pulating
it. Please gather information, and consider whether an appeal to the
people there to go to their homes and let one another alone recognizing as
a full right of protection for each that he lets others alone, and banning
only him who refuses to let others alone may not enable you to withdraw
the troops, their presence itself [being] a cause of irritation and
constant apprehension, and thus restore peace and quiet, and returning
prosperity. Please consider this and telegraph or write me.

A. LINCOLN.

FIRST OVERTURES FOR SURRENDER FROM DAVIS

TO P. P. BLAIR, SR.

WASHINGTON, January 18, 1865.

F. P. BLAIR, ESQ.

SIR:-You having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the twelfth
instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and shall
continue, ready to receive any agent whom he or any other influential
person now resisting the national authority may informally send to me with
the view of securing peace to the people of our one common country.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, January 19, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but
only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated at
Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish
to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those
who have already served long are better entitled and better qualified to
hold. Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service,
go into your military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the
public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least
hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply interested that you
shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL DODGE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL DODGE, Saint Louis, Mo.:

If Mrs. Beattie, alias Mrs. Wolff, shall be sentenced to death, notify me,
and postpone the execution till further order.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL ORD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 19, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL ORD:

You have a man in arrest for desertion passing by the name of Stanley.
William Stanley, I think, but whose real name is different. He is the son
of so close a friend of mine that I must not let him be executed. Please
let me know what is