Without a name, perhaps without a reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon the Father of his country.

So much of promised usefulness to one's country, and of bright hopes for one's self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall.

I have been unwilling to go beyond the pressure of necessity in the unusual exercise of power.

I have desired as sincerely as any man - I sometimes think more than any other man - that our present difficulties might be settled without the shedding of blood.

Our men are not moles, and can't dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can't fly through the air. There is no way but to march across, and that they must do.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.