mly and well upon the whole
subject--nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an
object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would
never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking
time, but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are
now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on
the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the
new administration will have no immediate power if it wanted to change
either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for
precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm
reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are
still competent to adjust in the best way all our present
difficulties.

In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have
no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall
have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.

I am about to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every
battle field and patriot grave, to every loving heart and hearthstone
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature.

LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY

The Administration, during the early months of the war for the Union,
was greatly perplexed as to the proper mode of dealing with slavery,
especially in the districts occupied by the Union forces. In the
summer of 1862, when Mr. Lincoln was earnestly contemplating his
Proclamation of Emancipation, Horace Greeley, the leading Republican
editor, published in his paper, the New York Tribune, a severe article
in the form of a letter addressed to the President, taking him to task
for failing to meet the just expectations of twenty millions of loyal
people. Thereupon Mr. Lincoln sent him the following letter:--

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
AUGUST 22, 1862.

HON. HORACE GREELEY.

_Dear Sir:_ I have just read yours of