The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

STATE PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 19
I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note, that while in this the Government's hour
of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who lhave been
favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which
had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known
to have deserted his flag.
Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most
important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers
and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but an
hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of
plain people. They understand, without an argument, that the destroying the Government which was made by Washington means ino good to
them.
Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two
points in it our people have already settled-the successful establishing
and the successful administering of it. One still remiains-its successful
maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is
now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry
an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and
peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets'
that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at
succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men
that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a
war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what
is to be the course of the Government towards the Southern States after
the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper
to say, it will be his purpose then. as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively
to the rights of the States and the people under the Constitution than that
expressed in the Inaugural Address.
He desires to preserve the Government, that it may be administered for
all, as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their Government, and the Government has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that in
giving it there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation, in any
just sense of those terms.
The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union
a republican form of Government." But if a State may lawfully go out
of the Union, having done so, it may also discard the republican form of