“I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the Executive Department of this Government, together with all legislators, all Judges and magistrates, and all other persons exercising authority in the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers, seamen and marines in the National service, and all other loyal and law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their professed places of public worship on that day, and there to render to the Almighty and merciful Ruler of the universe such homage and such confessions, and to offer him such supplications, as the Congress of the United States have in their aforesaid resolution so solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended. “In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. “Done at the City of Washington, this, the seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth. “By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN “WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.” To some Ohio volunteers, about to return home at the expiration of their term of service, who had called upon the President to pay him their respects, he spoke, on the 18th of August, thus: “SOLDIERS: You are about to return to your homes and your friends, after having, as I learn, performed in camp a comparatively short term of duty in this great contest. I am greatly obliged to you and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. “I wish it might be more generally and universally understood what the country is now engaged in. We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of government and every form of human rights is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed. I say this, in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose. “There may be some inequalities in the practical working of our system. It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion for the value of his property; but if we should wait, before collecting a tax, to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion to every other man, we should never collect any tax at all. There may be mistakes made somewhere; things may be done wrong, which the officers of Government do all they can to prevent mistakes.