When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends."
A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.
When it comes time to protecting the homeland, the United States of America must be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy, which desires to strike us again, only has to be right once.
Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war.
Still, I have been no one's enemy but my own. My easy nature, either in drinking or anything else, was always ready to submit to persuasions of profligate companions, who often led me into snares.