The Secretary of State will keep a registry thereof, and will, on application, in proper cases, issue certificates of such records in the customary form of official certificates.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed............
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President: WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
TO SECRETARY STANTON.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 28, 1864.
HON. SECRETARY OF WAR.
MY DEAR SIR:--The Governor of Kentucky is here, and desires to have the following points definitely fixed:
First. That the quotas of troops furnished, and to be furnished, by Kentucky may be adjusted upon the basis as actually reduced by able- bodied men of hers having gone into the rebel service; and that she be required to furnish no more than her just quotas upon fair adjustment upon such basis.
Second. To whatever extent the enlistment and drafting, one or both, of colored troops may be found necessary within the State, it may be conducted within the law of Congress; and, so far as practicable, free from collateral embarrassments, disorders, and provocations.
I think these requests of the Governor are reasonable; and I shall be obliged if you will give him a full hearing, and do the best you can to effect these objects.
Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.
TO GENERAL G. G. MEADE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 29, 1864.
MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE.
MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Colonel Townsend, inclosing a slip from the "Herald," and asking a court of inquiry, has been laid before me by the Secretary of War, with the request that I would consider it. It is quite natural that you should feel some sensibility on the subject; yet I am not impressed, nor do I think the country is impressed, with the belief that your honor demands, or the public interest demands, such an inquiry. The country knows that at all events you have done good service; and I believe it agrees with me that it is much better for you to be engaged in trying to do more, than to be diverted, as you necessarily would be, by a court of inquiry.
Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 29,1864.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT, Army of the Potomac:
Captain Kinney, of whom I spoke to you as desiring to go on your staff, is now in your camp, in company with Mrs. Senator Dixon. Mrs. Grant and I, and some others, agreed last night that I should, by this despatch, kindly call your attention to Captain Kinney.
A. LINCOLN.
TO A. G. HODGES.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 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 I 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.