President has recovered from illness sufficiently to be at his office today. He receives only Cabinet members and Senators on urgent business. Evening Star (Washington, DC), 15 March 1865, 2d ed., Extra, 2:2.

Receives credentials of Count Wydenbruck, Austrian minister, and replies to his speech. Reply to Count Wydenbruck, 15 March 1865, CW, 8:355.

Conducts long interview with delegation from Louisiana regarding organization of civil government. Field to Lincoln, 16 March 1865, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Converses with Rev. Samuel Roberts, who is writing articles on America for newspapers in England and Wales. Roberts to Lincoln, 14 March 1865, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

President Lincoln writes to political strategist Thurlow Weed, who wrote to praise Lincoln's recent speech to the Congressional Notification Committee. Lincoln thanks Weed, and notes, "Every one likes a compliment." Lincoln offers a self-critique of the second inaugural address. He judges that it is "perhaps better than—any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however . . . is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it." Reply to Notification Committee, 1 March 1865, CW, 8:326-327; Thurlow Weed to Abraham Lincoln, 4 March 1865, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Abraham Lincoln to Thurlow Weed, 15 March 1865, CW, 8:356.

President and Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by Clara Harris, daughter of Senator Harris (N.Y.), and General James G. Wilson, visit Grover's Theatre for performance of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Evening Star (Washington, DC), 16 March 1865, 2:4; Daily National Republican (Washington, DC), 16 March 1865, 2d ed., 2:4; James G. Wilson, "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," Putnam's Magazine 5 (March 1909):528-29.