*A. 
 
 LOYAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 
 
 8 6 3 BROADWAY. 
 
 s '- * 7 MnUcIft JyW 
 
 •/Vo. 98.— I 9 art IS. 
 
 To Jlis Excellency Abraham Lincoln, 
 
 President of the United States : 
 
 Most Respected Sir,—Since I last bad the honor to address 
 you, in January, 1862, the courage, skill and perseverance man¬ 
 ifested by you in your efforts to maintain and defend our union 
 of States, with all their rightful authority and power, has com¬ 
 manded my heartfelt gratitude, confidence and respect. 
 
 Your efforts to bring back the Rebel States to accept the 
 supremacy of the Constitution and the laws, with the general 
 course of your Administration, have compelled me to believe 
 that there is nothing that you have sought and desired so much, 
 as to know and apply the best means to secure a lasting and 
 honorable peace, and to overcome, with the least possible ex¬ 
 pense of life and treasure, a rebellion that embodies in itself 
 the sum of all that is vile. 
 
 It would have been too much to expect from any human 
 being, that such a complication of difficulties and dangers as 
 those you have encountered, should have been met and over¬ 
 come without errors and mistakes as to the best means to restore 
 peace to our country. ^ 
 
 Our Union of States, which has, from the commencement of 
 the government, continued to spread its protecting shield over 
 all the rights reserved to each of the individual States, can 
 never be abandoned to the despotism of slavery, or the heresy 
 of secession, while there is life and power to maintain and de¬ 
 fend it. 
 
 In my letter, I endeavored to show that nothing but the cor- 
 
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 rupting power of buying and selling human beings, could ever 
 so far demoralize a people as to cause them to deluge a nation 
 in blood, in order to perpetuate an institution that enslaves 
 thousands of their own children. 
 
 It must be apparent to all who desire the preservation of the 
 Union, that the slaves who now cultivate the fields, and who 
 perform a large portion of the mechanical labor of the South, 
 are as much a power to be met and overcome, as the Rebel ar¬ 
 mies that are now doing their utmost to spread death and deso¬ 
 lation over our country. 
 
 I believe with you, that it is impossible for a people who are 
 determined to perpetuate slavery at the expense of all the hor¬ 
 rors of a civil war, to continue to hold slaves and live in peace 
 with a Government having its foundation on the equal and 
 inalienable rights of man. 
 
 In relation to the propriety of the employment of negroes as a 
 war measure, or means to conquer the rebellion, I fear the 
 greatest mistakes of the war have been made. 
 
 It has taken time to educate the people to see and feel the 
 absolute necessity of attacking the rebellion in the only way by 
 which it can be speedily and effectually overcome, aud at the 
 same time extinguish a cause of national sorrow, demoralization, 
 and disgrace. 
 
 You have, with great propriety, asked the question, “ Why 
 should negroes do anything for us, if we will do nothing for 
 them 
 
 You have said rightly, that “if they stake their lives for ns, 
 :they must be prompted by the strongest motives.” 
 
 The correctness and wisdom of that opinion cannot be called 
 In question. 
 
 It is greatly to be deplored that the Government, and so many 
 people of the North, with some of the officers of the army, have 
 been so slow to perceive and adopt the only effectual means, 
 which is to use the negroes as a power by which this terrible 
 war of rebellion can be put down. 
 
 Those who have sympathized with rebels, know their im¬ 
 portance, and they are the persons who have uniformly raised 
 a clamor against their use, and every other measure calculated 
 
to strengthen our own Government, or to strike the rebellion in 
 its weakest place. 
 
 It is cause of astonishment to all who realize the fact that 
 this desolating war is now carried on against us by less than 
 one-third of the inhabitants of the United States. 
 
 This is rendered still more astonishing, when we remember 
 that more than one-half of this one-third now left within the 
 limits of the Rebel States, are our friends, and have been at all 
 times ready and anxious to aid us so soon as their safety and 
 freedom could be secured. 
 
 I believe that the war of Rebellion would have been short, if, 
 at the commencement of the struggle, a decided policy in rela¬ 
 tion to the employment of negroes could have been adopted and 
 sustained by the people of the North. 
 
 It should have been a policy promising freedom, protection, 
 and a soldier’s bounty to all able-bodied slaves of Rebels who 
 would enlist to defend the Union, the Constitution, and the laws 
 which made us a nation. It should have been a policy defined 
 by a proclamation to be constantly kept before the people, set¬ 
 ting forth the fact that the Government of the United States 
 have been compelled, in the most reluctant self-defence, to 
 adopt these measures, to meet in actual 'war those States now 
 in open Rebellion against all the rightful authority and power 
 of the Nation, thereby forcing on the Government the painful 
 necessity of using all means known in civilized warfare in order 
 to put down a combination of wicked men who aim to destroy 
 the Union and to build upon its ruins a Government where 
 “ property shall own labor,” and of which the corner-stone shall 
 be the enslavement of millions of human beings. 
 
 Our National Government, after having organized all the 
 public lands into Territorial Governments, with the right to en¬ 
 graft Slavery upon them all whenever the people of any State 
 shall so elect, and after passing, by an almost unanimous vote in 
 Congress, a resolution declaring that the Government had no 
 intention or desire to interfere with Slavery in any manner 
 where it was then legally held, did further demonstrate the 
 sincerity of the Government by proposed amendment to the 
 Constitutibn in order to put it forever out of the power of Con¬ 
 gress to interfere with Slavery within the States. 
 
4 
 
 All these efforts failed to satisfy the people of the South,, 
 whose present Vice-President, when in the Convention of Seces¬ 
 sionists, defied their body to show a single act of the General 
 Government that was intended to oppress or injure the people 
 of the South, whose leading men had long before determined 
 on a dissolution of the Union, for no better reason than the one 
 stated by John C. Calhoun more than thirty years ago. He 
 then said their system of Slavery was an aristocratic system, 
 and that they were an aristocratic people, and that so long as 
 they could control the action of the General Government they 
 
 would remain in it, but when they could not, they would break 
 it up. 
 
 This they are now trying to do by any and all means in their 
 power. 
 
 To prevent them from bringing upon our country, and tha 
 world such a calamity, our Government will be fully justified 
 in holding out every inducement to slaves of Rebels to join our 
 army to fight for their freedom and independence. 
 
 The policy of employing the negroes in^our defence, if I am 
 not mistaken, is demanded by the highest interests of the South 
 as well as by the North. 
 
 I believe that ten years will not pass before the people of the 
 South will erect monuments to commemorate their 'deliverance 
 from the blight of Slavery. 
 
 They will verify the truth of what Homer declared two thou¬ 
 sand six hundred years ago, when he said that 
 
 “ Whatever day makes man a slave 
 Takes half his worth away.” 
 
 I, for one, envy not the man who, to save"a nation’s life, will 
 not say : Perish Slavery—perish all that jstands in the way of 
 maintaining the freedom and independence that our Union ivas 
 intended to secure . 
 
 Hoping that our Government will always contend for those 
 measures best calculated to establish justice and promote the 
 general welfare, I remain, 
 
 With great respect, your friend, 
 
 Peter Cooper.