MISCELLANEOUS.

SPEECH AT OTTAWA, ILLS., AUG. 21, 1858.

"IN this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible to be executed."

LETTER TO THURLOW WEED, MARCH 15, 1865.

"Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, how

ever, 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."

SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858. "It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting to see how quickly these compromise-breakers ad

minister upon the effects of their dead adversaries, trumping up claims never before heard of, and dividing the assets among themselves. If I should be found dead to-morrow, nothing but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made upon my authority, before the end of next week."

SPEECH, PEORIA, ILLS., AUG., 21, 1858. "When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him—at least, I find it so with myself; but when misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him."

COOPER INSTITUTE, FEB. 27, 1859.

"I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience-to reject all progress all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we."

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1861.

"Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled-the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains,— its successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it."

LETTER TO GEN, N. P. BANKS, IN
LOUISIANA, AUG. 5, 1863.

“As an anti-slavery man, I have a motive to desire emancipation which pro-slavery men do not have; but even they have strong reason to thus place themselves again under the shield of the Union, and to thus perpetually hedge against the recurrence of the scenes through which we are now passing. . . . For my own part, I think I shall not, in any event, retract the Emancipa

tion Proclamation; nor, as Executive, ever return to slavery any person who is freed by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress."

TO KANSAS DELEGATION, SEPTEMBER,

1863.

"I am well aware that by many, by some even among this delegation -I shall not name them-I have been in public speeches and in printed documents charged with tyranny and wilfulness,' with a disposition to make my own personal will supreme. I do not intend to be a tyrant. At all events I shall take care that in my own eyes I do not become one. I have no right to act the tyrant to mere political opponents."