Abraham Lincoln

Reply to Delegation from the National Union League (June 9, 1864)

Posted on March 23, 2016 Updated on April 22, 2020

Reply to Delegation from the National Union League

June 9, 1864

Gentlemen:
I can only say, in response to the kind remarks of your chairman, as I suppose, that I am very grateful for the renewed confidence which has been accorded to me, both by the convention and by the National League. I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this; yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. The convention and the nation, I am assured, are alike animated by a higher view of the interests of the country for the present and the great future, and that part I am entitled to appropriate as a compliment is only that part which I may lay hold of as being the opinion of the convention and of the League, that I am not entirely unworthy to be intrusted with the place I have occupied for the last three years. I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that “it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”

–Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7.

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The phrase is overwhelming in its brevity and force, intelligible to any farmer’s wife, and withal pointed enough to down a lawyer.

1860-06-09 Ludwig-398-11