to their self-interest.  Unless
among those deficient of intellect, everybody you trade with makes
something.  You meet with these things here and everywhere.  If such
persons have what will be an advantage to them, the question is
whether it cannot be made of advantage to you.   You are intelligent,
and know that success does not so much depend on external help as on
self-reliance.  Much, therefore, depends upon yourselves.  As to the
coal-mines, I think I see the means available for your self-reliance.
I shall, if I get a sufficient number of you engaged, have provision
made that you shall not be wronged.  If you will engage in the
enterprise, I will spend some of the money intrusted to me.  I am not
sure you will succeed.  The government may lose the money; but we
cannot succeed unless we try, and we think with care we can succeed.
The political affairs in Central America are not in quite as
satisfactory a condition as I wish.  There are contending factions in
that quarter, but it is true all the factions are agreed alike on the
subject of colonization, and want it, and are more generous than we
are here.

To your colored race they have no objection  I would endeavor to have
you made the equals, and have the best assurance that you should be
the equals, of the best.

The practical thing I want to ascertain is whether I can get a number
of able-bodied men, with their wives and children, who are willing to
go when I present evidence of encouragement and protection.  Could I
get a hundred tolerably intelligent men, with their wives and
children, and able to "cut their own fodder," so to speak?  Can I
have fifty?  If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with a
mixture of women and children--good things in the family relation, I
think,--I could make a successful commencement.  I want you to let me
know whether this can be done or not.  This is the practical part of
my wish to see you.  These are subjects of very great importance,
worthy of a month's study, instead of a speech delivered in an hour.
I ask you, then, to consider seriously, not pertaining to yourselves
merely, nor for your race and ours for the present time, but as one
of the things, if successfully managed, the good of mankind--not
confined to the present generation, but as

    "From age to age descends the lay
     To millions yet to be,
     Till far its echoes roll away
     Into eternity."

The above is merely given as the substance of the President's
remarks.

The chairman of the delegation briefly replied that they would hold a
consultation, and in a short time give an answer.

The President said: Take your full time-no hurry at all.

The delegation then withdrew.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER AT CAMP CHASE, OHIO.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 14, 1862.

OFFICER in charge of Confederate prisoners at Camp Chase, Ohio:

It is believed that a Dr. J. J. Williams is a prisoner in your
charge, and if so tell him his wife is here and allow him to
telegraph to her.

A. LINCOLN.




TO HIRAM BARNEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 16, 1862.

HON. HIRAM BARNEY, New York:

Mrs. L. has $1000 for the benefit of the hospitals and she will be
obliged, and send the pay, if you will be so good as to select and
send her $200 worth of good lemons and $100 worth of good oranges.

A. LINCOLN.




NOTE OF INTRODUCTION.

The Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue will please see Mr. Talcott, one of the best men there is,
and, if any difference, one they would like better than they do me.

August 18, 1862

A. LINCOLN



TELEGRAM TO S. B. MOODY

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
August 18, 1862

S. B. MOODY, Springfield, Ill.:

Which do you prefer--commissary or quartermaster?  If appointed it
must be without conditions.

A. LINCOLN.

Operator please send above for President.
JOHN HAY




TO Mrs. PRESTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 21, 1862.

Mrs. MARGARET PRESTON, Lexington, Ky.:

Your despatch to Mrs. L. received yesterday.  She is not well.  Owing
to her early and strong friendship for you, I would gladly oblige
you, but I cannot absolutely do it.  If General Boyle and Hon. James
Guthrie, one or both, in their discretion see fit to give you the
passes, this is my authority to them for doing so.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE OR GENERAL PARKE.

WASHINGTON, August 21.

TO GENERAL BURNSIDE OR GENERAL PARKE:

What news about arrival of troops?

A. LINCOLN.




TO G. P. WATSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 21, 1862.

GILLET F. WATSON, Williamsburg, Va.:

Your telegram in regard to the lunatic asylum has been received.  It
is certainly a case of difficulty, but if you cannot remain, I cannot
conceive who under my authority can.  Remain as long as you safely
can and provide as well as you can for the poor inmates of the
institution.

A. LINCOLN.




TO HORACE GREELEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 22, 1862.

HON. HORACE GREELEY.

DEAR SIR:--I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself
through the New York Tribune.  If there be in it any statements or
assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now
and here controvert them.  If there be in it any inferences which I
may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against
them.  If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial
tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have
always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not
meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union.  I would save it the shortest way under the
Constitution.  The sooner the national authority can be restored, the
nearer the Union will be, "the Union as it was."  If there be those
who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save
slavery, I do not agree with them.  If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I
do not agree with them.  My paramount object in this struggle is to
save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.  If I
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if
I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I
could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do
that.  What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear
because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.  I shall do
less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I
shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the
cause.  I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I
shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty,
and I intend no modification of my oft expressed personal wish that
all men, everywhere, could be free.

Yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR YATES.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., August 13.1862.  8 A.M.

HON. R. YATES, Springfield, Ill.:

I am pained to hear that you reject the service of an officer we sent
to assist in organizing and getting off troops.  Pennsylvania and
Indiana accepted such officers kindly, and they now have more than
twice as many new troops in the field as all the other States
together.  If Illinois had got forward as many troops as Indiana,
Cumberland Gap would soon be relieved from its present peril.  Please
do not ruin us on punctilio.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR RAMSEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 27, 1862

GOVERNOR RAMSEY, St.  Paul, Minnesota:

Yours received.  Attend to the Indians.  If the draft cannot proceed,
of course it will not proceed.  Necessity knows no law.  The
government cannot extend the time.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, August 27, 1862  4 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Alexandria, Virginia:

What news from the front?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

August 27, 1862 4.30 p.m.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Falmouth, Virginia:

Do you hear anything from Pope?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

August 28, 1862.  2.40 P. M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Falmouth, Virginia:

Any news from General Pope?

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL HAUPT.

August 28, 1862.  2.40 p. m.

COLONEL HAUPT, Alexandria, Virginia:

Yours received. How do you learn that the rebel forces at Manassas
are large and commanded by several of their best generals?

A. LINCOLN,




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 29, 1862.  2.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Falmouth, Virginia:

Any further news? Does Colonel Devon mean that sound of firing was
heard in direction of Warrenton, as stated, or in direction of
Warrenton Junction?

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, August 29, 1862.  2.30 p.m.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN

What news from direction of Manassas Junction?
What generally?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, August 29, 1862.  4.10 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:
Yours of to-day just received. I think your first alternative--to
wit, "to concentrate all our available forces to open communication
with Pope"--is the right one, but I wish not to control.  That I now
leave to General Halleck, aided by your counsels.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL HAUPT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 30, 1862. 10.20 A.M.

COLONEL HAUPT Alexandria, Virginia:

What news?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL HAUPT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, August 30, 1862. 3.50 P.M.
COLONEL HAUPT, Alexandria, Virginia

Please send me the latest news.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BANKS.

August 30, 1862. 8.35 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS, Manassas Junction, Virginia:

Please tell me what news.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, August 31, 1862.

GENERAL BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

What force, and what the numbers of it, which General Nelson had in
the engagement near Richmond yesterday?

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 3, 1862.

Ordered, That the general-in-chief, Major-General Halleck,
immediately commence, and proceed with all possible despatch; to
organize an army, for active operations, from all the material within
and coming within his control, independent of the forces he may deem
necessary for the defense of Washington when such active army shall
take the field.

By order of the President:

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.

[Indorsement.]

Copy delivered to Major-General Halleck, September 3, 1862,
at 10 p.m.

E. D. TOWNSEND,
Assistant-Adjutant General.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. G. WRIGHT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 7, 1862.

GENERAL WRIGHT, Cincinnati, Ohio:

Do you know to any certainty where General Bragg is?  May he not be
in Virginia?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 7, 1862.

GENERAL BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

Where is General Bragg?  What do you know on the subject?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. E. WOOL.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.

September 7, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL Wool, Baltimore:

What about Harper's Ferry?  Do you know anything about it?  How
certain is your information about Bragg being in the valley of the
Shenandoah?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B, McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON, September 8, 1862.  5 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Rockville, Maryland:

How does it look now?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. C. BUELL.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON,
September 8, 1862. 7.20 P.M.

GENERAL BUELL:

What degree of certainty have you that Bragg, with his command, is
not now in the valley of the Shenandoah, Virginia?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO T. WEBSTER.

WASHINGTON, September 9, 1862.

THOMAS WEBSTER, Philadelphia:

Your despatch received, and referred to General Halleck, who must
control the questions presented.  While I am not surprised at your
anxiety, I do not think you are in any danger.  If half our troops
were in Philadelphia, the enemy could take it, because he would not
fear to leave the other half in his rear; but with the whole of them
here, he dares not leave them in his rear.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, September 10, 1862.  10.15 AM.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Rockville, Maryland:

How does it look now?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.,

September 11, 1862.

HIS EXCELLENCY ANDREW G. CURTIN, Governor of Pennsylvania,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

SIR:--The application made to me by your adjutant general for
authority to call out the militia of the State of Pennsylvania has
received careful consideration.   It is my anxious desire to afford,
as far as possible, the means and power of the Federal Government to
protect the State of Pennsylvania from invasion by the rebel forces;
and since, in your judgment, the militia of the State are required,
and have been called upon by you, to organize for home defense and
protection, I sanction the call that you have made, and will receive
them into the service and pay of the United States to the extent they
can be armed, equipped, and usefully employed.  The arms and
equipments now belonging to the General Government will be needed for
the troops called out for the national armies, so that arms can only
be furnished for the quota of militia furnished by the draft of nine
months' men, heretofore ordered.  But as arms may be supplied by the
militia under your call, these, with the 30,000 in your arsenal, will
probably be sufficient for the purpose contemplated by your call.
You will be authorized to provide such equipments as may be required,
according to the regulations of the United States service, which,
upon being turned over to the United States Quartermaster's
Department, will be paid for at regulation prices, or the rates
allowed by the department for such articles.  Railroad transportation
will also be paid for, as in other cases.  Such general officers will
be supplied as the exigencies of the service will permit.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WASHINGTON, September 11, 1862   12M

HON. ANDREW G. CURTIN:

Please tell me at once what is your latest news from or toward
Hagerstown, or of the enemy's movement in any direction.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL C. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, SEPTEMBER 11, 1862.    6 PM

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

This is explanatory.  If Porter, Heintzelman, and Sigel were sent
you, it would sweep everything from the other side of the river,
because the new troops have been distributed among them, as I
understand.  Porter reports himself  21,000 strong, which can only be
by the addition of new troops.  He is ordered tonight to join you as
quickly as possible.  I am for sending you all that can be spared,
and I hope others can follow Porter very soon,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., SEPTEMBER 12, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Clarksburg, Maryland:

How does it look now?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON D.C.,
SEPTEMBER 12, 1862    10.35 AM

HON. ANDREW G. CURTIN, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:

Your despatch asking for 80,000 disciplined troops to be sent to
Pennsylvania is received.  Please consider we have not to exceed
80,000 disciplined troops, properly so called, this side of the
mountains; and most of them, with many of the new regiments, are now
close in the rear of the enemy supposed to be invading Pennsylvania.
Start half of them to Harrisburg, and the enemy will turn upon and
beat the remaining half, and then reach Harrisburg before the part
going there, and beat it too when it comes.  The best possible
security for Pennsylvania is putting the strongest force possible in
rear of the enemy.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. G. WRIGHT.

MILITARY TELEGRAPH,
WASHINGTON, September 12, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL WRIGHT, Cincinnati, Ohio:

I am being appealed to from Louisville against your withdrawing
troops from that place.  While I cannot pretend to judge of the
propriety of what you are doing, you would much oblige me by
furnishing me a rational answer to make to the governor and others at
Louisville.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WASHINGTON, September 12, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

Your despatch of last evening received.  Where is the enemy which you
dread in Louisville?  How near to you?  What is General Gilbert's
opinion?  With all possible respect for you, I must think General
Wright's military opinion is the better.  He is as much responsible
for Louisville as for Cincinnati.  General Halleck telegraphed him on
this very subject yesterday, and I telegraph him now; but for us here
to control him there on the ground would be a babel of confusion
which would be utterly ruinous.  Where do you understand Buell to be,
and what is he doing?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO A. HENRY.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C, September 12, 1862.

HON. ALEXANDER HENRY, Philadelphia:

Yours of to-day received.  General Halleck has made the best
provision he can for generals in Pennsylvania.  Please do not be
offended when I assure you that in my confident belief Philadelphia
is in no danger.  Governor Curtin has just telegraphed me:
"I have advices that Jackson is crossing the Potomac at Williamsport,
and probably the whole rebel army will be drawn from Maryland."
At all events, Philadelphia is more than 150 miles from Hagerstown,
and could not be reached by the rebel army in ten days, if no
hindrance was interposed.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., September 12, 1862.  5.45 PM

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Governor Curtin telegraphs me:
"I have advices that Jackson is crossing the Potomac at Williamsport,
and probably the whole rebel army will be down from Maryland."

Receiving nothing from Harper's Ferry or Martinsburg to-day, and
positive information from Wheeling that the line is cut, corroborates
the idea that the enemy is crossing the Potomac.  Please do not let
him get off without being hurt.

A. LINCOLN.

[But he did!  D.W.]




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE FROM THE RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS  OF  CHICAGO,
ASKING  THAT THE PRESIDENT ISSUE A PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION.

September 13,1862.

The subject presented in the memorial is one upon which I have
thought much for weeks past, and I may even say for months.  I am
approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by
religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine
will.  I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken
in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both.  I hope it will
not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would
reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it
might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am
more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to
know the will of Providence in this matter.  And if I can learn what
it is I will do it!  These are not, however, the days of miracles,
and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct
revelation.  I must study the plain physical facts of the case,
ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and
right.

The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.  For instance,
the other day, four gentlemen of standing and intelligence from New
York called as a delegation on business connected with the war; but
before leaving two of them earnestly besought me to proclaim general
emancipation, upon which the other two at once attacked them.  You
know also that the last session of Congress had a decided majority of
antislavery men, yet they could not unite on this policy.  And the
same is true of the religious people.  Why, the rebel soldiers are
praying with a great deal more earnestness, I fear, than our own
troops, and expecting God to favor their side: for one of our
soldiers who had been taken prisoner told Senator Wilson a few days
since that he met nothing so discouraging as the evident sincerity of
those he was among in their prayers.  But we will talk over the
merits of the case.

What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially
as we are now situated?  I do not want to issue a document that the
whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's
bull against the comet!  Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot
even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States?  Is there a single
court, or magistrate or individual that would be influenced by it
there?  And what reason is there to think it would have any greater
effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I
approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of
rebel masters who come within our lines?  Yet I cannot learn that
that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.  And suppose
they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw
themselves upon us, what should we do with them?  How can we feed and
care for such a multitude?  General Butler wrote me a few days since
that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him
than to all the white troops under his command.  They eat, and that
is all; though it is true General Butler is feeding the whites also
by the thousand; for it nearly amounts to a famine there.  If, now,
the pressure of the war should call off our forces from New Orleans
to defend some other point, what is to prevent the masters from
reducing the blacks to slavery again?  for I am told that whenever
the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they immediately
auction them off.  They did so with those they took from a boat that
was aground in the Tennessee River a few days ago.  And then I am
very ungenerously attacked for it!  For instance, when, after the
late battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from
Washington under a flag of truce to bury the dead and bring in the
wounded, and the rebels seized the blacks who went along to help, and
sent them into slavery, Horace Greeley said in his paper that the
government would probably do nothing about it.  What could I do?

Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would
follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire?  Understand,
I raise no objections against it on legal or constitutional grounds;
for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war I
suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the
enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of
possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South.  I
view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on
according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the
suppression of the rebellion.

I admit that slavery is the root of the rebellion, or at least its
sine qua non.  The ambition of politicians may have instigated them
to act, but they would have been impotent without slavery as their
instrument.  I will also concede that emancipation would help us in
Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than
ambition.  I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the
North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent
imagine.  Still, some additional strength would be added in that way
to the war, and then, unquestionably, it would weaken the rebels by
drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am
not so sure we could do much with the blacks.  If we were to arm
them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of
the rebels; and, indeed, thus far we have not had arms enough to
equip our white troops.  I will mention another thing, though it meet
only your scorn and contempt.  There are fifty thousand bayonets in
the Union armies from the border slave States.  It would be a serious
matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they
should go over to the rebels.  I do not think they all would--not so
many, indeed, as a year ago, or as six months ago--not so many to-day
as yesterday.  Every day increases their Union feeling.  They are
also getting their pride enlisted, and want to beat the rebels.  Let
me say one thing more:  I think you should admit that we already have
an important principle to rally and unite the people, in the fact
that constitutional government is at stake.  This is a fundamental
idea going down about as deep as anything.

Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections.
They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action
in some such way as you desire.  I have not decided against a
proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under
advisement; and I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by
day and night, more than any other.  Whatever shall appear to be
God's will, I will do.  I trust that in the freedom with which I have
canvassed your views I have not in any respect injured your feelings.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. G. WRIGHT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., September 14, 1862.

GENERAL WRIGHT, Cincinnati, Ohio:

Thanks for your despatch.  Can you not pursue the retreating enemy,
and relieve Cumberland Gap?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON,

September 15, 1862.  2.45 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch of to-day received.  God bless you, and all with you.
Destroy the rebel army if possible.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. K. DUBOIS. WASHINGTON, D.C.,

September 15, 1862.   3 P.M.

HON. K. DUBOIS, Springfield, Illinois:

I now consider it safe to say that General McClellan has gained a
great victory over the great rebel army in Maryland, between
Fredericktown and Hagerstown.  He is now pursuing the flying foe.

A. LINCOLN.

[But not very fast--and he did not catch them!  D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN,

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 16, 1862.  Noon.

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg:

What do you hear from General McClellan's army?  We have nothing from
him to-day.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR MORTON.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 17, 1862.

GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON, Indianapolis, Indiana:

I have received your despatch in regard to recommendations of General
Wright.  I have received no such despatch from him, at least not that
I can remember.   I refer yours for General Halleck's consideration.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL KETCHUM.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 20, 1862.

GENERAL KETCHUM, Springfield, Illinois:

How many regiments are there in Illinois, ready for service but for
want of arms?  How many arms have you there ready for distribution?

A. LINCOLN.




PRELIMINARY EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION,
SEPTEMBER 22, 1862.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim
and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted
for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation
between the United States and each of the States and the people
thereof in which States that relation is or may be suspended or
disturbed.

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again
recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid
to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called,
the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United
States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or
thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of
slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to
colonize persons of African descent with their consent upon this
continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the
governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves
within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof,
will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do
no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any
efforts they may make for their actual freedom.


That the Executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion
against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people
thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the
Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have
participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing
testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the
people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.

That attention is hereby called to an act of Congress entitled "An
act to make an additional article of war," approved March 13, 1862,
and which act is in the words and figure following:

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the
following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for
the government of the Army of the United States and shall be obeyed
and observed as such.

"ART.    All officers or persons in the military or naval service of
the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces
under their respective commands for the purpose of returning
fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any person,
to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer
who shall be found guilty by a court-martial of violating this
article shall be dismissed from the service.

"SEC. 2.  And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect
from and after its passage."

Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled "An act to
suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and
confiscate the property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved
July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures
following:


"SEC. 9.  And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who
shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the Government of the
United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto,
escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the
army, and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them
and coming under the control of the Government of the United States,
and all slaves of such persons found on (or) being within any place
occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the
United States, shall be deemed captives of war and shall be forever
free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.

"SEC. 9.  And be it further enacted, That no slave escaping into any
State, Territory, or the District of Columbia from any other State
shall be delivered up or in any way impeded or hindered of his
liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless
the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the
person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be
due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United
States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort
thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of
the United States shall, under any pretense whatever, assume to
decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or
labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the
claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service."

And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the
military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and
enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act and
sections above recited.

And the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the
United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the
rebellion shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation
between the United States and their respective States and people, if
that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated
for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of
slaves.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this twenty-second day of September,
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and
of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION SUSPENDING THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS, SEPTEMBER 24,
1862.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A Proclamation

Whereas it has become necessary to call into service not only
volunteers, but also portions of the militia of the States by draft,
in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States,
and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary
processes of law from hindering this measure, and from giving aid and
comfort in various ways to the insurrection:

Now, therefore, be it ordered

First.  That during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary
measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their
aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons
discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or
guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels
against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to
martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or
military commissions.

Second.   That the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to
all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the
rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort camp, arsenal, military
prison or other place of confinement by any military authority or by
the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of WASHINGTON, this twenty-fourth day of September.
A.D. eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and of the independence of the
United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




REPLY TO SERENADE, SEPTEMBER 24, 1862.

I appear before you to do little more than acknowledge the courtesy
you pay me, and to thank you for it.  I have not been distinctly
informed why it is that on this occasion you appear to do me this
honor, though I suppose it is because of the proclamation.  What I
did, I did after a very full deliberation, and under a very heavy and
solemn sense of responsibility.  I can only trust in God I have made
no mistake.  I shall make no attempt on this occasion to sustain what
I have done or said by any comment.  It is now for the country and
the world to pass judgment and, maybe, take action upon it.

I will say no more upon this subject.  In my position I am environed
with difficulties.  Yet they are scarcely so great as the
difficulties of those who upon the battle-field are endeavoring to
purchase with their blood and their lives the future happiness and
prosperity of this country.  Let us never forget them.  On the
fourteenth and seventeenth days of this present month there have been
battles bravely, skillfully, and successfully fought.  We do not yet
know the particulars.  Let us be sure that, in giving praise to
certain individuals, we do no injustice to others.  I only ask you,
at the conclusion of these few remarks, to give three hearty cheers
for all good and brave officers and men who fought those successful
battles.




RECORD EXPLAINING THE DISMISSAL  OF MAJOR JOHN J. KEY FROM THE
MILITARY SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

September 26, 1862.

MAJOR JOHN J. KEY:

I am informed that, in answer to the question, "Why was not the rebel
army bagged immediately after the battle near Sharpsburg?" propounded
to you by Major Levi C. Turner, Judge Advocate, etc., you said:
"That is not the game.  The object is, that neither army shall get
much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field
till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save
slavery."

I shall be very happy if you will, within twenty-four hours from the
receipt of this, prove to me by Major Turner that you did not, either
literally or in substance, make the answer stated.

[Above delivered to Major Key at 10.25 a.m.  September 27th.]

At about 11 o'clock A.M., September 27, 1862, Major Key and Major
Turner appeared before me.  Major Turner says:
"As I remember it, the conversation was: 'Why did we not bag them
after the battle of Sharpsburg?'  Major Key's reply was: 'That was
not the game; that we should tire the rebels out and ourselves; that
that was the only way the Union could be preserved, we come together
fraternally, and slavery be saved.'"

On cross-examination, Major Turner says he has frequently heard Major
Key converse in regard to the present troubles, and never heard him
utter a sentiment unfavorable to the maintenance of the Union.  He
has never uttered anything which he, Major T., would call disloyalty.
The particular conversation detailed was a private one.

                     [Indorsement on the above.]

In my view, it is wholly inadmissible for any gentleman holding a
military commission from the United States to utter such sentiments
as Major Key is within proved to have done.  Therefore, let Major
John J. Key be forthwith dismissed from the military service of the
United States.

A. LINCOLN.




TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN.
(Strictly private.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 28, 1862.

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN.

MY DEAR SIR:  Your kind letter of the 25th is just received.  It is
known to some that, while I hope something from the proclamation, my
expectations are not as sanguine as are those of some friends.  The
time for its effect southward has not come; but northward the effect
should be instantaneous.  It is six days old, and, while commendation
in newspapers and by distinguished individuals is all that a vain man
could wish, the stocks have declined, and troops come forward more
slowly than ever.  This, looked soberly in the face, is not very
satisfactory.  We have fewer troops in the field at the end of the
six days than we had at the beginning--the attrition among the old
outnumbering the addition by the new.  The North responds to the
proclamation sufficiently in breath; but breath alone kills no
rebels.

I wish I could write more cheerfully; nor do I thank you the less for
the kindness of your letter.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL HALLECK.

McCLELLAN'S HEADQUARTERS, October 3, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

General Stuart, of the rebel army, has sent in a few of our prisoners
under a flag of truce, paroled with terms to prevent their fighting
the Indians, and evidently seeking to commit us to their right to
parole prisoners in that way.  My inclination is to send the
prisoners back with a definite notice that we will recognize no
paroles given to our prisoners by the rebels as extending beyond a
prohibition against fighting them, though I wish your opinion upon
it, based both upon the general law and our cartel.  I wish to avoid
violations of the law and bad faith.  Answer as quickly as possible,
as the thing, if done at all, should be done at once.

A. LINCOLN,  President




REMARKS TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC AT
FREDERICK, MARYLAND, OCTOBER, 4, 1862.

I am surrounded by soldiers and a little farther off by the citizens
of this good City of Frederick.  Nevertheless I can only say, as I
did five minutes ago, it is not proper for me to make speeches in my
present position.  I return thanks to our soldiers for the good
services they have rendered, the energy they have shown, the
hardships they have endured, and the blood they have shed for this
Union of ours; and I also return thanks, not only to the soldiers,
but to the good citizens of Frederick, and to the good men, women,
and children in this land of ours, for their devotion to this
glorious cause; and I say this with no malice in my heart towards
those who have done otherwise.  May our children and children's
children, for a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits
conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice
under these glorious institutions, bequeathed to us by WASHINGTON and
his compeers.  Now, my friends, soldiers and citizens, I can only say
once more-farewell.




TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK

TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.,
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 6, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I am instructed to telegraph you as follows: The President directs
that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy, or drive him
south.  Your army must move now, while the roads are good.  If you
cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the
latter by your operation, you can be reinforced by thirty thousand
men.  If you move up the valley of the Shenandoah, not more than
twelve or fifteen thousand can be sent you.  The President advises
the interior line between Washington and the enemy, but does not
order it.  He is very desirous that your army move as soon as
possible.  You will immediately report what line you adopt, and when
you intend to cross the river; also to what point the reinforcements
are to be sent.  It is necessary that the plan of your operations be
positively determined on, before orders are given for building
bridges and repairing railroads.  I am directed to add that the
Secretary of War and the General-in-chief fully concur with the
President in these directions.

H. W. HALLECK,  General-in-Chief.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 7, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN, Hdqs. Army of the Potomac:

You wish to see your family and I wish to oblige you.  It might be
left to your own discretion; certainly so, if Mrs. M. could meet you
here at Washington.

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. H. CLAY.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 8, 1862.

THOMAS H. CLAY, Cincinnati, Ohio:

You cannot have reflected seriously when you ask that I shall order
General Morgan's command to Kentucky as a favor because they have
marched from Cumberland Gap.  The precedent established by it would
evidently break up the whole army.  Buell's old troops, now in
pursuit of Bragg, have done more hard marching recently; and, in
fact, if you include marching and fighting, there are scarcely any
old troops east or west of the mountains that have not done as hard
service.  I sincerely wish war was an easier and pleasanter business
than it is; but it does not admit of holidays.  On Morgan's command,
where it is now sent, as I understand, depends the question whether
the enemy will get to the Ohio River in another place.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 8, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT:

I congratulate you and all concerned in your recent battles and
victories.  How does it all sum up?  I especially regret the death of
General Hackleman, and am very anxious to know the condition of
General Oglesby, who is an intimate personal friend.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 11,1862.   4 P.M.

GENERAL BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

Please send any news you have from General Buell to-day.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. T. BOYLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 12, 1862.   4.10 P.M.

GENERAL BOYLE, Louisville, Kentucky:

We are anxious to hear from General Buell's army.  We have heard
nothing since day before yesterday.  Have you anything?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., October 12, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, Saint Louis, Missouri:

Would the completion of the railroad some distance further in the
direction of Springfield, Mo., be of any military advantage to you?
Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 13, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR--You remember my speaking to you of what I called your
over-cautiousness.   Are you not over-cautious when you assume that
you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?  Should you not
claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?

As I understand, you telegraphed General Halleck that you cannot
subsist your army at Winchester unless the railroad from Harper's
Ferry to that point be put in working order.  But the enemy does now
subsist his army at Winchester, at a distance nearly twice as great
from railroad transportation as you would have to do, without the
railroad last named.  He now wagons from Culpepper Court-House, which
is just about twice as far as you would have to do from Harper's
Ferry.  He is certainly not more than half as well provided with
wagons as you are.  I certainly should be pleased for you to have the
advantage of the railroad from Harper's Perry to Winchester; but it
wastes an the remainder of autumn to give it to you, and, in fact,
ignores the question of time, which cannot and must not be ignored.

Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is "to operate
upon the enemy's communications as much as possible, without exposing
your own."  You seem to act as if this applies against you, but
cannot apply in your favor.  Change positions with the enemy, and
think you not he would break your communication with Richmond within
the next twenty-four hours?  You dread his going into Pennsylvania.
But if he does so in full force, he gives up his communications to
you absolutely, and you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin
him; if he does so with less than full force, fall upon and beat what
is left behind all the easier.

Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer to Richmond than the
enemy is, by the route that you can and he must take.  Why can you
not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than
your equal on a march?  His route is the arc of a circle, while yours
is the chord.  The roads are as good on yours as on his.

You know I desired, but did not order, you to cross the Potomac below
instead of above the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge.  My idea was, that
this would at once menace the enemy's communications, which I would
seize if he would permit.  If he should move northward, I would
follow him closely, holding his communications.  If he should prevent
our seizing his communications, and move toward Richmond, I would
press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should
present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside
track.  I say "try;" if we never try, we shall never succeed.  If he
makes a stand at Winchester, moving neither north or south, I would
fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him when he bears
the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of
going to him.  This proposition is a simple truth, and is too
important to be lost sight of for a moment.  In coming to us he
tenders us an advantage which we should not waive.  We should not so
operate as to merely drive him away.  As we must beat him somewhere
or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near to us than far
away.  If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he
again being within the entrenchments of Richmond.

[And, indeed, the enemy was let back into Richmond and it took
another two years and thousands of dead for McClelland cowardice--if
that was all that it was.   I still suspect, and I think the evidence
is overwhelming that he was, either secretly a supporter of the
South, or, what is more likely, a politician readying for a different
campaign:  that of the Presidency of the United States.]

Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the
facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy is
remarkable, as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel extending
from the hub toward the rim, and this whether you move directly by
the chord or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely.
The chord line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Hay Market, and
Fredericksburg; and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the
Potomac, by Aquia Creek, meet you at all points from WASHINGTON; the
same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the
Blue Ridge part of the way.

The gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the
following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestal's, 5 miles;
Gregory's, 13; Snicker's, 18; Ashby's, 28; Manassas, 38; Chester, 45;
and Thornton's, 53.  I should think it preferable to take the route
nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without
your knowledge, and compelling him to keep his forces together for
dread of you.  The gaps would enable you to attack if you should
wish.  For a great part of the way you would be practically between
the enemy and both WASHINGTON and Richmond, enabling us to spare you
the greatest number of troops from here.  When at length running for
Richmond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so,
turn and attack him in rear.  But I think he should be engaged long
before such a point is reached.  It is all easy if our troops march
as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it.
This letter is in no sense an order.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR PIERPOINT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
October 16, 1862.

GOVERNOR PIERPOINT, Wheeling, Virginia:

Your despatch of to-day received.  I am very sorry to have offended
you.  I appointed the collector, as I thought, on your written
recommendation, and the assessor also with your testimony of
worthiness, although I know you preferred a different man.  I will
examine to-morrow whether I am mistaken in this.

A. LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE ORDER ESTABLISHING A PROVISIONAL COURT IN LOUISIANA.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON CITY,

October 20, 1862.

The insurrection which has for some time prevailed in several of the
States of this Union, including Louisiana, having temporarily
subverted and swept away the civil institutions of that State,
including the judiciary and the judicial authorities of the Union, so
that it has become necessary to hold the State in military
Occupation, and it being indispensably necessary that there shall be
some judicial tribunal existing there capable of administering
justice, I have therefore thought it proper to appoint, and I do
hereby constitute, a provisional court, which shall be a court of
record, for the State of Louisiana; and I do hereby appoint Charles A
Peabody, of New York, to be a provisional judge to hold said court,
with authority to hear, try, and determine all causes, civil and
criminal, including causes in law, equity, revenue, and admiralty,
and particularly all such powers and jurisdiction as belong to the
district and circuit courts of the United States, conforming his
proceedings so far as possible to the course of proceedings and
practice which has been customary in the courts of the United States
and Louisiana, his judgment to be final and conclusive.  And I do
hereby authorize and empower the said judge to make and establish
such rules and regulations as may be necessary for the exercise of
his jurisdiction, and empower the said judge to appoint a prosecuting
attorney, marshal, and clerk of the said court, who shall perform the
functions of attorney, marshal, and clerk according to such
proceedings and practice as before mentioned and such rules and
regulations as may be made and established by said judge.  These
appointments are to continue during the pleasure of the President,
not extending beyond the military occupation of the city of New
Orleans or the restoration of the civil authority in that city and in
the State of Louisiana.  These officers shall be paid, out of the
contingent fund of the War Department, compensation as follows:

The judge at the rate of  $3500 per annum; the prosecuting attorney,
including the fees, at the rate of  $3000 per annum; the marshal,
including the fees, at the rate of $3000 per annum; and the clerk,
including the fees, at the rate of $2500 per annum; such
compensations to be certified by the Secretary of War.  A copy of
this order, certified by the Secretary of War and delivered to such
judge, shall be deemed and held to be a sufficient commission.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President of the United States.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 21, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL U. S. GRANT:

The bearer of this, Thomas R. Smith, a citizen of Tennessee, goes to
that State seeking to have such of the people thereof as desire to
avoid the unsatisfactory prospect before them, and to have peace
again upon the old terms, under the Constitution of the United
States, to manifest such desire by elections of members to the
Congress of the United States particularly, and perhaps a
Legislature, State officers, and a United States senator friendly to
their object.

I shall be glad for you and each of you to aid him, and all others
acting for this object, as much as possible.  In all  available ways
give the people a show to express their wishes at these elections.

Follow law, and forms of law, as far as convenient, but at all events
get the expression of the largest number of the people possible.  All
see how such action will connect with and affect the proclamation of
September 22.  Of course the men elected should be gentlemen of
character, willing to swear support to the Constitution as of old,
and known to be above reasonable suspicion of duplicity.

Yours very respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL JAMESON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,  October 21, 1862.

GENERAL JAMESON, Upper Stillwater, Me.:
How is your health now?  Do you or not wish Lieut.  R. P. Crawford to
be restored to his office?

A. LINCOLN.




GENERAL McCLELLAN'S TIRED HORSES

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, October 24 [25?], 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

I have just read your despatch about sore-tongued and fatigued
horses.  Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army
have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, October 26, 1862.   11.30am

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Yours, in reply to mine about horses, received.  Of course you know
the facts better than I; still two considerations remain: Stuart's
cavalry outmarched ours, having certainly done more marked service on
the Peninsula and everywhere since.  Secondly, will not a movement of
our army be a relief to the cavalry, compelling the enemy to
concentrate instead of foraging in squads everywhere?  But I am so
rejoiced to learn from your despatch to General Halleck that you
begin crossing the river this morning.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL DIX.
(Private and confidential.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
October 26, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe, Virginia:

Your despatch to Mr. Stanton, of which the enclosed is a copy, has
been handed me by him.  It would be dangerous for me now to begin
construing and making specific applications of the proclamation.

It is obvious to all that I therein intended to give time and
opportunity.  Also, it is seen I left myself at liberty to exempt
parts of States.  Without saying more, I shall be very glad if any
Congressional
district will, in good faith, do as your despatch contemplates.

Could you give me the facts which prompted you to telegraph?

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 27, 1862, 12.10

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Yours of yesterday received.  Most certainly I intend no injustice to
any, and if I have done any I deeply regret it.  To be told, after
more than five weeks' total inaction of the army, and during which
period we have sent to the army every fresh horse we possibly could,
amounting in the whole to 7918, that the cavalry horses were too much
fatigued to move, presents a very cheerless, almost hopeless,
prospect for the future, and it may have forced something of
impatience in my despatch.  If not recruited and rested then, when
could they ever be?  I suppose the river is rising, and I am glad to
believe you are crossing.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 27, 1862.  3.25pm

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatch of 3 P.M. to-day, in regard to filling up old regiments
with drafted men, is received, and the request therein shall be
complied with as far as practicable.

And now I ask a distinct answer to the question, Is it your purpose
not to go into action again until the men now being drafted in the
States are incorporated into the old regiments?

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 29, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLELLAN:

Your despatches of night before last, yesterday, and last night all
received.  I am much pleased with the movement of the army.  When you
get entirely across the river let me know.  What do you know of the
enemy?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 30, 1862.

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg:

By some means I have not seen your despatch of the 27th about order
No.154 until this moment.  I now learn, what I knew nothing of
before, that the history of the order is as follows:
When General McClellan telegraphed asking General Halleck to have the
order made, General Halleck went to the Secretary of War with it,
stating his approval of the plan.  The Secretary assented and General
Halleck wrote the order.  It was a military question, which the
Secretary supposed the General understood better than he.

I wish I could see Governor Curtin.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 31, 1862.

GOV. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn., via Louisville, Ky.:

Yours of the 29th received.  I shall take it to General Halleck, but
I already know it will be inconvenient to take General Morgan's
command from where it now is.  I am glad to hear you speak hopefully
of Tennessee.  I sincerely hope Rosecrans may find it possible to do
something for her.  David Nelson, son of the M. C. of your State,
regrets his father's final defection, and asks me for a situation.
Do you know him?   Could he be of service to you or to Tennessee in
any capacity in which I could send him?

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

November 1, 1862.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Captain Derrickson, with his company, has
been for some time keeping guard at my residence, now at the
Soldiers' Retreat.  He and his company are very agreeable to me, and
while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more
satisfactory than Captain Derrickson and his company.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER RELIEVING GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN AND
MAKING OTHER CHANGES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, November 5, 1862.

By direction of the President, it is ordered that Major-General
McClellan be relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac,
and that Major-General Burnside take the command of that army.  Also
that Major-General Hunter take command of the corps in said army
which is now commanded by General Burnside.  That Major-General Fitz.
John Porter be relieved from command of the corps he now commands in
said army, and that Major-General Hooker take command of said corps.

The general-in-chief is authorized, in [his] discretion, to issue an
order substantially as the above forthwith, or so soon as he may deem
proper.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO M. F. ODELL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, November 5, 1862.

HON. M. F. ODELL, Brooklyn, New York:

You are re-elected.  I wish to see you at once will you come?  Please
answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL LOWE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 7,1862.

COL. W. W. LOWE, Fort Henry, Tennessee:

Yours of yesterday received.  Governor Johnson, Mr. Ethridge, and
others are looking after the very thing you telegraphed about.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. POPE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 10, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St.  Paul, Minnesota:

Your despatch giving the names of 300 Indians condemned to death is
received.  Please forward as soon as possible the full and complete
record of their convictions; and if the record does not fully
indicate the more guilty and influential of the culprits, please have
a careful statement made on these points and forwarded to me.  Send
all by mail.

A. LINCOLN.




TO COMMODORE FARRAGUT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 11, 1862.

COMMODORE FARRAGUT:

DEAR SIR:--This will introduce Major-General Banks.  He is in command
of a considerable land force for operating in the South, and I shall
be glad for you to co-Operate with him and give him such assistance
as you can consistently with your orders from the Navy Department.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING BLOCKADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 12, 1862.

Ordered, First: that clearances issued by the Treasury Department for
vessels or merchandise bound for the port of Norfolk, for the
military necessities of the department, certified by the military
commandant at Fort Monroe, shall be allowed to enter said port.

Second: that vessels and domestic produce from Norfolk, permitted by
the military commandant at Fort Monroe for the military purposes of
his command, shall on his permit be allowed to pass from said port to
their destination in any port not blockaded by the United States.

A. LINCOLN




ORDER CONCERNING THE CONFISCATION ACT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, November 13, 1862.

Ordered, by the President of the United States, That the
Attorney-General be charged with the superintendence and direction of
all proceedings to be had under the act of Congress of the 17th of
July, 1862, entitled "An act to suppress insurrection, to punish
treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of
rebels, and for other purposes," in so far as may concern the
seizure, prosecution, and condemnation of the estate, property, and
effects of rebels and traitors, as mentioned and provided for in the
fifth, sixth, and seventh sections of the said act of Congress.  And
the Attorney-General is authorized and required to give to the
attorneys and marshals of the United States such instructions and
directions as he may find needful and convenient touching all such
seizures, prosecutions, and condemnations, and, moreover, to
authorize all such attorneys and marshals, whenever there may be
reasonable ground to fear any forcible resistance to them in the
discharge of their respective duties in this behalf, to call upon any
military officer in command of the forces of the United States to
give to them such aid, protection, and support as may be necessary to
enable them safely and efficiently to discharge their respective
duties; and all such commanding officers are required promptly to
obey such call, and to render the necessary service as far as may be
in their power consistently with their other duties.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
EDWARD BATES, Attorney-General




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, November 14, 1862.

GOV. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tennessee:

Your despatch of the 4th, about returning troops from western
Virginia to Tennessee, is just received, and I have been to General
Halleck with it.  He says an order has already been made by which
those troops have already moved, or soon will move, to Tennessee.

A. LINCOLN.




GENERAL ORDER RESPECTING THE OBSERVANCE OF
THE SABBATH DAY IN THE ARMY AND NAVY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 15, 1862.


The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and
enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men
in the military and naval service.  The importance for man and beast
of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian
soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a
Christian people, and a due regard for the divine will demand that
Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict
necessity.

The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer
nor the cause they defend be imperilled by the profanation of the day
or name of the Most High.  "At this time of public distress,"
adopting the words of Washington in 1776, "men may find enough to do
in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves
to vice and immorality."  The first general order issued by the Father
of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the
spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be
defended:

"The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will
endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the
dearest rights and liberties of his country."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BLAIR

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 17,1862.

HON. F. P. BLAIR:

Your brother says you are solicitous to be ordered to join General
McLernand.  I suppose you are ordered to Helena; this means that you
are to form part of McLernand's expedition as it moves down the
river; and General McLernand is so informed.  I will see General
Halleck as to whether the additional force you mention can go with
you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WASHINGTON, D. C., November 18, 1861.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

Please give me your best opinion as to the number of the enemy now at
Richmond and also at Petersburg.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR SHEPLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 21, 1862.

HON. G. F. SHEPLEY.

DEAR SIR:--Dr. Kennedy, bearer of this, has some apprehension that
Federal officers not citizens of Louisiana may be set up as
candidates for Congress in that State.  In my view there could be no
possible object in such an election.  We do not particularly need
members of Congress from there to enable us to get along with
legislation here.  What we do want is the conclusive evidence that
respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be members of
Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and that other
respectable citizens there are willing to vote for them and send
them.  To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives,
elected, as would be  understood (and perhaps really so), at the
point of the bayonet, would be disgusting and outrageous; and were I
a member of Congress here, I would vote against admitting any such
man to a seat.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN,




ORDER PROHIBITING THE EXPORT OF ARMS AND
MUNITIONS OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

November 21, 1862.

Ordered, That no arms, ammunition, or munitions of war be cleared or
allowed to be exported from the United States until further orders.
That any clearance for arms, ammunition, or munitions of war issued
heretofore by the Treasury Department be vacated, if the articles
have not passed without the United States, and the articles stopped.
That the Secretary of War hold possession of the arms, etc., recently
seized by his order at Rouse's Point, bound for Canada.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




DELAYING TACTICS OF GENERALS

TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 22, 1862.

MY DEAR GENERAL BANKS:--Early last week you left me in high hope with
your assurance that you would be off with your expedition at the end
of that week, or early in this.  It is now the end of this, and I
have just been overwhelmed and confounded with the sight of a
requisition made by you which, I am assured, cannot be filled and got
off within an hour short of two months.  I enclose you a copy of the
requisition, in some hope that it is not genuine--that you have never
seen it.  My dear General, this expanding and piling up of
impedimenta has been, so far, almost our ruin, and will be our final
ruin if it is not abandoned.  If you had the articles of this
requisition upon the wharf, with the necessary animals to make them
of any use, and forage for the animals, you could not get vessels
together in two weeks to carry the whole, to say nothing of your
twenty thousand men; and, having the vessels, you could not put the
cargoes aboard in two weeks more.  And, after all, where you are
going you have no use for them.  When you parted with me you had no
such ideas in your mind.  I know you had not, or you could not have
expected to be off so soon as you said.  You must get back to
something like the plan you had then, or your expedition is a failure
before you start.  You must be off before Congress meets.   You would
be better off anywhere, and especially where you are going, for not
having a thousand wagons doing nothing but hauling forage to feed the
animals that draw them, and taking at least two thousand men to care
for the wagons and animals, who otherwise might be two thousand good
soldiers.   Now, dear General, do not think this is an ill-natured
letter; it is the very reverse.   The simple publication of this
requisition would ruin you.

Very truly your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TO CARL SCHURZ.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 24, 1862.

GENERAL CARL SCHURZ.

MY DEAR SIR--I have just received and read your letter of the 20th.
The purport of it is that we lost the late elections and the
administration is failing because the war is unsuccessful, and that I
must not flatter myself that I am not justly to blame for it.  I
certainly know that if the war fails the administration fails, and
that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not.  And I
ought to be blamed if I could do better.  You think I could do
better; therefore you blame me already.  I think I could not do
better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.  I understand you now
to be willing to accept the help of men who are not Republicans,
provided they have "heart in it."  Agreed.  I want no others.  But who
is to be the judge of hearts, or of "heart in it"?  If I must discard
my own judgment and take yours, I must also take that of others and
by the time I should reject all I should be advised to reject, I
should have none left, Republicans or others not even yourself.  For
be assured, my dear sir, there are men who have "heart in it" that
think you are performing your part as poorly as you think I am
performing mine.  I certainly have been dissatisfied with the
slowness of Buell and McClellan; but before I relieved them I had
great fears I should not find successors to them who would do better;
and I am sorry to add that I have seen little since to relieve those
fears.

I do not see clearly the prospect of any more rapid movements.  I
fear we shall at last find out that the difficulty is in our case
rather than in particular generals.  I wish to disparage no one
certainly not those who sympathize with me; but I must say I need
success more than I need sympathy, and that I have not seen the so
much greater evidence of getting success from my sympathizers than
from those who are denounced as the contrary.  It does seem to me
that in the field the two classes have been very much alike in what
they have done and what they have failed to do.  In sealing their
faith with their blood, Baker and Lyon and Bohien and Richardson,
Republicans, did all that men could do; but did they any more than
Kearny and Stevens and Reno and Mansfield, none of whom were
Republicans, and some at least of whom have been bitterly and
repeatedly denounced to me as secession sympathizers?  I will not
perform the ungrateful task of comparing cases of failure.

In answer to your question, "Has it not been publicly stated in the
newspapers, and apparently proved as a fact, that from the
commencement of the war the enemy was continually supplied with
information by some of the confidential subordinates of as important
an officer as Adjutant-General Thomas?"  I must say "No," as far as my
knowledge extends.  And I add that if you can give any tangible
evidence upon the subject, I will thank you to come to this city and
do so.

Very truly your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 25, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Falmouth, Virginia:

If I should be in boat off Aquia Creek at dark tomorrow (Wednesday)
evening, could you, without inconvenience, meet me and pass an hour
or two with me?

A. LINCOLN.




TO ATTORNEY-GENERAL BATES.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 29, 1862.

HON. ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

MY DEAR SIR:--Few things perplex me more than this question between
Governor Gamble and the War Department, as to whether the peculiar
force organized by the former in Missouri are State troops or United
States troops.  Now, this is either an immaterial or a mischievous
question.  First, if no more is desired than to have it settled what
name the force is to be called by, it is immaterial.  Secondly, if it
is desired for more than the fixing a name, it can only be to get a
position from which to draw practical inferences; then it is
mischievous.  Instead of settling one dispute by deciding the
question, I should merely furnish a nest-full of eggs for hatching
new disputes.  I believe the force is not strictly either "State
troops" or "United States troops."  It is of mixed character.  I
therefore think it is safer, when a  practical question arises, to
decide that question directly, and not indirectly by deciding a
general abstraction supposed to include it, and also including a
great deal more.  Without dispute Governor Gamble appoints the
officers of this force, and fills vacancies when they occur.  The
question now practically in dispute is: Can Governor Gamble make a
vacancy by removing an officer or accepting a resignation?  Now,
while it is proper that this question shall be settled, I do not
perceive why either Governor Gamble or the government here should
care which way it is settled.  I am perplexed with it only because
there seems to be pertinacity about it.  It seems to me that it might
be either way without injury to the service; or that the offer of the
Secretary of War to let Governor Gamble make vacancies, and he (the
Secretary) to ratify the making of them, ought to be satisfactory.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.
[Cipher.]
WASHINGTON, November 30, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, Saint Louis, Missouri:

Frank Blair wants Manter's Thirty-second, Curly's Twenty seventh,
Boyd's Twenty-fourth and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry to go with him
down the river.  I understand it is with you to decide whether he
shall have them and if so, and if also it is consistent with the
public service, you will oblige me a good deal by letting him have
them.

A. LINCOLN.




ON EXECUTING 300 INDIANS

LETTER TO JUDGE-ADVOCATE-GENERAL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 1, 1862.

JUDGE-ADVOCATE-GENERAL.

SIR:--Three hundred Indians have been sentenced to death in Minnesota
by a military commission, and execution only awaits my action.  I
wish your legal opinion whether if I should conclude to execute only
a part of them, I must myself designate which, or could I leave the
designation to some officer on the ground?

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,
DECEMBER 1, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES--Since
your last annual assembling another year of health and bountiful
harvests has passed; and while it has not pleased the Almighty to
bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the
best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise
way all will yet be well.

The correspondence touching foreign affairs which has taken place
during the last year is herewith submitted, in virtual compliance
with a request to that effect, made by the House of Representatives
near the close of the last session of Congress.

If the condition of our relations with other nations is less
gratifying than it has usually been at former periods, it is
certainly more satisfactory than a nation so unhappily distracted as
we are might reasonably have apprehended.  In the month of June last
there were some grounds to expect that the maritime powers which, at
the beginning of our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and
unnecessarily, as we think, recognized the insurgents as a
belligerent, would soon recede from that position, which has proved
only less injurious to themselves than to our own country.  But the
temporary reverses which afterward befell the national arms, and
which were exaggerated by our own disloyal citizens abroad, have
hitherto delayed that act of simple justice.

The civil war, which has so radically changed, for the moment, the
occupations and habits of the American people, has necessarily
disturbed the social condition, and affected very deeply the
prosperity, of the nations with which we have carried on a commerce
that has been steadily increasing throughout a period of half a
century.  It has, at the same time, excited political ambitions and
apprehensions which have produced a profound agitation throughout the
civilized world.  In this unusual agitation we have forborne from
taking part in any controversy between foreign states, and between
parties or factions in such states.  We have attempted no
propagandism and acknowledged no revolution, but we have left to
every nation the exclusive conduct and management of its own affairs.
Our struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign nations
with reference less to its own merits than to its supposed and often
exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations
themselves, nevertheless, complaint on the part of this government,
even if it were just, would certainly be unwise.

The treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave trade
has been put into operation with a good prospect of complete success.
It is an occasion of special pleasure to acknowledge that the
execution of it on the part of her Majesty's government has been
marked with a jealous respect for the authority of the United States
and the rights of their moral and loyal citizens.

The convention with Hanover for the abolition of the state dues has
been carried into full effect under the act of Congress for that
purpose.

A blockade of 3000 miles of seacoast could not be established and
vigorously enforced in a season of great commercial activity like the
present without committing occasional mistakes and inflicting
unintentional injuries upon foreign nations and their subjects.

A civil war occurring in a country where foreigners reside and carry
on trade under treaty stipulations is necessarily fruitful of
complaints of the violation of neutral rights.  All such collisions
tend to excite misapprehensions, and possibly to produce mutual
reclamations between nations which have a common interest in
preserving peace and friendship.  In clear cases of these kinds I
have so far as possible heard and redressed complaints which have
been presented by friendly powers.  There is still, however, a large
and an augmenting number of doubtful cases upon which the government
is unable to agree with the governments whose protection is demanded
by the claimants.  There are, moreover, many cases in which the
United States or their citizens suffer wrongs from the naval or
military authorities of foreign nations which the governments of
those states are not at once prepared to redress.  I have proposed to
some of the foreign states thus interested mutual conventions to
examine and adjust such complaints.  This proposition has been made
especially to Great Britain, to France, to Spain, and to Prussia.  In
each case it has been kindly received, but has not yet been formally
adopted.

I deem it my duty to recommend an appropriation in behalf of the
owners of the Norwegian bark Admiral P. Tordenskiold, which vessel
was in May, 1861, prevented by the commander of the blockading force
off Charleston from leaving that port with cargo, notwithstanding a
similar privilege had shortly before been granted to an English
vessel.  I have directed the Secretary of State to cause the papers
in the case to be communicated to the proper committees.

Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African
descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization
as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress, Other parties, at
home and abroad--some from interested motives, others upon patriotic
considerations, and still others influenced by philanthropic
sentiments--have suggested similar measures, while, on the other
hand, several of the Spanish  American republics have protested
against the sending of such colonies to their respective territories.
Under these circumstances I have declined to move any such colony to
any state without first obtaining the consent of its government, with
an agreement on its part to receive and protect such emigrants in all
the rights of freemen; and I have at the same time offered to the
several states situated within the Tropics, or having colonies there,
to negotiate with them, subject to the advice and consent of the
Senate, to favor the voluntary emigration of persons of that class to
their respective territories, upon conditions which shall be equal,
just, and humane.  Liberia and Haiti are as yet the only countries to
which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty
of being received and adopted as citizens; and I regret to say such
persons contemplating colonization do not seem so willing to migrate
to those countries as to some others, nor so willing as I think their
interest demands.  I believe, however, opinion among them in this
respect is improving, and that ere long there will be an augmented
and considerable migration to both these countries from the United
States.

The new commercial treaty between the United States and the Sultan of
Turkey has been carried into execution.

A commercial and consular treaty has been negotiated, subject to the
Senate's consent, with Liberia, and a similar negotiation is now
pending with the Republic of Haiti.  A considerable improvement of
the national commerce is expected to result from these measures.

Our relations with Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Russia,
Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Rome, and
the other European states remain undisturbed.   Very favorable
relations also continue to be maintained with Turkey, Morocco, China,
and Japan.

During the last year there has not only been no change of our
previous relations with the independent states of our own continent,
but more friendly sentiments than have heretofore existed are
believed to be entertained by these neighbors, whose safety and
progress are so intimately connected with our own.  This statement
especially applies to Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru,
and Chile.

The commission under the convention with the Republic of New Granada
closed its session without having audited and passed upon all the
claims which were submitted to it.  A proposition is pending to
revive the convention, that it may be able to do more complete
justice.   The joint commission between the United States and the
Republic of Costa Rica has completed its labors and submitted its
report.

I have favored the project for connecting the United States with
Europe by an Atlantic telegraph, and a similar project to extend the
telegraph from San Francisco to connect by a Pacific telegraph with
the line which is being extended across the Russian Empire.

The Territories of the United States, with unimportant exceptions,
have remained undisturbed by the civil war; and they are exhibiting
such evidence of prosperity as justifies an expectation that some of
them will soon be in a condition to be organized as States and be
constitutionally admitted into the Federal Union.

The immense mineral resources of some of those Territories ought to
be developed as rapidly as possible.  Every step in that direction
would have a tendency to improve the revenues of the government and
diminish the burdens of the people.  It is worthy of your serious
consideration whether some extraordinary measures to promote that end
cannot be adopted.  The means which suggests itself as most likely to
be effective is a scientific exploration of the mineral regions in
those Territories with a view to the publication of its results at
home and in foreign countries--results which cannot fail to be
auspicious.

The condition of the finances win claim your most diligent
consideration.  The vast expenditures incident to the military and
naval operations required for the suppression of the rebellion have
hitherto been met with a promptitude and certainty unusual in similar
circumstances, and the public credit has been fully maintained.  The
continuance of the war, however, and the increased disbursements made
necessary by the augmented forces now in the field demand your best
reflections as to the best modes of providing the necessary revenue
without injury to business and with the least possible burdens upon
labor.

The suspension of specie payments by the banks soon after the
commencement of your last session made large issues of United States
notes unavoidable.  In no other way could the payment of troops and
the satisfaction of other just demands be so economically or so well
provided for.  The judicious legislation of Congress, securing the
receivability of these notes for loans and internal duties and making
them a legal tender for other debts, has made them an universal
currency, and has satisfied, partially at least, and for the time,
the long-felt want of an uniform circulating medium, saving thereby
to the people immense sums in discounts and exchanges.

A return to specie payments, however, at the earliest period
compatible with due regard to all interests concerned should ever be
kept in view.  Fluctuations in the value of currency are always
injurious, and to reduce these fluctuations to the lowest possible
point will always be a leading purpose in wise legislation.
Convertibility, prompt and certain convertibility, into coin is
generally acknowledged to be the best and surest safeguard against
them; and it is extremely doubtful whether a circulation of United
States notes payable in coin and sufficiently large for the wants of
the people can be permanently, usefully, and safely maintained.

Is there, then, any other mode in which the necessary provision for
the public wants can be made and the great advantages of a safe and
uniform currency secured?

I know of none which promises so certain results and is at the same
time so unobjectionable as the organization of banking associations,
under a general act of Congress, well guarded in its provisions.  To
such associations the government might furnish circulating notes, on
the security of United States bonds deposited in the treasury.
These notes, prepared under the supervision of proper officers, being
uniform in appearance and security and convertible always into coin,
would at once protect labor against the evils of a vicious currency
and facilitate commerce by cheap and safe exchanges.

A moderate reservation from the interest on the bonds would
compensate the United States for the preparation and distribution of
the notes and a general supervision of the system, and would lighten
the burden of that part of the public debt employed as securities.
The public credit, moreover, would be greatly improved and the
negotiation of new loans greatly facilitated by the steady market
demand for government bonds which the adoption of the proposed system
would create.

It is an additional recommendation of the measure, of considerable
weight, in my judgment, that it would reconcile as far as possible
all existing interests by the opportunity offered to existing
institutions to reorganize under the act, substituting only the
secured uniform national circulation for the local and various
circulation, secured and unsecured, now issued by them.

The receipts into the treasury from all sources, including loans and
balance from the preceding year, for the fiscal year ending on the
30th June, 1862, were $583,885,247.06, of which sum $49,056,397.62
were derived from customs; $1,795,331.73 from the direct tax; from
public lands, $152,203.77; from miscellaneous sources, $931,787.64;
from loans in all forms, $529,692,460.50.   The remainder,
$2,257,065.80, was the balance from last year.

The disbursements during the same period were:  For congressional,
executive, and judicial purposes, $5,939,009.29; for foreign
intercourse, $1,339,710.35; for miscellaneous expenses, including the
mints, loans, post-office deficiencies, collection of revenue, and
other like charges, $14,129,771.50; for expenses under the Interior
Department, $3,102,985.52; under the War Department, $394,368,407.36;
under the Navy Department, $42,674,569.69; for interest on public
debt, $13,190,324.45; and for payment of public debt, including
reimbursement of temporary loan and redemptions, $96,096,922.09;
making an aggregate of $570,841,700.25, and leaving a balance in the
treasury on the 1st day of July, 1862, of $13,043,546.81.

It should be observed that the sum of $96,096,922.09, expended for
reimbursements and redemption of public debt, being included also in
the loans made, may be properly deducted both from receipts and
expenditures, leaving the actual receipts for the year
$487,788,324.97, and the expenditures $474,744,778.16.

Other information on the subject of the finances will be found in the
report of the Secretary of the Treasury, to whose statements and
views I invite your most candid and considerate attention.

The reports of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy are herewith
transmitted.  These reports, though lengthy, are scarcely more than
brief abstracts of the very numerous and extensive transactions and
operations conducted through those departments.  Nor could I give a
summary of them here upon any principle which would admit of its
being much shorter than the reports themselves.  I therefore content
myself with laying the reports before you and asking your attention
to them.

It gives me pleasure to report a decided improvement in the financial
condition of the Post-Office Department as compared with several
preceding years.  The receipts for the fiscal year 1861 amounted to
$8,349,296.40, which embraced the revenue from all the States of the
Union for three quarters of that year.  Notwithstanding the cessation
of revenue from the so-called seceded States during the last fiscal
year, the increase of the correspondence of the loyal States has been
sufficient to produce a revenue during the same year of
$8,299,820.90, being only $50,000 less than was derived from all the
States of the Union during the previous year.  The expenditures show
a still more favorable result.  The amount expended in 1861 was
$13,606,759.11.  For the last year the amount has been reduced to
$11,125,364.13, showing a decrease of about $2,481,000 in the
expenditures as compared with the preceding year, and about
$3,750,000 as compared with the fiscal year 1860.  The deficiency in
the department for the previous year was $4,551,966.98.  For the last
fiscal year it was reduced to $2,112,814.57.  These favorable results
are in part owing to the cessation of mail service in the
insurrectionary States and in part to a careful review of all
expenditures in that department in the interest of economy.  The
efficiency of the postal service, it is believed, has also been much
improved.  The Postmaster-General has also opened a correspondence
through the Department of State with foreign governments proposing a
convention of postal representatives for the purpose of simplifying
the rates of foreign postage and to expedite the foreign mails.  This
proposition, equally important to our adopted citizens and to the
commercial interests of this country, has been favorably entertained
and agreed to by all the governments from whom replies have been
received.

I ask the attention of Congress to the suggestions of the
Postmaster-General in his report respecting the further legislation
required, in his opinion, for the benefit of the postal service.

The Secretary of the Interior reports as follows in regard to the
public lands:

"The public lands have ceased to be a source of revenue.  From the
1st July, 1861, to the 3oth September, 1862, the entire cash receipts
from the sale of lands were $137,476.2--a sum much less than the
expenses of our land system during the same period.   The homestead
law, which will take effect on the 1st of January next, offers such
inducements to settlers that sales for cash cannot be expected to an
extent sufficient to meet the expenses of the General Land Office and
the cost of surveying and bringing the land into market."

The discrepancy between the sum here stated as arising from the sales
of the public lands and the sum derived from the same source as
reported from the Treasury Department arises, as I understand, from
the fact that the periods of time, though apparently were not really
coincident at the beginning point, the Treasury report including a
considerable sum now which had previously been reported from the
Interior, sufficiently large to greatly overreach the sum derived
from the three months now reported upon by the Interior and not by
the Treasury.

The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have during the past year
manifested a spirit of insubordination, and at several points have
engaged in open hostilities against the white settlements in their
vicinity.  The tribes occupying the Indian country south of Kansas
renounced their allegiance to the United States and entered into
treaties with the insurgents.  Those who remained loyal to the United
States were driven from the country.  The chief of the Cherokees has
visited this city for the purpose of restoring the former relations
of the tribe with the United States.  He alleges that they were
constrained by superior force to enter into treaties with the
insurgents, and that the United States neglected to furnish the
protection which their treaty stipulations required.

In the month of August last the Sioux Indians in Minnesota attacked
the settlements in their vicinity with extreme ferocity, killing
indiscriminately men, women, and children.  This attack was wholly
unexpected, and therefore no means of defense had been provided.  It
is estimated that not less than 800 persons were killed by the
Indians, and a large amount of property was destroyed.  How this
outbreak was induced is not definitely known, and suspicions, which
may be unjust, need not to be stated.  Information was received by
the Indian Bureau from different sources about the time hostilities
were commenced that a simultaneous attack was to be made upon white
settlements by all the tribes between the Mississippi River and the
Rocky Mountains.  The State of Minnesota has suffered great injury
from this Indian war.  A large portion of her territory has been
depopulated, and a severe loss has been sustained by the destruction
of property.  The people of that State manifest much anxiety for the
removal of the tribes beyond the limits of the State as a guaranty
against future hostilities.  The Commissioner of Indian Affairs will
furnish full details.  I submit for your especial consideration
whether our Indian system shall not be remodeled.  Many wise and good
men have impressed me with the belief that this can be profitably
done.

I submit a statement of the proceedings of commissioners, which shows
the progress that has been made in the enterprise of constructing the
Pacific Railroad.  And this suggests the earliest completion of this
road, and also the favorable action of Congress upon the projects now
pending before them for enlarging the capacities of the great canals
in New York and Illinois, as being of vital and rapidly increasing
importance to the whole nation, and especially to the vast interior
region hereinafter to be noticed at some greater length.  I purpose
having prepared and laid before you at an early day some interesting
and valuable statistical information upon this subject.  The military
and commercial importance of enlarging the Illinois and Michigan
Canal and improving the Illinois River is presented in the report of
Colonel Webster to the Secretary of War, and now transmitted to
Congress.  I respectfully ask attention to it.

To carry out the provisions of the act of Congress of the 15th of May
last, I have caused the Department of Agriculture of the United
States to be organized.

The Commissioner informs me that within the period of a few months
this department has established an extensive system of correspondence
and exchanges, both at home and abroad, which promises to effect
highly beneficial results in the development of a correct knowledge
of recent improvements in agriculture, in the introduction of new
products, and in the collection of the agricultural statistics of the
different States.

Also, that it will soon be prepared to distribute largely seeds,
cereals, plants, and cuttings, and has already published and
liberally diffused much valuable information in anticipation.  of a
more elaborate report, which will in due time be furnished, embracing
some valuable tests in chemical science now in progress in the
laboratory.

The creation of this department was for the more immediate benefit of
a large class of our most valuable citizens, and I trust that the
liberal basis upon which it has been organized will not only meet
your approbation, but that it will realize at no distant day all the
fondest anticipations of its most sanguine friends and become the
fruitful source of advantage to all our people.

On the 22d day of September last a proclamation was issued by the
Executive, a copy of which is herewith submitted.

In accordance with the purpose expressed in the second paragraph of
that paper, I now respectfully recall your attention to what may be
called "compensated emancipation."

A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its
laws.  The territory is the only part which is of certain durability.
"One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the
earth abideth forever."  It is of the first importance to duly
consider and estimate this ever enduring part.  That portion of the
earth's surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the
United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family,
and it is not well adapted for two or more.  Its vast extent and its
variety of climate and productions are of advantage in this age for
one people, whatever they might have been in former ages.   Steam,
telegraphs, and intelligence have brought these to be an advantageous
combination for one united people.

In the inaugural address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy
of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the
two sections.  I did so in language which I cannot improve, and
which, therefore, I beg to repeat:

"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be
extended.  This is the only substantial dispute.  The fugitive-slave
clause of the Constitution and the laws for the suppression of the
foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law
can ever be in a community where the moral Sense of the people
imperfectly supports the law itself.  The great body of the people
abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over
in each.  This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be
worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before.
The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be
ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive
slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at
all by the other.

"Physically speaking, we can not separate.  We can not remove our
respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall
between them.  A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the
presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts
of our country cannot do this.  They cannot but remain face to face,
and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between
them.  Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more
advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before?  Can
aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?  Can treaties
be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among
friends?  Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when,
after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease
fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse,
are again upon you."

There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national
boundary upon which to divide.  Trace through, from east to west,
upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a
little more than one third of its length are rivers, easy to be
crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both
sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors'
lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any
consciousness of their presence.  No part of this line can be made
any more difficult to pass by writing it down on paper or parchment
as a national boundary.  The fact of separation, if it comes, gives
up on the part of the seceding section the fugitive-slave clause
along with all other constitutional obligations upon the section
seceded from, while I should expect no treaty stipulation would ever
be made to take its place.

But there is another difficulty.  The great interior region bounded
east by the Alleghenies, north by the British dominions, west by the
Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of
corn and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of
Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of
Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above 10,000,000
people, and will have 50,000,000 within fifty years if not prevented
by any political folly or mistake.  It contains more than one third
of the country owned by the United States--certainly more than
1,000,000 square miles.   Once half as populous as Massachusetts
already is, it would have more than 75,000,000 people.  A glance at
the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of
the Republic.  The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the
magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the
Pacific being the deepest and also the richest in undeveloped
resources.  In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all
which proceed from them this great interior region is naturally one
of the most important in the world.  Ascertain from statistics the
small proportion of the region which has yet been brought into
cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of
products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the
prospect presented.  And yet this region has no seacoast--touches no
ocean anywhere.  As part of one nation, its people now find, and may
forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and
Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco; but separate our
common country into two nations, as designed by the present
rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut
off from some one or more of these outlets, not perhaps by a physical
barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

And this is true, wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed.
Place it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of
Kentucky or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none
south of it can trade to any port or place north of it, and none
north of it can trade to any port or place south of it, except upon
terms dictated by a government foreign to them.  These outlets, east,
west, and south, are indispensable to the well-being of the people
inhabiting and to inhabit this vast interior region.  Which of the
three may be the best is no proper question.  All are better than
either, and all of right belong to that people and to their
successors forever.  True to themselves, they will not ask where a
line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be
no such line.

Nor are the marginal regions less interested in these communications
to and through them to the great outside world.  They, too, and each
of them, must have access to this Egypt of the West without paying
toll at the crossing of any national boundary.

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the
land we inhabit; not from our national homestead.  There is no
possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils
among us.  In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and
abhors separation.  In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however
much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.

Our strife pertains to ourselves--to the passing generations of men--
and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of
one generation.

In this view I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and
articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America, in Congress assembled, (two thirds of both Houses
concurring), That the following articles be proposed to the
Legislatures (or conventions) of the several States as amendments to
the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles,
when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures (or
conventions), to be valid as part or parts of the said Constitution,
viz.

ART.--Every State wherein slavery now exists which shall abolish the
same therein at any time or times before the 1st day of January, A.D.
1900, shall receive compensation from the United States as follows,
to wit:

The President of the United States shall deliver to every such State
bonds of the United States bearing interest at the rate of ___ per
cent. per annum to an amount equal to the aggregate sum of ______
for each slave shown to have been therein by the Eighth Census of the
United States, said bonds to be delivered to such State by
instalments or in one parcel at the completion of the abolishment,
accordingly as the same shall have been gradual or at one time within
such State; and interest shall begin to run upon any such bond only
from the proper time of its delivery as aforesaid.  Any State having
received bonds as aforesaid and afterwards reintroducing or
tolerating slavery therein shall refund to the United States the
bonds so received, or the value thereof, and all interest paid
thereon.

ART.--All slaves who shall have enjoyed actual freedom by the chances
of the war at any time before the end of the rebellion shall be
forever free; but all owners of such who shall not have been disloyal
shall be compensated for them at the same rates as is provided for
States adopting abolishment of slavery, but in such way that no slave
shall be twice accounted for.

ART.--Congress may appropriate money and otherwise provide for
colonizing free colored persons with their own consent at any place
or places without the United States.

I beg indulgence to discuss these proposed articles at some length.
Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without
slavery it could not continue.

Among the friends of the Union there is great diversity of sentiment
and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race amongst us.
Some would perpetuate slavery; some would abolish it suddenly and
without compensation; some would abolish it gradually and with
compensation; some would remove the freed people from us, and some
would retain them with us; and there are yet other minor diversities.
Because of these diversities we waste much strength in struggles
among ourselves.  By mutual concession we should harmonize and act
together.  This would be compromise, but it would be compromise among
the friends and not with the enemies of the Union.  These articles
are intended to embody a plan of such mutual concessions.  If the
plan shall be adopted, it is assumed that emancipation will follow,
at least in several of the States.

As to the first article, the main points are, first, the
emancipation; secondly, the length of time for consummating it
(thirty-seven years); and, thirdly, the compensation.

The emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of perpetual
slavery, but the length of time should greatly mitigate their
dissatisfaction.  The time spares both races from the evils of sudden
derangement--in fact, from the necessity of any derangement--while
most of those whose habitual course of thought will be disturbed by
the measure will have passed away before its consummation.  They will
never see it.  Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation,
but will deprecate the length of time.  They will feel that it gives
too little to the now living slaves.  But it really gives them much.
It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend
immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very
great, and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity
shall be free forever.  The plan leaves to each State choosing to act
under it to abolish slavery now or at the end of the century, or at
any intermediate tune, or by degrees extending over the whole or any
part of the period, and it obliges no two States to proceed alike.
It also provides for compensation, and generally the mode of making
it.  This, it would seem, must further mitigate the dissatisfaction
of those who favor perpetual slavery, and especially of those who are
to receive the compensation.  Doubtless some of those who are to pay
and not to receive will object.  Yet the measure is both just and
economical.  In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is the
destruction of property--property acquired by descent or by purchase,
the same as any other property.  It is no less true for having been
often said that the people of the South are not more responsible for
the original introduction of this property than are the people of the
North; and when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton
and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not be
quite safe to say that the South has been more responsible than the
North for its continuance.  If, then, for a common object this
property is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a
common charge?

And if with less money, or money more easily paid, we can preserve
the benefits of the Union by this means than we can by the war alone,
is it not also economical to do it?  Let us consider it, then.  Let
us ascertain the sum we have expended in the war Since compensated
emancipation was proposed last March, and consider whether if that
measure had been promptly accepted by even some of the slave States
the same sum would not have done more to close the war than has been
otherwise done.  If so, the measure would save money, and in that
view would be a prudent and economical measure.  Certainly it is not
so easy to pay something as it is to pay nothing, but it is easier to
pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one.  And it is easier to
pay any sum when we are able than it is to pay it before we are able.
The war requires large sums, and requires them at once.  The
aggregate sum necessary for compensated emancipation of course would
be large.  But it would require no ready cash, nor the bonds even any
faster than the emancipation progresses.  This might not, and
probably would not, close before the end of the thirty-seven years.
At that time we shall probably have a hundred millions of people to
share the burden, instead of thirty-one millions as now.  And not
only so, but the increase of our population may be expected to
continue for a long time after that period as rapidly as before,
because our territory will not have become full.  I do not state this
inconsiderately.  At the same ratio of increase which we have
maintained, on an average, from our first national census, in 1790,
until that of 1860, we should in 1900 have a population of
103,208,415.  And why may we not continue that ratio far beyond that
period?  Our abundant room, our broad national homestead, is our
ample resource.  Were our territory as limited as are the British
Isles, very certainly our population could not expand as stated.
Instead of receiving the foreign born as now, we should be compelled
to send part of the native born away.  But such is not our condition.
We have 2,963,000 square miles.  Europe has 3,800,000, with a
population averaging 73 persons to the square mile.  Why may not our
country at some time average as many?  Is it less fertile?  Has it
more waste surface by mountains, rivers, lakes, deserts, or other
causes?  Is it inferior to Europe in any natural advantage?  If,
then, we are at some time to be as populous as Europe, how soon?  As
to when this may be, we can judge by the past and the present; as to
when it will be, if ever, depends much on whether we maintain the
Union...............

[a page of tables of projected statistics]

These figures show that our country may be as populous as Europe now
is at some point between 1920 and 1930, say about 1925--our
territory, at 73 persons to the square mile, being of capacity to
contain 217,186,000.

And we will reach this, too, if we do not ourselves relinquish the
chance by the folly and evils of disunion or by long and exhausting
war springing from the only great element of national discord among
us.  While it cannot be foreseen exactly how much one huge example of
secession, breeding lesser ones indefinitely, would retard
population, civilization, and prosperity, no one can doubt that the
extent of it would be very great and injurious.

The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace,
insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of
the country.  With these we should pay all the emancipation would
cost, together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our
other debt without it.  If we had allowed our old national debt to
run at six per cent. per annum, simple interest, from the end of our
revolutionary struggle until to-day, without paying anything on
either principal or interest, each man of us would owe less upon that
debt now than each man owed upon it then; and this because our
increase of men through the whole period has been greater than six
per cent.--has run faster than the interest upon the debt.  Thus time
alone relieves a debtor nation, so long as its population increases
faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its debt.

This fact would be no excuse for delaying payment of what is justly
due, but it shows the great importance of time in this connection--
the great advantage of a policy by which we shall not have to pay
until we number 100,000,000 what by a different policy we would have
to pay now, when we number but 31,000,000.  In a word, it shows that
a dollar will be much harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar
for emancipation on the proposed plan.   And then the latter will
cost no blood, no precious life.  It will be a saving of both.

As to the second article, I think it would be impracticable to return
to bondage the class of persons therein contemplated.  Some of them,
doubtless, in the property sense belong to loyal owners, and hence
Provision is made in this article for compensating such.

The third article relates to the future of the freed people.  It does
not oblige, but merely authorizes Congress to aid in colonizing such
as may consent.  This ought nut to be regarded as objectionable on
the one hand or on the other, insomuch as it comes to nothing unless
by the mutual consent of the people to be deported and the American
voters through their representatives in Congress.

I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly
favor colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged
against free colored persons remaining in the country which is
largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious.

It is insisted that their presence would injure and displace white
labor and white laborers.  If there ever could be a proper time for
mere catch arguments that time surely is not now.  In times like the
present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly
be responsible through time and in eternity.  Is it true, then, that
colored people can displace any more white labor by being free than
by remaining slaves?  If they stay in their old places, they jostle
no white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them
open to white laborers.  Logically, there is neither more nor less of
it.  Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance
the wages of white labor, and very surely would not reduce them.
Thus the customary amount of labor would still have to be performed.
The freed people would surely not do more than their old proportion
of it, and very probably for a time would do less, leaving an
increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor into greater
demand, and consequently enhancing the wages of it.  With
deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor
is mathematically certain.  Labor is like any other commodity in the
market-increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it.
Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out
of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for
and wages of white labor.

But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover
the whole land.  Are they not already in the land?  Will liberation
make them any more numerous?  Equally distributed among the whites of
the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven
whites.  Could the one in any way greatly disturb the seven?  There
are many communities now having more than one free colored person to
seven whites, and this without any apparent consciousness of evil
from it.  The District of Columbia and the States of Maryland and
Delaware are all in this condition.  The District has more than one
free colored to six whites, and yet in its frequent petitions to
Congress I believe it has never presented the presence of free
colored persons as one of its grievances.  But why should
emancipation South send the free people North?  People of any color
seldom run unless there be something to run from.  Heretofore colored
people to some extent have fled North from bondage, and now, perhaps,
from both bondage and destitution.  But if gradual emancipation and
deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from.  Their
old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be
procured, and the freedmen in turn will gladly give their labor for
the wages till new homes can be found for them in congenial climes
and with people of their own blood and race.  This proposition can be
trusted on the mutual interests involved.  And in any event, cannot
the North decide for itself whether to receive them?

Again, as practice proves more than theory in any case, has there
been any irruption of colored people northward because of the
abolishment of slavery in this District last spring?

What I have said of the proportion of free colored persons to the
whites in the District is from the census of 1860, having no
reference to persons called contrabands nor to those made free by the
act of Congress abolishing slavery here.

The plan consisting of these articles is recommended, not but that a
restoration of the national authority would be accepted without its
adoption.

Nor will the war nor proceedings under the proclamation of September
22, 1862, be stayed because of the recommendation of this plan.  Its
timely adoption, I doubt not, would bring restoration, and thereby
stay both.

And notwithstanding this plan, the recommendation that Congress
provide by law for compensating any State which may adopt
emancipation before this plan shall have been acted upon is hereby
earnestly renewed.  Such would be only an advance part of the plan,
and the same arguments apply to both.

This plan is recommended as a means, not in exclusion of, but
additional to, all others for restoring and preserving the national
authority throughout the Union.  The subject is presented exclusively
in its economical aspect.  The plan would, I am confident, secure
peace more speedily and maintain it more permanently than can be done
by force alone, while all it would cost, considering amounts and
manner of payment and times of payment, would be easier paid than
will be the additional cost of the war if we rely solely upon force.
It is much, very much, that it would cost no blood at all.

The plan is proposed as permanent constitutional law.  It cannot
become such without the concurrence of, first, two thirds of
Congress, and afterwards three fourths of the States.  The requisite
three fourths of the States will necessarily include seven of the
slave States.  Their concurrence, if obtained, will give assurance of
their severally adopting emancipation at no very distant day upon the
new constitutional terms.  This assurance would end the struggle now
and save the Union forever.

I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper
addressed to the Congress of the nation by the chief magistrate of
the nation, nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that
many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public
affairs.  Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility
resting upon me you will perceive no want of respect to yourselves in
any undue earnestness I may seem to display.

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would
shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of
blood?  Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority
and national prosperity and perpetuate both indefinitely?  Is it
doubted that we here--Congress and executive--can secure its
adoption?  Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest
appeal from us?  Can we, can they, by any other means so certainly or
so speedily assure these vital objects?  We can succeed only by
concert.  It is not "Can any of us imagine better?" but "Can we all
do better?"  Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs,
"Can we do better?"  The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to
the stormy present.  The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and
we must rise with the occasion.  As our case is new, so we must think
anew and act anew.  We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall
save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history.  We of this Congress and
this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.  No
personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of
us.  The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in
honor or dishonor to the latest generation.  We say we are for the
Union.  The world will not forget that we say this.  We know how to
save the Union.  The world knows we do know how to save it.  We, even
we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.  In giving
freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike
in what we give and what we preserve.  We shall nobly save or meanly
lose the last, best hope of earth.  Other means may succeed; this
could not fail.  The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way
which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever
bless.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, December 3, 1862.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

On the 3d of November, 1861, a collision took place off the coast of
Cuba between the United States war steamer San Jacinto and the French
brig Jules et Marie, resulting in serious damage to the latter.  The
obligation of this Government to make amends therefor could not be
questioned if the injury resulted from any fault On the part of the
San Jacinto.  With a view to ascertain this, the subject was referred
to a commission of the United States and French naval officers at New
York, with a naval officer of Italy as an arbiter.  The conclusion
arrived at was that the collision was occasioned by the failure of
the San Jacinto seasonably to reverse her engine.   It then became
necessary to ascertain the amount of indemnification due to the
injured party.  The United States consul-general at Havana was
consequently instructed to confer with the consul of France on this
point, and they have determined that the sum of $9,500 is an
equitable allowance under the circumstances.

I recommend an appropriation of this sum for the benefit of the
owners of the Jules et Marie.

A copy of the letter of Mr. Shufeldt, the consul-general of the
United States at Havana, to the Secretary of State on the subject is
herewith transmitted.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO H. J. RAYMOND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 7, 1862.

Hon. H. J. RAYMOND, Times Office, New York:

Yours of November 25 reached me only yesterday. Thank you for it. I
shall consider and remember your suggestions.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO B. G. BROWN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON December 7, 1862.

HON. B. GRATZ BROWN, Saint Louis, Missouri:

Yours of the 3d received yesterday. Have already done what I can in
the premises.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 8, 1862.
GOVERNOR ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn.:

Jesse H. Strickland is here asking authority to raise a regiment of
Tennesseeans.  Would you advise that the authority be given him?

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., December 8, 1862.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially
recommend, that Commander John L. Worden, United States Navy, receive
a vote of thanks of Congress for the eminent skill and gallantry
exhibited by him in the late remarkable battle between the United
States ironclad steamer Monitor, under his command, and the rebel
ironclad steamer Merrimac, in March last.

The thanks of Congress for his services on the occasion referred to
were tendered by a resolution approved July 11, 1862, but the
recommendation is now specially made in order to comply with the
requirements of the ninth section of the act of July 16, 1862, which
is in the following words, viz.:

"That any line officer of the navy or marine corps may be advanced
one grade if upon recommendation of the President by name he receives
the thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict
with the enemy or for extraordinary heroism in the line of his
profession."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

December 10, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Please suspend, until further order, all proceeding on the order made
by General Schofield, on the twenty-eighth day of August last, for
assessing and collecting from secessionists and Southern sympathizers
the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, etc., and in the meantime
make out and send me a statement of facts pertinent to the question,
together with your opinion upon it.

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. K. DUBOIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

December 10, 1862.

Hon. J. K. DuBois.

MY DEAR SIR:--In the summer of 1859, when Mr. Freeman visited
Springfield, Illinois, in relation to the McCallister and Stebbins
bonds I promised him that, upon certain conditions, I would ask
members of the Legislature to give him a full and fair hearing of his
case. I do not now remember, nor have I time to recall, exactly what
the conditions were, nor whether they were completely performed; but
there can be in no case any harm [in] his having a full and fair
hearing, and I sincerely wish it may be given him.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

December 11, 1862.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In compliance with your resolution of December 5, 1862, requesting
the President "to furnish the Senate with all information in his
possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of
Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of
the principal actors and head men were tried and condemned to death,"
I have the honor to state that on receipt of said resolution, I
transmitted the same to the Secretary of the Interior, accompanied by
a note, a copy of which is herewith inclosed, marked A, and in
response to which I received, through that department, a letter of
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, a copy of which is herewith
inclosed, marked B.

I further state that on the eighth day of November last I received a
long telegraphic despatch from Major-General Pope, at St.  Paul,
Minnesota, simply announcing the names of the persons sentenced to be
hanged.  I immediately telegraphed to have transcripts of the records
in all cases forwarded to me, which transcripts, however, did not
reach me until two or three days before the present meeting of
Congress.  Meantime I received, through telegraphic despatches and
otherwise, appeals in behalf of the condemned, appeals for their
execution, and expressions of opinion as to the proper policy in
regard to them and to the Indians generally in that vicinity, none of
which, as I understand, falls within the scope of your inquiry.
After the arrival of the transcripts of records, but before I had
sufficient opportunity to examine them, I received a joint letter
from one of the senators and two of the representatives from
Minnesota, which contains some statements of fact not found in the
records of the trials, and for which reason I herewith transmit a
copy, marked C. I also, for the same reason, inclose a printed
memorial of the citizens of St.  Paul, addressed to me, and forwarded
with the letter aforesaid.

Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another
outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real
cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records
of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such
as had been proved guilty of violating females.  Contrary to my
expectation, only two of this class were found.  I then directed a
further examination and a classification of all who were proven to
have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation
in battles.  This class numbered forty, and included the two
convicted of female violation.  One of the number is strongly
recommended, by the commission which tried them, for commutation to
ten years imprisonment  I have ordered the other thirty-nine to be
executed on Friday the 19th instant.  The order was despatched from
here on Monday, the 8th instant, by a messenger to General Sibley,
and a copy of which order is herewith transmitted, marked D.

An abstract of the evidence as to the forty is herewith inclosed,
marked E.

To avoid the immense amount of copying, I lay before the Senate the
original transcripts of the records of trials, as received by me.

This is as full and complete a response to the resolution as it is in
my power to make.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

December 12, 1862.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I have in my possession three valuable swords, formerly the property
of General David E. Twiggs, which I now place at the disposal of
Congress.  They are forwarded to me from New Orleans by Major-General
Benjamin F. Butler.  If they or any of them shall be by Congress
disposed of in reward or compliment of military service, I think
General Butler is entitled to the first consideration.  A copy of the
General's letter to me accompanying the swords is herewith
transmitted.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO FERNANDO WOOD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
DECEMBER 12, 1862.

HON. FERNANDO WOOD.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter of the 8th, with the accompanying note of
same date, was received yesterday.  The most important paragraph in
the letter, as I consider, is in these words:
"On the 25th of November last I was advised by an authority which I
deemed likely to be well informed, as well as reliable and truthful,
that the Southern States would send representatives to the next
Congress, provided that a full and general amnesty should permit them
to do so.  No guarantee or terms were asked for other than the
amnesty referred to."

I strongly suspect your information will prove to be groundless;
nevertheless, I thank you for communicating it to me.  Understanding
the phrase in the paragraph just quoted--"the Southern States would
send representatives to the next Congress"--to be substantially the
same as that "the people of the Southern States would cease
resistance, and would reinaugurate, submit to, and maintain the
national authority within the limits of such States, under the
Constitution of the United States," I say that in such case the war
would cease on the part of the United States; and that if within a
reasonable time "a full and general amnesty" were necessary to such
end, it would not be withheld.

I do not think it would be proper now to communicate this, formally
or informally, to the people of the Southern States.  My belief is
that they already know it; and when they choose, if ever, they can
communicate with me unequivocally.  Nor do I think it proper now to
suspend military operations to try any experiment of negotiation

I should nevertheless receive with great pleasure the exact
information you now have, and also such other as you may in any way
obtain.  Such information might be more valuable before the 1st of
January than afterwards.

While there is nothing in this letter which I shall dread to see in
history, it is, perhaps, better for the present that its existence
should not become public.  I therefore have to request that you will
regard it as confidential.

Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 14, 1862

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

If my friend Dr. William Fithian, of Danville, Ill., should call on
YOU, please give him such facilities as you consistently can about
recovering the remains of a step-son, and matters connected
therewith.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. H. SIBLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 16, 1862.

BRIG. GEN. H. H. SIBLEY, Saint Paul, Minn.:

As you suggest, let the executions fixed for Friday the 19th instant
be postponed to, and be done on, Friday the 26th instant.

A. LINCOLN.
(Private.)
Operator please send this very carefully and accurately.  A. L.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 16, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, Saint Louis, Missouri:

N. W. Watkins, of Jackson, Mo., (who is half brother to Henry Clay),
writes me that a colonel of ours has driven him from his home at
Jackson.  Will you please look into the case and restore the old man
to his home if the public interest will admit?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
December 16, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Falmouth:

Your despatch about General Stahel is received. Please ascertain from
General Sigel and his old corps whether Stahel or Schurz is
preferable and telegraph the result, and I will act immediately.
After all I shall be governed by your preference.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 17, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS:

Could the civil authority be reintroduced into Missouri in lieu of
the military to any extent, with advantage and safety?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 17, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE

George Patten says he was a classmate of yours and was in the same
regiment of artillery.  Have you a place you would like to put him
in?  And if so what is it?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR GAMBLE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 18, 1862.

GOVERNOR GAMBLE, Saint Louis, MO.:

It is represented to me that the enrolled militia alone would now
maintain law and order in all the counties of your State north of the
Missouri River.  If so all other forces there might be removed south
of the river, or out of the State. Please post yourself and give me
your opinion upon the subject.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

December 19, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Hon. W. A. Hall, member of Congress here, tells me, and Governor
Gamble telegraphs me; that quiet can be maintained in all the
counties north of the Missouri River by the enrolled militia.  Confer
with Governor Gamble and telegraph me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WASHINGTON, December 19, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE:

Come, of course, if in your own judgment it is safe to do so.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARIES SEWARD AND CHASE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

December 20, 1862.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD AND HON. SALMON P. CHASE.

GENTLEMEN:--You have respectively tendered me your resignations as
Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury of the United
States.   I am apprised of the circumstances which may render this
course personally desirable to each of you; but after most anxious
consideration my deliberate judgment is that the public interest does
not admit of it.  I therefore have to request that you will resume
the duties of your departments respectively.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR ANDREW.

WASHINGTON, D. C., December 20, 1862.

GOVERNOR ANDREW, Boston, Mass.:

Neither the Secretary of War nor I know anything except what you tell
us about the "published official document" you mention.

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. J. HENDERSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 20, 1862.

HON. T. J. HENDERSON.

DEAR SIR:-Your letter of the 8th to Hon. William Kellogg has just
been shown me.  You can scarcely overestimate the pleasure it would
give me to oblige you, but nothing is operating so ruinously upon us
everywhere as "absenteeism."  It positively will not do for me to
grant leaves of absence in cases not sufficient to procure them under
the regular rules.

It would astonish you to know the extent of the evil of
"absenteeism."  We scarcely have more than half the men we are paying
on the spot for service anywhere.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




CONGRATULATIONS TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

December 22, 1862.

TO THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC:

I have just read your general's report of the battle of
Fredericksburg.   Although you were not successful, the attempt was
not an error, nor the failure other than accident.  The courage with
which you, in an open field, maintained the contest against an
intrenched foe, and the consummate skill and success with which you
crossed and recrossed the river in the face of the enemy, show that
you possess all the qualities of a great army, which will yet give
victory to the cause of the country and of popular government

Condoling with the mourners for the dead, and sympathizing with the
severely wounded, I congratulate you that the number of both is
comparatively so small.

I tender to you, officers and soldiers, the thanks of the nation.

A. LINCOLN.




LETTER OF CONDOLENCE

TO MISS FANNY McCULLOUGH.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December, 23, 1862.

DEAR FANNY:--It is with deep regret that I learn of the death of your
kind and brave father, and especially that it is affecting your young
heart beyond what is common in such cases.  In this sad world of ours
sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony
because it takes them unawares.

The older have learned ever to expect it.  I am anxious to afford
some alleviation of your present distress, perfect relief is not
possible, except with time.  You cannot now realize that you will
ever feel better.  Is not this so?  And yet it is a mistake.  You are
sure to be happy again.  To know this, which is certainly true, will
make you some less miserable now.  I have had experience enough to
know what I say, and you need only to believe it to feel better at
once.  The memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet
be a sad, sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort
than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 26, 1862

HONORABLE SECRETARY OF WAR.

Sir:--Two Ohio regiments and one Illinois regiment which were
captured at Hartsville have been paroled and are now at Columbus,
Ohio.  This brings the Ohio regiments substantially to their homes.
I am strongly impressed with the belief that the Illinois regiment
better be sent to Illinois, where it will be recruited and put in
good condition by the time they are exchanged so as to re-enter the
service.  They did not misbehave, as I am satisfied, so that they
should receive no treatment nor have anything withheld from them by
way of punishment.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 27, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Let the order in regard to Dr. McPheeters and family be suspended
until you hear from me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR GAMBLE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, December 27, 1862.

HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR GAMBLE:

I do not wish to leave the country north of the Missouri to the care
of the enrolled militia except upon the concurrent judgment of
yourself and General Curtis.  His I have not yet obtained.  Confer
with him, and I shall be glad to act when you and he agree.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C.,
December 30, 1862.  3.30 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE:

I have good reason for saying you must not make a general movement of
the army without letting me know.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
December 31, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe, Va.:

I hear not a word about the Congressional election of which you and I
corresponded.  Time clearly up.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO H. J. RAYMOND.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 31, 1862.

HON. H. J. RAYMOND:

The proclamation cannot be telegraphed to you until during the day
to-morrow.

JNO. G. NICOLAY.

[Same to Horace Greeley]




1863


EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION,

JANUARY 1, 1863.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas on the 22d day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was
issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other
things, the following, to wit:

"That on the 1st day of January, A.D., 1863, all persons held as
slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be
then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government
of the United States, including the military and naval authority
thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and
will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in
any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion
against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people
thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the
Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have
participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing
testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the
people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion
against the authority and government of the United States, and as a
fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on
this 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, and in accordance with my
purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one
hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate
as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof,
respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the
following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St.  Bernard,
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St.  John, St.  Charles, St.  James,
Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St.  Mary, St.
Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and
Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West
Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton,
Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the
cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for
the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order
and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and
that the Executive Government of the United States, including the
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain
the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend
to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for
reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable
condition will be received into the armed service of the United
States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and
to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty
God.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, A.D. 1863,
and of the independence of the United States of America the
eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,  Secretary of State.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
January 1, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK.

DEAR SIR:--General Burnside wishes to cross the Rappahannock with his
army, but his grand division commanders all oppose the movement.  If
in such a difficulty as this you do not help, you fail me precisely
in the point for which I sought your assistance You know what General
Burnside's plan is, and it is my wish that you go with him to the
ground, examine it as far as practicable, confer with the officers,
getting their judgment, and ascertaining their temper--in a word,
gather all the elements for forming a judgment of your own, and then
tell General Burnside that you do approve or that you do not approve
his plan.  Your military skill is useless to me if you will not do
this.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN

[Indorsement]

January 1, 1863
Withdrawn, because considered harsh by General Halleck.
A. LINCOLN




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

WASHINGTON, January 2, 1863

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I submit to Congress the expediency of extending to other departments
of the government the authority conferred on the President by the
eighth section of the act of the 8th of May, 1792, to appoint a
person to temporarily discharge the duties of Secretary of State,
Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of War, in case of the
death, absence from the seat of government, or sickness of either of
those officers.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
JANUARY 2, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of December 29 by the hand of Mr. Strong is just
received.  The day I telegraphed you suspending the order in relation
to Dr. McPheeters, he, with Mr. Bates, the Attorney-General, appeared
before me and left with me a copy of the order mentioned.  The doctor
also showed me the Copy of an oath which he said he had taken, which
is indeed very strong and specific.  He also verbally assured me that
he had constantly prayed in church for the President and government,
as he had always done before the present war.  In looking over the
recitals in your order, I do not see that this matter of the prayer,
as he states it, is negatived, nor that any violation of his oath is
charged nor, in fact, that anything specific is alleged against him.
The charges are all general:  that he has a rebel wife and rebel
relations, that he sympathies with rebels, and that he exercises
rebel influence.  Now, after talking with him, I tell you frankly I
believe he does sympathize with the rebels, but the question remains
whether such a man, of unquestioned good moral character, who has
taken such an oath as he has, and cannot even be charged with
violating it, and who can be charged with no other specific act or
omission, can, with safety to the government, be exiled upon the
suspicion of his secret sympathies.  But I agree that this must be
left to you, who are on the spot; and if, after all, you think the
public good requires his removal, my suspension of the order is
withdrawn, only with this qualification, that the time during the
suspension is not to be counted against him.   I have promised him
this.  But I must add that the United States Government must not, as
by this order, undertake to run the churches.  When an individual in
a church or out of it becomes dangerous to the public interest, he
must be checked; but let the churches, as such, take care of
themselves.  It will not do for the United States to appoint
trustees, supervisors, or other agents for the churches.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--The committee composed of Messrs.  Yeatman and Filley (Mr.
Broadhead not attending) has presented your letter and the memorial
of sundry citizens.  On the whole subject embraced exercise your best
judgment, with a sole view to the public interest, and I will not
interfere without hearing you.
A. LINCOLN.,  January 3, 1863.




TO SECRETARY WELLES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 4, 1863.

HON. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the Navy.

DEAR SIR:--As many persons who come well recommended for loyalty and
service to the Union cause, and who are refugees from rebel
oppression in the State of Virginia, make application to me for
authority and permission to remove their families and property to
protection within the Union lines, by means of our armed gunboats on
the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, you are hereby requested to
hear and consider all such applications, and to grant such assistance
to this class of persons as in your judgment their merits may render
proper, and as may in each case be consistent with the perfect and
complete efficiency of the naval service and with military
expediency.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL S. L CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 5, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am having a good deal of trouble with Missouri
matters, and I now sit down to write you particularly about it.  One
class of friends believe in greater severity and another in greater
leniency in regard to arrests, banishments, and assessments.  As
usual in such cases, each questions the other's motives.  On the one
hand, it is insisted that Governor Gamble's unionism, at most, is not
better than a secondary spring of action; that hunkerism and a wish
for political influence stand before Unionism with him.  On the other
hand, it is urged that arrests, banishments, and assessments are made
more for private malice, revenge, and pecuniary interest than for the
public good.  This morning I was told, by a gentleman who I have no
doubt believes what he says, that in one case of assessments for
$10,000 the different persons who paid compared receipts, and found
they had paid $30,000.  If this be true, the inference is that the
collecting agents pocketed the odd $20,000.  And true or not in the
instance, nothing but the sternest necessity can justify the making
and maintaining of a system so liable to such abuses.  Doubtless the
necessity for the making of the system in Missouri did exist, and
whether it continues for the maintenance of it is now a practical and
very important question.  Some days ago Governor Gamble telegraphed
me, asking that the assessments outside of St.  Louis County might be
suspended, as they already have been within it, and this morning all
the members of Congress here from Missouri but one laid a paper
before me asking the same thing.  Now, my belief is that Governor
Gamble is an honest and true man, not less so than yourself; that you
and he could confer together on this and other Missouri questions
with great advantage to the public; that each knows something which
the other does not; and that acting together you could about double
your stock of pertinent information.  May I not hope that you and he
will attempt this?  I could at once safely do (or you could safely do
without me) whatever you and he agree upon.  There is absolutely no
reason why you should not agree.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--I forgot to say that Hon. James S. Rollins, member of Congress
from one of the Missouri districts, wishes that, upon his personal
responsibility, Rev.  John M. Robinson, of Columbia, Missouri; James
L. Matthews, of Boone County, Missouri; and James L. Stephens, also
of Boone County, Missouri, may be allowed to return to their
respective homes.  Major Rollins leaves with me very strong papers
from the neighbors of these men, whom he says he knows to be true
men.  He also says he has many constituents who he thinks are rightly
exiled, but that he thinks these three should be allowed to return.
Please look into the case, and oblige Major Rollins if you
consistently can.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
[Copy sent to Governor Gamble.]




TO CALEB RUSSELL AND SALLIE A. FENTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 5, 1863.

MY GOOD FRIENDS:
The Honorable Senator Harlan has just placed in my hands your letter
of the 27th of December, which I have read with pleasure and
gratitude.

It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the
efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a
righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good
wishes and prayers of God's people.  No one is more deeply than
myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as
foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing
in the shadow of His displeasure.

I am conscious of no desire for my country's welfare that is not in
consonance with His will, and of no plan upon which we may not ask
His blessing.  It seems to me that if there be one subject upon which
all good men may unitedly agree, it is imploring the gracious favor
of the God of Nations upon the struggles our people are making for
the preservation of their precious birthright of civil and religious
liberty.

Very truly your friend;

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 5.  1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS, Murfreesborough, Tenn.:
Your despatch announcing retreat of enemy has just reached here.  God
bless you and all with you! Please tender to all, and accept for
yourself, the nation's gratitude for your and their skill, endurance,
and dauntless courage.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., January 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL DIX, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Do Richmond papers of 6th say nothing about Vicksburg, or if
anything, what?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
January 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK.

MY DEAR SIR:--What think you of forming a reserve cavalry corps of,
say, 6000 for the Army of the Potomac?  Might not such a corps be
constituted from the cavalry of Sigel's and Slocum's corps, with
scraps we could pick up here and there?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO B. G. BROWN.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 7, 1863. 5.30 P.M.

HON. B. GRATZ BROWN, Jefferson City, Mo.:

Yours of to-day just received. The administration takes no part
between its friends in Missouri, of whom I, at least, consider you
one; and I have never before had an intimation that appointees there
were interfering, or were inclined to interfere.

A. LINCOLN.




CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE,
JANUARY 8, 1863.


HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
January 5, 1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
Since my return to the army I have become more than ever convinced
that the general officers of this command are almost unanimously
opposed to another crossing of the river; but I am still of the
opinion that the, crossing should be attempted, and I have
accordingly issued orders to the engineers and artillery to prepare
for it.  There is much hazard in it, as there always is in the
majority of military movements, and I cannot begin the movement
without giving you notice of it, particularly as I know so little of
the effect that it may have upon other movements of distant armies.

The influence of your telegram the other day is still upon me, and
has impressed me with the idea that there are many parts of the
problem which influence you that are not known to me.

In order to relieve you from all embarrassment in my case, I inclose
with this my resignation of my commission as major-general of
volunteers, which you can have accepted if my movement is not in
accordance with the views of yourself and your military advisers.

I have taken the liberty to write to you personally upon this
subject, because it was necessary, as I learned from General Halleck,
for you to approve of my general plan, written at Warrenton, before I
could commence the movement; and I think it quite as necessary that
you should know of the important movement I am about to make,
particularly as it will have to be made in opposition to the views of
nearly all my general officers, and after the receipt of a despatch
from you informing me of the opinion of some of them who had visited
you.

In conversation with you on New Year's morning I was led to express
some opinions which I afterward felt it my duty to place on paper,
and to express them verbally to the gentleman of whom we were
speaking, which I did in your presence, after handing you the letter.
You were not disposed then, as I saw, to retain the letter, and I
took it back, but I now return it to you for record. if you wish it.

I beg leave to say that my resignation is not sent in in any spirit
of insubordination, but, as I before said, simply to relieve you from
any embarrassment in changing commanders where lack of confidence may
have rendered it necessary.

The bearer of this will bring me any answer, or I should be glad to
hear from you by telegraph in cipher.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

A. E. BURNSIDE,
Major-General, Commanding Army of the Potomac.




HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON,
January 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Commanding, etc., Falmouth:

GENERAL:--Your communication of the 5th was delivered to me by your
aide-de-camp at 12 M. to-day.

In all my communications and interviews with you since you took
command of the Army of the Potomac I have advised a forward movement
across the Rappahannock.  At our interview at Warrenton I urged that
you should cross by the fords above Fredericksburg rather than to
fall down to that place; and when I left you at Warrenton it was
understood that at least a considerable part of your army would cross
by the fords, and I so represented to the President.  It was this
modification of the plan proposed by you that I telegraphed you had
received his approval.  When the attempt at Fredericksburg was
abandoned, I advised you to renew the attempt at some other point,
either in whole or in part, to turn the enemy's works, or to threaten
their wings or communications; in other words, to keep the enemy
occupied till a favorable opportunity offered to strike a decisive
blow. I particularly advised you to use your cavalry and light
artillery upon his communications, and attempt to cut off his
supplies and engage him at an advantage.

In all our interviews I have urged that our first object was, not
Richmond, but the defeat or scattering of Lee's army, which
threatened Washington and the line of the upper Potomac.  I now recur
to these things simply to remind you of the general views which I
have expressed, and which I still hold.

The circumstances of the case, however, have somewhat changed since
the early part of November.  The chances of an extended line of
operations are now, on account of the advanced season, much less than
then.  But the chances are still in our favor to meet and defeat the
enemy on the Rappahannock, if we can effect a crossing in a position
where we can meet the enemy on favorable or even equal terms.
I therefore still advise a movement against him.  The character of
that movement, however, must depend upon circumstances which may
change any day and almost any hour.  If the enemy should concentrate
his forces at the place you have selected for a crossing, make it a
feint and try another place.  Again, the circumstances at the time
may be such as to render an attempt to cross the entire army not
advisable.  In that case, theory suggests that, while the enemy
concentrates at that point, advantages can be gained by crossing
smaller forces at other points to cut off his lines, destroy his
communication, and capture his rear-guards, outposts, etc.  The great
object is to occupy the enemy to prevent his making large detachments
or distant raids, and to injure him all you can with the least injury
to yourself.  If this can be best accomplished by feints of a general
crossing and detached real crossings, take that course; if by an
actual general crossing, with feints on other points, adopt that
course.  There seem to me to be many reasons why a crossing at some
point should be attempted.  It will not do to keep your large army
inactive.  As you yourself admit, it devolves on you to decide upon
the time, place, and character of the crossing which you may attempt.
I can only advise that an attempt be made, and as early as possible.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,
General-in-Chief.


[Indorsement.]

January 8, 1863.

GENERAL BURNSIDE:

I understand General Halleck has sent you a letter of which this is a
copy.  I approve this letter.  I deplore the want of concurrence with
you in opinion by your general officers, but I do not see the remedy.
Be cautious, and do not understand that the government or country is
driving you.  I do not yet see how I could profit by changing the
command of the Army of the Potomac; and if I did, I should not wish
to do it by accepting the resignation of your commission.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 8, 1863.

GOVERNOR JOHNSON, Nashville Tenn.:

A dispatch of yesterday from Nashville says the body of Captain Todd,
of the Sixth Kentucky, was brought in to-day.

Please tell me what was his Christian name, and whether he was in our
service or that of the enemy.  I shall also be glad to have your
impression as to the effect the late operations about Murfreesborough
will have on the prospects of Tennessee.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. R. CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 10, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS, St. Louis, MO.:

I understand there is considerable trouble with the slaves in
Missouri.  Please do your best to keep peace on the question for two
or three weeks, by which time we hope to do something here toward
settling the question in Missouri.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 10, 1863

GOVERNOR JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn.:

Yours received. I presume the remains of Captain Todd are in the
hands of his family and friends, and I wish to give no order on the
subject; but I do wish your opinion of the effects of the late
battles about Murfreesborough upon the prospects of Tennessee.

A. LINCOLN.




INSTRUCTION TO THE JUDGE-ADVOCATE-GENERAL.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY,
January 12, 1863.

The Judge-Advocate-General is instructed to revise the proceedings of
the court-martial in the case of Major-General Fitz-John Porter, and
to report fully upon any legal questions that may have arisen in
them, and upon the bearing of the testimony in reference to the
charges and specifications exhibited against the accused, and upon
which he was tried.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
JANUARY 14, 1863.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
The Secretary of State has submitted to me a resolution of the House
of Representatives of the 5th instant, which has been delivered to
him, and which is in the following words:

"Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to communicate to
this House, if not, in his judgment, incompatible with the public
interest, why our Minister in New Granada has not presented his
credentials to the actual government of that country; also the
reasons for which Senor Murillo is not recognized by the United
States as the diplomatic representative of the Mosquera government of
that country; also, what negotiations have been had, if any, with
General Herran as the representative of Ospina's government in New
Granada since it went into existence."

On the 12th day of December, 1846, a treaty of amity, peace, and
concord was concluded between the United States of America and the
Republic of New Granada, which is still in force.  On the 7th day of
December, 1847, General Pedro Alcantara Herran, who had been duly
accredited, was received here as the envoy extraordinary and minister
plenipotentiary of that, republic.  On the 30th day of August, 1849,
Senor Don Rafael Rivas was received by this government as charge
d'affaires of the same republic. On the 5th day of December, 1851, a
consular convention was concluded between that republic and the
United States, which treaty was signed on behalf of the Republic of
Granada by the same Senor Rivas.  This treaty is still in force.  On
the 27th of April, 1852, Senor Don Victoriano de Diego Paredes was
received as charge d'affaires of the Republic of New Granada.  On the
20th of June, 1855, General Pedro Alcantara Herran was again received
as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, duly accredited
by the Republic of New Granada, and he has ever since remained, under
the same credentials, as the representative of that republic near the
Government of the United States.  On the 10th of September, 1857, a
claims convention was concluded between the United States and the
Republic of Granada.  This convention is still in force, and has in
part been executed.  In May, 1858, the constitution of the republic
was remodelled; and the nation assumed the political title of "The
Granadian Confederacy."  This fact was formally announced to this
Government, but without any change in their representative here.
Previously to the 4th day of March, 1861, a revolutionary war against
the Republic of New Granada, which had thus been recognized and
treated with by the United States, broke out in New Granada, assuming
to set up a new government under the name of "United States of
Colombia."  This war has had various vicissitudes, sometimes
favorable, sometimes adverse, to the revolutionary movements.  The
revolutionary organization has hitherto been simply a military
provisionary power, and no definitive constitution of government has
yet been established in New Granada in place of that organized by the
constitution of 1858.  The minister of the United States to the
Granadian Confederacy, who was appointed on the 29th day of May,
1861, was directed, in view of the occupation of the capital by the
revolutionary party and of the uncertainty of the civil war, not to
present his credentials to either the government of the Granadian
Confederacy or to the provisional military government, but to conduct
his affairs informally, as is customary in such cases, and to report
the progress of events and await the instructions of this Government.
The advices which have been received from him have not hitherto, been
sufficiently conclusive to determine me to recognize the
revolutionary government.  General Herran being here, with full
authority from the Government of New Canada, which has been so long
recognized by the United States, I have not received any
representative from the revolutionary government, which has not yet
been recognized, because such a proceeding would be in itself an act
of recognition.

Official communications have been had on various incidental and
occasional questions with General Herran as the minister
plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary of the Granadian Confederacy,
but in no other character. No definitive measure or proceeding has
resulted from these communications, and a communication of them at
present would not, in my judgment, be compatible with the public
interest.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY OF WAR.

WASHINGTON, January 15, 1863.

SECRETARY OF WAR:

Please see Mr. Stafford, who wants to assist in raising colored
troops in Missouri.

A. LINCOLN.




PRINTING MONEY

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

January 17, 1863.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I have signed the joint resolution to provide for the immediate
payment of the army and navy of the United States, passed by the
House of Representatives on the 14th and by the Senate on the 15th
instant.

The joint resolution is a simple authority, amounting, however, under
existing circumstances, to a direction, to the Secretary of the
Treasury to make an additional issue of $100,000,000 in United States
notes, if so much money is needed, for the payment of the army and
navy.

My approval is given in order that every possible facility may be
afforded for the prompt discharge of all arrears of pay due to our
soldiers and our sailors.

While giving this approval, however, I think it my duty to express my
sincere regret that it has been found necessary to authorize so large
an additional issue of United States notes, when this circulation and
that of the suspended banks together have become already so redundant
as to increase prices beyond real values, thereby augmenting the cost
of living to the injury of labor, and the cost of supplies to the
injury of the whole country.

It seems very plain that continued issues of United States notes
without any check to the issues of suspended banks, and without
adequate provision for the raising of money by loans and for funding
the issues so as to keep them within due limits, must soon produce
disastrous consequences; and this matter appears to me so important
that I feel bound to avail myself of this occasion to ask the special
attention of Congress to it.

That Congress has power to regulate the currency of the country can
hardly admit of doubt, and that a judicious measure to prevent the
deterioration of this currency, by a seasonable taxation of bank
circulation or otherwise, is needed seems equally clear.
Independently of this general consideration, it would be unjust to
the people at large to exempt banks enjoying the special privilege of
circulation from their just proportion of the public burdens.

In order to raise money by way of loans most easily and cheaply, it
is clearly necessary to give every possible support to the public
credit.  To that end a uniform currency, in which taxes,
subscriptions to loans, and all other ordinary public dues as well as
all private dues may be paid, is almost if not quite indispensable.
Such a currency can be furnished by banking associations organized
under a general act of Congress, as suggested in my message at the
beginning of the present session.  The securing of this circulation
by the pledge of United States bonds, as therein suggested, would
still further facilitate loans, by increasing the present and causing
a future demand for such bonds.

In view of the actual financial embarrassments of the government, and
of the greater embarrassment sure to come if the necessary means of
relief be not afforded, I feel that I should not perform my duty by a
simple announcement of my approval of the joint resolution, which
proposes relief only by increased circulation, without expressing my
earnest desire that measures such in substance as those I have just
referred to may receive the early sanction of Congress.  By such
measures, in my opinion, will payment be most certainly secured, not
only to the army and navy, but to all honest creditors of the
government, and satisfactory provision made for future demands on the
treasury.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO THE WORKING-MEN OF MANCHESTER, ENGLAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January, 1863.

TO THE WORKING-MEN OF MANCHESTER:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and
resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the new year.  When I
came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional
election to fireside in the Government of the United States, the
country was found at the verge of civil war.  Whatever might have
been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all
others, was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the
Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic.
A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the
measures of administration which have been and to all which will
hereafter be pursued.  Under our frame of government and my official
oath, I could not depart from this purpose if I would.  It is not
always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope
of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it
necessary for the public safety from time to time to adopt.

I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests
solely with the American people; but I have at the same time been
aware that favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material
influence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men
in which the country is engaged.  A fair examination of history has
served to authorize a belief that the past actions and influences of
the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial
toward mankind.  I have, therefore, reckoned upon the forbearance of
nations.  Circumstances--to some of which you kindly allude--induce
me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be
practised by the United States, they would encounter no hostile
influence on the part of Great Britain.  It is now a pleasant duty to
acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a
spirit of amity and peace toward this country may prevail in the
councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own
country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its
home on this side of the Atlantic.

I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at
Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis.
It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to
overthrow this government, which was built upon the foundation of
human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest
exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the
favor of Europe.  Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the
working-men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the
purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt.  Under the
circumstance, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the
question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not
been surpassed in any age or in any country.  It is indeed an
energetic and inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth and
of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and
freedom.  I do not doubt that the sentiments, you have expressed will
be sustained by your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no
hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem,
and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American
people.

I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that
whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country
or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two
nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, January 21, 1863.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I submit herewith for your consideration the joint resolutions of the
corporate authorities of the city of Washington, adopted September a
7, 1862, and a memorial of the same under date of October 28, 1862,
both relating to and urging the construction of certain railroads
concentrating upon the city of Washington.

In presenting this memorial and the joint resolutions to you, I am
not prepared to say more than that the subject is one of great
practical importance, and that I hope it will receive the attention
of Congress.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND SENTENCE OF THE FITZ-JOHN PORTER
COURT-MARTIAL.

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON,

January 13, 1863.

In compliance with the Sixty-fifth Article of War, these whole
proceedings are transmitted to the Secretary of War, to be laid
before the President of the United States.

H. W. HALLECK,
General-in-Chief.
January 21, 1863.


The foregoing proceedings, findings, and sentence in the foregoing
case of Major-General Fitz-John Porter are approved and confirmed,
and it is ordered that the said Fitz-John Porter be, and he hereby
is, cashiered and dismissed from the service of the United States as
a major-general of volunteers, and as colonel and brevet
brigadier-general in the regular service of the United States, and
forever disqualified from holding any office of trust or profit under
the Government of the United States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON

January 21, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT, Memphis.

GENERAL:--The President has directed that so much of Arkansas as you
may desire to control be temporarily attached to your department.
This will give you control of both banks of the river.

In your operations down the Mississippi you must not rely too
confidently upon any direct co-operation of General Banks and the
lower flotilla, as it is possible that they may not be able to pass
or reduce Port Hudson.  They, however, will do everything in their
power to form a junction with you at Vicksburg.   If they should not
be able to effect this, they will at least occupy a portion of the
enemy's forces, and prevent them from reinforcing Vicksburg.  I hope,
however, that they will do still better and be able to join you.

It may be proper to give you some explanation of the revocation of
your order expelling all Jews from your department.  The President
has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which,
I suppose, was the object of your order; but as it in terms
proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in
our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,  General-in-Chief.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 23, 1863

GENERAL BURNSIDE:

Will see you any moment when you come.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER RELIEVING GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE AND MAKING OTHER CHANGES.

(General Orders No.20.)

WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 25, 1863.

I.  The President of the United States has directed:

1st.  That Major-General A. E. Burnside, at his own request, be
relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac.

2d.  That Major-General E. V. Sumner, at his own request, be relieved
from duty in the Army of the Potomac.

3d.  That Major-General W. B. Franklin be relieved from duty in the
Army of the Potomac.

4th.  That Major-General J. Hooker be assigned to the command of the
Army of the Potomac.

II. The officers relieved as above will report in person to the
adjutant-general of the army.

By order of the Secretary of War:
D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General




TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
January 26, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER.

GENERAL:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac.
Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient
reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some
things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.  I
believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which of course I
like.  I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession,
in which you are right.  You have confidence in yourself, which is a
valuable if not an indispensable quality.  You are ambitious, which
within reasonable bounds does good rather than harm; but I think that
during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel
of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you
did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and
honorable brother officer.  I have heard, in such a way as to believe
it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government
needed a dictator.  Of course it was not for this, but in spite of
it, that I have given you the command.  Only those generals who gain
successes can set up dictators.   What I now ask of you is military
success, and I will risk the dictatorship.  The government will
support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor
less than it has done and will do for all commanders.  I much fear
that the spirit that you have aided to infuse into the army, of
criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will
now turn upon you.  I shall assist you as far as I can to put it
down.  Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get
any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it.  And now
beware of rashness.  Beware of rashness, but with energy and
sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON CITY, January 28,1863,

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend
that Commander David D. Porter, United States Navy, acting
rear-admiral, commanding the Mississippi Squadron, receive a vote of
thanks of Congress for the bravery and skill displayed in the attack
on the post of Arkansas, which surrendered to the combined military
and naval forces on the 10th instant.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 28, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Lowell, Mass.:

Please come here immediately. Telegraph me about what time you will
arrive.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 29, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL DIx, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Do Richmond papers have anything from Vicksburg?

A. LINCOLN.




TO THURLOW WEED.

WASHINGTON, January 29, 1863.

HON. THURLOW WEED.

DEAR SIR:--Your valedictory to the patrons of the Albany Evening
journal brings me a good deal of uneasiness. What does it mean?

Truly Yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY,

January 30, 1863. 5.45 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe, Va.:

What iron-clads, if any, have gone out of Hampton Roads within the
last two days?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
January 31, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe, Va.:
Corcoran's and Pryor's battle terminated. Have you any news through
Richmond papers or otherwise?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
January 31, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

I do not take jurisdiction of the pass question. Exercise your own
discretion as to whether Judge Pettis shall have a pass.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE WORKING-MEN OF LONDON, ENGLAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 1, 1863.

TO THE WORKING-MEN OF LONDON:

I have received the New Year's address which you have sent me, with a
sincere appreciation of the exalted and humane sentiments by which it
was inspired.

As these sentiments are manifestly the enduring support of the free
institutions of England, so I am sure also that they constitute the
only reliable basis for free institutions throughout the world.

The resources, advantages, and powers of the American people are very
great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great
responsibilities.  It seems to have devolved upon them to test
whether a government established on the principles of human freedom
can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive
foundation of human bondage.  They will rejoice with me in the new
evidences which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they
are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and
humanity in foreign countries.

Accept my best wishes for your individual welfare, and for the
welfare and happiness of the whole British people.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,

February 4, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

I hear of some difficulty in the streets of Baltimore yesterday. What
is the amount of it?

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
February 12, 1863.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

On the 4th of September, 1862, Commander George Henry Preble, United
States Navy, then senior officer in command of the naval force off
the harbor of Mobile, was guilty of inexcusable neglect in permitting
the armed steamer Oreto in open daylight to run the blockade.  For
his omission to perform his whole duty on that occasion, and the
injury thereby inflicted on the service and the country, his name was
stricken from the list of naval officers and he was dismissed [from]
the service.

Since his dismissal earnest application has been made for his
restoration to his former position by senators and naval officers, on
the ground that his fault was an error of judgment, and that the
example in his case has already had its effect in preventing a
repetition of similar neglect.

I therefore on this application and representation, and in
consideration of his previous fair record, do hereby nominate George
Henry Preble to be a commander in the navy from the 16th July, 1862,
to take rank on the active list next after Commander Edward
Donaldson, and to fill a vacancy occasioned by the death of Commander
J. M. Wainwright.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON, D. C., February 12, 1863.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

On the 24th August, 1861, Commander Roger Perry, United. States Navy,
was dismissed from the service under a misapprehension in regard to
his loyalty to the Government, from the circumstance that several
oaths were transmitted to him and the Navy Department failed to
receive any recognition of them.  After his dismissal, and upon his
assurance that the oath failed to reach him and his readiness to
execute it, he was recommissioned to his original position on the 4th
September following.  On the same day, 4th September, he was ordered
to command the sloop of war Vandalia; on the 22d this order was
revoked and he was ordered to duty in the Mississippi Squadron, and
on the 23d January, 1862, was detached sick, and has since remained
unemployed. The advisory board under the act of 16th July, 1862, did
not recommend him for further promotion.

This last commission, having been issued during the recess of the
Senate, expired at the end of the succeeding session, 17th July,
1862, from which date, not having been nominated to the Senate, he
ceased to be a commander in the navy.

To correct the omission to nominate this officer to the Senate at its
last session, I now nominate Commander Roger Perry to be a commander
in the navy from the 14th September, 1855, to take his relative
position on the list of commanders not recommended for further
promotion.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 12,1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS,
Murfreesborough, Tenn.:

Your despatch about "river patrolling" received.  I have called the
Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of War, and General-in-Chief
together, and submitted it to them, who promise to do their very best
in the case.  I cannot take it into my own hands without producing
inextricable confusion.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SIMON CAMERON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 13, 1863.

HON. SIMON CAMERON, Harrisburg, Pa.:
General Clay is here and I suppose the matter we spoke of will have
to be definitely settled now.  Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TO ALEXANDER REED.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 22, 1863.

REV. ALEXANDER REED.
MY DEAR SIR:--Your note, by which you, as General Superintendent of
the United States Christian Commission, invite me to preside at a
meeting to be held this day at the hall of the House of
Representatives in this city, is received.

While, for reasons which I deem sufficient, I must decline to
preside, I cannot withhold my approval of the meeting and its worthy
objects.

Whatever shall be, sincerely and in God's name, devised for the good
of the soldiers and seamen in their hard spheres of duty, can
scarcely fail to be blessed; and whatever shall tend to turn our
thoughts from the unreasoning and uncharitable passions, prejudices,
and jealousies incident to a great national trouble such as ours, and
to fix them on the vast and long enduring consequences, for weal or
for woe, which are to result from the struggle, and especially to
strengthen our reliance on the Supreme Being for the final triumph of
the right, cannot but be well for us all.

The birthday of Washington and the Christian Sabbath coinciding this
year, and suggesting together the highest interests of this life and
of that to come, is most propitious for the meeting proposed.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO J. K. DUBOIS.
[Cipher]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.
February 26,1863.

HON. J. K. DuBois, Springfield, Ill.:
General Rosecrans respectfully urges the appointment of William P.
Caslin as a brigadier-general, What say you?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 27,1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

If it will be no detriment to the service I will be obliged for Capt.
Henry A. Marchant, of Company I, Twenty-third Pennsylvania
Volunteers, to come here and remain four or five days.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONVENING THE SENATE,

FEBRUARY 28, 1863

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A Proclamation.

Whereas objects of interest to the United States require that the
Senate should be convened at 12 o'clock on the 4th of March next to
receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the
part of the Executive:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
have considered it to be my duty to issue this my proclamation,
declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the
United States to convene for the transaction of business at the
Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the 4th day of March next, at
12 o'clock at noon on that day, of which all who shall at that time
be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required to
take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington,
the twenty eighth day of February A.D. 1863, and of the independence
of the United States of America, the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary o f State.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

WASHINGTON, March, 7,1863.

Mr. M. is now with me on the question of the Honolulu Commissioner.
It pains me some that this tilt for the place of Colonel Baker's
friend grows so fierce, now that the Colonel is no longer alive to
defend him.  I presume, however, we shall have no rest from it.  In
self-defense I am disposed to say, "Make a selection and send it to
me."

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR TOD,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 9, 1863.

GOVERNOR DAVID TOD, Columbus, Ohio:

I think your advice with that of others would be valuable in the
selection of provost-marshals for Ohio.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION RECALLING SOLDIERS TO THEIR REGIMENTS
MARCH 10, 1863

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A Proclamation

In pursuance of the twenty-sixth section of the act of Congress
entitled "An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces,
and for other purposes," approved on the 3d day of March, 1863, I,
Abraham Lincoln, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy of the United States, do hereby order and command that all
soldiers enlisted or drafted in the service of the United States now
absent from their regiments without leave shall forthwith return to
their respective regiments.

And I do hereby declare and proclaim that all soldiers now absent
from their respective regiments without leave who shall, on or before
the first day of April, 1863, report themselves at any rendezvous
designated by the general orders of the War Department No.  58,
hereto annexed, may be restored to their respective regiments without
punishment, except the forfeiture of pay and allowances during their
absence; and all who do not return within the time above specified
shall be arrested as deserters and punished as the law provides; and

Whereas evil-disposed and disloyal persons at sundry places have
enticed and procured soldiers to desert and absent themselves from
their regiments, thereby weakening the strength of the armies and
prolonging the war, giving aid arid comfort to the enemy, and cruelly
exposing the gallant and faithful soldiers remaining in the ranks to
increased hardships and danger:

I do therefore call upon all patriotic and faithful citizens to
oppose and resist the aforementioned dangerous and treasonable
crimes, and to aid in restoring to their regiments all soldiers
absent without leave, and to assist in the execution of the act of
Congress "for enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for
other purposes," and to support the proper authorities in the
prosecution and punishment of offenders against said act and in
suppressing tile insurrection and rebellion.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand.  Done at the city
of Washington, this tenth day of March, A.D. 1863, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 13, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

General Stahel wishes to be assigned to General Heintzelman and
General Heintzelman also desires it.  I would like to oblige both if
it would not injure the service in your army, or incommode you.  What
say you?

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

WASHINGTON, Match 15, 1863.

I am very glad of your note saying "recent despatches from him are
able, judicious, and loyal," and that if I agree; we will leave him
there.  I am glad to agree, so long as the public interest does not
seem to require his removal.




TELEGRAM TO J. O. MORTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 16, 1863.

HON. J. O. MORTON, Joliet, Ill.:
William Chumasero is proposed for provost-marshal of your district.
What think you of it?  I understand he is a good man.

A. LINCOLN.




GRANT'S EXCLUSION OF A NEWSPAPER REPORTER

REVOCATION OF SENTENCE OF T. W. KNOX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 20, 1863.

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:--Whereas, it appears to my satisfaction that
Thomas W. Knox, a correspondent of the New York Herald, has been by
the sentence of a court-martial excluded from the military department
under command of Major-General Grant, and also that General Thayer,
president of the court-martial which rendered the sentence, and
Major-General McClernand, in command of a corps of that department,
and many other respectable persons, are of opinion that Mr. Knox's
offense was technical rather than wilfully wrong, and that the
sentence should be revoked: now, therefore, said sentence is hereby
so far revoked as to allow Mr. Knox to return to General Grant's
headquarters, and to remain if General Grant shall give his express
assent, and to again leave the department if General Grant shall
refuse such assent.

A. LINCOLN.




TO BENJAMIN GRATZ.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 25,1863.

Mr. BENJAMIN GRATZ, Lexington, Ky.:

Show this to whom it may concern as your authority for allowing Mrs.
Selby to remain at your house, so long as you choose to be
responsible for what she may do.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,  March 25, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Murfreesborough, Tenn.:

Your dispatches about General Davis and General Mitchell are
received.  General Davis' case is not particular, being simply one of
a great many recommended and not nominated because they would
transcend the number allowed by law.  General Mitchell (was)
nominated and rejected by the Senate and I do not think it proper for
me to renominate him without a change of circumstances such as the
performance of additional service, or an expressed change of purpose
on the part of at least some senators who opposed him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT.

WASHINGTON, March 25, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HURLBUT, Memphis:

What news have you?  What from Vicksburg?  What from Yazoo Pass?
What from Lake Providence?  What generally?

A. LINCOLN.




QUESTION OF RAISING NEGRO TROOPS

TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
March 26, 1863.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro
military force.  In my opinion the country now needs no specific
thing so much as some man of your ability and position to go to this
work.  When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent
citizen of a slave State and himself a slaveholder.  The colored
population is the great available and yet unavailed of force for
restoring the Union.  The bare sight of fifty thousand armed and
drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end
the rebellion at once; and who doubts that we can present that sight
if we but take hold in earnest?  If you have been thinking of it,
please do not dismiss the thought.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION APPOINTING A NATIONAL FAST-DAY.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

March 30, 1863.

Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the
supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the
affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution requested the
President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and
humiliation:

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins
and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that
genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize
the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all
history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like
individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this
world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war
which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon
us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole people?  We have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved, these many
years, in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth,
and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten
God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace,
and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly
imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these
blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our
own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-
sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace,
too proud to pray to the God that made us:

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power,
to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and
forgiveness:

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring
in the views, of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate
and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of
national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request
all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular
pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and
their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and
devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to
that solemn occasion.  All this being done in sincerity and truth,
let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the divine
teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high,
and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national
sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to
its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of
the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




LICENSE OF COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
March 31, 1863.

Whereas by the act of Congress approved July 13, 1861, entitled "An
act to provide for the collection of duties on imports, and for other
purposes," all commercial intercourse between the inhabitants of such
States as should by proclamation be declared in insurrection against
the United States and the citizens of the rest of the United States
was prohibited so long as such condition of hostility should
continue, except as the same shall be licensed and permitted by the
President to be conducted and carried on only in pursuance of rules
and regulations prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury; and:

Whereas it appears that a partial restoration of such intercourse
between the inhabitants of sundry places and sections heretofore
declared in insurrection in pursuance of said act and the citizens of
the rest of the United States will favorably affect the public
interests:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
exercising the authority and discretion confided to me by the said
act of Congress, do hereby license and permit such commercial
intercourse between the citizens of loyal States and the inhabitants
of such insurrectionary States in the cases and under the
restrictions described and expressed in the regulations prescribed by
the Secretary of the Treasury bearing even date with these presents,
or in such other regulations as he may hereafter, with my approval,
prescribe.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL D. HUNTER.

(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C
April 1, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at
Jacksonville, Florida.  I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely,
as is to be expected.  It is important to the enemy that such a force
shall not take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in
precisely the same proportion it is important to us that it shall.
Hence the utmost caution and vigilance is necessary on our part.  The
enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them, and we should do the
same to preserve and increase them.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION ABOUT COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE,
APRIL 2, 1863

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, in pursuance of the act of Congress approved July 13, 1861,
I did, by proclamation dated August 16, 1861, declare that the
inhabitants of the States of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Mississippi, and Florida (except the inhabitants of that part of
Virginia lying west of the Alleghany Mountains, and of such other
parts of that State and the other States hereinbefore named as might
maintain a legal adhesion to the Union and the Constitution or might
be from time to time occupied and controlled by forces of the United
States engaged in the dispersion of said insurgents) were in a state
of insurrection against the United States, and that all commercial
intercourse between the same and the inhabitants thereof, with the
exceptions aforesaid, and the citizens of other States and other
parts of the United States was unlawful and would remain unlawful
until such insurrection should cease or be suppressed, and that all
goods and chattels, wares and merchandise, coming from any of said
States, with the exceptions aforesaid, into other parts of the United
States without the license and permission of the President, through
the Secretary of the Treasury, or proceeding to any of said States,
with the exceptions aforesaid, by land or water, together with the
vessel or vehicle conveying the same to or from said States, with the
exceptions aforesaid, would be forfeited to the United States, and:

Whereas experience has shown that the exceptions made in and by said
proclamation embarrass the due enforcement of said act of July 13,
1861, and the proper regulation of the commercial intercourse
authorized by said act with the loyal citizens of said States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby revoke the said exceptions, and declare that the
inhabitants of the States of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida,
and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties of Virginia designated
as West Virginia, and except also the ports of New Orleans, Key West;
Port Royal, and Beaufort in North Carolina) are in a state of
insurrection against the United States, and that all commercial
intercourse not licensed and conducted as provided in said act
between the said States and the inhabitants thereof, with the
exceptions aforesaid, and the citizens of other States and other
parts of the United States is unlawful and will remain unlawful until
such insurrection shall cease or has been suppressed and notice
thereof has been duly given by proclamation; and all cotton, tobacco,
and other products, and all other goods and chattels, wares and
merchandise, coming from any of said States, with the exceptions
aforesaid, into other parts of the United States, or proceeding to
any of said States, with the exceptions aforesaid, without the
license and permission of the President, through the Secretary of the
Treasury, will together with the vessel or vehicle conveying the
same, be forfeited to the United States.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this second day of April, A.D. 1863,
and of the independence of the United States of America the
eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 3, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Our plan is to pass Saturday night on the boat, go over from Aquia
Creek to your camp Sunday morning, remain with you till Tuesday
morning, and then return. Our party will probably not exceed six
persons of all sorts.

A. LINCOLN.




OPINION ON HARBOR DEFENSE.

April 4, 1863.

On this general subject I respectfully refer Mr.________ to the
Secretaries of War and Navy for conference and consultation.  I have
a single idea of my own about harbor defense.  It is a steam ram,
built so as to sacrifice nearly all capacity for carrying to those of
speed and strength, so as to be able to split any vessel having
hollow enough in her to carry supplies for a voyage of any distance.
Such ram, of course, could not herself carry supplies for a voyage of
considerable distance, and her business would be to guard a
particular harbor as a bulldog guards his master's door.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY POTOMAC,
April 9, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE NAVY:

Richmond Whig of the 8th has no telegraphic despatches from
Charleston, but has the following as editorial:

"All thoughts are now centred upon Charleston.  Official intelligence
was made public early yesterday morning that the enemy's iron-clad
fleet had attempted to cross the bar and failed, but later in the day
it was announced that the gunboats and transports had succeeded in
crossing and were at anchor.  Our iron-clads lay between the forts
quietly awaiting the attack.  Further intelligence is looked for with
eager anxiety.  The Yankees have made no secret of this vast
preparation for an attack on Charleston, and we may well anticipate a
desperate conflict.  At last the hour of trial has come for
Charleston, the hour of deliverance or destruction, for no one
believes the other alternative, surrender, possible.  The heart of
the whole country yearns toward the beleaguered city with intense
solicitude, yet with hopes amounting to confidence.  Charleston knows
what is expected of her, and which is due to her fame, and to the
relation she sustains to the cause.  The devoted, the heroic, the
great-hearted Beauregard is there, and he, too, knows what is
expected of him and will not disappoint that expectation.  We predict
a Saragossa defense, and that if Charleston is taken it will be only
a heap of ruins."

The rebel pickets are reported as calling over to our pickets today
that we had taken some rebel fort.  This is not very intelligible,
and I think is entirely unreliable.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER IN COMMAND AT NASHVILLE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 11,1863.

OFFICER IN COMMAND at Nashville, Tenn:
Is there a soldier by the name of John R. Minnick of Wynkoop's
cavalry under sentence of death, by a court-martial or military
commission, in Nashville?  And if so what was his offense, and when
is he to be executed?

A. LINCOLN.

If necessary let the execution be staid till I can be heard from
again.
A. LINCOLN.

[President Lincoln sent many telegrams similar in form to this one in
order to avoid tiresome repetition the editor has omitted all those
without especial interest.   Hardly a day went by that there were not
people in the White House begging mercy for a sentenced soldier.   A
mother one day, pleaded with Lincoln to remit the sentence of
execution on her son.  "I don't think it will do him a bit of good"
said Mr. Lincoln--"Pardoned."  D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON D.C., April 12, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Your letter by the hand of General Butterfield is received, and will
be conformed to.  The thing you dispense with would have been ready
by mid-day to-morrow.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO ADMIRAL S. P. DUPONT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 13, 1863

ADMIRAL DUPONT:

Hold your position inside the bar near Charleston; or, if you shall
have left it, return to it, and hold it until further orders.  Do not
allow the enemy to erect new batteries or defenses on Morris Island.
If he has begun it, drive him out.  I do not herein order you to
renew the general attack.  That is to depend on your own discretion
or a further order.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL D. HUNTER AND ADMIRAL S. F. DUPONT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 54, 1863.

GENERAL HUNTER AND ADMIRAL DUPONT:

This is intended to clear up an apparent inconsistency between the
recent order to continue operations before Charleston and the former
one to remove to another point in a certain contingency.  No censure
upon you, or either of you, is intended.  We still hope that by
cordial and judicious co-operation you can take the batteries on
Morris Island and Sullivan's Island and Fort Sumter.  But whether you
can or not, we wish the demonstration kept up for a time, for a
collateral and very important object.  We wish the attempt to be a
real one, though not a desperate one, if it affords any considerable
chance of success.  But if prosecuted as a demonstration only, this
must not become public, or the whole effect will be lost.  Once again
before Charleston, do not leave until further orders from here.  Of
course this is not intended to force you to leave unduly exposed
Hilton Head or other near points in your charge.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--Whoever receives this first, please send a copy to the other
immediately.
A.L.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 15, 1863.  10.15 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

It is now 10.15 P.M.  An hour ago I received your letter of this
morning, and a few moments later your despatch of this evening.  The
latter gives me considerable uneasiness.  The rain and mud of course
were to be calculated upon.  General S. is not moving rapidly enough
to make the expedition come to anything.  He has now been out three
days, two of which were unusually fair weather, and all three without
hindrance from the enemy, and yet he is not twenty-five miles from
where he started.  To reach his point he still has sixty to go,
another river (the Rapidan) to cross, and will be hindered by the
enemy.  By arithmetic, how many days will it take him to do it?  I do
not know that any better can be done, but I greatly fear it is
another failure already.  Write me often.  I am very anxious.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON COLONIZATION ARRANGEMENTS

REPUDIATION OF AN AGREEMENT WITH BERNARD KOCK

APRIL 16, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, TO ALL TO WHOM THESE
PRESENTS SHALL COME,

GREETING:

Know ye that, whereas a paper bearing date the 3rst day of December
last, purporting to be an agreement between the United States and one
Bernard Kock for immigration of persons of African extraction to a
dependency of the Republic of Haiti, was signed by me on behalf of
the party of the first part; but whereas the said instrument was and
has since remained incomplete in consequence of the seal of the
United States not having been thereunto affixed; and whereas I have
been moved by considerations by me deemed sufficient to withhold my
authority for affixing the said seal:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, do hereby authorize the Secretary of State to cancel
my signature to the instrument aforesaid.

Done at Washington, this sixteenth day of April, A.D. 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




STATEHOOD FOR WEST VIRGINIA

PROCLAMATION ADMITTING WEST VIRGINIA INTO THE UNION,
APRIL 20, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by the act of Congress approved the 31st day of December last
the State of West Virginia was declared to be one of the United
States of America, and was admitted into the Union on an equal
footing with the original States in all respects whatever, upon the
condition that certain changes should be duly made in the proposed
constitution for that State; and

Whereas proof of a compliance with that condition, as required by the
second section of the act aforesaid, has been submitted to me:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, do hereby, in pursuance of the act of Congress
aforesaid, declare and proclaim that the said act shall take effect
and be in force from and after sixty days from the date hereof.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twentieth day of April, A.D.
1863, and of the independence of the United States the
eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, APRIL 23, 1863 10.10am

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS,  Murfreesborough, Tenn.:

Your despatch of the 21st received.  I really cannot say that I have
heard any complaint of you.  I have heard complaint of a police corps
at Nashville, but your name was not mentioned in connection with it,
so far as I remember.  It may be that by inference you are connected
with it, but my attention has never been drawn to it in that light.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 27, 1863.  3.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

How does it look now?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, April 28, 1863.

HON. A. O. CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

I do not think the people of Pennsylvania should be uneasy about an
invasion.  Doubtless a small force of the enemy is flourishing about
in the northern part of Virginia, on the "skewhorn" principle, on
purpose to divert us in another quarter.  I believe it is nothing
more.  We think we have adequate force close after them.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO W. A. NEWELL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 29, 1863.

HON. W. A. NEWELL, Allentown, N.J.:

I have some trouble about provost-marshal in your first district.
Please procure HON. Mr, Starr to come with you and see me, or come to
an agreement with him and telegraph me the result.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MAY 1, 1863

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

The whole disposable force at Baltimore and else where in reach have
already been sent after the enemy which alarms you.  The worst thing
the enemy could do for himself would be to weaken himself before
Hooker, and therefore it is safe to believe he is not doing it; and
the best thing he could do for himself would be to get us so scared
as to bring part of Hooker's force away, and that is just what he is
trying to do.  I will telegraph you in the morning about calling out
the militia.

A. LINCOLN,




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN

EXECUTIVE MANSION, MAY 2, 1863

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

General Halleck tells me he has a despatch from General Schenck this
morning, informing him that our forces have joined, and that the
enemy menacing Pennsylvania will have to fight or run today.  I hope
I am not less anxious to do my duty to Pennsylvania than yourself,
but I really do not yet see the justification for incurring the
trouble and expense of calling out the militia.  I shall keep watch,
and try to do my duty.

A. LINCOLN
P. S.--Our forces are exactly between the enemy and Pennsylvania.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. BUTTERFIELD.

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 3, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD, Chief of Staff:

The President thanks you for your telegrams, and hopes you will keep
him advised as rapidly as any information reaches you.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




GENERALS LOST

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. BUTTERFIELD.

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 3, 1863.  4.35 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD:

Where is General Hooker?  Where is Sedgwick Where is Stoneman?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 4, 1863.  3.10 P M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

We have news here that the enemy has reoccupied heights above
Fredericksburg.  Is that so?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 4, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:

Our friend General Sigel claims that you owe him a letter.  If you so
remember please write him at once.  He is here.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 1863.  2.25.  P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

We have through General Dix the contents of Richmond papers of the
5th.  General Dix's despatch in full is going to you by Captain Fox
of the navy.  The substance is General Lee's despatch of the 3d
(Sunday), claiming that he had beaten you and that you were then
retreating across the Rappahannock, distinctly stating that two of
Longstreet's divisions fought you on Saturday, and that General [E.
F.] Paxton was killed, Stonewall Jackson severely wounded, and
Generals Heth and A. P. Hill slightly wounded.  The Richmond papers
also stated, upon what authority not mentioned, that our cavalry have
been at Ashland, Hanover Court-House, and other points, destroying
several locomotives and a good deal of other property, and all the
railroad bridges to within five miles of Richmond.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 1863.   12.30 P.M.

Just as I telegraphed you contents of Richmond papers showing that
our cavalry has not failed, I received General Butterfield's of 11
A.M. yesterday.  This, with the great rain of yesterday and last
night securing your right flank, I think puts a new face upon your
case; but you must be the judge.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL R. INGALLS.
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 6, 1863 1.45 PM

COLONEL INGALLS:

News has gone to General Hooker which may change his plans.  Act in
view of such contingency.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
 May 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER.

MY DEAR SIR:--The recent movement of your army is ended without
effecting its object, except, perhaps, some important breakings of
the enemy's communications.  What next?  If possible, I would be very
glad of another movement early enough to give us some benefit from
the fact of the enemy's communication being broken; but neither for
this reason nor any other do I wish anything done in desperation or
rashness.  An early movement would also help to supersede the bad
moral effect of there certain, which is said to be considerably
injurious.  Have you already in your mind a plan wholly or partially
formed?  If you have, prosecute it without interference from me.  If
you have not, please inform me, so that I, incompetent as I may be,
can try and assist in the formation of some plan for the army.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




DRAFTING OF ALIENS

PROCLAMATION CONCERNING ALIENS,

MAY 8, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

Whereas the Congress of the United States, at its last session,
enacted a law entitled "An act for enrolling and calling out the
national forces and for other purposes," which was approved on the 3d
day of March last; and

Whereas it is recited in the said act that there now exists in the
United States an insurrection and rebellion against the authority
thereof, and it is, under the Constitution of the United States, the
duty of the government to suppress insurrection and rebellion, to
guarantee to each State a republican form of government, and to
preserve the public tranquillity; and

Whereas for these high purposes a military force is indispensable, to
raise and support which all persons Ought willingly to contribute;
and

Whereas no service can be more praiseworthy and honorable than that
which is rendered for the maintenance of the Constitution and the
Union, and the consequent preservation of free government; and

Whereas, for the reasons thus recited, it was enacted by the said
statute that all able-bodied male citizens of the United States, and
persons of foreign birth who shall have declared on oath their
intention to become citizens under and in pursuance of the laws
thereof, between the ages of twenty and forty-five years (with
certain exceptions not necessary to be here mentioned), are declared
to constitute the national forces, and shall be liable to perform
military duty in the service of the United States when called out by
the President for that purpose; and

Whereas it is claimed by and in behalf of persons of foreign birth
within the ages specified in said act, who have heretofore declared
on oath their intentions to become citizens under and in pursuance of
the laws of the United States, and who have not exercised the right
of suffrage or any other political franchise under the laws of the
United States, or of any of the States thereof, that they are not
absolutely concluded by their aforesaid declaration of intention from
renouncing their purpose to become citizens, and that, on the
contrary, such persons under treaties or the law of nations retain a
right to renounce that purpose and to forego the privileges of
citizenship and residence within the United States under the
obligations imposed by the aforesaid act of Congress:

Now, therefore, to avoid all misapprehensions concerning the
liability of persons concerned to perform the service required by
such enactment, and to give it full effect, I do hereby order and
proclaim that no plea of alienage will be received or allowed to
exempt from the obligations imposed by the aforesaid act of Congress
any person of foreign birth who shall have declared on oath his
intention to become a citizen of the United States under the laws
thereof, and who shall be found within the United States at any time
during the continuance of the present insurrection and rebellion, at
or after the expiration of the period of sixty-five days from the
date of this proclamation; nor shall any such plea of alienage be
allowed in favor of any such person who has so, as aforesaid,
declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and
shall have exercised at any time the right of suffrage, or any other
political franchise, within the United States, under the laws
thereof, or under the laws of any of the several States.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this eighth day of May, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the
independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D. C. May 8, 1863.  4 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

The news is here of the capture by our forces of Grand Gulf--a large
and very important thing.  General Willich, an exchanged prisoner
just from Richmond, has talked with me this morning.  He was there
when our cavalry cut the roads in that vicinity.  He says there was
not a sound pair of legs in Richmond, and that our men, had they
known it, could have safely gone in and burned everything and brought
in Jeff Davis.  We captured and paroled 300 or 400 men.  He says as
he came to City Point there was an army three miles long
(Longstreet's, he thought) moving toward Richmond.

Muroy has captured a despatch of General Lee, in which he says his
loss was fearful in his last battle with you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 9,1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL DIX:

It is very important for Hooker to know exactly what damage is done
to the railroads at all points between Fredericksburg and Richmond.
As yet we have no word as to whether the crossings of the North and
South Anna, or any of them, have been touched.  There are four of
these Crossings; that is, one on each road on each stream.  You
readily perceive why this information is desired.  I suppose
Kilpatrick or Davis can tell.  Please ascertain fully what was done,
and what is the present condition, as near as you can, and advise me
at once.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

WASHINGTON, May 9, 1863

I believe Mr. L. is a good man, but two things need to be remembered.

1st.  Mr. R.'s rival was a relative of Mr. L.

2d.  I hear of nobody calling Mr. R. a "Copperhead," but Mr. L.
However, let us watch.

A. L.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
MAY 11, 1863

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

DEAR SIR:--I have again concluded to relieve General Curtis.  I see
no other way to avoid the worst consequences there.  I think of
General Schofield as his successor, but I do not wish to take the
matter of a successor out of the hands of yourself and General
Halleck.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON  CITY, May 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL DIX:

Do the Richmond papers have anything about Grand Gulf or Vicksburg?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTTERFIELD.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, May 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD:

About what distance is it from the observatory we stopped at last
Thursday to the line of enemies' works you ranged the glass upon for
me?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 12, 1863.

GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, Albany, N.Y.:

Dr. Swinburne and Mr. Gillett are here, having been refused, as they
say, by the War Department, permission to go to the Army of the
Potomac.   They now appeal to me, saying you wish them to go.  I
suppose they have been excluded by a rule which experience has
induced the department to deem proper; still they shall have leave to
go, if you say you desire it.  Please answer.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO A. G. HENRY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON May 13,1863.

Dr. A. G. HENRY, Metropolitan Hotel, New York:

Governor Chase's feelings were hurt by my action in his absence.
Smith is removed, but Governor Chase wishes to name his successor,
and asks a day or two to make the designation.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
May 14, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER, Commanding.

MY DEAR SIR:--When I wrote on the 7th, I had an impression that
possibly by an early movement you could get some advantage from the
supposed facts that the enemy's communications were disturbed and
that he was somewhat deranged in position.  That idea has now passed
away, the enemy having re-established his communications, regained
his positions, and actually received reinforcements.  It does not now
appear probable to me that you can gain anything by an early renewal
of the attempt to cross the Rappahannock.  I therefore shall not
complain if you do no more for a time than to keep the enemy at bay
and out of other mischief by menaces and occasional cavalry raids, if
practicable, and to put your own army in good condition again.
Still, if in your own clear judgment you can renew the attack
successfully, I do not mean to restrain you.  Bearing upon this last
point, I must tell you that I have some painful intimations that some
of your corps and division commanders are not giving you their entire
confidence.  This would be ruinous, if true, and you should
therefore, first of all, ascertain the real facts beyond all
possibility of doubt.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




FACTIONAL QUARRELS

TELEGRAM TO H. T. BLOW AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 15, 1863.

HON. H. T. BLOW, C. D. DRAKE, AND OTHERS, St.  Louis, Mo.:

Your despatch of to-day is just received.  It is very painful to me
that you in Missouri cannot or will not settle your factional quarrel
among yourselves.  I have been tormented with it beyond endurance for
months by both sides.  Neither side pays the least respect to my
appeals to your reason.  I am now compelled to take hold of the case.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO JAMES GUTHRIE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, May 16, 1863.

HON. JAMES GUTHRIE, Louisville, Ky.:

Your despatch of to-day is received.  I personally know nothing of
Colonel Churchill, but months ago and more than once he has been
represented to me as exerting a mischievous influence at Saint Louis,
for which reason I am unwilling to force his continuance there
against the judgment of our friends on the ground; but if it will
oblige you, he may come to and remain at Louisville upon taking the
oath of allegiance, and your pledge for his good behavior.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY OF WAR.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY,
May 16, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--The commander of the Department at St.  Louis has
ordered several persons south of our military lines, which order is
not disapproved by me.  Yet at the special request of the HON. James
Guthrie I have consented to one of the number, Samuel Churchill,
remaining at Louisville, Ky., upon condition of his taking the oath
of allegiance and Mr. Gutlirie's word of honor for his good behavior.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




ORDERS SENDING C. L. VALLANDIGHAM BEYOND MILITARY LINES.
[Cipher.]

UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH, May 10, 1863.
By telegraph from Washington, 9.40 PM, 1863

TO MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE,
Commanding Department of Ohio.

SIR:--The President directs that without delay you send C. L.
Vallandigham under secure guard to the Headquarters of General
Rosecrans, to be put by him beyond our military lines; and in case of
his return within our lines, he be arrested and kept in close custody
for the term specified in his sentence.

By order of the President:
E. R. S. CANBY,  Assistant Adjutant-General.




WAR DEPARTMENT,
May 20, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL A. B. BURNSIDE,
Commanding Department of Ohio, Cincinnati, O.

Your despatch of three o'clock this afternoon to the Secretary of War
has been received and shown to the President.  He thinks the best
disposition to be made of Vallandigham is to put him beyond the
lines, as directed in the order transmitted to you last evening, and
directs that you execute that order by sending him forward under
secure guard without delay to General Rosecrans.

By order of the President:
ED. R. S. CANBY, Brigadier-General




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WASHINGTON, May 20, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS:

Yours of yesterday in regard to Colonel Haggard is received.  I am
anxious that you shall not misunderstand me.  In no case have I
intended to censure you or to question your ability.  In Colonel
Haggard's case I meant no more than to suggest that possibly you
might have been mistaken in a point that could [be] corrected.  I
frequently make mistakes myself in the many things I am compelled to
do hastily.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WASHINGTON, May 21, 1863.  4.40 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS:

For certain reasons it is thought best for Rev. Dr. Jaquess not to
come here.

Present my respects to him, and ask him to write me fully on the
subject he has in contemplation.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT.

WASHINGTON, May 22, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HURLBUT, Memphis, Tenn.:

We have news here in the Richmond newspapers of 20th and 21st,
including a despatch from General Joe Johnston himself, that on the
15th or 16th--a little confusion as to the day--Grant beat Pemberton
and [W. W.] Loring near Edwards Station, at the end of a nine hours'
fight, driving Pemberton over the Big Black and cutting Loring off
and driving him south to Crystal Springs, twenty-five miles below
Jackson.  Joe Johnston telegraphed all this, except about Loring,
from his camp between Brownsville and Lexington, on the 18th.
Another despatch indicates that Grant was moving against Johnston on
the 18th.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO ANSON STAGER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 24, 1863.10.40

ANSON STAGER, Cleveland, O.:

Late last night Fuller telegraphed you, as you say, that "the Stars
and Stripes float over Vicksburg and the victory is complete."  Did he
know what he said, or did he say it without knowing it?  Your
despatch of this afternoon throws doubt upon it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL HAGGARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON. May 25, 1863.

COLONEL HAGGARD, Nashville, Tenn.:

Your despatch to Green Adams has just been shown me.  General
Rosecrans knows better than we can know here who should be in charge
of the Fifth Cavalry.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 26, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:

Your despatch about Campbell, Lyle, and others received and
postponement ordered by you approved.  I will consider and telegraph
you again in a few days.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 27, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

Let the execution of William B. Compton be respited or suspended till
further order from me, holding him in safe custody meanwhile.  On
receiving this notify me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BUCKINGHAM.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 27,1863.

GOVERNOR BUCKINGHAM, Hartford, Conn.:

The execution of Warren Whitemarch is hereby respited or suspended
until further order from me, he to be held in safe custody meanwhile.
On receiving this notify me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 27,1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Murfreesborough, Tenn.:

Have you anything from Grant?  Where is Forrest's headquarters?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
May 27, 1863.

GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD.

MY DEAR SIR:--Having relieved General Curtis and assigned you to the
command of the Department of the Missouri, I think it may be of some
advantage for me to state why I did it.  I did not relieve General
Curtis because of any full conviction that he had done wrong by
commission or omission.  I did it because of a conviction in my mind
that the Union men of Missouri, constituting, when united, a vast
majority of the whole people, have entered into a pestilent factional
quarrel among themselves--General Curtis, perhaps not of choice,
being the head of one faction and Governor Gamble that of the other.
After months of labor to reconcile the difficulty, it seemed to grow
worse and worse, until I felt it my duty to break it up somehow; and
as I could not remove Governor Gamble, I had to remove General
Curtis.  Now that you are in the position, I wish you to undo nothing
merely because General Curtis or Governor Gamble did it, but to
exercise your own judgment, and do right for the public interest.
Let your military measures be strong enough to repel the invader and
keep the peace, and not so strong as to unnecessarily harass and
persecute the people.  It is a difficult role, and so much greater
will be the honor if you perform it well.  If both factions, or
neither, shall abuse you, you will probably be about right.  Beware
of being assailed by one and praised by the other.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, May 27, 1863.11 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Have you Richmond papers of this morning?  If so, what news?

A. LINCOLN.




TO ERASTUS CORNING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
May 28, 1863.

HON. ERASTUS CORNING, Albany, N.Y.:

The letter of yourself and others dated the 19th and inclosing the
resolutions of a public meeting held at Albany on the 16th, was
received night before last.  I shall give the resolutions the
consideration you ask, and shall try to find time and make a
respectful response.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Murfreesborough, Tenn..

I would not push you to any rashness, but I am very anxious that you
do your utmost, short of rashness, to keep Bragg from getting off to
help Johnston against Grant.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1863.

GOVERNOR ANDREW JOHNSON, Louisville, Ky.:

General Burnside has been frequently informed lately that the
division under General Getty cannot be spared.  I am sorry to have to
tell you this, but it is true, and cannot be helped.

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. K. DUBOIS AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
May 29, 1863.

MESSRS. JESSE K. DUBOIS, O. M. HATCH, JOHN WILLIAMS, JACOB BUNN, JOHN
BUNN, GEORGE R. WEBER, WILLIAM YATES, S. M. CULLOM, CHARLES W.
MATHENY, WILLIAM F. ELKIN, FRANCIS SPRINGER, B. A. WATSON, ELIPHALET
HAWLEY, AND JAMES CAMPBELL.

GENTLEMEN:--Agree among yourselves upon any two of your own number--
one of whom to be quartermaster and the other to be commissary to
serve at Springfield, Illinois, and send me their names, and I will
appoint them.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:

Your despatch of to-day received.  When I shall wish to supersede you
I will let you know.  All the Cabinet regretted the necessity of
arresting, for instance, Vallandigham, some perhaps doubting there
was a real necessity for it; but, being done, all were for seeing you
through with it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL LUDLOW.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 1, 1863.

COLONEL LUDLOW, Fort Monroe:

Richardson and Brown, correspondents of the Tribune captured at
Vicksburg, are detained at Richmond.  Please ascertain why they are
detained, and get them off if you can.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 2, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

It is said that Philip Margraf, in your army, is under sentence to be
shot on Friday the 5th instant as a deserter.  If so please send me
up the record of his case at once.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 2, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT, Vicksburg, via Memphis:

Are you in communication with General Banks?  Is he coming toward you
or going farther off?  Is there or has there been anything to hinder
his coming directly to you by water from Alexandria?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 4,1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Let execution of sentences in the cases of Daily, Margraf, and
Harrington be respited till further orders from me, they remaining in
close custody meanwhile.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTTERFIELD.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., June 4, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD:

The news you send me from the Richmond Sentinel of the 3d must be
greatly if not wholly incorrect.  The Thursday mentioned was the
28th, and we have despatches here directly from Vicksburg of the
28th, 29th, 30th, and 31st; and, while they speak of the siege
progressing, they speak of no assault or general fighting whatever,
and in fact they so speak as to almost exclude the idea that there
can have been any since Monday the 25th, which was not very heavy.
Neither do they mention any demand made by Grant upon Pemberton for a
surrender.  They speak of our troops as being in good health,
condition, and spirits.  Some of them do say that Banks has Port
Hudson invested.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 4, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have received additional despatches, which, with
former ones, induce me to believe we should revoke or suspend the
order suspending the Chicago Times; and if you concur in opinion,
please have it done.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D.C. JUNE 5, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Yours of to-day was received an hour ago.  So much of professional
military skill is requisite to answer it that I have turned the task
over to General Halleck.  He promises to perform it with his utmost
care.  I have but one idea which I think worth suggesting to you, and
that is, in case you find Lee coming to the north of the
Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it.  If he
should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg, tempting you to fall
upon it, it would fight in entrenchments and have you at advantage,
and so, man for man, worst you at that point, While his main force
would in some way be getting an advantage of you northward.  In one
word, I would not take any risk of being entangled up on the river
like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs
front and rear without a fair chance to gore one way or to kick the
other.

If Lee would come to my side of the river I would keep on the same
side and fight him, or act on the defensive, according as might be my
estimate of his strength relatively to my own.  But these are mere
suggestions, which I desire to be controlled by the judgment of
yourself and General Halleck.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. GRIMSLEY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 6, 1863.

Mrs. ELIZABETH J. GRIMSLEY, Springfield, Ill.:

Is your John ready to enter the naval school?  If he is, telegraph me
his full name.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX,

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., June 6, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe, Va.:

By noticing the news you send from the Richmond Dispatch of this
morning you will see one of the very latest despatches says they have
nothing reliable from Vicksburg since Sunday.  Now we here have a
despatch from there Sunday and others of almost every day preceding
since the investment, and while they show the siege progressing they
do not show any general fighting since the 21st and 22d.  We have
nothing from Port Hudson later than the 29th when things looked
reasonably well for us.  I have thought this might be of some
interest to you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

We have despatches from Vicksburg of the 3d.  Siege progressing.  No
general fighting recently.  All well.  Nothing new from Port Hudson.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C. JUNE 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

The substance of news sent of the fighting at Port Hudson on the 27th
we have had here three or four days, and I supposed you had it also,
when I said this morning, "No news from Port Hudson."  We knew that
General Sherman was wounded, but we hoped not so dangerously as your
despatch represents.   We still have nothing of that Richmond
newspaper story of Kirby Smith crossing and of Banks losing an arm.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO J. P. HALE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 9, 1863.

HON. JOHN P. HALE, Dover, N. H.:

I believe that it was upon your recommendation that B. B. Bunker was
appointed attorney for Nevada Territory.  I am pressed to remove him
on the ground that he does not attend to the office, nor in fact pass
much time in the Territory.  Do you wish to say anything on the
subject?

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 9, 1863.

MRS. LINCOLN, Philadelphia, Pa.:

Think you had better put "Tad's" pistol away.  I had an ugly dream
about him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 9, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

I am told there are 50 incendiary shells here at the arsenal made to
fit the 100 pounder Parrott gun now with you.  If this be true would
you like to have the shells sent to you?

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 10, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Your long despatch of to-day is just received.  If left to me, I
would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it.
If you had Richmond invested to-day you would not be able to take it
in twenty days; meanwhile your communications, and with them your
army, would be ruined.  I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your
true objective point.   If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow
on his flank, and on the inside track, shortening your lines while he
lengthens his.  Fight him, too, when opportunity offers.  If he stay
where he is, fret him and fret him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 11,1863.

MRS. LINCOLN, Philadelphia:

Your three despatches received.  I am very well and am glad to know
that you and "Tad" are so.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, JUNE 12, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

If you can show me a trial of the incendiary shells on Saturday
night, I will try to join you at 5 P.M. that day  Answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TO ERASTUS CORNING AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 12, 1863.

HON. ERASTUS CORNING AND OTHERS.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter of May 19, inclosing the resolutions of a
public meeting held at Albany, New York, on the 16th of the same
month, was received several days ago.

The resolutions, as I understand them, are resolvable into two
propositions--first, the expression of a purpose to sustain the cause
of the Union, to secure peace through victory, and to support the
administration in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress
the rebellion; and, secondly, a declaration of censure upon the
administration for supposed unconstitutional action, such as the
making of military arrests.  And from the two propositions a third is
deduced, which is that the gentlemen composing the meeting are
resolved on doing their part to maintain our common government and
country, despite the folly or wickedness, as they may conceive, of
any administration.  This position is eminently patriotic, and as
such I thank the meeting, and congratulate the nation for it.  My own
purpose is the same; so that the meeting and myself have a common
object, and can have no difference, except in the choice of means or
measures for effecting that object.

And here I ought to close this paper, and would close it, if there
were no apprehension that more injurious consequences than any merely
personal to myself might follow the censures systematically cast upon
me for doing what, in my view of duty, I could not forbear.  The
resolutions promise to support me in every constitutional and lawful
measure to suppress the rebellion; and I have not knowingly employed,
nor shall knowingly employ, any other.  But the meeting, by their
resolutions, assert and argue that certain military arrests, and
proceedings following them, for which I am ultimately responsible,
are unconstitutional.  I think they are not.  The resolutions quote
from the Constitution the definition of treason, and also the
limiting safeguards and guarantees therein provided for the citizen
on trial for treason, and on his being held to answer for capital or
otherwise infamous crimes, and in criminal prosecutions his right to
a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.  They proceed to
resolve "that these safeguards of the rights of the citizen against
the pretensions of arbitrary power were intended more especially for
his protection in times of civil commotion."  And, apparently to
demonstrate the proposition, the resolutions proceed: "They were
secured substantially to the English people after years of protracted
civil war, and were adopted into our Constitution at the close of the
Revolution."  Would not the demonstration have been better if it could
have been truly said that these safeguards had been adopted and
applied during the civil wars and during our Revolution, instead of
after the one and at the close of the other?   I too am devotedly for
them after civil war, and before Civil war, and at all times, "except
when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may
require" their suspension.  The resolutions proceed to tell us that
these safeguards "have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial
under our republican system, under circumstances which show that,
while they constitute the foundation of all free government, they are
the elements of the enduring stability of the republic."  No one
denies that they have so stood the test up to the beginning of the
present rebellion, if we except a certain occurrence at New Orleans
hereafter to be mentioned; nor does any one question that they will
stand the same test much longer after the rebellion closes.  But
these provisions of the Constitution have no application to the case
we have in hand, because the arrests complained of were not made for
treason--that is, not for the treason defined in the Constitution,
and upon the conviction of which the punishment is death--nor yet
were they made to hold persons to answer for any capital or otherwise
infamous crimes; nor were the proceedings following, in any
constitutional or legal sense, "criminal prosecutions."  The arrests
were made on totally different grounds, and the proceedings following
accorded with the grounds of the arrests.  Let us consider the real
case with which we are dealing, and apply to it the parts of the
Constitution plainly made for such cases.

Prior to my installation here it had been inculcated that any State
had a lawful right to secede from the national Union, and that it
would be expedient to exercise the right whenever the devotees of the
doctrine should fail to elect a president to their own liking.  I was
elected contrary to their liking; and accordingly, so far as it was
legally possible, they had taken seven States out of the Union, had
seized many of the United States forts, and had fired upon the United
States flag, all before I was inaugurated, and, of course, before I
had done any official act whatever.  The rebellion thus begun soon
ran into the present civil war; and, in certain respects, it began on
very unequal terms between the parties.  The insurgents had been
preparing for it more than thirty years, while the government had
taken no steps to resist them.  The former had carefully considered
all the means which could be turned to their account.  It undoubtedly
was a well-pondered reliance with them that in their own unrestricted
effort to destroy Union, Constitution and law, all together, the
government would, in great degree, be restrained by the same
Constitution and law from arresting their progress.  Their
sympathizers invaded all departments of the government and nearly all
communities of the people.  From this material, under cover of
"liberty of speech," "liberty of the press," and "habeas corpus,"
they hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of
spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors of their cause
in a thousand ways.  They knew that in times such as they were
inaugurating, by the Constitution itself the "habeas corpus" might be
suspended; but they also knew they had friends who would make a
question as to who was to suspend it; meanwhile their spies and
others might remain at large to help on their cause.  Or if, as has
happened, the Executive should suspend the writ without ruinous waste
of time, instances of arresting innocent persons might occur, as are
always likely to occur in such cases; and then a clamor could be
raised in regard to this, which might be at least of some service to
the insurgent cause.  It needed no very keen perception to discover
this part of the enemies program, so soon as by open hostilities
their machinery was fairly put in motion.  Yet, thoroughly imbued
with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals, I was slow
to adopt the strong measures which by degrees I have been forced to
regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution, and as
indispensable to the public safety.  Nothing is better known to
history than that courts of justice are utterly incompetent to such
cases.  Civil courts are organized chiefly for trials of individuals-
-or, at most, a few individuals acting in concert, and this in quiet
times, and on charges of crimes well defined in the law.   Even in
times of peace bands of horse-thieves and robbers frequently grow too
numerous and powerful for the ordinary courts of justice.   But what
comparison, in numbers have such bands ever borne to the insurgent
sympathizers even in many of the loyal States?  Again, a jury too
frequently has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than
to hang the traitor.  And yet again, he who dissuades one man from
volunteering, or induces one soldier to desert, weakens the Union
cause as much as he who kills a Union soldier in battle.  Yet this
dissuasion or inducement may be so conducted as to be no defined
crime of which any civil court would take cognizance.


Ours is a case of rebellion--so called by the resolutions before me--
in fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of rebellion; and the
provision of the Constitution that "the privilege of the writ of
habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of
rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it," is the
provision which specially applies to our present case.  This
provision plainly attests the understanding of those who made the
Constitution that ordinary courts of justice are inadequate to "cases
of rebellion"--attests their purpose that, in such cases, men may be
held in custody whom the courts, acting on ordinary rules, would
discharge.  Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are proved to be
guilty of defined crime, and its suspension is allowed by the
Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held who can not
be proved to be guilty of defined crime, "when, in cases of rebellion
or invasion, the public safety may require it."

This is precisely our present case--a case of rebellion wherein the
public safety does require the suspension--Indeed, arrests by process
of courts and arrests in cases of rebellion do not proceed altogether
upon the same basis.  The former is directed at the small percentage
of ordinary and continuous perpetration of crime, while the latter is
directed at sudden and extensive uprisings against the government,
which, at most, will succeed or fail in no great length of time.  In
the latter case arrests are made not so much for what has been done
as for what probably would be done.  The latter is more for the
preventive and less for the vindictive than the former.  In such
cases the purposes of men are much more easily understood than in
cases of ordinary crime.  The man who stands by and says nothing when
the peril of his government is discussed, cannot be misunderstood.
If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more if he talks
ambiguously--talks for his country with "buts," and "ifs," and
"ands."  Of how little value the constitutional provision I have
quoted will be rendered if arrests shall never be made until defined
crimes shall have been committed, may be illustrated by a few notable
examples: General John C. Breckinridge, General Robert E. Lee,
General Joseph E. Johnston, General John B. Magruder, General William
B. Preston, General Simon B. Buckner, and Commodore Franklin
Buchanan, now occupying the very highest places in the rebel war
service, were all within the power of the government since the
rebellion began, and were nearly as well known to be traitors then as
now.  Unquestionably if we had seized and had them the insurgent
cause would be much weaker.  But no one of them had then committed
any crime defined in the law.   Every one of them, if arrested, would
have been discharged on habeas corpus were the writ allowed to
operate.  In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not
unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few
arrests rather than too many.

By the third resolution the meeting indicate their opinion that
military arrests may be constitutional in localities where rebellion
actually exists, but that such arrests are unconstitutional in
localities where rebellion or insurrection does not actually exist.
They insist that such arrests shall not be made "outside of the lines
of necessary military occupation and the scenes of insurrection."
Inasmuch, however, as the Constitution itself makes no such
distinction, I am unable to believe that there is any such
constitutional distinction.  I concede that the class of arrests
complained of can be constitutional only when, in cases of rebellion
or invasion, the public safety may require them; and I insist that in
such cases--they are constitutional wherever the public safety does
require them, as well in places to which they may prevent the
rebellion extending, as in those where it may be already prevailing;
as well where they may restrain mischievous interference with the
raising and supplying of armies to suppress the rebellion as where
the rebellion may actually be; as well where they may restrain the
enticing men out of the army as where they would prevent mutiny in
the army; equally constitutional at all places where they will
conduce to the public safety as against the dangers of rebellion or
invasion.  Take the particular case mentioned by the meeting.   It is
asserted in substance that Mr. Vallandigham was, by a military
commander, seized and tried "for no other reason than words addressed
to a public meeting in criticism of the course of the administration,
and in condemnation of the military orders of the general."  Now, if
there be no mistake about this, if this assertion is the truth, and
the whole truth, if there were no other reason for the arrest, then I
concede that the arrest was wrong.  But the arrest, as I understand,
was made for a very different reason.  Mr. Vallandigham avows his
hostility to the war on the part of the Union; and his arrest was
made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the
raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army, and to
leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress
it.   He was not arrested because he was damaging the political
prospects of the administration or the personal interests of the
commanding general, but because he was damaging the army, upon the
existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends.  He was
warring upon the military, and thus gave the military constitutional
jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.  If Mr. Vallandigham was not
damaging the military power of the country, then his arrest was made
on mistake of fact, which I would be glad to correct on reasonably
satisfactory evidence.

I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering to be in
favor of suppressing the rebellion by military force--by armies.
Long experience has shown that armies cannot be maintained unless
desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death.  The case
requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment.
 Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must
not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induced him to desert.  This
is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or
brother, or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his
feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is
fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a
contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he
shall desert.  I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator
and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a great
mercy.

If I be wrong on this question of constitutional power, my error lies
in believing that certain proceedings are constitutional when, in
cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety requires them,
which would not be constitutional when, in absence of rebellion or
invasion, the public safety does not require them: in other words,
that the Constitution is not in its application in all respects the
same in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety as
it is in times of profound peace and public security.  The
Constitution itself makes the distinction, and I can no more be
persuaded that the government can constitutionally take no strong
measures in time of rebellion, because it can be shown that the same
could not be lawfully taken in times of peace, than I can be
persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man
because it can be shown to not be good food for a well one.  Nor am I
able to appreciate the danger apprehended by the meeting, that the
American people will by means of military arrests during the
rebellion lose the right of public discussion, the liberty of speech
and the press, the law of evidence, trial by jury, and habeas corpus
throughout the indefinite peaceful future which I trust lies before
them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so
strong an appetite for emetics during temporary illness as to persist
in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life.

In giving the resolutions that earnest consideration which you
request of me, I cannot overlook the fact that the meeting speak as
"Democrats."  Nor can I, with full respect for their known
intelligence, and the fairly presumed deliberation with which they
prepared their resolutions, be permitted to suppose that this
occurred by accident, or in any way other than that they preferred to
designate themselves "Democrats" rather than "American citizens."  In
this time of national peril I would have preferred to meet you upon a
level one step higher than any party platform, because I am sure that
from such more elevated position we could do better battle for the
country we all love than we possibly can from those lower ones where,
from the force of habit, the prejudices of the past, and selfish
hopes of the future, we are sure to expend much of our ingenuity and
strength in finding fault with and aiming blows at each other.  But
since you have denied me this I will yet be thankful for the
country's sake that not all Democrats have done so.  He on whose
discretionary judgment Mr. Vallandigham was arrested and tried is a
Democrat, having no old party affinity with me, and the judge who
rejected the constitutional view expressed in these resolutions, by
refusing to discharge Mr. Vallandigham on habeas corpus is a Democrat
of better days than these, having received his judicial mantle at the
hands of President Jackson.  And still more: of all those Democrats
who are nobly exposing their lives and shedding their blood on the
battle-field, I have learned that many approve the course taken with
Mr. Vallandigham, while I have not heard of a single one condemning
it.  I cannot assert that there are none such.  And the name of
President Jackson recalls an instance of pertinent history.  After
the battle of New Orleans, and while the fact that the treaty of
peace had been concluded was well known in the city, but before
official knowledge of it had arrived, General Jackson still
maintained martial or military law.  Now that it could be said that
the war was over, the clamor against martial law, which had existed
from the first, grew more furious.  Among other things, a Mr.
Louaillier published a denunciatory newspaper article.  General
Jackson arrested him.  A lawyer by the name of Morel procured the
United States Judge Hall to order a writ of habeas corpus to release
Mr. Louaillier.  General Jackson arrested both the lawyer and the
judge.  A Mr. Hollander ventured to say of some part of the matter
that "it was a dirty trick."  General Jackson arrested him.  When the
officer undertook to serve the writ of habeas corpus, General Jackson
took it from him, and sent him away with a copy.  Holding the judge
in custody a few days, the general sent him beyond the limits of his
encampment, and set him at liberty with an order to remain till the
ratification of peace should be regularly announced, or until the
British should have left the southern coast.  A day or two more
elapsed, the ratification of the treaty of peace was regularly
announced, and the judge and others were fully liberated.  A few days
more, and the judge called General Jackson into court and fined him
$1000 for having arrested him and the others named.   The General
paid the fine, and then the matter rested for nearly thirty years,
when Congress refunded principal and interest.  The late Senator
Douglas, then in the House of Representatives, took a leading part in
the debates, in which the constitutional question was much discussed.
I am not prepared to say whom the journals would show to have voted
for the measure.

It may be remarked--first, that we had the same Constitution then as
now; secondly, that we then had a case of invasion, and now we have a
case of rebellion; and, thirdly, that the permanent right of the
people to public discussion, the liberty of speech and of the press,
the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the habeas corpus
suffered no detriment whatever by that conduct of General Jackson, or
its subsequent approval by the American Congress.

And yet, let me say that, in my own discretion, I do not know whether
I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.  While I cannot
shift the responsibility from myself, I hold that, as a general rule,
the commander in the field is the better judge of the necessity in
any particular case.  Of course I must practice a general directory
and revisory power in the matter.

One of the resolutions expresses the opinion of the meeting that
arbitrary arrests will have the effect to divide and distract those
who should be united in suppressing the rebellion, and I am
specifically called on to discharge Mr. Vallandigham.  I regard this
as, at least, a fair appeal to me on the expediency of exercising a
constitutional power which I think exists.  In response to such
appeal I have to say, it gave me pain when I learned that Mr.
Vallandigham had been arrested (that is, I was pained that there
should have seemed to be a necessity for arresting him), and that it
will afford me great pleasure to discharge him so soon as I can by
any means believe the public safety will not suffer by it.

I further say that, as the war progresses, it appears to me, opinion
and action, which were in great confusion at first, take shape and
fall into more regular channels, so that the necessity for strong
dealing with them gradually decreases.  I have every reason to desire
that it should cease altogether, and far from the least is my regard
for the opinions and wishes of those who, like the meeting at Albany,
declare their purpose to sustain the government in every
constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the rebellion.  Still,
I must continue to do so much as may seem to be required by the
public safety.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
June 14, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

SIR:--Your note of this morning is received.  You will co-operate by
the revenue cutters under your direction with the navy in arresting
rebel depredations on American commerce and transportation and in
capturing rebels engaged therein.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL TYLER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 14, 1863.

GENERAL TYLER, Martinsburg:
Is Milroy invested so that he cannot fall back to Harper's Ferry?

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A "BESIEGED" GENERAL

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL TYLER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 14, 1863.

GENERAL TYLER, Martinsburg:

If you are besieged, how do you despatch me?  Why did you not leave
before being besieged?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL KELLEY.

WASHINGTON, June 14, 1863.   1.27 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL KELLEY, Harper's Ferry:

Are the forces at Winchester and Martinsburg making any effort to get
to you?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 14, 1863.3.50 P.M.,

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

So far as we can make out here, the enemy have Muroy surrounded at
Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg.  If they could hold out a few
days, could you help them?  If the head of Lee's army is at
Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank-road between
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim
somewhere; could you not break him?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. C. SCHENCK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 14, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK:

Get General Milroy from Winchester to Harper's Ferry, if possible.
He will be "gobbled up" if he remains, if he is not already past
salvation.

A. LINCOLN,
President, United States.




NEEDS NEW TIRES ON HIS CARRIAGE

TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 15, 1863.

MRS. LINCOLN, Philadelphia, Pa.:

Tolerably well.  Have not rode out much yet, but have at last got new
tires on the carriage wheels and perhaps shall ride out soon.

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR 100,000 MILITIA TO SERVE FOR SIX MONTHS,
JUNE 15, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

Whereas the armed insurrectionary combinations now existing in
several of the States are threatening to make inroads into the States
of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, requiring
immediately an additional military force for the service of the
United States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States
and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof and of the
militia of the several States when called into actual service, do
hereby call into the service of the United States 100,000 militia
from the States following, namely:

From the State of Maryland, 10,000; from the State of Pennsylvania,
50,000; from the State of Ohio, 30,000; from the State of West
Virginia, 10,000--to be mustered into the service of the United
States forthwith and to serve for a period of six months from the
date of such muster into said service, unless sooner discharged; to
be mustered in as infantry, artillery, and cavalry, in proportions
which will be made known through the War Department, which Department
will also designate the several places of rendezvous.  These militia
to be organized according to the rules and regulations of the
volunteer service and such orders as may hereafter be issued.  The
States aforesaid will be respectively credited under the enrollment
act for the militia services entered under this proclamation. In
testimony whereof ...............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO P. KAPP AND OTHERS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
June 10, 1863

FREDERICK KAPP AND OTHERS, New York:

The Governor of New York promises to send us troops, and if he wishes
the assistance of General Fremont and General Sigel, one or both, he
can have it.  If he does not wish them it would but breed confusion
for us to set them to work independently of him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEAGHER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 16, 1863.

GENERAL T. FRANCIS MEAGHER, New York:

Your despatch received.  Shall be very glad for you to raise 3000
Irish troops if done by the consent of and in concert with Governor
Seymour.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 16, 1863.

MRS. LINCOLN, Philadelphia:

It is a matter of choice with yourself whether you come home.  There
is no reason why you should not, that did not exist when you went
away.  As bearing on the question of your coming home, I do not think
the raid into Pennsylvania amounts to anything at all.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL BLISS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 16, 1863.

COL. WILLIAM S. BLISS, New York Hotel:

Your despatch asking whether I will accept "the Loyal Brigade of the
North" is received.  I never heard of that brigade by name and do not
know where it is; yet, presuming it is in New York, I say I will
gladly accept it, if tendered by and with the consent and approbation
of the Governor of that State.  Otherwise not.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, June 16, 1863.10 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

To remove all misunderstanding, I now place you in the strict
military relation to General Halleck of a commander of one of the
armies to the general-in-chief of all the armies.  I have not
intended differently, but as it seems to be differently understood I
shall direct him to give you orders and you to obey them.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON  D. C., June 17, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Mr. Eckert, superintendent in the telegraph office, assures me that
he has sent and will send you everything that comes to the office.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO JOSHUA TEVIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 17, 1863.

JOSHUA TEVIS, Esq., U. S. Attorney, Frankfort, Ky.:

A Mr. Burkner is here shoving a record and asking to be discharged
from a suit in San Francisco, as bail for one Thompson.  Unless the
record shown me is defectively made out I think it can be
successfully defended against.  Please examine the case carefully
and, if you shall be of opinion it cannot be sustained, dismiss it
and relieve me from all trouble about it. Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR TOD.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

June 18, 1863.

GOVERNOR D. TOD, Columbus, O.:

Yours received. I deeply regret that you were not renominated, not
that I have aught against Mr. Brough.  On the contrary, like
yourself, I say hurrah for him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DINGMAN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 18, 1863.

GENERAL A. DINGMAN, Belleville, C. W.:

Thanks for your offer of the Fifteenth Battalion.  I do not think
Washington is in danger.

A. LINCOLN




TO B. B. MALHIOT AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 19, 1863.

MESSRS. B. B. MALHIOT, BRADISH JOHNSON, AND THOMAS COTTMAN.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter, which follows, has been received and
Considered.

"The undersigned, a committee appointed by the planters of the State
of Louisiana, respectfully represent that they have been delegated to
seek of the General Government a full recognition of all the rights
of the State as they existed previous to the passage of an act of
secession, upon the principle of the existence of the State
constitution unimpaired, and no legal act having transpired that
could in any way deprive them of the advantages conferred by that
constitution.   Under this constitution the State wishes to return to
its full allegiance, in the enjoyment of all rights and privileges
exercised by the other States under the Federal Constitution.  With
the view of accomplishing the desired object, we further request that
your Excellency will, as commander-in-chief of the army of the United
States, direct the Military Governor of Louisiana to order an
election, in conformity with the constitution and laws of the State,
on the first Monday of November next, for all State and Federal
officers.
"With high consideration and resect, we have the honor to subscribe
ourselves,
"Your obedient servants,
E. E. MALHIOT.
BRADISH JOHNSON.
THOMAS COTTMAN."

Since receiving the letter, reliable information has reached me that
a respectable portion of the Louisiana people desire to amend their
State constitution, and contemplate holding a State convention for
that object.  This fact alone, as it seems to me, is a sufficient
reason why the General Government should not give the committal you
seek to the existing State constitution.  I may add that, while I do
not perceive how such committal could facilitate our military
operations in Louisiana, I really apprehend it might be so used as to
embarrass them.

As to an election to be held next November, there is abundant time
without any order or proclamation from me just now.  The people of
Louisiana shall not lack an opportunity for a fair election for both
Federal and State officers by want of anything within my power to
give them.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
 June 22, 1863.

GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD.
MY DEAR SIR:--Your despatch, asking in substance whether, in case
Missouri shall adopt gradual emancipation, the General Government
will protect slave owners in that species of property during the
short time it shall be permitted by the State to exist within it, has
been received.  Desirous as I am that emancipation shall be adopted
by Missouri, and believing as I do that gradual can be made better
than immediate for both black and white, except when military
necessity changes the case, my impulse is to say that such protection
would be given.   I cannot know exactly what shape an act of
emancipation may take.   If the period from the initiation to the
final end should be comparatively short, and the act should prevent
persons being sold during that period into more lasting slavery, the
whole would be easier.   I do not wish to pledge the General
Government to the affirmative support of even temporary slavery
beyond what can be fairly claimed under the Constitution.  I suppose,
however, this is not desired, but that it is desired for the military
force of the United States, while in Missouri, to not be used in
subverting the temporarily reserved legal rights in slaves during the
progress of emancipation.  This I would desire also.  I have very
earnestly urged the slave States to adopt emancipation; and it ought
to be, and is, an object with me not to overthrow or thwart what any
of them may in good faith do to that end.  You are therefore
authorized to act in the spirit of this letter in conjunction with
what may appear to be the military necessities of your department.
Although this letter will become public at some time, it is not
intended to be made so now.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, June 22, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

Operator at Leesburg just now says:  "I heard very little firing this
A.M. about daylight, but it seems to have stopped now.  It was in
about the same direction as yesterday, but farther off."

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 23, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR:

You remember that Hon. W. D. Kelly and others are engaged in raising
or trying to raise some colored regiments in Philadelphia.  The
bearer of this, Wilton M. Huput, is a friend of Judge Kelly, as
appears by the letter of the latter.  He is a private in the 112th
Penn.  and has been disappointed in a reasonable expectation of one
of the smaller offices.  He now wants to be a lieutenant in one of
the colored regiments.  If Judge Kelly will say in writing he wishes
to so have him, I am willing for him to be discharged from his
present position, and be so appointed.  If you approve, so indorse
and let him carry the letter to Kelly

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MAJOR VAN VLIET.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 23, 1863.

MAJOR VAN VLIET, New York:

Have you any idea what the news is in the despatch of General Banks
to General Halleck?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL COUCH.

WAR DEPARTMENT, June 24, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL COUCH, Harrisburg, Pa.:

Have you any reports of the enemy moving into Pennsylvania?  And if
any, what?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

WASHINGTON, June 24, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Yorktown, Va.:

We have a despatch from General Grant of the 19th.  Don't think Kirby
Smith took Milliken's Bend since, allowing time to get the news to
Joe Johnston and from him to Richmond.  But it is not absolutely
impossible.  Also have news from Banks to the 16th, I think.  He had
not run away then, nor thought of it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL PECK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 25, 1863.

GENERAL PECK, Suffolk, Va.:

Colonel Derrom, of the Twenty-fifth New Jersey Volunteers, now
mustered out, says there is a man in your hands under conviction for
desertion, who formerly belonged to the above named regiment, and
whose name is Templeton--Isaac F. Templeton, I believe.  The Colonel
and others appeal to me for him.  Please telegraph to me what is the
condition of the case, and if he has not been executed send me the
record of the trial and conviction.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SLOCUM.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 25,1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SLOCUM, Leesburg, Va.:

Was William Gruvier, Company A, Forty-sixth, Pennsylvania, one of the
men executed as a deserter last Friday?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HOOKER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 27, 1863.  8A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER:

It did not come from the newspapers, nor did I believe it, but I
wished to be entirely sure it was a falsehood.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 28, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:

There is nothing going on in Kentucky on the subject of which you
telegraph, except an enrolment.  Before anything is done beyond this,
I will take care to understand the case better than I now do.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BOYLE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1863.

GOVERNOR J. T. BOYLE, Cincinnati, O.:

There is nothing going on in Kentucky on the subject of which you
telegraph, except an enrolment.  Before anything is done beyond this,
I will take care to understand the case better than I now do.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
June 28, 1863.

MAJOR GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

Every place in the Naval school subject to my appointment is full,
and I have one unredeemed promise of more than half a year's
standing.

A. LINCOLN.




FURTHER DEMOCRATIC PARTY CRITICISM

TO M. BIRCHARD AND OTHERS.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
June 29,1863.

MESSRS. M. BIRCHARD, DAVID A. HOUK, et al:

GENTLEMEN:--The resolutions of the Ohio Democratic State convention,
which you present me, together with your introductory and closing
remarks, being in position and argument mainly the same as the
resolutions of the Democratic meeting at Albany, New York, I refer
you to my response to the latter as meeting most of the points in the
former.

This response you evidently used in preparing your remarks, and I
desire no more than that it be used with accuracy.  In a single
reading of your remarks, I only discovered one inaccuracy in matter,
which I suppose you took from that paper.  It is where you say: "The
undersigned are unable to agree with you in the opinion you have
expressed that the Constitution is different in time of insurrection
or invasion from what it is in time of peace and public security."

A recurrence to the paper will show you that I have not expressed the
opinion you suppose.  I expressed the opinion that the Constitution
is different in its application in cases of rebellion or invasion,
involving the public safety, from what it is in times of profound
peace and public security; and this opinion I adhere to, simply
because, by the Constitution itself, things may be done in the one
case which may not be done in the other.

I dislike to waste a word on a merely personal point, but I must
respectfully assure you that you will find yourselves at fault should
you ever seek for evidence to prove your assumption that I "opposed
in discussions before the people the policy of the Mexican war."


You say: "Expunge from the Constitution this limitation upon the
power of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and yet the
other guarantees of personal liberty would remain unchanged."
Doubtless, if this clause of the Constitution, improperly called, as
I think, a limitation upon the power of Congress, were expunged, the
other guarantees would remain the same; but the question is not how
those guarantees would stand with that clause out of the
Constitution, but how they stand with that clause remaining in it, in
case of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety.  If the
liberty could be indulged of expunging that clause, letter and
spirit, I really think the constitutional argument would be with you.

My general view on this question was stated in the Albany response,
and hence I do not state it now.  I only add that, as seems to me,
the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus is the great means through
which the guarantees of personal liberty are conserved and made
available in the last resort; and corroborative of this view is the
fact that Mr. Vallandigham, in the very case in question, under the
advice of able lawyers, saw not where else to go but to the habeas
corpus.  But by the Constitution the benefit of the writ of habeas
corpus itself may be suspended when, in case of rebellion or
invasion, the public safety may require it.

You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may override all
the guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the
public safety when I may choose to say the public safety requires it.
This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me
as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply
a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall
decide, what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or
invasion.

The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for
decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it.  By
necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision
is to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the
time, the people have, under the Constitution, made the
commander-in-chief of their army and navy, is the man who holds the
power and bears the responsibility of making it.  If he uses the
power justly, the same people will probably justify him; if he abuses
it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all the modes they have
reserved to themselves in the Constitution.

The earnestness with which you insist that persons can only, in times
of rebellion, be lawfully dealt with in accordance with the rules for
criminal trials and punishments in times of peace, induces me to add
a word to what I said on that point in the Albany response.

You claim that men may, if they choose, embarrass those whose duty it
is to combat a giant rebellion, and then be dealt with in turn only
as if there were no rebellion.   The Constitution itself rejects this
view.  The military arrests and detentions which have been made,
including those of Mr. Vallandigham, which are not different in
principle from the others, have been for prevention, and not for
punishment--as injunctions to stay injury, as proceedings to keep the
peace; and hence, like proceedings in such cases and for like
reasons, they have not been accompanied with indictments, or trials
by juries, nor in a single case by any punishment whatever, beyond
what is purely incidental to the prevention.  The original sentence
of imprisonment in Mr. Vallandigham's case was to prevent injury to
the military service only, and the modification of it was made as a
less disagreeable mode to him of securing the same prevention.

I am unable to perceive an insult to Ohio in the case of Mr.
Vallandigham.  Quite surely nothing of the sort was or is intended.
I was wholly unaware that Mr. Vallandigham was, at the time of his
arrest, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor until
so informed by your reading to me the resolutions of the convention.
I am grateful to the State of Ohio for many things, especially for
the brave soldiers and officers she has given in the present national
trial to the armies of the Union.

You claim, as I understand, that according to my own position in the
Albany response, Mr. Vallandigham should be released; and this
because, as you claim, he has not damaged the military service by
discouraging enlistments, encouraging desertions, or otherwise; and
that if he had, he should have been turned over to the civil
authorities under the recent acts of Congress.  I certainly do not
know that Mr. Vallandigham has specifically and by direct language
advised against enlistments and in favor of desertion and resistance
to drafting.

We all know that combinations, armed in some instances, to resist the
arrest of deserters began several months ago; that more recently the
like has appeared in resistance to the enrolment preparatory to a
draft; and that quite a number of assassinations have occurred from
the same animus.  These had to be met by military force, and this
again has led to bloodshed and death.  And now, under a sense of
responsibility more weighty and enduring than any which is merely
official, I solemnly declare my belief that this hindrance of the
military, including maiming and murder, is due to the course in which
Mr. Vallindigham has been engaged in a greater degree than to any
other cause; and it is due to him personally in a greater degree than
to any other one man.

These things have been notorious, known to all, and of course known
to Mr. Vallandigham.  Perhaps I would not be wrong to say they
originated with his special friends and adherents.  With perfect
knowledge of them, he has frequently if not constantly made speeches
in Congress and before popular assemblies; and if it can be shown
that, with these things staring him in the face he has ever uttered a
word of rebuke or counsel against them, it will be a fact greatly in
his favor with me, and one of which as yet I am totally ignorant.
When it is known that the whole burden of his speeches has been to
stir up men against the prosecution of the war, and that in the midst
of resistance to it he has not been known in any instance to counsel
against such resistance, it is next to impossible to repel the
inference that he has counseled directly in favor of it.

With all this before their eyes, the convention you represent have
nominated Mr. Vallandigham for governor of Ohio, and both they and
you have declared the purpose to sustain the national Union by all
constitutional means.  But of course they and you in common reserve
to yourselves to decide what are constitutional means; and, unlike
the Albany meeting, you omit to state or intimate that in your
opinion an army is a constitutional means of saving the Union against
a rebellion, or even to intimate that you are conscious of an
existing rebellion being in progress with the avowed object of
destroying that very Union.  At the same time your nominee for
governor, in whose behalf you appeal, is known to you and to the
world to declare against the use of an army to suppress the
rebellion.  Your own attitude, therefore, encourages desertion,
resistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those who
incline to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your
purpose to protect them, and to hope that you will become strong
enough to do so.

After a short personal intercourse with you, gentlemen of the
committee, I cannot say I think you desire this effect to follow your
attitude; but I assure your that both friends and enemies of the
Union look upon it in this light.  It is a substantial hope, and by
consequence a real strength to the enemy.  If it is a false hope, and
one which you would willingly dispel, I will make the way exceedingly
easy.

I send you duplicates of this letter in order that you, or a majority
of you, may, if you choose, indorse your names upon one of them and
return it thus indorsed to me with the understanding that those
signing are thereby committed to the following propositions and to
nothing else:

1.  That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object
and tendency of which is to destroy the National Union; and that, in
your opinion, an army and navy are constitutional means for
suppressing that rebellion;

2.  That no one of you will do anything which, in his own judgment,
will tend to hinder the increase, or favor the decrease, or lessen
the efficiency of the army or navy while engaged in the effort to
suppress that rebellion; and

3.  That each of you will, in his sphere, do all he can to have the
officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy, while engaged in
the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise
well provided for and supported.

And with the further understanding that upon receiving the letter and
names thus indorsed, I will cause them to be published, which
publication shall be, within itself, a revocation of  the order in
relation to Mr. Vallandigham.   It will not escape observation that I
consent to the release of Mr. Vallandigham upon terms not embracing
any pledge from him or from others as to what he will or will not do.
I do this because he is not present to speak for himself, or to
authorize others to speak for him; and because I should expect that
on his returning he would not put himself practically in antagonism
with the position of his friends.  But I do it chiefly because I
thereby prevail on other influential gentlemen of Ohio to so define
their position as to be of immense value to the army--thus more than
compensating for the consequences of any mistake in allowing Mr.
Vallandigham to return; so that, on the whole, the public safety will
not have suffered by it.  Still, in regard to Mr. Vallandigham and
all others, I must hereafter, as heretofore, do so much as the public
safety may seem to require.

I have the honor to be respectfully yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR PARKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 30, 1863.  10.55

GOVERNOR PARKER, Trenton, N.J.:

Your despatch of yesterday received.  I really think the attitude of
the enemy's army in Pennsylvania presents us the best opportunity we
have had since the war began.  I think you will not see the foe in
New Jersey.  I beg you to be assured that no one out of my position
can know so well as if he were in it the difficulties and
involvements of replacing General McClellan in command, and this
aside from any imputations upon him.

Please accept my sincere thanks for what you have done and are doing
to get troops forward.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO A. K. McCLURE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, June 30, 1863.

A. K. McCLURE, Philadelphia:

Do we gain anything by opening one leak to stop another?   Do we gain
anything by quieting one merely to open another, and probably a
larger one?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL COUCH.
[Cipher]
WASHINGTON CITY, June 30, 1863.  3.23 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL COUCH, Harrisburg, Pa.:

I judge by absence of news that the enemy is not crossing or pressing
up to the Susquehanna.  Please tell me what you know of his
movements.

A. LINCOLN




TO GENERAL D. HUNTER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 30, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER.

MY DEAR GENERAL:--I have just received your letter of the 25th of
June.

I assure you, and you may feel authorized in stating, that the recent
change of commanders in the Department of the South was made for no
reasons which convey any imputation upon your known energy,
efficiency, and patriotism; but for causes which seemed sufficient,
while they were in no degree incompatible with the respect and esteem
in which I have always held you as a man and an officer.

I cannot, by giving my consent to a publication of whose details I
know nothing, assume the responsibility of whatever you may write.
In this matter your own sense of military propriety must be your
guide, and the regulations of the service your rule of conduct.

I am very truly your friend,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 3, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, Ohio:

Private Downey, of the Twentieth or Twenty-sixth Kentucky Infantry,
is said to have been sentenced to be shot for desertion to-day.  If
so, respite the execution until I can see the record.

A. LINCOLN.




REASSURING SON IN COLLEGE

TELEGRAM TO ROBERT T, LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 3,1863.

ROBERT T. LINCOLN, Esq., Cambridge, Mass.:
Don't he uneasy.  Your mother very slightly hurt by her fall.

A.L.
Please send at once.



ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEWS FROM GETTYSBURG.

WASHINGTON,

July 4, 10.30 A.M.

The President announces to the country that news from the Army of the
Potomac, up to 10 P.M. of the 3d, is such as to cover that army with
the highest honor, to promise a great success to the cause of the
Union, and to claim the condolence of all for the many gallant
fallen; and that for this he especially desires that on this day He
whose will, not ours, should ever be done be everywhere remembered
and reverenced with profoundest gratitude.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FRENCH.
[Cipher]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 5, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL FRENCH, Fredericktown, Md.:

I see your despatch about destruction of pontoons.  Cannot the enemy
ford the river?

A. LINCOLN.




CONTINUED FAILURE TO PURSUE ENEMY

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

SOLDIERS' HOME, WASHINGTON, JULY 6 1863.7 P.M.,

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

I left the telegraph office a good deal dissatisfied.  You know I did
not like the phrase--in Orders, No.  68, I believe--"Drive the
invaders from our soil."  Since that, I see a despatch from General
French, saying the enemy is crossing his wounded over the river in
flats, without saying why he does not stop it, or even intimating a
thought that it ought to be stopped.  Still later, another despatch
from General Pleasonton, by direction of General Meade, to General
French, stating that the main army is halted because it is believed
the rebels are concentrating "on the road towards Hagerstown, beyond
Fairfield," and is not to move until it is ascertained that the
rebels intend to evacuate Cumberland Valley.

These things appear to me to be connected with a purpose to cover
Baltimore and Washington and to get the enemy across the river again
without a further collision, and they do not appear connected with a
purpose to prevent his crossing and to destroy him.  I do fear the
former purpose is acted upon and the latter rejected.

If you are satisfied the latter purpose is entertained, and is
judiciously pursued, I am content.  If you are not so satisfied,
please look to it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,

JULY 7, 1863.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet
I will not say I thank you for this call; but I do most sincerely
thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called.  How
long ago is it Eighty-odd years since, on the Fourth of July, for the
first time in the history of the world, a nation, by its
representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth "that
all men are created equal."  That was the birthday of the United
States of America.  Since then the Fourth of July has had several
very peculiar recognitions.  The two men most distinguished in the
framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams, the one having penned it, and the other sustained it the most
forcibly in debate--the only two of the fifty-five who signed it and
were elected Presidents of the United States.  Precisely fifty years
after they put their hands to the paper, it pleased Almighty God to
take both from this stage of action.  This was indeed an
extraordinary and remarkable event in our history.  Another
President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence
on the same day and month of the year; and now on this last Fourth of
July just passed, when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom of
which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were
created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and
army on that very day.  And not only so, but in the succession of
battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly
fought that they might be called one great battle, on the first,
second, and third of the month of July; and on the fourth the cohorts
of those who opposed the Declaration that all men are created equal,
"turned tail" and run.

Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme, and the occasion for a speech,
but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the occasion.  I would
like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and
soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of
their country from the beginning of the war.  These are trying
occasions, not only in success, but for the want of success.  I
dislike to mention the name of one single officer, lest I might do
wrong to those I might forget.  Recent events bring up glorious
names, and particularly prominent ones; but these I will not mention.
Having said this much, I will now take the music.




SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG TO GENERAL GRANT

TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK
TO GENERAL  G. C. MEADE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

I have received from the President the following note, which I
respectfully communicate:

"We have certain information that Vicksburg surrendered to General
Grant on the Fourth of July.  Now if General Meade can complete his
work, so gloriously prosecuted this far, by the literal or
substantial destruction of Lee's army, the rebellion will be over.

"Yours truly,
"A. LINCOLN."

H. W. HALLECK.
General-in-Chief.




TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK
TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Frederick, Md.:

There is reliable information that the enemy is crossing at
Williamsport.  The opportunity to attack his divided forces should
not be lost.  The President is urgent and anxious that your army
should move against him by forced marches.

H. W. HALLECK,
Genera1-in-Chief




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 8, 1863.12.30 P.M.

GENERAL LORENZO THOMAS, Harrisburg, Pa.:

Your despatch of this morning to the Secretary of War is before me.
The forces you speak of will be of no imaginable service if they
cannot go forward with a little more expedition.  Lee is now passing
the Potomac faster than the forces you mention are passing Carlisle.
Forces now beyond Carlisle to be joined by regiments still at
Harrisburg, and the united force again to join Pierce somewhere, and
the whole to move down the Cumberland Valley, will in my
unprofessional opinion be quite as likely to capture the "man in the
moon" as any part of Lee's army.

A. LINCOLN.




NEWS OF GRANT'S CAPTURE OF VICKSBURG

TELEGRAM TO E. D. SMITH.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8, 1863.

E. DELAFIELD SMITH, New York:

Your kind despatch in behalf of self and friends is gratefully
received.  Capture of Vicksburg confirmed by despatch from General
Grant himself.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO F. F. LOWE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8, 1863.

HON. F. F. LOWE, San Francisco, Cal.:

There is no doubt that General Meade, now commanding the Army of the
Potomac, beat Lee at Gettysburg, Pa., at the end of a three days'
battle, and that the latter is now crossing the Potomac at
Williamsport over the swollen stream and with poor  means of
crossing, and closely pressed by Meade.  We also have despatches
rendering it entirely certain that Vicksburg surrendered to General
Grant on the glorious old 4th.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO L. SWETT AND P. F. LOWE.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D.C., July 9, 1863.

HON. LEONARD SWETT, HON. F. F. LOWE, San Francisco, Cal.:

Consult together and do not have a riot, or great difficulty about
delivering possession.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. K. DUBOIS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 11,1863.  9 A.M.

HON. J. K. DUBOIS, Springfield, Ill.:

It is certain that, after three days' fighting at Gettysburg, Lee
withdrew and made for the Potomac, that he found the river so swollen
as to prevent his crossing; that he is still this side, near
Hagerstown and Williamsport, preparing to defend himself; and that
Meade is close upon him, and preparing to attack him, heavy
skirmishing having occurred nearly all day yesterday.

I am more than satisfied with what has happened north of the Potomac
so far, and am anxious and hopeful for what is to come.

A. LINCOLN.

[Nothing came!  Lee was allowed to escape again and the war went on
for another two years.  D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, July 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

How many rebel prisoners captured within Maryland and Pennsylvania
have reached Baltimore within this month of July?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 13, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT:

MY DEAR GENERAL:--I do not remember that you and I ever met
personally.  I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment of the
almost inestimable service you have done the Country.  I write to say
a word further.  When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I
thought you should do what you finally did--march the troops across
the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below;
and I never had any faith except a general hope that you knew better
than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed.
When you dropped below, and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and
vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General
Banks; and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared
it was a mistake.  I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment
that you were right and I was wrong.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 13, 1863.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD. St. Louis, Mo.:

I regret to learn of the arrest of the Democrat editor.  I fear this
loses you the middle position I desired you to occupy.  I have not
learned which of the two letters I wrote you it was that the Democrat
published, but I care very little for the publication of any letter I
have written.  Please spare me the trouble this is likely to bring.

A. LINCOLN.




SON IN COLLEGE DOES NOT WRITE HIS PARENTS

TELEGRAM TO R. T. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON D.C., July 14, 1863.

ROBERT T. LINCOLN: New York, Fifth Avenue Hotel:

Why do I hear no more of you?

A. LINCOLN.




INTIMATION OF ARMISTICE PROPOSALS

FROM JAMES R. GILMORE
TO GOVERNOR VANCE OF NORTH CAROLINA,
WITH THE PRESIDENT'S INDORSEMENT.

PRESIDENT'S ROOM, WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON,

July [15?] 1864.


HIS EXCELLENCY ZEBULON B. VANCE.

MY DEAR SIR:--My former business partner, Mr. Frederic Kidder, of
Boston, has forwarded to me a letter he has recently received from
his brother, Edward Kidder, of Wilmington, in which (Edward Kidder)
says that he has had an interview with you in which you expressed an
anxiety for any peace compatible with honor; that you regard slavery
as already dead, and the establishment of the Confederacy as
hopeless; and that you should exert all your influence to bring about
any reunion that would admit the South on terms of perfect equality
with the North.

On receipt of this letter I lost no time in laying it before the
President of the United States, who expressed great gratification at
hearing such sentiments from you, one of the most influential and
honored of the Southern governors, and he desires me to say that he
fully shares your anxiety for the restoration of peace between the
States and for a reunion of all the States on the basis of the
abolition of slavery--the bone we are fighting over--and the full
reinstatement of every Confederate citizen in all the rights of
citizenship in our common country.  These points conceded, the
President authorizes me to say that he will be glad to receive
overtures from any man, or body of men, who have authority to control
the armies of the Confederacy; and that he and the United States
Congress will be found very liberal on all collateral points that may
come up in the settlement.

His views on the collateral points that may naturally arise, the
President desires me to say he will communicate to you through me if
you should suggest the personal interview that Mr. Edward Kidder
recommends in his letter to his brother.  In that case you will
please forward to me, through Mr. Kidder, your official permit, as
Governor of North Carolina, to enter and leave the State, and to
remain in it in safety during the pendency of these negotiations,
which, I suppose, should be conducted in entire secrecy until they
assume an official character.  With high consideration, I am,

Sincerely yours,

JAMES R. GILMORE.

 [Indorsement.]
This letter has been written in my presence, has been read by me, and
has my entire approval.
A.L.




PROCLAMATION FOR THANKSGIVING, JULY 15, 1863
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and
prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the army and navy
of the United States victories on land and on the sea so signal and
so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented
confidence that the Union of these States will be maintained, their
Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently
restored.  But these victories have been accorded not without
sacrifices of life, limb, health, and liberty, incurred by brave,
loyal, and patriotic citizens.  Domestic affliction in every part of
the country follows in the train of these fearful bereavements.  It
is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the
Almighty Father, and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs
and in these sorrows.

Now, therefore, be it known that I do set apart Thursday, the 6th day
of August next, to be observed as a day for national thanksgiving,
praise, and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to
assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and,
in the forms approved by their own consciences, render the homage due
to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the
nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to
subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless
and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of the insurgents, to guide
the counsels of the Government with wisdom adequate to so great a
national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation
throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through
the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges have been,
brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate, and finally to lead the
whole nation through the paths of repentance and submission to the
Divine Will back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal
peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done. at the city of Washington, this fifteenth day of July, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of
the independence of the United States of America the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By, the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO L. SWETT.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, July 15, 1863.

HON. L SWETT, San Francisco, Cal.:

Many persons are telegraphing me from California, begging me for the
peace of the State to suspend the military enforcement of the writ of
possession in the Almaden case, while you are the single one who
urges the contrary.  You know I would like to oblige you, but it
seems to me my duty in this case is the other way.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SIMON CAMERON.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, JULY 15, 1863.

HON. SIMON CAMERON, Harrisburg, Pa.:

Your despatch of yesterday received.  Lee was already across the
river when you sent it.  I would give much to be relieved of the
impression that Meade, Couch, Smith, and all since the battle at
Gettysburg, have striven only to get Lee over the river without
another fight.  Please tell me, if you know, who was the one corps
commander who was for fighting in the council of war on Sunday night.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. O. BROADHEAD.

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 15, 1863.

J. O. BROADHEAD, St. Louis, Mo.:

The effect on political position of McKee's arrest will not be
relieved any by its not having been made with that purpose.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL LANE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 17 1863.

HON. S. H. LANE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Governor Carney has not asked to [have] General Blunt
removed, or interfered with, in his military operations.  He has
asked that he, the Governor, be allowed to commission officers for
troops raised in Kansas, as other governors of loyal States do; and I
think he is right in this.

He has asked that General Blunt shall not take persons charged with
civil crimes out of the hands of the courts and turn them over to
mobs to be hung; and I think he is right in this also.  He has asked
that General Ewing's department be extended to include all Kansas;
and I have not determined whether this is right or not.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR MORTON.

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 18, 1863.

GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON, Indianapolis:

What do you remember about the case of John O. Brown, convicted of
mutinous conduct and sentenced to death?  What do you desire about
it?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR PARKER

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON

July 20, 1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY JOEL PARKER, Governor of New Jersey.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 15th has been received, and considered by the
Secretary of War and myself.  I was pained to be informed this
morning by the Provost-Marshal-General that New Jersey is now behind
twelve thousand, irrespective of the draft.  I did not have time to
ascertain by what rules this was made out; and I shall be very glad
if it shall, by any means, prove to be incorrect.  He also tells me
that eight thousand will be about the quota of New Jersey on the
first draft; and the Secretary of War says the first draft in that
State would not be made for some time in any event.  As every man
obtained otherwise lessens the draft so much, and this may supersede
it altogether, I hope you will push forward your volunteer regiments
as fast as possible.

It is a very delicate matter to postpone the draft in one State,
because of the argument it furnishes others to have postponement
also.  If we could have a reason in one case which would be good if
presented in all cases, we could act upon it.

I will thank you, therefore, to inform me, if you can, by what day,
at the earliest, you can promise to have ready to be mustered into
the United States service the eight thousand men.

If you can make a reliable promise (I mean one which you can rely on
yourself) of this sort, it will be of great value, if the day is not
too remote.

I beg you to be assured I wish to avoid the difficulties you dread as
much as yourself.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN




TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON D.C.
JULY 20, 1863

MAJOR GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD.

MY DEAR GENERAL:--I have received and read your letter of the 14th of
July.

I think the suggestion you make, of discontinuing proceedings against
Mr. McKee, a very proper one.  While I admit that there is an
apparent impropriety in the publication of the letter mentioned,
without my consent or yours, it is still a case where no evil could
result, and which I am entirely willing to overlook.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD

WASHINGTON, D.C. JULY 22, 1863

MAJOR GENERAL SCHOFIELD, St.  Louis, Mo.:

The following despatch has been placed in my hands.  Please look to
the subject of it.

LEXINGTON, Mo., JULY 21, 1863
HON. S C. POMEROY:
Under Orders No.63  the sheriff is arresting slaves of rebels inside
our lines, and returning them in great numbers.   Can  he do it?
Answer.  GOULD.

A. LINCOLN




TO POSTMASTER-GENERAL BLAIR

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
JULY 24, 1863.

HON. POSTMASTER-GENERAL

SIR:-Yesterday little indorsements of mine went to you in two cases
of postmasterships sought for widows whose husbands have fallen in
the battles of this war.  These cases occurring on the same day
brought me to reflect more attentively than I had before done, as to
what is fairly due from us herein the dispensing of patronage toward
the men who, by fighting our battles, bear the chief burden of
serving our country.  My conclusion is that, other claims and
qualifications being equal, they have the better right and this is
especially applicable to the disabled and the soldier, deceased
soldier's family.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN




TO SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 25, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

SIR:--Certain matters have come to my notice, and considered by me,
which induce me to believe that it will conduce to the public
interest for you to add to the general instructions given to our
naval commanders in relation to contraband trade propositions
substantially as follows, to wit:

First.  You will avoid the reality, and as far as possible the
appearance, of using any neutral port to watch neutral vessels and
then to dart out and seize them on their departure.

NOTE.--Complaint is made that this has been practiced at the port of
St Thomas, which practice, if it exists, is disapproved and must
cease.

Second.  You will not in any case detain the crew of a captured
neutral vessel or any other subject of a neutral power on board such
vessel, as prisoners of war or otherwise, except the small number
necessary as witnesses in the prize court.

NOTE.-The practice here forbidden is also charged to exist, which, if
true, is disapproved and must cease.

My dear sir, it is not intended to be insinuated that you have been
remiss in the performance of the arduous and responsible duties of
your department, which, I take pleasure in affirming, has in your
hands been conducted with admirable success.  Yet, while your
subordinates are almost of necessity brought into angry collision
with the subjects of foreign states, the representatives of those
states and yourself do not come into immediate contact for the
purpose of keeping the peace, in spite of such collisions.  At that
point there is an ultimate and heavy responsibility upon me.

What I propose is in strict accordance with international law, and is
therefore unobjectionable; whilst, if it does no other good, it will
contribute to sustain a considerable portion of the present British
ministry in their places, who, if displaced, are sure to be replaced
by others more unfavorable to us.

Your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN




LETTER TO GOVERNOR PARKER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

July 25, 1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR JOEL PARKER.

SIR:--Yours of the 21st is received, and I have taken time and
considered and discussed the subject with the Secretary of War and
Provost-Marshal General, in order, if possible, to make you a more
favorable answer than I finally find myself able to do.

It is a vital point with us to not have a special stipulation with
the governor of any one State, because it would breed trouble in
many, if not all, other States; and my idea was when I wrote you, as
it still is, to get a point of time to which we could wait, on the
reason that we were not ready ourselves to proceed, and which might
enable you to raise the quota of your State, in whole, or in large
part, without the draft.  The points of time you fix are much farther
off than I had hoped.  We might have got along in the way I have
indicated for twenty, or possibly thirty, days.  As it stands, the
best I can say is that every volunteer you will present us within
thirty days from this date, fit and ready to be mustered into the
United States service, on the usual terms, shall be pro tanto an
abatement of your quota of the draft.  That quota I can now state at
eight thousand seven hundred and eighty-three (8783).  No draft from
New Jersey, other than for the above quota, will be made before an
additional draft, common to [all] the States, shall be required; and
I may add that if we get well through with this draft, I entertain a
strong hope that any further one may never be needed.  This
expression of hope, however, must not be construed into a promise.

As to conducting the draft by townships, I find it would require such
a waste of labor already done, and such an additional amount of it,
and such a loss of time, as to make it, I fear, inadmissible.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--Since writing the above, getting additional information, I am
enabled to say that the draft may be made in subdistricts, as the
enrolment has been made, or is in process of making.  This will
amount practically to drafting by townships, as the enrollment
subdistricts are generally about the extent of townships.
A.L.




To GENERAL G. G. MEADE.
(Private.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 27, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE:

I have not thrown General Hooker away; and therefore I would like to
know whether it would be agreeable to you, all things considered, for
him to take a corps under you, if he himself is willing to do so.
Write me in perfect freedom, with the assurance that I will not
subject you to any embarrassment by making your letter or its
contents known to any one.  I wish to know your wishes before I
decide whether to break the subject to him.  Do not lean a hair's
breadth against your own feelings, or your judgment of the public
service, on the idea of gratifying me.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. B. BURNSIDE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 27, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:

Let me explain.  In General Grant's first despatch after the fall of
Vicksburg, he said, among other things, he would send the Ninth Corps
to you.  Thinking it would be pleasant to you, I asked the Secretary
of War to telegraph you the news.  For some reasons never mentioned
to us by General Grant, they have not been sent, though we have seen
outside intimations that they took part in the expedition against
Jackson.  General Grant is a copious worker and fighter, but a very
meager writer or telegrapher.  No doubt he changed his purpose in
regard to the Ninth Corps for some sufficient reason, but has
forgotten to notify us of it.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
July 29, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

Seeing General Meade's despatch of yesterday to yourself causes me to
fear that he supposes the Government here is demanding of him to
bring on a general engagement with Lee as soon as possible.  I am
claiming no such thing of him.  In fact, my judgment is against it;
which judgment, of course, I will yield if yours and his are the
contrary.  If he could not safely engage Lee at Williamsport, it
seems absurd to suppose he can safely engage him now, when he has
scarcely more than two thirds of the force he had at Williamsport,
while it must be that Lee has been reinforced.  True, I desired
General Meade to pursue Lee across the Potomac, hoping, as has proved
true, that he would thereby clear the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
and get some advantages by harassing him on his retreat.  These being
past, I am unwilling he should now get into a general engagement on
the impression that we here are pressing him, and I shall be glad for
you to so inform him, unless your own judgment is against it.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 29, 1863

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

SIR:--Can we not renew the effort to organize a force to go to
western Texas?

Please consult with the general-in-chief on the subject.

If the Governor of New Jersey shall furnish any new regiments, might
not they be put into such an expedition?  Please think of it.

I believe no local object is now more desirable.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER OF RETALIATION.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 30, 1863.

It is the duty of every government to give protection to its
citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition, and especially to
those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service.  The
law of nations and the usages and customs of war, as carried on by
civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment
of prisoners of war as public enemies.  To sell or enslave any
captured person, on account of his color and for no offense against
the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the
civilization of the age.

The Government of the United States will give the same protection to
all its soldiers; and if the enemy shall sell or enslave any one
because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation
upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession.

It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States
killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be
executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into
slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public
works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released
and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 31, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL HURLBUT:

Your letter by Mr. Dana was duly received.  I now learn that your
resignation has reached the War Department.  I also learn that an
active command has been assigned you by General Grant.  The Secretary
of War and General Halleck are very partial to you, as you know I
also am.  We all wish you to reconsider the question of resigning;
not that we would wish to retain you greatly against your wish and
interest, but that your decision may be at least a very well-
considered one.

I understand that Senator [William K.] Sebastian, of Arkansas, thinks
of offering to resume his place in the Senate.  Of course the Senate,
and not I, would decide whether to admit or reject him.   Still I
should feel great interest in the question.  It may be so presented
as to be one of the very greatest national importance; and it may be
otherwise so presented as to be of no more than temporary personal
consequence to him.

The Emancipation Proclamation applies to Arkansas.  I think it is
valid in law, and will be so held by the courts.  I think I shall not
retract or repudiate it.  Those who shall have tasted actual freedom
I believe can never be slaves or quasi-slaves again.  For the rest, I
believe some plan substantially being gradual emancipation would be
better for both white and black.   The Missouri plan recently
adopted, I do not object to on account of the time for ending the
institution; but I am sorry the beginning should have been postponed
for seven years, leaving all that time to agitate for the repeal of
the whole thing.  It should begin at once, giving at least the
new-born a vested interest in freedom which could not be taken away.
If Senator Sebastian could come with something of this sort from
Arkansas, I, at least, should take great interest in his case; and I
believe a single individual will have scarcely done the world so
great a service.  See him if you can, and read this to him; but
charge him not to make it public for the present.  Write me again.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.
ALBANY, August 1, 1863.  Recvd 2 P.M.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

I ask that the draft be suspended in this State until I can send you
a communication I am preparing.

HORATIO SEYMOUR.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 1, 1863.  4 P.M.

HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, Albany, N.Y.:

By what day may I expect your communication to reach me?  Are you
anxious about any part except the city and vicinity?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FOSTER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 3, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL FOSTER (or whoever may be in command of the military
department with headquarters at Fort Monroe, Va.):

If Dr. Wright, on trial at Norfolk, has been or shall be convicted,
send me a transcript of his trial and conviction, and do not let
execution be done upon him until my further order.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 5,1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL BANKS:

While I very well know what I would be glad for Louisiana to do, it
is quite a different thing for me to assume direction of the matter.
I would be glad for her to make a new constitution, recognizing the
emancipation proclamation, and adopting emancipation in those parts
of the State to which the proclamation does not apply.  And while she
is at it, I think it would not be objectionable for her to adopt some
practical system by which the two races could gradually live
themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out
better prepared for the new.  Education for young blacks should be
included in the plan.  After all, the power or element of "contract"
may be sufficient for this probationary period, and by its simplicity
and flexibility may be the better.

As an antislavery man, I have a motive to desire emancipation which
proslavery men do not have but even they have strong enough reason to
thus place themselves again under the shield of the Union, and to
thus perpetually hedge against the recurrence of the scenes through
which we are now passing.

Governor Shepley has informed me that Mr. Durant is now taking a
registry, with a view to the election of a constitutional convention
in Louisiana.  This, to me, appears proper.  If such convention were
to ask my views, I could present little else than what I now say to
you.  I think the thing should be pushed forward, so that, if
possible, its mature work may reach here by the meeting of Congress.

For my own part, I think I shall not, in any event, retract the
emancipation proclamation: nor, as executive, ever return to slavery
any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any
of the acts of Congress.

If Louisiana shall send members to Congress, their admission to seats
will depend, as you know, upon the respective Houses, and not upon
the President.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 7, 1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY HORATIO SEYMOUR, Governor of New York:

Your communication of the 3rd instant has been received and
attentively considered.

I cannot consent to suspend the draft in New York, as you request,
because, among other reasons, time is too important.

By the figures you send, which I presume are correct, the twelve
districts represented fall into two classes of eight and four
respectively.  The disparity of the quotas for the draft in these two
classes is certainly very striking, being the difference between an
average of 2200 in one class and 4864 in the other.  Assuming that
the districts are equal one to another in entire population, as
required by the plan on which they were made, this disparity is such
as to require attention.  Much of it, however, I suppose will be
accounted for by the fact that so many more persons fit for soldiers
are in the city than are in the country who have too recently arrived
from other parts of the United States and from Europe to be either
included in the census of 1860, or to have voted in 1862.  Still,
making due allowance for this, I am yet unwilling to stand upon it as
an entirely sufficient explanation of the great disparity.

I shall direct the draft to proceed in all the districts, drawing,
however, at first from each of the four districts--to wit, the
Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth--only, 2200 being the average quota
of the other class.  After this drawing, these four districts, and
also the Seventeenth and Twenty-ninth, shall be carefully re-
enrolled; and, if you please, agents of yours may witness every step
of the process.  Any deficiency which may appear by the new enrolment
will be supplied by a special draft for that object, allowing due
credit for volunteers who may be obtained from these districts
respectively during the interval; and at all points, so far as
consistent with practical convenience, due credits shall be given for
volunteers, and your Excellency shall be notified of the time fixed
for commencing the draft in each district.

I do not object to abide a decision of the United States Supreme
Court, or of the judges thereof, on the constitutionality of the
draft law.  In fact, I should be willing to facilitate the obtaining
of it.  But I cannot consent to lose the time while it is being
obtained.  We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand,
drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very much
as a butcher drives bullocks into the slaughter-pen.  No time is
wasted, no argument is used.  This produces an army which will soon
turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they
shall not be sustained by recruits as they should be.  It produces an
army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side if we first waste
time to re-experiment with the volunteer system, already deemed by
Congress, and palpably, in fact, so far exhausted as to be
inadequate; and then more time to obtain a court decision as to
whether a law is constitutional, which requires a part of those not
now in the service to go to the aid of those who are already in it;
and still more time to determine with absolute certainty that we get
those who are to go in the precisely legal proportion to those who
are not to go.  My purpose is to be in my action just and
constitutional, and yet practical, in performing the important duty
with which I am charged, of maintaining the unity and the free
principles of our common country.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON,
August 9, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL GRANT:

I see by a despatch of yours that you incline quite strongly toward
an expedition against Mobile.  This would appear tempting to me also,
were it not that in view of recent events in Mexico I am greatly
impressed with the importance of re-establishing the national
authority in western Texas as soon as possible.  I am not making an
order, however; that I leave, for the present at least, to the
general-in-chief.

A word upon another subject: General Thomas has gone again to the
Mississippi Valley, with the view of raising colored troops.  I have
no reason to doubt that you are doing what you reasonably can upon
the same subject.  I believe it is a resource which if vigorously
applied now will soon close the contest.  It works doubly, weakening
the enemy and strengthening us.  We were not fully ripe for it until
the river was opened.  Now, I think at least one hundred thousand can
and ought to be rapidly organized along its shores, relieving all
white troops to serve elsewhere.  Mr. Dana understands you as
believing that the Emancipation Proclamation has helped some in your
military operations.  I am very glad if this is so.

Did you receive a short letter from me dated the 13th of July?

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 10, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL ROSECRANS:

Yours of the 1st was received two days ago.  I think you must have
inferred more than General Halleck has intended, as to any
dissatisfaction of mine with you.  I am sure you, as a reasonable
man, would not have been wounded could you have heard all my words
and seen all my thoughts in regard to you.   I have not abated in my
kind feeling for and confidence in you.  I have seen most of your
despatches to General Halleck--probably all of them.  After Grant
invested Vicksburg I was very anxious lest Johnston should overwhelm
him from the outside, and when it appeared certain that part of
Bragg's force had gone and was going to Johnston, it did seem to me
it was exactly the proper time for you to attack Bragg with what
force he had left.  In all kindness let me say it so seems to me yet.
Finding from your despatches to General Halleck that your judgment
was different, and being very anxious for Grant, I, on one occasion,
told General Halleck I thought he should direct you to decide at once
to immediately attack Bragg or to stand on the defensive and send
part of your force to Grant.  He replied he had already so directed
in substance.  Soon after, despatches from Grant abated my anxiety
for him, and in proportion abated my anxiety about any movement of
yours.  When afterward, however, I saw a despatch of yours arguing
that the right time for you to attack Bragg was not before, but would
be after, the fall of Vicksburg, it impressed me very strangely, and
I think I so stated to the Secretary of War and General Halleck.  It
seemed no other than the proposition that you could better fight
Bragg when Johnston should be at liberty to return and assist him
than you could before he could so return to his assistance.

Since Grant has been entirely relieved by the fall of Vicksburg, by
which Johnston is also relieved, it has seemed to me that your chance
for a stroke has been considerably diminished, and I have not been
pressing you directly or indirectly.  True, I am very anxious for
East Tennessee to be occupied by us; but I see and appreciate the
difficulties you mention.  The question occurs, Can the thing be done
at all?  Does preparation advance at all?  Do you not consume
supplies as fast as you get them forward?  Have you more animals to-
day than you had at the battle of Stone's River?  And yet have not
more been furnished you since then than your entire present stock?  I
ask the same questions as to your mounted force.

Do not misunderstand: I am not casting blame upon you; I rather think
by great exertion you can get to East Tennessee; but a very important
question is, Can you stay there?  I make no order in the case--that I
leave to General Halleck and yourself.

And now be assured once more that I think of you in all kindness and
confidence, and that I am not watching you with an evil eye.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON,
August 11.1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY HORATIO  SEYMOUR,
Governor of New York:

Yours of the 8th, with Judge-Advocate-General Waterbury's report, was
received to-day.

Asking you to remember that I consider time as being very important,
both to the general cause of the country and to the soldiers in the
field, I beg to remind you that I waited, at your request, from the
1st until the 6th inst., to receive your communication dated the 3d.
In view of its great length, and the known time and apparent care
taken in its preparation, I did not doubt that it contained your full
case as you desired to present it.  It contained the figures for
twelve districts, omitting the other nineteen, as I suppose, because
you found nothing to complain of as to them.  I answered accordingly.
In doing so I laid down the principle to which I purpose adhering,
which is to proceed with the draft, at the same time employing
infallible means to avoid any great wrong.  With the communication
received to-day you send figures for twenty-eight districts,
including the twelve sent before, and still omitting three, for which
I suppose the enrolments are not yet received.  In looking over the
fuller list of twenty-eight districts, I find that the quotas for
sixteen of them are above 2000 and below 2700, while, of the rest,
six are above 2700 and six are below 2000.   Applying the principle
to these new facts, the Fifth and Seventh districts must be added to
the four in which the quotas have already been reduced to 2200 for
the first draft; and with these four others just be added to those to
be re-enrolled.  The correct case will then stand: the quotas of the
Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth districts fixed at
2200 for the first draft.  The Provost-Marshal-General informs me
that the drawing is already completed in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth,
Eighteenth, Twenty-second, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-
seventh, Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth districts.   In
the others, except the three outstanding, the drawing will be made
upon the quotas as now fixed.  After the first draft, the Second,
Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth,
Twenty-first, Twenty-fifth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirty-first will be
enrolled for the purpose and in the manner stated in my letter of the
7th inst. The same principle will be applied to the now outstanding
districts when they shall come in.  No part of my former letter is
repudiated by reason of not being restated in this, or for any other
cause.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL J. A. McCLERNAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 12, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL McCLERNAND.

MY DEAR SIR:--Our friend William G. Greene has just presented a kind
letter in regard to yourself, addressed to me by our other friends
Yates, Hatch, and Dubois.

I doubt whether your present position is more painful to you than to
myself.  Grateful for the patriotic stand so early taken by you in
this life-and-death struggle of the nation, I have done whatever has
appeared practicable to advance you and the public interest together.
 No charges, with a view to a trial, have been preferred against you
by any one; nor do I suppose any will be.   All there is, so far as I
have heard, is General Grant's statement of his reasons for relieving
you.  And even this I have not seen or sought to see; because it is a
case, as appears to me, in which I could do nothing without doing
harm.  General Grant and yourself have been conspicuous in our most
important successes; and for me to interfere and thus magnify a
breach between you could not but be of evil effect.  Better leave it
where the law of the case has placed it.  For me to force you back
upon General Grant would be forcing him to resign.  I cannot give you
a new command, because we have no forces except such as already have
commanders.

I am constantly pressed by those who scold before they think, or
without thinking at all, to give commands respectively to Fremont,
McClellan, Butler, Sigel, Curtis, Hunter, Hooker, and perhaps others,
when, all else out of the way, I have no commands to give them.  This
is now your case; which, as I have said, pains me not less than it
does you.  My belief is that the permanent estimate of what a general
does in the field is fixed by the "cloud of witnesses" who have been
with him in the field, and that, relying on these, he who has the
right needs not to fear.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, AUGUST 16, 1863.

GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, New York:

Your despatch of this morning is just received, and I fear I do not
perfectly understand it.

My view of the principle is that every soldier obtained voluntarily
leaves one less to be obtained by draft.  The only difficulty is in
applying the principle properly.  Looking to time, as heretofore, I
am unwilling to give up a drafted man now, even for the certainty,
much less for the mere chance, of getting a volunteer hereafter.
Again, after the draft in any district, would it not make trouble to
take any drafted man out and put a volunteer in--for how shall it be
determined which drafted man is to have the privilege of thus going
out, to the exclusion of all the others?  And even before the draft
in any district the quota must be fixed; and the draft must be
postponed indefinitely if every time a volunteer is offered the
officers must stop and reconstruct the quota.  At least I fear there
might be this difficulty; but, at all events, let credits for
volunteers be given up to the last moment which will not produce
confusion or delay.  That the principle of giving credits for
volunteers shall be applied by districts seems fair and proper,
though I do not know how far by present statistics it is practicable.
When for any cause a fair credit is not given at one time, it should
be given as soon thereafter as practicable.  My purpose is to be just
and fair, and yet to not lose time.

A. LINCOLN




To J. H. HACKETT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON
August 17, 1863.

JAMES H. HACKETT, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:--Months ago I should have acknowledged the receipt of
your book and accompanying kind note; and I now have to beg your
pardon for not having done so.

For one of my age I have seen very little of the drama.  The first
presentation of Falstaff I ever saw was yours here, last winter or
spring.  Perhaps the best compliment I can pay is to say, as I truly
can, I am very anxious to see it again.  Some of Shakespeare's plays
I have never read, while others I have gone over perhaps as
frequently as any un-professional reader.  Among the latter are Lear,
Richard III., Henry VIII., Hamlet, and especially Macbeth.  I think
nothing equals Macbeth.  It is wonderful.

Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in
Hamlet commencing "Oh, my offense is rank," surpasses that commencing
"To be or not to be."  But pardon this small attempt at criticism.  I
should like to hear you pronounce the opening speech of Richard III.
Will you not soon visit Washington again?  If you do, please call and
let me make your personal acquaintance.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN




TO F. F. LOWE.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 17, 1863.

HON. P. F. LOWE, San Francisco, Cal.:

There seems to be considerable misunderstanding about the recent
movement to take possession of the "New Almaden" mine.  It has no
reference to any other mine or mines.

In regard to mines and miners generally, no change of policy by the
Government has been decided on, or even thought of, so far as I know.

The "New Almaden" mine was peculiar in this:  that its occupants
claimed to be the legal owners of it on a Mexican grant, and went
into court on that claim.  The case found its way into the Supreme
Court of the United States, and last term, in and by that court, the
claim of the occupants was decided to be utterly fraudulent.
Thereupon it was considered the duty of the Government by the
Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney-General, and myself to take
possession of the premises; and the Attorney-General carefully made
out the writ and I signed it.  It was not obtained surreptitiously,
although I suppose General Halleck thought it had been, when he
telegraphed, simply because he thought possession was about being
taken by a military order, while he knew no such order had passed
through his hands as general-in-chief.

The writ was suspended, upon urgent representations from California,
simply to keep the peace.  It never had any direct or indirect
reference to any mine, place, or person, except the "New Almaden"
mine and the persons connected with it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 21, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Warrenton, Va.:

At this late moment I am appealed to in behalf of William Thompson of
Company K, Third Maryland Volunteers, in Twelfth Army Corps, said to
be at Kelly's Ford, under sentence to be shot to-day as a deserter.
He is represented to me to be very young, with symptoms of insanity.
Please postpone the execution till further order.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 22, 1863.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Please send me if you can a transcript of the record in the case of
McQuin and Bell, convicted of murder by a military commission.  I
telegraphed General Strong for it, but he does not answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. GRIMSLEY.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 24, 1863.

MRS. ELIZABETH J. GRIMSLEY, Springfield, Ill.:

I mail the papers to you to-day appointing Johnny to the Naval
school.

A. LINCOLN




TO CRITICS OF EMANCIPATION

To J. C. CONKLING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 26, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CONKLING.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of
unconditional Union men, to be held at the capital of Illinois, on
the 3d day of September, has been received.  It would be very
agreeable for me thus to meet my old friends at my own home, but I
cannot just now be absent from here so long as a visit there would
require.

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional devotion
to the Union, and I am sure that my old political friends will thank
me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those other
noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to
the nation's life.

There are those who are dissatisfied with me.  To such I would say:
You desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it.  But how
can we obtain it?  There are but three conceivable ways:

First--to suppress the rebellion by force of arms.  This I am trying
to do.  Are you for it?  If you are, so far we are agreed.  If you
are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union.  I am against
this.  Are you for it?  If you are you should say so plainly.  If you
are not for force nor yet for dissolution, there only remains some
imaginable compromise.

I do not believe that any compromise embracing the maintenance of the
Union is now possible.  All that I learn leads to a directly opposite
belief.  The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army.
That army dominates all the country and all the people within its
range.  Any offer of terms made by any man or men within that range,
in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present;
because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side
of a compromise, if one were made with them.

To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and peace men of the
North get together in convention, and frame and proclaim a compromise
embracing a restoration of the Union.  In what way can that
compromise be used to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania?  Meade's
army can keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania, and, I think, can
ultimately drive it out of existence.  But no paper compromise to
which the controllers of Lee's army are not agreed can at all affect
that army.  In an effort at such compromise we would waste time,
which the enemy would improve to our disadvantage; and that would be
all.

A compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those who
control the rebel army, or with the people, first liberated from the
domination of that army by the success of our own army.  Now allow me
to assure you that no word or intimation from that rebel army, or
from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace
compromise, has ever come to my knowledge or belief.  All charges and
insinuations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless.  And I
promise you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it
shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you.  I freely
acknowledge myself to be the servant of the people, according to the
bond of service, the United States Constitution, and that, as such, I
am responsible to them.

But, to be plain: You are dissatisfied with me about the negro.
Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself
upon that subject.  I certainly wish that all men could be free,
while you, I suppose, do not.  Yet, I have neither adopted nor
proposed any measure which is not consistent with even your view,
provided you are for the Union.  I suggested compensated
emancipation; to which you replied you wished not to be taxed to buy
negroes.  But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except
in such way as to save you from greater taxation to save the Union
exclusively by other means.

You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and perhaps would have it
retracted.  You say it is unconstitutional.  I think differently.  I
think the Constitution invests its commander-in-chief with the law of
war in time of war.  The most that can be said, if so much, is, that
slaves are property.  Is there, has there ever been, any question
that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be
taken when needed?  And is it not needed whenever it helps us and
hurts the enemy?  Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property
when they cannot use it, and even destroy their own to keep it from
the enemy.  Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help
themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded as
barbarous or cruel.  Among the exceptions are the massacre of
vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female.

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid.  If it
is not valid it needs no retraction.  If it is valid it cannot be
retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.  Some of
you profess to think its retraction would operate favorably for the
Union, why better after the retraction than before the issue?  There
was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion
before the proclamation was issued, the last one hundred days of
which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless
averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance.  The war
has certainly progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the
proclamation as before.

I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of
the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most
important victories, believe the emancipation policy and the use of
colored troops constitute the heaviest blows yet dealt to the
rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could
not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers.

Among the commanders who hold these views are some who have never had
any affinity with what is called "Abolitionism," or with "Republican
Party politics," but who hold them purely as military opinions.   I
submit their opinions are entitled to some weight against the
objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are
unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good
faith.
You say that you will not fight to free negroes.  Some of them seem
willing to fight for you; but no matter.  Fight you, then,
exclusively, to save the Union.  I issued the proclamation on purpose
to aid you in saving the Union.  Whenever you shall have conquered
all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue
fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not
fight to free negroes.  I thought that in your struggle for the
Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy,
to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you.  Do
you think differently?  I thought that whatever negroes can be got to
do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in
saving the Union.  Does it appear otherwise to you?  But negroes,
like other people, act upon motives.  Why should they do anything for
us if we will do nothing for them?  If they stake their lives for us
they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of
freedom.  And the promise, being made, must be kept.

The signs look better.  The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to
the sea.  Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to
them.  Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone,
and Jersey, hewing their way right and left.  The sunny South, too,
in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand.  On the spot,
their part of the history was jotted down in black and white.  The
job was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an
honorable part in it  And while those who have cleared the great
river may well be proud, even that is not all.  It is hard to say
that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam,
Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note.  Nor must
Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten.  At all the watery margins they
have been present; not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the
rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the
ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.
Thanks to all.  For the great Republic--for the principle it lives by
and keeps alive--for man's vast future--thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did.  I hope it will come
soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all
future time.  It will then have been proved that among freemen there
can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that
they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the
cost.  And there will be some black men who can remember that with
silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised
bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation;
while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with
malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph.  Let
us be quite sober.  Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting
that a just God, in His own good time, will give us the rightful
result.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JAMES CONKLING.
(Private.)
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.,
August 27.1863.

HON. JAMES CONKLING.

MY DEAR CONKLING:--I cannot leave here now.  Herewith is a letter
instead.  You are one of the best public readers.  I have but one
suggestion--read it very slowly.  And now God bless you, and all good
Union men.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 26, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR
SIR:-In my correspondence with Governor Seymour in relation to the
draft, I have said to him, substantially, that credits shall be given
for volunteers up to the latest moment, before drawing in any
district, that can be done without producing confusion or delay.  In
order to do this, let our mustering officers in New York and
elsewhere be at, once instructed that whenever they muster into our
service any number of volunteers, to at once make return to the War
Department, both by telegraph and mail, the date of the muster, the
number mustered, and the Congressional or enrolment district or
districts, of their residences, giving the numbers separately for
each district.  Keep these returns diligently posted, and by them
give full credit on the quotas, if possible, on the last day before
the draft begins in any district.

Again, I have informed Governor Seymour that he shall be notified of
the time when the draft is to commence in each district in his State.
This is equally proper for all the States. In order to carry it out,
I propose that so soon as the day for commencing the draft in any
district is definitely determined, the governor of the State,
including the district, be notified thereof, both by telegraph and
mail, in form about as follows:

          ___________________________________

          ___________________________1863.

Governor of ___________________________________
          _____________________________________

You are notified that the draft will commence in the____________
_______________________district, at _________ on the ___________
day _____________   1863, at ________ A.M. of said day.

Please acknowledge receipt of this by telegraph and mail.
                              ____________________________
                              ____________________________


This notice may be given by the Provost-Marshal-General here, the
sub-provost-marshal-generals in the States, or perhaps by the
district provost-marshals.

Whenever we shall have so far proceeded in New York as to make the
re-enrolment specially promised there practicable, I wish that also
to go forward, and I wish Governor Seymour notified of it; so that if
he choose, he can place agents of his with ours to see the work
fairly done.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 27.  1863.

HIS EXCELLENCY HORATIO SEYMOUR,

Governor of New York:

Yours of the 21st, with exhibits, was received on the 24th.

In the midst of pressing duties I have been unable to answer it
sooner.  In the meantime the Provost Marshal-General has had access
to yours, and has addressed a communication in relation to it to the
Secretary of War, a copy of which communication I herewith enclose to
you.

Independently of this, I addressed a letter on the same subject to
the Secretary of War, a copy of which I also enclose to you.  The
Secretary has sent my letter to the Provost-Marshal General, with
direction that he adopt and follow the course therein pointed out.
It will, of course, overrule any conflicting view of the
Provost-Marshal-General, if there be such.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.-I do not mean to say that if the Provost-Marshal-General can
find it practicable to give credits by subdistricts, I overrule him
in that.  On the contrary, I shall be glad of it; but I will not take
the risk of over-burdening him by ordering him to do it.    A. L.

Abraham Lincoln




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 27, 1863 8.30 P. M.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD, St. LOUIS:

I have just received the despatch which follows, from two very
influential citizens of Kansas, whose names I omit.  The severe blow
they have received naturally enough makes them intemperate even
without there being any just cause for blame.  Please do your utmost
to give them future security and to punish their invaders.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. G. MEADE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 27, 1863 9 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Warrenton, Va.:

Walter, Rionese, Folancy, Lai, and Kuhn appealed to me for mercy,
without giving any ground for it whatever.  I understand these are
very flagrant cases, and that you deem their punishment as being
indispensable to the service.  If I am not mistaken in this, please
let them know at once that their appeal is denied.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO F. C. SHERMAN AND J. S. HAYES.

WASHINGTON, August 27, 1863.

F. C. SHERMAN, Mayor, J. S. HAVES, Comptroller,
Chicago, Ill.:

Yours of the 24th, in relation to the draft, is received.  It seems
to me the Government here will be overwhelmed if it undertakes to
conduct these matters with the authorities of cities and counties.
They must be conducted with the governors of States, who will, of
course, represent their cities and counties.  Meanwhile you need not
be uneasy until you again hear from here.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FOSTER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, August 28, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL FOSTER, Fort Monroe, Va. :

Please notify, if you can, Senator Bowden, Mr. Segar, and Mr.
Chandler, all or any of them, that I now have the record in Dr.
Wright's case, and am ready to hear them.  When you shall have got
the notice to them, please let me know.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL CRAWFORD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 28, 1863.

GENERAL CRAWFORD, Rappahannock Station, Va.:

I regret that I cannot be present to witness the presentation of a
sword by the gallant Pennsylvania Reserve Corps to one so worthy to
receive it as General Meade.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO L. SWETT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 29, 1863.

HON. L. SWETT, San Francisco, Cal.:
If the Government's rights are reserved, the Government will be
satisfied, and at all events it will consider.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.
August 29, 1863.

MRS. A. LINCOLN, Manchester, N. H.:

All quite well. Fort Sumter is certainly battered down and utterly
useless to the enemy, and it is believed here, but not entirely
certain, that both Sumter and Fort Wagner are occupied by our forces.
It is also certain that General Gilmore has thrown some shot into the
city of Charleston.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. C. CONKLING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 31, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CONKLING, Springfield, Ill.:

In my letter of the 26th insert between the sentence ending "since
the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation as before" and the next,
commencing "You say you will not fight, etc.," what follows below my
signature hereto.

A. LINCOLN.

"I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others that some of
the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most
important successes, believe the emancipation policy and the use of
colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the
rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could
not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of black
soldiers.  Among the commanders holding these views are some who have
never had any affinity with what is called abolitionism, or with
Republican party politics, but who hold them purely as military
opinions.  I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight
against the objections, often urged, that emancipation and arming the
blacks are unwise as military measures and were not adopted as such
in good faith."




TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 31, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL ROSECRANS:

Yours of the 22d was received yesterday.  When I wrote you before, I
did not intend, nor do I now, to engage in an argument with you on
military questions.  You had informed me you were impressed through
General Halleck that I was dissatisfied with you, and I could not
bluntly deny that I was without unjustly implicating him.  I
therefore concluded to tell you the plain truth, being satisfied the
matter would thus appear much smaller than it would if seen by mere
glimpses.  I repeat that my appreciation of you has not abated.  I
can never forget whilst I remember anything, that about the end of
last year and the beginning of this, you gave us a hard-earned
victory, which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could
hardly have lived over.  Neither can I forget the check you so
opportunely gave to a dangerous sentiment which was spreading in the
North.

Yours, as ever,

A. LINCOLN




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

August 31, 1863

It is not improbable that retaliation for the recent great outrage at
Lawrence, in Kansas, may extend to indiscriminate slaughter on the
Missouri border, unless averted by very judicious action.  I shall be
obliged if the general-in-chief can make any suggestions to General
Schofield upon the subject.

A. LINCOLN.




POLITICAL MOTIVATED MISQUOTATION IN NEWSPAPER

TELEGRAM TO J. C. CONKLING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 3, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CONKLING, Springfield, Ill.:

I am mortified this morning to find the letter to you botched up in
the Eastern papers, telegraphed from Chicago.  How did this happen?

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 4, 1863.

Ordered, That the executive order dated November 21, 1862,
prohibiting the exportation from the United States of arms,
ammunition, or munitions of war, under which the commandants of
departments were, by order of the Secretary of War dated May 13,
1863, directed to prohibit the purchase and sale, for exportation
from the United States, of all horses and mules within their
respective commands, and to take and appropriate for the use of the
United States any horses, mules, and live stock designed for
exportation, be so far modified that any arms heretofore imported
into the United States may be re-exported to the place of original
shipment, and that any live stock raised in any State or Territory
bounded by the Pacific Ocean may be exported from, any port of such
State or Territory.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. SEGAR.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C..
September 5, 1863.

HON. JOSEPH SEGAR, Fort Monroe, Va.:

I have just seen your despatch to the Secretary of War, who is
absent.  I also send a despatch from Major Hayner of the 3d showing
that he had notice of my order, and stating that the people were
jubilant over it, as a victory over the Government extorted by fear,
and that he had already collected about $4000 of the money.  If he
has proceeded since, I shall hold him accountable for his contumacy.
On the contrary, no dollar shall be refunded by my order until it
shall appear that my act in the case has been accepted in the right
spirit.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON. D. C.
September 6, 1863.

MRS. A. LINCOLN, Manchester, Vt.:

All well and no news except that General Burnside has Knoxville, Ten.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON,
September 6, 1863. 6 P.M.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR, Bedford, Pa.:

Burnside has Kingston and Knoxville, and drove the enemy across the
river at Loudon, the enemy destroying the bridge there; captured some
stores and one or two trains; very little fighting; few wounded and
none killed. No other news of consequence.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO F. C. SHERMAN AND J. S. HAYES.

WASHINGTON, September 7, 1863.

Yours of August 29 just received. I suppose it was intended by
Congress that this government should execute the act in question
without dependence upon any other government, State, city, or county.
It is, however, within the range of practical convenience to confer
with the governments of States, while it is quite beyond that range
to have correspondence on the subject with counties and cities.  They
are too numerous.  As instances, I have corresponded with Governor
Seymour, but Not with Mayor Opdyke; with Governor Curtin, but not
with Mayor Henry.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 8, 1863.   9.30

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn.:

Despatch of yesterday just received.  I shall try to find the paper
you mention and carefully consider it.  In the meantime let me urge
that you do your utmost to get every man you can, black and white,
under arms at the very earliest moment, to guard roads, bridges, and
trains, allowing all the better trained soldiers to go forward to
Rosecrans.  Of course I mean for you to act in co-operation with and
not independently of, the military authorities.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 9, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Warrenton, Va.:

It would be a generous thing to give General Wheaton a leave of
absence for ten or fifteen days, and if you can do so without injury
to the service, please do it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL WHEATON.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 10, 1863.

GENERAL WHEATON, Army of Potomac:

Yesterday at the instance of Mr. Blair, senator, I telegraphed
General Meade asking him to grant you a leave of absence, to which he
replied that you had not applied for such leave, and that you can
have it when you do apply.  I suppose it is proper for you to know
this.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
SEPTEMBER, 11, 1863

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR:--All Tennessee is now clear of armed insurrectionists.
You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for
reinaugurating a loyal State government.  Not a moment should be
lost.  You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the
ways and means than can be judged by any here.  I only offer a few
suggestions.  The reinauguration must not be such as to give control
of the State and its representation in Congress to the enemies of the
Union, driving its friends there into political exile.  The whole
struggle for Tennessee will have been profitless to both State and
nation if it so ends that Governor Johnson is put down and Governor
Harris put up.  It must not be so.  You must have it otherwise.  Let
the reconstruction be the work of such men only as can be trusted for
the Union.  Exclude all others, and trust that your government so
organized will be recognized here as being the one of republican form
to be guaranteed to the State, and to be protected against invasion
and domestic violence.  It is something on the question of time to
remember that it cannot be known who is next to occupy the position I
now hold, nor what he will do.  I see that you have declared in favor
of emancipation in Tennessee, for which may God bless you.  Get
emancipation into your new State government constitution and there
will be no such word as fail for your cause.  The raising of colored
troops, I think, will greatly help every way.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.

WASHINGTON, September 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cumberland Gap:

Yours received.  A thousand thanks for the late successes you have
given us.  We cannot allow you to resign until things shall be a
little more settled in East Tennessee.  If then, purely on your own
account, you wish to resign, we will not further refuse you.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Warrenton, Va.:

It is represented to me that Thomas Edds, in your army, is under
sentence of death for desertion, to be executed next Monday.  It is
also said his supposed desertion is comprised in an absence
commencing with his falling behind last winter, being captured and
paroled by the enemy, and then going home.  If this be near the
truth, please suspend the execution till further order and send in
the record of the trial.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 12, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEAD, Warrenton, Va.:

The name is "Thomas Edds" not "Eddies" as in your despatch.  The
papers left with me do not designate the regiment to which he
belongs.  The man who gave me the papers, I do not know how to find
again.  He only told me that Edds is in the Army of the Potomac, and
that he fell out of the ranks during Burnside's mud march last
winter.  If I get further information I will telegraph again.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO H. H. SCOTT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 13, 1863.

Dr. WILLIAM H. H. SCOTT, Danville, Ill.:

Your niece, Mrs. Kate Sharp, can now have no difficulty in going to
Knoxville, Tenn., as that place is within our military lines.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. G. BLAINE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 25, 1863.

J. G. BLAINE, Augusta, Me.:
Thanks both for the good news you send and for the sending of it.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION SUSPENDING WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS,
SEPTEMBER 15, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas the Constitution of the United States has ordained that the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless
when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may
require it; and:

Whereas a rebellion was existing on the third day of March, 1863,
which rebellion is still existing; and:

Whereas by a statute which was approved on that day it was enacted by
the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in
Congress assembled that during the present insurrection the President
of the United States, whenever in his judgment the public safety may
require, is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus in any case throughout the United States or any part thereof;
and:

Whereas, in the judgment of the President, the public safety does
require that the privilege of the said writ shall new be suspended
throughout the United States in the cases where, by the authority of
the President of the United States, military, naval, and civil
officers of the United States, or any of them, hold persons under
their command or in their custody, either as prisoners of war, spies,
or aiders or abettors of the enemy, or officers, soldiers, or seamen
enrolled or drafted or mustered or enlisted in or belonging to the
land or naval forces of the United States, or as deserters therefrom,
or otherwise amenable to military law or the rules and articles of
war or the rules or regulations prescribed for the military or naval
services by authority of the President of the United States, or for
resisting a draft, or for any other offense against the military or
naval service

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby proclaim and make known to all whom it may concern that the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is suspended throughout the
United States in the several cases before mentioned, and that this
suspension will continue throughout the duration of the said
rebellion or until this proclamation shall, by a subsequent one to be
issued by the President of the United States, be modified or revoked.
And I do hereby require all magistrates, attorneys, and other civil
officers within the United States and all officers and others in the
military and naval services of the United States to take distinct
notice of this suspension and to give it full effect, and all
citizens of the United States to conduct and govern themselves
accordingly and in conformity with the Constitution of the United
States and the laws of Congress in such case made and provided.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed, this fifteenth day of September,
A.D. 1863, and of the independence of the United States of America
the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 13, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

If I did not misunderstand General Meade's last despatch, he posts
you on facts as well as he can, and desires your views and those of
the Government as to what he shall do.  My opinion is that he should
move upon Lee at once in manner of general attack, leaving to
developments whether he will make it a real attack.  I think this
would develop Lee's real condition and purposes better than the
cavalry alone can do.  Of course my opinion is not to control you and
General Meade.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. SPEED.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 16, 1862.

MRS. J. F. SPEED, Louisville, Ky.:

Mr. Holman will not be jostled from his place with my knowledge and
consent.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 16, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Warrenton, Va.:

Is Albert Jones of Company K, Third Maryland Volunteers, to be shot
on Friday next?  If so please state to me the general features of the
case.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 17, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

Major Haynor left here several days ago under a promise to put down
in writing, in detail, the facts in relation to the misconduct of the
people on the eastern shore of Virginia.  He has not returned.
Please send him over.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 17, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE,
Headquarters Army of Potomac:

Yours in relation to Albert Jones is received. I am appealed to in
behalf of Richard M. Abrams of Company A, Sixth New Jersey
Volunteers, by Governor Parker, Attorney-General Frelinghuysen,
Governor Newell, Hon. Mr. Middleton, M. C., of the district, and the
marshal who arrested him.  I am also appealed to in behalf of Joseph
S. Smith, of Company A, Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers, by Governor
Parker, Attorney-General Frelinghuysen, and Hon. Marcus C. Ward.
Please state the circumstances of their cases to me.

A. LINCOLN.




REQUEST TO SUGGEST NAME FOR A BABY

TELEGRAM TO C. M. SMITH.

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 18, 1863.

C.M. SMITH, Esq., Springfield, Ill.:

Why not name him for the general you fancy most?  This is my
suggestion.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO MRS. ARMSTRONG.

WASHINGTON, September 18, 1863.

MRS. HANNAH ARMSTRONG, Petersburg, Ill.:

I have just ordered the discharge of your boy William, as you say,
now at Louisville, Ky.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 19.1863.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR:--Herewith I send you a paper, substantially the same as
the one drawn up by yourself and mentioned in your despatch, but
slightly changed in two particulars: First, yours was so drawn as
that I authorized you to carry into effect the fourth section, etc.,
whereas I so modify it as to authorize you to so act as to require
the United States to carry into effect that section.

Secondly, you had a clause committing me in some sort to the State
constitution of Tennessee, which I feared might embarrass you in
making a new constitution, if you desire; so I dropped that clause.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

[Inclosure.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,

September 19, 1863.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON,
Military Governor of Tennessee:

In addition to the matters contained in the orders and instructions
given you by the Secretary of War, you are hereby authorized to
exercise such powers as may be necessary and proper to enable the
loyal people of Tennessee to present such a republican form of State
government as will entitle the State to the guaranty of the United
States therefor, and to be protected under such State government by
the United States against invasion and domestic violence, all
according to the fourth Section of the fourth article of the
Constitution of the United States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN




MILITARY STRATEGY

TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON D.C.
September 19, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

By General Meade's despatch to you of yesterday it appears that he
desires your views and those of the government as to whether he shall
advance upon the enemy.  I am not prepared to order, or even advise,
an advance in this case, wherein I know so little of particulars, and
wherein he, in the field, thinks the risk is so great and the promise
of advantage so small.

And yet the case presents matter for very serious consideration in
another aspect.  These two armies confront each other across a small
river, substantially midway between the two capitals, each defending
its own capital, and menacing the other.   General Meade estimates
the enemy's infantry in front of him at not less than 40,000.
Suppose we add fifty per cent. to this for cavalry, artillery, and
extra-duty men stretching as far as Richmond, making the whole force
of the enemy 60,000.

General Meade, as shown by the returns, has with him, and between him
and Washington, of the same classes, of well men, over 90,000.
Neither can bring the whole of his men into a battle; but each can
bring as large a percentage in as the other.  For a battle, then,
General Meade has three men to General Lee's two.  Yet, it having
been determined that choosing ground and standing on the defensive
gives so great advantage that the three cannot safely attack the two,
the three are left simply standing on the defensive also.

If the enemy's 60,000 are sufficient to keep our 90,000 away from
Richmond, why, by the same rule, may not 40,000 of ours keep their
60,000 away from Washington, leaving us 50,000 to put to some other
use?  Having practically come to the mere defensive, it seems to be
no economy at all to employ twice as many men for that object as are
needed.  With no object, certainly, to mislead myself, I can perceive
no fault in this statement, unless we admit we are not the equal of
the enemy, man for man.  I hope you will consider it.

To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that to attempt to fight the
enemy slowly back into his entrenchments at Richmond, and then to
capture him, is an idea I have been trying to repudiate for quite a
year.

My judgment is so clear against it that I would scarcely allow the
attempt to be made if the general in command should desire to make
it.  My last attempt upon Richmond was to get McClellan, when he was
nearer there than the enemy was, to run in ahead of him.   Since then
I have constantly desired the Army of the Potomac to make Lee's army,
and not Richmond, its objective point.  If our army cannot fall upon
the enemy and hurt him where he is, it is plain to me it can gain
nothing by attempting to follow him over a succession of intrenched
lines into a fortified city.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., September 20, 1863.

MRS. A. LINCOLN, New York:

I neither see nor hear anything of sickness here now, though there
may be much without my knowing it.  I wish you to stay or come just
as is most agreeable to yourself.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C, September 21, 1863.

MRS. A. LINCOLN. Fifth Avenue Hotel.  New York:

The air is so clear and cool and apparently healthy that I would be
glad for you to come.  Nothing very particular, but I would be glad
to see you and Tad.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 21, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

I think it very important for General Rosecrans to hold his position
at or about Chattanooga, because if held from that place to
Cleveland, both inclusive, it keeps all Tennessee clear of the enemy,
and also breaks one of his most important railroad lines.  To prevent
these consequences is so vital to his cause that he cannot give up
the effort to dislodge us from the position, thus bringing him to us
and saving us the labor, expense, and hazard of going farther to find
him, and also giving us the advantage of choosing our own ground and
preparing it to fight him upon.   The details must, of course, be
left to General Rosecrans, while we must furnish him the means to the
utmost of our ability.  If you concur, I think he would better be
informed that we are not pushing him beyond this position; and that,
in fact, our judgment is rather against his going beyond it.  If he
can only maintain this position, without more, this rebellion can
only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may
with a thorn in its vitals.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C., September 21, 1863.

GENERAL BURNSIDE, Greenville, Tenn.:

If you are to do any good to Rosecrans it will not do to waste time
with Jonesboro.  It is already too late to do the most good that
might have been done, but I hope it will still do some good.  Please
do not lose a moment.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 21, 1863. 11 A.M.

GENERAL BURNSIDE, Knoxville, Tenn.:

Go to Rosecrans with your force without a moment's delay.

A. LINCOLN,




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS

WASHINGTON, September 21, 1863.  12.55 PM.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga:

Be of good cheer.  We have unabated confidence in you, and in your
soldiers and officers.  In the main you must be the judge as to what
is to be done.  If I were to suggest, I would say, save your army by
taking strong positions until Burnside joins you, when, I hope, you
can turn the tide.  I think you had better send a courier to Burnside
to hurry him up.  We cannot reach him by telegraph.  We suppose some
force is going to you from Corinth, but for want of communication we
do not know how they are getting along.  We shall do our utmost to
assist you.  Send us your present positions.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, September 22, 1863.8.30 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Tenn.:

We have not a word here as to the whereabouts or condition of your
army up to a later hour than sunset, Sunday, the 20th.  Your
despatches to me of 9 A.M., and to General Halleck of 2 P. M.,
yesterday, tell us nothing later on those points.  Please relieve my
anxiety as to the position and condition of your army up to the
latest moment.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO O. M. HATCH AND J. K. DUBOIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON.
September 22, 1863.

HON. O. M. HATCH, HON. J. K. DUBOIS,
Springfield, Ill.:

Your letter is just received. The particular form of my despatch was
jocular, which I supposed you gentlemen knew me well enough to
understand. General Allen is considered here as a very faithful and
capable officer, and one who would be at least thought of for
quartermaster-general if that office were vacant.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 22, 1863.

MRS. A. LINCOLN, Fifth Avenue House, New York:--Did you receive my
despatch of yesterday? Mrs. Cuthbert did not correctly understand me.
I directed her to tell you to use your own pleasure whether to stay
or come, and I did not say it is sickly and that you should on no
account come. So far as I see or know, it was never healthier, and I
really wish to see you. Answer this on receipt.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WASHINGTON, September 23,1863.  9.13 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Tenn:

Below is Bragg's despatch as found in the Richmond papers.  You see
he does not claim so many prisoners or captured guns as you were
inclined to concede.  He also confesses to heavy loss.  An exchanged
general of ours leaving Richmond yesterday says two of Longstreet's
divisions and his entire artillery and two of Pickett's brigades and
Wise's legion have gone to Tennessee.  He mentions no other.

"CHICAMAUGA RIVER, SEPTEMBER 20.
"GENERAL COOPER, Adjutant-General:
"After two days' hard fighting we have driven the enemy, after a
desperate resistance, from several positions, and now hold the field;
but he still confronts us.  The loses are heavy on both sides,
especially  in our officers..............
BRAXTON BRAGG

A. LINCOLN




PROCLAMATION OPENING THE PORT OF ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA,
SEPTEMBER 24, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, in my proclamation of the twenty-seventh of April, 1861, the
ports of the States of Virginia and North Carolina were, for reasons
therein set forth, placed under blockade; and whereas the port of
Alexandria, Virginia, has since been blockaded, but as the blockade
of said port may now be safely relaxed with advantage to the
interests of commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United Sates, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth
section of the act of Congress, approved on the 13th of July, 1861,
entitled "An act further to provide for the collection of duties on
imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade
of the said port of Alexandria shall so far cease and determine, from
and after this date, that commercial intercourse with said port,
except as to persons, things, and information contraband of war, may
from this date be carried on, subject to the laws of the United
States, and to the limitations and in pursuance of the regulations
which are prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury in his order
which is appended to my proclamation of the 12th of May, 1862.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-fourth day of September
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three,
and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 24, 1863.  10 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Term.:

Last night we received the rebel accounts, through Richmond papers,
of your late battle.  They give Major-General Hood as mortally
wounded, and Brigadiers Preston Smith, Wofford, Walthall, Helm of
Kentucky, and DesMer killed, and Major-Generals Preston, Cleburne,
and Gregg, and Brigadier-Generals Benning, Adams, Burm, Brown, and
John [B. H.] Helm wounded.  By confusion the two Helms may be the
same man, and Bunn and Brown may be the same man.  With Burnside,
Sherman, and from elsewhere we shall get to you from forty to sixty
thousand additional men.

A. LINCOLN




MRS. LINCOLN'S REBEL BROTHER-IN-LAW KILLED

TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.

WAR DEPARTMENT, SEPTEMBER 24, 1863

MRS. A. LINCOLN, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York:

We now have a tolerably accurate summing up of the late battle
between Rosecrans and Braag.  The result is that we are worsted, if
at all, only in the fact that we, after the main fighting was over,
yielded the ground, thus leaving considerable of our artillery and
wounded to fall into the enemy's hands., for which we got nothing in
turn.  We lost in general officers one killed and three or four
wounded, all brigadiers, while, according to the rebel accounts which
we have, they lost six killed and eight wounded: of the killed one
major-general and five brigadiers including your brother-in-law,
Helm; and of the wounded three major-generals and five brigadiers.
This list may be reduced two in number by corrections of confusion in
names.   At  11.40 A.M. yesterday General Rosecrans telegraphed from
Chattanooga:   "We hold this point, and I cannot be dislodged except
by very superior numbers and after a great battle."  A despatch
leaving there after night yesterday says, "No fight to-day."

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCALLUM.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 25, 1863.

GENERAL McCALLUM, Alexandria, Va.:

I have sent to General Meade, by telegraph, to suspend the execution
of Daniel Sullivan of Company F, Thirteenth Massachusetts, which was
to be to-day, but understanding there is an interruption on the line,
may I beg you to send this to him by the quickest mode in your power?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
September 25, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

Owing to the press in behalf of Daniel Sullivan, Company E,
Thirteenth Massachusetts, and the doubt; though small, which you
express of his guilty intention, I have concluded to say let his
execution be suspended till further order, and copy of record sent
me.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 25, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL ROSECRANS:

We are sending you two small corps, one under General Howard and one
under General Slocum, and the whole under General Hooker.

Unfortunately the relations between Generals Hooker and Slocum are
not such as to promise good, if their present relative positions
remain.  Therefore, let me beg--almost enjoin upon you--that on their
reaching you, you will make a transposition by which General Slocum
with his Corps, may pass from under the command of General Hooker,
and General Hooker, in turn receive some other equal force.  It is
important for this to be done, though we could not well arrange it
here.  Please do it.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 28, 1863. 8 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga., Tenn.:

You can perhaps communicate with General Burnside more rapidly by
sending telegrams directly to him at Knoxville.  Think of it.  I send
a like despatch to him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C, September 30, 1863.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Following despatch just received:

"Union Men Driven out of Missouri."
"Leavenworth, September 29, I863.

"Governor Gamble having authorized Colonel Moss, of Liberty,
Missouri, to arm the men in Platte and Clinton Counties, he has armed
mostly the returned rebel soldiers and men wider bonds.  Moss's men
are now driving the Union men out of Missouri.  Over one hundred
families crossed the river to-day.  Many of the wives of our Union
soldiers have been compelled to leave.  Four or five Union men have
been murdered by Colonel Moss's men."

Please look to this and, if true, in main or part, put a stop to it.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO F. S. CORKRAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 30, 1863.

HON. FRANCIS S. CORKRAN, Baltimore, Md.:
MRS. L. is now at home and would be pleased to see you any time.  If
the grape time has not passed away, she would be pleased to join in
the enterprise you mention.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL TYLER

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., October 1, 1863.

GENERAL TYLER, Baltimore:

Take care of colored troops in your charge, but do nothing further
about that branch of affairs until further orders.  Particularly do
nothing about General Vickers of Kent County.

A. LINCOLN.

Send a copy to Colonel Birney.
A. L.




TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
OCTOBER 1, 1863

GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD:

There is no organized military force in avowed opposition to the
General Government now in Missouri, and if any shall reappear, your
duty in regard to it will be too plain to require any special
instruction.  Still, the condition of things, both there and
elsewhere, is such as to render it indispensable to maintain, for a
time, the United States military establishment in that State, as well
as to rely upon it for a fair contribution of support to that
establishment generally.  Your immediate duty in regard to Missouri
now is to advance the efficiency of that establishment, and to so use
it, as far as practicable, to compel the excited people there to let
one another alone.

Under your recent order, which I have approved, you will only arrest
individuals, and suppress assemblies or newspapers, when they may be
working palpable injury to the military in your charge; and in no
other case will you interfere with the expression of opinion in any
form, or allow it to be interfered with violently by others.  In this
you have a discretion to exercise with great caution, calmness, and
forbearance.

With the matter of removing the inhabitants of certain counties en
masse, and of removing certain individuals from time to time, who are
supposed to be mischievous, I am not now interfering, but am leaving
to your own discretion.

Nor am I interfering with what may still seem to you to be necessary
restrictions upon trade and intercourse.  I think proper, however, to
enjoin upon you the following: Allow no part of the military under
your command to be engaged in either returning fugitive slaves or in
forcing or enticing slaves from their homes; and, so far as
practicable, enforce the same forbearance upon the people.

Report to me your opinion upon the availability for good of the
enrolled militia of the State.  Allow no one to enlist colored
troops, except upon orders from you, or from here through you.

Allow no one to assume the functions of confiscating property, under
the law of Congress, or otherwise, except upon orders from here.

At elections see that those, and only those, are allowed to vote who
are entitled to do so by the laws of Missouri, including as of those
laws the restrictions laid by the Missouri convention upon those who
may have participated in the rebellion.

So far as practicable, you will, by means of your military force,
expel guerrillas, marauders, and murderers, and all who are known to
harbor, aid, or abet them.  But in like manner you will repress
assumptions of unauthorized individuals to perform the same service,
because under pretense of doing this they become marauders and
murderers themselves.

To now restore peace, let the military obey orders, and those not of
the military leave each other alone, thus not breaking the peace
themselves.

In giving the above directions, it is not intended to restrain you in
other expedient and necessary matters not falling within their range.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 2, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHOFIELD:

I have just seen your despatch to Halleck about Major-General Blunt.
If possible, you better allow me to get through with a certain matter
here, before adding to the difficulties of it.  Meantime supply me
the particulars of Major-General Blunt's case.

A. LINCOLN.


TELEGRAM TO COLONEL BIRNEY.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., October 3, 1863.

COLONEL BIRNEY, Baltimore, Md.:

Please give me, as near as you can, the number of slaves you have
recruited in Maryland.  Of course the number is not to include the
free colored.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION FOR THANKSGIVING, OCTOBER 3, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the
blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties,
which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the
source from which they come, others have been added which are of so
extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften
even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful
providence of Almighty God.  In the midst of a civil war of
unequalled magnitude and severity which has sometimes seemed to
invite and provoke the aggressions of foreign states; peace has been
preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have
been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere
except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has
been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the
Union.  The needful diversion of wealth and strength from the fields
of peaceful industry, to the national defense has not arrested the
plough, the shuttle, or the ship: The axe has enlarged the borders of
our settlements, and the mines, as well of, iron and coal as of the
precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has
been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field; and the
country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and
vigor, is permitted to expect a continuance of years, with large
increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out
these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God,
who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless
remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be reverently,
solemnly, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and voice,
by the whole American people.  I do, therefore, invite my
fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those
who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set
apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of
thanksgiving and prayer to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the
heavens.  And I recommend to them that, while offering up the
ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and
blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national
perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those
who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the
lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and
fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the
wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent
with divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony,
tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the
seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of
the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASHINGTON D.C., OCTOBER 4, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHOFIELD, St.  Louis, Mo.:

I think you will not have just cause to complain of my action.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 4, 1863.  11.30 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Tenn.:

Yours of yesterday received.  If we can hold Chattanooga and East
Tennessee, I think the rebellion must dwindle and die.  I think you
and Burnside can do this, and hence doing so is your main object.  Of
course to greatly damage or destroy the enemy in your front would be
a greater object, because it would include the former and more, but
it is not so certainly within your power.  I understand the main body
of the enemy is very near you, so near that you could "board at
home," so to speak, and menace or attack him any day.  Would not the
doing of this be your best mode of counteracting his raid on your
communications?  But this is not an order.  I intend doing something
like what you suggest whenever the case shall appear ripe enough to
have it accepted in the true understanding rather than as a
confession of weakness and fear.

A. LINCOLN.




TO C. D. DRAKE AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 5, 1863.

HON. CHARLES D. DRAKE AND OTHERS, Committee.

GENTLEMEN:-Your original address, presented on the 30th ult., and the
four supplementary ones presented on the 3d inst., have been
carefully considered.  I hope you will regard the other duties
claiming my attention, together with the great length and importance
of these documents, as constituting a sufficient apology for not
having responded sooner.

These papers, framed for a common object, consist of the things
demanded and the reasons for demanding them.

The things demanded are

First.  That General Schofield shall be relieved, and General Butler
be appointed as Commander of the Military Department of Missouri.

Second.  That the system of enrolled militia in Missouri may be
broken up, and national forces he substituted for it; and

Third.  That at elections persons may not be allowed to vote who are
not entitled by law to do so.

Among the reasons given, enough of suffering and wrong to Union men
is certainly, and I suppose truly, stated.  Yet the whole case, as
presented, fails to convince me that General Schofield, or the
enrolled militia, is responsible for that suffering and wrong.   The
whole can be explained on a more charitable, and, as I think, a more
rational hypothesis.

We are in a civil war.  In such cases there always is a main
question, but in this case that question is a perplexing compound--
Union and slavery.  It thus becomes a question not of two sides
merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the
Union, saying nothing of those who are against it.  Thus, those who
are for the Union with, but not without slavery; those for it
without, but not with; those for it with or without, but prefer it
with; and those for it with or without, but prefer it without.

Among these, again, is a subdivision of those who are for gradual,
but not for immediate, and those who are for immediate, but not for
gradual extinction of slavery.

It is easy to conceive that all these shades of opinion, and even
more, may be sincerely entertained by honest and truthful men.  Yet,
all being for the Union, by reason of these differences each will
prefer a different way of sustaining the Union.  At once, sincerity
is questioned, and motives are assailed.  Actual war coining, blood
grows hot and blood is spilled.  Thought is forced from old channels
into confusion.  Deception breeds and thrives.  Confidence dies, and
universal suspicion reigns.  Each man feels an impulse to kill his
neighbor, lest he be killed by him.  Revenge and retaliation follow.
And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only.  But this
is not all.  Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile
rises up.  These add crime to confusion.  Strong measures deemed
indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by
maladministration.  Murders for old grudges, and murders for self,
proceed under any cloak that will best serve for the occasion.

These causes amply account for what has occurred in Missouri, without
ascribing it to the weakness or wickedness of any general.  The
newspaper files, those chroniclers of current events, will show that
the evils now complained of were quite as prevalent under Fremont,
Hunter, Halleck, and Curtis, as under Schofield.  If the former had
greater force opposed to them, they also had greater force with which
to meet it.  When the organized rebel army left the State, the main
Federal force had to go also, leaving the department commander at
home relatively no stronger than before.  Without disparaging any, I
affirm with confidence that no commander of that department has, in
proportion to his means, done better than General Schofield.

The first specific charge against General Schofield is, that the
enrolled militia was placed under his command, whereas it had not
been placed under the command of General Curtis.  The fact is, I
believe, true; but you do not point out, nor can I conceive, how that
did, or could, injure loyal men or the Union cause.

You charge that, General Curtis being superseded by General
Schofield, Franklin A. Dick was superseded by James O. Broadhead as
Provost-Marshal General.  No very specific showing is made as to how
this did or could injure the Union cause.  It recalls, however, the
condition of things, as presented to me, which led to a change of
commander of that department.

To restrain contraband intelligence and trade, a system of searches,
seizures, permits, and passes, had been introduced, I think, by
General Fremont.  When General Halleck came, he found and continued
the system, and added an order, applicable to some parts of the
State, to levy and collect contributions from noted rebels, to
compensate losses and relieve destitution caused by the rebellion.
The action of General Fremont and General Halleck, as stated,
constituted a sort of system which General Curtis found in full
operation when he took command of the department.  That there was a
necessity for something of the sort was clear; but that it could only
be justified by stern necessity, and that it was liable to great
abuse in administration, was equally clear.  Agents to execute it,
contrary to the great prayer, were led into temptation.  Some might,
while others would not, resist that temptation.  It was not possible
to hold any to a very strict accountability; and those yielding to
the temptation would sell permits and passes to those who would pay
most and most readily for them, and would seize property and collect
levies in the aptest way to fill their own pockets.  Money being the
object, the man having money, whether loyal or disloyal, would be a
victim.  This practice doubtless existed to some extent, and it was,
a real additional evil that it could be, and was, plausibly charged
to exist in greater extent than it did.

When General Curtis took command of the department, Mr. Dick, against
whom I never knew anything to allege, had general charge of this
system.  A controversy in regard to it rapidly grew into almost
unmanageable proportions.  One side ignored the necessity and
magnified the evils of the system, while the other ignored the evils
and magnified the necessity; and each bitterly assailed the other.  I
could not fail to see that the controversy enlarged in the same
proportion as the professed Union men there distinctly took sides in
two opposing political parties.  I exhausted my wits, and very nearly
my patience also, in efforts to convince both that the evils they
charged on each other were inherent in the case, and could not be
cured by giving either party a victory over the other.

Plainly, the irritating system was not to be perpetual; and it was
plausibly urged that it could be modified at once with advantage.
The case could scarcely be worse, and whether it could be made better
could only be determined by a trial.  In this view, and not to ban or
brand General Curtis, or to give a victory to any party, I made the
change of commander for the department.  I now learn that soon after
this change Mr. Dick was removed, and that Mr. Broadhead, a gentleman
of no less good character, was put in the place.  The mere fact of
this change is more distinctly complained of than is any conduct of
the new officer, or other consequence of the change.

I gave the new commander no instructions as to the administration of
the system mentioned, beyond what is contained in the private letter
afterwards surreptitiously published, in which I directed him to act
solely for the public good, and independently of both parties.
Neither any thing you have presented me, nor anything I have
otherwise learned, has convinced me that he has been unfaithful to
this charge.

Imbecility is urged as one cause for removing General Schofield; and
the late massacre at Lawrence, Kansas, is pressed as evidence of that
imbecility.  To my mind that fact scarcely tends to prove the
proposition.  That massacre is only an example of what Grierson, John
Morgan, and many others might have repeatedly done on their
respective raids, had they chosen to incur the personal hazard, and
possessed the fiendish hearts to do it.

The charge is made that General Schofield, on purpose to protect the
Lawrence murderers, would not allow them to be pursued into Missouri.
While no punishment could be too sudden or too severe for those
murderers, I am well satisfied that the preventing of the threatened
remedial raid into Missouri was the only way to avoid an
indiscriminate massacre there, including probably more innocent than
guilty.  Instead of condemning, I therefore approve what I understand
General Schofield did in that respect.

The charges that General Schofield has purposely withheld protection
from loyal people and purposely facilitated the objects of the
disloyal are altogether beyond my power of belief.  I do not arraign
the veracity of gentlemen as to the facts complained of, but I do
more than question the judgment which would infer that those facts
occurred in accordance with the purposes of General Schofield.

With my present views, I must decline to remove General Schofield.
In this I decide nothing against General Butler.  I sincerely wish it
were convenient to assign him a suitable command.  In order to  meet
some existing evils I have addressed a letter of instructions to
General Schofield, a copy of which I enclose to you.

As to the enrolled militia, I shall endeavor to ascertain better than
I now know what is its exact value.  Let me say now, however, that
your proposal to substitute national forces for the enrolled militia
implies that in your judgment the latter is doing something which
needs to be done; and if so, the proposition to throw that force away
and to supply its place by bringing other forces from the field where
they are urgently needed seems to me very extraordinary.  Whence
shall they come?  Shall they be withdrawn from Banks, or Grant, or
Steele, or Rosecrans?  Few things have been so grateful to my anxious
feelings as when, in June last, the local force in Missouri aided
General Schofield to so promptly send a large general force to the
relief of General Grant, then investing Vicksburg and menaced from
without by General Johnston.  Was this all wrong?  Should the
enrolled militia then have been broken up and General Herron kept
from Grant to police Missouri?  So far from finding cause to object,
I confess to a sympathy for whatever relieves our general force in
Missouri and allows it to serve elsewhere.   I therefore, as at
present advised, cannot attempt the destruction of the enrolled
militia of Missouri.  I may add that, the force being under the
national military control, it is also within the proclamation in
regard to the habeas corpus.

I concur in the propriety of your request in regard to elections, and
have, as you see, directed General Schofield accordingly.  I do not
feel justified to enter upon the broad field you present in regard to
the political differences between Radicals and Conservatives.  From
time to time I have done and said what appeared to me proper to do
and say.  The public knows it all.  It obliges nobody to follow me,
and I trust it obliges me to follow nobody.  The Radicals and
Conservatives each agree with me in some things and disagree in
others.  I could wish both to agree with me in all things, for then
they would agree with each other, and would be too strong for any foe
from any quarter.  They, however, choose to do otherwise; and I do
not question their right.  I too shall do what seems to be my duty.
I hold whoever commands in Missouri or elsewhere responsible to me
and not to either Radicals or Conservatives.  It is my duty to hear
all, but at last I must, within my sphere, judge what to do and what
to forbear.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




APPROVAL OF THE DECISION OF THE COURT IN THE
CASE OF DR. DAVID M. WRIGHT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERALS OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, October 8, 1863.


MAJOR-GENERAL J. G. FOSTER, Commanding Department of Virginia and
North Carolina, Fort Monroe, Va.

SIR:--The proceedings of the military commission instituted for the
trial of David Wright, of Norfolk, in Special Orders Nos.  195, 196,
and 197, of 1863, from headquarters Department of Virginia, have been
submitted to the President of the United States.  The following are
his remarks on the case:

Upon the presentation of the record in this case and the examination
thereof, aided by the report thereon of the Judge-Advocate-General,
and on full hearing of counsel for the accused, being specified that
no proper question remained open except as to the sanity of the
accused, I caused a very full examination to be made on that
question, upon a great amount of evidence, including all effort by
the counsel for accused, by an expert of high reputation in that
professional department, who thereon reports to me, as his opinion,
that the accused, Dr. David M. Wright, was not insane prior to or on
the 11th day of July, 1863, the date of the homicide of Lieutenant
Sanborn; that he has not been insane since, and is not insane now
(Oct.  7, 1863).  I therefore approve the finding and sentence of the
military commission, and direct that the major-general in command of
the department including the place of trial, and wherein the convict
is now in custody, appoint a time and place and carry such sentence
into execution.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

I am appealed to in behalf of August Blittersdorf, at Mitchell's
Station, Va., to be shot to-morrow as a deserter.  I am unwilling for
any boy under eighteen to be shot, and his father affirms that he is
yet under sixteen.  Please answer.  His regiment or company not given
me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

The boy telegraphs from Mitchell's Station, Va.  The father thinks he
is in the One hundred and nineteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers.  The
father signs the name "Blittersdorf."  I can tell no more.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 12, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

The father and mother of John Murphy, of the One hundred and
nineteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers, have filed their own affidavits
that he was born June 22, 1846, and also the affidavits of three
other persons who all swear that they remembered the circumstances of
his birth and that it was in the year 1846, though they do not
remember the particular day.  I therefore, on account of his tender
age, have concluded to pardon him, and to leave it to yourself
whether to discharge him or continue him in the service.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO W. S. ROSECRANS.
[Cipher.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, October 12, 1863.8.35 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Term.:

As I understand, Burnside is menaced from the west, and so cannot go
to you without surrendering East Tennessee.  I now think the enemy
will not attack Chattanooga, and I think you will have to look out
for his making a concentrated drive at Burnside.  You and Burnside
now have him by the throat, and he must break your hold or perish I
therefore think you better try to hold the road up to Kingston,
leaving Burnside to what is above there.  Sherman is coming to you,
though gaps in the telegraph prevent our knowing how far he is
advanced.  He and Hooker will so support you on the west and
northwest as to enable you to look east and northeast.  This is not
an order.  General Halleck will give his views.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. G. MEADE.

WASHINGTON, October 12, 1863.  9 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE:
What news this morning?  A despatch from Rosecrans, leaving him at
7.30 P.M. yesterday, says:
"Rebel rumors that head of Ewell's column reached Dalton yesterday."

I send this for what it is worth.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO WAYNE McVEIGH.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 13, 1863.

McVEIGH, Philadelphia:

The enemy some days ago made a movement, apparently to turn General
Meade's right.  This led to a maneuvering of the two armies and to
pretty heavy skirmishing on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  We have
frequent despatches from General Meade and up to 10 o'clock last
night nothing had happened giving either side any marked advantage.
Our army reported to be in excellent condition.  The telegraph is
open to General Meade's camp this morning, but we have not troubled
him for a despatch.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THURLOW WEED.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 14, 1863.

HON. THURLOW WEED.

DEAR SIR:--I have been brought to fear recently that somehow, by
commission or omission, I have caused you some degree of pain.  I
have never entertained an unkind feeling or a disparaging thought
toward you; and if I have said or done anything which has been
construed into such unkindness or disparagement, it has been
misconstrued.  I am sure if we could meet we would not part with any
unpleasant impression On either side.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO L. B. TODD.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
October 15, 1863.

L. B. TODD, Lexington, Ky.:

I send the following pass to your care.

A. LINCOLN.




AID TO MRS. HELM, MRS. LINCOLN'S SISTER

WASHINGTON, D. C..  October 15, 1863.

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Allow MRS. Robert S. Todd, widow, to go south and bring her daughter,
MRS. General B. Hardin Helm, with her children, north to Kentucky.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FOSTER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 15, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL FOSTER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Postpone the execution of Dr. Wright to Friday the 23d instant
(October).  This is intended for his preparation and is final.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 15, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

On the 4th instant you telegraphed me that Private Daniel Hanson, of
Ninety-seventh New York Volunteers, had not yet been tried.  When he
shall be, please notify me of the result, with a brief statement of
his case, if he be convicted.  Gustave Blittersdorf, who you say is
enlisted in the One hundred and nineteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers as
William Fox, is proven to me to be only fifteen years old last
January.  I pardon him, and you will discharge him or put him in the
ranks at your discretion.  Mathias Brown, of Nineteenth Pennsylvania
Volunteers, is proven to me to be eighteen last May, and his friends
say he is convicted on an enlistment and for a desertion both before
that time.  If this last be true he is pardoned, to be kept or
discharged as you please.  If not true suspend his execution and
report the facts of his case.  Did you receive my despatch of 12th
pardoning John Murphy?

A. LINCOLN.

[The Lincoln papers during this time have a suspended execution on
almost every other page, I have omitted most of these D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO T. W. SWEENEY.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 16, 1863.

THOMAS W. SWEENEY, Continental, Philadelphia:

Tad is teasing me to have you forward his pistol to him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO T. C. DURANT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., October 16, 1863.

T. C. DURANT, New York:

I remember receiving nothing from you of the 10th, and I do not
comprehend your despatch of to-day.  In fact I do not remember, if I
ever knew, who you are, and I have very little conception as to what
you are telegraphing about.

A. LINCOLN.




COMMENT ON A NOTE.

NEW YORK, October 15, 1863.

DEAR SIR: On the point of leaving I am told, by a gentleman to whose
statements I attach credit, that the opposition policy for the
Presidential campaign will be to "abstain from voting."
J.

[Comment.]
More likely to abstain from stopping, once they get at it, until they
shall have voted several times each.

October 16.
A. L.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 16, 1863.

MAJOR GENERAL HALLECK:

I do not believe Lee can have over 60,000 effective men.

Longstreet's corps would not be sent away to bring an equal force
back upon the same road; and there is no other direction for them to
have come from.

Doubtless, in making the present movement, Lee gathered in all
available scraps, and added them to Hill's and Ewell's corps; but
that is all, and he made the movement in the belief that four corps
had left General Meade; and General Meade's apparently avoiding a
collision with him has confirmed him in that belief.  If General
Meade can now attack him on a field no worse than equal for us, and
will do so now with all the skill and courage which he, his officers,
and men possess, the honor will be his if he succeeds, and the blame
may be mine if he fails.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR 300,000 VOLUNTEERS,
OCTOBER 17, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas the term of service of a part of the Volunteer forces of the
United States will expire during the coming year; and whereas, in
addition to the men raised by the present draft, it is deemed
expedient to call out three hundred thousand volunteers to serve for
three years or during the war, not, however, exceeding three years:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, and of the
militia of the several States when called into actual service, do
issue this my proclamation, calling upon the governors of the
different States to raise, and have enlisted into the United States
service, for the various companies and regiments in the field from
their respective States, the quotas of three hundred thousand men.


I further proclaim that all the volunteers thus called out and duly
enlisted shall receive advance pay, premium, and bounty, as
heretofore communicated to the governors of States by the War
Department through the Provost-Marshal-General's office, by special
letters.

I further proclaim that all volunteers received under this call, as
well as all others not heretofore credited, shall be duly credited
and deducted from the quotas established for the next draft.

I further proclaim that if any State shall fail to raise the quota
assigned to it by the War Department under this call, then a draft
for the deficiency in said quota shall be made in said State, or in
the districts of said State, for their due proportion of said quota,
and the said draft shall commence on the 5th day of January, 1864.

And I further proclaim that nothing in this proclamation shall
interfere with existing orders, or with those which may be issued for
the present draft in the States where it is now in progress, or where
it has not yet been commenced.

The quotas of the States and districts will be assigned by the War
Department through the Provost-Marshal-General's office, due regard
being had for the men heretofore furnished, whether by volunteering
or drafting; and the recruiting will be conducted in accordance with
such instructions as have been or may be issued by that department.

In issuing this proclamation, I address myself not only to the
governors of the several States, but also to the good and loyal
people thereof, invoking them to lend their cheerful, willing, and
effective aid to the measures thus adopted, with a view to reinforce
our victorious army now in the field, and bring our needful military
operations to a prosperous end, thus closing forever the fountains of
sedition and civil war.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.....................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FOSTER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., October 17, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL FOSTER, Port Monroe, Va.:

It would be useless for Mrs. Dr. Wright to come here.  The subject is
a very painful one, but the case is settled.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO W. B. THOMAS

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 17, 1863

HON. WILLIAM B. THOMAS, Philadelphia, Pa.

I am grateful for your offer of 100,000 men, but as at present
advised I do not consider that Washington is in danger, or that there
is any emergency requiring 60 or 90 days men.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. WILLIAMS AND N. G. TAYLOR.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 17, 1863.

JOHN WILLIAMS AND N G. TAYLOR, Knoxville, Tenn.:

You do not estimate the holding of East Tennessee more highly than I
do.  There is no absolute purpose of withdrawing our forces from it,
and only a contingent one to withdraw them temporarily for the
purpose of not losing the position permanently.  I am in great hope
of not finding it necessary to withdraw them at all, particularly if
you raise new troops rapidly for us there.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO T. C. DURANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON CITY, October 18, 1863.

T. C. DURANT, New York:

As I do with others, so I will try to see you when you come.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, October 19, 1863.9.  A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Chattanooga, Tenn:

There has been no battle recently at Bull Run.  I suppose what you
have heard a rumor of was not a general battle, but an "affair" at
Bristow Station on the railroad, a few miles beyond Manassas Junction
toward the Rappahannock, on Wednesday, the 14th.  It began by an
attack of the enemy upon General Warren, and ended in the enemy being
repulsed with a loss of four cannon and from four to seven hundred
prisoners.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. C. SCHENCK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 21, 1863.2.45

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

A delegation is here saying that our armed colored troops are at
many, if not all, the landings on the Patuxent River, and by their
presence with arms in their hands are frightening quiet people and
producing great confusion.  Have they been sent there by any order,
and if so, for what reason?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL R. C. SCHENCK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 22, 1863.1.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:

Please come over here.  The fact of one of our officers being killed
on the Patuxent is a specimen of what I would avoid.  It seems to me
we could send white men to recruit better than to send negroes and
thus inaugurate homicides on punctilio.

Please come over.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 24, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

Taking all our information together, I think it probable that Ewell's
corps has started for East Tennessee by way of Abingdon, marching
last Monday, say from Meade's front directly to the railroad at
Charlottesville.

First, the object of Lee's recent movement against Meade; his
destruction of the Alexandria and Orange Railroad, and subsequent
withdrawal without more motive, not otherwise apparent, would be
explained by this hypothesis.

Secondly, the direct statement of Sharpe's men that Ewell has gone to
Tennessee.

Thirdly, the Irishman's [Northern Spy in Richmond] statement that he
has not gone through Richmond, and his further statement of an appeal
made to the people at Richmond to go and protect their salt, which
could only refer to the works near Abingdon.

Fourthly, Graham's statement from Martinsburg that Imboden is in
retreat for Harrisonburg.  This last matches with the idea that Lee
has retained his cavalry, sending Imboden and perhaps other scraps to
join Ewell.  Upon this probability what is to be done?

If you have a plan matured, I have nothing to say.  If you have not,
then I suggest that, with all possible expedition, the Army of the
Potomac get ready to attack Lee, and that in the meantime a raid
shall, at all hazards, break the railroad at or near Lynchburg.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

(Private and Confidential.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 26, 1863.

HON. E. B. WASHBURNE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 12th has been in my hands several days.
Inclosed I send the leave of absence for your brother, in as good
form as I think I can safely put it.  Without knowing whether he
would accept it.  I have tendered the collectorship at Portland,
Maine, to your other brother, the governor.

Thanks to both you and our friend Campbell for your kind words and
intentions.  A second term would be a great honor and a great labor,
which, together, perhaps I would not decline if tendered.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CHASE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 26, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

MY DEAR SIR:--The writer of the accompanying letter is one of Mrs.
Lincoln's numerous cousins.  He is a grandson of "Milliken's Bend,"
near Vicksburg--that is, a grandson of the man who gave name to
Milliken's Bend.  His father was a brother to MRS. Lincoln's mother.
I know not a thing about his loyalty beyond what he says.  Supposing
he is loyal, can any of his requests be granted, and if any, which of
them?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v6
By Abraham Lincoln






VOLUME 7


OPINION ON THE LOSS OF
GENERAL R. H. MILROY'S DIVISION.

October 27, 1863.

In June last a division was substantially lost at or near Winchester,
Va.  At the time, it was under General Milroy as immediate commander
in the field, General Schenck as department commander at Baltimore,
and General Halleck as general-in-chief at Washington.

General Milroy, as immediate commander, was put in arrest, and
subsequently a court of inquiry examined chiefly with reference to
disobedience of orders, and reported the evidence.

The foregoing is a synoptical statement of the evidence, together
with the judge-advocate-general's conclusions.  The disaster, when it
came, was a surprise to all.  It was very well known to Generals
Shenck and Milroy for some time before, that General Halleck thought
the division was in great danger of a surprise at Winchester; that it
was of no service commensurate with the risk it incurred, and that it
ought to be withdrawn; but, although he more than once advised its
withdrawal, he never positively ordered it.  General Schenck, on the
contrary, believed the service of the force at Winchester was worth
the hazard, and so did not positively order its withdrawal until it
was so late that the enemy cut the wire and prevented the order
reaching General Milroy.

General Milroy seems to have concurred with General Schenck in the
opinion that the force should be kept at Winchester at least until
the approach of danger, but he disobeyed no order upon the subject.

Some question can be made whether some of General Halleck's
dispatches to General Schenk should not have been construed to be
orders to withdraw the force, and obeyed accordingly; but no such
question can be made against General Milroy.  In fact, the last order
he received was to be prepared to withdraw, but not to actually
withdraw until further order, which further order never reached him.

Serious blame is not necessarily due to any serious disaster, and I
cannot say that in this case any of the officers are deserving of
serious blame.  No court-martial is deemed necessary or proper in the
case.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

Private and confidential

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, October 28, 1863.

GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD:

There have recently reached the War Department, and thence been laid
before me, from Missouri, three communications, all similar in import
and identical in object.  One of them, addressed to nobody, and
without place or date, but having the signature of (apparently) the
writer, is a letter of eight closely written foolscap pages.  The
other two are written by a different person, at St. Joseph, Mo., and
of the dates, respectively, October 12 and 13, 1863, and each
inclosing a large number of affidavits.  The general statements of
the whole are that the Federal and State authorities are arming the
disloyal and disarming the loyal, and that the latter will all be
killed or driven out of the State unless there shall be a change.  In
particular, no loyal man who has been disarmed is named, but the
affidavits show by name forty-two persons as disloyal who have been
armed.  They are as follows: [The names are omitted.]

A majority of these are shown to have been in the rebel service.  I
believe it could be shown that the government here has deliberately
armed more than ten times as many captured at Gettysburg, to say
nothing of similar operations in East Tennessee.  These papers
contain altogether thirty--one manuscript pages, and one newspaper in
extenso, and yet I do not find it anywhere charged in them that any
loyal man has been harmed by reason of being disarmed, or that any
disloyal one has harmed anybody by reason of being armed by the
Federal or State Government.  Of course, I have not had time to
carefully examine all; but I have had most of them examined and
briefed by others, and the result is as stated.  The remarkable fact
that the actual evil is yet only anticipated--inferred--induces me to
suppose I understand the case; but I do not state my impression,
because I might be mistaken, and because your duty and mine is plain
in any event.  The locality of nearly all this seems to be St.
Joseph and Buchanan County.   I wish you to give special attention to
this region, particularly on election day.  Prevent violence from
whatever quarter, and see that the soldiers themselves do no wrong.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 28, 1863.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn.:
If not too inconvenient, please come at once and have a personal
conversation with me.

A. LINCOLN.




TO VICE-PRESIDENT HAMLIN.

AN ACT TO REGULATE THE DUTIES OF THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES IN PREPARING FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, that, before the
first meeting of the next Congress, and of every subsequent Congress,
the clerk of the next preceding House of Representatives shall make a
roll of the Representatives elect, and place thereon the names of all
persons, and of such persons only, whose credentials show that they
were regularly elected in accordance with the laws of their States
respectively, or the laws of the United States.

Approved March 3, 1863.




TO J. W. GRIMES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 29, 1863.

HON. JAMES W. GRIMES.

MY DEAR SIR :--The above act of Congress was passed, as I suppose,
for the purpose of shutting out improper applicants for seats in the
House of Representatives; and I fear there is some danger that it
will be used to shut out proper ones.  Iowa, having an entire Union
delegation, will be one of the States the attempt will be made, if
upon any.  The Governor doubtless has made out the certificates, and
they are already in the hands of the members.  I suggest that they
come on with them; but that, for greater caution, you, and perhaps
Mr. Harlan with you, consult with the Governor, and have an
additional set made out according to the form on the other half of
this sheet; and still another set, if you can, by studying the law,
think of a form that in your judgment, promises additional security,
and quietly bring the whole on with you, to be used in case of
necessity.  Let what you do be kept still.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO P. F. LOWE.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 30, 1863.

HON. F. F. LOWE, San Francisco, Cal.:

Below is an act of Congress, passed last session, intended to exclude
applicants not entitled to seats, but which, there is reason to fear,
will be used to exclude some who are entitled.  Please get with the
Governor and one or two other discreet friends, study the act
carefully, and make certificates m two or three forms, according to
your best judgement, and have them sent to me, so as to multiply the
chances of the delegation getting their seats.  Let it be done
without publicity.  Below is a form which may answer for one.  If you
could procure the same to be done for the Oregon member it might be
well.

A. LINCOLN.





TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 30, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

Much obliged for the information about deserters contained in your
dispatch of yesterday, while I have to beg your pardon for troubling
you in regard to some of them, when, as it appears by yours, I had
the means of answering my own questions.

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, October 31, 1863.

The Provost-Marshal-General has issued no proclamation at all.  He
has in no form announced anything recently in regard to troops in New
York, except in his letter to Governor Seymour of October 21, which
has been published in the newspapers of that State.  It has not been
announced or decided in any form by the Provost-Marshal-General, or
any one else in authority of the Government, that every citizen who
has paid his three hundred dollars commutation is liable to be
immediately drafted again, or that towns that have just raised the
money to pay their quotas will have again to be subject to similar
taxation or suffer the operations of the new conscription, nor it is
probable that the like of them ever will be announced or decided.




TELEGRAM TO W. H. SEWARD.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., November 1, 1863.

HON. W. H. SEWARD, Auburn, N.Y.:

No important news.  Details of Hooker's night fight do great credit
to his command, and particularly to the Eleventh Corps and Geary's
part of the Twelfth.  No discredit on any.

A. LINCOLN.




TO POSTMASTER-GENERAL BLAIR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 2, 1863.

HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR.

MY DEAR SIR:--Some days ago I understood you to say that your
brother, General Frank Blair, desires to be guided by my wishes as to
whether he will occupy his seat in Congress or remain in the field.
My wish, then, is compounded of what I believe will be best for the
country; and it is that he will come here, put his military
commission in my hands, take his seat, go into caucus with our
friends, abide the nominations, help elect the nominees, and thus aid
to organize a House of Representatives which will really support the
Government in the war.  If the result shall be the election of
himself as Speaker, let him serve in that position.  If not, let him
retake his commission and return to the army for the benefit of the
country.

This will heal a dangerous schism for him.  It will relieve him from
a dangerous position or a misunderstanding, as I think he is in
danger of being permanently separated from those with whom only he
can ever have a real sympathy--the sincere opponents of slavery.

It will be a mistake if he shall allow the provocations offered him
by insincere time-servers to drive him from the house of his own
building.  He is young yet.  He has abundant talents--quite enough to
occupy all his time without devoting any to temper.

He is rising in military skill and usefulness.  His recent
appointment to the command of a corps, by one so competent to judge
as General Sherman, proves this.  In that line he can serve both the
country and himself more profitably than he could as a member of
Congress upon the floor.

The foregoing is what I would say if Frank Blair was my brother
instead of yours.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR BRADFORD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 2, 1863.

His EXCELLENCY A. W. BRADFORD, Governor of Maryland.

SIR:--Yours of the 31st ult.  was received yesterday about noon, and
since then I have been giving most earnest attention to the subject-
matter of it.  At my call General Schenck has attended, and he
assures me it is almost certain that violence will be used at some of
the voting places on election day unless prevented by his provost-
guards.  He says that at some of those places Union voters will not
attend at all, or run a ticket, unless they have some assurance of
protection.   This makes the Missouri case, of my action in regard to
which you express your approval.

The remaining point of your letter is a protest against any person
offering to vote being put to any test not found in the laws of
Maryland.  This brings us to a difference between Missouri and
Maryland.  With the same reason in both States, Missouri has, by law,
provided a test for the voter with reference to the present
rebellion, while Maryland has not.  For example, General Trimble,
captured fighting us at Gettysburg, is, without recanting his
treason, a legal voter by the laws of Maryland.  Even General
Schenck's order admits him to vote, if he recants upon oath.  I think
that is cheap enough.  My order in Missouri, which you approve, and
General Scherick's order here, reach precisely the same end.  Bach
assures the right of voting to all loyal men, and whether a man is
loyal, each allows that man to fix by his own oath.  Your suggestion
that nearly all the candidates are loyal, I do not think quite meets
the case.  In this struggle for the nation's life, I cannot so
confidently rely on those whose elections may have depended upon
disloyal votes.  Such men, when elected, may prove true; but such
votes are given them in the expectation that they will prove false.

Nor do I think that to keep the peace at the polls, and to prevent
the persistently disloyal from voting, constitutes just cause of
offense to Maryland.  I think she has her own example for it.  If I
mistake not, it is precisely what General Dix did when your
Excellency was elected Governor.

I revoke the first of the three propositions in General Schenek's
General Order No.  53; not that it is wrong in principle, but because
the military, being of necessity exclusive judges as to who shall be
arrested, the provision is too liable to abuse.  For the revoked part
I substitute the following:

That, all provost-marshals and other military officers do prevent all
disturbance and violence at or about the polls, whether offered by
such persons as above described, or by any other person or persons
whomsoever.

The other two propositions of the order I allow to stand.  General
Schenek is fully determined, and has my strict orders besides, that
all loyal men may vote, and vote for whom they please.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. H. HACKETT
[Private.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 2, 1863.

JAMES H. HACKETT.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of October 22d is received, as also was, in due
course, that of October 3d.  I look forward with pleasure to the
fulfillment of the promise made in the former to visit Washington the
following winter and to "call."

Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject mentioned in that
of the 22d.  My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in
print, yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments
upon it.

Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred
to me through life.  I have endured a great deal of ridicule, without
much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness not quite
free from ridicule.  I am used to it.





TELEGRAM TO W. H. SEWARD.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON CITY, November 3, 1863.

HON. W. H. SEWARD, Auburn, N. Y.:

Nothing new.  Dispatches up to 12 last night from Chattanooga show
all quiet and doing well.  How is your son?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 3, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

Samuel Wellers, private in Company B, Forty-ninth Pennsylvania
Volunteers, writes that he is to be shot for desertion on the 6th
instant.  His own story is rather a bad one, and yet he tells it so
frankly, that I am somewhat interested in him.  Has he been a good
soldier except the desertion? About how old is he?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE, MANSION
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 5, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

Please suspend the execution of Samuel Wellers, Forty-ninth
Pennsylvania Volunteers, until further
orders.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL A. E. BURNSIDE.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, November 9, 1863.4 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Knoxville, Tenn.:

Have seen dispatch from General Grant about your loss at Rogersville.
Per contra, about the same time, Averell and Duffle got considerable
advantage of the enemy at and about Lewisburg, Virginia: and on
Saturday, the seventh, Meade drove the enemy from Rappahannock
Station and Kelly's Ford, capturing eight battle-flags, four guns,
and over 1800 prisoners, with very little loss to himself.  Let me
hear from you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. G. MEADE.
WASHINGTON, November 9, 1863 7.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE:

I have seen your dispatches about operations on the Rappahannock on
Saturday, and I wish to say, "Well done!"  Do the 1500 prisoners
reported by General Sedgwick include the 400 taken by General French,
or do the Whole amount to 1900?

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING THE EXPORT OF TOBACCO PURCHASED BY FOREIGN NATIONS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, November 10, 1863.

In consideration of the peculiar circumstances and pursuant to the
comity deemed to be due to friendly powers, any tobacco in the United
States belonging to the government either of France, Austria, or any
other state with which this country is at peace, and which tobacco
was purchased and paid for by such government prior to the 4th day of
March, 1861, may be exported from any port of the United States under
the supervision and upon the responsibility of naval officers of such
governments and in conformity to such regulations as may be presented
by the Secretary of State of the United States, and not otherwise.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 10, 1863.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

 I see a dispatch here from Saint Louis, which is a little difficult
for me to understand.  It says "General Schofield has refused leave
of absence to members in military service to attend the legislature.
All such are radical and administration men.  The election of two
Senators from this place on Thursday will probably turn upon this
thing."  what does this mean? Of course members of the legislation
must be allowed to attend its sessions.  But how is there a session
before the recent election returns are in? And how is it to be at
"this place"--and that is Saint Louis? Please inform me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 11, 1863.

GENERAL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

I believe the Secretary of War has telegraphed you about members of
the legislation.  At all events, allow those in the service to attend
the session, and we can afterward decide whether they can stay
through the entire session.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO HIRAM BARNEY.
     [Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., November 11, 1863.

HON. HIRAM BARNEY, New York;
I would like an interview with you.  Can you not come?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. MILDERBORGER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 11, 1863.

JOHN MILDERBORGER, Peru, Ind.:

I cannot comprehend the object of your dispatch.  I do not often
decline seeing people who call upon me, and probably will see you if
you call.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM to E. H. AND E. JAMESON.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 13, 1863.

E. H. and E. JAMESON, Jefferson City, Mo.:

Yours saying Brown and Henderson are elected Senators is received. I
understand this is one and one.  If so it is knocking heads together
to some

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, November 14, 1863.  12.15 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Cincinnati, Ohio:

I have received and considered your dispatch of yesterday.  Of the
reports you mention, I have not the means of seeing any except your
own.  Besides this, the publication might be improper in view of the
court of inquiry which has been ordered.  With every disposition, not
merely to do justice, but to oblige you, I feel constrained to say I
think the publications better not be made now.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON CITY, November 16, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Knoxville, Tenn.:

What is the news?

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CHASE

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 17, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

MY DEAR SIR:--I expected to see you here at Cabinet meeting, and to
say something about going to Gettysburg.  There will be a train to
take and return us.  The time for starting is not yet fixed, but when
it shall be I will notify you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are
met on a great battle-field of that war.   We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live.   It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--
we can not hallow--this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add
or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we
say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us
the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., November 20, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

If there is a man by the name of King under sentence to be shot,
please suspend execution till further order, and send record.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON. November 20, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

An intelligent woman in deep distress, called this morning, saying
her husband, a lieutenant in the Army of Potomac, was to be shot next
Monday for desertion, and putting a letter in my hand, upon which I
relied for particulars, she left without mentioning a name or other
particular by which to identify the case.  On opening the letter I
found it equally vague, having nothing to identify by, except her own
signature, which seems to be "Mrs. Anna S. King."  I could not again
find her.  If you have a case which you shall think is probably the
one intended, please apply my dispatch of this morning to it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO E. P. EVANS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., November 23, 1863.

E. P. EVANS, West Union, Adams County, Ohio:

Yours to Governor Chase in behalf of John A Welch is before me.  Can
there be a worse case than to desert and with letters persuading
others to desert? I cannot interpose without a better showing than
you make.  When did he desert? when did he write the letters?

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., November 23, 1863.

MY DEAR SIR:--Two despatches since I saw you; one not quite so late
on firing as we had before, but giving the points that Burnside
thinks he can hold the place, that he is not closely invested, and
that he forages across the river.  The other brings the firing up to
11 A.M. yesterday, being twenty-three hours later than we had before.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL GRANT.
WASHINGTON, November 25, 1863.  8.40 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL U.S. GRANT:

Your despatches as to fighting on Monday and Tuesday are here.  Well
done!  Many thanks to all.  Remember Burnside.

A. LINCOLN.




TO C. P. KIRKLAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 7, 1863.

CHARLES P. KIRKLAND, ESQ., New York:

I have just received and have read your published letter to the HON.
Benjamin R. Curtis.  Under the circumstances I may not be the most
competent judge, but it appears to me to be a paper of great ability,
and for the country's sake more than for my own I thank you for it.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ANNOUNCEMENT OF UNION SUCCESS IN EAST TENNESSEE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
December 7, 1863.

Reliable information being received that the insurgent force is
retreating from East Tennessee, under circumstances rendering it
probable that the Union forces cannot hereafter be dislodged from
that important position; and esteeming this to be of high national
consequence, I recommend that all loyal people do, on receipt of this
information, assemble at their places of worship, and render special
homage and gratitude to Almighty God for this great advancement of
the national cause.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION OF AMNESTY AND RECONSTRUCTION
DECEMBER 8, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas in and by the Constitution of the United States it is
provided that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and
pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of
impeachment;" and,

Whereas a rebellion now exists whereby the loyal State governments of
several States have for a long time been subverted, and many persons
have committed and are now guilty of treason against the United
States; and

Whereas, with reference to said rebellion and treason, laws have been
enacted by Congress declaring forfeitures and confiscation of
property and liberation of slaves, all upon terms and conditions
therein stated, and also declaring that the President was thereby
authorized at any time thereafter, by proclamation, to extend to
persons who may have participated in the existing rebellion in any
State or part thereof pardon and amnesty, with such exceptions and at
such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the
public welfare; and

Whereas the Congressional declaration for limited and conditional
pardon accords with well-established judicial exposition of the
pardoning power; and

Whereas, with reference to said rebellion, the President of the
United States has issued several proclamations with provisions in
regard to the liberation of slaves; and

Whereas it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said
rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States and to
reinaugurate loyal State governments within and for their respective
States:

Therefore, I,  Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do
proclaim, declare, and make known to all persons who have, directly
or by implication, participated in the existing rebellion, except as
hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them
and each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, except
as to slaves and in property cases where rights of third parties
shall have intervened, and upon the condition that every such person
shall take and subscribe an oath and thenceforward keep and maintain
said oath inviolate, and which oath shall be registered for permanent
preservation and shall be of the tenor and effect following, to wit:

"I, ________, do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I
will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States
thereunder; and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully
support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion
with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed,
modified, or held void by Congress or by decision of the Supreme
Court; and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support
all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion
having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or
declared void by decision of the Supreme Court.  So help me God."

The persons excepted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions
are all who are or shall have been civil or diplomatic officers or
agents of the so-called Confederate Government; all who have left
judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all
who are or shall have been military or naval officers of said so-
called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the army
or of lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States
Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the
Army or Navy of the United States and afterwards aided the rebellion;
and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or
white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners
of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States
service as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity.

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that whenever, in
any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North
Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of
the votes cast in such State at the Presidential election of the year
A.D. 1860, each having taken oath aforesaid, and not having since
violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the
State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and
excluding all others, shall reestablish a State government which
shall be republican and in nowise contravening said oath, such shall
be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State
shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision
which declares that "the United States shall guarantee to every State
in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each
of them against invasion, and, on application of the legislature, or
the EXECUTIVE (when the legislature can not be convened), against
domestic violence."

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that any provision
which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the
freed people of such State which shall recognize and declare their
permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be
consistent as a temporary arrangement with their present condition as
a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by
the National EXECUTIVE.

And it is suggested as not improper that in constructing a loyal
State government in any State the name of the State, the boundary,
the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of laws as
before the rebellion be maintained, subject only to the modifications
made necessary by the conditions hereinbefore stated, and such
others, if any, not contravening said co and which may be deemed
expedient by those framing the new State government.

To avoid misunderstanding, it may be proper to say that this
proclamation, so far as it relates to State governments, has no
reference to States wherein loyal State governments have all the
while been maintained.  And for the same reason it may be proper to
further say that whether members sent to Congress from any State
shall be admitted to seats constitutionally rests exclusively with
the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the EXECUTIVE. And,
still further, that this proclamation is intended to present the
people of the States wherein the national authority has been
suspended and loyal State governments have been subverted a mode in
and by which the national authority and loyal State governments may
be re-established within said States or in any of them; and while the
mode presented is the best the EXECUTIVE can suggest, with his
present impressions, it must not be understood that no other possible
mode would be acceptable.

Given under my hand at the city of WASHINGTON, the 8th day of
December, A. D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States of
America the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

DECEMBER 8, 1863.


FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:--Another year of health, and of sufficiently
abundant harvests, has passed.  For these, and especially for the
improved condition cf our national affairs, our renewed and
profoundest gratitude to God is due.

We remain in peace and friendship with foreign powers.

The efforts of disloyal citizens of the United States to involve us
in foreign wars, to aid an inexcusable insurrection, have been
unavailing.  Her Britannic Majesty's government, as was justly
expected, have exercised their authority to prevent the departure of
new hostile expeditions from British ports.  The Emperor of France
has, by a like proceeding, promptly vindicated the neutrality which
he proclaimed at the beginning of the contest.  Questions of great
intricacy and importance have arisen out of the blockade, and other
belligerent operations, between the Government and several of the
maritime powers, but they have been discussed, and, as far as was
possible, accommodated, in a spirit of frankness, justice, and mutual
good-will.  It is especially gratifying that our prize courts, by the
impartiality of their adjudications, have commanded the respect and
confidence of maritime powers.

The supplemental treaty between the United States and Great Britain
for the suppression of the African slave-trade, made on the 17th day
of February last, has been duly ratified and carried into execution.
It is believed that, so far as American ports and American citizens
are concerned, that inhuman and odious traffic has been brought to an
end.

I shall submit, for the consideration of the Senate, a convention for
the adjustment of possessory claims in Washington Territory, arising
out of the treaty of the 15th of June, 1846, between the United
States and Great Britain, and which have been the source of some
disquiet among the citizens of that now rapidly improving part of the
country.

A novel and important question, involving the extent of the maritime
jurisdiction of Spain in the waters which surround the island of
Cuba, has been debated without reaching an agreement, and it is
proposed, in an amicable spirit, to refer it to the arbitrament of a
friendly power.  A convention for that purpose will be submitted to
the Senate.

I have thought it proper, subject to the approval of the Senate, to
concur with the interested commercial powers in an arrangement for
the liquidation of the Scheldt dues upon the principles which have
been heretofore adopted in regard to the imposts upon navigation in
the waters of Denmark.

The long-pending controversy between this government and that of
Chile touching the seizure at Sitana, in Peru, by Chilean officers,
of a large amount in treasure belonging to citizens of the United
States has been brought to a close by the award of His Majesty the
King of the Belgians, to whose arbitration the question was referred
by the parties.  The subject was thoroughly and patiently examined by
that justly respected magistrate, and although the sum awarded to the
claimants may not have been as large as they expected there is no
reason to distrust the wisdom of His Majesty's decision.  That
decision was promptly complied with by Chile when intelligence in
regard to it reached that country.

The joint commission under the act of the last session of carrying
into effect the convention with Peru on the subject of claims has
been organized at Lima, and is engaged in the business intrusted to
it.

Difficulties concerning interoceanic transit through Nicaragua are in
course of amicable adjustment.

In conformity with principles set forth in my last annual message, I
have received a representative from the United States of Colombia,
and have accredited a minister to that Republic.

Incidents occurring in the progress of our civil war have forced upon
my attention the uncertain state of international questions touching
the rights of foreigners in this country and of United States
citizens abroad.  In regard to some governments these rights are at
least partially defined by treaties.  In no instance, however, is it
expressly stipulated that in the event of civil war a foreigner
residing in this country within the lines of the insurgents is to be
exempted from the rule which classes him as a belligerent, in whose
behalf the government of his country can not expect any privileges or
immunities distinct from that character.   I regret to say, however,
that such claims have been put forward, and in some instances in
behalf of foreigners who have lived in the United States the greater
part of their lives.

There is reason to believe that many persons born in foreign
countries who have declared their intention to become citizens, or
who have been fully naturalized have evaded the military duty
required of them by denying the fact and thereby throwing upon the
Government the burden of proof.  It has been found difficult or
impracticable to obtain this proof.  from the want of guides to the
proper sources of information.  These might be supplied by requiring
clerks of courts where declarations of intention may be made or
naturalizations effected to send periodically lists of the names of
the persons naturalized or declaring their intention to become
citizens to the Secretary of the Interior, in whose Department those
names might be arranged and printed for general information.

There is also reason to believe that foreigners frequently become
citizens of the United States for the sole purpose of evading duties
imposed by the laws of their native countries, to which on becoming
naturalized here they at once repair, and though never returning to
the United States they still claim the interposition of this
government as citizens.  Many altercations and great prejudices have
heretofore arisen out of this abuse.  It is therefore submitted to
your serious consideration.  It might be advisable to fix a limit
beyond which no citizen of the United States residing abroad may
claim the interposition of his government.

The right of suffrage has often been assumed and exercised by aliens
under pretenses of naturalization, which they have disavowed when
drafted into the military service.  I submit the expediency of such
an amendment of the law as will make the fact of voting an estoppe
against any plea of exemption from military service or other civil
obligation on the ground of alienage.

In common with other Western powers, our relations with Japan have
been brought into serious jeopardy through the perverse opposition of
the hereditary aristocracy of the Empire to the enlightened and
liberal policy of the Tycoon, designed to bring the country into the
society of nations.  It is hoped, although not with entire
confidence, that these difficulties may be peacefully overcome.  I
ask your attention to the claim of the minister residing there for
the damages he sustained in the destruction by fire of the residence
of the legation at Yedo.

Satisfactory arrangements have been made with the Emperor of Russia,
which, it is believed, will result in effecting a continuous line of
telegraph through that Empire from our Pacific coast.

I recommend to your favorable consideration the subject of an
international telegraph across the Atlantic Ocean, and also of a
telegraph between this capital and the national forts along the
Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico.  Such communications,
established with any reasonable outlay, would be economical as well
as effective aids to the diplomatic, military, and naval service.

The consular system of the United States, under the enactments of the
last Congress, begins to be self-sustaining, and there is reason to
hope that it may become entirely so with the increase of trade which
will ensue whenever peace is restored.  Our ministers abroad have
been faithful in defending American rights.  In protecting commercial
interests our consuls have necessarily had to encounter increased
labors and responsibilities growing out of the war.  These they have
for the most part met and discharged with zeal and efficiency.  This
acknowledgment justly includes those consuls who, residing in
Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China, and other Oriental countries,
are charged with complex functions and extraordinary powers.

The condition of the several organized Territories is generally
satisfactory, although Indian disturbances in New Mexico have not
been entirely suppressed.  The mineral resources of Colorado, Nevada,
Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona are proving far richer than has been
heretofore understood.  I lay before you a communication on this
subject from the Governor of New Mexico.  I again submit to your
consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the
encouragement of immigration.  Although this source of national
wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for
several years before the insurrection occurred, there is still a
great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially
in agriculture and in our mines, as well of iron and coal as of the
precious metals.  While the demand for labor is much increased here,
tens of thousands of persons, destitute of remunerative occupation,
are thronging our foreign consulates and offering to emigrate to the
United States if essential, but very cheap, assistance can be
afforded them.  It is easy to see that under the sharp discipline of
civil war the nation is beginning a new life.  This noble effort
demands the aid and ought to receive the attention and support of the
Government.

Injuries unforeseen by the Government and unintended may in some
cases have been inflicted on the subjects or citizens of foreign
countries, both at sea and on land, by persons in the service of the
United States.  As this government expects redress from other powers
when similar injuries are inflicted by persons in their service upon
citizens of the United States, we must be prepared to do justice to
foreigners.  If the existing judicial tribunals are inadequate to
this purpose, a special court may be authorized, with power to hear
and decide such claims of the character referred to as may have
arisen under treaties and the public law.  Conventions for adjusting
the claims by joint commission have been proposed to some
governments, but no definitive answer to the proposition has yet been
received from any.

In the course of the session I shall probably have occasion to
request you to provide indemnification to claimants where decrees of
restitution have been rendered and damages awarded by admiralty
courts, and in other cases where this government may be acknowledged
to be liable in principle and where the amount of that liability has
been ascertained by an informal arbitration.

The proper officers of the Treasury have deemed themselves required
by the law of the United States upon the subject to demand a tax upon
the incomes of foreign consuls in this country.  While such a demand
may not in strictness be in derogation of public law, or perhaps of
any existing treaty between the United States and a foreign country,
the expediency of so far modifying the act as to exempt from tax the
income of such consuls as are not citizens of the United States,
derived from the emoluments of their office or from property not
situated in the United States, is submitted to your serious
consideration.  I make this suggestion upon the ground that a comity
which ought to be reciprocated exempts our consuls in all other
countries from taxation to the extent thus indicated.  The United
States, I think, ought not to be exceptionally illiberal to
international trade and commerce.

The operations of the Treasury during the last year have been
successfully conducted.  The enactment by Congress of a national
banking law has proved a valuable support of the public credit, and
the general legislation in relation to loans has fully answered the
expectations of its favorers.  Some amendments may be required to
perfect existing laws, but no change in their principles or general
scope is believed to be needed.

Since these measures have been in operation all demands on the
Treasury, including the pay of the Army and Navy, have been promptly
met and fully satisfied.  No considerable body of troops, it is
believed, were ever more amply provided and more liberally and
punctually paid, and it may be added that by no people were the
burdens incident to a great war ever more cheerfully borne.

The receipts during the year from all sources, including loans and
balance in the Treasury at its commencement, were $901,125,674.86,
and the aggregate disbursements $895,796,630.65, leaving a balance on
the 1st of July, 1863, of $5,329,044.21.  Of the receipts there were
derived from customs $69,059,642.40, from internal revenue
$37,640,787.95, from direct tax $1,485,103.61, from lands
$167,617.17, from miscellaneous sources $3,046,615.35, and from loans
$776,682,361.57, making the aggregate $901,125,674.86.  Of the
disbursements there were for the civil service $23,253,922.08, for
pensions and Indians $4,216,520.79, for interest on public debt
$24,729,846.51, for the War Department $599,298,600.83, for the Navy
Department $63,211,105.27, for payment of funded and temporary debt
$181,086,635.07, making the aggregate $895,796,630.65 and leaving the
balance of $5,329,044.21.   But the payment of funded and temporary
debt, having been made from moneys borrowed during the year, must be
regarded as merely nominal payments and the moneys borrowed to make
them as merely nominal receipts, and their amount, $181,086,635.07,
should therefore be deducted both from receipts and disbursements.
This being done there remains as actual receipts  $720,039,039.79 and
the actual disbursements $714,709,995.58, leaving the balance as
already stated.

The actual receipts and disbursements for the first quarter and the
estimated receipts and disbursements for the remaining three-quarters
of the current fiscal year (1864) will be shown in detail by the
report of the Secretary of the Treasury, to which I invite your
attention.   It is sufficient to say here that it is not believed
that actual results will exhibit a state of the finances less
favorable to the country than the estimates of that officer
heretofore submitted while it is confidently expected that at the
close of the year both disbursements and debt will be found very
considerably less than has been anticipated.

The report of the Secretary of War is a document of great interest.
It consists of:
1.The military operations of the year, detailed in the report of the
General in Chief.
2.The organization of colored persons into the war service.
3.The exchange of prisoners, fully set forth in the letter of General
Hitchcock.
4.The operations under the act for enrolling and calling out the
national forces, detailed in the report of the Provost Marshal
General.
5.The organization of the invalid corps, and
6.The operation of the several departments of the Quartermaster-
General, Commissary-General, Paymaster-General, Chief of Engineers,
Chief of Ordnance, and Surgeon-General.

It has appeared impossible to make a valuable summary of this report,
except such as would be too extended for this place, and hence I
content myself by asking your careful attention to the report itself.

The duties devolving on the naval branch of the service during the
year and throughout the whole of this unhappy contest have been
discharged with fidelity and eminent success.  The extensive blockade
has been constantly increasing in efficiency as the Navy has
expanded, yet on so long a line it has so far been impossible to
entirely suppress illicit trade.  From returns received at the Navy
Department it appears that more than 1,000 vessels have been captured
since the blockade was instituted? and that the value of prizes
already sent in for adjudication amounts to over $13,000,000.

The naval force of the United States consists at this time of five
hundred and eighty-eight vessels completed and in the course of
completion, and of these seventy-five are ironclad or armored
steamers.  The events of the war give an increased interest and
importance to the Navy which will probably extend beyond the war
itself.

The armored vessels in our Navy completed and in service, or which
are under contract and approaching completion, are believed to exceed
in number those of any other power; but while these may be relied
upon for harbor defense and coast service, others of greater strength
and capacity will be necessary for cruising purposes and to maintain
our rightful position on the ocean.

The change that has taken place in naval vessels and naval warfare
since the introduction of steam as a motive power for ships of war
demands either a corresponding change in some of our existing navy
yards or the establishment of new ones for the construction and
necessary repair of modern naval vessels.  No inconsiderable
embarrassment, delay, and public injury have been experienced from
the want of such governmental establishments.  The necessity of such
a navy-yard, so furnished, at some suitable place upon the Atlantic
seaboard has on repeated occasions been brought to the attention of
Congress by the Navy Department, and is again presented in the report
of the Secretary which accompanies this communication.  I think it my
duty to invite your special attention to this subject, and also to
that of establishing a yard and depot for naval purposes upon one of
the Western rivers.  A naval force has been created on those interior
waters, and under many disadvantages, within little more than two
years, exceeding in numbers the whole naval force of the country at
the commencement of the present Administration.  Satisfactory and
important as have been the performances of the heroic men of the Navy
at this interesting period, they are scarcely more wonderful than the
success of our mechanics and artisans in the production of war
vessels, which has created a new form of naval power.

Our country has advantages superior to any other nation in our
resources of iron and timber, with inexhaustible quantities of fuel
in the immediate vicinity of both, and all available and in close
proximity to navigable waters.   Without the advantage of public
works, the resources of the nation have been developed and its power
displayed in the construction of a Navy of such magnitude, which has
at the very period of its creation rendered signal service to the
Union.

The increase of the number of seamen in the public service from 7,500
men in the spring of 1861 to about 34,000 at the present time has
been accomplished without special legislation or extraordinary
bounties to promote that increase.  It has been found, however, that
the operation of the draft, with the high bounties paid for army
recruits, is beginning to affect injuriously the naval service, and
will, if not corrected, be likely to impair its efficiency by
detaching seamen from their proper vocation and inducing them to
enter the Army.   I therefore respectfully suggest that Congress
might aid both the army and naval services by a definite provision on
this subject which would at the same time be equitable to the
communities more especially interested.

I commend to your consideration the suggestions of the Secretary of
the Navy in regard to the policy of fostering and training seamen and
also the education of officers and engineers for the naval service.
The Naval Academy is rendering signal service in preparing midshipmen
for the highly responsible duties which in after life they will be
required to perform.  In order that the country should not be
deprived of the proper quota of educated officers, for which legal
provision has been made at the naval school, the vacancies caused by
the neglect or omission to make nominations from the States in
insurrection have been filled by the Secretary of the Navy.  The
school is now more full and complete than at any former period, and
in every respect entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress.

During the past fiscal year the financial condition of the Post-
Office Department has been one of increasing prosperity, and I am
gratified in being able to state that the actual postal revenue has
nearly equaled the entire expenditures, the latter amounting to
$11,314,206.84 and the former to $11,163,789.59, leaving a deficiency
of but $150,417.25.   In 1860, the year immediately preceding the
rebellion, the deficiency amounted to $5,656,705.49, the postal
receipts of that year being $2,645,722.19 less that those of 1863.
The decrease since 1860 in the annual amount of transportation has
been only about twenty-five per cent, but the annual expenditure on
account of the same has been reduced thirty-five per cent.  It is
manifest, therefore, that the Post-Office Department may become self-
sustaining in a few years, even with the restoration of the whole
service.

The international conference of postal delegates from the principal
countries of Europe and America, which was called at the suggestion
of the Postmaster-General, met at Paris on the 11th of May last and
concluded its deliberations on the 8th of June.  The principles
established by the conference as best adapted to facilitate postal
intercourse between nations and as the basis of future postal
conventions inaugurate a general system of uniform international
charges at reduced rates of postage, and can not fail to produce
beneficial results.

I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Interior, which is
herewith laid before you, for useful and varied information in
relation to the public lands, Indian affairs, patents, pensions, and
other matters of public concern pertaining to his Department.

The quantity of land disposed of during the last and the first
quarter of the present fiscal years was 3,841,549 acres, of which
161,911 acres were sold for cash, 1,456,514 acres were taken up under
the homestead law, and the residue disposed of under laws granting
lands for military bounties, for railroad and other purposes.  It
also appears that the sale of the public lands is largely on the
increase.

It has long been a cherished opinion of some of our wisest statesmen
that the people of the United States had a higher and more enduring
interest in the early settlement and substantial cultivation of the
public lands than in the amount of direct revenue to be derived from
the sale of them.  This opinion has had a controlling influence in
shaping legislation upon the subject of our national domain.  I may
cite as evidence of this the liberal measures adopted in reference to
actual settlers; the grant to the States of the overflowed lands
within their limits, in order to their being reclaimed and rendered
fit for cultivation; the grants to railway companies of alternate
sections of land upon the contemplated lines of their roads, which
when completed will so largely multiply the facilities for reaching
our distant possessions.  This policy has received its most signal
and beneficent illustration in the recent enactment granting
homesteads to actual settlers.  Since the 1st day of January last the
before-mentioned quantity of 1,456,514 acres of land have been taken
up under its provisions.  This fact and the amount of sales furnish
gratifying evidence of increasing settlement upon the public lands,
notwithstanding the great struggle in which the energies of the
nation have been engaged, and which has required so large a
withdrawal of our citizens from their accustomed pursuits.  I
cordially concur in the recommendation of the Secretary of the
Interior suggesting a modification of the act in favor of those
engaged in the military and naval service of the United States.   I
doubt not that Congress will cheerfully adopt such measures as will,
without essentially changing the general features of the system,
secure to the greatest practicable extent its benefits to those who
have left their homes in the defense of the country in this arduous
crisis.

I invite your attention to the views of the Secretary as to the
propriety of raising by appropriate legislation a revenue from the
mineral lands of the United States.

The measures provided at your last session for the removal of certain
Indian tribes have been carried into effect.  Sundry treaties have
been negotiated, which will in due time be submitted for the
constitutional action of the Senate.  They contain stipulations for
extinguishing the possessory rights of the Indians to large and
valuable tracts of lands.  It is hoped that the effect of these
treaties will result in the establishment of permanent friendly
relations with such of these tribes as have been brought into
frequent and bloody collision with our outlying settlements and
emigrants.  Sound policy and our imperative duty to these wards of
the Government demand our anxious and constant attention to their
material well-being, to their progress in the arts of civilization,
and, above all, to that moral training which under the blessing of
Divine Providence will confer upon them the elevated and sanctifying
influences, the hopes and consolations, of the Christian faith.

I suggested in my last annual message the propriety of remodeling our
Indian system.  Subsequent events have satisfied me of its necessity.
The details set forth in the report of the Secretary evince the
urgent need for immediate legislative action.

I commend the benevolent institutions established or patronized by
the Government in this District to your generous and fostering care.

The attention of Congress during the last session was engaged to some
extent with a proposition for enlarging the water communication
between the Mississippi River and the northeastern seaboard, which
proposition, however, failed for the time.  Since then, upon a call
of the greatest respectability, a convention has been held at Chicago
upon the same subject, a summary of whose views is contained in a
memorial addressed to the President and Congress, and which I now
have the honor to lay before you.  That this interest is one which
ere long will force its own way I do not entertain a doubt, while it
is submitted entirely to your wisdom as to what can be done now.
Augmented interest is given to this subject by the actual
commencement of work upon the Pacific Railroad, under auspices so
favorable to rapid progress and completion.  The enlarged navigation
becomes a palpable need to the great road.

I transmit the second annual report of the Commissioner of the
Department of Agriculture, asking your attention to the developments
in that vital interest of the nation.

When Congress assembled a year ago, the war had already lasted nearly
twenty months, and there had been many conflicts on both land and
sea, with varying results; the rebellion had been pressed back into
reduced limits; yet the tone of public feeling and opinion, at home
and abroad, was not satisfactory.  With other signs, the popular
elections then just past indicated uneasiness among ourselves, while,
amid much that was cold and menacing, the kindest words coming from
Europe were uttered in accents of pity that we are too blind to
surrender a hopeless cause.  Our commerce was suffering greatly by a
few armed vessels built upon and furnished from foreign shores, and
we were threatened with such additions from the same quarter as would
sweep our trade from the sea and raise our blockade.  We had failed
to elicit from European governments anything hopeful upon this
subject.  The preliminary emancipation proclamation, issued in
September, was running its assigned period to the beginning of the
new year.  A month later the final proclamation came, including the
announcement that colored men of suitable condition would be received
into the war service.  The policy of emancipation and of employing
black soldiers gave to the future a new aspect, about which hope and
fear and doubt contended in uncertain conflict.  According to our
political system, as a matter of civil administration, the General
Government had no lawful power to effect emancipation in any State,
and for a long time it had been hoped that the rebellion could be
suppressed without resorting to it as a military measure.  It was all
the while deemed possible that the necessity for it might come, and
that if it should the crisis of the contest would then be presented.
It came, and, as was anticipated, it was followed by dark and
doubtful days.  Eleven months having now passed, we are permitted to
take another review.  The rebel borders are pressed still farther
back, and by the complete opening of the Mississippi the country
dominated by the rebellion is divided into distinct parts, with no
practical communication between them.  Tennessee and Arkansas have
been substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential
citizens in each, owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the
beginning of the rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in
their respective States.  Of those States not included in the
emancipation proclamation, Maryland and Missouri, neither of which
three years ago would tolerate any restraint upon the extension of
slavery into new Territories, dispute now only as to the best mode of
removing it within their own limits.

Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion full
100,000 are now in the United States military service, about one-half
of which number actually bear arms in the ranks, thus giving the
double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause and
supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many
white men.  So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as
good soldiers as any.  No servile insurrection or tendency to
violence or cruelty has marked the measures of emancipation and
arming the blacks.  These measures have been much discussed in
foreign countries, and, contemporary with such discussion, the tone
of public sentiment there is much improved.  At home the same
measures have been fully discussed, supported, criticized, and
denounced, and the annual elections following are highly encouraging
to those whose official duty it is to bear the country through this
great trial.  Thus we have the new reckoning.  The crisis which
threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past.

Looking now to the present and future, and with reference to a
resumption of the national authority within the States wherein that
authority has been suspended, I have thought fit to issue a
proclamation, a copy of which is herewith transmitted.  On
examination of this proclamation it will appear, as is believed, that
nothing will be attempted beyond what is amply justified by the
Constitution.  True, the form of an oath is given, but no man is
coerced to take it.  The man is promised a pardon only in case he
voluntarily takes the oath.  The Constitution authorizes the
Executive to grant or withhold the pardon at his own absolute
discretion, and this includes the power to grant on terms, as is
fully established by judicial and other authorities.

It is also proffered that if in any of the States named a State
government shall be in the mode prescribed set up, such government
shall be recognized and guaranteed by the United States, and that
under it the State shall, on the constitutional conditions, be
protected against invasion and domestic violence.  The constitutional
obligation of the United States to guarantee to every State in the
Union a republican form of government and to protect the State in the
cases stated is explicit and full.  But why tender the benefits of
this provision only to a State government set up in this particular
way? This section of the Constitution contemplates a case wherein the
element within a State favorable to republican government in the
Union may be too feeble for an opposite and hostile element external
to or even within the State, and such are precisely the cases with
which we are now dealing.

An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government,
constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element
against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply
absurd.  There must be a test by which to separate the opposing
elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a
sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a
sworn recantation of his former unsoundness.

But if it be proper to require as a test of admission to the
political body an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the
United States and to the Union under it, why also to the laws and
proclamations in regard to slavery? Those laws and proclamations were
enacted and put forth for the purpose of aiding in the suppression of
the rebellion.  To give them their fullest effect there had to be a
pledge for their maintenance.  In my judgment, they have aided and
will further aid the cause for which they were intended.  To now
abandon them would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but
would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.  I may add
at this point that while I remain in my present position I shall not
attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall
I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that
proclamation or by any of the acts of Congress.  For these and other
reasons it is thought best that support of these measures shall be
included in the oath, and it is believed the Executive may lawfully
claim it in return for pardon and restoration of forfeited rights,
which he has clear constitutional power to withhold altogether or
grant upon the terms which he shall deem wisest for the public
interest.  It should be observed also that this part of the oath is
subject to the modifying and abrogating power of legislation and
supreme judicial decision.

The proposed acquiescence of the National Executive in any reasonable
temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the
view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must
at best attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout
whole States.  It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people
in those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of
their affliction if to this extent this vital matter be left to
themselves, while no power of the National Executive to prevent an
abuse is abridged by the proposition.

The suggestion in the proclamation as to maintaining the political
framework of the States on what is called reconstruction is made in
the hope that it may do good without danger of harm.  It will save
labor and avoid great confusion.

But why any proclamation now upon this subject? This question is
beset with the conflicting views that the step might be delayed too
long or be taken too soon.  In some States the elements for
resumption seem ready for action, but remain inactive apparently for
want of a rallying point--a plan of action.  Why shall A adopt the
plan of B rather than B that of A? And if A and B should agree, how
can they know but that the General Government here will reject their
plan? By the proclamation a plan is presented which may be accepted
by them as a rallying point, and which they are assured in advance
will not be rejected here.  This may bring them to act sooner than
they otherwise would.

The objections to a premature presentation of a plan by the National
Executive consist in the danger of committals on points which could
be more safely left to further developments.  Care has been taken to
so shape the document as to avoid embarrassments from this source.
Saying that on certain terms certain classes will be pardoned with
rights restored, it is not said that other classes or other terms
will never be included.  Saying that reconstruction will be accepted
if presented in a specified way, it is not said it will never be
accepted in any other way.

The movements by State action for emancipation in several of the
States not included in the emancipation proclamation are matters of
profound gratulation.  And while I do not repeat in detail what I
have heretofore so earnestly urged upon this subject my general views
and feelings remain unchanged and I trust that Congress will omit no
fair opportunity of aiding these important steps to a great
consummation.

In the midst of other cares, however important we must not lose sight
of the fact that the war power is still our main reliance.  To that
power alone we look yet for a time to give confidence to the people
in the contested regions that the insurgent power will not again
overrun them.  Until that confidence shall be established little can
be done anywhere what is called reconstruction.  Hence our chiefest
care must still be directed to the Army and Navy who have thus far
borne their harder part so nobly and well; and it may be esteemed
fortunate that giving the greatest efficiency to these indispensable
arms we do also honorably recognize the gallant men, from commander
to sentinel, who compose them, and to whom more than to others the
world must stand indebted for the home of freedom disenthralled,
regenerated, enlarged, and perpetuated.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON D. C., December 8, 1863.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend
that Captain John Rogers United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks
from Congress for the eminent skill and gallantry exhibited by him in
the engagement with the rebel armed ironclad steamer Fingal, alias
Atlanta, whilst in command of the United States ironclad steamer
Weehawken, which led to her capture on the 17th June, 1863, and also
for the zeal, bravery, and general good conduct shown by this officer
on many occasions.

This recommendation is specially made in order to comply with the
requirements of the ninth section of the aforesaid act, which is in
the following words, viz:

That any line officer of the Navy or Marine Corps may be advanced one
grade if upon recommendation of the President by name he receives the
thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict with
the enemy or for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON, D. C., December 8, 1863.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

Congress, on my recommendation, passed a resolution, approved 7th
February, 1863, tendering its thanks to Commander D. D. Porter "for
the bravery and skill displayed in the attack on the post of Arkansas
on the 10th January, 1863," and in consideration of those services,
together with his efficient labors and vigilance subsequently
displayed in thwarting the efforts of the rebels to obstruct the
Mississippi and its tributaries and the important part rendered by
the squadron under his command, which led to the surrender of
Vicksburg.

I do therefore, in conformity to the seventh section of the act
approved 16th July, 1862, nominate Commander D. D. Porter to be a
rear-admiral in the Navy on the active list from the 4th July, 1863,
to fill an existing vacancy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, December 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL GRANT:
Understanding that your lodgment at Chattanooga and Knoxville is now
secure, I wish to tender you, and all under your command, my more
than thanks, my profoundest gratitude, for the skill, courage, and
perseverance with which you and they, over so great difficulties,
have effected that important object.  God bless you all!

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 9, 1863

HIS EXCELLENCY A. G. CURTIN,
Governor of Pennsylvania.
DEAR SIR:--I have to urge my illness, and the preparation of the
message, in excuse for not having sooner transmitted you the inclosed
from the Secretary of War and Provost Marshal General in response to
yours in relation to recruiting in Pennsylvania.   Though not quite
as you desire, I hope the grounds taken will be reasonably
satisfactory to you.  Allow me to exchange congratulations with you
on the organization of the House of Representatives, and especially
on recent military events in Georgia and Tennessee.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 10, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Please suspend execution in any and all sentences of death in your
department until further order.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 11, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

Lieut.  Col.  James B. Knox, Tenth Regiment Pennsylvania Reserves,
offers his resignation under circumstances inducing me to wish to
accept it.  But I prefer to know your pleasure upon the subject.
Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TO JUDGE HOFFMAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
December 15, 1863.

HON. OGDEN HOFFMAN, U. S. District Judge, San Francisco, Cal.:

The oath in the proclamation of December 8 is intended for those who
may voluntarily take it, and not for those who may be constrained to
take it in order to escape actual imprisonment or punishment.  It is
intended that the latter class shall abide the granting or
withholding of the pardoning power in the ordinary way.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MARY GONYEAG.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 15, 1863.

MOTHER MARY GONYEAG, Superior, Academy of Visitation,
Keokuk, Iowa:

The President has no authority as to whether you may raffle for the
benevolent object you mention.  If there is no objection in the Iowa
laws, there is none here.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING DISCRIMINATING DUTIES,
DECEMBER 16, 1863.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by an act of the Congress of the United States of the 24th of
May, 1828, entitled "An act in addition to an act entitled 'An act
concerning discriminating duties of tonnage and impost' and to
equalize the duties on Prussian vessels and their cargoes," it is
provided that upon satisfactory evidence being given to the President
of the United States by the government of any foreign nation that no
discriminating duties of tonnage or impost are imposed or levied in
the ports of the said nation upon vessels wholly belonging to
citizens of the United States or upon the produce, manufactures, or
merchandise imported in the same from the United States or from any
foreign country, the President is thereby authorized to issue his
proclamation declaring that the foreign discriminating duties of
tonnage and impost within the United States are and shall be
suspended and discontinued so far as respects the vessels of the said
foreign nation and the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported
into the United States in the same from the said foreign nation or
from any other foreign country, the said suspension to take effect
from the time of such notification being given to the President of
the United States and to continue so long as the reciprocal exemption
of vessels belonging to citizens of the United States and their
cargoes, as aforesaid, shall be continued, and no longer; and

Whereas satisfactory evidence has lately been received by me through
an official communication of Senor Don Luis Molina, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of
Nicaragua, under date of the 28th of November, 1863, that no other or
higher duties of tonnage and impost have been imposed or levied since
the second day of August, 1838, in the ports of Nicaragua, upon
vessels wholly belonging to citizens of the United States, and upon
the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported in the same from
the United States, and from any foreign country whatever, than are
levied on Nicaraguan ships and their cargoes in the same ports under
like circumstances:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America, do hereby declare and proclaim that so much of the several
acts imposing discriminating duties of tonnage and impost within the
United States are, and shall be, suspended and discontinued so far as
respects the vessels of Nicaragua, and the produce, manufactures, and
the merchandise imported into the United States in the same from the
dominions of Nicaragua, and from any other foreign country whatever;
the said suspension to take effect from the day above mentioned, and
to continue thenceforward so long as the reciprocal exemption of the
vessels of the United States, and the produce, manufactures, and
merchandise imported into the dominions of Nicaragua in the same, as
aforesaid, shall be continued on the part of the government of
Nicaragua.

Given under my hand at the city of Washington, the sixteenth day of
December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, and the eighty-eighth of the Independence of the United
States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

DECEMBER 17, 1863.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES:

Herewith I lay before you a letter addressed to myself by a committee
of gentlemen representing the freedmen's aid societies in Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati.  The subject of the letter, as
indicated above, is one of great magnitude and importance, and one
which these gentlemen, of known ability and high character, seem to
have considered with great attention and care.  Not having the time
to form a mature judgment of my own as to whether the plan they
suggest is the best, I submit the whole subject to Congress, deeming
that their attention thereto is almost imperatively demanded.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL HURLBUT.
[Cipher.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 17, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL HURLBUT, Memphis, Tenn.:

I understand you have under sentence of death, a tall old man, by the
name of Henry F. Luckett.  I personally knew him, and did not think
him a bad man.   Please do not let him be executed unless upon
further order from me, and in the meantime send me a transcript of
the record.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, December 19, 1863.

GENERAL GRANT, Chattanooga, Tennessee:

The Indiana delegation in Congress, or at least a large part of them,
are very anxious that General Milroy shall enter active service
again, and I share in this feeling.  He is not a difficult man to
satisfy, sincerity and courage being his strong traits.  Believing in
our cause, and wanting to fight for it, is the whole matter with him.
Could you, without embarrassment, assign him a place, if directed to
report to you?

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., December 21, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--Sending a note to the Secretary of the Navy, as I
promised, he called over and said that the strikes in the ship-yards
had thrown the completion of vessels back so much that he thought
General Gilimore's proposition entirely proper.  He only wishes (and
in which I concur) that General Gillmore will courteously confer
with, and explain to, Admiral Dahlgren.

In regard to the Western matter, I believe the program will have to
stand substantially as I first put it.  Henderson, and especially
Brown, believe that the social influence of St.  Louis would
inevitably tell injuriously upon General Pope in the particular
difficulty existing there, and I think there is some force in that
view.

As to retaining General Schofield temporarily, if this should be
done, I believe I should scarcely be able to get his nomination
through the Senate.  Send me over his nomination, which, however, I
am not quite ready to send to the Senate.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO O. D. FILLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 22, 1863.

O. D. FILLEY, ST. Louis, Missouri:

I have just looked over a petition signed by some three dozen
citizens of St.  Louis, and three accompanying letters, one by
yourself, one by a Mr. Nathan Ranney, and one by a Mr. John D.
Coalter, the whole relating to the Rev.  Dr. McPheeters.  The
petition prays, in the name of justice and mercy, that I will restore
Dr. McPheeters to all his ecclesiastical rights.   This gives no
intimation as to what ecclesiastical rights are withheld.

Your letter states that Provost-Marshal Dick, about a year ago,
ordered the arrest of Dr. McPheeters, pastor of the Vine Street
Church, prohibited him from officiating, and placed the management of
the affairs of the church out of the control of its chosen trustees;
and near the close you state that a certain course "would insure his
release."  Mr. Ranney's letter says: "Dr. Samuel S. McPheeters is
enjoying all the rights of a civilian, but cannot preach the
Gospel!!!!"  Mr. Coalter, in his letter, asks: "Is it not a strange
illustration of the condition of things, that the question of who
shall be allowed to preach in a church in St. Louis shall be decided
by the President of the United States?"

Now, all this sounds very strangely; and, withal, a little as if you
gentlemen making the application do not understand the case alike;
one affirming that the doctor is enjoying all the rights of a
civilian, and another pointing out to me what will secure his
release! On the second day of January last, I wrote to General Curtis
in relation to Mr. Dick's order upon Dr. McPheeters; and, as I
suppose the doctor is enjoying all the rights of a civilian, I only
quote that part of my letter which relates to the church.  It is as
follows: "But I must add that the United States Government must not,
as by this order, undertake to run the churches.  When an individual,
in a church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest,
he must be checked; but the churches, as such, must take care of
themselves.  It will not do for the United States to appoint
trustees, supervisors, or other agents for the churches."

This letter going to General Curtis, then in command there, I
supposed, of course, it was obeyed, especially as I heard no further
complaint from Dr. McPheeters or his friends for nearly an entire
year.  I have never interfered, nor thought of interfering, as to who
shall or shall not preach in any church; nor have I knowingly or
believingly tolerated any one else to so interfere by my authority.
If any one is so interfering by color of my authority, I would like
to have it specifically made known to me.   If, after all, what is
now sought is to have me put Dr. McPheeters back over the heads of a
majority of his own congregation, that, too, will be declined.  I
will not have control of any church on any side.

Yours respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MILITARY COMMANDER AT POINT LOOKOUT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 22, 1863.

MILITARY COMMANDER, Point Lookout, Md.:

If you have a prisoner by the name Linder--Daniel Linder, I think,
and certainly the son of U. F. Linder, of Illinois, please send him
to me by an officer.

A. LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO MILITARY COMMANDER AT POINT LOOKOUT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 24, 1863.

MILITARY COMMANDER, Point Lookout, Md.:

If you send Linder to me as directed a day or two ago, also send
Edwin C. Claybrook, of Ninth Virginia rebel cavalry.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO U. F. LINDER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON D. C., December 26, 1863.

HON. U. F. LINDER, Chicago, Ill.:
Your son Dan has just left me with my order to the Secretary of War,
to administer to him the oath of allegiance, discharge him and send
him to you.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL N. P. BANKS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 29, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BANKS:

Yours of the sixteenth is received, and I send you, as covering the
ground of it, a copy of my answer to yours of the sixth, it being
possible the original may not reach you.  I intend you to be master
in every controversy made with you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 30, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Jacob Bowers is fully pardoned for past offence, upon condition that
he returns to duty and re-enlists for three years or during the war.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, December 31, 1863.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

SIR:--Please fix up the department to which Curtis is to go, without
waiting to wind up the Missouri matter.  Lane is very anxious to have
Fort Smith in it, and I am willing, unless there be decided military
reasons to the contrary, in which case of course, I am not for it.
It will oblige me to have the Curtis department fixed at once.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




1864



TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SULLIVAN.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., January 1, 1864.  3.30 p.m.

GENERAL SULLIVAN, Harper's Ferry:

Have you anything new from Winchester, Martinsburg or thereabouts?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR PIERPOINT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 2, 1864.

GOVERNOR PIERPOINT, Alexandria, Va.:

Please call and see me to-day if not too inconvenient.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 2, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER.

SIR:--The Secretary of War and myself have concluded to discharge of
the prisoners at Point Lookout the following classes: First, those
who will take the oath prescribed in the proclamation of December 8,
and issued by the consent of General Marston, will enlist in our
service.  Second, those who will take the oath and be discharged and
whose homes lie safely within our military lines.

I send by Mr. Hay this letter and a blank-book and some other blanks,
the way of using which I propose for him to explain verbally better
than I can in writing.

Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 5, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE:

If not inconsistent with the service, please allow General William
Harrow as long a leave of absence as the rules permit with the
understanding that I may lengthen it if I see fit.  He is an
acquaintance and friend of mine, and his family matters very urgently
require his presence.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

JANUARY 5, 1864.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

By a joint resolution of your honorable bodies approved December 23,
1863, the paying of bounties to veteran volunteers, as now practiced
by the War Department, is, to the extent of three hundred dollars in
each case, prohibited after this 5th day of the present month.  I
transmit for your consideration a communication from the Secretary of
War, accompanied by one from the Provost-Marshal General to him, both
relating to the subject above mentioned.  I earnestly recommend that
the law be so modified as to allow bounties to be paid as they now
are, at least until the ensuing 1st day of February.

I am not without anxiety lest I appear to be importunate in thus
recalling your attention to a subject upon which you have so recently
acted, and nothing but a deep conviction that the public interest
demands it could induce me to incur the hazard of being misunderstood
on this point.  The Executive approval was given by me to the
resolution mentioned, and it is now by a closer attention and a
fuller knowledge of facts that I feel constrained to recommend a
reconsideration of the subject.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 6, 1864. 2 P.M.

GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE, Frankfort, Kentucky:

Yours of yesterday received.  Nothing is known here about General
Foster's order, of which you complain, beyond the fair presumption
that it comes from General Grant, and that it has an object which, if
you understood, you would be loath to frustrate.  True, these troops
are, in strict law, only to be removed by my order; but General
Grant's judgment would be the highest incentive to me to make such
order.  Nor can I understand how doing so is bad faith and dishonor,
nor yet how it so exposes Kentucky to ruin.  Military men here do not
perceive how it exposes Kentucky, and I am sure Grant would not
permit it if it so appeared to him.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL Q. A. GILLMORE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 13, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL GILLMORE:

I understand an effort is being made by some worthy gentlemen to
reconstruct a legal State government in Florida.   Florida is in your
Department, and it is not unlikely you may be there in person.  I
have given Mr. Hay a commission of major, and sent him to you, with
some blank-books and other blanks, to aid in the reconstruction.  He
will explain as to the manner of using the blanks, and also my
general views on the subject.  It is desirable for all to co-operate,
but if irreconcilable differences of opinion shall arise, you are
master.  I wish the thing done in the most speedy way, so that when
done it be within the range of the late proclamation on the subject.
The detail labor will, of course, have to be done by others; but I
will be greatly obliged if you will give it such general supervision
as you can find consistent with your more strictly military duties.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BROUGH.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 15, 1864.

GOVERNOR BROUGH, Columbus, Ohio:

If Private William G. Toles, of Fifty-ninth Ohio Volunteers, returns
to his regiment and faithfully serves out his term, he is fully
pardoned for all military offenses prior to this.

A. LINCOLN.




TO CROSBY AND NICHOLS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 16, 1864.

MESSRS. CROSBY AND NICHOLS.

GENTLEMEN: The number for this month and year of the North American
Review was duly received, and for which please accept my thanks.  Of
course I am not the most impartial judge; yet, with due allowance for
this, I venture to hope that the article entitled "The President's
Policy" will be of value to the country.  I fear I am not worthy of
all which is therein kindly said of me personally.

The sentence of twelve lines, commencing at the top of page 252, I
could wish to be not exactly what it is.  In what is there expressed,
the writer has not correctly understood me.  I have never had a
theory that secession could absolve States or people from their
obligations.  Precisely the contrary is asserted in the inaugural
address; and it was because of my belief in the continuation of those
obligations that I was puzzled, for a time, as to denying the legal
rights of those citizens who remained individually innocent of
treason or rebellion.  But I mean no more now than to merely call
attention to this point.

Yours respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL P. STEELE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 20, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE:

Sundry citizens of the State of Arkansas petition me that an election
may be held in that State, at which to elect a Governor; that it be
assumed at that election, and thenceforward, that the constitution
and laws of the State, as before the rebellion, are in full force,
except that the constitution is so modified as to declare that there
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in the
punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted; that the General Assembly may make such provisions for the
freed people as shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom,
and provide for their education, and which may yet be construed as a
temporary arrangement suitable to their condition as a laboring,
landless, and homeless class; that said election shall be held on the
28th of March, 1864, at all the usual places of the State, or all
such as voters may attend for that purpose, that the voters attending
at eight o'clock in the morning of said day may choose judges and
clerks of election for such purpose; that all persons qualified by
said constitution and laws, and taking the oath presented in the
President's proclamation of December 8, 1863, either before or at the
election, and none others, may be voters; that each set of judges and
clerks may make returns directly to you on or before the __th day of
_____next; that in all other respects said election may be conducted
according to said constitution and laws: that on receipt of said
returns, when five thousand four hundred and six votes shall have
been cast, you can receive said votes, and ascertain all who shall
thereby appear to have been elected; that on the ___th day of
_______next, all persons so appearing to have been elected, who shall
appear before you at Little Rock, and take the oath, to be by you
severally administered, to support the Constitution of the United
States and said modified Constitution of the State of Arkansas, may
be declared by you qualified and empowered to enter immediately upon
the duties of the offices to which they shall have been respectively
elected.

You will please order an election to take place on the 28th of March,
1864, and returns to be made in fifteen days thereafter.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, JANUARY 20, 1864

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In accordance with a letter addressed by the Secretary of State, with
my approval, to the Hon. Joseph A. Wright, of Indiana, that patriotic
and distinguished gentleman repaired to Europe and attended the
International Agricultural Exhibition, held at Hamburg last year, and
has since his return made a report to me, which, it is believed, can
not fail to be of general interest, and especially so to the
agricultural community.  I transmit for your consideration copies of
the letters and report.  While it appears by the letter that no
reimbursement of expenses or compensation was promised him, I submit
whether reasonable allowance should not be made him for them.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ORDER APPROVING TRADE REGULATIONS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 26, 1864.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States having seen and
considered the additional regulations of trade prescribed by the
Secretary of the Treasury, and numbered LI, LII, LIII, LIV, LV, and
LVI, do hereby approve the same; and I further declare and order that
all property brought in for sale, in good faith, and actually sold in
pursuance of said Regulations LII, LIII, LIV, LV, and LVI,
after the same shall have taken effect and come in force as provided
in Regulation LVI, shall be exempt from confiscation or forfeiture to
the United States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FOSTER.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., January 27, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL FOSTER, Knoxville, Tenn.:

Is a supposed correspondence between General Longstreet and yourself
about the amnesty proclamation, which is now in the newspapers,
genuine?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO E. STANLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 28, 1864

HON. EDWARD STANLEY, San Francisco, Cal.:

Yours of yesterday received.  We have rumors similar to the dispatch
received by you, but nothing very definite from North Carolina.
Knowing Mr. Stanley to be an able man, and not doubting that he is a
patriot, I should be glad for him to be with his old acquaintances
south of Virginia, but I am unable to suggest anything definite upon
the subject.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, January 28, 1864.
MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

Some citizens of Missouri, vicinity of Kansas City, are apprehensive
that there is special danger of renewed troubles in that
neighborhood, and thence on the route toward New Mexico.  I am not
impressed that the danger is very great or imminent, but I will thank
you to give Generals Rosecrans and Curtis, respectively, such orders
as may turn their attention thereto and prevent as far as possible
the apprehended disturbance.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SICKLES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 29, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SICKLES, New York:

Could you, without it being inconvenient or disagreeable to yourself,
immediately take a trip to Arkansas for me?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 31, 1864.

GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE, Frankfort, Ky.:

General Boyle's resignation is accepted, so that your Excellency can
give him the appointment proposed.

A. LINCOLN.




COLONIZATION EXPERIMENT

ORDER TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
February 1, 1864

HON. EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

SIR:-You are directed to have a transport (either a steam or sailing
vessel, as may be deemed proper by the Quartermaster-General) sent to
the colored colony established by the United States at the island of
Vache, on the coast of San Domingo, to bring back to this country
such of the colonists there as desire to return.  You will have the
transport furnished with suitable supplies for that purpose, and
detail an officer of the Quartermaster's Department, who, under
special instructions to be given, shall have charge of the business.
The colonists will be brought to Washington, unless otherwise
hereafter directed, and be employed and provided for at the camps for
colored persons around that city.  Those only will be brought from
the island who desire to return, and their effects will be brought
with them.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ORDER FOR A DRAFT OF FIVE HUNDRED
THOUSAND MEN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
February 1, 1864.

Ordered, That a draft of five hundred thousand (500,000) men, to
serve for three years or during the war, be made on the tenth (10th)
day of March next, for the military service of the United States,
crediting and deducting therefrom so many as may have been enlisted
or drafted into the service prior to the first (1st) day of March,
and not before credited.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR YATES.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 3, 1864.

GOVERNOR YATES, Springfield, Ill.:

The United States Government lot in Springfield can be used for a
soldiers' home, with the understanding that the Government does not
incur any expense
in the case.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR MURPHY.
WASHINGTON, February 6, 1864.

GOVERNOR J. MURPHY:

My order to General Steele about an election was made in ignorance of
the action your convention had taken or would take.  A subsequent
letter directs General Steele to aid you on your own plan, and not to
thwart or hinder you.  Show this to him.

A. LINCOLN.




THE STORY OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

TOLD BY THE PRESIDENT,
TO THE ARTIST F. B. CARPENTER,
FEBRUARY 6, 1864.

It had got to be," said Mr. Lincoln, "midsummer, 1862.  Things had
gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end
of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we
had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose
the game.  I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation
policy; and without consultation with, or the knowledge of, the
Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and,
after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting  upon  the
subject.  This was the last of July or the first part of the month of
August, 1862.   [The exact date was July 22, 1862.]  .  .  .  All
were present excepting Mr. Blair, the Postmaster-General, who was
absent at the opening of the discussion, but came in subsequently.  I
said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not
called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-
matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would
be in order after they had heard it read.   Mr. Lovejoy was in error
when he informed you that it excited no comment excepting on the part
of Secretary Seward.  Various suggestions were offered.  Secretary
Chase wished the language stronger in reference to the arming of the
blacks.

"Mr. Blair, after he came in, deprecated the policy on the ground
that it would cost the administration the fall elections.  Nothing,
however, was offered that I had not already fully anticipated and
settled in my mind, until Secretary Seward spoke.  He said in
substance, 'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I
question the expediency of its issue at this juncture.  The
depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses,
is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step.  It may be
viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for
help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead
of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government.'  His
idea," said the President, "was that it would be considered our last
shriek on the retreat.  [This was his precise expression.]  'Now,'
continued Mr. Seward, 'while I approve the measure, I suggest, sir,
that you postpone its issue until you can give it to the country
supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the
case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war.'  "Mr. Lincoln
continued "The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me
with very great force.  It was an aspect of the case that, in all my
thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked.  The result was
that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch
for a picture, waiting for a victory.

"From time to time I added or changed a line, touching it up here and
there, anxiously watching the process of events.  Well, the next news
we had was of Pope's disaster at Bull Run.  Things looked darker than
ever.  Finally came the week of the battle of Antietam.  I determined
to wait no longer.   The news came, I think, on Wednesday, that the
advantage was on our side.  I was then staying at the Soldiers' Home
[three miles out of Washington].  Here I finished writing the second
draft of the preliminary proclamation; came up on Saturday; called
the Cabinet together to hear it, and it was published on the
following Monday."




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SEDGWICK.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 11, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SEDGWICK, Army of Potomac:

Unless there be some strong reason to the contrary, please send
General Kilpatrick to us here, for two or three days.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO HORACE MAYNARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 13, 1864.

HON. HORACE MAYNARD, Nashville, Tenn.:

Your letter of [the] second received.  Of course Governor Johnson
will proceed with reorganization as the exigencies of the case appear
to him to require.  I do not apprehend he will think it necessary to
deviate from my views to any ruinous extent.  On one hasty reading I
see no such deviation in his program, which you send.

A. LINCOLN.




TO W. M. FISHBACK.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, February 17, 1864.

WILLIAM M. FISHBACK, Little Rock, Arkansas:

When I fixed a plan for an election in Arkansas I did it in ignorance
that your convention was doing the same work.  Since I learned the
latter fact I have been constantly trying to yield my plan to them.
I have sent two letters to General Steele, and three or four
despatches to you and others, saying that he, General Steele, must be
master, but that it will probably be best for him to merely help the
convention on its own plan.  Some single mind must be master, else
there will be no agreement in anything, and General Steele,
commanding the military and being on the ground, is the best man to
be that master.  Even now citizens are telegraphing me to postpone
the election to a later day than either that fixed by the convention
or by me.  This discord must be silenced.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL STEELE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 17, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE, Little Rock, Arkansas:

The day fixed by the convention for the election is probably the
best, but you on the ground, and in consultation with gentlemen
there, are to decide.  I should have fixed no day for an election,
presented no plan for reconstruction, had I known the convention was
doing the same things.  It is probably best that you merely assist
the convention on their own plan, as to election day and all other
matters I have already written and telegraphed this half a dozen
times.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO A. ROBINSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 18, 1864.

A. ROBINSON, Leroy, N. Y.:

The law only obliges us to keep accounts with States, or at most
Congressional Districts, and it would overwhelm us to attempt in
counties, cities and towns.  Nevertheless we do what we can to oblige
in particular cases.  In this view I send your dispatch to the
Provost-Marshal General, asking him to do the best he can for you.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING BLOCKADE,
FEBRUARY 18, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

A Proclamation.

Whereas, by my proclamation of the nineteenth of April, one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-one, the ports of the States of South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas were, for reasons therein set forth, placed under blockade; and
whereas, the port of Brownsville, in the district of Brazos Santiago,
in the State of Texas, has since been blockaded, but as the blockade
of said port may now be safely relaxed with advantage to the
interests of commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth
section of the act of Congress approved on the 13th of July, 1861,
entitled " An act further to provide for the collection of duties on
imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade
of the said port of Brownsville shall so far cease and determine from
and after this date, that commercial intercourse with said port,
except as to persons, things, and information hereinafter specified,
may, from this date, be carried on, subject to the laws of the United
States, to the regulations prescribed by the Secretary of the
Treasury, and, until the rebellion shall have been suppressed, to
such orders as may be promulgated by the general commanding the
department, or by an officer duly authorized by him and commanding at
said port.  This proclamation does not authorize or allow the
shipment or conveyance of persons in, or intending to enter, the
service of the insurgents, or of things or information intended for
their use, or for their aid or comfort, nor, except upon the
permission of the Secretary of War, or of some officer duly
authorized by him, of the following prohibited articles, namely:
cannon, mortars, firearms, pistols, bombs, grenades, powder,
saltpeter, sulphur, balls, bullets, pikes, swords, boarding-caps
(always excepting the quantity of the said articles which may be
necessary for the defense of the ship and those who compose the
crew), saddles, bridles, cartridge-bag material, percussion and other
caps, clothing adapted for uniforms; sail-cloth of all kinds, hemp
and cordage, intoxicating drinks other than beer and light native
wines.

To vessels clearing from foreign ports and destined to the port of
Brownsville, opened by this proclamation, licenses will be granted by
consuls of the United States upon satisfactory evidence that the
vessel so licensed will convey no persons, property, or information
excepted or prohibited above, either to or from the said port; which
licenses shall be exhibited to the collector of said port immediately
on arrival, and, if required, to any officer in charge of the
blockade, and on leaving said port every vessel will be required to
have a clearance from the collector of the customs, according to law,
showing no violation of the conditions of the license. Any violations
of said conditions will involve the forfeiture and condemnation of
the vessel and cargo, and the exclusion of all parties concerned from
any further privilege of entering the United States during the war
for any purpose whatever.

In all respects, except as herein specified, the existing blockade
remains in full force and effect as hitherto established and
maintained, nor is it relaxed by this proclamation except in regard
to the port to which relaxation is or has been expressly applied.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.  Done at the city of Washington,
this eighteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United
States the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO COMMANDER BLAKE.
EXECUTIVE, MANSION, February 19, 1864.

COMMANDER GEORGE S. BLAKE,
Commandant Naval Academy, Newport, R. I.:

I desire the case of Midshipman C. Lyon re-examined and if not
clearly inconsistent I shall be much obliged to have the
recommendation changed.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM WARREN JORDAN.
NASHVILLE, February 20, 1864.

HON. W. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, Washington, D.C.:

In county and State elections, must citizens of Tennessee take the
oath prescribed by Governor Johnson, or will the President's oath of
amnesty entitle them to vote? I have been appointed to hold the March
election in Cheatham County, and wish to act understandingly.

WARREN JORDAN.




WASHINGTON, February 20, 1864.

WARREN JORDAN, NASHVILLE:

In county elections you had better stand by Governor Johnson's plan;
otherwise you will have conflict and confusion.  I have seen his
plan.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 22, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Saint LOUIS, MO.:

Colonel Sanderson will be ordered to you to-day, a mere omission that
it was not done before. The other questions in your despatch I am not
yet prepared to answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL STEELE.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 22, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE, Little Rock, Ark.:

Yours of yesterday received. Your conference with citizens approved.
Let the election be on the i4th of March as they agreed.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL F. STEELE.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, February 25, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE, Little Rock, Arkansas:

General Sickles is not going to Arkansas.  He probably will make a
tour down the Mississippi and home by the gulf and ocean, but he will
not meddle in your affairs.

At one time I did intend to have him call on you and explain more
fully than I could do by letter or telegraph, so as to avoid a
difficulty coming of my having made a plan here, while the convention
made one there, for reorganizing Arkansas; but even his doing that
has been given up for more than two weeks.  Please show this to
Governor Murphy to save me telegraphing him.

A. LINCOLN.




DESERTERS DEATH SENTENCES REMITTED

GENERAL ORDERS, NO.76.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
ADJUTANT-GENERALS OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, February 26, 1864.

Sentence of Deserters.

The President directs that the sentences of all deserters who have
been condemned by court-martial to death, and that have not been
otherwise acted upon by him, be mitigated to imprisonment during the
war at the Dry Tortugas, Florida, where they will be sent under
suitable guards by orders from army commanders.

The commanding generals, who have power to act on proceedings of
courts-martial in such cases, are authorized in special cases to
restore to duty deserters under sentence, when in their judgment the
service will be thereby benefited.

Copies of all orders issued under the foregoing instructions will be
immediately forwarded to the Adjutant-General and to the Judge-
Advocate General.

By order of the Secretary of War:
B. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General




FEMALE SPY

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 26, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort.  Monroe, Va.:

I cannot remember at whose request it was that I gave the pass to
Mrs. Bulky.  Of course detain her, if the evidence of her being a spy
is strong against her.

A. LINCOLN.




TO W. JAYNE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 26, 1864.

HON. W. JAYNE.

DEAR SIR--I dislike to make changes in office so long as they can be
avoided.  It multiplies my embarrassments immensely.  I dislike two
appointments when one will do.  Send me the name of some man not the
present marshal, and I will nominate him to be Provost-Marshal for
Dakota.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO E. H. EAST.

WASHINGTON, February 27, 1864.

HON. E. H: EAST, Secretary of State, Nashville, Tennessee

Your telegram of the twenty-sixth instant asking for a copy of my
despatch to Warren Jordan, Esq., at Nashville Press office, has just
been referred to me by Governor Johnson.  In my reply to Mr. Jordan,
which was brief and hurried, I intended to say that in the county and
State elections of Tennessee, the oath prescribed in the proclamation
of Governor Johnson on the twenty-sixth of January, 1864, ordering an
election in Tennessee on the first Saturday in March next, is
entirely satisfactory to me as a test of loyalty of all persons
proposing or offering to vote in said elections; and coming from him
would better be observed and followed.  There is no conflict between
the oath of amnesty in my proclamation of eighth December, 1863, and
that prescribed by Governor Johnson in his proclamation of the
twenty-sixth ultimo.

No person who has taken the oath of amnesty of eighth December, 1863,
and obtained a pardon thereby, and who intends to observe the same in
good faith, should have any objection to taking that prescribed by
Governor Johnson as a test of loyalty.

I have seen and examined Governor Johnson's proclamation, and am
entirely satisfied with his plan, which is to restore the State
government and place it under the control of citizens truly loyal to
the Government of the United States.

A. LINCOLN.

Please send above to Governor Johnson.
A. L.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 27, 1864

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

SIR:--You ask some instructions from me in relation to the Report of
Special Commission constituted by an order of the War Department,
dated December 5, 1863, "to revise the enrolment and quotas of the
City and State of New York, and report whether there be any, and
what, errors or irregularities therein, and what corrections, if any,
should be made."

In the correspondence between the Governor of New York and myself
last summer, I understood him to complain that the enrolments in
several of the districts of that State had been neither accurately
nor honestly made; and in view of this, I, for the draft then
immediately ensuing, ordered an arbitrary reduction of the quotas in
several of the districts wherein they seemed too large, and said:
"After this drawing, these four districts, and also the seventeenth
and twenty-ninth, shall be carefully re-enrolled, and, if you please,
agents of yours may witness every step of the process."  In a
subsequent letter I believe some additional districts were put into
the list of those to be re-enrolled.  My idea was to do the work over
according to the law, in presence of the complaining party, and
thereby to correct anything which might be found amiss.  The
commission, whose work I am considering, seem to have proceeded upon
a totally different idea.  Not going forth to find men at all, they
have proceeded altogether upon paper examinations and mental
processes.  One of their conclusions, as I understand, is that, as
the law stands, and attempting to follow it, the enrolling officers
could not have made the enrolments much more accurately than they
did.  The report on this point might be useful to Congress.  The
commission conclude that the quotas for the draft should be based
upon entire population, and they proceed upon this basis to give a
table for the State of New York, in which some districts are reduced
and some increased.  For the now ensuing draft, let the quotas stand
as made by the enrolling officers, in the districts wherein this
table requires them to be increased; and let them be reduced
according to the table in the others: this to be no precedent for
subsequent action.  But, as I think this report may, on full
consideration, be shown to have much that is valuable in it, I
suggest that such consideration be given it, and that it be
especially considered whether its suggestions can be conformed to
without an alteration of the law.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, February 28, 1864.

GENERAL L. THOMAS, Louisville, Kentucky:

I see your despatch of yesterday to the Secretary of War.

I wish you would go to the Mississippi River at once, and take hold
of and be master in the contraband and leasing business.  You
understand it better than any other man does.  Mr. Miller's system
doubtless is well intended, but from what I hear I fear that, if
persisted in, it would fall dead within its own entangling details.
Go there and be the judge.  A Mr. Lewis will probably follow you with
something from me on this subject, but do not wait for him.  Nor is
this to induce you to violate or neglect any military order from the
General-in-Chief or Secretary of War.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY CHASE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 29, 1864.

HON. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

MY DEAR SIR:--I would have taken time to answer yours of the 22d
inst. sooner, only that I did not suppose any evil could result from
the delay, especially as, by a note, I promptly acknowledged the
receipt of yours, and promised a fuller answer.  Now, on
consideration I find there is really very little to say.  My
knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's letter having been made public came to me
only the day you wrote; but I had, in spite of myself, known of its
existence several days before.  I have not yet read it, and I think I
shall not.  I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the
letter, because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's committee, and
of secret issues which, I supposed, came from it, and of secret
agents who, I supposed, were sent out by it for several weeks.  I
have known just as little a these things as my friends have allowed
me to know.  They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them;
they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for
more.

I fully concur with you that neither of us can justly be held
responsible for what our respective friends may do without our
instigation or countenance and I assure you, as you have assured me,
that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation, or with my
countenance.

Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a
question which I will not allow myself to consider from any
standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, and, in that
view, I do not perceive occasion for a change.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL THOMAS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, March 1,1864.

GENERAL L. THOMAS:

This introduces Mr. Lewis, mentioned in my despatch sent you at
Louisville some days ago.  I have but little personal acquaintance
with him; but he has the confidence of several members of Congress
here who seem to know him well.  He hopes to be useful, without
charge to the government, in facilitating the introduction of the
free-labor system on the Mississippi plantations.  He is acquainted
with, and has access to, many of the planters who wish to adopt the
system.  He will show you two letters of mine on this subject, one
somewhat General, and the other relating to named persons; they are
not different in principle.  He will also show you some suggestions
coming from some of the planters themselves.  I desire that all I
promise in these letters, so far as practicable, may be in good faith
carried out, and that suggestions from the planters may be heard and
adopted, so far as they may not contravene the principles stated, nor
justice, nor fairness, to laborers.  I do not herein intend to
overrule your own mature judgment on any point.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL STEELE.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 3, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE, Little Rock, Ark.:

Yours including address to people of Arkansas is received.  I approve
the address and thank you for it.  Yours in relation to William M.
Randolph also received.  Let him take the oath of December 8,
and go to work for the new constitution, and on your notifying me of
it, I will immediately issue the special pardon for him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 4,1864.
MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Admiral Dahlgren is here, and of course is very anxious about his
son.  Please send me at once all you know or can learn of his fate.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER IN REGARD TO THE EXPORTATION OF TOBACCO BELONGING TO THE FRENCH
GOVERNMENT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, March 7, 1864.

Whereas, by an Executive order of the 10th of November last
permission was given to export certain tobacco belonging to the
French government from insurgent territory, which tobacco was
supposed to have been purchased and paid for prior to the 4th day of
March, 1861; but whereas it was subsequently ascertained that a part
at least of the said tobacco had been purchased subsequently to that
date, which fact made it necessary to suspend the carrying into
effect of the said order; but whereas, pursuant to mutual
explanations, a satisfactory understanding upon the subject has now
been reached, it is directed that the order aforesaid may be carried
into effect, it being understood that the quantity of French tobacco
so to be exported shall not exceed seven thousand hogsheads, and that
it is the same tobacco respecting the exportation of which
application Was originally made by the French government.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO UNITED STATES MARSHAL, LOUISVILLE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 7, 1864.

U.S. MARSHAL, Louisville, Ky.:

Until further order suspend sale of property and further proceedings
in cases of the United States against Dr. John B. English, and S. S.
English, qt al., sureties for John L. Hill.  Also same against same
sureties for Thomas A. Ireland.

A. LINCOLN.

MAJOR ECKERT:
Please send the above dispatch.
JNO. G. NICOLAY, Private Secretary




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 9, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

New York City votes ninety-five hundred majority for allowing
soldiers to vote, and the rest of the State nearly all on the same
side.  Tell the soldiers.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO SENATE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 9, 1864.

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 1st instant,
respecting the points of commencement of the Union Pacific Railroad,
on the one hundredth degree of west longitude, and of the branch
road, from the western boundary of Iowa to the said one hundredth
degree of longitude, I transmit the accompanying report from the
Secretary of the Interior, containing the information called for.

I deem it proper to add that on the 17th day of November last an
Executive order was made upon this subject and delivered to the vice-
president of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, which fixed the
point on the western boundary of the State of Iowa from which the
company should construct their branch road to the one hundredth
degree of west longitude, and declared it to be within the limits of
the township in Iowa opposite the town of Omaha, in Nebraska.  Since
then the company has represented to me that upon actual surveys made
it has determined upon the precise point of departure of their said
branch road from the Missouri River, and located the same as
described in the accompanying report of the Secretary of the
Interior, which point is within the limits designated in the order of
November last; and inasmuch as that order is not of record in any of
the Executive Departments, and the company having desired a more
definite one, I have made the order of which a copy is herewith, and
caused the same to be filed in the Department of the Interior.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ADDRESS TO GENERAL GRANT,

MARCH 9, 1864.

GENERAL GRANT:--The expression of the nation's approbation of what
you have already done, and its reliance on you for what remains to do
in the existing great struggle, is now presented with this commission
constituting you Lieutenant-General of the Army of the United States.

With this high honor, devolves on you an additional responsibility.
As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it win sustain you.
I scarcely need add, that with what I here speak for the country,
goes my own hearty personal concurrence.



GENERAL GRANT'S REPLY.

Mr. PRESIDENT:--I accept this commission, with gratitude for the high
honor conferred.

With the aid of the noble armies that have fought on so many fields
for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to
disappoint your expectations.

I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me,
and I know that if they are met, it will be due to those armies; and
above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations
and men.




ORDER ASSIGNING U. S. GRANT TO THE COMMAND OF
THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 10, 1864.

Under the authority of an act of Congress to revive the grade of
lieutenant-General in the United States Army, approved February 29,
1864, Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant, United States Army, is
assigned to the command of the Armies of the United States.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR MURPHY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 12, 1864.
GOVERNOR MURPHY, Little Rock, Arkansas:

I am not appointing officers for Arkansas now, and I will try to
remember your request. Do your. best to get out the largest vote
possible, and of course as much of it as possible on the right side.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL HAHN.
(Private.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 13, 1864

HON. MICHAEL HAHN.

MY DEAR SIR:--I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history
as the first free-state governor of Louisiana.  Now, you are about to
have a convention, which among other things will probably define the
elective franchise.  I barely suggest for your private consideration,
whether some of the colored people may not be let in,--as, for
instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought
gallantly in our ranks.  They would probably help, in some trying
time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of
freedom.  But this is only a suggestion,--not to the public, but to
you alone.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MEN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, MARCH 14, 1864.

In order to supply the force required to be drafted for the Navy and
to provide an adequate reserve force for all contingencies, in
addition to the five hundred thousand men called for February 1,
1864, a call is hereby made and a draft ordered for two hundred
thousand men for the military service (Army, Navy, and Marine Corps)
of the United States.

The proportional quotas for the different wards, towns, townships,
precincts, or election districts, or counties, will be made known
through the Provost Marshal-General's Bureau, and account will be
taken of the credits and deficiencies on former quotas.

The 15th day of April, 1864, is designated as the time up to which
the numbers required from each ward of a city, town, etc., may be
raised by voluntary enlistment, and drafts will be made in each ward
of a city, town, etc., which shall not have filled the quota assigned
to it within the time designated for the number required to fill said
quotas.  The drafts will be commenced as soon after the 15th of April
as practicable.

The Government bounties as now paid continue until April I, 1864, at
which time the additional bounties cease.   On and after that date
one hundred dollars bounty only will be paid, as provided by the act
approved July 22, 1861.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 15, 1864

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, Nashville, Tenn.:

General McPherson having been assigned to the command of a
department, could not General Frank Blair, without difficulty or
detriment to the service, be assigned to command the Corps he
commanded a while last autumn?

A. LINCOLN.




PASS FOR GENERAL D. E. SICKLES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 15, 1864.

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Major-General Sickles is making a tour for me from here by way of
Cairo, New Orleans, and returning by the gulf, and ocean, and all
land and naval officers and, employees are directed to furnish
reasonable transportation and other reasonable facilities to himself
and personal staff not inconsistent with the public service.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ORDER TO GOVERNOR HAHN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 15, 1864.

HIS EXCELLENCY MICHAEL HAHN, Governor of Louisiana

Until further order, you are hereby invested with the powers
exercised hitherto by the military governor of Louisiana.

Yours truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




REMARKS AT A FAIR IN THE PATENT OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, MARCH 16, 1864.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I appear to say but a word.  This extraordinary war in which we are
engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people but the most heavily
upon the soldier.  For it has been said, "All that a man hath will he
give for his life;" and while all contribute of their substance, the
soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his
country's cause.  The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier.

In this extraordinary war, extraordinary developments have manifested
themselves, such as have not been seen in former wars; and among
these manifestations nothing has been more remarkable than these
fairs for the relief of suffering soldiers and their families.  And
the chief agents of these fairs are the women of America.

I am not accustomed to the use of language of eulogy: I have never
studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say, that
if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of
the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it
would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.  I will
close by saying, God bless the women of America.




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE FROM
THE WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK,

MARCH 21, 1864.

GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:

The honorary membership in your association, as generously tendered,
is gratefully accepted.

You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing rebellion
means more and tends to do more than the perpetuation of African
slavery--that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working
people.  Partly to show that this view has not escaped my attention,
and partly that I cannot better express myself, I read a passage from
the message to Congress in December, 1861:

"It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not
exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government,
the rights of the people.  Conclusive evidence of this is found in
the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as
in the General tone of the insurgents.  In those documents we find
the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage, and the denial to
the people of all right to participate in the selection of public
officers, except the legislature, boldly advocated, with labored
argument to prove that large control of the people in government is
the source of all political evil.  Monarchy itself is sometimes
hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.   In my
present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising
a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

"It is not needed, nor fitting here, that a General argument should
be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point,
with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask
a brief attention.  It is the effort to place capital on an equal
footing, if not above labor, in the structure of government.  It is
assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that
nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the
use of it induces him to labor.  This assumed, it is next considered
whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce
them to work by their own consent or buy them, and drive them to it
without their consent.  Having proceeded so it is naturally concluded
that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what we call slaves.
And, further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer, is
fixed in that condition for life.  Now there is no such relation
between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as
a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer.
Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are
groundless.

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first
existed.  Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the
higher consideration.  Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of
protection as any other rights.  Nor is it denied that there is, and
probably always will be, a relation between capital and labor,
producing mutual benefits.  The error is in assuming that the whole
labor of a community exists within that relation.  A few men own
capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and, with their
capital, hire or buy another few to labor for them.  A large majority
belong to neither class--neither work for others, nor have others
working for them.  In most of the Southern States, a majority of the
whole people, of all colors, are neither slaves nor masters; while in
the Northern, a large majority are neither hirers nor hired.   Men
with their families, wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves,
on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole
product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one
hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other.  It is not
forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own
labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands, and
also buy or hire others to labor for them, but this is only a mixed
and not a distinct class.  No principle stated is disturbed by the
existence of this mixed class.

"Again, as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, any such
thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for
life.  Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years
back in their lives, were hired laborers.  The prudent penniless
beginner in the world labors for wages a while, saves a surplus with
which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own
account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to
help him.  This is the just and generous and prosperous system which
opens the way to all--gives hope to all, and consequent energy and
progress, and improvement of condition to all.  No men living are
more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty--none
less inclined to touch or take aught which they have not honestly
earned.  Let them beware of surrendering a political power they
already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to
close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new
disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be
lost."

The views then expressed remain unchanged, nor have I much to add.
None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the
working people.  Let them beware of prejudices, working division and
hostility among themselves.  The most notable feature of a
disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working
people by other working people.   It should never be so.   The
strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation,
should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and
tongues, and kindreds.  Nor should this lead to a war upon property,
or the owners of property.  Property is the fruit of labor; property
is desirable; is a positive good in the world.  That some should be
rich shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just
encouragement to industry and enterprise.  Let not him who is
houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that
his own shall be safe from violence when built.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 22, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Hon. W. R. Morrison says he has requested you by letter to effect a
special exchange of Lieut. Col. A. F. Rogers, of Eightieth Illinois
Volunteers, now in Libby Prison, and I shall be glad if you can
effect it.

A. LINCOLN.




CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL C. SCHURZ.
( Private.)

WASHINGTON, March 13, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SCHURZ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of February 29 reached me only four days ago; but
the delay was of little consequence, because I found, on feeling
around, I could not invite you here without a difficulty which at
least would be unpleasant, and perhaps would be detrimental to the
public service.  Allow me to suggest that if you wish to remain in
the military service, it is very dangerous for you to get temporarily
out of it; because, with a major-general once out, it is next to
impossible for even the President to get him in again.  With my
appreciation of your ability and correct principle, of course I would
be very glad to have your service for the country in the approaching
political canvass; but I fear we cannot properly have it without
separating you from the military.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION ABOUT AMNESTY,
MARCH 26, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, it has become necessary to define the cases in which
insurgent enemies are entitled to the benefits of the Proclamation of
the President of the United States, which was made on the 8th day of
December, 1863, and the manner in which they shall proceed to avail
themselves of these benefits; and whereas the objects of that
Proclamation were to suppress the insurrection and to restore the
authority of the United States; and whereas the amnesty therein
proposed by the President was offered with reference to these objects
alone:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby proclaim and declare that the said Proclamation does not
apply to the cases of persons who, at the time when they seek to
obtain the benefits thereof by taking the oath thereby prescribed,
are in military, naval, or civil confinement or custody, or under
bonds, or on parole of the civil, military, or naval authorities, or
agents of the United States, as prisoners of war, or persons detained
for offences of any kind, either before or after conviction; and that
on the contrary it does apply only to those persons who, being yet at
large, and free from any arrest, confinement, or duress, shall
voluntarily come forward and take the said oath, with the purpose of
restoring peace, and establishing the national authority.

Persons excluded from the amnesty offered in the said Proclamation
may apply to the President for clemency, like all other offenders,
and their application will receive due consideration.

I do further declare and proclaim that the oath presented in the
aforesaid proclamation of the 8th of December, 1863, may be taken and
subscribed before any commissioned officer, civil, military, or
naval, in the service of the United States, or any civil or military
officer of a State or Territory not in insurrection, who, by the laws
thereof, may be qualified for administering oaths.

All officers who receive such oaths are hereby authorized to give
certificates thereof to the persons respectively by whom they are
made, and such officers are hereby required to transmit the original
records of such oaths, at as early a day as may be convenient, to the
Department of State, where they will be deposited, and remain in the
archives of the Government.

The Secretary of State will keep a registry thereof, and will, on
application, in proper cases, issue certificates of such records in
the customary form of official certificates.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 28, 1864.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:--The Governor of Kentucky is here, and desires to have
the following points definitely fixed:

First.  That the quotas of troops furnished, and to be furnished, by
Kentucky may be adjusted upon the basis as actually reduced by able-
bodied men of hers having gone into the rebel service; and that she
be required to furnish no more than her just quotas upon fair
adjustment upon such basis.

Second.  To whatever extent the enlistment and drafting, one or both,
of colored troops may be found necessary within the State, it may be
conducted within the law of Congress; and, so far as practicable,
free from collateral embarrassments, disorders, and provocations.

I think these requests of the Governor are reasonable; and I shall be
obliged if you will give him a full hearing, and do the best you can
to effect these objects.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL G. G. MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 29, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Colonel Townsend, inclosing a slip from
the "Herald," and asking a court of inquiry, has been laid before me
by the Secretary of War, with the request that I would consider it.
It is quite natural that you should feel some sensibility on the
subject; yet I am not impressed, nor do I think the country is
impressed, with the belief that your honor demands, or the public
interest demands, such an inquiry.  The country knows that at all
events you have done good service; and I believe it agrees with me
that it is much better for you to be engaged in trying to do more,
than to be diverted, as you necessarily would be, by a court of
inquiry.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 29,1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, Army of the Potomac:

Captain Kinney, of whom I spoke to you as desiring to go on your
staff, is now in your camp, in company with Mrs. Senator Dixon.  Mrs.
Grant and I, and some others, agreed last night that I should, by
this despatch, kindly call your attention to Captain Kinney.

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. G. HODGES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 4, 1864.

A. G. HODGES, ESQ., Frankfort, Kentucky:

MY DEAR SIR:--You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I
verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette
and Senator Dixon.  It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery.  If slavery is not wrong, nothing is
wrong.  I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I
have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an
unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.
It was in the oath I took that I would to the best of my ability
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
I could not take the office without taking the oath.   Nor was it my
view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in
using the power.  I understood, too, that in ordinary civil
administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my
primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery.  I had
publicly declared this many times, and in many ways.  And I aver
that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to
my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery.  I did understand,
however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my
ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every
indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that
Constitution was the organic law.  Was it possible to lose the nation
and yet preserve the Constitution? By General law, life and limb must
be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but
a life is never wisely given to save a limb.  I felt that measures,
otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming
indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the
preservation of the nation.   Right or wrong, I assumed this ground,
and now avow it.  I could not feel that to the best of my ability I
had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery, or
any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country,
and Constitution, altogether.  When, early in the war, General
Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did
not then think it an indispensable necessity.  When, a little later,
General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the
blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable
necessity.  When, still later, General Hunter attempted military
emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the
indispensable necessity had come.  When, in March, and May, and July,
1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the Border States to
favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable
necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come,
unless averted by that measure.  They declined the proposition, and I
was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either
surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying
strong hand upon the colored element.   I chose the latter.  In
choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was
not entirely confident.  More than a year of trial now shows no loss
by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment,
none in our white military force, no loss by it any how, or anywhere.
On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty
thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers.  These are palpable facts,
about which, as facts, there can be no caviling.  We have the men;
and we could not have had them without the measure.

"And now let any Union man who complains of the measure test himself
by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by
force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred
and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where
they would be but for the measure he condemns.  If he cannot face his
case so stated, it is only because he cannot face the truth."

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation.  In telling
this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity.  I claim not to
have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have
controlled me.  Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the
nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or
expected.  God alone can claim it.  Whither it is tending seems
plain.  If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also
that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly
for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein
new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO MRS. HORACE MANN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 5, 1864.

MRS HORACE MANN:

MADAM:--The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would
free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears
you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner.  Please
tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so
full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the
power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has,
and that, as it seems, he wills to do it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 12, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

I am pressed to get from Libby, by special exchange, Jacob C.
Hagenbuek, first lieutenant, Company H, Sixty-seventh Pennsylvania
Volunteers.  Please do it if you can without detriment or
embarrassment.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 17, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

Private William Collins of Company B, of the Sixty-ninth New York
Volunteers, has been convicted of desertion, and execution suspended
as in numerous other cases.  Now Captain O'Neill, commanding the
regiment, and nearly all its other regimental and company officers,
petition for his full pardon and restoration to his company.  Is
there any good objection?

A. LINCOLN.




LECTURE ON LIBERTY

ADDRESS AT SANITARY FAIR IN BALTIMORE,

APRIL 18, 1864.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we
cannot fail to note that the world moves.  Looking upon these many
people assembled here to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the
Union, it occurs at once that three years ago the same soldiers could
not so much as pass through Baltimore.  The change from then till now
is both great and gratifying.  Blessings on the brave men who have
wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for
it!

But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore.  The
change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change.  When the
war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it
would last till now.  Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere
to-day.  Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be
much affected by the war.  But here we are; the war has not ended,
and slavery has been much affected how much needs not now to be
recounted.  So true is it that man proposes and God disposes.

But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it;
and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for
the future.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and
the American people, just now, are much in want of one.  We all
declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing.  With some the word liberty may mean for each man to
do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while
with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please
with other men, and the product of other men's labor.  Here are two,
not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name,
liberty.  And it follows that each of the things is, by the
respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--
liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the
sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces
him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the
sheep was a black one.  Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not
agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same
difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the
North, and all professing to love liberty.  Hence we behold
the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke
of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by
others as the destruction of all liberty.  Recently, as it seems, the
people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and
thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary
has been repudiated.

It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at
length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought
to say a word.  A painful rumor, true, I fear, has reached us, of the
massacre, by the rebel forces at Fort Pillow, in the west end of
Tennessee, on the Mississippi River, of some three hundred colored
soldiers and white officers [I believe it latter turned out to be
500], who had just been overpowered by their assailants [numbering
5000].  There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the
Government is doing its duty to the colored soldier, and to the
service, at this point.  At the beginning of the war, and for some
time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the
change of purpose was wrought I will not now take time to explain.
Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of
strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American
people, to the Christian world, to history, and in my final account
to God.  Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no
way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier.
The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically
applying it.  It is a mistake to suppose the Government is
indifferent to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard
to it.  We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white
officer commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels
when made a prisoner.  We fear it, we believe it, I may say,--but we
do not know it.  To take the life of one of their prisoners on the
assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that
they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel, a mistake.  We
are having the Fort Pillow affair thoroughly investigated; and such
investigation will probably show conclusively how the truth is.  If
after all that has been said it shall turn out that there has been no
massacre at Fort Pillow, it will be almost safe to say there has been
none, and will be none, elsewhere.  If there has been the massacre of
three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will
be conclusively proved; and being so proved, the retribution shall as
surely come.  It will be matter of grave consideration in what exact
course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case it must
come.

[There was a massacre of a black company and their officers at Fort
Pillow--they were prisoners who later on, the day of their capture,
were ordered executed.   The black soldiers were tied alive to
individual planks--then man and plank were cobbled up like cord wood
and burned.   The white officers were shot.   D.W.]




TO CALVIN TRUESDALE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 20, 1864.

CALVIN TRUESDALE, ESQ., Postmaster, Rock Island, Ill.:

Thomas J. Pickett, late agent of the Quartermaster 's Department for
the island of Rock Island, has been removed or suspended from that
position on a charge of having sold timber and stone from the island
for his private benefit.  Mr. Pickett is an old acquaintance and
friend of mine, and I will thank you, if you will, to set a day or
days and place on and at which to take testimony on the point.
Notify Mr. Pickett and one J. B. Danforth (who, as I understand,
makes the charge) to be present with their witnesses.  Take the
testimony in writing offered by both sides, and report it in full to
me.  Please do this for me.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER COMMANDING AT FORT WARREN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 20, 1864.

OFFICER IN MILITARY COMMAND,
Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, Mass.:

If there is a man by the name of Charles Carpenter, under sentence of
death for desertion, at Fort Warren, suspend execution until further
order and send the record of his trial.  If sentenced for any other
offence, telegraph what it is and when he is to be executed.  Answer
at all events.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER COMMANDING AT FORT WARREN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 21,1864.

OFFICER IN COMMAND AT FORT WARREN,
Boston Harbor, Mass.:

The order I sent yesterday in regard to Charles Carpenter is hereby
withdrawn and you are to act as if it never existed.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DIX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., April 21, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, New York:

Yesterday I was induced to telegraph the officer in military command
at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, suspending the
execution of Charles Carpenter, to be executed tomorrow for
desertion.  Just now, on reaching your order in the case, I
telegraphed the same officer withdrawing the suspension, and leave
the case entirely with you.  The man's friends are pressing me, but I
refer them to you, intending to take no further action myself.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 23, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Senator Ten Eyck is very anxious to have a, special exchange of Capt.
Frank J. McLean, of Ninth Tennessee Cavalry now, or lately, at
Johnson's Island, for Capt. T. Ten Eyck, Eighteenth U. S. Infantry,
and now at Richmond.  I would like to have it done.  Can it be?

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON OFFER OF TROOPS, APRIL 23, 1864.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

1. The Governors of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin
offer to the President infantry troops for the approaching campaign
as follows: Ohio, thirty thousand; Indiana, twenty thousand;
Illinois, twenty thousand; Iowa, ten thousand; Wisconsin, five
thousand.

2. The term of service to be one hundred days, reckoned from the date
of muster into the service of the United States, unless sooner
discharged.

3. The troops to be mustered into the service of the United States by
regiments, when the regiments are filled up, according to
regulations, to the minimum strength--the regiments to be organized
according to the regulations of the War Department.  The whole number
to be furnished within twenty days from date of notice of the
acceptance of this proposition.

4. The troops to be clothed, armed, equipped, subsisted; transported,
and paid as other United States infantry volunteers, and to serve in
fortifications,--or wherever their services may be required, within
or without their respective States.

5. No bounty to be paid the troops, nor the service charged or
credited on any draft.

6. The draft for three years' service to go on in any State or
district where the quota is not filled up; but if any officer or
soldier in this special service should be drafted, he shall be
credited for the service rendered.

JOHN BROUGH, Governor of Ohio.
O. P. MORTON, Governor of Indiana.
RICHARD PATES, Governor of Illinois.
WILLIAM M. STONE, Governor of Iowa.
JAMES T. LEWIS, Governor of Wisconsin

(Indorsement.)

April 23, 1864.

The foregoing proposition of the governors is accepted, and the
Secretary of War is directed to carry it into execution.

A. LINCOLN.




TO SECRETARY STANTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 23, 1864.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR:

MY DEAR SIR:--According to our understanding with Major-General Frank
P. Blair at the time he took his seat in Congress last winter, he now
asks to withdraw his resignation as Major-General, then tendered, and
be sent to the field.  Let this be done.  Let the order sending him
be such as shown me to-day by the Adjutant-General, only dropping
from it the names of Maguire and Tompkins.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO JOHN WILLIAMS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, April 25, 1864.

JOHN WILLIAMS, Springfield, Ill.:

Yours of the 15th is just received.  Thanks for your kind
remembrance.  I would accept your offer at once, were it not that I
fear there might be some impropriety in it, though I do not see that
there would.  I will think of it a while.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, April 25, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

A Mr. Corby brought you a note from me at the foot of a petition I
believe, in the case of Dawson, to be executed to-day.  The record
has been examined here, and it shows too strong a case for a pardon
or commutation, unless there is something in the poor man's favor
outside of the record, which you on the ground may know, but I do
not.  My note to you only means that if you know of any such
thing rendering a suspension of the execution proper, on your own
judgment, you are at liberty to suspend it.  Otherwise I do not
interfere.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., April 26, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, Chattanooga, Term.:

Suspend execution of death sentence of young Perry, of Wisconsin,
condemned for sleeping on his post, till further orders, and forward
record for examination.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR MURPHY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 27, 1864.

GOVERNOR MURPHY, Little Rock, Arkansas:

I am much gratified to learn that you got out so large a vote, so
nearly all the right way, at the late election; and not less so that
your State government including the legislature, is organized and in
good working order.  Whatever I can I will do to protect you;
meanwhile you must do your utmost to protect yourselves.  Present my
greeting to all.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, APRIL 28, 1864.

TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I have the honor to transmit herewith an address to the President of
the United States, and through him to both Houses of Congress, on the
condition and wants of the people of east Tennessee, and asking their
attention to the necessity of some action on the part of the
Government for their relief, and which address is presented by a
committee of an organization called "The East Tennessee Relief
Association."

Deeply commiserating the condition of these most loyal and suffering
people, I am unprepared to make any specific recommendation for their
relief.  The military is doing and will continue to do the best for
them within its power.  Their address represents that the
construction of direct railroad communication between Knoxville and
Cincinnati by way of central Kentucky would be of great consequence
in the present emergency.  It may be remembered that in the annual
message of December, 1861, such railroad construction was
recommended.  I now add that, with the hearty concurrence of
Congress, I would yet be pleased to construct a road, both for the
relief of these people and for its continuing military importance.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

APRIL 28, 1864.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In obedience to the resolution of your honorable body, a copy of
which is herewith returned, I have the honor to make the following
brief statement, which is believed to contain the information sought:

Prior to and at the meeting of the present Congress, Robert C.
Schenck, of Ohio, and Frank P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, members elect
thereto, by and with the consent of the Senate held commissions from
the Executive as major-generals in the volunteer army.  General
Schenck tendered the resignation of his said commission, and took his
seat in the House of Representatives, at the assembling thereof, upon
the distinct verbal understanding with the Secretary of War and the
Executive that he might, at any time during the session, at his own
pleasure, withdraw said resignation and return to the field.

General Blair was, by temporary assignment of General Sherman, in
command of a corps through the battles in front of Chattanooga, and
in the march to the relief of Knoxville, which occurred in the latter
days of November and early days of December last, and of course was
not present at the assembling of Congress.  When he subsequently
arrived here, he sought, and was allowed by the Secretary of War and
the Executive, the same conditions and promise as allowed and made to
General Schenck.

General Schenck has not applied to withdraw his resignation; but when
General Grant was made Lieutenant-General, producing some change of
commanders, General Blair sought to be assigned to the command of a
corps.  This was made known to Generals Grant and Sherman, and
assented to by them, and the particular corps for him designated.

This was all arranged and understood, as now remembered, so much as a
month ago; but the formal withdrawal of General Blair's resignation,
and making the order assigning him to the command of the corps, were
not consummated at the War Department until last week, perhaps on the
23d of April instant.  As a summary of the whole, it may be stated
that General Blair holds no military commission or appointment other
than as herein stated, and that it is believed he is now acting as
major-General upon the assumed validity of the commission herein
stated, in connection with the facts herein stated, and not
otherwise.  There are some letters, notes, telegrams, orders,
entries, and perhaps other documents in connection with this subject,
which it is believed would throw no additional light upon it, but
which will be cheerfully furnished if desired.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 30, 1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Not expecting to see you before the spring campaign opens, I wish to
express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up
to this time, so far as I understand it.

The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know.  You
are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to
obtrude any restraints or constraints upon you.  While I am very
anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great number
shall be avoided, I know that these points are less likely to escape
your attention than they would be mine.  If there be anything wanting
which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it.

And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.





MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MAY 2, 1864.

TO THE HONORABLE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In compliance with the request contained in your resolution of the
29th ultimo, a copy of which resolution is herewith returned, I have
the honor to transmit the following:
[Correspondence and orders relating to the resignation and
reinstatement of Major-General Frank P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri.]

The foregoing constitutes all sought by the resolution so far as is
remembered or has been found upon diligent search.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 4, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Chattanooga, Tenn.:

I have an imploring appeal in behalf of the citizens who say your
Order No.8 will compel them to go north of Nashville.  This is in no
sense an order, nor is it even a request that you will do anything
which in the least shall be a drawback upon your military operations,
but anything you can do consistently with those operations for those
suffering people I shall be glad of.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 5, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Commanding,  Saint Louis, Mo.:

The President directs me to inquire whether a day has yet been fixed
for the execution of citizen Robert Louden, and if so what day?

JOHN HAY,
Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.




TO MRS. S. B. McCONKEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May 9, 1864.

MRS. SARAH B. McCONKEY, West Chester, Pa.:

MADAM:--Our mutual friend, Judge Lewis, tells me you do me the honor
to inquire for my personal welfare.  I have been very anxious for
some days in regard to our armies in the field, but am considerably
cheered, just now, by favorable news from them.

I am sure you will join me in the hope for their further success;
while yourself, and other good mothers, wives, sisters, and
daughters, do all you and they can, to relieve and comfort the
gallant soldiers who compose them.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RECOMMENDATION OF THANKSGIVING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May 9, 1864

TO THE FRIENDS OF UNION AND LIBERTY:

Enough is known of army operations, within the last five days, to
claim our special gratitude to God.  While what remains undone
demands our most sincere prayers to and reliance upon Him (without
whom all effort is vain), I recommend that all patriots at their
homes, in their places of public worship, and wherever they may be,
unite in common thanksgiving and prayer to Almighty God.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,

MAY 9, 1864.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am very much obliged to you for the compliment of
this call, though I apprehend it is owing more to the good news
received to-day from the Army, than to a desire to see me.  I am
indeed very grateful to the brave men who have been struggling with
the enemy in the field, to their noble commanders who have directed
them, and especially to our Maker.  Our commanders are following up
their victories resolutely and successfully.  I think, without
knowing the particulars of the plans of General Grant, that what has
been accomplished is of more importance than at first appears.  I
believe, I know (and am especially grateful to know) that General
Grant has not been jostled in his purposes, that he has made all his
points, and to-day he is on his line as he purposed before he moved
his armies.  I will volunteer to say that I am very glad at what has
happened, but there is a great deal still to be done.  While we are
grateful to all the brave men and officers for the events of the past
few days, we should, above all, be very grateful to Almighty God, who
gives us victory.

There is enough yet before us requiring all loyal men and patriots to
perform their share of the labor and follow the example of the modest
General at the head of our armies, and sink all personal
consideration for the sake of the country.  I commend you to keep
yourselves in the same tranquil mood that is characteristic of that
brave and loyal man.  I have said more than I expected when I came
before you.  Repeating my thanks for this call, I bid you good-bye.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL LEW WALLACE.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., May 10, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL WALLACE, Baltimore:

Please tell me what is the trouble with Dr. Hawks.   Also please ask
Bishop Whittington to give me his view of the case.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS,
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 11, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Complaints are coming to me of disturbances in Canoll, Platte, and
Buchanan counties.   Please ascertain the truth, correct what is
found wrong, and telegraph me.

A. LINCOLN.




TO P. B. LOOMIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May 12, 1864

F. B. LOOMIS, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
communication of the 28th April, in which you offer to replace the
present garrison at Port Trumbull with volunteers, which you propose
to raise at your own expense.  While it seems inexpedient at this
time to accept this proposition on account of the special duties now
devolving upon the garrison mentioned, I cannot
pass unnoticed such a meritorious instance of individual patriotism.
Permit me, for the Government, to express my cordial thanks to you
for this generous and public-spirited offer, which is worthy of note
among the many called forth in these times of national trial.

I am very truly, your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A METHODIST DELEGATION, MAY 14, 1864.

GENTLEMEN:-In response to your address, allow me to attest the
accuracy of its historical statements, indorse the sentiments it
expresses, and thank you in the nation's name for the sure promise it
gives.  Nobly sustained, as the Government has been, by all the
churches, I would utter nothing which might in the least appear
invidious against any.  Yet without this, it may fairly be said, that
the Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is by
its greatest numbers the most important of all.  It is no fault in
others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field,
more nurses to the hospitals, and more prayers to Heaven than--any
other.  God bless the Methodist Church Bless all the churches; and
blessed be God, who in this our great trial giveth us the churches.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR YATES.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 18, 1864.

His EXCELLENCY RICHARD YATES, Springfield, Ill.:

If any such proclamation has appeared, it is a forgery.

A. LINCOLN.




ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF IRRESPONSIBLE NEWSPAPER
REPORTERS AND EDITORS

ORDER TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May 18, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. DIX,
Commanding at New York:

Whereas there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and
published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of
Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a
false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the
President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which
publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and
comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at
war against the Government and their aiders and abettors, you are
therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any
fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors,
and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers, and all such persons as,
after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said
publication, print and publish the same with intent to give aid and
comfort to the enemy; and you will hold the persons so arrested in
close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military
commission for their offense.  You will also take possession by
military force of the printing establishments of the New York World
and Journal of Commerce, and hold the same until further orders, and
prohibit any further publication therefrom.

A. LINCOLN.

[On the morning of May 18, 3864, a forged proclamation was published
in the World, and Journal of Commerce, of New York.  The proclamation
named a day for fasting and prayer, called for 400,000 fresh troops,
and purposed to raise by an "immediate and peremptory draft,"
whatever quotas were not furnished on the day specified.   D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL B. P. BUTLER.
(Cipher.)
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 18, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Bermuda Hundred, Va.:

Until receiving your dispatch of yesterday, the idea of commissions
in the volunteers expiring at the end of three years had not occurred
to me.  I think no trouble will come of it; and, at all events, I
shall take care of it so far as in me lies.  As to the major-
generalships in the regular army, I think I shall not dispose of
another, at least until the combined operations now in progress,
under direction of General Grant, and within which yourself and
command are included, shall be terminated.
Meanwhile, on behalf of yourself, officers, and men, please accept my
hearty thanks for what you and they have so far done.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING THE EXEMPTION OF
AMERICAN CONSULS FROM MILITARY SERVICE,

MAY 19, 1864.

It is officially announced by the State Department that citizens of
the United States holding commissions and recognized as Consuls of
foreign powers, are not by law exempt from military service if
drafted:

Therefore the mere enrolment of a citizen holding a foreign consulate
will not be held to vacate his commission, but if he shall be drafted
his exequatur will be revoked unless he shall have previously
resigned in order that another Consul may be received.

An exequatur bearing date the 3d day of May, 1858, having been issued
to Charles Hunt, a citizen of the United States, recognizing him as a
Consul of Belgium for St.  Louis, Missouri, and declaring him free to
exercise and enjoy such functions, powers, and privileges as are
allowed to the Consuls of the most favored nations in the United
States, and the said Hunt having sought to screen himself from his
military duty to his country, in consequence of thus being invested
with the consular functions of a foreign power in the United States,
it is deemed advisable that the said Charles Hunt should no longer be
permitted to continue in the exercise of said functions, powers, and
privileges.

These are therefore to declare that I no longer recognize the said
Hunt as Consul of Belgium, for St.  Louis, Missouri, and will not
permit him to exercise or enjoy any of the functions, powers or
privileges allowed to consuls of that nation, and that I do hereby
wholly revoke and annul the said exequatur heretofore given, and do
declare the same to be absolutely null and void from this day
forward.

In testimony whereof, I have caused these letters to be made patent,
and the seal of the United States of America to be hereunto
affixed................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR MORTON AND OTHERS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 21, 1864

GOVERNOR O. P. MORTON:

The getting forward of hundred-day troops to sustain General
Sherman's lengthening lines promises much good.  Please put your best
efforts into the work.

A. LINCOLN.

Same to Governor Yates, Springfield, Illinois; Governor Stone,
Davenport, Iowa; Governor Lewis, Madison, Wisconsin.




TELEGRAM TO CHRISTIANA A. SACK.
WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON, D. C., May 21, 1864

CHRISTIANA A. SACK, Baltimore, Md.:

I cannot postpone the execution of a convicted spy on a mere
telegraphic despatch signed with a name I never heard before.
General Wallace may give you a pass to see him if he chooses.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BROUGH.
WASHINGTON CITY, May 24, 1864.

GOVERNOR BROUGH, Columbus, Ohio:

Yours to Secretary of War [received] asking for something cheering.
We have nothing bad from anywhere.  I have just seen a despatch of
Grant, of 11 P.M., May 23, on the North Anna and partly across it,
which ends as follows: "Everything looks exceedingly favorable for
us."  We have nothing later from him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 25,1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of Potomac:

Mr. J. C. Swift wishes a pass from me to follow your army to pick up
rags and cast-off clothing.  I will give it to him if you say so,
otherwise not.

A. LINCOLN.

["No job to big or too small" for this president--not even a request
from a Rag Picker.  D.W.]




MEMORANDUM CONCERNING THE TRANSPORTATION OF
THE NEW YORK NAVAL BRIGADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May 26, 1864.

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I am again pressed with the claim of Mr. Marshall O. Roberts, for
transportation of what was called the Naval Brigade from New York to
Fortress Monroe.  This force was a special organization got up by one
Bartlett, in pretended pursuance of written authority from me, but in
fact, pursuing the authority in scarcely anything whatever.  The
credit given him by Mr. Roberts, was given in the teeth of the
express declaration that the Government would not be responsible for
the class of expenses to which it belonged.  After all some part of
the transportation became useful to the Government, and equitably
should be paid for; but I have neither time nor means to ascertain
this equitable amount, or any appropriation to pay it with if
ascertained.  If the Quartermaster at New York can ascertain what
would compensate for so much of the transportation as did result
usefully to the Government, it might be a step towards reaching
justice.  I write this from memory, but I believe it is substantially
correct.

A. LINCOLN.




TO P. A. CONKLING AND OTHERS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, June 3, 1864.

HON. F. A. CONKLING AND OTHERS.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter, inviting me to be present at a mass meeting
of loyal citizens, to be held at New York on the 4th instant, for the
purpose of expressing gratitude to Lieutenant-General Grant for his
signal services, was received yesterday.  It is impossible for me to
attend.  I approve, nevertheless, of whatever may tend to strengthen
and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now under his
direction.  My previous high estimate of General Grant has been
maintained and heightened by what has occurred in the remarkable
campaign he is now conducting, while the magnitude and difficulty of
the task before him does not prove less than I expected.  He and his
brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust
that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may
turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON A LETTER TOUCHING THE
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION.

JUNE 5, 1864.

(Indorsement.)

Swett is unquestionably all right.  Mr. Holt is a good man, but I had
not heard or thought of him for Vice-President.  Wish not to
interfere about Vice-President.  Cannot interfere about platform.
Convention must judge for itself.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 6, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

Private James McCarthy, of the One-hundred and fortieth New York
Volunteers, is here under sentence to the Dry Tortugas for an attempt
to desert.  His friends appeal to me and if his colonel and you
consent, I will send him to his regiment.  Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.
WASHINGTON, June 8, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Yours of to-day received.  I am unable to conceive how a message can
be less safe by the express than by a staff-officer.  If you send a
verbal message, the messenger is one additional person let into the
secret.

A. LINCOLN




REPLY TO THE COMMITTEE NOTIFYING PRESIDENT LINCOLN OF HIS
RENOMINATION,

JUNE 9, 1864.

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:

I will neither conceal my gratification nor restrain the expression
of my gratitude that the Union people, through their convention, in
their continued effort to save and advance the nation, have deemed me
not unworthy to remain in my present position.  I know no reason to
doubt that I shall accept the nomination tendered; and yet perhaps I
should not declare definitely before reading and considering what is
called the platform.  I will say now, however, I approve the
declaration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit
slavery throughout the nation.  When the people in revolt, with a
hundred days of explicit notice that they could within those days
resume their allegiance without the overthrow of their institution,
and that they could not so resume it afterward, elected to stand out,
such amendment of the Constitution as now proposed became a fitting
and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause.
Such alone can meet and cover all cavils.  Now the unconditional
Union men, North and South, perceive its importance and embrace it.
In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it
legal form and practical effect.




PLATFORM OF THE UNION NATIONAL CONVENTION
HELD IN BALTIMORE, MD., JUNE 7 AND 8, 1864.

1.  Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen
to maintain against all their enemies the integrity of the Union and
the paramount authority of the Constitution and laws of the United
States; and that, laying aside all differences of political opinion,
we pledge ourselves, as Union men, animated by a common sentiment and
aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the
Government in quelling by force of arms the rebellion now raging
against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to their
crimes the rebels and traitors arrayed against it.

2.  Resolved, That we approve the determination of the Government of
the United States not to compromise with rebels, or to offer them any
terms of peace, except such as may be based upon an unconditional
surrender of their hostility and a return to their just allegiance to
the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that we call upon
the Government to maintain this position, and to prosecute the war
with the utmost possible vigor to the complete suppression of the
rebellion, in full reliance upon the self-sacrificing patriotism, the
heroic valor, and the undying devotion of the American people to
their Country and its free institutions.

3.  Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the
strength, of this rebellion, and as it must be, always and
everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican government,
justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete
extirpation from the soil of the republic; and that while we uphold
and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in
its own defense, has aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil, we are
in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to
be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall
terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the
limits or the jurisdiction of the United States.

4.  Resolved, That the thanks of the American people are due to the
soldiers and sailors of the Army and Navy, who have periled their
lives in defense of their country and in vindication of the honor of
its flag; that the nation owes to them some permanent recognition of
their patriotism and their valor, and ample and permanent provision
for those of their survivors who have received disabling and
honorable wounds in the service of the country; and that the memories
of those who have fallen in its defense shall be held in grateful and
everlasting remembrance.

5.  Resolved, That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the
unselfish patriotism, and the unswerving fidelity to the Constitution
and the principles of American liberty, with which Abraham Lincoln
has discharged under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty the
great duties and responsibilities of the Presidential office; that we
approve and indorse as demanded by the emergency and essential to the
preservation of the nation, and as within the provisions of the
Constitution, the measures and acts which he has adopted to defend
the nation against its open and secret foes; that we approve,
especially, the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the employment as
Union soldiers of men heretofore held in slavery; and that we have
full confidence in his determination to carry these and all other
constitutional measures essential to the salvation of the country
into full and complete effect.

6.  Resolved, That we deem it essential to the General welfare that
harmony should prevail in the national councils, and we regard as
worthy of public confidence and official trust those only who
cordially indorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions, and
which should characterize the administration of the Government.

7.  Resolved, That the Government owes to all men employed in its
armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full protection
of the laws of war, and that any violation of these laws, or of the
usages of civilized nations in time of war, by the rebels now in
arms, should be made the subject of prompt and full redress.

8.  Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added
so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of
power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations,
should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.

9.  Resolved, That we are in favor of the speedy construction of the
railroad to the Pacific coast.

10.  Resolved, That the national faith, pledged for the redemption of
the public debt, must be kept inviolate, and that for this purpose we
recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public
expenditures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation: and that it
is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote
the use of the national currency.

11.  Resolved, That we approve the position taken by the Government
that the people of the United States can never regard with
indifference the attempt of any European power to overthrow by force
or to supplant by fraud the institutions of any republican government
on the Western Continent, and that they will view with extreme
jealousy, as menacing to the peace and independence of their own
country, the efforts of any such power to obtain new footholds for
monarchical governments, sustained by foreign military force, in near
proximity to the United States.




REPLY TO A DELEGATION FROM THE NATIONAL UNION LEAGUE,

JUNE 9, 1864.

GENTLEMEN--I can only say in response to the remarks of your
chairman, that I am very grateful for the renewed confidence which
has been accorded to me, both by the convention and by the National
League.  I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there
is in this, yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small
portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment to me.
The convention and the nation, I am assured, are alike animated by a
higher view of the interests of the country, for the present and the
great future, and the part I am entitled to appropriate as a
compliment is only that part which I may lay hold of as being the
opinion of the convention and of the League, that I am not entirely
unworthy to be intrusted with the place I have occupied for the last
three years.  I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude
that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded in this
connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a
companion once that "it was not best to swap horses when crossing a
stream."




REPLY TO A DELEGATION FROM OHIO,

JUNE 9, 1864.

GENTLEMEN:--I am very much obliged to you for this compliment.  I
have just been saying, and will repeat it, that the hardest of all
speeches I have to answer is a serenade.  I never know what to say on
these occasions.  I suppose that you have done me this kindness in
connection with the action of the Baltimore convention, which has
recently taken place, and with which, of course, I am very well
satisfied.  What we want still more than Baltimore conventions, or
Presidential elections, is success under General Grant.  I propose
that you constantly bear in mind that the support you owe to the
brave officers and soldiers in the field is of the very first
importance, and we should therefore bend all our energies to that
point.  Now without detaining you any longer, I propose that you help
me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers for
General Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command.




ADDRESS TO THE ENVOY FROM
THE HAWAIIAN
ISLANDS,

JUNE 11, 1864.

SIR:--In every light in which the State of the Hawaiian Islands can
be contemplated, it is an object of profound interest for the United
States.   Virtually it was once a colony.  It is now a near and
intimate neighbor.  It is a haven of shelter and refreshment for our
merchants, fishermen, seamen, and other citizens, when on their
lawful occasions they are navigating the eastern seas and oceans.
Its people are free, and its laws, language, and religion are largely
the fruit of our own teaching and example.  The distinguished part
which you, Mr. Minister, have acted in the history of that
interesting country, is well known here.  It gives me pleasure to
assure you of my sincere desire to do what I can to render now your
sojourn in the United States agreeable to yourself, satisfactory to
your sovereign, and beneficial to the Hawaiian people.




REMARKS TO AN OHIO REGIMENT,

JUNE 11, 1864.

Soldiers! I understand you have just come from Ohio; come to help us
in this the nation's day of trial, and also of its hopes.  I thank
you for your promptness in responding to the call for troops.  Your
services were never needed more than now.  I know not where you are
going.  You may stay here and take the places of those who will be
sent to the front, or you may go there yourselves.  Wherever you go I
know you will do your best.  Again I thank you.  Good-by.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL L. THOMAS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 13, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, Louisville, Kentucky:

Complaint is made to me that in the vicinity of Henderson, our
militia is seizing negroes and carrying them off without their own
consent, and according to no rules whatever, except those of absolute
violence.  I wish you would look into this and inform me, and see
that the making soldiers of negroes is done according to the rules
you are acting upon, so that unnecessary provocation and irritation
be avoided.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO THOMAS WEBSTER.
WASHINGTON, D. C., June 13, 1864.

THOMAS WEBSTER, Philadelphia:

Will try to leave here Wednesday afternoon, say at 4 P.M., remain
till Thursday afternoon and then return.  This subject to events.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, June 15, 1864.  7 A.M.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT,
Headquarters Army of the Potomac:

I have just received your dispatch of 1 P.M. yesterday.  I begin to
see it: you will succeed.  God bless you all.

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS AT A SANITARY FAIR IN PHILADELPHIA,

JUNE 16, 1864.

I suppose that this toast is intended to open the way for me to say
something.  War at the best is terrible, and this of ours in its
magnitude and duration is one of the most terrible the world has ever
known.  It has deranged business totally in many places, and perhaps
in all.  It has destroyed property, destroyed life, and ruined homes.
It has produced a national debt and a degree of taxation
unprecedented in the history of this country.  It has caused mourning
among us until the heavens may almost be said to be hung in black.
And yet it continues.  It has had accompaniments not before known in
the history of the world.  I mean the Sanitary and Christian
Commissions, with their labors for the relief of the soldiers, and
the Volunteer Refreshment Saloons, understood better by those who
hear me than by myself, and these fairs, first begun at Chicago and
next held in Boston, Cincinnati, and other cities.  The motive and
object that lie at the bottom of them are worthy of the most that we
can do for the soldier who goes to fight the battles of his country.
From the fair and tender hand of women is much, very much, done for
the soldier, continually reminding him of the care and thought for
him at home.  The knowledge that he is not forgotten is grateful to
his heart.  Another view of these institutions is worthy of thought.
They are voluntary contributions, giving proof that the national
resources are not at all exhausted, and that the national patriotism
will sustain us through all.  It is a pertinent question, When is
this war to end? I do not wish to name the day when it will end, lest
the end should not come at the given time.  We accepted this war, and
did not begin it.  We accepted it for an object, and when that object
is accomplished the war will end, and I hope to God that it will
never end until that object is accomplished.  We are going through
with our task, so far as I am concerned, if it takes us three years
longer.  I have not been in the habit of making predictions, but I am
almost tempted now to hazard one.  I will.  It is, that Grant is this
evening in a position, with Meade and Hancock, of Pennsylvania,
whence he can never be dislodged by the enemy until Richmond is
taken.  If I shall discover that General Grant may be greatly
facilitated in the capture of Richmond by rapidly pouring to him a
large number of armed men at the briefest notice, will you go? Will
you march on with him? [Cries of "Yes, yes."] Then I shall call upon
you when it is necessary.




TO ATTORNEY-GENERAL BATES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, Jun. 24, 1864

HONORABLE ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

SIR:--By authority of the Constitution, and moved thereto by the
fourth section of the act of Congress, entitled "An act making
appropriations for the support of the army for the year ending the
thirtieth of June, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, and for other
purposes, approved June is, 1864," I require your opinion in writing
as to what pay, bounty, and clothing are allowed by law to persons of
color who were free on the nineteenth day of April, 1861, and who
have been enlisted and mustered into the military service of the
United States between the month of December, 1862, and the sixteenth
of June, 1864.

Please answer as you would do, on my requirement, if the act of June
15, 1864, had not been passed, and I will so use your opinion as to
satisfy that act.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 24, 1864.

MES. A. LINCOLN, Boston, Massachusetts:
All well and very warm.  Tad and I have been to General Grant's army.
Returned yesterday safe and sound.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS.
WASHINGTON, June 24, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Complaint is made to me that General Brown does not do his best to
suppress bushwhackers.  Please ascertain and report to me.

A. LINCOLN.




LETTER ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, June 27, 1864.

HON. WILLIAM DENNISON AND OTHERS,
a Committee of the Union National Convention.

GENTLEMEN:--Your letter of the 14th inst.., formally notifying me
that I have been nominated by the convention you represent for the
Presidency of the United States for four years from the 4th of March
next, has been received.  The nomination is gratefully accepted, as
the resolutions of the convention, called the platform, are heartily
approved.

While the resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican
government upon the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there
might be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position of the
Government in relation to the action of France in Mexico, as assumed
through the State Department and indorsed by the convention among the
measures and acts of the Executive, will be faithfully maintained so
long as the state of facts shall leave that position pertinent and
applicable.

I am especially gratified that the soldier and seaman were not
forgotten by the convention, as they forever must and will be
remembered by the grateful country for whose salvation they devote
their lives.

Thanking you for the kind and complimentary terms in which you have
communicated the nomination and other proceedings of the convention,
I subscribe myself,

Your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL P. STEELE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, June 29, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL STEELE:

I understand that Congress declines to admit to seats the persons
sent as Senators and Representatives from Arkansas.  These persons
apprehend that, in consequence, you may not support the new State
government there as you otherwise would.   My wish is that you give
that government and the people there the same support and protection
that you would if the members had been admitted, because in no event,
nor in any view of the case, can this do any harm, while it will be
the best you can do toward suppressing the rebellion.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 29, 1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point:

Dr. Worster wishes to visit you with a view of getting your
permission to introduce into the army "Harmon's Sandal Sock."  Shall I
give him a pass for that object?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO DAVID TOD.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 30, 1864.

HON. DAVID TOD, Youngstown, Ohio:
I have nominated you to be Secretary of the Treasury, in place of
Governor Chase, who has resigned.  Please come without a moment's
delay.

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. L. SCRIPPS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, July 4, 1864.

To JOHN L. SCRIPPS, E5Q.

DEAR SIR:--Complaint is made to me that you are using your official
power to defeat Mr. Arnold's nomination to Congress.  I am well
satisfied with Mr. Arnold as a member of Congress, and I do not know
that the man who might supplant him would be as satisfactory; but the
correct principle, I think, is that all our friends should have
absolute freedom of choice among our friends.  My wish, therefore, is
that you will do just as you think fit with your own suffrage in the
case, and not constrain any of your subordinates to [do] other than
[as] he thinks fit with his.  This is precisely the rule I inculcated
and adhered to on my part, when a certain other nomination, now
recently made, was being canvassed for.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO J. W. GARRETT.
WASHINGTON, July 5, 1864.

J. W. GARRETT, President [B. & 0.  R. R.], Camden Station:

You say telegraphic communication is re-established with Sandy Hook.
Well, what does Sandy Hook say about operations of enemy and of Sigel
during to-day?

A. LINCOLN.




FROM SECRETARY STANTON TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, July 5, 1864.

HIS EXCELLENCY HORATIO SEYMOUR,
Governor of New York, Albany:

The President directs me to inform you that a rebel force, variously
estimated at from fifteen to twenty thousand men, have invaded the
State of Maryland, and have taken Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry, and
are threatening other points; that the public safety requires him to
call upon the State executives for a militia force to repel this
invasion.  He therefore directs me to call on you for a militia force
of twelve thousand men from your State to serve not more than one
hundred days, and to request that you will with the utmost despatch
forward the troops to Washington by rail or steamboat as may be most
expeditious.

Please favor me with an answer at your earliest convenience.

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.




PROCLAMATION
SUSPENDING THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS,

JULY 5, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, by a proclamation which was issued on the 15th day of April,
1861, the President of the United States announced and declared that
the laws of the United States had been for some time past, and then
were, opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in certain States
therein mentioned, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the power vested in
the marshals by law; and

Whereas, immediately after the issuing of the said proclamation the
land and naval forces of the United States were put into activity to
suppress the said insurrections and rebellion; and

Whereas, the Congress of the United States, by an act approved on the
third day of March, 1863, did enact that during the said rebellion
the President of the United States, whenever in his judgment the
public safety may require it, is authorized to suspend the privilege
of the writ of habeas corpus in any case throughout the United
States, or any part thereof; and

Whereas, the said insurrection and rebellion still continue,
endangering the existence of the Constitution and Government of the
United States; and

Whereas, the military forces of the United States are now actively
engaged in suppressing the said insurrection and rebellion in various
parts of the States where the said rebellion has been successful in
obstructing the laws and public authorities, especially in the States
of Virginia and Georgia; and

Whereas, on the fifteenth day of September last, the President of the
United States duly issued his proclamation, wherein he declared that
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus should be suspended
throughout the United States, in Cases whereby the authority of the
President of the United States, the military, naval, and civil
officers of the United States, or any of them, hold persons under
their command or in their custody, either as prisoners of war, spies,
or aiders or abettors of the enemy, or officers, soldiers, or seamen
enrolled or drafted, or mustered, or enlisted in, or belonging to the
land or naval forces of the United States, or as deserters therefrom,
or otherwise amenable to military law, or the rules and articles of
war, or the rules and regulations prescribed for the military and
naval service by authority of the President of the United States, or
for resisting a draft, or for any other offence against the military
or naval service; and

Whereas, many citizens of the State of Kentucky have joined the
forces of the insurgents, who have on several occasions entered the
said State of Kentucky in large force and not without aid and comfort
furnished by disaffected and disloyal citizens of the United States
residing therein, have not only greatly disturbed the public peace
but have overborne the civil authorities and made flagrant civil war,
destroying property and life in various parts of the State; and

Whereas, it has been made known to the President of the United
States, by the officers commanding the National armies, that
combinations have been formed in the said State of Kentucky, with a
purpose of inciting the rebel forces to renew the said operations of
civil war within the said State, and thereby to embarrass the United
States armies now operating in the said States of Virginia and
Georgia, and even to endanger their safety.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws,
do hereby declare that in my judgment the public safety especially
requires that the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus so proclaimed in the said proclamation of the 15th of
September, 1863, be made effectual and be duly enforced in and
throughout the said State of Kentucky, and that martial law be for
the present declared therein.  I do therefore hereby require of the
military officers of the said State that the privilege of the habeas
corpus be effectually suspended within the said State, according to
the aforesaid proclamation, and that martial law be established
therein to take effect from the date of this proclamation, the said
suspension and establishment of martial law to continue until this
proclamation shall be revoked or modified, but not beyond the period
when the said rebellion shall have been suppressed or come to an end.
And I do hereby require and command, as well as military officers,
all civil officers and authorities existing or found within the said
State of Kentucky, to take notice of this proclamation and to give
full effect to the same.  The martial laws herein proclaimed and the
things in that respect herein ordered will not be deemed or taken to
interfere with the holding of lawful elections, or with the
proceedings of the constitutional Legislature of Kentucky, or with
the administration of justice in the courts of law existing therein
between citizens of the United States in suits or proceedings which
do not affect the military operations or the constituted authorities
of the government of the United States.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this 5th day of July, in the year of
our Lord 1864, and of the independence of the United States the
eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION FOR A DAY OF PRAYER, JULY 7, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate and House of Representatives at their last
session adopted a concurrent resolution, which was approved on the
second day of July instant, and which `was in the words following,
namely:

That the President of the United States be requested to appoint a day
of humiliation and prayer by the people of the United States, that he
request his constitutional advisers at the head of the Executive
Departments to unite with him, as Chief Magistrate of the nation, at
the City of Washington, and the members of Congress, and all
magistrates, all civil, military, and naval officers, all soldiers,
sailors, and marines, with all loyal and law-abiding people, to
convene at their usual places of worship, or wherever they may be, to
confess and to repent of their manifold sins, to implore the
compassion and forgiveness of the Almighty, that, if consistent with
His will, the existing rebellion may be speedily suppressed, and the
supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United States may be
established throughout all the States; to implore Him, as the Supreme
Ruler of the world, not to destroy us as a people, nor suffer us to
be destroyed by the hostility or connivance of other nations, or by
obstinate adhesion to our own counsels which may be in conflict with
His eternal, purposes, and to implore Him to enlighten the mind of
the nation to know and do His will, humbly believing that it is in
accordance with His will that our place should be maintained as a
united people among the family of nations; to implore Him to grant to
our armed defenders, and the masses of the people, that courage,
power of resistance, and endurance necessary to secure that result;
to implore Him in His infinite goodness to soften the hearts,
enlighten the minds, and quicken the conscience of those in
rebellion, that they may lay down their arms, and speedily return to
their allegiance to the United States, that they may not be utterly
destroyed, that the effusion of blood may be stayed, and that unity
and fraternity may be restored, and peace established throughout all
our borders.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the `United States,
cordially concurring with the Congress of the United States, in the
penitential and pious sentiments expressed in the aforesaid
resolutions, and heartily approving of the devotional design and
purpose thereof, do hereby appoint the first Thursday of August next
to be observed by the people of the United States as a day of
national humiliation and prayer.

I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the Executive
Departments of this Government, together with all legislators, all
judges and magistrates, and all other persons exercising authority in
the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers,
seamen, and marines in the national service, and all other loyal and
law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their
preferred places of public worship on that day, and there to render
to the Almighty and merciful Ruler of the Universe, such homage and
such confessions, and to offer to Him such supplications as the
Congress of the United States have, in their aforesaid resolution, so
solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.  Done at the city of Washington
this seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States
the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING A BILL "TO GUARANTEE TO CERTAIN STATES, WHOSE
GOVERNMENTS HAVE BEEN USURPED OR OVERTHROWN, A REPUBLICAN FORM OF
GOVERNMENT," AND CONCERNING RECONSTRUCTION,

JULY 8, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A Proclamation.

Whereas at the late session Congress passed a bill "to guarantee to
certain states whose governments have been usurped or overthrown a
republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed;
and

Whereas, the said bill was presented to the President of the United
States for his approval less than one hour before the sine die
adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him; and

Whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for
restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation
in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that
subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the
people for their consideration:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do proclaim, declare, and make known that while I am (as I was in
December last, when, by proclamation, I propounded a plan for
restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be
inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration, and while I
am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and
governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana
shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and
discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to
further effort, or to declare a constitutional competency in Congress
to abolish slavery in States, but am at the same time sincerely
hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery throughout the nation may be adopted, nevertheless I am fully
satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as
one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to
adopt it, and that I am and at all times shall be prepared to give
the Executive aid and assistance to any such people so soon as the
military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed
in any such States and the people thereof shall have sufficiently
returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, in which cases militia-governors will be appointed
with directions to proceed according to the bill.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed..............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TO HORACE GREELEY.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
July 9, 1864

HON. HORACE GREELEY.

DEAR SIR:--Your letter of the 7th, with inclosures, received.

If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have any
proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing, for peace, embracing the
restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it
embraces, say to him he may come to me with you; and that if he
really brings such proposition, he shall at the least have safe
conduct with the paper (and without publicity, if he chooses) to the
point where you shall have to meet him.  The same if there be two or
more persons.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. W. GARRETT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 9, 1864

J. W. GARRETT, Camden Station:

What have you heard about a battle at Monocacy to-day? We have
nothing about it here except what you say.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK
TO GENERAL WALLACE.
WASHINGTON, July 9, 1864.  11.57 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL L. WALLACE, Commanding Middle Department:

I am directed by the President to say that you will rally your forces
and make every possible effort to retard the enemy's march on
Baltimore.

H. W. HALLECK, Major-General and Chief of Staff.




TELEGRAM TO T. SWAN AND OTHERS.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 10, 1864.  9.20 A.M.

THOMAS SWAN AND OTHERS, Baltimore, Maryland:

Yours of last night received.  I have not a single soldier but whom
is being disposed by the military for the best protection of all.  By
latest accounts the enemy is moving on Washington.  They cannot fly
to either place.  Let us be vigilant, but keep cool.  I hope neither
Baltimore nor Washington will be sacked.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON CITY, July TO, 1864.2 P.M.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Your dispatch to General Halleck, referring to what I may think in
the present emergency, is shown me.   General Halleck says we have
absolutely no force here fit to go to the field.  He thinks that with
the hundred-day men and invalids we have here we can defend
Washington, and, scarcely, Baltimore.  Besides these there are about
eight thousand, not very reliable, under Howe, at Harper's Ferry with
Hunter approaching that point very slowly, with what number I suppose
you know better than I. Wallace, with some odds and ends, and part of
what came up with Ricketts, was so badly beaten yesterday at
Monocacy, that what is left can attempt no more than to defend
Baltimore.  What we shall get in from Pennsylvania and New York will
scarcely be worth counting, I fear.  Now, what I think is, that you
should provide to retain your hold where you are, certainly, and
bring the rest with you personally, and make a vigorous effort to
destroy the enemy's forces in this vicinity.  I think there is really
a fair chance to do this, if the movement is prompt.  This is what I
think upon your suggestion, and is not an order.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, July 11, 1864.  8 A.M.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Yours of 10.30 P.M. yesterday received, and very satisfactory.  The
enemy will learn of Wright's arrival, and then the difficulty will be
to unite Wright and Hunter south of the enemy before he will recross
the Potomac.  Some firing between Rockville and here now.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 12, 1864.  11.30 AM.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Vague rumors have been reaching us for two or three days that
Longstreet's corps is also on its way [to] this vicinity.  Look out
for its absence from your front.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM AND LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 12, 1864.

HON. HORACE GREELEY, New York:

I suppose you received my letter of the 9th.  I have just received
yours of the 13th, and am disappointed by it.  I was not expecting
you to send me a letter, but to bring me a man, or men.  Mr. Hay goes
to you with my answer to yours of the 13th.

A. LINCOLN.

[Carried by Major John Hay.]




EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, JULY 15, 1864.

HON. HORACE GREELEY.

MY DEAR SIR:-Yours of the 13th is just received, and I am
disappointed that you have not already reached here with those
commissioners, if they would consent to come on being shown my letter
to you of the 9th instant.  Show that and this to them, and if they
will come on the terms stated in the former, bring them.  I not only
intend a sincere effort for peace, but I intend that you shall be a
personal witness that it is made.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




SAFE CONDUCT FOR CLEMENT C. CLAY AND OTHERS,

JULY 16, 1864.

The President of the United States directs that the four persons
whose names follow, to wit, HON. Clement C. Clay, HON. Jacob
Thompson, Professor James P. Holcombe, George N. Sanders, shall have
safe conduct to the city of Washington in company with the HON.
HORACE GREELEY, and shall be exempt from arrest or annoyance of any
kind from any officer of the United States during their journey to
the said city of Washington.

By order of the President:
JOHN HAY, Major and Assistant Adjutant-General




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
[WASHINGTON] July 17.  1864.  11.25 A.M.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

In your dispatch of yesterday to General Sherman, I find the
following, to wit:

"I shall make a desperate effort to get a position here, which will
hold the enemy without the necessity of so many men."

Pressed as we are by lapse of time I am glad to hear you say this;
and yet I do hope you may find a way that the effort shall not be
desperate in the sense of great loss of life.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. HUNTER
WASHINGTON JULY 17, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER, Harper's Ferry, West Va.

Yours of this morning received.   You misconceive.  The order you
complain of was only nominally mine, and was framed by those who
really made it with no thought of making you a scapegoat.  It seemed
to be General Grant's wish that the forces under General Wright and
those under you should join and drive at the enemy under General
Wright.  Wright had the larger part of the force, but you had the
rank.  It was thought that you would prefer Crook's commanding your
part to your serving in person under Wright.  That is all of it.
General Grant wishes you to remain in command of the department, and
I do not wish to order otherwise.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 18, 1864.  11.25 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Chattahoochee River, Georgia:

I have seen your despatches objecting to agents of Northern States
opening recruiting stations near your camps.  An act of Congress
authorizes this, giving the appointment of agents to the States, and
not to the Executive Government.  It is not for the War Department,
or myself, to restrain or modify the law, in its execution, further
than actual necessity may require.  To be candid, I was for the
passage of the law, not apprehending at the time that it would
produce such inconvenience to the armies in the field as you now
cause me to fear.  Many of the States were very anxious for it, and I
hoped that, with their State bounties, and active exertions, they
would get out substantial additions to our colored forces, which,
unlike white recruits, help us where they come from, as well as where
they go to.  I still hope advantage from the law; and being a law, it
must be treated as such by all of us.  We here will do what we
consistently can to save you from difficulties arising out of it.
May I ask, therefore, that you will give your hearty co-operation.

A. LINCOLN.




ANNOUNCEMENT CONCERNING TERMS OF PEACE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, July 18, 1864.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the
integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and
which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now
at war against the United States, will be received and considered by
the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met by
liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points; and the
bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CALLING FOR FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND VOLUNTEERS,

JULY 18, 1864,

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by the act approved July 4, 1864, entitled "An act further to
regulate and provide for the enrolling and calling out the national
forces and for other purposes," it is provided that the President of
the United States may, "at his discretion, at any time hereafter,
call for any number of men, as volunteers for the respective terms of
one, two, and three years for military service," and "that in case
the quota or any part thereof of any town, township, ward of a city,
precinct, or election district, or of a county not so subdivided,
shall not be filled within the space of fifty days after such call,
then the
President shall immediately order a draft for one year to fill such
quota or any part thereof which may be unfilled;" and

Whereas the new enrolment heretofore ordered is so far completed as
that the aforementioned act of Congress may now be put in operation
for recruiting and keeping up the strength of the armies in the
field, for garrisons, and such military operations as may be required
for the purpose of suppressing the rebellion and restoring the
authority of the United States Government in the insurgent States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do issue this my last call for five hundred thousand volunteers for
the military service:  Provided, nevertheless, That this call shall
be reduced by all credits which may be established under section
eight of the aforesaid act on account of persons who have entered the
naval service during the present rebellion and by credits for men
furnished to the military service in excess of calls heretofore made.
Volunteers will be accepted under this call for one, two, or three
years, as they may elect, and will be entitled to the bounty provided
by the law for the period of services for which they enlist.

And I hereby proclaim, order, and direct that immediately after the
5th day of September, 1864, being fifty days from the date of this
call, a draft for troops to serve for one year shall be had in every
town, township, ward of a city, precinct, or election district, or
county not so subdivided, to fill the quota which shall be assigned
to it under this call or any part thereof which may be unfilled by
volunteers on the said 5th day of September, 1864.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this 18th day of July, A.D. 1864, and
of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 20, 1864.  4.30 p.m.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Yours of yesterday, about a call for three hundred thousand, is
received.  I suppose you had not seen the call for five hundred
thousand, made the day before, and which, I suppose, covers the case.
Always glad to have your suggestions.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. L. WRIGHT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, JULY. 20, 1864.

J. L. WRIGHT, Indianapolis, Ind.:

All a mistake.  Mr. Stanton has not resigned.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL D. HUNTER.
(Cipher.)

WAR DEPARTMENT, JULY 23, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER, Harper's Ferry, West Va.

Are you able to take care of the enemy, when he turns back upon you,
as he probably will on finding that Wright has left?

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR CURTIN, ENCLOSING A LETTER TO WILLIAM O. SNIDER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, July 25, 1864.

GOVERNOR CURTIN:

Herewith is the manuscript letter for the gentleman who sent me a
cane through your hands.  For my life I cannot make out his name; and
therefore I cut it from his letter and pasted it on, as you see.  I
suppose [sic] will remember who he is, and I will thank you to
forward him the letter.  He dates his letter at Philadelphia.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, July 25, 1864.

WILLIAM O. SNIDER:

The cane you did me the honor to present through Governor Curtin was
duly placed in my hand by him.  Please accept my thanks; and, at the
same time, pardon me for not having sooner found time to tender them.
Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




FROM JOHN HAY TO J. C. WELLING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON.
July 25, 1864.

J. C. WELLING, ESQ.

SIR:--According to the request contained in your note, I have placed
Mr. Gibson's letter of resignation in the hands of the President.  He
has read the letter, and says he accepts the resignation, as he will
be glad to do with any other, which may be tendered, as this is, for
the purpose of taking an attitude of hostility against him.

He says he was not aware that he was so much indebted to Mr. Gibson
for having accepted the office at first, not remembering that he ever
pressed him to do so, or that he gave it otherwise than as was usual,
upon request made on behalf of Mr. Gibson.

He thanks Mr. Gibson for his acknowledgment that he has been treated
with personal kindness and consideration, and says he knows of but
two small drawbacks upon Mr. Gibson's right to still receive such
treatment, one of which is that he never could learn of his giving
much attention to the duties of his office, and the other is this
studied attempt of Mr. Gibson's to stab him.

I am very truly,

Your obedient servant,

JOHN HAY.




TO COLONEL, FIRST N. Y. VETERAN CAVALRY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, JULY 25, 1864.

Thomas Connor, a private in the First Veteran New York Cavalry, is
now imprisoned at hard labor for desertion.  If the Colonel of said
Regiment will say in writing on this sheets that he is willing to
receive him back to the Regiment, I will pardon, and send him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
WASHINGTON, July 26, 1864. 2.30 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, near Atlanta:

I have just seen yours complaining of the appointment of Hovey and
Osterhaus.  The point you make is unquestionably a good one, and yet
please hear a word from us.  My recollection is that both General
Grant and yourself recommended both H [ovey] and O [sterhaus] for
promotion, and these, with other strong recommendations, drew
committals from us which we could neither honorably or safely
disregard.  We blamed H [ovey] for coming away in the manner in which
he did, but he knew he had apparent reason to feel disappointed and
mortified, and we felt it was not best to crush one who certainly had
been a good soldier.  As to [Osterhaus], we did not know of his
leaving at the time we made the appointment, and do not now know the
terms on which he left.  Not to have appointed him, as the case
appeared to us at the time, would have been almost, if not quite, a
violation of our word.  The word was given on what we thought was
high merit and somewhat on his nationality.  I beg you to believe we
do not act in a spirit of disregarding merit.  We expect to await
your programme for further changes and promotions in your army.  My
profoundest thanks to you and your whole army for the present
campaign so far.

A. LINCOLN.




FROM SECRETARY STANTON TO GENERAL HALLECK.

WASHINGTON CITY,
July 27, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK,
Chief of Staff of the Army:

GENERAL:--Lieutenant-General Grant having signified that, owing to
the difficulties and delay of communication between his headquarters
and Washington, it is necessary that in the present emergency
military orders must be issued directly from Washington, the
President directs me to instruct you that all the military operations
for the defense of the Middle Department, the Department of the
Susquehanna, the Department of Washington, and the Department of West
Virginia, and all the forces in those departments, are placed under
your general command, and that you will be expected to take all
military measures necessary for defense against any attack of the
enemy and for his capture and destruction.  You will issue from time
to time such orders to the commanders of the respective departments
and to the military authorities therein as may be proper.

Your obedient servant,

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
WASHINGTON, July 27, 1864.

GOVERNOR JOHNSON, Nashville, Tennessee:

Yours in relation to General A. C. Gillam just received.  Will look
after the matter to-day.

I also received yours about General Carl Schurz.  I appreciate him
certainly, as highly as you do; but you can never know until you have
the trial, how difficult it is to find a place for an officer of so
high rank when there is no place seeking him.

A. LINCOLN.




TO Mrs. ANNE WILLIAMSON,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
July 29, 1864.

Mrs. ANNE WILLIAMSON.

MADAM:--The plaid you send me is just now placed in my hands.  I
thank you for that pretty and useful present, but still more for
those good wishes for myself and our country, which prompted you to
present it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT, AUGUST 3, 1864.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON CITY, August 2, 1864.

MR. PRESIDENT:--This note will introduce to you Mr. Schley of
Baltimore, who desires to appeal to you for the revocation of an
order of General Hunter, removing some persons, citizens of
Frederick, beyond his lines, and imprisoning others.  This Department
has no information of the reasons or proofs on which General Hunter
acts, and I do not therefore feel at liberty to suspend or interfere
with his action except under your direction.

Yours truly,

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.


[Indorsement.]

August 3, 1864.

The Secretary of War will suspend the order of General Hunter
mentioned within, until further order and direct him to send to the
Department a brief report of what is known against each one proposed
to be dealt with.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U, S. GRANT.
(Cipher.)

WASHINGTON, D. C..  August 3, 1864

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

I have seen your despatch in which you say, "I want Sheridan put in
command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put
himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death.  Wherever
the enemy goes, let our troops go also."

This, I think, is exactly right as to how our forces should move; but
please look over the despatches you may have received from here, ever
since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is
any idea in the head of any one here of "putting our army south of
the enemy," or of following him to the "death," in any direction.  I
repeat to you, it will neither be done nor attempted, unless you
watch it every day and hour, and force it.

A. LINCOLN.

[Here the President was mistaken in thinking that Sherman and Grant
had the same inability of most of his previous general officers.   No
one needed to watch Grant or Sherman, they only needed to get out of
their way.  D.W.]




TELEGRAM TO HORACE GREELEY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 6, 1864

HON. HORACE GREELEY, New York:

Yours to Major Hay about publication of our correspondence received.
With the suppression of a few passages in your letters in regard to
which I think you and I would not disagree, I should be glad of the
publication.  Please come over and see me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO HORACE GREELEY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 8, 1864

HON. HORACE GREELEY, New York:

I telegraphed you Saturday.  Did you receive the despatch? Please
answer.

A. LINCOLN.




ON DISLOYAL FAMILY MEMBER

TO GENERAL S. O. BURBRIDGE.

WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 8, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL BURBRIDGE, Lexington, Ky.:

Last December Mrs. Emily T. Helm, half-sister of Mrs. Lincoln, and
widow of the rebel general, Ben Hardin Helm, stopped here on her way
from Georgia to Kentucky, and I gave her a paper, as I remember, to
protect her against the mere fact of her being General Helm's widow.
I hear a rumor to-day that you recently sought to arrest her, but
were prevented by her presenting the paper from me.  I do not intend
to protect her against the consequences of disloyal words or acts,
spoken or done by her since her return to Kentucky, and if the paper
given her by me can be construed to give her protection for such
words and acts, it is hereby revoked pro tanto.  Deal with her for
current conduct just as you would with any other.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., August 14, 1864.  1.30 P.M.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

The Secretary of War and I concur that you had better confer with
General Lee, and stipulate for a mutual discontinuance of house-
burning and other destruction of private property.  The time and
manner of conference and particulars of stipulation we leave, on our
part, to your convenience and judgment.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 15,1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, near Atlanta, Ga.:

If the Government should purchase, on its own account, cotton
northward of you, and on the line of your communications, would it be
an inconvenience to you, or detriment to the military service, for it
to come to the north on the railroad?

A. LINCOLN.




INTERVIEW WITH JOHN T. MILLS,

AUGUST [15?], 1864.


Mr. President," said Governor Randall, "why can't you seek seclusion,
and play hermit for a fortnight? It would reinvigorate you."

"Ah," said the President, "two or three weeks would do me no good.  I
cannot fly from my thoughts--my solicitude for this great country
follows me wherever I go.  I do not think it is personal vanity or
ambition, though I am not free from these infirmities, but I cannot
but feel that the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided in
November.  There is no program offered by any wing of the Democratic
party but that must result in the permanent destruction of the Union.

"But, Mr. President, General McClellan is in favor of crushing out
this rebellion by force.  He will be the Chicago candidate."

"Sir, the slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man
that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed by Democratic strategy.  It
would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it.  There are
now in the service of the United States nearly one hundred and fifty
thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending
and acquiring Union territory.  The Democratic strategy demands that
these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by
restoring them to slavery.  The black men who now assist Union
prisoners to escape are to be converted into our enemies, in the vain
hope of gaining the good-will of their masters.  We shall have to
fight two nations instead of one.

"You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate
success; and the experience of the present war proves their success
is inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of millions of black
men into their side of the scale.  Will you give our enemies such
military advantages as insure success, and then depend on coaxing,
flattery, and concession to get them back into the Union? Abandon all
the posts now garrisoned by black men, take one hundred and fifty
thousand men from our side and put them in the battle-field or corn-
field against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in
three weeks.

"We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places; where are
the Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field was open
to the war Democrats to put down this rebellion by fighting against
both master and slave, long before the present policy was
inaugurated.

"There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to
slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win
the respect of the masters they fought.  Should I do so, I should
deserve to be damned in time and eternity.  Come what will, I will
keep my faith with friend and foe.  My enemies pretend I am now
carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition.  So long as I
am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of
restoring the Union.  But no human power can subdue this rebellion
without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy
calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.

"Freedom has given us one hundred and fifty thousand men, raised on
Southern soil.  It will give us more yet.  Just so much it has
subtracted from the enemy, and, instead of alienating the South,
there are now evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our
men and the rank and file of the rebel soldiers.  Let my enemies
prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary
to a restoration of the Union.  I will abide the issue."




ENDORSEMENT OF APPLICATION FOR EMPLOYMENT,
AUGUST 15, 1864.

I am always for the man who wishes to work; and I shall be glad for
this man to get suitable employment at Cavalry Depot, or elsewhere

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. J. RAYMOND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, August 15, 1864

HON. HENRY J. RAYMOND.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have proposed to Mr. Greeley that the Niagara
correspondence be published, suppressing only the parts of his
letters over which the red pencil is drawn in the copy which I
herewith send.  He declines giving his consent to the publication of
his letters unless these parts be published with the rest.  I have
concluded that it is better for me to submit, for the time, to the
consequences of the false position in which I consider he has placed
me, than to subject the country to the consequences of publishing
these discouraging and injurious parts.  I send you this, and the
accompanying copy, not for publication, but merely to explain to you,
and that you may preserve them until their proper time shall come.

Yours truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 17, 1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your
hold where you are.  Neither am I willing.  Hold on with a bulldog
grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS,
AUGUST 18, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas the act of Congress of the 28th of September, 1850, entitled
"An act to create additional collection districts in the State of
California, and to change the existing districts therein, and to
modify the existing collection districts in the United States,"
extends to merchandise warehoused under bond the privilege of being
exported to the British North American provinces adjoining the United
States, in the manner prescribed in the act of Congress of the 3d of
March, 1845, which designates certain frontier ports through which
merchandise may be exported, and further provides "that such other
ports, situated on the frontiers of the United States adjoining the
British North American provinces, as may hereafter be found
expedient, may have extended to them the like privileges, on the
recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, and proclamation
duly made by the President of the United States, specially
designating the ports to which the aforesaid privileges are to be
extended."

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America, in accordance with the recommendation of the Secretary of
the Treasury, do hereby declare and proclaim that the port of
Newport, in the State of Vermont, is and shall be entitled to all the
privileges in regard to the exportation of merchandise in bond to the
British North American provinces adjoining the United States, which
are extended to the ports enumerated in the seventh section of the
act of Congress of the 3d of March, 1845, aforesaid, from and after
the date of this proclamation.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.  Done at the city of Washington,
this eighteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United
States of America, the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




INDORSEMENT CONCERNING AN EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS, AUGUST 18, 1864.

If General Hitchcock can effect a special exchange of Thomas D.
Armesy, now under conviction as a spy, or something of the sort, and
in prison at for Major Nathan Goff, made a prisoner of war, and now
in prison at Richmond, let it be done.

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS TO THE 164TH OHIO REGIMENT,

AUGUST 18, 1864.

SOLDIERS:--You are about to return to your homes and your friends,
after having, as I learn, performed in camp a comparatively short
term of duty in this great contest.  I am greatly obliged to you, and
to all who have come forward at the call of their country.  I wish it
might be more generally and universally understood what the country
is now engaged in.  We have, as all will agree, a free government,
where every man has a right to be equal with every other man.  In
this great struggle, this form of government and every form of human
right is endangered if our enemies succeed.  There is more involved
in this contest than is realized by every one.  There is involved in
this struggle, the question whether your children and my children
shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.  I say this, in order to
impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small
matter should divert us from our great purpose.

There may be some inequalities in the practical application of our
system.  It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion
to the value of his property; but if we should wait, before
collecting a tax, to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact
proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at
all.  There may be mistakes made sometimes; and things may be done
wrong, while the officers of the Government do all they can to
prevent mistakes.  But I beg of you, as citizens of this great
Republic, not to let your minds be carried off from the great work we
have before us.  This struggle is too large for you to be diverted
from it by any small matter.  When you return to your homes, rise up
to the height of a generation of men worthy of a free government, and
we will carry out the great work we have commenced.  I return to you
my sincere thanks, soldiers, for the honor you have done me this
afternoon.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 20, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Bermuda Hundred, Va.:

Please allow Judge Snead to go to his family on Eastern Shore, or
give me some good reason why not.

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS TO THE 166TH OHIO REGIMENT,

AUGUST 22, 1864.

SOLDIERS--I suppose you are going home to see your families and
friends.  For the services you have done in this great struggle in
which we are engaged, I present you sincere thanks for myself and the
country.

I almost always feel inclined, when I say anything to soldiers, to
impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the importance of success
in this contest.  It is not merely for the day, but for all time to
come, that we should perpetuate for our children's children that
great and free government which we have enjoyed all our lives.  I beg
you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours.  I
happen, temporarily, to occupy this big White House.  I am a living
witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my
father's child has.  It is in order that each one of you may have,
through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field,
and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence;
that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all
its desirable human aspirations--it is for this that the struggle
should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthrights--not only
for one, but for two or three years, if necessary.  The nation is
worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.




MEMORANDUM.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 23, 1864.

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
that this administration will not be re-elected.  Then it will be my
duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union
between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
afterward.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 26, 1864.

GOVERNOR JOHNSON, Nashville, Tenn.:

Thanks to General Gillam for making the news and also to you for
sending it.  Does Joe Heiskell's "walking to meet us" mean any more
than that "Joe" was scared and wanted to save his skin?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO B. H. BREWSTER.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 30,1864.

HON. B. H. BREWSTER, Astor House, New York:

Your letter of yesterday received.  Thank you for it.  Please have no
fears.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING COTTON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, August 31, 1864.

Any person or persons engaged in bringing out cotton, in strict
conformity with authority given by W. P. Fessenden, Secretary of the
United States Treasury, must not be hindered by the War, Navy, or any
other Department of the Government, or any person engaged under any
of said Departments.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO COLONEL HUIDEKOPER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
SEPTEMBER 1, 1864

COLONEL H. C. HUIDEKOPER, Meadville, Penn.

SIR:  It is represented to me that there are at Rock Island,
Illinois, as rebel prisoners of war, many persons of Northern and
foreign birth who are unwilling to be exchanged and sent South, but
who wish to take the oath of allegiance and enter the military
service of the Union.  Colonel Huidekoper, on behalf of the people of
some parts of Pennsylvania, wishes to pay the bounties the Government
would have to pay to proper persons of this class, have them enter
the service of the United States, and be credited to the localities
furnishing the bounty money.  He will therefore proceed to Rock
Island, ascertain the names of such persons (not including any who
have attractions Southward), and telegraph them to the Provost-
Marshal-General here, whereupon direction will be given to discharge
the persons named upon their taking the oath of allegiance; and then
upon the official evidence being furnished that they shall have been
duly received and mustered into the service of the United States,
their number will be credited as may be directed by Colonel
Huidekoper.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON CITY,
September 3, 1864.

The signal success that Divine Providence has recently vouchsafed to
the operations of the United States fleet and army in the harbor of
Mobile, and the reduction of Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort
Morgan, and the glorious achievements of the army under Major-General
Sherman, in the State of Georgia, resulting in the capture of the
city of Atlanta, call for devout acknowledgment to the Supreme Being
in whose hands are the destinies of nations.  It is therefore
requested that on next Sunday, in all places of worship in the United
States, thanksgivings be offered to Him for His mercy in preserve our
national existence against the insurgent rebels who have been waging
a cruel war against the Government of the United States for its
overthrow, and also that prayer be made for Divine protection to our
brave soldiers and their leaders in the field who have so often and
so gallantly periled their lives in battling with the enemy, and for
blessings and comfort from the Father of mercies to the sick,
wounded, and prisoners, and to the orphans and widows of those who
have fallen in the service of their country, and that He will
continue to uphold the Government of the United States against all
the efforts of public enemies and secret foes.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ORDERS OF GRATITUDE AND REJOICING.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
September 3, 1864.

The national thanks are tendered by the President to Admiral Farragut
and Major-General Canby, for the skill and harmony with which the
recent operations in Mobile Harbor and against Fort Powell, Fort
Gaines, and Fort Morgan were planned and carried into execution.
Also to Admiral Farragut and Major-General Granger, under whose
immediate command they were conducted, and to the gallant commanders
on sea and land, and to the sailors and soldiers engaged in the
operations, for their energy and courage, which, under the blessing
of Providence, have been crowned with brilliant success, and have won
for them the applause and thanks of the nation.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE MANSION,
September 3, 1864.

The national thanks are tendered by the President to Major-General
William T. Sherman and the gallant officers and soldiers of his
command before Atlanta, for the distinguished ability, courage, and
perseverance displayed in the campaign in Georgia, which under Divine
power resulted in the capture of the city of Atlanta.  The marches,
battles, sieges, and other military operations that have signalized
this campaign must render it famous in the annals of war, and have
entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and
thanks of the nation.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE MANSION,
September 3, 1864.

Ordered:  First, That on Monday, the fifth day of September,
commencing at the hour of twelve o'clock noon, there shall be given a
salute of one hundred guns at the arsenal and navy-yard, at
Washington, and on Tuesday, the 6th of September, or on the day after
the receipt of this order, at each arsenal and navy-yard in the
United States, for the recent brilliant achievements of the fleet and
land forces of the United States in the harbor of Mobile, and in the
reduction of Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Morgan.  The
Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy will issue the
necessary directions in their respective departments for the
execution of this order.

Second, That on Wednesday, the 7th of September, commencing at the
hour of twelve o'clock noon, there shall be fired a salute of one
hundred guns at the arsenal at Washington, and at New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Newport (Ky.), and St.  Louis,
and New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, Hilton Head, and Newbern, the
day after the receipt of this order, for the brilliant achievements
of the army under command of Major-General Sherman, in the State of
Georgia, and for the capture of Atlanta.  The Secretary of War will
issue directions for the execution of this order.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President Of the United States.




TO MRS. GURNEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 4, 1864.

ELIZA P. GURNEY.

MY ESTEEMED FRIEND:--I have not forgotten probably never shall forget
the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends visited me on
a Sabbath forenoon two years ago--nor has your kind letter, written
nearly a year later, even been for gotten.  In all, it has been your
purpose to strengthen my reliance on God.  I am much indebted to the
good Christian people of the country for their constant prayer and
consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself.  The
purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we
erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.  We
hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this;
but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise.  We shall yet
acknowledge His wisdom, and our own error therein.  Mean while we
must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so
working still conduces to the great ends He ordains.  Surely He
intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no
mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.

Your people--the Friends--have had, and are having, a very great
trial.  On principle, and faith, opposed to both war and oppression,
they can only practically oppose oppression by war.  For those
appealing to me on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall do,
the best I could and can, in my own conscience, under my oath to the
law.  That you believe this I doubt not, and believing it, I shall
still receive, for our country and myself your earnest prayers to our
Father in Heaven.

Your sincere friend,

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE OF COLORED PEOPLE FROM BALTIMORE WHO PRESENTED
HIM WITH A BIBLE,

SEPTEMBER 7, 1864.

I can only say now, as I have often said before, it has always been a
sentiment with me, that all mankind should be free.  So far as I have
been able, so far as came within my sphere, I have always acted as I
believed was just and right, and done all I could for the good of
mankind. I have, in letters sent forth from this office, expressed
myself better than I can now.

In regard to the great Book, I have only to say it is the best gift
which God has ever given to man.  All the good from the Saviour of
the world is communicated to us through this book.  But for that
Book, we could not know right from wrong.  All those things desirable
to man are contained in it.  I return you sincere thanks for this
very elegant copy of this great Book of God which you present.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR PICKERING.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., September 8, 1864:

GOVERNOR PICKERING, Olympia, W. T.:

Your patriotic despatch of yesterday received and will be published.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER OF THANKS TO HUNDRED-DAY TROOPS FROM OHIO.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON CITY, September 10, 1864.

The term of one hundred days for which the National Guard of Ohio
volunteered having expired, the President directs an official
acknowledgment to be made of their patriotic and valuable services
during the recent campaigns.  The term of service of their enlistment
was short, but distinguished by memorable events.  In the Valley of
the Shenandoah, on the Peninsula, in the operations on the James
River, around Petersburg and Richmond, in the battle of Monocacy, and
in the intrenchments of Washington, and in other important service,
the National Guard of Ohio performed with alacrity the duty of
patriotic volunteers, for which they are entitled to and are hereby
tendered, through the Governor of their State, the national thanks.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 12, 1864.


LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Sheridan and Early are facing each other at a dead-lock.  Could we
not pick up a regiment here and there, to the number of say ten
thousand men, and quietly but suddenly concentrate them at Sheridan's
camp and enable him to make a strike?

This is but a suggestion.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO JAMES G. BLAINE.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., September 13, 1864.

HON. J. G. BLAINE, Augusta, Me.:
On behalf of the Union, thanks to Maine.  Thanks to you personally
for sending the news.

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--Send same to L. B. Smith and M. A. Blanchard, Portland, Me.
A. L.


TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 13, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS, Saint Louis:

Postpone the execution of S. H. Anderson for two weeks.  Hear what
his friends can say in mitigation and report to me.

A. LINCOLN.

MAJOR ECKERT:
Please send the above telegram.

JNO. G. NICOLAY, Private Secretary.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SLOUGH.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., September 16, 1864.

GENERAL SLOUGH, Alexandria, Va.:

On the 14th I commuted the sentence of Conley, but fearing you may
not have received notice I send this.  Do not execute him.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
WASHINGTON, D. C., September 17,1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Atlanta, Georgia:

I feel great interest in the subjects of your despatch mentioning
corn and sorghum, and the contemplated visit to you.

A. LINCOLN, President of the United States.




TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 19, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN:

The State election of Indiana occurs on the 11th of October, and the
loss of it to the friends of the Government would go far towards
losing the whole Union cause.  The bad effect upon the November
election, and especially the giving the State government to those who
will oppose the war in every possible way, are too much to risk if it
can be avoided.  The draft proceeds, notwithstanding its strong
tendency to lose us the State.  Indiana is the only important State
voting in October whose soldiers cannot vote in the field.  Anything
you can safely do to let her soldiers or any part of them go home and
vote at the State election will be greatly in point.  They need not
remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once.
This is in no sense an order, but is merely intended to impress you
with the importance to the Army itself of your doing all you safely
can, yourself being the judge of what you can safely do.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT CONCERNING AN EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS, SEPTEMBER 1864.

The writer of this, who appeals for his brother, is our minister to
Ecuador, and whom, if at all compatible, I would like to have obliged
by a special exchange of his brother.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL P. SHERIDAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, September 20, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERIDAN, Winchester, Va.:

Have just heard of your great victory.  God bless you all, officers
and men.  Strongly inclined to come up and See you.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL HITCHCOCK,

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 21, 1864.

GENERAL HITCHCOCK:

Please see the bearer, Mr. Broadwell, on a question about a mutual
supplying of clothes to prisoners.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 22, 1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

I send this as an explanation to you, and to do justice to the
Secretary of War.  I was induced, upon pressing application, to
authorize the agents of one of the districts of Pennsylvania to
recruit in one of the prison depots in Illinois; and the thing went
so far before it came to the knowledge of the Secretary that, in my
judgment, it could not be abandoned without greater evil than would
follow its going through.  I did not know at the time that you had
protested against that class of thing being done; and I now say that
while this particular job must be completed, no other of the sort
will be authorized, without an understanding with you, if at all.
The Secretary of War is wholly free of any part in this blunder.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO POSTMASTER-GENERAL BLAIR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
September 23, 1864.


HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR.

MY DEAR SIR:--You have generously said to me, more than once, that
whenever your resignation could be a relief to me, it was at my
disposal.  The time has come.  You very well know that this proceeds
from no dissatisfaction of mine with you personally or officially.
Your uniform kindness has been unsurpassed by that of any other
friend, and while it is true that the war does not so greatly add to
the difficulties of your department as to those of some others, it is
yet much to say, as I most truly can, that in the three years and a
half during which you have administered the General Post-Office, I
remember no single complaint against you in connection therewith.

Yours, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING THE PURCHASE OF PRODUCTS IN INSURRECTIONARY STATES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 24, 1864.

I. Congress having authorized the purchase for the United States of
the products of States declared in insurrection, and the Secretary of
the Treasury having designated New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville,
Pensacola, Port Royal, Beaufort (North Carolina), and Norfolk, as
places of purchase, and, with my approval, appointed agents and made
regulations under which said products may be purchased, therefore:

II. All persons except such as may be in the civil, military, or
naval service of the government, having in their possession any
products of States or parts of States declared in insurrection, which
said agents are authorized to purchase; and all persons owning or
controlling such products therein are authorized to convey such
products to either of the places which have been hereby or may
hereafter be designated as places of purchase, and such products so
destined shall not be liable to detention, seizure, or forfeiture
while in transitu, or in store waiting transportation.

III. Any person having the certificate of a purchasing agent, as
prescribed by Treasury Regulation VIII, is authorized to pass with
the necessary means of transportation to the points named in said
certificate, and to return therefrom with the products required for
the fulfilment of the stipulations set forth in said certificate.

IV. Any person having sold and delivered to a purchasing agent any
products of an insurrectionary State in accordance with the
regulations in relation thereto, and having in his possession a
certificate setting forth the fact of such purchase and sale; the
character and quantity of products, and the aggregate amount paid
therefor, as prescribed by Regulation I, shall be permitted by the
military authority commanding at the place of sale to purchase from
any authorized dealer at such place merchandise and other articles
not contraband of war nor prohibited by order of the War Department,
nor coin, bullion, or foreign exchange, to an amount not exceeding in
value one-third of the aggregate value of the products sold by him as
certified by the agents purchasing, and the merchandise and other
articles so purchased may be transported by the same route, and to
the same place, from and by which the products sold and delivered
reached the purchasing agent, as set forth in the certificate, and
such merchandise and other articles shall have safe conduct, and
shall not be subject to detention, seizure, or forfeiture while being
transported to the places and by the routes set forth in the said
certificate.

V. Generals commanding military districts, and commandants of
military posts and detachments, and officers commanding fleets,
flotillas, and gunboats, will give safe conduct to persons and
products, merchandise, and other articles duly authorized as
aforesaid, and not contraband of war, or prohibited by order of the
War Department, or of the order of such generals commanding, or other
duly authorized military or naval officer, made in pursuance hereof,
and all persons hindering or preventing such safe conduct of persons
or property will, be deemed guilty of a military offense and punished
accordingly.

VI. Any person transporting or attempting to transport any
merchandise or other articles except in pursuance of regulations of
the Secretary of the Treasury, dated July 29, 1864, or in pursuance
of this order, or transporting or attempting to transport any
merchandise or other articles contraband of war or forbidden by any
order of the War Department, will be deemed guilty of a military
offense and punished accordingly; and all products of insurrectionary
States found in transitu to any other person or than a purchasing
agent and a designated of purchase shall be seized and forfeited to
the States, except such as may be moving to a loyal state under duly
authorized permits of a proper officer of the Treasury Department, as
prescribed by Regulation XXXVIII, concerning commercial intercourse,
dated July 29, 1864, or such as may have been found abandoned, or
have been captured and are moving in pursuance of the act of March
12, 1864.

VII. No military or naval officer of the United States, or person in
the military or naval service, nor any civil officer, except such as
are appointed for that purpose, shall engage in trade or traffic in
the products of the insurrectionary States, or furnish transportation
therefor under pain of being deemed guilty of unlawful trading with
the enemy and punished accordingly.

VIII. The Secretary of War will make such general orders or
regulations as will insure the proper observance and execution of,,
this order, and the Secretary of the Navy will give instructions to
officers commanding fleets, flotillas, and gunboats in conformity
therewith.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
WASHINGTON, D. C., September 27, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Atlanta, Georgia:

You say Jefferson Davis is on a visit to Hood.  I judge that Brown
and Stephens are the objects of his visit.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 29,1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

I hope it will have no constraint on you, nor do harm any way, for me
to say I am a little afraid lest Lee sends reinforcements to Early,
and thus enables him to turn upon Sheridan.

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT.

September 29, 1864.

I think the bearer of this, Second Lieutenant Albee, deserves a
hearing.  Will the Secretary of War please accord it to him?

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER RETURNING THANKS TO THE VOLUNTEERS FOR ONE HUNDRED DAYS FROM
THE STATES OF INDIANA, ILLINOIS, IOWA, AND WISCONSIN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, October 1, 1864.

The term of one hundred days for which volunteers from the States of
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin volunteered, under the call of
their respective governors, in the months of May and June, to aid in
the campaign of General Sherman, having expired; the President
directs an official acknowledgment to be made of their patriotic
service. It was their good fortune to render efficient service in the
brilliant operations in the Southwest and to contribute to the
victories of the national arms over the rebel forces in Georgia under
command of Johnston and Hood.  On all occasions and in every service
to which they were assigned their duty as patriotic volunteers was
performed with alacrity and courage, for which they are entitled to
and are hereby tendered the national thanks through the governors of
their respective States.

The Secretary of War is directed to transmit a copy of this order to
the governors of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin and to cause
a certificate of their honorable service to be delivered to the
officers and soldiers of the States above named who recently served
in the military force of the United States as volunteers for one
hundred days.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
October 5, 1864

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

I inclose you a copy of a correspondence in regard to a contemplated
exchange of naval prisoners through your lines, and not very distant
from your headquarters.  It only came to the knowledge of the War
Department and of myself yesterday, and it gives us some uneasiness.
I therefore send it to you with the statement that, as the numbers to
be exchanged under it are small, and so much has already been done to
effect the exchange, I hope you may find it consistent to let it go
forward under the general supervision of General Butler, and
particularly in reference to the points he holds vital in exchanges.
Still, you are at liberty to arrest the whole operation if in your
judgment the public good requires it

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




INDORSEMENT ON A MEMORANDUM BY GENERAL McDOWELL,
OCTOBER 7, 1864

I well remember the meetings herein narrated.  See nothing for me to
object to in the narrative as being made by General McDowell, except
the phrase attributed to me "of the Jacobinism of Congress,"

[This memorandum describes the private discussions that preceded the
transfer of McClellan's army from the Potomac, where it had
confronted the Confederates at Manassas. See H. J. Raymond: Life of
Lincoln, p.  772]

which phrase I do not remember using literally or in substance, and
which I wish not to be published in any event.

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. W. HOFFMAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, October 10, 1864.

HON. HENRY W. HOFFMAN.

MY DEAR SIR:--A convention of Maryland has framed a new constitution
for the State; a public meeting is called for this evening at
Baltimore to aid in securing its ratification by the people, and you
ask a word from me for the occasion.  I presume the only feature of
the instrument about which there is serious controversy is that which
provides for the extinction of slavery.  It needs not to be a secret
and I presume it is no secret, that I wish success to this provision.
I desire it on every consideration.  I wish all men to be free.  I
wish the material prosperity of the already free, which I feel sure
the extinction of slavery would bring.  I wish to see in process of
disappearing that only thing which ever could bring this nation to
civil war.  I attempt no argument.  Argument upon the question is
already exhausted by the abler, better informed, and more immediately
interested sons of Maryland herself.  I only add that I shall be
gratified exceedingly if the good people of the State shall, by their
votes, ratify the new constitution.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 10, 1864, 5 P.M.

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Pa.:

Yours of to-day just this moment received, and the Secretary having
left it is impossible for me to answer to-day.  I have not received
your letter from Erie.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO ROBERT T. LINCOLN, Cambridge, Mass.:

Your letter makes us a little uneasy about your health.  Telegraph us
how you are.  If you think it would help you, make us a visit.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 12, 1864.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Secretary of War not being in, I answer yours about election.
Pennsylvania very close, and still in doubt on home vote.  Ohio
largely for us, with all the members of Congress but two or three.
Indiana largely for us,--Governor, it is said, by fifteen thousand,
and eight of the eleven members of Congress.  Send us what you may
know of your army vote.

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,

OCTOBER 19, 1864.


FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am notified that this is a compliment
paid me by the loyal Marylanders resident in this District.  I infer
that the adoption of the new constitution for the State furnishes the
occasion, and that in your view the extirpation of slavery
constitutes the chief merit of the new constitution.  Most heartily
do I congratulate you, and Maryland, and the nation, and the world,
upon this event.  I regret that it did not occur two years sooner,
which, I am sure, would have saved the nation more money than would
have met all the private loss incident to the measure; but it has
come at last, and I sincerely hope its friends may fully realize all
their anticipations of good from it, and that its opponents may by
its effects be agreeably and profitably disappointed.

A word upon another subject.  Something said by the Secretary of
State in his recent speech at Auburn, has been construed by some into
a threat, that if I shall be beaten at the election, I will, between
then and the end of my constitutional term, do what I may be able to
ruin the Government.

Others regard the fact that the Chicago Convention adjourned, not
sine die, but to meet again, if called to do so by a particular
individual, as the intimation of a purpose that if their nominee
shall be elected he will at once seize control of the Government.  I
hope the good people will permit themselves to suffer no uneasiness
on either point.  I am struggling to maintain the Government, not to
overthrow it.  I am struggling especially to prevent others from
overthrowing it.  I therefore say, that if I live, I shall remain
President until the 4th of next March, and that whoever shall be
constitutionally elected, in November, shall be duly installed as
President on the 4th of March, and in the interval I shall do my
utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage shall
start with the best possible chance of saving the ship.  This is due
to the people, both on principle and under the Constitution.  Their
will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all.  If
they should deliberately resolve to have immediate peace, even at the
loss of their country and their liberties, I know not the power or
the right to resist them.  It is their own business, and they must do
as they please with their own.  I believe, however, they are still
resolved to preserve their country and their liberties; and in this,
in office or out of it, I am resolved to stand by them.  I may add,
that in this purpose to save the country and its liberties, no
classes of people seem so nearly unanimous as the soldiers in the
field and the sailors afloat.  Do they not have the hardest of  it?
Who should quail while they do not? God bless the soldiers and
seamen, with all their brave commanders.




PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING, OCTOBER 20, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another
year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs
from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal
victories over the enemy, who is of our own household.  It has also
pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their
homes as our soldiers in their camps, and our sailors on the rivers
and seas, with unusual health.  He has largely augmented our free
population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to
us new: sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working-
men in every department of industry with abundant rewards.  Moreover,
he has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds arid hearts with
fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of
civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a
nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us
reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our
dangers and afflictions.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as
a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens,
wherever they may be then, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to
Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe.  And
I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that
occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from
thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the
great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of
peace, union, and harmony throughout the, land which it has pleased
him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity
throughout all generations.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twentieth day of October, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of
the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM To J. G. NICOLAY.
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 21, 1864.  9.45 P.M.

J. G. NICOLAY, Saint Louis, Missouri:

While Curtis is fighting Price, have you any idea where the force
under Rosecrans is, or what it is
doing?

A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
October 22, 1864.


MESSRS WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL, THOMAS A. R. NELSON, JAMES T. P. CARTER,
JOHN WILLIAMS, A.  BLIZZARD, HENRY COOPER, BAILLIE PEYTON, JOHN
LELLYET, EMERSON ETHERIDGE, and JOHN D. PERRYMAN.

GENTLEMEN:--On the 15th day of this month, as I remember, a printed
paper manuscript, with a few manuscript interlineations, called a
protest, with your names appended thereto, and accompanied by another
printed paper, purporting to be a proclamation by Andrew Johnson,
Military Governor of Tennessee, and also a manuscript paper,
purporting to be extracts from the Code of Tennessee, were laid
before me.

The protest, proclamation, and extracts are respectively as follows:

[The protest is here recited, and also the proclamation of Governor
Johnson, dated September 30, to which it refers, together with a list
of the counties in East, Middle, and West Tennessee; also extracts
from the Code of Tennessee in relation to electors of President and
Vice-President, qualifications of voters for members of the General
Assembly, places of holding elections, and officers of popular
elections.]

At the time these papers were presented, as before stated, I had
never seen either of them, nor heard of the subject to which they
related, except in a general way one day previously.

Up to the present moment, nothing whatever upon the subject has
passed between Governor Johnson, or any one else, connected with the
proclamation, and myself.

Since receiving the papers, as stated, I have given the subject such
brief consideration as I have been able to do, in the midst of so
many pressing public duties.

My conclusion is, that I can have nothing to do with the matter,
either to sustain the plan as the convention and Governor Johnson
have initiated it, or to revoke or modify it as you demand.

By the Constitution and laws, the President is charged with no duty
in the presidential election in any State, nor do I in this case
perceive any military reason for his interference in the matter.

The movement set on foot by the convention and Governor Johnson does
not, as seems to be assumed by you, emanate from the National
Executive.

In no proper sense can it be considered other than an independent
movement of, at least, a portion of the loyal people of Tennessee.

I do not perceive in the plan any menace, or violence, or coercion
towards any one.

Governor Johnson, like any other loyal citizen of Tennessee, has the
right to favor any political plan he chooses, and, as military
governor, it is his duty to keep peace among and for the loyal people
of the State.

I cannot discern that by this plan he purposes any more.  But you
object to the plan.

Leaving it alone will be your perfect security against it.  It is not
proposed to force you into it.  Do as you please, on your own
account, peaceably and loyally, and Governor Johnson will not molest
you, but will protect you against violence as far as in his power.

I presume that the conducting of a presidential election in Tennessee
in strict accordance with the old Code of the State, is not now a
possibility.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that if any election shall be held
and any votes shall be cast in the State of Tennessee for President
and Vice-President of the United States, it will belong, not to the
military agents, nor yet to the Executive Department, but exclusively
to another department of the Government, to determine whether they
are entitled to be counted in conformity with the Constitution and
laws of the United States.

Except it be to give protection against violence, I decline to
interfere in any way with any presidential election.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 22, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERIDAN:

With great pleasure I tender to you and your brave army the thanks of
the nation, and my own personal admiration and gratitude, for the
month's operations in the Shenandoah Valley; and especially for the
splendid work of October 19, 1864.
Your obedient servant,
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. H. THOMAS.
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 23, 1864 5 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, Nashville, Tennessee:

I have received information to-day, having great appearance of
authenticity, that there is to be a rebel raid into Western Kentucky;
that it is to consist of four thousand infantry and three thousand
cavalry, and is to start from Corinth, Mississippi, On the fourth day
of November.

A. LINCOLN, President.

Send copy to General Washburn at Memphis.
A. L.




TELEGRAM TO T. T. DAVIS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D.C., October 31, 1864.

HON. THOMAS T. DAVIS, Syracuse, N.Y.:

I have ordered that Milton D. Norton be discharged on taking the
oath.   Please notify his mother.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION ADMITTING NEVADA INTO THE UNION

OCTOBER 31, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

Whereas the Congress of the United States passed an act, which was
approved on the 21st day of March last, entitled "An act to enable
the people of Nevada to form a constitution and State government, and
for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing
with the original States;" and,

Whereas the said constitution and State government have been formed,
pursuant to the conditions prescribed by the fifth section of the act
of Congress aforesaid, and the certificate required by the said act
and also a copy of the constitution and ordinances have been
submitted to the President of the United States:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, in accordance with the duty imposed upon me by the act
of Congress aforesaid, do hereby declare and proclaim that the said
State of Nevada is admitted into the Union on an equal footing with
the original States.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed..........

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURBRIDGE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 4, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL BURBRIDGE, Lexington, Ky.

Suspend execution of all the deserters ordered to be executed on
Sunday at Louisville, until further order, and send me the records in
the cases. Acknowledge receipt.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO NAVAL OFFICER AT MOBILE BAY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 6, 1864.  9 P.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL CANBY, New Orleans, La.:

Please forward with all possible despatch to the naval officer
commanding at Mobile Bay the following order.

A. LINCOLN.


(Inclosure.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 6, 1864.

NAVAL OFFICER IN COMMAND AT MOBILE BAY

Do not on any account, or on any showing of authority whatever, from
whomsoever purporting to come, allow the blockade to be violated.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SAILORS' FAIR, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., November 8, 1864.

TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF THE SAILORS' FAIR,
Boston, Massachusetts

Allow me to wish you a great success.  With the old fame of the Navy
made brighter in the present war you cannot fail.  I name none lest I
wrong others by omission.  To all, from rear-admiral to honest Jack,
I tender the nation's admiration and gratitude.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO A. H. RICE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, November 8, 1864.

HON. A. H. RICE, Boston, Massachusetts:

Yours received. I have no other notice that the ox is mine.  If it be
really so, I present it to the Sailors' Fair as a contribution.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD.
WASHINGTON, November 8, 1864.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Auburn, New York:

News from Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Rosecrans satisfactory, but not
important.  Pirate Florida captured by the Wachusett October 7, on
the coast of Brazil.  The information is certain.

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,
NOVEMBER 9, 1864.

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Even before I had been informed by you
that this compliment was paid me by loyal citizens of Pennsylvania,
friendly to me, I had inferred that you were of that portion of my
countrymen who think that the best interests of the nation are to be
subserved by the support of the present administration.  I do not
pretend to say that you, who think so, embrace all the patriotism and
loyalty of the country, but I do believe, and I trust without
personal interest, that the welfare of the country does require that
such support and indorsement should be given.

I earnestly believe that the consequences of this day's work, if it
be as you assume, and as now seems probable, will be to the lasting
advantage, if not to the very salvation, of the country.   I cannot
at this hour say what has been the result of the election.   But,
whatever it may be, I have no desire to modify this opinion: that all
who have labored to-day in behalf of the Union have wrought for the
best interests of the country and the world; not only for the
present, but for all future ages.

I am thankful to God for this approval of the people; but, while
deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my
heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph.  I do
not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me.  It is no pleasure
to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the Almighty for
this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government
and the rights of humanity.




TELEGRAM TO H. W. HOFFMAN.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C. November 10, 1864.

H.  HOFFMAN, Baltimore, Md.:

The Maryland soldiers in the Army of the Potomac cast a total vote of
fourteen hundred and twenty-eight, out of which we get eleven hundred
and sixty majority.  This is directly from General Meade and General
Grant.

A. LINCOLN.




ON DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,
NOVEMBER 10, 1864.

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too
strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to
maintain its existence in great emergencies.  On this point the
present rebellion brought our government to a severe test, and a
presidential election occurring in regular course during the
rebellion, added not a little to the strain.

If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength
by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially
paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a
necessity.   We cannot have free government without elections; and if
the election could force us to forego or postpone a national
election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined
us.  The strife of the election is but human nature practically
applied to the facts of the case.  What has occurred in this case
must ever recur in similar cases.  Human nature will not change.  In
any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we
will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as
good.  Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy
to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

But the election, along with its incidental and undesirable strife,
has done good, too.  It has demonstrated that a people's government
can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war.
Until now, it has not been known to the world that this was a
possibility.  It shows, also, how sound and strong we still are.  It
shows that even among the candidates of the same party, he who is
most devoted to the Union and most opposed to treason can receive
most of the people's votes.  It shows, also, to the extent yet known,
that we have more men now than we had when the war began.   Gold is
good in its place; but living, brave, and patriotic men are better
than gold.

But the rebellion continues, and, now that the election is over, may
not all have a common interest to reunite in a common effort to save
our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive
to avoid placing any obstacle in the way.  So long as I have been
here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.  While
I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly
grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God, for having directed my
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, it adds
nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed by
the result.

May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this
same spirit towards those who have? And now, let me close by asking
three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers and seamen, and their
gallant and skillful commanders.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. O. BURBRIDGE.
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 10, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BURBRIDGE, Lexington, Ky.:

I have just received a telegram from Governor Bramlette saying:
"General John B. Houston, a loyal man and prominent citizen, was
arrested, and yesterday, started off by General Burbridge, to be sent
beyond our lines by way of Catlettsburg, for no other offense than
opposition to your re-election," and I have answered him as follows
below, of which please take notice and report to me.

A. LINCOLN.




WASHINGTON, D.C., November 10, 1864.
GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE, Frankfort, Ky.:

Yours of yesterday received.  I can scarcely believe that General
John B. Houston has been arrested "for no other offense than
opposition to my re-election;" for, if that had been deemed
sufficient cause of arrest, I should have heard of more than one
arrest in Kentucky on election day.  If, however, General Houston has
been arrested for no other cause than opposition to my re-election,
General Burbridge will discharge him at once, I sending him a copy of
this as an order to that effect.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL S. A. HURLBUT.
(Private.)
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 14, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL HURLBUT:

Few things since I have been here have impressed me more painfully
than what, for four or five months past, has appeared a bitter
military opposition to the new State government of Louisiana.   I
still indulged some hope that I was mistaken in the fact; but copies
of a correspondence on the subject between General Canby and
yourself, and shown me to-day, dispel that hope.  A very fair
proportion of the people of Louisiana have inaugurated a new State
government, making an excellent new constitution--better for the poor
black man than we have in Illinois.  This was done under military
protection, directed by me, in the belief, still sincerely
entertained, that with such a nucleus around which to build we could
get the State into position again sooner than otherwise.  In this
belief a general promise of protection and support, applicable alike
to Louisiana and other States, was given in the last annual message.
During the formation of the new government and constitution they were
supported by nearly every loyal person, and opposed by every
secessionist.  And this support and this opposition, from the
respective standpoints of the parties, was perfectly consistent and
logical.  Every Unionist ought to wish the new government to succeed;
and every disunionist must desire it to fail.  Its failure would
gladden the heart of Slidell in Europe, and of every enemy of the old
flag in the world.  Every advocate of slavery naturally desires to
see blasted and crushed the liberty promised the black man by the new
constitution.  But why General Canby and General Hurlbut should join
on the same side is to me incomprehensible.

Of course, in the condition of things at New Orleans, the military
must not be thwarted by the civil authority; but when the
Constitutional Convention, for what it deems a breach of privilege,
arrests an editor in no way connected with the military, the military
necessity for insulting the convention and forcibly discharging the
editor is difficult to perceive.  Neither is the military necessity
for protecting the people against paying large salaries fixed by a
legislature of their own choosing very apparent.  Equally difficult
to perceive is the military necessity for forcibly interposing to
prevent a bank from loaning its own money to the State.  These
things, if they have occurred, are, at the best, no better than
gratuitous hostility.  I wish I could hope that they may be shown not
to have occurred.  To make assurance against misunderstanding, I
repeat that in the existing condition of things in Louisiana, the
military must not be thwarted by the civil authority; and I add that
on points of difference the commanding general must be judge and
master.  But I also add that in the exercise of this judgment and
control, a purpose, obvious, and scarcely unavowed, to transcend all
military necessity, in order to crush out the civil government, will
not be overlooked.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO MARYLAND UNION COMMITTEE,
NOVEMBER 17, 1864.

The President, in reply, said that he had to confess he had been duly
notified of the intention to make this friendly call some days ago,
and in this he had had a fair opportunity afforded to be ready with a
set speech; but he had not prepared one, being too busy for that
purpose.  He would say, however, that he was gratified with the
result of the presidential election.  He had kept as near as he could
to the exercise of his best judgment for the interest of the whole
country, and to have the seal of approbation stamped on the course he
had pursued was exceedingly grateful to his feelings.  He thought he
could say, in as large a sense as any other man, that his pleasure
consisted in belief that the policy he had pursued was the best, if
not the only one, for the safety of the country.

He had said before, and now repeated, that he indulged in no feeling
of triumph over any man who thought or acted differently from
himself.  He had no such feeling toward any living man.  When he
thought of Maryland, in particular, he was of the opinion that she
had more than double her share in what had occurred in the recent
elections.  The adoption of a free-State constitution was a greater
thing than the part taken by the people of the State in the
presidential election.  He would any day have stipulated to lose
Maryland in the presidential election to save it by the adoption of a
free-State constitution, because the presidential election comes
every four years, while that is a thing which, being done, cannot be
undone.   He therefore thought that in that they had a victory for
the right worth a great deal more than their part in the presidential
election, though of the latter he thought highly.  He had once before
said, but would say again, that those who have differed with us and
opposed us will see that the result of the presidential election is
better for their own good than if they had been successful.

Thanking the committee for their compliment, he brought his brief
speech to a close.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING BLOCKADE,
NOVEMBER 19, 1864

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by my proclamation of the 19th of April, 1861, it was
declared that the ports of certain States, including those of
Norfolk, in the State of Virginia, Fernandina and Pensacola, in the
State of Florida, were, for reasons therein set forth, intended to be
placed under blockade; and:

Whereas the said ports were subsequently blockaded accordingly, but
having for some time past been in the military possession of the
United States, it is deeemd advisable that they should be opened to
domestic and foreign commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth
section of the act of Congress approved on the 13th of July, 1861,
entitled "An act further to provide for the collection of duties on
imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade
of the said ports of Norfolk, Fernandina, and Pensacola shall so far
cease and determine, from and after the first day of December next,
that commercial intercourse with those ports, except as to persons,
things, and information contraband of war, may, from that time, be
carried on, subject to the laws of the United States, to the
limitations and in pursuance of the regulations which may be
prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and to such military and
naval regulations as are now in force, or may hereafter be found
necessary.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.  Done at the city of Washington,
this nineteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United
States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




FIVE-STAR MOTHER

TO MRS. BIXBY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 21, 1864.

MRS. BIXBY, Boston, Massachusetts.

DEAR MADAM:--I have been shown in the files of the War Department a
statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the
mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.  But
I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be
found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.  I pray that
our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the
solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice
upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO J. PHILLIPS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
November 21, 1864.

DEACON JOHN PHILLIPS.

MY DEAR SIR:--I have heard of the incident at the polls in your town,
in which you acted so honorable a part, and I take the liberty of
writing to you to express my personal gratitude for the compliment
paid me by the suffrage of a citizen so venerable.

The example of such devotion to civic duties in one whose days have
already been extended an average lifetime beyond the Psalmist's
limit, cannot but be valuable and fruitful.  It is not for myself
only, but for the country which you have in your sphere served so
long and so well, that I thank you.

Your friend and servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE.
WASHINGTON, D. C. NOVEMBER 22, 1864.

GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE, Frankfort, Ky.:

Yours of to-day received.  It seems that Lieutenant-Governor Jacobs
and Colonel Wolford are stationary now.  General Sudarth and Mr.
Hodges are here, and the Secretary of War and myself are trying to
devise means of pacification and harmony for Kentucky, which we hope
to effect soon, now that the passion-exciting subject of the election
is past.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN,
WASHINGTON, D.C., NOVEMBER 25, 1864

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania;

I have no knowledge, information, or belief, that three States--or
any States, offer to resume allegiance.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ROSECRANS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON D.C., NOV. 26, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL ROSECRANS:

Please telegraph me briefly on what charge and evidence Mrs. Anna B.
Martin has been sent to the penitentiary at Alton.

A. LINCOLN.




MEMORANDUM,

DECEMBER 3, 1864.

On Thursday of last week, two ladies from Tennessee came before the
President, asking the release of their husbands held as prisoners of
war at Johnson's Island.  They were put off until Friday, when they
came again, and were again put off until Saturday.  At each of the
interviews one of the ladies urged that her husband was a religious
man, and on Saturday the President ordered the release of the
prisoners, when he said to this lady: "You say your husband is a
religious man; tell him when you meet him, that I say I am not much
of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that
sets men to rebel and fight against their own government, because, as
they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to
eat their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of
religion upon which people can get to heaven."

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER CONCERNING THE STEAMER "FUNAYMA SOLACE."

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 3, 1864.

A war steamer, called the Funayma Solace, having been built in this
country, for the Japanese government and at the instance of that
government, it is deemed to comport with the public interest, in view
of the unsettled condition of the relations of the United States with
that Empire, that the steamer should not be allowed to proceed to
Japan. If, however, the Secretary of the Navy should ascertain that
the steamer is adapted to our service, he is authorized to purchase
her, but the purchase money will be held in trust toward satisfying
any valid claims which may be presented by the Japanese on account of
the construction of the steamer and the failure to deliver the same,
as above set forth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.



MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON CITY, December 5, 1864

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: `

In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend
that Captain John A. Winslow, United States Navy, receive a vote of
thanks from Congress for the skill and gallantry exhibited by him in
the brilliant action whilst in command of the United States steamer
Keaysarge, which led to the total destruction of the piratical craft
Alabama, on the 19th of June, 1864., a vessel superior in tonnage,
superior in number of guns, and superior in number of crew.

This recommendation is specially made in order to comply with the
requirements of the ninth section of the aforesaid act, which is in
the following words, viz:

That any line officer of the navy or marine corps may be advanced one
grade, if, upon recommendation by the President by name he receives
the thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict
with the enemy, or far extraordinary heroism in the line of his
profession.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON CITY, December 5, 1864.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend
that Lieutenant William B. Gushing, United States Navy, receive a
vote of thanks from Congress for his important, gallant, and perilous
achievement in destroying the rebel ironclad steamer Albemarle on the
night of the 27th of October, 1864., at Plymouth, N. C.

The destruction of so formidable a vessel, which had resisted the
continued attacks of a number of our vessels on former occasions, is
an important event touching our future naval and military operations,
and would reflect honor on any officer, and redounds to the credit of
this young officer and the few brave comrades who assisted in this
successful and daring undertaking.

This recommendation is specially made in order to comply with the
requirements of the ninth section of the Aforesaid act, which is in
the following words, namely:

That any line officer of the navy or marine corps may be advanced one
grade if upon recommendation of the President by name he receives the
thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict with
the enemy, or for extraordinary heroism in the line of his
profession.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

DECEMBER 6, 1864.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:

Again the blessings of health and abundant harvests claim our
profoundest gratitude to Almighty God.

The condition of our foreign affairs is reasonably satisfactory.

Mexico continues to be a theater of civil war.  While our political
relations with that country have undergone no change, we have at the
same time strictly maintained neutrality between the belligerents.

At the request of the States of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, a competent
engineer has been authorized to make a survey of the river San Juan
and the port of San Juan.  It is a source of much satisfaction that
the difficulties which for a moment excited some political
apprehensions and caused a closing of the interoceanic transit route
have been amicably adjusted, and that there is a good prospect that
the route will soon be reopened with an increase of capacity and
adaptation.  We could not exaggerate either the commercial or the
political importance of that great improvement.

It would be doing injustice to an important South American State not
to acknowledge the directness, frankness, and cordiality with which
the United States of Colombia have entered into intimate relations
with this government.   A claims convention has been constituted to
complete the unfinished work of the one which closed its session in
1861.

The new liberal constitution of Venezuela having gone into effect
with the universal acquiescence of the people, the government under
it has been recognized and diplomatic intercourse with it has opened
in a cordial and friendly spirit.  The long-deferred Aves Island
claim has been satisfactorily paid and discharged.

Mutual payments have been made of the claims awarded by the late
joint commission for the settlement of claims between the United
States and Peru.  An earnest and cordial friendship continues to
exist between the two countries, and such efforts as were in my power
have been used to remove misunderstanding, and avert a threatened war
between Peru and Spain.

Our relations are of the most friendly nature with Chile, the
Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, San Salvador, and
Haiti.

During the past year no differences of any kind have arisen with any
of these republics, and on the other hand, their sympathies with the
United States are constantly expressed with cordiality and
earnestness.

The claim arising from the seizure of the cargo of the brig
Macedonian in 1821 has been paid in full by the Government of Chile.

Civil war continues in the Spanish part of San Domingo, apparently
without prospect of an early close.

Official correspondence has been freely opened with Liberia, and it
gives us a pleasing view of social and political progress in that
republic.  It may be expected to derive new vigor from American
influence improved by the rapid disappearance of slavery in the
United States.

I solicit your authority to furnish to the republic a gunboat, at
moderate cost, to be reimbursed to the United States by instalments.
Such a vessel is needed for the safety of that state against the
native African races, and in Liberian hands it would be more
effective in arresting the African slave-trade than a squadron in our
own hands.  The possession of the least organized naval force would
stimulate a generous ambition in the republic, and the confidence
which we should manifest by furnishing it would win forbearance and
favor toward the colony from all civilized nations.

The proposed overland telegraph between America and Europe, by the
way of Bering Straits and Asiatic Russia, which was sanctioned by
Congress at the last session, has been undertaken, under very
favorable circumstances, by an association of American citizens, with
the cordial good-will and support as well of this Government as of
those of Great Britain and Russia.  Assurances have been received
from most of the South American States of their high appreciation of
the enterprise and their readiness to co-operate in constructing
lines tributary to that world-encircling communication.  I learn with
much satisfaction that the noble design of a telegraphic
communication between the eastern coast of America and Great Britain
has been renewed, with full expectation of its early accomplishment.

Thus it is hoped that with the return of domestic peace the country
will be able to resume with energy and advantage its former high
career of commerce and civilization.

Our very popular and estimable representative in Egypt died in April
last.  An unpleasant altercation which arose between the temporary
incumbent of the office and the Government of the Pasha resulted in a
suspension of intercourse.  The evil was promptly corrected on the
arrival of the successor in the consulate, and our relations with
Egypt, as well as our relations with the Barbary Powers, are entirely
satisfactory.

The rebellion which has so long been flagrant in China has at last
been suppressed, with the co-operating good offices of this
Government and of the other Western commercial States.  The judicial
consular establishment there has become very difficult and onerous,
and it will need legislative revision to adapt it to the extension of
our commerce and to the more intimate intercourse which has been
instituted with the Government and people of that vast Empire.  China
seems to be accepting with hearty good-will the conventional laws
which regulate commercial and social intercourse among the Western
nations.

Owing to the peculiar situation of Japan and the anomalous form of
its Government, the action of that empire in performing treaty
stipulations is inconstant and capricious.  Nevertheless, good
progress has been effected by the Western powers, moving with
enlightened concert.  Our own pecuniary claims have been allowed or
put in course of settlement, and the inland sea has been reopened to
commerce.  There is reason also to believe that these proceedings
have increased rather than diminished the friendship of Japan toward
the United States.

The ports of Norfolk, Fernandina, and Pensacola have been opened by
proclamation.  It is hoped that foreign merchants will now consider
whether it is not safer and more profitable to themselves, as well as
just to the United States, to resort to these and other open ports
than it is to pursue, through many hazards and at vast cost, a
contraband trade with other ports which are closed, if not by actual
military occupation, at least by a lawful and effective blockade.

For myself, I have no doubt of the power and duty of the Executive,
under the law of nations, to exclude enemies of the human race from
an asylum in the United States.  If Congress should think that
proceedings in such cases lack the authority of law, or ought to be
further regulated by it, I recommend that provision be made for
effectually preventing foreign slave traders from acquiring domicile
and facilities for their criminal occupation in our country.

It is possible that if it were a new and open question the maritime
powers, with the lights they now enjoy, would not concede the
privileges of a naval belligerent to the insurgents of the United
States, destitute, as they are, and always have been, equally of
ships of war and of ports and harbors.  Disloyal emissaries have been
neither assiduous nor more successful during the last year than they
were before that time in their efforts, under favor of that
privilege, to embroil our country in foreign wars.  The desire and
determination of the governments of the maritime states to defeat
that design are believed to be as sincere as and can not be more
earnest than our own.  Nevertheless, unforeseen political
difficulties have arisen, especially in Brazilian and British ports
and on the northern boundary of the United States, which have
required, and are likely to continue to require, the practice of
constant vigilance and a just and conciliatory spirit on the part of
the United States, as well as of the nations concerned and their
governments.

Commissioners have been appointed under the treaty with Great Britain
on the adjustment of the claims of the Hudson Bay and Puget Sound
Agricultural Companies, in Oregon, and are now proceeding to the
execution of the trust assigned to them.

In view of the insecurity of life and property in the region adjacent
to the Canadian border, by reason of recent assaults and depredations
committed by inimical and desperate persons who are harbored there,
it has been thought proper to give notice that after the expiration
of six months, the period conditionally stipulated in the existing
arrangement with Great Britain, the United States must hold
themselves at liberty to increase their naval armament upon the Lakes
if they shall find that proceeding necessary.  The condition of the
border will necessarily come into consideration in connection with
the question of continuing or modifying the rights of transit from
Canada through the United States, as well as the regulation of
imposts, which were temporarily established by the reciprocity treaty
of the 5th June, 1854.

I desire, however, to be understood while making this statement that
the colonial authorities of Canada are not deemed to be intentionally
unjust or unfriendly toward the United States, but, on the contrary,
there is every reason to expect that, with the approval of the
Imperial Government, they will take the necessary measures to prevent
new incursions across the border.

The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of
immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation.  It
seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the
Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants
while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure
them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement.  A
liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested
by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our
part by giving the immigrants effective national protection.  I
regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams
which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal
war and its wastes of national strength and health.  All that is
necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present
fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it
manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary
military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their
lot in our country.  The financial affairs of the Government have
been successfully administered during the last year.  The legislation
of the last session of Congress has beneficially affected the
revenues, although sufficient time has not yet elapsed to experience
the full effect of several of the provisions of the acts of Congress
imposing increased taxation.

The receipts during the year from all sources, upon the basis of
warrants signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, including loans and
the balance in the Treasury on the 1st day of July, 1863, were
$1,394,
196,007.62, and the aggregate disbursements, upon the same basis,
were $1,298,056,101.89, leaving a balance in the Treasury, as shown
by warrants, of $96,739,905.73.

Deduct from these amounts the amount of the principal of the public
debt redeemed and the amount of issues in substitution therefor, and
the actual cash operations of the Treasury were: receipts,
$884,076,646.57; disbursements, $865,234,087.86; which leaves a cash
balance in the Treasury of $18,842,558.71.

Of the receipts there were derived from customs $102,316,152.99,
from lands  $588,333.29,  from direct taxes $475,648.96, from
internal revenue $109,741,134.10, from miscellaneous sources
$47,511,448.10, and from loans applied to actual expenditures,
including former balance, $623,443,929.13.

There were disbursed for the civil service $27,505,599.46, for
pensions and Indians $7,517,930.97, for the War Department
$690,791,842.97, for the Navy Department $85,733,292.77, for interest
on the public debt $53,685,421.69, making an aggregate of
$865,234,087.86, and leaving a balance in the Treasury of
$18,842,558.71, as before stated.

For the actual receipts and disbursements for the first quarter and
the estimated receipts and disbursements for the three remaining
quarters of the current fiscal year, and the general operations of
the Treasury in detail, I refer you to the report of the Secretary of
the Treasury.   I concur with him in the opinion that the proportion
of moneys required to meet the expenses consequent upon the war
derived from taxation should be still further increased; and I
earnestly invite your attention to this subject to the end that there
be such additional legislation as shall be required to meet the just
expectations of the Secretary.

The public debt on the first day of July last, as appears by the
books of the Treasury, amounted to $1,740,690,489.49.  Probably,
should the war continue for another year, that amount may be
increased by not far from $500,000,000.  Held, as it is, for the most
part by our own people, it has become a substantial branch of
national, though private, property.  For obvious reasons the more
nearly this property can be distributed among all the people the
better.  To favor such general distribution, greater inducements to
become owners might, perhaps, with good effect and without injury be
presented to persons of limited means.  With this view I suggest
whether it might not be both competent and expedient for Congress to
provide that a limited amount of some future issue of public
securities might be held by any bona fide purchaser exempt from
taxation and from seizure for debt, under such restrictions and
limitations as might be necessary to guard against abuse of so
important a privilege.  This would enable every prudent person to set
aside a small annuity against a possible day of want.

Privileges like these would render the possession of such securities
to the amount limited most desirable to every person of small means
who might be able to save enough for the purpose.  The great
advantage of citizens being creditors as well as debtors with
relation to the public debt is obvious.  Men readily perceive that
they can not be much oppressed by a debt which they owe to
themselves.

The public debt on the first day of July last, although somewhat
exceeding the estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury made to
Congress at the commencement of the last session, falls short of the
estimate of that officer made in the preceding December as to its
probable amount at the beginning of this year by the sum of
$3,995,097.31.  This fact exhibits a satisfactory condition and
conduct of the operations of the Treasury.

The national banking system is proving to be acceptable to
capitalists and to the people.  On the twenty-fifth day of November
five hundred and eighty-four national banks had been organized, a
considerable number of which were conversions from State banks.
Changes from State systems to the national system are rapidly taking
place, and it is hoped that very soon there will be in the United
States no banks of issue not authorized by Congress and no bank-note
circulation not secured by the Government.  That the Government and
the people will derive great benefit from this change in the banking
systems of the country can hardly be questioned.  The national system
will create a reliable and permanent influence in support of the
national credit and protect the people against losses in the use of
paper money.  Whether or not any further legislation is advisable for
the suppression of State-bank issues, it will be for Congress to
determine.  It seems quite clear that the Treasury can not be
satisfactorily conducted unless the Government can exercise a
restraining power over the bank-note circulation of the country.

The report of the Secretary of War and the accompanying documents
will detail the campaigns of the armies in the field since the date
of the last annual message, and also the operations of the several
administrative bureaus of the War Department during the last year.
It will also specify the measures deemed essential for the national
defense and to keep up and supply the requisite military force.

The report of the Secretary of the Navy presents a comprehensive and
satisfactory exhibit of the affairs of that Department and of the
naval service.  It is a subject of congratulation and laudable pride
to our countrymen that a Navy of such vast proportions has been
organized in so brief a period and conducted with so much efficiency
and success.

The general exhibit of the Navy, including vessels under construction
on the first of December, 1864, shows a total of 671 vessels,
carrying 4610 guns, and of 510,396 tons, being an actual increase
during the year, over and above all losses by shipwreck or in battle,
of 83 vessels, 167 guns, and 42,427 tons.

The total number of men at this time in the naval service, including
officers, is about 51,000.

There have been captured by the Navy during the year 324 vessels, and
the whole number of naval captures since hostilities commenced is
1379, of which 267 are steamers.

The gross proceeds arising from the sale of condemned prize property
thus far reported amount to $14,369,250.51.  A large amount of such
proceeds is still under adjudication and yet to be reported.

The total expenditure of the Navy Department of every description,
including the cost of the immense squadrons that have been called
into existence from the fourth of March, 1861, to the first of
November, 1864, is $238,647,262.35.

Your favorable consideration is invited to the various
recommendations of the Secretary of the Navy, especially in regard to
a navy-yard and suitable establishment for the construction and
repair of iron vessels and the machinery and armature for our ships,
to which reference was made in my last annual message.

Your attention is also invited to the views expressed in the report
in relation to the legislation of Congress at its last session in
respect to prize on our inland waters.

I cordially concur in the recommendation of the Secretary as to the
propriety of creating the new rank of vice-admiral in our naval
service.

Your attention is invited to the report of the Postmaster-General for
a detailed account of the operations and financial condition of the
Post-Office Department.

The postal revenues for the year ending June 30, 1864, amounted to
$12,438,253.78, and the expenditures to $12,644,786.20, the excess of
expenditures over receipts being $206,532.42.

The views presented by the Postmaster-General on the subject of
special grants by the Government in aid of the establishment of new
lines of ocean mail steamships and the policy he recommends for the
development of increased commercial intercourse with adjacent and
neighboring countries should receive the careful consideration of
Congress.

It is of noteworthy interest that the steady expansion of population,
improvement, and governmental institutions over the new and
unoccupied portions of our country have scarcely been checked, much
less impeded or destroyed, by our great civil war, which at first
glance would seem to have absorbed almost the entire energies of the
nation.

The organization and admission of the State of Nevada has been
completed in conformity with law, and thus our excellent system is
firmly established in the mountains, which once seemed a barren and
uninhabitable waste between the Atlantic States and those which have
grown up on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

The Territories of the Union are generally in a condition of
prosperity and rapid growth.  Idaho and Montana, by reason of their
great distance and the interruption of communication with them by
Indian hostilities, have been only partially organized; but it is
understood that these difficulties are about to disappear, which will
permit their governments, like those of the others, to go into speedy
and full operation.

As intimately connected with and promotive of this material growth of
the nation, I ask the attention of Congress to the valuable
information and important recommendations relating to the public
lands, Indian affairs, the Pacific Railroad, and mineral discoveries
contained in the report of the Secretary of the Interior which is
herewith transmitted, and which report also embraces the subjects of
patents, pensions, and other topics of public interest pertaining to
his Department.

The quantity of public land disposed of during the five quarters
ending on the thirtieth of September last was 4,221,342 acres, of
which 1,538,614 acres were entered under the homestead law.  The
remainder was located with military land warrants, agricultural scrip
certified to States for railroads, and sold for cash.  The cash
received from sales and location fees was $1,019,446.

The income from sales during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1864,
was $678,007.21, against $136,077.95 received during the preceding
year.  The aggregate number of acres surveyed during the year has
been equal to the quantity disposed of, and there is open to
settlement about 133,000,000 acres of surveyed land.

The great enterprise of connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific
States by railways and telegraph lines has been entered upon with a
vigor that gives assurance of success, notwithstanding the
embarrassments arising from the prevailing high prices of materials
and labor.  The route of the main line of the road has been
definitely located for one hundred miles westward from the initial
point at Omaha City, Nebraska, and a preliminary location of the
Pacific Railroad of California has been made from Sacramento eastward
to the great bend of the Truckee River in Nevada.

Numerous discoveries of gold, silver, and cinnabar mines have been
added to the many heretofore known, and the country occupied by the
Sierra Nevada and Rocky mountains and the subordinate ranges now
teems with enterprising labor, which is richly remunerative.  It is
believed that the produce of the mines of precious metals in that
region has during the year reached, if not exceeded, $100,000,000 in
value.

It was recommended in my last annual message that our Indian system
be remodeled.  Congress at its last session, acting upon the
recommendation, did provide for reorganizing the system in
California, and it is believed that under the present organization
the management of the Indians there will be attended with reasonable
success.  Much yet remains to be done to provide for the proper
government of the Indians in other parts of the country, to render it
secure for the advancing settler, and to provide for the welfare of
the Indian.  The Secretary reiterates his recommendations, and to
them the attention of Congress is invited.


The liberal provisions made by Congress for paying pensions to
invalid soldiers and sailors of the Republic and to the widows,
orphans, and dependent mothers of those who have fallen in battle or
died of disease contracted or of wounds received in the service of
their country have been diligently administered.  There have been
added to the pension rolls during the year ending the 3oth day of
June last the names of 16,770 invalid soldiers and of 271 disabled
seamen, making the present number of army invalid pensioners 22,767
and of navy invalid pensioners 712.

Of widows, orphans, and mothers 22,198 have been placed on the army
pension rolls and 248 on the navy rolls.  The present number of army
pensioners of this class is 25,433 and of navy pensioners 793.  At
the beginning of the year the number of Revolutionary pensioners was
1430.  Only twelve of them were soldiers, of whom seven have since
died.  The remainder are those who under the law receive pensions
because of relationship to Revolutionary soldiers.  During the year
ending the thirtieth of June, 1864, $4,504,616.92 have been paid to
pensioners of all classes.

I cheerfully commend to your continued patronage the benevolent
institutions of the District of Columbia which have hitherto been
established or fostered by Congress, and respectfully refer for
information concerning them and in relation to the Washington
Aqueduct, the Capitol, and other matters of local interest to the
report of the Secretary.

The Agricultural Department, under the supervision of its present
energetic and faithful head, is rapidly commending itself to the
great and vital interest it was created to advance.  It is peculiarly
the people's department, in which they feel more directly concerned
than in any other.  I commend it to the continued attention and
fostering care of Congress.

The war continues.  Since the last annual message all the important
lines and positions then occupied by our forces have been maintained
and our arms have steadily advanced, thus liberating the regions left
in rear, so that Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of other
States have again produced reasonably fair crops.

The most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year is
General Sherman's attempted march of three hundred miles directly
through the insurgent region.  It tends to show a great increase of
our relative strength that our General-in-Chief should feel able to
confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy, and yet
to detach a well-appointed large army to move on such an expedition.
The result not yet being known, conjecture in regard to it is not
here indulged.

Important movements have also occurred during the year to the effect
of molding society for durability in the Union.  Although short of
complete success, it is much in the right direction that twelve
thousand citizens in each of the States of Arkansas and Louisiana
have organized loyal State governments, with free constitutions, and
are earnestly struggling to maintain and administer them.  The
movements in the same direction more extensive though less definite
in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, should not be overlooked.  But
Maryland presents the example of complete success.  Maryland is
secure to liberty and union for all the future.  The genius of
rebellion will no more claim Maryland.  Like another foul spirit
being driven out, it may seek to tear her, but it will woo her no
more.

At the last session of Congress a proposed amendment of the
Constitution abolishing slavery throughout the United States passed
the Senate, but failed for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote in
the House of Representatives.  Although the present is the same
Congress and nearly the same members, and without questioning the
wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to
recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the
present session.  Of course the abstract question is not changed; but
an intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress
will pass the measure if this does not.  Hence there is only a
question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the
States for their action.  And as it is to so go at all events, may we
not agree that the sooner the better? It is not claimed that the
election has imposed a duty on members to change their views or their
votes any further than, as an additional element to be considered,
their judgment may be affected by it.  It is the voice of the people
now for the first time heard upon the question.  In a great national
crisis like ours, unanimity of action among those seeking a common
end is very desirable, almost indispensable.  And yet no approach to
such unanimity is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to
the will of the majority simply because it is the will of the
majority.  In this case the common end is the maintenance of the
Union, and among the means to secure that end such will, through the
election, is most clearly declared in favor of such Constitutional
amendment.

The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is
derived through our popular elections.  Judging by the recent canvass
and its result, the purpose of the people within the loyal States to
maintain the integrity of the Union was never more firm nor more
nearly unanimous than now.  The extraordinary calmness and good order
with which the millions of voters met and mingled at the polls give
strong assurance of this.  Not only all those who supported the Union
ticket, so called, but a great majority of the opposing party also
may be fairly claimed to entertain and to be actuated by the same
purpose.  It is an unanswerable argument to this effect that no
candidate for any office whatever, high or low, has ventured to seek
votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union.  There have
been much impugning of motives and much heated controversy as to the
proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause, but on the
distinct issue of Union or no Union the politicians have shown their
instinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people.
In affording the people the fair opportunity of showing one to
another and to the world this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the
election has been of vast value to the national cause.

The election has exhibited another fact not less valuable to be
known--the fact that we do not approach exhaustion in the most
important branch of national resources, that of living men.  While it
is melancholy to reflect that the war has filled so many graves and
carried mourning to so many hearts, it is some relief to know that,
compared with the surviving, the fallen have been so few.  While
corps and divisions and brigades and regiments have formed and fought
and dwindled and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men
who composed them are still living.  The same is true of the naval
service.  The election returns prove this.  So many voters could not
else be found.  The States regularly holding elections, both now and
four years ago, to wit, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and
Wisconsin, cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast then,
showing an aggregate now of 3,982,011.  To this is to be added 33,762
cast now in the new States of Kansas and Nevada, which States did not
vote in 1860, thus swelling the aggregate to 4,015,773 and the net
increase during the three years and a half of war to 145,551.  A
table is appended showing particulars.  To this again should be added
the number of all soldiers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and California, who
by the laws of those States could not vote away from their homes, and
which number can not be less than 90,000.  Nor yet is this all.  The
number in organized Territories is triple now what it was four years
ago--while thousands, white and black, join us as the national arms
press back the insurgent lines.  So much is shown, affirmatively and
negatively, by the election.  It is not material to inquire how the
increase has been produced or to show that it would have been greater
but for the war, which is probably true.  The important fact remains
demonstrated that we have more men now than we had when the war
began; that we are not exhausted nor in process of exhaustion; that
we are gaining strength and may if need be maintain the contest
indefinitely.  [This sentence recognizes the concern of a guerilla
war after the main war finished.]This as to men.  Material resources
are now more complete and abundant than ever.

The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we believe,
inexhaustible.  The public purpose to re-establish and maintain the
national authority is unchanged, and, as we believe, unchangeable.
The manner of continuing the effort remains to choose.  On careful
consideration of all the evidence accessible it seems to me that no
attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any
good.  He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union,
precisely what we will not and can not give.  His declarations to
this effect are explicit and oft repeated.  He does not attempt to
deceive us.  He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves.  He can
not voluntarily reaccept the Union; we can not voluntarily yield it.
Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible.  It
is an issue which can only be tried by war and decided by victory.
If we yield, we are beaten; if the Southern people fail him, he is
beaten.  Either way it would be the victory and defeat following war.
What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause is not
necessarily true of those who follow.  Although he can not reaccept
the Union, they can.  Some of them, we know, already desire peace and
reunion.  The number of such may increase.  They can at any moment
have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the
national authority under the Constitution.  After so much the
Government could not, if it would, maintain war against them.  The
loyal people would not sustain or allow it.  If questions should
remain, we would adjust them by the peaceful means of legislation,
conference, courts, and votes, operating only in Constitutional and
lawful channels.  Some certain, and other possible, questions are and
would be beyond the Executive power to adjust; as, for instance, the
admission of members into Congress and whatever might require the
appropriation of money.  The Executive power itself would be greatly
diminished by the cessation of actual war.  Pardons and remissions of
forfeitures, however, would still be within Executive control.  In
what spirit and temper this control would be exercised can be fairly
judged of by the past.

A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were
offered to all except certain designated classes, and it was at the
same time made known that the excepted classes were still within
contemplation of special clemency.  During the year many availed
themselves of the general provision, and many more would, only that
the signs of bad faith in some led to such precautionary measures as
rendered the practical process less easy and certain.  During the
same time also special pardons have been granted to individuals of
the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied.
Thus practically the door has been for a full year open to all except
such as were not in condition to make free choice; that is, such as
were in custody or under constraint.  It is still so open to all.
But the time may come, probably will come, when public duty shall
demand that it be closed and that in lieu more rigorous measures than
heretofore shall be adopted.

In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national
authority on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable
condition to ending the war on the part of the Government, I retract
nothing heretofore said as to slavery.  I repeat the declaration made
a year ago, that "while I remain in my present position I shall not
attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall
I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that
proclamation or by any of the acts of Congress."  If the people
should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-
enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to
perform it.
In stating a single condition of peace I mean simply to say that the
war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have
ceased on the part of those who began it.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,
DECEMBER 6, 1864.

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I believe I shall never be old enough
to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.  I
have no good news to tell you, and yet I have no bad news to tell.
We have talked of elections until there is nothing more to say about
them.  The most interesting news now we have is from Sherman.  We all
know where he went in at, but I can't tell where he will come out at.
I will now close by proposing three cheers for General Sherman and
his army.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR HALL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 7, 1864.

GOVERNOR HALL, Jefferson City, Mo.:

Complaint is made to me of the doings of a man at Hannibal, Mo., by
the name of Haywood, who, as I am told, has charge of some militia
force, and is not in the United States service.  Please inquire into
the matter and correct anything you may find amiss if in your power.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL FASLEIGH.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., December 8, 1864.

COLONEL FASLEIGH, Louisville, Ky.:

I am appealed to in behalf of a man by the name of Frank Fairbairns,
said to have been for a long time and still in prison, without any
definite ground stated. How is it?

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER APPOINTING COMMISSIONERS TO INVESTIGATE THE MILITARY DIVISION
WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 10, 1864.

ORDERED, First, that Major-General William P. Smith and the Hon.
Henry Stanbery be, and they are hereby, appointed special
commissioners to investigate and report, for the information of the
President; upon the civil and military administration in the military
division bordering upon and west of the Mississippi, under such
instructions as shall be issued by authority of the President and the
War Department.

Second, said commissioners shall have power to examine witnesses upon
oath, and to take such proofs orally or in writing, upon the subject-
matters of investigation as they may deem expedient, and return the
same together with their report.

Third, all officers and persons in the military, naval and revenue
services, or in any branch of the public service under the authority
of the United States Government, are required, upon subpoena issued
by direction of the said commissioners, to appear before them at such
time and place as may be designated in said subpoena and to give
testimony on oath touching such matters as may be inquired of by the
commissioners, and to produce such books, papers, writings, and
documents as they may be notified or required to produce by the
commissioners, and as may be in their possession.

Fourth, said special commissioners shall also investigate and report
upon any other matters that may hereafter be directed by the
Secretary of War, and shall with all convenient dispatch make report
to him in writing of their investigation, and shall also from time to
time make special reports to the Secretary of War upon such matters
as they may deem of importance to the public interests.

Fifth, the Secretary of War shall assign to the said commissioners
such aid and assistance as may be required for the performance of
their duties, and make such just and reasonable allowances and
compensation for the said commissioners and for the persons employed
by them as he may deem proper.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G, H. THOMAS.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 16, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS, Nashville, Tennessee:

Please accept for yourself, officers, and men, the nation's thanks
for your good work of yesterday.  You made a magnificent beginning; a
grand consummation is within your easy reach.  Do not let it slip.

A. LINCOLN,




ORIGIN OF THE "GREENBACK" CURRENCY

TO COLONEL B. D. TAYLOR

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December [16 ?], 1864.

DEAR COLONEL DICK:--I have long determined to make public the origin
of the greenback and tell the world that it is Dick Taylor's
creation.  You had always been friendly to me, and when troublous
times fell on us, and my shoulders, though broad and willing, were
weak, and myself surrounded by such circumstances and such people
that I knew not whom to trust, then I said in my extremity: "I will
send for Colonel Taylor; he will know what to do."  I think it was in
January, 1862, on or about the 16th, that I did so.  You came, and I
said to you:

"What can we do?"  Said you, "Why, issue Treasury notes bearing no
interest, printed on the best banking paper.  Issue enough to pay off
the Army expenses and declare it legal tender."

Chase thought it a hazardous thing, but we finally accomplished it,
and gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they ever
had-their own paper to pay their own debts.

It is due to you, the father of the present greenback, that the
people should know it, and I take great pleasure in making it known.
How many times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that I was
too lazy to be anything but a lawyer.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER IN COMMAND AT CHATTANOOGA.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 16, 1864

OFFICER IN COMMAND at Chattanooga, Tenn.:

It is said that Harry Walters, a private in the Anderson cavalry, is
now and for a long time has been in prison at Chattanooga.  Please
report to me what is his condition, and for what he is imprisoned.

A. LINCOLN.




CALL FOR 300,000 VOLUNTEERS, DECEMBER 19, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A Proclamation

Whereas, by the act approved July 4, 1864, entitled "An act further
to regulate and provide for the enrolling and calling out the
national forces, and for other purposes," it is provided that the
President of the United States may, "at his discretion, at any time
hereafter, call for any number of men, as volunteers for the
respective terms of one, two, and three years for military service,"
and "that in case the quota or any part thereof of any town,
township, ward of a city, precinct, or election district, or of any
country not so subdivided, shall not be filled within the space of
fifty days after such call, then the President shall immediately
order a draft for one year to fill such quota or any part thereof
which may be unfilled;" and

Whereas, by the credits allowed in accordance with the act of
Congress on the call for 500,000 men, made July 18, 1864, the number
of men to be obtained under that call was reduced to 280,000; and

Whereas, the operations of the enemy in certain States have rendered
it impracticable to procure from them their full quotas of troops
under said call; and

Whereas, from the foregoing causes but 240,000 men have been put into
the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps under the said call of July 18,
1864, leaving a deficiency on that call of two hundred and sixty
thousand (260,000):

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America, in order to supply the aforesaid deficiency and to provide
for casualties in the military and naval service of the United
States, do issue this my call for three hundred thousand (300,000)
volunteers to serve for one, two, or three years.  The quotas of the
States, districts, and subdistricts under this call will be assigned
by the War Department through the bureau of the Provost-Marshal
General of the United States, and "in case the quota or any part
thereof of any town, township, ward of a city, precinct, or election
district, or of any county not so subdivided, shall not be filled"
before the fifteenth of February, 1865, then a draft shall be made to
fill such quota or any part thereof under this call which may be
unfilled on said fifteenth day of February, 1865.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed..........

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA

TO GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 26, 1864

MY DEAR GENERAL SHERMAN:--Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift,
the capture of Savannah.

When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was
anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge,
and remembering that "nothing risked, nothing gained," I did not
interfere.  Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all
yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.

And taking the work of General Thomas into the count, as it should be
taken, it is indeed a great success.  Not only does it afford the
obvious and immediate military advantages; but in showing to the
world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to
an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old
opposing force of the whole,--Hood's army,--it brings those who sat
in darkness to see a great light.  But what next?

I suppose it will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself to
decide.

Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army of
officers and men.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER IN COMMAND AT LEXINGTON.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 27, 1864.

OFFICER IN COMMAND at Lexington, Ky.:

If within your power send me the particulars of the causes for which
Lieutenant-Governor Jacob was arrested and sent away.

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. MACLEAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 27, 1864.


Dr. JOHN MACLEAN:

MY DEAR SIR:--I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your
note of the twentieth of December, conveying the announcement that
the Trustees of the College of New Jersey had conferred upon me the
degree of Doctor of Laws.

The assurance conveyed by this high compliment, that the course of
the Government which I represent, has received the approval of a body
of gentlemen of such character and intelligence, in this time of
public trial, is most grateful to me.

Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this
continent is involved in the issue of our contest.  Among the most
gratifying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion
everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national
cause.

I am most thankful if my labors have seemed to conduct to the
preservation of those institutions, under which alone we can expect
good government and in its train sound learning, and the progress of
the liberal arts.

I am, sir, very truly, your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER IN COMMAND AT NASHVILLE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 28, 1864.

OFFICER IN COMMAND at Nashville, Tenn.:

Suspend execution of James R. Mallory, for six weeks from Friday the
thirtieth of this month, which time I have given his friends to make
proof, if they can, upon certain points.

A. LINCOLN,




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., December 28, 1864. 5.30 p.m.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

If there be no objection, please tell me what you now understand of
the Wilmington expedition, present and prospective.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 29, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER:

There is a man in Company I, Eleventh Connecticut Volunteers, First
Brigade, Third Division, Twenty-fourth Army Corps, at Chapin's Farm,
Va.; under the assumed name of William Stanley, but whose real name
is Frank R. Judd, and who is under arrest, and probably about to be
tried for desertion.  He is the son of our present minister to
Prussia, who is a close personal friend of Senator Trumbull and
myself.  We are not willing for the boy to be shot, but we think it
as well that his trial go regularly on, suspending execution until
further order from me and reporting to me.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL WARNER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, December 30, 1864.

COLONEL WARNER, Indianapolis, Ind.:

It is said that you were on the court-martial that tried John Lennon,
and that you are disposed to advise his being pardoned and sent to
his regiment.  If this be true, telegraph me to that effect at once.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO J. WILLIAMS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 4, 1865.

JOHN WILLIAMS, Springfield, Ill.:

Let Trumbo's substitute be regularly mustered in, send me the
evidence that it is done and I will then discharge Trumbo.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

WASHINGTON, January 5, 1865.

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES:

I herewith return to your honorable body, in which it originated, a
"joint resolution to correct certain clerical errors in the internal
revenue act," without my approval.

My reason for so doing is that I am informed that this joint
resolution was prepared during the last moments of the last session
of Congress for the purpose of correcting certain errors of reference
in the internal revenue act, which were discovered on an examination
of an official copy procured from the State Department a few hours
only before the adjournment.  It passed the House and went to the
Senate, where a vote was taken upon it, but by some accident it was
not presented to the President of the Senate for his signature.

Since the adjournment of the last session of Congress, other errors
of a kind similar to those which this resolution was designed to
correct, have been discovered in the law, and it is now thought most
expedient to include all the necessary corrections in one act or
resolution.

The attention of the proper committee of the House has, I am
informed, been already directed to the preparation of a bill for this
purpose.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 5, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Richard T. Jacob, Lieutenant-Governor of Kentucky, is at the
Spotswood House, in Richmond, under an order of General Burbridge not
to return to Kentucky.  Please communicate leave to him to pass our
lines, and come to me here at Washington.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, January 6, 1865, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point:

If there is a man at City Point by the name of Waterman Thornton who
is in trouble about desertion, please have his case briefly stated to
me and do not let him be executed meantime.

A. LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

WASHINGTON, January 9, 1865.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I transmit to Congress a
copy of two treaties between the United States and Belgium, for the
extinguishment of the Scheldt dues, etc., concluded on the twentieth
of May, 1863, and twentieth of July, 1863, respectively, the
ratifications of which were exchanged at Brussels on the twenty-
fourth of June last; and I recommend an appropriation to carry into
effect the provisions thereof relative to the payment of the
proportion of the United States toward the capitalization of the said
dues.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO SCHUYLER COLFAX.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 9, 1865.

HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.

SIR:--I transmit herewith the letter of the Secretary of War, with
accompanying report of the Adjutant-General, in reply to the
resolution of the House of Representatives, dated December 7, 1864,
requesting me "to communicate to the House the report made by Col.
Thomas M. Key of an interview between himself and General Howell Cobb
on the fourteenth [15th] day of June, 1862, on the banks of the
Chickahominy, on the subject of the exchange of prisoners of war."

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING COMMERCE,
JANUARY 10, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas the act of Congress of the twenty-eighth of September, 1850,
entitled "An act to create additional collection districts in the
State of California, and to change the existing districts therein,
and to modify the existing collection districts in the United
States," extends to merchandise warehoused under bond the privilege
of being exported to the British North American provinces adjoining
the United States, in the manner prescribed in the act of Congress of
the third of March, 1845, which designates certain frontier ports
through which merchandise may be exported, and further provides "that
such other ports situated on the frontiers of the United States,
adjoining the British North American provinces, as may hereafter be
found expedient, may have extended to them the like privileges on the
recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, and proclamation
duly made by the President of the United States, specially
designating the ports to which the aforesaid privileges are to be
extended;"

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America, in accordance with the recommendation of the Secretary of
the Treasury, do hereby declare and proclaim that the port of St.
Albans, in the State of Vermont, is, and shall be, entitled to all
the privileges in regard to the exportation of merchandise in bond to
the British North American provinces adjoining the United States,
which are extended to the ports enumerated in the seventh section of
the act of Congress of the third of March, 1845, aforesaid, from and
after the date of this proclamation.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this tenth day of January, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred-and sixty-five, and of
the independence of the United States of America the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL B. F. BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 10, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

No principal report of yours on the Wilmington expedition has ever
reached the War Department, as I am informed there.  A preliminary
report did reach here, but was returned to General Grant at his
request.  Of course, leave to publish cannot be given without
inspection of the paper, and not then if it should be deemed to be
detrimental to the public service.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL B. F. BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 13, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Yours asking leave to come to Washington is received.  You have been
summoned by the Committee on the Conduct of the War to attend here,
which, of course, you will do.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 15, 1865.

GOVERNOR JOHNSON, Nashville, Tennessee:

Yours announcing ordinance of emancipation received. Thanks to the
convention and to you.  When do you expect to be here?  Would be glad
to have your suggestion as to supplying your place of military
governor.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. M. DODGE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 15, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL DODGE, St.  Louis, Missouri:

It is represented to me that there is so much irregular violence in
northern Missouri as to be driving away the people and almost
depopulating it.  Please gather information, and consider whether an
appeal to the people there to go to their homes and let one another
alone recognizing as a full right of protection for each that he lets
others alone, and banning only him who refuses to let others alone
may not enable you to withdraw the troops, their presence itself
[being] a cause of irritation and constant apprehension, and thus
restore peace and quiet, and returning prosperity.  Please consider
this and telegraph or write me.

A. LINCOLN.




FIRST OVERTURES FOR SURRENDER FROM DAVIS

TO P. P. BLAIR, SR.

WASHINGTON, January 18, 1865.

F. P. BLAIR, ESQ.

SIR:-You having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the twelfth
instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and
shall continue, ready to receive any agent whom he or any other
influential person now resisting the national authority may
informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the people
of our one common country.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, January 19, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but
only a friend.  My son, now in his twenty-second year, having
graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it
ends.  I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a
commission, to which those who have already served long are better
entitled and better qualified to hold.  Could he, without
embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your
military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public,
furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least
hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply interested that you
shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DODGE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL DODGE, Saint Louis, Mo.:

If Mrs. Beattie, alias Mrs. Wolff, shall be sentenced to death,
notify me, and postpone the execution till further order.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ORD.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL ORD:

You have a man in arrest for desertion passing by the name of
Stanley.  William Stanley, I think, but whose real name is different.
He is the son of so close a friend of mine that I must not let him be
executed.  Please let me know what is his present and prospective
condition.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. M. DODGE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 24, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL DODGE, St.  Louis, Mo.:

It is said an old lady in Clay County, Missouri, by name Mrs.
Winifred B. Price, is about being sent South.  If she is not
misbehaving let her remain.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR JOHNSON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 24, 1865.

HON. ANDREW JOHNSON, Nashville, Tennessee:

Several members of the Cabinet, with myself, considered the question,
to-day, as to the time of your coming on here. While we fully
appreciate your wish to remain in Tennessee until her State
government shall be completely reinaugurated, it is our unanimous
conclusion that it is unsafe for you to not be here on the 4th of
March.  Be sure to reach here by that time.

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE, JANUARY 24, 1865.

REVEREND SIR, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I accept with emotions of profoundest gratitude, the beautiful gift
you have been pleased to present to me.  You will, of course, expect
that I acknowledge it.  So much has been said about Gettysburg and so
well, that for me to attempt to say more may perhaps only serve to
weaken the force of that which has already been said.  A most
graceful and eloquent tribute was paid to the patriotism and self-
denying labors of the American ladies, on the occasion of the
consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, by our
illustrious friend, Edward Everett, now, alas! departed from earth.
His life was a truly great one, and I think the greatest part of it
was that which crowned its closing years, I wish you to read, if you
have not already done so, the eloquent and truthful words which he
then spoke of the women of America.  Truly, the services they have
rendered to the defenders of our country in this perilous time, and
are yet rendering, can never be estimated as they ought to be.  For
your kind wishes to me personally, I beg leave to render you likewise
my sincerest thanks.  I assure you they are reciprocated. And now,
gentlemen and ladies, may God bless you all.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 25, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point

If Newell W. Root, of First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, is under
sentence of death, please telegraph me briefly the circumstances.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL GRANT.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 25, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Having received the report in the case of Newell W. Root, I do not
interfere further in the case.

A. LINCOLN.




EARLY CONSULTATIONS WITH REBELS

INSTRUCTIONS TO MAJOR ECKERT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 30, 1865.

MAJOR T. T. ECKERT.

SIR:-You will proceed with the documents placed in your hands, and on
reaching General Ord will deliver him the letter addressed to him by
the Secretary of War.  Then, by General Ord's assistance procure an
interview with Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, or any of
them, deliver to him or them the paper on which your own letter is
written.  Note on the copy which you retain the time of delivery and
to whom delivered.  Receive their answer in writing, waiting a
reasonable time for it, and which, if it contain their decision to
come through without further condition, will be your warrant to ask
General Ord to pass them through as directed in the letter of the
Secretary of War to him.  If by their answer they decline to come, or
propose other terms, do not have them pass through.  And this being
your whole duty, return and report to me.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY OF WAR TO GENERAL ORD.
(Cipher.)
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., January 30, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL ORD,  Headquarters Army of the James:

By direction of the President you are instructed to inform the three
gentlemen, Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, that a messenger
will be dispatched to them at or near where they now are, without
unnecessary delay.

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.




INDORSEMENT ON A LETTER FROM J. M. ASHLEY.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
January 31, 1865.

DEAR SIR:--The report is in circulation in the House that Peace
Commissioners are on their way or in the city, and is being used
against us.  If it is true, I fear we shall lose the bill.  Please
authorize me to contradict it, if it is not true.

Respectfully,
J. M. ASHLEY.

To the President.


(Indorsement.)

So far as I know there are no Peace Commissioners in the city or
likely to be in it.

A. LINCOLN.
January 31, 1865




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 31, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

A messenger is coming to you on the business contained in your
despatch.  Detain the gentlemen in comfortable quarters until he
arrives, and then act upon the message he brings, as far as
applicable, it having been made up to pass through General Ord's
hands, and when the gentlemen were supposed to be beyond our lines.

A. LINCOLN.




INSTRUCTIONS TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 31, 1865.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State

You will proceed to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, there to meet and
informally confer with Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, on
the basis of my letter to F. P. Blair, Esq., of January 18, 1865, a
copy of which you have.  You will make known to them that three
things are indispensable to wit:

1.  The restoration of the national authority throughout all the
States.

2.  No receding by the Executive of the United States on the slavery
question from the position assumed thereon in the late annual message
to Congress, and in preceding documents.

3.  No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war and the
disbanding of all forces hostile to the Government.

You will inform them that all propositions of theirs, not
inconsistent with the above, will be considered and passed upon in a
spirit of sincere liberality.  You will hear all they may choose to
say and report it to me.  You will not assume to definitely
consummate anything.

Yours, etc.,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




PASSAGE THROUGH CONGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT FOR THE
ABOLISHING OF SLAVERY

RESPONSE TO A SERENADE, JANUARY 31, 1865.

He supposed the passage through Congress of the Constitutional
amendment for the abolishing of slavery throughout the United States
was the occasion to which he was indebted for the honor of this call.

The occasion was one of congratulation to the country, and to the
whole world.  But there is a task yet before us--to go forward and
consummate by the votes of the States that which Congress so nobly
began yesterday.  He had the honor to inform those present that
Illinois had already done the work.  Maryland was about half through,
but he felt proud that Illinois was a little ahead.

He thought this measure was a very fitting if not an indispensable
adjunct to the winding up of the great difficulty.  He wished the
reunion of all the States perfected, and so effected as to remove all
causes of disturbance in the future; and, to attain this end, it was
necessary that the original disturbing cause should, if possible, be
rooted out.  He thought all would bear him witness that he had never
shirked from doing all that he could to eradicate slavery, by issuing
an Emancipation Proclamation.  But that proclamation falls short of
what the amendment will be when fully consummated.  A question might
be raised whether the proclamation was legally valid.  It might be
added, that it only aided those who came into our lines, and that it
was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up; or that
it would have no effect upon the children of the slaves born
hereafter; in fact, it would be urged that it did not meet the evil.
But this amendment is a king's cure for all evils.  It winds the
whole thing up.  He would repeat, that it was the fitting if not the
indispensable adjunct to the consummation of the great game we are
playing.  He could not but congratulate all present--himself, the
country, and the whole world upon this great moral victory.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, February 1, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point:

Let nothing which is transpiring change, hinder, or delay your
military movements or plans.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MAJOR ECKERT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 1, 1865.

MAJOR T. T. ECKERT,
Care of General Grant, City Point, Va.:

Call at Fortress Monroe, and put yourself under direction of Mr.
Seward, whom you will find there.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 2, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Say to the gentlemen I will meet them personally at Fortress Monroe
as soon as I can get there.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 2, 1865.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Fortress Monroe, Va.

Induced by a despatch of General Grant, I join you at Fort Monroe, as
soon as I can come.

A. LINCOLN.




ORDER TO MAKE CORRECTIONS IN THE DRAFT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON CITY, February 6, 1865

Whereas complaints are made in some localities respecting the
assignments of quotas and credits allowed for the pending call of
troops to fill up the armies: Now, in order to determine all
controversies in respect thereto, and to avoid any delay in filling
up the armies, it is ordered, That the Attorney-General, Brigadier-
General Richard Delafield, and Colonel C. W. Foster, be, and they are
hereby constituted, a board to examine into the proper quotas and
credits of. the respective States and districts under the call of
December 19, 1864, with directions, if any errors be found therein,
to make such corrections as the law and facts may require, and report
their determination to the Provost-Marshal-General.  The
determination of said board to be final and conclusive, and the draft
to be made in conformity therewith.

2. The Provost-Marshal-General is ordered to make the draft in the
respective districts as speedily as the same can be done after the
fifteenth of this month.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 6, 1865.

PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL:

These gentlemen distinctly say to me this morning that what they want
is the means from your office of showing their people that the quota
assigned to them is right. They think it will take but little time-
two hours, they say. Please give there double the time and every
facility you can.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.



February 6, 1865.

The Provost-Marshal brings this letter back to me and says he cannot
give the facility required without detriment to the service, and
thereupon he is excused from doing it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO LIEUTENANT-COLONEL GLENN.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 7, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL GLENN,
Commanding Post at Henderson, Ky.:

Complaint is made to me that you are forcing negroes into the
military service, and even torturing them--riding them on rails and
the like to extort their consent.  I hope this may be a mistake.  The
like must not be done by you, or any one under you.  You must not
force negroes any more than white men.  Answer me on this.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GOVERNOR SMITH.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, February 8, 1865.

HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR SMITH, of Vermont:

Complaint is made to me, by Vermont, that the assignment of her quota
for the draft on the pending call is intrinsically unjust, and also
in bad faith of the Government's promise to fairly allow credits for
men previously furnished.  To illustrate, a supposed case is stated
as follows:

Vermont and New Hampshire must between them furnish six thousand men
on the pending call; and being equal, each must furnish as many as
the other in the long run. But the Government finds that on former
calls Vermont furnished a surplus of five hundred, and New Hampshire
a surplus, of fifteen hundred. These two surpluses making two
thousand and added to the six thousand, making eight thousand to be
furnished by the two States, or four thousand each less, by fair
credits.  Then subtract Vermont's surplus of five hundred from her
four thousand, leaves three thousand five hundred as her quota on the
pending call; and likewise subtract New Hampshire's surplus of
fifteen hundred from her four thousand, leaves two thousand five
hundred as her quota on the pending call.  These three thousand five
hundred and two thousand five hundred make precisely six thousand,
which the supposed case requires from the two States, and it is just
equal for Vermont to furnish one thousand more now than New
Hampshire, because New Hampshire has heretofore furnished one
thousand more than Vermont, which equalizes the burdens of the two in
the long run.  And this result, so far from being bad faith to
Vermont, is indispensable to keeping good faith with New Hampshire.
By no other result can the six thousand men be obtained from the two
States, and, at the same time deal justly and keep faith with both,
and we do but confuse ourselves in questioning the process by which
the right result is reached. The supposed case is perfect as an
illustration.

The pending call is not for three hundred thousand men subject to
fair credits, but is for three hundred thousand remaining after all
fair credits have been deducted, and it is impossible to concede what
Vermont asks without coming out short of three hundred thousand men,
or making other localities pay for the partiality shown her.

This upon the case stated. If there be different reasons for making
an allowance to Vermont, let them be presented and considered.

Yours truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
February 8, 1865.

TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES:

The joint resolution entitled "Joint resolution declaring certain
States not entitled to representation in the electoral college" has
been signed by the Executive in deference to the view of Congress
implied in its passage and presentation to him.  In his own view,
however, the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth
article of the Constitution, have complete power to exclude from
counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it is
not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct that power by a
veto, as would be the case if his action were at all essential in the
matter.  He disclaims all right of the Executive to interfere in any
way in the matter of canvassing or counting electoral votes, and he
also disclaims that by signing said resolution he has expressed any
opinion on the recitals of the preamble or any judgment of his own
upon the subject of the resolution.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 8, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point.  Va.:

I am called on by the House of Representatives to give an account of
my interview with Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, and it is
very desirable to me to put your despatch of February 1, to the
Secretary of War, in which, among other things, you say: "I fear now
their going back without any expression from any one in authority
will have a bad influence."  I think the despatch does you credit,
while I do not see that it can embarrass you.  May I use it?

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO A COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS, REPORTING
THE RESULT OF THE ELECTORAL COUNT,

FEBRUARY 9, 1865.

With deep gratitude to my countrymen for this mark of their
confidence; with a distrust of my own ability to perform the duty
required under the most favorable circumstances, and now rendered
doubly difficult by existing national perils; yet with a firm
reliance on the strength of our free government, and the eventual
loyalty of the people to the just principles upon which it is
founded, and above all with an unshaken faith in the Supreme Ruler of
nations, I accept this trust.  Be pleased to signify this to the
respective Houses of Congress.




CHRONOLOGIC REVIEW OF PEACE PROPOSALS

MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
February 10, 1865

TO THE HONORABLE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

In response to your resolution of the eighth instant, requesting
information in relation to a conference recently held in Hampton
Roads, I have the honor to state that on the day of the date I gave
Francis P. Blair, Sr., a card, written on as follows, to wit:

December 28, 1864.

Allow the bearer, F. P. Blair, Sr., to pass our lines, go South, and
return.

A. LINCOLN.




That at the time I was informed that Mr. Blair sought the card as a
means of getting to Richmond, Va., but he was given no authority to
speak or act for the Government, nor was I informed of anything he
would say or do on his own account or otherwise.  Afterwards Mr.
Blair told me that he had been to Richmond and had seen Mr. Jefferson
Davis; and he (Mr. B.) at the same time left with me a manuscript
letter, as follows, to wit:

RICHMOND, VA., January 12, 1865.
F. P. BLAIR, ESQ.
SIR: I have deemed it proper, and probably desirable to you, to give
you in this for in the substance of remarks made by me, to be
repeated by you to President Lincoln, etc., etc.
I have no disposition to find obstacles in forms, and am willing, now
as heretofore, to enter into negotiations for the restoration of
peace, and am ready to send a commission whenever I have reason to
suppose it will be received, or to receive a commission if the United
States Government shall choose to send one.  That notwithstanding the
rejection of our former offers, I would, if you could promise that a
commissioner, minister, or other agent would be received, appoint one
immediately, and renew the effort to enter into conference with a
view to secure peace to the two countries.
Yours, etc.,
JEFFERSON DAVIS.




Afterwards, and with the view that it should be shown to Mr. Davis, I
wrote and delivered to Mr. Blair a letter, as follows, to wit:

WASHINGTON, January 18, 1865.

P. P. BLAIR, ESQ.

SIR:--Your having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the twelfth
instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and
shall continue ready to receive any agent whom he or any other
influential person now resisting the national authority may
informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the people
of our one common country.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




Afterwards Mr. Blair dictated for and authorized me to make an entry
on the back of my retained copy of the letter last above recited,
which entry is as follows:

January 28, 1865

To-day Mr. Blair tells me that on the twenty-first instant he
delivered to Mr. Davis the original of which the within is a copy,
and left it with him; that at the time of delivering it Mr. Davis
read it over twice in Mr. Blair's presence, at the close of which he
(Mr. Blair) remarked that the part about "our one common country"
related to the part of Mr. Davis' letter about "the two countries,"
to which Mr. Davis replied that he so understood it.

A. LINCOLN.




Afterwards the Secretary of War placed in my hands the following
telegram, indorsed by him, as appears:

OFFICE UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH WAR DEPARTMENT.
The following telegram received at Washington January 29, 1865, from
headquarters Army of James,

6.30 P.M., January 29, 1865:
"HON. EDWIN M. STANTON,  "Secretary of War:
"The following despatch just received from Major-General Parke, who
refers it to me for my action.  I refer it to you in Lieutenant-
General Grant's absence:

"E. O. C. ORD, Major-General, Commanding.
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF POTOMAC,
January 29, 1863.  4 P.M.
'MAJOR-GENERAL E. O. C. ORD,
'Headquarters Army of James:
'The following despatch is forwarded to you for your action.  Since I
have no knowledge of General Grant's having had any understanding of
this kind, I refer the matter to you as the ranking officer present
in the two armies.
'JNO. G. PARKE, Major-General, Commanding.'


"'FROM HEADQUARTERS NINTH ARMY Cos, 29th.
'MAJOR-GENERAL JNO. G. PARKE, 'Headquarters Army of Potomac:
'Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and J. A. Campbell desire to
cross my lines, in accordance with an understanding claimed to exist
with Lieutenant-General Grant, on their way to Washington as peace
commissioners.  Shall they be admitted? They desire an early answer,
to come through immediately.  Would like to reach City Point tonight
if they can.  If they can not do this, they would like to come
through at 10 A.M. to-morrow morning.
'O. B. WILCOX,
'Major-General, Commanding Ninth Corps.'


"January 29, 8.30 P.M.
"Respectfully referred to the President for such instructions as he
may be pleased to give.
"EDWIN M. STANTON,  "Secretary of War."




It appears that about the time of placing the foregoing telegram in
my hands the Secretary of War dispatched General Ord as follows, to
wit:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON CITY, January 29, 1865.  10 P.M.
(Sent at 2 A.M., 30th.)
MAJOR-GENERAL ORD.

SIR:--This Department has no knowledge of any understanding by
General Grant to allow any person to come within his lines as
commissioner of any sort.  You will therefore allow no one to come
into your lines under such character or profession until you receive
the President's instructions, to whom your telegraph will be
submitted for his directions.

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.




Afterwards, by my direction, the Secretary of War telegraphed General
Ord as follows, to wit:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 30.  10.30 A.M.

MAJOR-GENERAL E. O. C. ORD,
Headquarters Army of the James.

SIR:--By direction of the President, you are instructed to inform the
three gentlemen, Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter and Campbell, that a
messenger will be dispatched to them at or near where they now are
without unnecessary delay.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




Afterwards I prepared and put into the hands of Major Thomas T.
Eckert the following instructions and message:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

MAJOR T. T. ECKERT.  WASHINGTON, January 30, 1865

SIR:--You will proceed with the documents placed in your hands, and
on reaching General Ord will deliver him the letter addressed to him
by the Secretary of War; then, by General Ord's assistance, procure
an interview with Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell, or any of
them.  Deliver to him or them the paper on which your own letter is
written.  Note on the copy which you retain the time of delivery and
to whom delivered.  Receive their answer in writing, waiting a
reasonable time for it, and which, if it contain their decision to
come through without further condition, will be your warrant to ask
General Ord to pass them through, as directed in the letter of the
Secretary of War to him.  If by their answer they decline to come, or
propose other terms, do not have them pass through.  And this being
your whole duty, return and report to me.

A. LINCOLN.



CITY POINT, VA..  February 1, 1865.

MESSRS. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, J. A. CAMPBELL AND
R. M. T. HUNTER.

GENTLEMEN :--I am instructed by the President of the United States to
place this paper in your hands, with the information that if you pass
through the United States military lines it will be understood that
you do so for the purpose of an informal conference on the basis of
the letter a copy of which is on the reverse side of this sheet, and
that if you choose to pass on such understanding, and so notify me in
writing, I will procure the commanding general to pass you through
the lines and to Fortress Monroe under such military precautions as
he may deem prudent, and at which place you will be met in due time
by some person or persons for the purpose of such informal
conference; and, further, that you shall have protection, safe
conduct, and safe return in all events.

THOMAS T. ECKERT,
Major and Aide-de-Camp.



WASHINGTON, January 18, 1865.
F. P. BLAIR, ESQ.

SIR:--Your having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the twelfth
instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and
shall continue ready to receive any agent whom he or any other
influential person now resisting the national authority may
informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the people
of our one common country.
Yours, etc.,   A. LINCOLN.




Afterwards, but before Major Eckert had departed, the following
dispatch was received from General Grant:

OFFICE UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH,
WAR DEPARTMENT.

The following telegram received at Washington January 30, 1865, from
City Point, Va., 10.30 A.M., January 30, 1865:

"His EXCELLENCY ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President of the United States:

"The following communication was received here last evening:

"'PETERSBURG, VA., January 30, 1865.
'LIEUTENANT-GENERAL U.S. GRANT,
Commanding Armies United States.
'SIR: We desire to pass your lines under safe conduct, and to proceed
to Washington to hold a conference with President Lincoln upon the
subject of the existing war, and with a view of ascertaining upon
what terms it may be terminated, in pursuance of the course indicated
by him in his letter to Mr. Blair of January 18, 1865, of which we
presume you have a copy; and if not, we wish to see you in person, if
convenient, and to confer with you upon the subject.
'Very respectfully, yours,
'ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
'J. A. CAMPBELL.
'R. M. T. HUNTER.'"


"I have sent directions to receive these gentlemen, and expect to
have them at my quarters this evening, awaiting your instructions.
U.S. GRANT,
Lieutenant-General, Commanding
Armies United States."




This, it will be perceived, transferred General Ord's agency in the
matter to General Grant.  I resolved, however, to send Major Eckert
forward with his message, and accordingly telegraphed General Grant
as follows, to wit:

EXECUTIVE MANSION
WASHINGTON, January 13, 1865
(Sent at 1.30 P.M.)

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

A messenger is coming to you on the business contained in your
despatch.  Detain the gentlemen in comfortable quarters until he
arrives, and then act upon the message he brings as far as
applicable, it having been made up to pass through General Ord's
hands, and when the gentlemen were supposed to be beyond our lines.

A. LINCOLN.




When Major Eckert departed, he bore with him a letter of the
Secretary of War to General Grant, as follows, to wit:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 30, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, Commanding, etc.

GENERAL:--The President desires that you will please procure for the
bearer, Major Thomas T. Eckert, an interview with Messrs.  Stephens,
Hunter, and Campbell, and if on his return to you he requests it pass
them through our lines to Fortress Monroe by such route and under
such military precautions as you may deem prudent, giving them
protection and comfortable quarters while there, and that you let
none of this have any effect upon your movements or plans.

By order of the President:
EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.




Supposing the proper point to be then reached, I dispatched the
Secretary of State with the following instructions, Major Eckert,
however, going ahead of him:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, January 31, 1865.

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State:

You will proceed to Fortress Monroe, Va., there to meet and
informally confer with Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell on the
basis of my letter to F. P. Blair, Esq., of January 18, 1865, a copy
of which you have.

You will make known to them that three things are indispensable, to
Wit:

1.  The restoration of the national authority throughout all the
States.

2.  No receding by the Executive of the United States on the slavery
question from the position assumed thereon in the late annual message
to Congress and in preceding documents.

3.  No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war and the
disbanding of all forces hostile to the Government.

You will inform them that all propositions of theirs not inconsistent
with the above will be considered and passed upon in a spirit of
sincere liberality.  You will hear all they may choose to say and
report it to me.

You will not assume to definitely consummate anything.

Yours, etc.,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




On the day of its date the following telegram was sent to General
Grant:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 1,1865
(Sent at 9.30 A.M.)

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Let nothing which is transpiring change, hinder, or delay your
military movements or plans.

A. LINCOLN.




Afterwards the following despatch was received from General Grant:

OFFICE UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH
WAR DEPARTMENT.
The following telegram received at Washington, 2.30 P.M., February 1,
1865, from City Point, Va., February 1, 12.30 PM., 1865:

"His EXCELLENCY A. LINCOLN, President United States:

"Your despatch received.  There will be no armistice in consequence of
the presence of Mr. Stephens and others within our lines.  The troops
are kept in readiness to move at the shortest notice if occasion
should justify it.

"U.S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General."




To notify Major Eckert that the Secretary of State would be at
Fortress Monroe, and to put them in communication, the following
despatch was sent:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 1, 1865.

MAJOR T. T. ECKERT,
Care of General Grant, City Point, Va.:

Call at Fortress Monroe and put yourself under direction of Mr. S.,
whom you will find there.

A. LINCOLN.




On the morning of the 2d instant the following telegrams were
received by me respectively from the Secretary of State and Major
Eckert:

FORT MONROE, VA.,
February 1,1865.  11.30 PM.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

Arrived at 10 this evening.  Richmond party not here.  I remain here.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.



CITY POINT, VA.,
February 1, 1865.  10 P.M.

HIS EXCELLENCY A. LINCOLN, President of the United States:
I have the honor to report the delivery of your communication and my
letter at 4.15 this afternoon, to which I received a reply at 6 P.M.,
but not satisfactory.




At 8 P.M. the following note, addressed to General Grant, was
received:

CITY POINT, VA.,
February 1, 1865

"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT.
"SIR:-We desire to go to Washington City to confer informally with
the President personally in reference to the matters mentioned in his
letter to Mr. Blair of the 18th January ultimo, without any personal
compromise on any question in the letter.  We have the permission to
do so from the authorities in Richmond.
Very respectfully yours,
ALEX. H. STEPHENS
R. M. T. HUNTER.
J. A. CAMPBELL."


At 9.30 P.M. I notified them that they could not proceed further
unless they complied with the terms expressed in my letter.  The
point of meeting designated in the above note would not, in my
opinion, be insisted upon.  Think Fort Monroe would be acceptable.
Having complied with my instructions, I will return to Washington to-
morrow unless otherwise ordered.

THOS. T. ECKERT, Major, etc.




On reading this despatch of Major Eckert I was about to recall him
and the Secretary of State, when the following telegram of General
Grant to the Secretary of War was shown me:

OFFICE UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH,
WAR DEPARTMENT.

The following telegram received at Washington
4.35 A.M., February 2, 1865, from City Point, Va., February 1, 10.30
P.M., 1865:

"HON. EDWIN M. STANTON, "Secretary of War:

"Now that the interview between Major Eckert, under his written
instructions, and Mr. Stephens and party has ended, I will state
confidentially, but not officially to become a matter of record, that
I am convinced upon conversation with Messrs.  Stephens and Hunter
that their intentions are good and their desire sincere to restore
peace and union.  I have not felt myself at liberty to express even
views of my own or to account for my reticency.  This has placed me
in an awkward position, which I could have avoided by not seeing them
in the first instance.  I fear now their going back without any
expression from anyone in authority will have a bad influence.  At
the same time, I recognize the difficulties in the way of receiving
these informal commissioners at this time, and do not know what to
recommend.  I am sorry, however, that Mr. Lincoln can not have an
interview with the two named in this despatch, if not all three now
within our lines.  Their letter to me was all that the President's
instructions contemplated to secure their safe conduct if they had
used the same language to Major Eckert.

"U.S. GRANT
"Lieutenant-General,"




This despatch of General Grant changed my purpose, and accordingly I
telegraphed him and the Secretary of State, respectively, as follows:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 2, 1865.  (Sent at 9 A.M.)

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

Say to the gentlemen I will meet them personally at Fortress Monroe
as soon as I can get there.

A. LINCOLN.




WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 2, 1865.  (Sent at 9 A.M.)

HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Fortress Monroe, Va.:

Induced by a despatch from General Grant, I join you at Fort Monroe
as soon as I can come.

A. LINCOLN.




Before starting, the following despatch was shown me.  I proceeded,
nevertheless:

OFFICE UNITED STATES MILITARY TELEGRAPH,
WAR DEPARTMENT.
The following telegram received at Washington, February 2, 1865, from
City Point, Va., 9 A.M., February 2, 1865:

"HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, Fort Monroe:

"The gentlemen here have accepted the proposed terms, and will leave
for Fort Monroe at 9.30 A.M.

"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General."

(Copy to HON. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington.)




On the night of the 2nd I reached Hampton Roads, found the Secretary
of State and Major Eckert on a steamer anchored offshore, and learned
of them that the Richmond gentlemen were on another steamer also
anchored offshore, in the Roads, and that the Secretary of State had
not yet seen or communicated with them.  I ascertained that Major
Eckert had literally complied with his instructions, and I saw for
the first time the answer of the Richmond gentlemen to him, which in
his despatch to me of the 1st he characterizes as "not satisfactory."
That answer is as follows, to wit:

CITY POINT, VA., February 1, 1865.
THOMAS T. ECKERT, Major and Aid-de-Camp.
MAJOR:-Your note, delivered by yourself this day, has been
considered.  In reply we have to say that we were furnished with a
copy of the letter of President Lincoln to Francis P. Blair, Esq., of
the 18th of January ultimo, another copy of which is appended to your
note.  Our instructions are contained in a letter of which the
following is a copy:

"RICHMOND, January 28, 1865.
"In conformity with the letter of Mr. Lincoln, of which the foregoing
is a copy, you are to proceed to Washington City for informal
conference with him upon the issues involved in the existing war, and
for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries.
"With great respect, your obedient servant,
"JEFFERSON DAVIS."



The substantial object to be obtained by the informal conference is
to ascertain upon what terms the existing war can be terminated
honorably.

Our instructions contemplate a personal interview between President
Lincoln and ourselves at Washington City, but with this explanation
we are ready to meet any person or persons that President Lincoln may
appoint at such place as he may designate.

Our earnest desire is that a just and honorable peace may be agreed
upon, and we are prepared to receive or to submit propositions which
may possibly lead to the attainment of that end.

Very respectfully, yours,
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
R. M. T. HUNTER.
JOHN A. CAMPBELL.




A note of these gentlemen, subsequently addressed to General Grant,
has already been given in Major Eckert's despatch of the 1st instant.

I also here saw, for the first time, the following note, addressed by
the Richmond gentlemen to Major Eckert:

CITY POINT, VA., February 2, 1865.
THOMAS T. ECKERT, Major and Aid-de-Camp.
MAJOR:--In reply to your verbal statement that your instructions did
not allow you to alter the conditions upon which a passport could be
given to us, we say that we are willing to proceed to Fortress Monroe
and there to have an informal conference with any person or persons
that President Lincoln may appoint on the basis of his letter to
Francis P. Blair of the 18th of January ultimo, or upon any other
terms or conditions that he may hereafter propose not inconsistent
with the essential principles of self-government and popular rights,
upon which our institutions are founded.

It is our earnest wish to ascertain, after a free interchange of
ideas and information, upon what principles and terms, if any, a just
and honorable peace can be established without the further effusion
of blood, and to contribute our utmost efforts to accomplish such a
result.

We think it better to add that in accepting your passport we are not
to be understood as committing ourselves to anything but to carry to
this informal conference the views and feelings above expressed.

Very respectfully, yours, etc.,

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS,
J. A. CAMPBELL,
R. M. T. HUNTER.


Note.-The above communication was delivered to me at Fort Monroe at
4.30 P.M. February 2 by Lieutenant-Colonel Babcock, of General
Grant's staff.
THOMAS T. ECKERT
Major and Aid-de-Camp.




On the morning of the third the three gentlemen, Messrs.  Stephens,
Hunter, and Campbell, came aboard of our steamer and had an interview
with the Secretary of State and myself of several hours' duration.
No question of preliminaries to the meeting was then and there made
or mentioned; no other person was present; no papers were exchanged
or produced; and it was in advance agreed that the conversation was
to be informal and verbal merely.  On our part the whole substance of
the instructions to the Secretary of State hereinbefore recited was
stated and insisted upon, and nothing was said inconsistent
therewith; while by the other party it was not said that in any event
or on any condition they ever would consent to reunion, and yet they
equally omitted to declare that they never would consent.  They
seemed to desire a postponement of that question and the adoption of
some other course first, which, as some of them seemed to argue,
might or might not lead to reunion, but which course we thought would
amount to an indefinite postponement.  The conference ended without
result.

The foregoing, containing, as is believed, all the information sought
is respectfully submitted.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




MESSAGE TO THE SENATE.

WASHINGTON, February 10, 1865

To THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

In answer to the resolution of the Senate of the eighth instant,
requesting information concerning recent conversations or
communications with insurgents, under executive sanction, I transmit
a report from the Secretary of State, to whom the resolution was
referred.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TO THE PRESIDENT:

The Secretary of State, to whom was referred a resolution of the
Senate of the 8th instant, requesting "the President of the United
States, if, in his opinion, not incompatible with the public
interests, to furnish to the Senate any information in his possession
concerning recent conversations or communications with certain
rebels, said to have taken place under executive sanction, including
communications with the rebel Jefferson Davis, and any correspondence
relating thereto," has the honor to report that the Senate may
properly be referred to a special message of the President bearing
upon the subject of the resolution, and transmitted to the House this
day.  Appended to this report is a copy of an instruction which has
been addressed to Charles Francis Adams, Esq., envoy extraordinary
and minister plenipotentiary of the United States at London, and
which is the only correspondence found in this department touching
the subject referred to in the resolution.

Respectfully submitted,
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, February 10, 1865.




MR. SEWARD TO MR. ADAMS.
(Extract.)
No.  1258.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, February 7,1865

On the morning of the 3d, the President, attended by the Secretary,
received Messrs.  Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell on board the United
States steam transport River Queen in Hampton Roads.  The conference
was altogether informal.  There was no attendance of secretaries,
clerks, or other witnesses.  Nothing was written or read.  The
conversation, although earnest and free, was calm, and courteous, and
kind on both sides.  The Richmond party approached the discussion
rather indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical
demands, or tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals.
Nevertheless, during the conference, which lasted four hours, the
several points at issue between the Government and the insurgents
were distinctly raised, and discussed fully, intelligently, and in an
amicable spirit.  What the insurgent party seemed chiefly to favor
was a postponement of the question of separation, upon which the war
is waged, and a mutual direction of efforts of the Government, as
well as those of the insurgents, to some extrinsic policy or scheme
for a season during which passions might be expected to subside, and
the armies be reduced, and trade and intercourse between the people
of both sections resumed.  It was suggested by them that through such
postponement we might now have immediate peace, with some not very
certain prospect of an ultimate satisfactory adjustment of political
relations between this Government and the States, section, or people
now engaged in conflict with it.

This suggestion, though deliberately considered, was nevertheless
regarded by the President as one of armistice or truce, and he
announced that we can agree to no cessation or suspension of
hostilities, except on the basis of the disbandment of the insurgent
forces, and the restoration of the national authority throughout all
the States in the Union.  Collaterally, and in subordination to the
proposition which was thus announced, the antislavery policy of the
United States was reviewed in all its bearings, and the President
announced that he must not be expected to depart from the positions
he had heretofore assumed in his proclamation of emancipation and
other documents, as these positions were reiterated in his last
annual message.  It was further declared by the President that the
complete restoration of the national authority was an indispensable
condition of any assent on our part to whatever form of peace might
be proposed.  The President assured the other party that, while he
must adhere to these positions, he would be prepared, so far as power
is lodged with the Executive, to exercise liberality.  His power,
however, is limited by the Constitution; and when peace should be
made, Congress must necessarily act in regard to appropriations of
money and to the admission of representatives from the
insurrectionary States.  The Richmond party were then informed that
Congress had, on the 31st ultimo, adopted by a constitutional
majority a joint resolution submitting to the several States the
proposition to abolish slavery throughout the Union, and that there
is every reason to expect that it will be soon accepted by three
fourths of the States, so as to become a part of the national organic
law.

The conference came to an end by mutual acquiescence, without
producing an agreement of views upon the several matters discussed,
or any of them.  Nevertheless, it is perhaps of some importance that
we have been able to submit our opinions and views directly to
prominent insurgents, and to hear them in answer in a courteous and
not unfriendly manner.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.




TO ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
February 10, 1865

REAR-ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER,
Commanding North Atlantic Squadron, Hampton Roads, Va.

SIR:--It is made my agreeable duty to enclose herewith the joint
resolution approved 24th January, 1865, tendering the thanks of
Congress to yourself, the officers and men under your command for
their gallantry and good conduct in the capture of Fort Fisher, and
through you to all who participated in that brilliant and decisive
victory under your command.

Very respectfully,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL S. POPE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 12, 1865

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St.  Louis, Missouri:

I understand that provost-marshals in different parts of Missouri are
assuming to decide that the conditions of bonds are forfeited, and
therefore are seizing and selling property to pay damages.  This, if
true, is both outrageous and ridiculous.   Do not allow it.  The
courts, and not provost-marshals, are to decide such questions unless
when military necessity makes an exception.  Also excuse John Eaton,
of Clay County, and Wesley Martin, of Platte, from being sent South,
and let them go East if anywhere.

A. LINCOLN




TO THE COMMANDING OFFICERS IN WEST TENNESSEE

WASHINGTON,
February 13, 1865.

TO THE MILITARY OFFICERS COMMANDING IN WEST
TENNESSEE:

While I cannot order as within requested, allow me to say that it is
my wish for you to relieve the people from all burdens, harassments,
and oppressions, so far as is possible consistently with your
military necessities; that the object of the war being to restore and
maintain the blessings of peace and good government, I desire you to
help, and not hinder, every advance in that direction.

Of your military necessities you must judge and execute, but please
do so in the spirit and with the purpose above indicated.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. POPE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 14, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Yours of yesterday about provost-marshal system received.  As part of
the same subject, let me say I am now pressed in regard to a pending
assessment in St.  Louis County.  Please examine and satisfy yourself
whether this assessment should proceed or be abandoned; and if you
decide that it is to proceed, please examine as to the propriety of
its application to a gentleman by the name of Charles McLaran.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL POPE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON February 15, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Please ascertain whether General Fisk's administration is as good as
it might be, and answer me.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CONVENING THE SENATE IN EXTRA SESSION,

FEBRUARY 17, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation

Whereas objects of interest to the United States require that the
Senate should be convened at twelve o'clock on the fourth of March
next to receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it
on the part of the Executive;

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
have considered it to be my duty to issue this, my proclamation,
declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the
United States to convene for the transaction of business at the
Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the fourth day of March next,
at twelve o'clock at noon on that day, of which all who shall at that
time be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required
to take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at
Washington...............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




TELEGRAM TO OFFICER IN COMMAND AT HARPER'S FERRY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 17, 1865

OFFICER IN COMMAND AT HARPER'S FERRY:

Chaplain Fitzgibbon yesterday sent me a despatch invoking Clemency
for Jackson, Stewart, and Randall, who are to be shot to-day.  The
despatch is so vague that there is no means here of ascertaining
whether or not the execution of sentence of one or more of them may
not already have been ordered.  If not suspend execution of sentence
m their cases until further orders and forward records of trials for
examination.

A. LINCOLN

MAJOR ECKERT:
Please send above telegram
JNO. G. NICOLAY.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 24, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Virginia:

I am in a little perplexity.  I was induced to authorize a gentleman
to bring Roger A. Pryor here with a view of effecting an exchange of
him; but since then I have seen a despatch of yours showing that you
specially object to his exchange.  Meantime he has reached here and
reported to me.  It is an ungracious thing for me to send him back to
prison,  and yet inadmissible for him to remain here long.  Cannot
you help me out with it? I can conceive that there may be difference
to you in days, and I can keep him a few days to accommodate on that
point.  I have not heard of my son's reaching you.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL POPE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 24, 1865

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Please inquire and report to me whether there is any propriety of
longer keeping in Gratiott Street Prison a man said to be there by
the name of Riley Whiting.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, February 25, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Virginia:

General Sheridan's despatch to you, of to-day, in which he says he
"will be off on Monday," and that he "will leave behind about two
thousand men," causes the Secretary of War and myself considerable
anxiety.   Have you well considered whether you do not again leave
open the Shenandoah Valley entrance to Maryland and Pennsylvania, or,
at least, to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., February 27, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Virginia:

Subsequent reflection, conference with General Halleck, your
despatch, and one from General Sheridan, have relieved my anxiety;
and so I beg that you will dismiss any concern you may have on my
account, in the matter of my last despatch.

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. W. CONWAY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 1, 1865.

MR. THOMAS W. CONWAY,
General Superintendent Freedmen,
Department of the Gulf.

SIR:--Your statement to Major-General Hurlbut of the condition of the
freedmen of your department, and of your success in the work of their
moral and physical elevation, has reached me and given me much
pleasure.

That we shall be entirely successful in our efforts I firmly believe.

The blessing of God and the efforts of good and faithful men will
bring us an earlier and happier consummation than the most sanguine
friends of the freedmen could reasonably expect.

Yours,

A. LINCOLN,




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 2, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:

You have not sent contents of Richmond papers for Tuesday or
Wednesday.  Did you not receive them? If not, does it indicate
anything?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON
TO GENERAL GRANT.
WASHINGTON, March 3, 1865.  12 PM.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

The President directs me to say to you that he wishes you to have no
conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of
General Lee's army, or on some minor and purely military matter.  He
instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer
upon any political question.  Such questions the President holds in
his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or
conventions.  Meantime you are to press to the utmost your military
advantages.

EDWIN M. STANTON,  Secretary of War.


SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS,

MARCH 4, 1865.


FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN :--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address
than there was at the first.  Then a statement somewhat in detail of
a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper.  Now, at the
expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest
which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the
nation, little that is new could be presented.  The progress of our
arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the
public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and
encouraging to all.  With high hope for the future, no prediction in
regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war.  All dreaded it,
all sought to avert it.  While the inaugural address was being
delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union
without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it
without war seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by
negotiation.  Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make
war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept
war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One eighth of the whole population was colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern
part of it.  These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest.  All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the
war.  To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war,
while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the
territorial enlargement of it.  Neither party expected for the war
the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.  Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even
before the conflict itself should cease.  Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.  Both read the
same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against
the other.  It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a
just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other
men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.  The
prayers of both could not be answered.  That of neither has been
answered fully.  The Almighty has His own purposes.  "Woe unto the
world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come,
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."  If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives
to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by
whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from
those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet, if God wills that
it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with
the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be
said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among
ourselves and with all nations.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL JOHN POPE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 7, 1865

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St.  Louis, Missouri:

Please state briefly, by telegraph, what you concluded about the
assessments in St.  Louis County.  Early in the war one Samuel B.
Churchill was sent from St.  Louis to Louisville, where I have quite
satisfactory evidence that he has not misbehaved.  Still I am told
his property at St.  Louis is subjected to the assessment, which I
think it ought not to be.  Still I wish to know what you think.

A. LINCOLN.




TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 8, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va:

Your two despatches to the Secretary of War, one relating to supplies
for the enemy going by the Blackwater, and the other to General
Singleton and Judge Hughes, have been laid before me by him.  As to
Singleton and Hughes, I think they are not in Richmond by any
authority, unless it be from you.  I remember nothing from me which
could aid them in getting there, except a letter to you, as follows,
to wit:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON CITY, February 7, 1865.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.:
General Singleton, who bears you this, claims that he already has
arrangements made, if you consent, to bring a large amount of
Southern produce through your lines.  For its bearing on our
finances, I would be glad for this to be done, if it can be, without
injuriously disturbing your military operations, or supplying the
enemy.  I wish you to be judge and master on these points.  Please
see and hear him fully, and decide whether anything, and, if
anything, what, can be done in the premises.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.

I believe I gave Hughes a card putting him with Singleton on the same
letter.  However this may be, I now authorize you to get Singleton
and Hughes away from Richmond, if you choose, and can.  I also
authorize you, by an order, or in what form you choose, to suspend
all operations on the Treasury trade permits, in all places
southeastward of the Alleghenies.  If you make such order, notify me
of it, giving a copy, so that I can give corresponding direction to
the Navy.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION OFFERING PARDON TO DESERTERS,

MARCH 11, 1865

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA

A Proclamation

Whereas, the twenty-first section of the act of Congress, approved on
the 3d instant, entitled "An Act to amend the several acts heretofore
passed to provide for the enrolling and calling out the national
forces and for other purposes," requires that in addition to the
other lawful penalties of the crime of desertion from the military or
naval service, all persons who have deserted the military or naval
service of the United States who shall not return to said service or
report themselves to a provost-marshal within sixty days after the
proclamation hereinafter mentioned, shall be deemed and taken to have
voluntarily relinquished and forfeited their citizenship and their
right to become citizens, and such deserters shall be forever
incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under the United
States, or of exercising any rights of citizens thereof; and all
persons who shall hereafter desert the military or naval service, and
all persons who, being duly enrolled, shall depart the jurisdiction
of the district in which they are enrolled, or go beyond the limits
of the United States with intent to avoid any draft into the military
or naval service duly ordered, shall be liable to the penalties of
this section; and the President is hereby authorized and required
forthwith, on the passage of this act, to issue his proclamation
setting forth the provisions of this section, in which proclamation
the President is requested to notify all deserters returning within
sixty days as aforesaid that they shall be pardoned on condition of
returning to their regiments and companies, or to such other
organizations as they may be assigned to, until they shall have
served for a period of time equal to their original term of
enlistment:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, do issue this my proclamation as required by said act,
ordering and requiring all deserters to return to their proper posts;
and I do hereby notify them that all deserters who shall within sixty
days from the date of this proclamation, viz., on or before the 10th
day of May, 1865, return to service or report themselves to a
provost-marshal, shall be pardoned on condition that they return to
their regiments or companies or to such other organization as they
may be assigned to, and serve the remainder of their original terms
of enlistment, and in addition thereto a period equal to the time
lost by desertion.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed...............

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State




TELEGRAM TO H. T. BLOW.

WASHINGTON, March 13, 1865.

HON. HENRY T. BLOW, Saint Louis, Mo.:

A Miss E. Snodgrass, who was banished from Saint Louis in May,1863,
wishes to take the oath and return home. What say you?

A. LINCOLN.




LETTER TO THURLOW WEED,

MARCH 15, 1865.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR Mr. WEED:

Every one likes a compliment.  Thank you for yours on my little
notification speech and on the recent inaugural address.  I expect
the latter to wear as well as perhaps better than--anything I have
produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular.  Men are not
flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them.  To deny it, however, in this case, is
to deny that there is a God governing the world.  It is a truth which
I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is
in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford
for me to tell it.

Truly yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO COLONEL ROUGH AND OTHERS.

WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., March 17, 1865.

COL. R. M. ROUGH AND OTHERS, Chicago, Ill.:

Yours received. The best I can do with it is, to refer it to the War
Department.  The Rock Island case referred to, was my individual
enterprise; and it caused so much difficulty in so many ways that I
promised to never undertake another.

A. LINCOLN.




ADDRESS TO AN INDIANA REGIMENT,

MARCH 17, 1865.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It will be but a very few words that I shall
undertake to say.  I was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and
lived in Illinois; and now I am here, where it is my business to care
equally for the good people of all the States.  I am glad to see an
Indiana regiment on this day able to present the captured flag to the
Governor of Indiana.   I am not disposed, in saying this, to make a
distinction between the States, for all have done equally well.

There are but few views or aspects of this great war upon which I
have not said or written something whereby my own opinions might be
known.  But there is one--the recent attempt of our erring brethren,
as they are sometimes called, to employ the negro to fight for them.
I have neither written nor made a speech on that subject, because
that was their business, not mine, and if I had a wish on the
subject, I had not the power to introduce it, or make it effective.
The great question with them was whether the negro, being put into
the army, will fight for them.  I do not know, and therefore cannot
decide.  They ought to know better than me.  I have in my lifetime
heard many arguments why the negroes ought to be slaves; but if they
fight for those who would keep them in slavery, it will be a better
argument than any I have yet heard.  He who will fight for that,
ought to be a slave.  They have concluded, at last, to take one out
of four of the slaves and put them in the army, and that one out of
the four who will fight to keep the others in slavery, ought to be a
slave himself, unless he is killed in a fight.   While I have often
said that all men ought to be free, yet would I allow those colored
persons to be slaves who want to be, and next to them those white
people who argue in favor of making other people slaves.   I am in
favor of giving an appointment to such white men to try it on for
these slaves.  I will say one thing in regard to the negroes being
employed to fight for them.  I do know he cannot fight and stay at
home and make bread too.   And as one is about as important as the
other to them, I don't care which they do.  I am rather in favor of
having them try them as soldiers.  They lack one vote of doing that,
and I wish I could send my vote over the river so that I might cast
it in favor of allowing the negro to fight.  But they cannot fight
and work both.  We must now see the bottom of the enemy's resources.
They will stand out as long as they can, and if  the negro will fight
for them they must allow him to fight.  They have drawn upon their
last branch of resources, and we can now see the bottom.  I am glad
to see the end so near at hand.  I have said now more than I
intended, and will therefore bid you good-by.




PROCLAMATION CONCERNING INDIANS,

MARCH 17, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas reliable information has been received that hostile Indians,
within the limits of the United States, have been furnished with arms
and munitions of war by persons dwelling in conterminous foreign
territory, and are thereby enabled to prosecute their savage warfare
upon the exposed and sparse settlements of the frontier;

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States of America, do hereby proclaim and direct that all
persons detected in that nefarious traffic shall be arrested and
tried by court-martial at the nearest military post, and if
convicted, shall receive the punishment due to their deserts.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, arid caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed...................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




ORDER ANNULLING THE SENTENCE AGAINST
BENJAMIN G. SMITH AND FRANKLIN W. SMITH,

MARCH 18, 1865.


I am unwilling for the sentence to stand, and be executed, to any
extent in this case.  In the absence of a more adequate motive than
the evidence discloses, I am wholly unable to believe in the
existence of criminal or fraudulent intent on the part of men of such
well established good character.  If the evidence went as far to
establish a guilty profit of one or two hundred thousand dollars, as
it does of one or two hundred dollars, the case would, on the
question of guilt, bear a far different aspect.  That on this
contract, involving some twelve hundred thousand dollars, the
contractors would plan, and attempt to execute a fraud which, at the
most, could profit them only one or two hundred, or even one thousand
dollars, is to my mind beyond the power of rational belief.  That
they did not, in such a case, make far greater gains, proves that
they did not, with guilty or fraudulent intent, make at all.  The
judgment and sentence are disapproved, and declared null, and the
defendants are fully discharged.

A. LINCOLN
March 18, 1865.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. POPE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, March 19, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, St. Louis, Missouri:

Understanding that the plan of action for Missouri contained in your
letter to the Governor of that State, and your other letter to me, is
concurred in by the Governor, it is approved by me, and you will be
sustained in proceeding upon it.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ORD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, May [March] 20, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL ORD, Army of the James

Is it true that George W. Lane is detained at Norfolk without any
charge against him?  And if so why is it done?

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO JUDGE SCATES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, March 21, 1865.

HON. WALTER B. SCATES, Centralia, Illinois:

If you choose to go to New Mexico and reside, I will appoint you
chief justice there. What say you? Please answer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL W. S. HANCOCK.

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 22, 1865.
MAJOR-GENERAL HANCOCK, Winchester, Va.:

Seeing your despatch about General Crook, and fearing that through
misapprehension something unpleasant may occur, I send you below two
despatches of General Grant, which I suppose will fully explain
General Crook's movements.

A. LINCOLN.




ANOTHER FEMALE SPY

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DODGE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 23, 1865.

GENERAL DODGE,
Commanding, &c, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Allow Mrs. R. S. Ewell the benefit of my amnesty proclamation on her
taking the oath.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 25, 1865.  8.30 A.M.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D. C.:

Arrived here all safe about 9 P.M. yesterday.   No war news.  General
Grant does not seem to know very much about Yeatman, but thinks very
well of him so far as he does know.

I like Mr. Whiting very much, and hence would wish him to remain or
resign as best suits himself.  Hearing this much from me, do as you
think best in the matter.  General Lee has sent the Russell letter
back, concluding, as I understand from Grant, that their dignity does
not admit of their receiving the document from us.  Robert just now
tells me there was a little rumpus up the line this morning, ending
about where it began.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
(Cipher.)
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
March 25, 1865.  (Received 5 P.M.)

HON. EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

I am here within five miles of the scene of this morning's action.  I
have nothing to add to what General Meade reports except that I have
seen the prisoners myself and they look like there might be the
number he states--1600.

A. LINCOLN




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VA., March 26, 1865.  (Received 11.30 A.M.)

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR:

I approve your Fort Sumter programme.  Grant don't seem to know
Yeatman very well, but thinks very well of him so far as he knows.
Thinks it probable that Y. is here now, for the place.  I told you
this yesterday as well as that you should do as you think best about
Mr. Whiting's resignation, but I suppose you did not receive the
dispatch.  I am on the boat and have no later war news than went to
you last night.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 27, 1865.3.35 P.M.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D.C.:

Yours inclosing Fort Sumter order received.  I think of but one
suggestion.  I feel quite confident that Sumter fell on the 13th, and
not on the 14th of April, as you have it.  It fell on Saturday, the
13th; the first call for troops on our part was got up on Sunday, the
14th, and given date and issued on Monday, the 15th.  Look up the old
almanac and other data, and see if I am not right.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 28, 1865. 12 M.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D.C.:
After your explanation, I think it is little or no difference whether
the Fort Sumter ceremony takes place on the 13th or 14th.

General Sherman tells me he is well acquainted with James Yeatman,
and that he thinks him almost the best man in the country for
anything he will undertake.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VA., March 30, 1865.  7.30 P.M.
(Received 8.30 P.M.)

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR:

I begin to feel that I ought to be at home and yet I dislike to leave
without seeing nearer to the end of General Grant's present movement.
He has now been out since yesterday morning and although he has not
been diverted from his programme no considerable effort has yet been
produced so far as we know here.  Last night at 10.15 P. M. when it
was dark as a rainy night without a moon could be, a furious
cannonade soon joined in by a heavy musketry fire opened near
Petersburg and lasted about two hours.  The sound was very distinct
here as also were the flashes of the guns up the clouds.  It seemed
to me a great battle, but the older hands here scarcely noticed it
and sure enough this morning it was found that very little had been
done.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 31, 1865. 3 P.M.

SECRETARY STANTON:

At 12.30 P.M. to-day General Grant telegraphed me as follows:
"There has been much hard fighting this morning.  The enemy drove our
left from near Dabney's house back well toward the Boydton plank
road.  We are now about to take the offensive at that point, and I
hope will more than recover the lost ground."

Later he telegraphed again as follows:
"Our troops, after being driven back to the Boydton plank road,
turned and drove the enemy in turn, and took the White Oak road,
which we now have.  This gives us the ground occupied by the enemy
this morning.  I will send you a rebel flag captured by our troops in
driving the enemy back.  There have been four flags captured to-day."

Judging by the two points from which General Grant telegraphs, I
infer that he moved his headquarters about one mile since he sent the
first of the two despatches.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
CITY POINT, April 1, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Yours to Colonel Bowers about the Secretary of War is shown to me.
He is not here, nor have I any notice that he is coming.  I presume
the mistake comes of the fact that the Secretary of State was here.
He started back to Washington this morning.  I have your two
despatches of this morning, and am anxious to hear from Sheridan.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, April 1, 1865.  12.50 P.M.

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D.C.:

I have had two despatches from General Grant since my last to you,
but they contain little additional, except that Sheridan also had
pretty hot work yesterday, that infantry was sent to his support
during the night, and that he (Grant) has not since heard from
Sheridan.

Mrs. Lincoln has started home, and I will thank you to see that our
coachman is at the Arsenal wharf at eight o'clock to-morrow morning,
there to wait until she arrives.

A. LINCOLN.



TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD.
CITY POINT, VA., April, 1865.  5.30 ?.M.

HON. W. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, Fort Monroe:

Despatch just received, showing that Sheridan, aided by Warren, had,
at 2 P.M., pushed the enemy back, so as to retake the Five Forks and
bring his own headquarters up to J. Boisseau's.  The Five Forks were
barricaded by the enemy and carried by Devin's division of cavalry.
This part of the enemy seem to now be trying to work along the White
Oak road, to join the main force in front of Grant, while Sheridan
and Warren are pressing them as closely as possible.
A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.
CITY POINT, April 1, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Yours showing Sheridan's success of to-day is just received and
highly appreciated.  Having no great deal to do here, I am still
sending the substance of your despatches to the Secretary of War.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.
CITY POINT, VA., April 2, 1865.  8.30 A.M. (Received 9 A.M.)

MRS. A. LINCOLN, Executive Mansion:

Last night General Grant telegraphed that General Sheridan with his
cavalry and the Fifth Corps had captured three brigades of infantry,
a train of wagons, and several batteries, prisoners amounting to
several thousand.  This morning General Grant having ordered an
attack along the whole line telegraphs as follows.

Robert yesterday wrote a little cheerful note to Captain Penrose,
which is all he has heard of him since you left.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAMS TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, April 2, 1865.  8.30 A.M.

HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

Last night General Grant telegraphed that General Sheridan, with his
cavalry and the Fifth Corps, had captured three brigades of infantry,
a train of wagons, and several batteries; the prisoners amounting to
several thousand.

This morning General Grant, having ordered an attack along the whole
line, telegraphs as follows:

"Both Wright and Parke got through the enemy's lines.  The battle now
rages furiously.  General Sheridan, with his cavalry, the Fifth
corps, and Miles's Division of the Second Corps, which was sent to
him this morning, is now sweeping down from the west.

"All now looks highly favorable.  General Ord is engaged, but I have
not yet heard the result in his front."

A. LINCOLN.


CITY POINT, April 1.  11.00 A.M.

Despatches are frequently coming in.  All is going on finely.
Generals Parke, Wright, and Ord's lines are extending from the
Appomattox to Hatcher's Run.  They have all broken through the
enemy's intrenched lines, taking some forts, guns, and prisoners.
Sheridan, with his own cavalry, the Fifth Corps, and part of the
Second, is coming in from the west on the enemy's flank.  Wright is
already tearing up the Southside Railroad.

A. LINCOLN


CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, April 2.  2 P.M.

At 10.45 A.M. General Grant telegraphs as follows:

"Everything has been carried from the left of the Ninth Corps.  The
Sixth Corps alone captured more than three thousand prisoners.  The
Second and Twenty-fourth Corps captured forts, guns, and prisoners
from the enemy, but I cannot tell the numbers.  We are now closing
around the works of the line immediately enveloping Petersburg.  All
looks remarkably well.  I have not yet heard from Sheridan.  His
headquarters have been moved up to Banks's house, near the Boydton
road, about three miles southwest of Petersburg."

A. LINCOLN.


CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, April 2.  8.30 P.M.

At 4.30 P.M. to-day General Grant telegraphs as follows:

"We are now up and have a continuous line of troops, and in a few
hours will be intrenched from the Appomattox below Petersburg to the
river above.  The whole captures since the army started out will not
amount to less than twelve thousand men, and probably fifty pieces of
artillery.  I do not know the number of men and guns accurately,
however.  A portion of Foster's Division, Twenty Fourth Corps, made a
most gallant charge this afternoon, and captured a very important
fort from the enemy, with its entire garrison.  All seems well with
us, and everything is quiet just now."

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO MRS. LINCOLN.
CITY POINT, VA., April 1, 1865.

MRS. LINCOLN:

At 4.30 P.M. to-day General Grant telegraphs that he has Petersburg
completely enveloped from river below to river above, and has
captured, since he started last Wednesday, about twelve thousand
prisoners and fifty guns.  He suggests that I shall go out and see
him in the morning, which I think I will do.  Tad and I are both
well, and will be glad to see you and your party here at the time you
name.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
CITY POINT, April 2, 1865

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Allow me to tender to you and all with you the nation's grateful
thanks for this additional and magnificent success.  At your kind
suggestion I think I will meet you to-morrow.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, April 3, 1865.8.30 A.M.

HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

This morning Lieutenant-General Grant reports Petersburg evacuated,
and he is confident that Richmond also is.   He is pushing forward to
cut off, if possible, the retreating rebel army.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VA., April 3, 1865.  5 P.M.

HON. EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

Yours received.  Thanks for your caution, but I have already been to
Petersburg.  Staid with General Grant an hour and a half and returned
here.  It is certain now that Richmond is in our hands, and I think I
will go there to-morrow.  I will take care of myself.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VA., April 4, 1865
(Received 8.45 A.M.)

HON. EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

General Weitzel telegraphs from Richmond that of railroad stock he
found there twenty-eight locomotives, forty-four passenger and
baggage cars, and one hundred and six freight cars.  At 3.30 this
evening General Grant, from Sutherland's Station, ten miles from
Petersburg toward Burkevllle, telegraphs as follows:

"General Sheridan picked up twelve hundred prisoners to-day, and from
three hundred to five hundred more have been gathered by other
troops.  The majority of the arms that were left in the hands of the
remnant of Lee's army are now scattered between Richmond and where
his troops are.  The country is also full of stragglers; the line of
retreat marked with artillery, ammunition, burned or charred wagons,
caissons, ambulances, etc."

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY SEWARD.
CITY POINT, APRIL 5, 1865.
(Received 11.55 PM.)

HON. SECRETARY OF STATE:

Yours of to-day received.  I think there is no probability of my
remaining here more than two days longer.  If that is too long come
down.  I passed last night at Richmond and have just returned.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,
CITY POINT, April 6, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, in the Field:

Secretary Seward was thrown from his carriage yesterday and seriously
injured.  This, with other matters, will take me to Washington soon.
I was at Richmond yesterday and the day before, when and where Judge
Campbell, who was with Messrs.  Hunter and Stephens in February,
called on me, and made such representations as induced me to put in
his hands an informal paper, repeating the propositions in my letter
of instructions to Mr. Seward, which you remember, and adding that if
the war be now further persisted in by the rebels, confiscated
property shall at the least bear the additional cost, and that
confiscation shall be remitted to the people of any State which will
now promptly and in good faith withdraw its troops and other support
from resistance to the Government.

Judge Campbell thought it not impossible that the rebel legislature
of Virginia would do the latter if permitted; and accordingly I
addressed a private letter to General Weitzel, with permission to
Judge Campbell to see it, telling him (General Weitzel) that if they
attempt this, to permit and protect them, unless they attempt
something hostile to the United States, in which case to give them
notice and time to leave, and to arrest any remaining after such
time.

I do not think it very probable that anything win come of this, but I
have thought best to notify you so that if you should see signs you
may understand them.

From your recent despatches it seems that you are pretty effectually
withdrawing the Virginia troops from opposition to the Government.
Nothing that I have done, or probably shall do, is to delay, hinder,
or interfere with your work.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. WEITZEL.
HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES
CITY POINT, April 6, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL WEITZEL, Richmond, Va.:

It has been intimated to me that the gentlemen who have acted as the
legislature of Virginia in support of the rebellion may now desire to
assemble at Richmond and take measures to withdraw the Virginia
troops and other support from resistance to the General Government.
If they attempt it, give them permission and protection, until, if at
all, they attempt some action hostile to the United States, in which
case you will notify them, give them reasonable time to leave, and at
the end of which time arrest any who remain.  Allow Judge Campbell to
see this, but do not make it public.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO SECRETARY STANTON.
CITY POINT, VA., April 7, 1865
(Received 10.30 AM.)

HON. SECRETARY OF WAR:

At  11.15 P.M. yesterday at Burkesville Station, General Grant sends
me the following from General Sheridan:

"April 6,  11.15 P.M.
"LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:
I have the honor to report that the enemy made a stand at the
intersection of the Burks Station road with the road upon which they
were retreating.  I attacked them with two divisions of the Sixth
Army Corps and routed them handsomely, making a connection with the
cavalry.  I am still pressing on with both cavalry and infantry.  Up
to the present time we have captured Generals Ewell, Kershaw, Button,
Corse, DeBare, and Custis Lee, several thousand prisoners, fourteen
pieces of artillery with caissons and a large number of wagons.   If
the thing is pressed I think Lee will surrender.
"P. H. SHERIDAN,
"Major-General, Commanding."

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,

CITY POINT, April 7, 11 A.M., 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Gen.  Sheridan says:

"If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender."

Let the thing be pressed.

A. LINCOLN.




NOTE ON A CARD TO SECRETARY STANTON.

April 10, 1865.

Tad wants some flags--can he be accommodated?

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A CALL,

APRIL 10, 1865

If the company had assembled by appointment, some mistake had crept
in their understanding.  He had appeared before a larger audience
than this one to-day, and he would repeat what he then said, namely,
he supposed owing to the great, good news, there would be some
demonstration.  He would prefer to-morrow evening, when he should be
quite willing, and he hoped ready, to say something.  He desired to
be particular, because every thing he said got into print.  Occupying
the position he did, a mistake would produce harm, and therefore he
wanted to be careful not to make a mistake.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. H. GORDON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, April 11, 1865.

BRIG. GEN. G. H. GORDON, Norfolk, Va.:

Send to me at once a full statement as to the cause or causes for
which, and by authority of what tribunal George W. Lane, Charles
Whitlock, Ezra Baler, J. M. Renshaw, and others are restrained of
their liberty. Do this promptly and fully.

A. LINCOLN.




PROCLAMATION CLOSING CERTAIN PORTS,
APRIL 11, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by my proclamations of the 19th and 27th days of April, A.D.
1861, the ports of the United States in the States of Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas were declared to be subject to blockade; but

Whereas the said blockade has, in consequence of actual military
occupation by this Government, since been conditionally set aside or
relaxed in respect to the ports of Norfolk and Alexandria, in the
State of Virginia; Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina; Port
Royal, in the State of South Carolina; Pensacola and Fernandina, in
the State of Florida; and New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana; and

Whereas by the fourth section of the act of Congress approved on the
13th of July, 1861, entitled "An act further to provide for the
collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes," the
President, for the reasons therein set forth, is authorized to close
certain ports of entry:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln. President of the
United States, do hereby proclaim that the ports of Richmond,
Tappahannock, Cherrystone, Yorktown, and Petersburg, in Virginia; of
Camden (Elizabeth City), Edenton, Plymouth, Washington, Newbern,
Ocracoke, and Wilmington in North Carolina; of Charleston,
Georgetown, and Beaufort, in South Carolina; of Savannah, St. Marys,
and Brunswick (Darien), in Georgia; of Mobile, in Alabama; of Pearl
River (Shieldsboro), Natchez and Vicksburg, in Mississippi; of St.
Augustine, Key West, St. Marks (Port Leon), St. Johns (Jacksonville),
and Apalachicola, in Florida; of Teche (Franklin), in Louisiana; of
Galveston, La Salle, Brazos de Santiago (Point Isabel), and
Brownsville, in Texas, are hereby closed, and all right of
importation, warehousing, and other privileges shall, in respect to
the ports aforesaid, cease until they shall have again been opened by
order of the President; and if while said parts are so closed any
ship or vessel from beyond the United States or having on board any
articles subject to duties shall attempt to enter any such port, the
same, together with its tackle, apparel, furniture, and cargo, shall
be forfeited to the United States.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this eleventh day of April, A.D.,
1865, and of the independence of the United States of America, the
eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION OPENING THE PORT OF KEY WEST,

APRIL 11, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas by my proclamation of this date the port of Key West, in the
State of Florida, was inadvertently included among those which are
not open to commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, do hereby declare and make known that the said port of
Key West is and shall remain open to foreign and domestic commerce
upon the same conditions by which that commerce has there hitherto
been governed.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this eleventh day of April, A.D.
1865, and of the independence of the United States of America the
eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




PROCLAMATION CLAIMING EQUALITY OF RIGHTS
WITH ALL MARITIME NATIONS,

APRIL 11, 1865.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas for some time past vessels of war of the United States have
been refused in certain foreign ports, privileges and immunities to
which they were entitled by treaty, public law, or the community of
nations, at the same time that vessels of war of the country wherein
the said privileges and immunities have been withheld have enjoyed
them fully and uninterruptedly in ports of the United States, which
condition of things has not always been forcibly resisted by the
United States, although, on the other hand, they have not at any time
failed to protest against and declare their dissatisfaction with the
same.   In the view of the United States, no condition any longer
exists which can be claimed to justify the denial to them by any one
of such nations of customary naval rights as has heretofore been so
unnecessarily persisted in.......

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby make known that if, after a reasonable time shall have
elapsed for intelligence of this proclamation to have reached any
foreign country in whose ports the said privileges and immunities
shall have been refused as aforesaid, they shall continue to be so
refused, then and thenceforth the same privileges and immunities
shall be refused to the vessels of war of that country in the ports
of the United States, and this refusal shall continue until war
vessels of the United States shall have been placed upon an entire
equality in the foreign ports aforesaid with similar vessels of other
countries.  The United States, whatever claim or pretense may have
existed heretofore, are now, at least, entitled to claim and concede
an entire and friendly equality of rights and hospitalities with all
maritime nations.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed..................

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.




LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS,

APRIL 11, 1865

FELLOW-CITIZENS--We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness
of heart.  The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the
surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous
and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained.  In
the midst of this, however, He from whom  blessings flow must not be
forgotten.

A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be
duly promulgated.  Nor must those whose harder part gives us the
cause of rejoicing be overlooked.  Their honors must not be parceled
out with others.  I myself was near the front, and had the pleasure
of transmitting much of the good news to you.  But no part of the
honor for plan or execution is mine.  To General Grant, his skillful
officers, and brave men, all belongs.  The gallant navy stood ready,
but was not in reach to take active part.  By these recent successes,
the reinauguration of the national authority--reconstruction  which
has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more
closely upon our attention.  It is fraught with great difficulty.
Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no
authorized organ for us to treat with--no one man has authority to
give up the rebellion for any other man.  We simply must begin with
and mould from disorganized and discordant elements.  Nor is it a
small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ
among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of
reconstruction.  As a general rule, I abstain from reading the
reports of attacks upon myself, Wishing not to be provoked by that to
which I cannot properly offer an answer.  In spite of this
precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured
for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new
State government of Louisiana.   In this I have done just so much and
no more than the public knows.  In the Annual Message of December,
1863, and the accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of
reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by
any State, would be acceptable to and sustained by the Executive
Government of the nation.  I distinctly stated that this was not the
only plan that might possibly be acceptable, and I also distinctly
protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when or whether
members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States.
This plan was in advance submitted to the then Cabinet, and approved
by every member of it.  One of them suggested that I should then and
in that connection apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the
theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should
drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I
should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the
admission of members of Congress.  But even he approved every part
and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by
the action of Louisiana.   The new constitution of Louisiana,
declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the
proclamation to the part previously excepted.  It does not adopt
apprenticeship for freed people, and is silent, as it could not well
be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress.  So that,
as it applied to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully
approved the plan.  The message went to Congress, and I received many
commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single
objection to it from any professed emancipationist came to my
knowledge until after the news reached Washington that the people of
Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it.  From about July,
1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be
interested in seeking a reconstruction of a State government for
Louisiana.  When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned,
reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident
that the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct
substantially on that plan.  I wrote to him and some of them to try
it.  They tried it, and the result is known.  Such has been my only
agency in getting up the Louisiana government.  As to sustaining it
my promise is out, as before stated.  But, as bad promises are better
broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise and break it,
whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the
public interest; but I have not yet been so convinced.  I have been
shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which
the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be
definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded States, so
called, are in the Union or out of it.  It would perhaps add
astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found
professed Union men endeavoring to answer that question, I have
purposely forborne any public expression upon it.  As appears to me,
that question has not been nor yet is a practically material one, and
that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically
immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of
dividing our friends.  As yet, whatever it may become, that question
is bad as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a
merely pernicious abstraction.  We all agree that the seceded States,
so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union,
and that the sole object of the Government, civil and military, in
regard to those States, is to again get them into their proper
practical relation.  I believe that it is not only possible, but in
fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether
those States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.  Finding
themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether
they had been abroad.  Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to
restore the proper practical relations between these States and the
Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion
whether, in doing the acts he brought the States from without into
the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having
been out of it.  The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which
the Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all if
it contained fifty thousand, or thirty thousand, or even twenty
thousand, instead of twelve thousand, as it does.  It is also
unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to
the colored man.  I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on
the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.
Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it
stands, is quite all that is desirable.  The question is, Will it be
wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and
disperse?  Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation
with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State
government? Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore Slave State
of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the
rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a
State government, adopted a Free State constitution, giving the
benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering
the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored
man.  This Legislature has already voted to ratify the Constitutional
Amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout
the nation.  These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed
to the Union and to perpetuate freedom in the State--committed to the
very things, and nearly all things, the nation wants--and they ask
the nation's recognition and its assistance to make good this
committal.  Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to
disorganize and disperse them.   We, in fact, say to the white man:
You are worthless or worse; we will neither help you nor be helped by
you.  To the blacks we say:  This cup of liberty which these, your
old masters, held to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you
to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in
some vague and undefined when, where, and how.  If this course,
discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to
bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I
have so far been unable to perceive it.  If, on the contrary, we
recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse
of all this is made true.  We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms
of twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and
proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and
ripen it to a complete success.  The colored man, too, in seeing all
united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring to
the same end.  Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he
not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it,
than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government
of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl,
we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing
it.  Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor
of the proposed amendment to the National Constitution.   To meet
this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths
of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to
validly ratify the amendment.  I do not commit myself against this,
further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable,
and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three
fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.
I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical
relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new
State government?  What has been said of Louisiana will apply to
other States.  And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State,
and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and
withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive
and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and
collaterals.  Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become
a new entanglement.  Important principles may and must be inflexible.
In the present situation as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to
make some new announcement to the people of the South.  I am
considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action
will be proper.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. WEITZEL.

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 12, 1865.
MAJOR-GENERAL WEITZEL, Richmond, Va.:

I have seen your despatch to Colonel Hardie about the matter of
prayers. I do not remember hearing prayers spoken of while I was in
Richmond; but I have no doubt you have acted in what appeared to you
to be the spirit and temper manifested by me while there.  Is there
any sign of the rebel legislature coming together on the
understanding of my letter to you?  If there is any such sign, inform
me what it is; if there is no such sign, you may withdraw the offer.

A. LINCOLN.




TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. WEITZEL.
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 12, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL WEITZEL, Richmond, Va.:

I have just seen Judge Campbell's letter to you of the 7th.  He
assumes, as appears to me, that I have called the insurgent
legislature of Virginia together, as the rightful legislature of the
State, to settle all differences with the United States.  I have done
no such thing.  I spoke of them, not as a legislature, but as "the
gentlemen who have acted as the legislature of Virginia in support of
the rebellion."  I did this on purpose to exclude the assumption that
I was recognizing them as a rightful body.  I deal with them as men
having power de facto to do a specific thing, to wit: "To withdraw
the Virginia troops and other support from resistance to the General
Government," for which, in the paper handed Judge Campbell, I
promised a specific equivalent, to wit: a remission to the people of
the State, except in certain cases, of the confiscation of their
property.  I meant this, and no more.  Inasmuch, however, as Judge
Campbell misconstrues this, and is still pressing for an armistice,
contrary to the explicit statement of the paper I gave him, and
particularly as General Grant has since captured the Virginia troops,
so that giving a consideration for their withdrawal is no longer
applicable, let my letter to you and the paper to Judge Campbell both
be withdrawn, or countermanded, and he be notified of it.  Do not now
allow them to assemble, but if any have come, allow them safe return
to their homes.

A. LINCOLN.




INTERVIEW WITH SCHUYLER COLFAX ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 14, 1865.

Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from me to the miners whom
you visit.  I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our
nation.  I believe it practically inexhaustible.  It abounds all over
the Western country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and its
development has scarcely commenced.  During the war, when we were
adding a couple of millions of dollars every day to our national
debt, I did not care about encouraging the increase in the volume of
our precious metals.  We had the country to save first.  But now that
the rebellion is overthrown, and we know pretty nearly the amount of
our national debt, the more gold and silver we mine, we make the
payment of that debt so much the easier.  "Now," said he, speaking
with more emphasis, "I am going to encourage that in every possible
way.  We shall have hundreds of thousands of disbanded soldiers, and
many have feared that their return home in such great numbers might
paralyze industry, by furnishing, suddenly, a greater supply of labor
than there will be demand for.  I am going to try to attract them to
the hidden wealth of our mountain ranges, where there is room enough
for all.  Immigration, which even the war has not stopped, will land
upon our shores hundreds of thousands more per year from overcrowded
Europe.  I intend to point them to the gold and silver that wait for
them in the West.  Tell the miners for me, that I shall promote their
interests to the utmost of my ability; because their prosperity is
the prosperity of the nation; and," said he, his eye kindling with
enthusiasm, "we shall prove, in a very few years, that we are indeed
the treasury of the world."




TO GENERAL VAN ALLEN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
April 14, 1865

GENERAL VAN ALLEN:

I intend to adopt the advice of my friends and use due precaution....
I thank you for the assurance you give me that I shall be
supported by conservative men like yourself, in the efforts I may
make to restore the Union, so as to make it, to use your language, a
Union of hearts and hands as well as of States.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




LINCOLN'S LAST WRITTEN WORDS

Allow Mr. Ashmer and friend to come in at 9 A.M. to-morrow.

A. LINCOLN.
April 14, 1865




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, v7
By Abraham Lincoln




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Writings of Lincoln, Entire
By Abraham Lincoln

