Major General McClernand Washington, January 8. 1863.
My dear Sir Your interesting communication by the hand of Major Scates is received. I never did ask more, nor ever was willing to accept less, than for all the States, and the people thereof, to take and hold their places, and their rights, in the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. For this alone have I felt authorized to struggle; and I seek neither more nor less now. Still, to use a coarse, but an expressive figure, broken eggs can not be mended. I have issued the emancipation proclamation, and I can not retract it.
After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the ``institution''; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred