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 30 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 40 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 50 has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which 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 TELEGRAM TO GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER Yours of WASHINGTON, June 5, 1863. 4 P. M. MAJOR GENERAL HOOKER: today 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 disadvantage, 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 upon 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 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 defense, 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 GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER WASHINGTON, June 14, 1863 MAJOR GENERAL HOOKER: So far as we can make out here, the enemy have 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 Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and here, last winter or spring. Perhaps the Tyler at Martinsburg. If they could hold out a few days, could you help I truly can, I am very anxious to see it best compliment I can pay is to say, as them? If the head of Lee's army is at 10 again. Some of Shakespeare's plays I Martinsburg and the tail of it on the have never read; while others I have plank road between Fredericksburg and gone over perhaps as frequently as any Chancellorsville, the animal must be unprofessional reader. Among the latvery slim somewhere. Could you not ter are "Lear," "Richard III," "Henry VIII," "Hamlet," and especially "Macbeth." I think nothing equals "Macbeth." It is wonderful. break him? A. LINCOLN LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in "Hamlet" EXECUTIVE MANSION, 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 for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish 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 30 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 got 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 40 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 LETTER TO JAMES H. HACKETT EXECUTIVE MANSION, JAMES H. HACKETT, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR: Months ago I should have acknowledged the receipt of your 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, 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 50 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. MEMORANDUM AUGUST 23, 1864 This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reëlected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and 10 the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward. A. LINCOLN 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, 20 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. LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. 30 EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 30, 1864 LIEUTENANT GENERAL GRANT: 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 40 and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or 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 50 know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you. Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN LETTER 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 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. 10 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 20 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. 30 One-eighth of the whole population were 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 40 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. 50 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 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 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. LETTER TO THURLOW WEED EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., March 15, 1865 DEAR MR. WEED: Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech and on the recent in augural address.. I expect the latter to A. LINCOLN EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909) THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY I suppose that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the announcement, 20 "NOLAN. Died on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° 30 W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN:" I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to come; and I was devouring to the very stubble all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the Herald. 40 My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died, May 11th, The Man without a Country." For it was as "The Man without a Country" that 50 poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at all. There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's creature's story. Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the esprit de corps of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown, and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when Ross burned the public. buildings at Washington. One of the Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at Washington to one of the Crowninshields.— who was in the Navy Department when he came home,-he found that the Department ignored the whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a "Non mi ricordo," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise. But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his story, by way of showing young Americans of today what it is to be A Man without a Country. Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition I do not remember |