NOTES. Note 1. Page 20, line 21, after the word "war." Mr. Lincoln did not think money for its own sake a fit object of any man's ambition. Note 2. Page 24, line 2, after the word "Mexico." In a speech delivered in the House July 27, 1848, on General Politics, Mr. Lincoln said: "The declaration that we (the Whigs) have always opposed the Mexican War is true or false accordingly as one may understand the term 'opposing the war.' If to say 'the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President' be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. Whenever they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they said it on what appeared good reasons to them: the marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other property to destruction to you may appear a perfectly amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure, but it does not appear so to us. So to call such an act to us appears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly. But if, when the war had begun and had become the cause of the country, the giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was support of the war, then it is not true that we have always opposed the war." On another occasion Mr. Lincoln said that the claim that the Mexican War was not aggressive reminded him of the farmer who asserted, “I ain't greedy 'bout land, I only just wants what jines mine." |