"I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals."
- Statement attributed to Abraham Lincoln in response to complaints about Grant's drinking habits (November 1863); as quoted in Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents: A Book of Quotations (2000) by Joslyn T. Pine, p. 26.
“I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?”
- Telegram to McClellan dated October 25, 1862 sent after McClellan partially attributed the army's failure to pursue Lee to the condition of his cavalry.
"I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing a stream."
- Reponse to National Union Convention dated June 9, 1864 after receiving word they had nominated him as the party's candidate for president in the upcoming election.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
- Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
The words just before "with malice" are:
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and 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."
"mild recontructionists" often point to the concluding words of Lincoln's second ignaugral to show he would be easy on the ex-Confeds. I don't know of any one who points to the words "unrequited toil" as hinting he would be in favor of reparations at most or even "forty acres and a mule..."
IMHO the "every drop" phrase shows Lincoln as strongly against the black codes, probably against the state legislatures that devised them.
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