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PRESENTATION OF A GOLD MEDAL* TO LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Executive Mansion, March 7, 1865.

Lieutenant-General Grant:

In accordance with a joint resolution of Congress approved December 16, 1863, I now have the honor of transmitting and presenting to you, in the name of the people of the United States of America, a copy of said resolutions engrossed on parchment together with the gold medal therein ordered and directed.

Please accept for yourself and all under your command the renewed expression of my gratitude for your and their arduous and well-performed public service. Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO MRS. GURNEY, WIFE OF EMINENT
ENGLISH PREACHER OF THE SOCIETY
OF FRIENDS.

My Esteemed Friend: I have not forgotten-probably never shall forget-the very impressive occasion when yourself and friends visited me on a Sabbath forenoon, two years ago; nor has your kind letter, written nearly a year later, ever been forgotten.

In all it has been your purpose to strengthen my reliance on God.

I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations, and to no one more than to yourself.

The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must *The cost of medal was $6,000.

prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accur ately perceive them in advance.

We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom, and our own error therein.

Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely, He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.

Your people, the Friends, have had, and are having, a very great trial. On principle and faith, opposed to both war and oppression, they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In this hard dilemma, some have chosen one horn, and some the other.

For those appealing to me on conscientious grounds, I have done, and shall do, the best I could and can, in 'my own conscience, under my oath to the law. That you believe this I doubt not, and believing it I shall still receive for our country and myself your earnest prayers to our Father in heaven.

Your sincere friend,

A. LINCOLN.

Lincoln's Great Speeches.

LINCOLN'S FIRST POLITICAL SPEECH.

Mr. Lincoln made his first political speech in 1832, at the age of twenty-three, when he was a candidate for the Illinois Legislature. His opponent had wearied the audience by a long speech, leaving him but a short time in which to present his views. He condensed all he had to say into a few words, as follows:

"Gentlemen, Fellow-Citizens: I presume you know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics can be briefly stated. I am in favor of the Internal Improvement System, and a high Protective Tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful. If not, it will be all the same."

THE PERPETUITY OF OUR FREE INSTITUTIONS.

Delivered before the Springfield, Ill., Lyceum, in January, 1837, when twenty-eight years of age. Coming, as he did upon this occasion, before a literary society, Mr. Lincoln's Websterian diction is more observable.

"Ladies and Gentlemen: In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility ci soil, and salubrity of climate.

"We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which history of former times tells us.

"We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race, of ancestors.

"Theirs was the task (and nobly did they perform it) to possess themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours to transmit thesethe former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation-to the generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity-all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

"How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?

"Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa, combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own

excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

"At what point, then, is this approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if ever it reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

"I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.

"This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to deny.

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of the latter.

"They are not the creatures of climate, neither are they confined to the slave-holding or non-slave-holding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

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