tional 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 shall live I shall remain President until the 4th of next March; and that whoever shall be constitutionally elected therefor, in November, shall be duly installed as President on the 4th of March; and that, 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 to save 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 liberty, 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 liberty; 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 when 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 and 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 of November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, 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 eightyninth. 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, St. Louis, Mo.: While Curtis is fighting Price, have you any idea where the force under Rosecrans is, or what it is doing? A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL AND

OTHERS 1

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
October 22, 1864.

G

ENTLEMEN: On the fifteenth day of this month, as I remember, a printed paper, 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, was 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 an extract from the Code of Tennessee, in relation to electors of President and Vice-Presi

1 Addressed to Messrs. Wm. B. Campbell, Thomas A. R. Nelson, James T. P. Carter, John Williams, A. Blizzard, Henry Cooper, Bailie Peyton, John Lellyett, E. Etheridge, John D. Perrymans.