Executive Mansion, Washington,
April 4, 1864.

A. G. Hodges, Esq., Frankfort, Ky.


"My Dear Sir:--You ask me to put in writing the substance of what
I verbally stated the other day, in your presence, to Governor
Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong nothing is
wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel; and yet I
have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an
unrestricted right to act officially in this judgment and feeling. It
was in the oath I took that I would to the best of my ability
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I
could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it in my
view that I might take the oath to get power, and break the oath in
using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil
administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my
primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had
publicly declared this many times and in many ways; and I aver that,
to this day I have done no official act in mere deference to my
abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however,
that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability
imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means,
that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the
organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the
Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet