My Dear Sir:
Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of Unconditional Union men, to be held at the Capitol of Illinois, on the 3rd day of September, has been received.
It would be very agreeable to me to thus meet my old friends at my own home; but I cannot, just now, be absent from here so long as a visit there would require.
The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union; and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those other noble men, whom no partisan malice, or partisan's hope, can make false to the nation's life.
There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say: You desire peace; and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it?
There are but three conceivable ways.
First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms.
This I am trying to do. Are you for it?
If
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The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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