GTON, D. C.

DEAR Mr. WEED:

Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little
notification speech and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the
latter to wear as well as perhaps better than--anything I have produced;
but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by
being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the
Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that
there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed
to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most
directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.

Truly yours,

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO COLONEL ROUGH AND OTHERS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., March 17, 1865.

COL. R. M. ROUGH AND OTHERS, Chicago, Ill.:

Yours received. The best I can do with it is, to refer it to the
War Department. The Rock Island case referred to, was my individual
enterprise; and it caused so much difficulty in so many ways that I
promised to never undertake another.

A. LINCOLN.

ADDRESS TO AN INDIANA REGIMENT,

MARCH 17, 1865.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It will be but a very few words that I shall undertake
to say. I was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois;
and now I am here, where it is my business to care equally for the good
people of all the States. I am glad to see an Indiana regiment on this
day able to present the captured flag to the Governor of Indiana. I am not
disposed, in saying this, to make a distinction between the States, for
all have done equally well.

There are but few views or aspects of this great war upon which I have
not said or written something whereby my own opinions might be known.
But there is one--the recent attempt of our erring brethren, as they are
sometimes called, to employ the negro to fight for them. I have neither
written nor made a speech on that subject, because that was their
business, not mine, and if I had a wish on the subject, I had not the
power to introduce it, or make it effective. The great question with them
was whether the negro, being put into the army, will fight for them. I do
not know, and therefore cannot decide. They ought to know better than me.
I have in my lifetime heard many arguments why the negroes ought to be
slaves; but if they fight for those who would keep them in slavery, it
will be a better argument than any I have yet heard. He w