"When I have been to Richmond, I shall have this letter published."

This was more than sixteen years ago, and the letter has just now seen the light of day. There are in it certain sharp passages which, after this long lapse of time, can not be verified by the memory of any who heard it read in 1863. There are others which seem missing. Nevertheless, the letter, which is herewith reprinted, must have been written by Lincoln:

Maj.-Gen.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D, C., Jan, 26, 1863. Hooker-General: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons; and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier-which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession-in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself--which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious-which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brotherofficer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a Dictator. course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those Generals who win victories can set up Dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the Dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its abilitywhich is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but, with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victories.

Yours, very truly,

Of

A. LINCOLN.

A "Hen-Pecked" Husband.

When General Phelps took possession of Ship Island, near New Orleans, early in the war, it will be remembered that he issued a proclamation, somewhat bombastic in tone, freeing the slaves. To the surprise of many people, on both sides, the President took no official notice of this movement. Some time had elapsed, when one day a friend took him to task for his seeming indifference on so important a matter.

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "I feel about that a good deal as a man whom I will call Jones, whom I once knew, did about his wife. He was one of your meek men and had the reputation of being badly hen-pecked. At last, one day his wife was seen switching him out of the house. A day or two afterward a friend met him in the street and said: 'Jones I have always stood up for you, as you know; but I am not going to do it any longer. Any man who will stand quietly and take a switching from his wife, deserves to be horsewhipped,' Jones looked up with a wink, patting his friend on the back, "Now don't," said he, "why, it didn't hurt me any; and you've no idea what a power of good it did Sarah Ann?”

:0:

Lincoln's Curt Reply to a Clergyman. No nobler reply ever fell from the lips of a ruler, than that uttered by President Lincoln in response to the clergyman who ventured to say, in his presence during the war, that he hoped "the Lord was on our side."

"I am not at all concerned about that," replied Mr.

Lincoln,

for I know that the Lord is always on the side But it is my constant anxiety and prayer

of the right.

that this nation should be on the Lord's side."

:0:

A Short Practical Sermon.

On a certain occasion, two ladies from Tennessee came before the President, asking the release of their husbands, held as prisoners of war at Johnson's Island. They were put off until the following Friday, when they came again, and were again put off until Saturday, At each of the interviews one of the ladies urged that her husband was a religious man. On Saturday, when the President ordered the release of the prisoner, he said to this lady:

"You say your husband is a religious man; tell him, when you meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that in my opinion the religion which sets men to rebel and fight against their Government because, as they think, that Government does not sufficiontly help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven."

:0:

A Celebrated Case.

The celebrated case of Franklin W. Smith and brother. was one of those which most largely helped to bring military tribunals into public contempt. Those two gentleman were arrested and kept in confinement, their papers seized, their business destroyed, their reputation

damaged and a naval court-martial "organized to convict," pursued them unrelentingly till a wiser and juster hand arrested the malice of their prosecutors.

It is known that President Lincoln, after full investigation of the case, annulled the whole proceedings, but it is remarkable that the actual record of his decision could never be obtained from the Navy Department. An exact copy being withheld, the following was presented to the Boston Board of Trade as being very nearly the words of the late President:

"Whereas,

Franklin W. Smith had transactions with the Navy Department to the amount of one million and a quarter of a million of dollars; and, whereas, he had the chance to steal a quarter of a million, and was only charged with stealing twenty-two hundred dollars-and the question now is about his stealing a hundred-I don't believe he stole anything at a Therefore, the record and findings are disapproved-declared null and void, and the defendants are fully discharged."

"It would be difficult," says the New York Tribune, "to sum up the rights and wrongs of the business more briefly than that, or to find a paragraph more characteristically and unmistakably Mr. Lincoln's.

:0,

Recollections of the War President by Judge William Johnston.

"I rendered," says Judge Johnston, "Mr. Lincoln some service in my time. When I went to Washington I observed that among Congressmen and others in high

places, Mr. Lincoln had very few friends. Montgomery Blair was the only one I heard speak of him for a second term.

This was about the middle of his first administration. I went to Washington by way of Columbus, and G. Tod asked me to carry a verbal message to Mr. Lincoln, and that was to tell him that there were certain elements indispensable to the success of the war that would be seriously affected by any interference with McClellan.

"I suppose that the liberal translation of Tod's language would be thus:

"I am keeping the Democratic soldiers in the field, and if McClellan is interfered with I shall not be able to do it.' We all felt some trouble about it. McClellan had been relieved, and one bright moonlight night I saw a regiment, I suppose Pennsylvanians mostly, marching from the Capitol down Pennsylvania avenue, yelling at the top of their lungs, 'Hurrah for Little Mac!' and making a pause before the White House, they kept up that bawling and hurrahing for McClellan.

"I went to see Mr. Lincoln early the next morning, and asked him if he had witnessed the performance on the previous night. He said he had. I asked him what he thought of it. He said it was very perplexing. I told him I had come to make a suggestion. I told him I would introduce him to a young man of fine talents and liberal education, who had lost an arm in the service and I wanted him to tell one of his Cabinet Ministers to give that young man a good place in the Civil Service, and to avail himself of the occasion to declare that the