NT.

WASHINGTON, March 3, 1865. 12 PM.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT:

The President directs me to say to you that he wishes you to have no
conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of General
Lee's army, or on some minor and purely military matter. He instructs me
to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political
question. Such questions the President holds in his own hands, and will
submit them to no military conferences or conventions. Meantime you are to
press to the utmost your military advantages.

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1865.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:--At this second appearing to take the oath of the
presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course
to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four
years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth
on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the
attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new
could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly
depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust,
reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the
future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought
to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this
place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent
agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war seeking to
dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation
survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the
war came.

One eighth of the whole population was colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These
slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this
interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and
extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend
the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more
than to restrict the territorial