Record Data
Source citation
Abraham Lincoln to Michael Hahn, March 13, 1864, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 7: 244, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
Type
Letter
Date Certainty
Exact
Transcriber
Transcription adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler
Adapted by Matthew Pinsker, Dickinson College
Transcription date
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
Private
Executive Mansion, Washington,
March 13. 1864.
Hon. Michael Hahn
My dear Sir:
I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first-free-state Governor of Louisiana. Now you are about to have a Convention which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in---as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.
Yours truly
A. LINCOLN
