Abraham Lincoln

I recommend an appropriation of this sum for the benefit of the owners of the Jules et Marie.

The obligation of this Government to make amends therefor could not be questioned if the injury resulted from any fault on the part of the San Jacinto.

The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,--a way which, if followed, the world will for ever applaud, and God must for ever bless.

We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.

The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honour or dishonour, to the latest generation.

In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost....

In all its adaptations and aptitudes, it demands union and abhors separation.

There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us.

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead.

True to themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no such line.

But separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from one or more of these outlets,--not perhaps by a physical barrier, but by…

As part of one nation, its people now find, and may for ever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco.

In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed from them, this great interior region is naturally one of the most important in the world.

We must think anew, act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves from the past, and then we shall save our country.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.

The treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave trade has been put into operation with a good prospect of complete success.

The immense mineral resources of some of those Territories ought to be developed as rapidly as possible.

The struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign nations with reference less to its own merits than to its supposed and often exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations themselves.

I deem it my duty to recommend an appropriation in behalf of the owners of the Norwegian bark Admiral P. Tordenskiold.

Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history.

Ordered, That no arms ammunition, or munitions of war be cleared or allowed to be exported from the United States until further order

The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High.