individual in a church or out of it becomes dangerous to the public
interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such, take care
of themselves. It will not do for the United States to appoint trustees,
supervisors, or other agents for the churches.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

P. S.--The committee composed of Messrs. Yeatman and Filley (Mr. Broadhead
not attending) has presented your letter and the memorial of sundry
citizens. On the whole subject embraced exercise your best judgment,
with a sole view to the public interest, and I will not interfere without
hearing you.

A. LINCOLN., January 3, 1863.

TO SECRETARY WELLES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 4, 1863.

HON. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the Navy.

DEAR SIR:--As many persons who come well recommended for loyalty and
service to the Union cause, and who are refugees from rebel oppression in
the State of Virginia, make application to me for authority and permission
to remove their families and property to protection within the Union
lines, by means of our armed gunboats on the Potomac River and Chesapeake
Bay, you are hereby requested to hear and consider all such applications,
and to grant such assistance to this class of persons as in your judgment
their merits may render proper, and as may in each case be consistent with
the perfect and complete efficiency of the naval service and with military
expediency.

A. LINCOLN.

TO GENERAL S. L CURTIS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 5, 1863

MAJOR-GENERAL CURTIS.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am having a good deal of trouble with Missouri matters,
and I now sit down to write you particularly about it. One class of
friends believe in greater severity and another in greater leniency in
regard to arrests, banishments, and assessments. As usual in such cases,
each questions the other's motives. On the one hand, it is insisted that
Governor Gamble's unionism, at most, is not better than a secondary spring
of action; that hunkerism and a wish for political influence stand
before Unionism with him. On the other hand, it is urged that arrests,
banishments, and assessments are made more for private malice, revenge,
and pecuniary interest than for the public good. This morning I was told,
by a gentleman who I have no doubt believes what he says, that in one
case of assessments for $10,000 the different persons who paid compared
receipts, and found they had paid $30,000. If this b