You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union.

Let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.

I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

Again, a law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.

You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently.

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.

I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome.