u are ready to say I apply to friends what is due only to enemies. I
distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold my
hands while my enemies stab me. This appeal of professed friends has
paralyzed me more in this struggle than any other one thing. You remember
telling me, the day after the Baltimore mob in April, 1861, that it would
crush all Union feeling in Maryland for me to attempt bringing troops over
Maryland soil to Washington. I brought the troops notwithstanding, and
yet there was Union feeling enough left to elect a Legislature the
next autumn, which in turn elected a very excellent Union United States
senator! I am a patient man--always willing to forgive on the Christian
terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still,
I must save this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of course, I
will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall
not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TO CUTHBERT BULLITT.

(Private.)

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 28, 1862.

CUTHBERT BULLITT, Esq., New Orleans, Louisiana.

SIR:--The copy of a letter addressed to yourself by Mr. Thomas J. Durant
has been shown to me. The writer appears to be an able, a dispassionate,
and an entirely sincere man. The first part of the letter is devoted to
an effort to show that the secession ordinance of Louisiana was adopted
against the will of a majority of the people. This is probably true,
and in that fact may be found some instruction. Why did they allow the
ordinance to go into effect? Why did they not assert themselves? Why stand
passive and allow themselves to be trodden down by minority? Why did they
not hold popular meetings and have a convention of their own to express
and enforce the true sentiment of the State? If preorganization was
against them then, why not do this now that the United States army is
present to protect them? The paralysis--the dead palsy--of the government
in this whole struggle is that this class of men will do nothing for the
government, nothing for themselves, except demanding that the government
shall not strike its open enemies, lest they be struck by accident!

Mr. Durant complains that in various ways the relation of master and slave
is disturbed by the presence of our army, and he considers it particularly
vexatious that this, in part, is done under cover of an act of Congress,
whil