time to help themselves....  What would you do in my position?  Would you drop the war where it is?  Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose-water?  Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones?  Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?  I am in no boastful mood.  I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination.  I shall do nothing in malice.  What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”

The President could afford to overlook the misrepresentations and invective of the professedly opposition newspapers, but he had also to meet the over-zeal of influential Republican editors of strong antislavery bias.  Horace Greeley printed, in the New York “Tribune” of August 20, a long “open letter” ostentatiously addressed to Mr. Lincoln, full of unjust censure all based on the general accusation that the President and many army officers as well, were neglecting their duty under pro-slavery influences and sentiments.  The open letter which Mr. Lincoln wrote in reply is remarkable not alone for the skill with which it separated the true from the false issue of the moment, but also for the equipoise and dignity with which it maintained his authority as moral arbiter between the contending factions.

     “EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
     August 22, 1862.

     “HON.  HORACE GREELEY.

“DEAR SIR:  I have just read yours of the nineteenth, addressed to myself through the New York ‘Tribune.’  If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them.  If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them.  If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

“As to the policy I ‘seem to be pursuing,’ as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

“I would save the Union.  I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution.  The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’  If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.  If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could, at the same time, destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.  My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.  If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.  What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.  I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.  I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.