The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln
Chapter 245 : Second. To whatever extent the enlistment and drafting, one or both, of colored troops

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 embarra.s.sments, 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, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, 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, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, 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, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, 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 Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that Const.i.tution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Const.i.tution? 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 unconst.i.tutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Const.i.tution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I a.s.sumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that to the best of my ability I had even tried to preserve the Const.i.tution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Const.i.tution, altogether. When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emanc.i.p.ation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emanc.i.p.ation 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 Const.i.tution, 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. G.o.d alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TO MRS. HORACE MANN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, April 5, 1864.

MRS HORACE MANN:

MADAM:--The pet.i.tion of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which pet.i.tion 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 G.o.d has, and that, as it seems, he wills to do it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BUTLER.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, 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 embarra.s.sment.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL MEADE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, April 17, 1864.