Abraham Lincoln: “If we yield, we are beaten; if the Southern people fail him, he is beaten.”

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

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?

As a general rule I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.