assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or 10 bear arms (by no means excluding females). If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me. While acting as their representative, I shall be governed 15 by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the several States, 20 to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it. If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President. A. LINCOLN. Speech on Leaving Springfield in 1861 MY FRIENDS: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a 5 young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I 10 cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trust ing in him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. Lincoln's Shortest Speech (Address at Utica, New York, February 18, 1861) 15 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have no speech to make to you, and no time to speak in. I appear before you that I may see you, and that you may see me; and I am willing to admit, that so far as the ladies are concerned, I have the best of the bargain, though I wish it to be understood that 5 I do not make the same acknowledgment concerning the men. (From the First Inaugural) In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall 5 have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The 10 mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. The Gettysburg Address Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 15 war. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that 5 nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 10 that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what 15 we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these 20 honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, — and that government of the people, by the 25 people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Letter to Mrs. Bixby WASHINGTON, November 21, 1864. DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who 5 have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly 10 Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 1 The poems by Henry Timrod included in this book are used by special permission of the B. F. Johnson Publishing Co., Richmond, Va., the authorized publishers of his works. Does any falter? let him turn Oh! could you like your women feel, A day might see your lines of steel What hope, O God! would not grow warm The rack that sweeps the plain; Ho! woodsmen of the mountain side! And for the Lily's sake! Ode (Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867) Sleep sweetly in your humble graves, In seeds of laurel in the earth The blossom of your fame is blown, |