Friday the Ides. Until to-day nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But, our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A Colonel was at his side. I shouted “sic simper” before I fired. In jumping, broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it. Though we hated to our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country. This night before the deed I wrote a long article and left it for the National Intelligencer in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. We of the south.
SOURCE: William Eleazar Barton, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, p. 482
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