foundest gratitude for the skill, courage, and perseverance with which you and they, over so great difficulties, have effected the important object. God bless you all. [To General Grant, April 30, 1864.] LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT: Not expecting to see you before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant, and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know that these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there be anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you. [In reply to a deputation from the National Union League, June 8, 1864, who congratulated him upon his re-nomination for the Presidency, Mr. Lincoln said:] . ... "I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once, that 'it was not best to swop horses when crossing streams."" [From a letter written December 11, 1864]: "You say you are praying for the war to end. So am I, but I want it to end right. God alone knows how anxious I am to see these rivers of blood cease to flow; but they must flow until treason hides its head." It matters not to me whether Shakespeare be well or ill acted; with him the thought suffices. There is one passage of the play of "Hamlet" which is very apt to be slurred over by the actor, or omitted altogether, which seems to me the choicest part of the play. It is the soliloquy of the king after the murder. It always struck me as one of the finest touches of nature in this world. The opening of the play of "King Richard the Third" seems to me often entirely misapprehended. It is quite common for an actor to come upon the stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a flourish: "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York, Out Now this is all wrong. Richard, remember, had been, and was then, plotting the destruction of his brothers, to make room for himself. wardly, the most loyal to the newly-crowned king, secretly, he could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation. He appears upon the stage, just after the crowning of Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire. [From a letter written just before the assassination.] I assure you that as soon as the business of this war is settled, the Indians shall have my first attention; and I will not rest until they shall have justice with which both you and they will be satisfied. There are some quaint, queer, verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled, "The Last Leaf," one of which is to me inexpressibly touching: "The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom; And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb." For pure pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing finer than those six lines in the English language. |
