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.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LETTERS. 767
APPENDIX.
A.
LETTERS ON SUNDRY OCCASIONS.
TO MR. HODGES, OF KENTUCKY.
EXECUTTIV MANSION, WASINGTOm, Aprd 4, 1864.
A. G. HODGES, Esq., Frankfort, Kentucky:
My DEAR SIR:-You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I
verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and
Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is
wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet
I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was
in the oath 1 took that I would to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take
the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might
take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power I
understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the
moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and
in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act
in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery I
did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to
the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every
indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and
yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be
protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life
is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.
Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not
feel that to the best of my ability I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the
wreck of government, country, and Constitution, altogether. When,
early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emancipation, 1
forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity.
When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested
the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an
indispensable necessity When, still later, General Hunter attempted
military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the