At the end of March 1864 a delegation of prominent Kentuckians called on President Lincoln at the White House to discuss affairs in their border state and to express their dissatisfaction with his policy of enlisting and arming soldiers of African descent. Asked by the newspaper editor Albert G. Hodges to write out his reply to that delegation’s complaint, Lincoln wrote the following.

A.G. Hodges, Esq

Executive Mansion,

Frankfort, Ky.

Washington,

April 4, 1864

My dear Sir:

You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said 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 upon 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 my view that I might take an 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.