Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v9.djvu/59

 Rh of a few passages in your letters in regard to which I think you and I would not disagree, I should be glad of the publication. Please come over and see me.

A. Lincoln.

Executive Mansion, Washington, August 9, 1864.

Hon. Horace Greeley.

Dear Sir: Herewith is a full copy of the correspondence, and which I have had privately printed, but not made public. The parts of your letters which I wish suppressed are only those which, as I think, give too gloomy an aspect to our cause, and those which present the carrying of elections as a motive of action. I have, as you see, drawn a red pencil over the parts I wish suppressed.

As to the Alexander H. Stephens matter, so much pressed by you, I can only say that he sought to come to Washington in the name of the "Confederate States," in a vessel of "the Confederate States navy," and with no pretense even that he would bear any proposal for peace; but with language showing that his mission would be military, and not civil or diplomatic. Nor has he at any time since pretended that he had terms of peace, so far as I know or believe. On the contrary, Jefferson Davis has, in the most formal manner, declared that Stephens had no terms of peace. I thought we could not afford to give this quasi-acknowledgment of the independence of the Confederacy, in a case where there was not even an intimation of anything for our good. Still, as the parts of your letters relating to Stephens