I thank you, Mr. Train, for your kindness in presenting me with this truly elegant and highly creditable specimen of the handiwork of the mechanics of your State of Massachusetts, and I beg of you to express my hearty thanks to the donors.  It displays a perfection of workmanship which I really wish I had time to acknowledge in more fitting words, and I might then follow your idea that it is suggestive, for it is evidently expected that a good deal of whipping is to be done.  But as we meet here socially let us not think only of whipping rebels, or of those who seem to think only of whipping negroes, but of those pleasant days, which it is to be hoped are in store for us, when seated behind a good pair of horses we can crack our whips and drive through a peaceful, happy, and prosperous land.  With this idea, gentlemen, I must leave you for my business duties. [It was likely a Buggy-Whip D.W.]

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

Washington city, March 20, 1862.

To the Senate and house of representatives: 

The third section of the “Act further to promote the efficiency of the Navy,” approved December 21, 1861, provides: 

“That the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall have the authority to detail from the retired list of the navy for the command of squadrons and single ships such officers as he may believe the good of the service requires to be thus placed in command; and such officers may, if upon the recommendation of the President of the United States they shall receive a vote of thanks cf Congress for their services and gallantry in action against an enemy, be restored to the active list, and not otherwise.”

In conformity with this law, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, of the navy, was nominated to the Senate for continuance as the flag-officer in command of the squadron which recently rendered such important service to the Union in the expedition to the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Believing that no occasion could arise which would more fully correspond with the intention of the law or be more pregnant with happy influence as an example, I cordially recommend that Captain Samuel F. Du Pont receive a vote of thanks of Congress for his service and gallantry displayed in the capture since the 21st December, 1861, of various ports on the coasts of Georgia and Florida, particularly Brunswick, Cumberland Island and Sound, Amelia Island, the towns of St. Mary’s, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville and Fernandina.

Abraham Lincoln.

TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, MARCH 31, 1862

Major-general McCLELLAN.

My dear sir:-This morning I felt constrained to order Blenker’s division to Fremont, and I write this to assure you I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise.  If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident that you would justify it, even beyond a mere acknowledgment that the commander-in-chief may order what he pleases.