Our country was built up on intelligence, obedience to law, desire for freedom and the equal enjoyment of rights.

Letters are the best evidence of current thought or events, but they ought to be guarded by the person to whom they are written as confidential communications, not to be disclosed to the injury of the writer.

What I have written is no doubt clouded with partisanship, but I would not be honest if I did not express my attachment to my party.

During forty years of public life, though many able men have aspired to the office I hold, the people of Ohio, through their general assembly, have preferred me to represent them.

Though my grateful thanks are due to them and have been often expressed, yet I have felt, as they do, that my duty was to the whole country.

Proud of Ohio, of its history and people, willing at all times to sound its praise in the sisterhood of states, yet, according to my convictions, the United States is entitled to my allegiance, and all parts of it should receive equal care…

Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country" has been the watchword and creed of my public life.

It was settled by this war that we have a country limited in its powers by the constitution of the United States fairly construed.

The events of the future are beyond the vision of mankind, but I hope our people will be content with internal growth, and avoid the complications of foreign acquisitions.

Our family of states is already large enough to create embarrassment in the Senate, and a republic should not hold dependent provinces or possessions.

Canada and Mexico as independent republics will be more valuable to the United States than if carved into additional states.

The Union already embraces discordant elements enough without adding others.

If my life is prolonged I will do all I can to add to the strength and prosperity of the United States, but nothing to extend its limits or to add new dangers by acquisition of foreign territory.

It is to us, and, I fear, will be for generations to come, one of those problems which tax the highest abilities of statesmen.

Still we may hope very much even from the present signs of the times and upon what the south ought to be if not upon what it is.

One-third of the people of the south were slaves.

More than another third were deprived, by the nature of the institutions among which they lived, of many of the advantages absolutely indispensable to the highest civilization.

The south was very much such a democracy as Rome and Greece were at some periods of their history; a democracy founded upon the privileges of the few and the exclusion of the many.

Very much like the democracy of the barons of Runnymede, who, when they met together to dictate Magna Charta to King John, guarded fully their own privileges as against the king, but cared but little for the rights of the people.

Among the brightest names in the American diadem were many men of the south--at the head of whom, and at the head of all mankind, was the name of Washington.

And so, in all our history, the south, misnamed a democracy, did furnish to the United States many of their leading lights, and the highest saints in our calendar.

But General Grant was the head, the front, the selected leader; and therefore his name is the impersonation of that power in the war which broke the old south, and preserved our Union to your children, and I trust your children's children…

But, while we praise Grant and the Union soldiers, we must remember that Abraham Lincoln was the genius of the times.

He hated slavery, if he hated anything, but I do not believe he hated the owners of slaves.

No man better than he could have uttered those words: 'Malice towards none, charity for all.' That was Abraham Lincoln.