(Confidential.)
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, October 23, 1860.
My dear Sir: Yours of the 13th was duly received. I appreciate your motive when you suggest the propriety of my writing for the public something disclaiming all intention to interfere with slaves or slavery in the States; but in my judgment it would do no good. I have already done this many, many times; and it is in print, and open to all who will read. Those who will not read or heed what I have already publicly said would not read or heed a repetition of it. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.”
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
Update note: This Abraham Lincoln letter was also posted today on The American Civil War blog at civilwar-online.com.
FAYETTEVILLE, N. C., October 23, 1860.
A. MCLEAN, Esq., Mayor
SIR : We, the undersigned, having appended our names to a request to you as mayor of our town, to make application to the War Department at Washington for a company of United States soldiers to act as a guard to the U. S. Arsenal located at this place, and having seen the correspondence that took place between Capt. J. A. J. Bradford, the highly worthy officer in command there, and yourself in relation to the matter, we wish most respectfully to add in this paper some of the reasons moving us in the course we have pursued. Captain Bradford mentions in his note to you that the petitioners do not state to him that the works are menaced from any quarter, and further, that beyond that he has never heard of any. We grant all that. We know of no open attack that is meditated upon the arsenal. If we did, we, as citizens of Fayetteville and North Carolina, would know how to meet it. The raid at Harper’s Ferry, and all subsequent events in the South, teach us that all mischief comes (and is to be especially dreaded on that account) without menace. If any attempt is made on lives and property, it will not be made with light of day and with a warning beforehand, but at the dead hour of night, when all are unsuspecting. And when we look about to know what means the assassin has at hand to enable him to carry out his dreadful designs, we find them stored up in immense quantities at our very doors, in the shape of United States muskets. swords, pistols, &c., with, as we are informed, large quantities of powder, with one single man standing as guard. We think our request not an unreasonable one, when we place it purely on the assumption that you place it—where there are arms there should be a guard to protect them, without any reference whatever to any peculiar state of affairs. It is hardly necessary to say in the close that these views of things grow out of the events most especially that had taken place within a year all over the South, and that all these unfortunate untoward events have come at all times without a menace.
Entertaining these views, we respectfully request that you make application to the War Department for a company of soldiers as before suggested.
………..Very respectfully, yours,
W. G. MATTHEWS et al.
