Excerpt of Letter to Mary Lincoln

Referencing Cooper Union Speech

The following excerpt of a letter from Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln was quoted in 1908, by Robert Todd Lincoln. The original letter or a complete copy have never been found.

MARCH 4, 1860

EXETER, N.H.

I have been unable to escape this toil. If I had foreseen it, I think I would not have come east at all. The speech at New York, being within my calculation before I started, went off passably well and gave me no trouble whatever. The difficulty was to make nine others, before reading audiences who had already seen all my ideas in print.

source: Basler, Roy P. (editor). The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, volume III, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953, p. 555.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until...every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

- Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865