Letter to Horace Greeley (August 22, 1862)
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.
— Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler et al.
The very day on which he receives the newspaper, he replies with his own hand, using the identical method of an open letter, which, Socratic in its style, must rank as one of his most brilliant documents.
Never in Europe has such a document been published by the chief of a State, not even in peace time nor in the form of an official decree. But even in America it is unique, for what other President has answered opinionated newspaper criticism in this way, answered it by return of post so that deliberation was impossible, answered it also in a newspaper where all (including the enemy) could read it, in phraseology equally intelligible to the most uncultured farmer of the West and to the shrewdest lawyer of the East, and in a document both logical and political, both matter-of-fact and in the highest sense of the word moral?
Ludwig-343-17