MAYOR WOOD LECTURES LINCOLN. – Mayor Wood’s address of welcome to the Abolition President, upon his entry into New York, is too good to be lost. It was as follows:
Mr. Linoln: As Mayor of New York, it becomes my duty to extend to you an official welcome in behalf of the corporation. In doing so, permit me to say that this city has never offered hospitality to a man clothed with more exalted powers, or resting under graver responsibilities, than those which circumstances have devolved upon you. Coming into office with a dismembered Government to reconstruct, and a disconnected and hostile people to reconcile, it will require a high patriotism and an elevated comprehension of the whole country and its varied interests, opinions and prejudices to so conduct public affairs as to bring it back again to its former harmonious, consolidated and prosperous condition.
If I refer to this topic, sir, it is because New York is deeply interested. The present political divisions have sorely afflicted her people. All her material interests are paralyzed. Her commercial greatness is endangered. She is the child of the American Union. She has grown up under its maternal care and been fostered by its paternal bounty, and we fear that if the Union dies, the present supremacy of New York may perish with it. To you, therefore, chosen under the forms of the Constitution as the head of the Confederacy, [illegible] look for a restoration of fraternal relations between the States – only to be accomplished by peaceful and conciliatory means – aided by the wisdom of Almighty God.”
