Bell, now at Rock Island, and whom he thinks was arrested as a hostage by you or by your authority. What say you? A. LINCOLN. *TELEGRAM TO R. M. CORWINE WAR DEPARTMENT, March 30, 1864. Hon. R. M. Corwine, New York: It does not occur to me that you can present the Smith case any better than you have done. Of this, however, you must judge for yourself. A. LINCOLN LETTER TO GENERAL W. S. ROSECRANS 1 My dear Sir: This is rather more social than official; containing suggestions rather than orders. I somewhat dread the effect of your Special Order No. 61, dated March 7, 1864. I have found that men who have not even been suspected of disloyalty are very averse to tak 1 The military administration of General Rosecrans in Missouri began in January, 1864, under favorable conditions, but although the violent dissensions of the year previous had abated, new difficulties were continually coming up. To quell disloyal influences the General issued an order commanding members of various religious denominations to take an oath of allegiance to the United States before transacting their business. It was resented. President Lincoln deprecated any restraint of this character unless absolutely necessary. Upon complaint he wrote the above mild admonition to Rosecrans. ing an oath of any sort as a condition to exercising an ordinary right of citizenship. The point will probably be made that while men may, without an oath, assemble in a noisy political meeting, they must take the oath to assemble in a religious meeting. It is said, I know not whether truly, that in some parts of Missouri assassinations are systematically committed upon returned rebels who wish to ground arms and behave themselves. This should not be. Of course I have not heard that you give countenance to or wink at such assassinations. Again, it is complained that the enlistment of negroes is not conducted in as orderly a manner and with as little collateral provocation as it might be. So far you have got along in the Department of the Missouri rather better than I dared to hope, and I congratulate you and myself upon it. Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN. LETTER TO A. W. THOMPSON EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., Ambrose W. Thompson: Yours of yesterday is just received. The financial scheme you suggest I shall consider further, but I have not time to form a conclusion which would reach you by the 6th. I shall be glad to hear from you in Europe as you suggest. Yours truly, A. LINCOLN. LETTER TO A. G. HODGES EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 4, 1864. 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 antislavery. 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 assume 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 Frémont 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, be cause 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 anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary it shows a gain of quite a 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 |