No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

I believe this Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free.

Gold is good in its place; but living, brave and patriotic men are better than gold.

This Government must be preserved in spite of the acts of any man, or set of men.

Nowhere in the world is presented a Government of so much liberty and equality.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature opposition to it in his love of justice.

If I live, this accursed system of robbery and shame in our treatment of the Indians shall be reformed.

In law it is good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.

Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.

The reasonable man has long since agreed that intemperance is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all evils among mankind.

The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail accurately to perceive them in advance.

I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.

Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.

By a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, would you prove it false by calling Euclid a liar?

I am profitably engaged reading the Bible. Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a better man. - Said to Joshua Speed about a year before the President's assassination.

LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Ar this second appearing to take the oath of 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, on which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as 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.

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 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.

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 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. 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.

"Woe unto the

The Almighty has his own purposes. world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences 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 offence 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 a lash shall be paid with another drawn by a 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.

THE END.