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Source citation
Abraham Lincoln to Henry J. Raymond, December 18, 1860, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 4: 156, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
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Transcription adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler
Adapted by Matthew Pinsker, Dickinson College
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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.
Confidential
Springfields, Ills.
Dec. 18, 1860
Hon. H. J. Raymond
My dear Sir
Yours of the 14th. is received. What a very mad-man your correspondent, Smedes is. Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctinction [sic] of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian; and Mr. S. can not prove one of his assertions true.
Mr. S. seems sensitive on the questions of morals and christianity. What does he think of a man who makes charges against another which he does not know to be true, and could easily learn to be false?
As to the pitcher story, it is a forgery out and out. I never made but one speech in Cincinnati---the last speech in the volume containing the Joint Debates between Senator Douglas and myself. I have never yet seen Gov. Chase. I was never in a meeting of negroes in my life; and never saw a pitcher presented by anybody to anybody.
I am much obliged by your letter, and shall be glad to hear from you again when you have anything of interest.
Yours truly
A. LINCOLN
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