could "board at home," so to speak, and
menace or attack him any day. Would not the doing of this be your best
mode of counteracting his raid on your communications? But this is not an
order. I intend doing something like what you suggest whenever the case
shall appear ripe enough to have it accepted in the true understanding
rather than as a confession of weakness and fear.

A. LINCOLN.

TO C. D. DRAKE AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 5, 1863.

HON. CHARLES D. DRAKE AND OTHERS, Committee.

GENTLEMEN:-Your original address, presented on the 30th ult., and the
four supplementary ones presented on the 3d inst., have been carefully
considered. I hope you will regard the other duties claiming my attention,
together with the great length and importance of these documents, as
constituting a sufficient apology for not having responded sooner.

These papers, framed for a common object, consist of the things demanded
and the reasons for demanding them.

The things demanded are

First. That General Schofield shall be relieved, and General Butler be
appointed as Commander of the Military Department of Missouri.

Second. That the system of enrolled militia in Missouri may be broken up,
and national forces he substituted for it; and

Third. That at elections persons may not be allowed to vote who are not
entitled by law to do so.

Among the reasons given, enough of suffering and wrong to Union men is
certainly, and I suppose truly, stated. Yet the whole case, as presented,
fails to convince me that General Schofield, or the enrolled militia, is
responsible for that suffering and wrong. The whole can be explained on a
more charitable, and, as I think, a more rational hypothesis.

We are in a civil war. In such cases there always is a main question, but
in this case that question is a perplexing compound--Union and slavery.
It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four
sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who
are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without
slavery; those for it without, but not with; those for it with or without,
but prefer it with; and those for it with or without, but prefer it
without.

Among these, again, is a subdivision of those who are for gradual, but
not for immediate, and those who are for immediate, but not for gradual
extinction of slavery.

It is easy to conceive that all these