I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation.  In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity.  I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.  Now, at the end of three years’ struggle, the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected.  God alone can claim it.  Whither it is tending seems plain.  If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln.

TO MRS. HORACE MANN.

Executive Mansion, Washington,
April 5, 1864.

Mrs Horace Mann: 

Madam:—­The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner.  Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, he wills to do it.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln.

Telegram to general Butler. 
Executive Mansion, Washington, April 12, 1864.

Major-general Butler, Fort Monroe, Va.: 

I am pressed to get from Libby, by special exchange, Jacob C. Hagenbuek, first lieutenant, Company H, Sixty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers.  Please do it if you can without detriment or embarrassment.

A. Lincoln.

Telegram to general Meade. 
Executive Mansion, Washington, April 17, 1864.

Major-general Meade, Army of the Potomac: 

Private William Collins of Company B, of the Sixty-ninth New York Volunteers, has been convicted of desertion, and execution suspended as in numerous other cases.  Now Captain O’Neill, commanding the regiment, and nearly all its other regimental and company officers, petition for his full pardon and restoration to his company.  Is there any good objection?

A. Lincoln.

LECTURE ON LIBERTY

Address at sanitary fair in Baltimore,

April 18, 1864.

Ladies and gentlemen:—­Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we cannot fail to note that the world moves.  Looking upon these many people assembled here to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore.  The change from then till now is both great and gratifying.  Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it!