Excerpt from The Life, and Martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States; And Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States In compiling this selection of Lincoln's works, I have been guided by one principle or purpose. I have chosen those writ ings which illustrate Lincoln's political and social philosophy and his views on the great issues of his day. My attempt has been to present Lincoln the philosopher of democracy. I have not tried to present the complete Lincoln. I have taken these selections from published collections of Lincoln's works. For the most part, I have reproduced the speeches and letters as they are given in these earlier works, including punctuation and spelling. The first editors of Lin coln's works, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, edited Lincoln to achieve a formal correctness. The changes they made were of a minor nature and did no violence to Lincoln's meaning. I have taken Nicolay and Hay as the closest possible approach to the original documents. Wherever I have omitted a portion of a speech or a letter, I have indicated that omission by asterisks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.