My dear Sir, I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first free-State governor of Louisiana.  Now you are about to have a convention, which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise.  I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the coloured people may not be let in—­as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.  They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom.  But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.

An Address at a Fair for the Sanitary Commission.  March 18, 1864

I appear to say but a word.  This extraordinary war in which we are engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people, but the most heavily upon the soldier.  For it has been said, “all that a man hath will he give for his life;” and while all contribute of their substance, the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country’s cause. The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier.

In this extraordinary war extraordinary developments have manifested themselves, such as have not been seen in former wars; and amongst these manifestations nothing has been more remarkable than these fairs for the relief of suffering soldiers and their families.  And the chief agents in these fairs are the women of America.

I am not accustomed to the language of eulogy.  I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women.  But I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.  I will close by saying, God bless the women of America!

Letter to A.G.  Hodges, of Kentucky.  April 4, 1864

I am naturally anti-slavery.  If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.  I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.  It was in the oath that I took, that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.  I could not take office without taking the oath.  Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power.  I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery.  I had publicly declared this many times and in many ways.  And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract feeling and judgment on slavery.  I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by