Abraham Lincoln: “I solicit your authority to furnish to the Republic a gunboat at moderate cost, to be reimbursed to the United States by…”

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it?

I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.

I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.