If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am in height six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes--no other marks or brands recollected.
Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they have died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere should be free.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
I take the official oath today with no mental reservation and with no purpose to construe the constitution by any hypercritical rules.
You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend" it.
The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
In giving freedom to the slaves we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
Do not swap horses in the middle of the stream.
You can fool part of the people all of the time, and all of the people part of the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.