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 were too blind to surrender a
hopeless cause. Our commerce was suffering greatly from a few 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 seas 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 coloured 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, 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, only
dispute now as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits.
Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one
hundred thousand 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 labour 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 passed.
_Letter to Secretary Stanton. Washington. March 1, 1864_
My dear Sir, A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the army,
that for some offence has been sentenced to serve a long time without
pay, or at most with very little pay. I do not like this punishment of
withholding pay--it falls so very hard upon poor families. After he had
been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful appeal of
the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to enlist for a
new term, on the same condition as others. She now comes, and says she
cannot get it acted upon. Please do it.
_Letter to Governor Michael Hahn. Washington. March 13, 1864_
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 coloured 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.
_An Address at a Fair for the Sanitary Commission. March 18, 1864_
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 amongst these
manifestations nothing has been more remarkable than these fairs for the
relief of suffering soldiers and their families. And the chief agents in
these fairs are the women of America.
I am not accustomed to the 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!
_Letter to A.G. Hodges, of Kentucky. April 4, 1864_
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
that 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
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 feeling and judgment 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, all together. 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 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
favour 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 laying strong hand upon the
coloured 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 anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a
gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and
labourers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be
no cavilling. 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.
_From an Address at a Sanitary Fair in Baltimore. April 18, 1864_
... 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 labour; 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 labour. 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.
_Letter to General Grant. April 30, 1864_
Not expecting to see you again 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 constraints nor restraints
upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of
our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less
likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is
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.
_From an Address to the 166th Ohio Regiment. August 22, 1864_
I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to 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 to-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 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 the struggle should be maintained, that we
may not lose our birthright--not only for one, but for two or three
years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable
jewel.
_Reply 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 Republic 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 rebellion
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 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 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. Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, patriotic
men are better than gold.
But the rebellion continues; and now that the election is over, 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 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.
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
skilful commanders.
_A Letter to Mrs. Bixley, of Boston. November 21, 1864_
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.
_Letter to General Grant. Washington. January 19, 1865_
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.
_The Second Inaugural Address. March 4, 1865_
Fellow-countrymen, At this second appearance 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 were coloured 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....
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.
_A Letter to Thurlow Weed. Executive Mansion, Washington. March 15,
1865_
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.
_From an Address to an Indiana Regiment. March 17, 1865_
There are but few aspects of this great war on which I have not already
expressed my views by speaking or writing. There is one--the recent
effort of "Our erring brethren," sometimes so called, to employ the
slaves in their armies. The great question with them has been, "Will the
negro fight for them?" They ought to know better than we, and doubtless
do know better than we. I may incidentally remark, that having in my
life heard many arguments--or strings of words meant to pass for
arguments--intended to show that the negro ought to be a slave,--if he
shall now really fight to keep himself a slave, it will be a far better
argument why he should remain a slave than I have ever before heard. He,
perhaps, ought to be a slave if he desires it ardently enough to fight
for it. Or, if one out of four will, for his own freedom fight to keep
the other three in slavery, he ought to be a slave for his selfish
meanness. I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any
should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves,
and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear any one
arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him
personally.
_From his Reply to a Serenade. Lincoln's Last Public Address. April 11,
1865_
Fellow-citizens, We meet this evening, not in sorrow but in gladness of
heart. The evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg, and the surrender of
the principal insurgent army, give the hope of a just and speedy peace,
the joyous expression of which cannot be restrained. In all this joy,
however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call
for a national thanksgiving is in the course of preparation, and will be
duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part give us the cause for
rejoicing be overlooked. Their honours must not be parcelled out with
others. I, myself, was near the front, and had the high pleasure of
transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honour for
plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and
brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in
reach to take an 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 organized 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 as, and no more than, the public knows.
In the annual message of December 1863, and in the accompanying
proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes,
which I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to and
sustained by the executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated
that this was not the only plan which 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....
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 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 endeavouring to answer that question, I have
purposely forborne any public expression upon it....