第519章 VOLUME VII(48)

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am notified that this is a compliment paid me by the loyal Marylanders resident in this District. I infer that the adoption of the new constitution for the State furnishes the occasion, and that in your view the extirpation of slavery constitutes the chief merit of the new constitution. Most heartily do I congratulate you, and Maryland, and the nation, and the world, upon this event. I regret that it did not occur two years sooner, which, I am sure, would have saved the nation more money than would have met all the private loss incident to the measure; but it has come at last, and I sincerely hope its friends may fully realize all their anticipations of good from it, and that its opponents may by its effects be agreeably and profitably disappointed.

A word upon another subject. Something said by the Secretary of State in his recent speech at Auburn, has been construed by some into a threat, that if I shall be beaten at the election, I will, between then and the end of my constitutional term, do what I may be able to ruin the Government.

Others regard the fact that the Chicago Convention adjourned, not sine die, but to meet again, if called to do so by a particular individual, as the intimation of a purpose that if their nominee shall be elected he will at once seize control of the Government. I hope the good people will permit themselves to suffer no uneasiness on either point. I am struggling to maintain the Government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it. I therefore say, that if I live, I shall remain President until the 4th of next March, and that whoever shall be constitutionally elected, in November, shall be duly installed as President on the 4th of March, and in the interval I shall do my utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage shall start with the best possible chance of saving the ship. This is due to the people, both on principle and under the Constitution. Their will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all. If they should deliberately resolve to have immediate peace, even at the loss of their country and their liberties, I know not the power or the right to resist them. It is their own business, and they must do as they please with their own. I believe, however, they are still resolved to preserve their country and their liberties; and in this, in office or out of it, I am resolved to stand by them. I may add, that in this purpose to save the country and its liberties, no classes of people seem so nearly unanimous as the soldiers in the field and the sailors afloat. Do they not have the hardest of it?

Who should quail while they do not? God bless the soldiers and seamen, with all their brave commanders.

PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING, OCTOBER 20, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while he has opened to us new: sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working- men in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, he has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds arid hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may be then, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the, land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this twentieth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

TELEGRAM To J. G. NICOLAY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., October 21, 1864. 9.45 P.M.

J. G. NICOLAY, Saint Louis, Missouri:

While Curtis is fighting Price, have you any idea where the force under Rosecrans is, or what it is doing?

A. LINCOLN.

TO WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL AND OTHERS.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., October 22, 1864.

MESSRS WILLIAM B. CAMPBELL, THOMAS A. R. NELSON, JAMES T. P. CARTER, JOHN WILLIAMS, A. BLIZZARD, HENRY COOPER, BAILLIE PEYTON, JOHN LELLYET, EMERSON ETHERIDGE, and JOHN D. PERRYMAN.

GENTLEMEN:--On the 15th day of this month, as I remember, a printed paper manuscript, with a few manuscript interlineations, called a protest, with your names appended thereto, and accompanied by another printed paper, purporting to be a proclamation by Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee, and also a manuscript paper, purporting to be extracts from the Code of Tennessee, were laid before me.