this occasion.  We see how, upon the result of the debate in which we are engaged, a war may ensue between the United States and one, two, or even more European nations.  War in any case is as exceptionable from the habits as it is revolting from the sentiments of the American people.  But if it come, it will be fully seen that it results from the action of Great Britain, not our own; that Great Britain will have decided to fraternize with our domestic enemy, either without waiting to hear from you our remonstrances and our warnings, or after having heard them.  War in defense of national life is not immoral, and war in defense of independence is an inevitable part of the discipline of nations.

The dispute will be between the European and the American branches of the British race.  All who belong to that race will especially deprecate it, as they ought.  It may well be believed that men of every race and kindred will deplore it.  A war not unlike it between the same parties occurred at the close of the last century.  Europe atoned by forty years of suffering for the error that Great Britain committed in provoking that contest.  If that nation shall now repeat the same great error, the social convulsions which will follow may not be so long, but they will be more general.  When they shall have ceased, it will, we think, be seen, whatever may have been the fortunes of other nations, that it is not the United States that will have come out of them with its precious Constitution altered or its honestly obtained dominion in any degree abridged.  Great Britain has but to wait a few months and all her present inconveniences will cease with all our own troubles.  If she take a different course, she will calculate for herself the ultimate as well as the immediate consequences, and will consider what position she will hold when she shall have forever lost the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim.  In making that calculation she will do well to remember that in the controversy she proposes to open we shall be actuated by neither pride, nor passion, nor cupidity, nor ambition; but we shall stand simply on the principle of self-preservation, and that our cause will involve the independence of nations and the rights of human nature.

I am, Sir, respectfully your obedient servant, W. H. S.

Charles Francis Adams, Esq., etc,

TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR,

Executive Mansion, May 21, 1861.

Hon.  Secretary of war.  My dear sir:—­Why cannot Colonel Small’s Philadelphia regiment be received?  I sincerely wish it could.  There is something strange about it.  Give these gentlemen an interview, and take their regiment.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln.

TO GOVERNOR MORGAN.