The original book contained many unprinted characters. Those omissions are too numerous to enumerate here, and have been silently corrected unless more than one alternative existed. Those exceptions are noted below.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Unbalanced and mismatched single- and double-quotation marks remedied only when the correction was unambiguous.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Inconsistent hyphenation retained unless there was a predominant preference for one form.

Text mostly uses “any thing” but sometimes uses “anything”.

Text uses both “Chancelor” and “Chancellor”.

Page 44: “the tenth commandment” probably should be “amendment”.

Page 195 does not have a “Second” order.

Page 256: “rule of political action.” should end with a question mark, not with a period.

Page 244: “acknowledgment” in “as a grateful acknowledgment” was misprinted. It was spelled correctly in Lincoln’s original handwritten letter and that spelling is used here.

Page 376: “reportively replied” was incompletely printed with empty space before “portively”. Transcriber added “re” as it seemed to be the best fit.

Page 386: “homely often” was incompletely printed with empty space before “omely”. Transcriber added “h” as it seemed to be the best fit.

Page 409: “wholly good; almost every” originally had a period after “good”. Changed here to a semi-colon, but perhaps the following word should have been capitalized instead, as “Almost”.

Page 413: “[Here Mr. Meade ... every improvement?]” was missing a closing square bracket. Added by Transcriber based on context.