I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down but I bite my lip and keep quiet.

Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity - Posterity has done nothing for us

Gen. Schurz thinks I was a little cross in my late note to you. If I was, I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.

As we keep or break the Sabbath Day we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment's sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.

The time has come when I am for everybody fighting the rebels. Let Indians fight them; let the Negroes fight them; and if you have got any strong-legged jackasses in Iwoa that can kick rebels to death, they have my hearty consent.

I walk slowly, but never backwards.