and yet inadmissible for him to remain here long. Cannot you help me out with it? I can conceive that there may be difference to you in days, and I can keep him a few days to accommodate on that point. I have not heard of my son's reaching you.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL POPE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 24, 1865.

MAJOR-GENERAL POPE, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Please inquire and report to me whether there is any propriety of longer keeping in Gratiott Street Prison a man said to be there by the name of Riley Whiting.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

WASHINGTON, February 25, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Virginia: General Sheridan's despatch to you, of to-day, in which he says he "will be off on Monday," and that he "will leave behind about two thousand men, causes the Secretary of War and myself considerable anxiety. Have you well considered whether you do not again leave open the Shenandoah Valley entrance to Maryland and Pennsylvania, or, at least, to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad?

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., February 27, 1865. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Virginia: Subsequent reflection, conference with General Halleck, your despatch, and one from General Sheridan, have relieved my anxiety; and so I beg that you will dismiss any concern you may have on my account, in the matter of my last despatch.

A. LINCOLN.

TO T. W. CONWAY.1

EXECUTIVE Mansion,

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 1, 1865.

MR. THOMAS W. CONWAY,

General Superintendent Freedmen,
Department of the Gulf.

SIR: Your statement to Major-General Hurlbut of the condition of the freedmen of your department, and of your success in the work of their moral and physical elevation, has reached me and given me much pleasure.

That we shall be entirely successful in our efforts I firmly believe.

The blessing of God and the efforts of good and faithful men will bring us an earlier and happier consummation than the most sanguine friends of the freedmen could reasonably expect.

1 The Evening Post, December 13, 1865.

Yours,

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 2, 1865.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, City Point, Va.: You have not sent contents of Richmond papers for Tuesday or Wednesday. Did you not receive them? If not, does it indicate anything?.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM FROM SECRETARY STANTON

TO GENERAL GRANT.

WASHINGTON, March 3, 1865. 12 P.M.

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 enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood