Speech to a Massachusetts Delegation1Jump to section
I thank you, Mr. TRAIN, for your kindness in presenting me with this truly elegant and highly creditable specimen of the handiwork of the mechanics of your State of Massachusetts, and I beg of you to express my hearty thanks to the donors. It displays a perfection of workmanship which I really wish I had time to acknowledge in more fitting words, and I might then follow your idea that it is suggestive, for it is evidently expected that a good deal of whipping is to be done. But, as we meet here socially, let us not think only of whipping rebels, or of those who seem to think only of whipping negroes, but of those who seem to think only of whipping negroes, but of those pleasant days which it is to be hoped are in store for us, when, seated behind a good pair of horses, we can crack our whips and drive through a peaceful, happy and prosperous land. With this idea, gentlemen, I must leave you for my business duties.
Annotation
[1] New York Times, March 22, 1862. Lincoln replied to a short speech by Representative Charles R. Train, who presented ``an elegant whip, made by a Massachusetts whip company.'' Among the delegation was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had come to Washington to gather impressions for an article to appear in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1862, but being unable to get a personal appointment with the president, thus availed himself of the best opportunity.