LETTER TO REVERDY JOHNSON, "I am a patient man-always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed." REPLY TO THE WORKINGMEN OF "The resources, advantages and powers of the American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of human bondage." LETTER TO THE WORKINGMen of MANCHESTER, ENG., FEB. 9, 1863. "When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election, to preside in the government of the United States, the country was found on the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosoever at fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key of all the measures of administration which have been and to all which shall hereafter be pursued. Under our form of government, and my official oath, I could not depart from the purpose if I would. It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the politics which they may deem it necessary for the public safety from time to time to adopt." OF MERCY. INCOLN was an embodiment of LIN the general aversion of the American people to the taking away of human life. Blood is to be shed upon the battlefield, but with a continual assertion that war is in itself hateful. The death penalty may be inflicted, elsewhere, even in time of peace, but only under pressure of extreme circumstances and with ample justification. Much more than this was also true, however, and a number of Lincoln's most notable successes as a lawyer were won in defending almost hopeless men who were standing under the shadow of the gallows. When afterwards, he became endowed with an oppres sive abundance of pardoning power, it was not merely the exercise of it in many cases that so drew out to him the hearts of all merciful people-it was the sympathetic eagerness with which he sought, from day to day, to rescue every man for whom he could conscientiously intervene. His personal resistance to the arguments for rigid discipline made by his military commanders; his personal visits to the camps and tents and cells of the condemned; the touching scenes, in his office at the White House, between him and those whose petitions for the pardon of culprits whom they loved he was struggling to grant or dreading to refuse; all became known to his fellow-citizens as so many photographs of the man. Not all who were condemned could be spared, even by Lincoln, but in every case it must be recorded that |