The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v6

SIR:–Can we not renew the effort to organize a force to go...

Please con­sult with the gen­er­al-​in-​chief on the sub­ject.

If the Gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey shall fur­nish any new reg­iments, might not they be put in­to such an ex­pe­di­tion? Please think of it.

I be­lieve no lo­cal ob­ject is now more de­sir­able.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

OR­DER OF RE­TAL­IA­TION.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Ju­ly 30, 1863.

It is the du­ty of ev­ery gov­ern­ment to give pro­tec­tion to its cit­izens, of what­ev­er class, col­or, or con­di­tion, and es­pe­cial­ly to those who are du­ly or­ga­nized as sol­diers in the pub­lic ser­vice. The law of na­tions and the us­ages and cus­toms of war, as car­ried on by civ­ilized pow­ers, per­mit no dis­tinc­tion as to col­or in the treat­ment of pris­on­ers of war as pub­lic en­emies. To sell or en­slave any cap­tured per­son, on ac­count of his col­or and for no of­fense against the laws of war, is a re­lapse in­to bar­barism, and a crime against the civ­iliza­tion of the age.

The Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States will give the same pro­tec­tion to all its sol­diers; and if the en­emy shall sell or en­slave any one be­cause of his col­or, the of­fense shall be pun­ished by re­tal­ia­tion up­on the en­emy’s pris­on­ers in our pos­ses­sion.

It is there­fore or­dered that for ev­ery sol­dier of the Unit­ed States killed in vi­ola­tion of the laws of war, a rebel sol­dier shall be ex­ecut­ed; and for ev­ery one en­slaved by the en­emy or sold in­to slav­ery, a rebel sol­dier shall be placed at hard la­bor on the pub­lic works, and con­tin­ued at such la­bor un­til the oth­er shall be re­leased and re­ceive the treat­ment due to a pris­on­er of war.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL S. A. HURL­BUT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Ju­ly 31, 1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL HURL­BUT:

Your let­ter by Mr. Dana was du­ly re­ceived. I now learn that your res­ig­na­tion has reached the War De­part­ment. I al­so learn that an ac­tive com­mand has been as­signed you by Gen­er­al Grant. The Sec­re­tary of War and Gen­er­al Hal­leck are very par­tial to you, as you know I al­so am. We all wish you to re­con­sid­er the ques­tion of re­sign­ing; not that we would wish to re­tain you great­ly against your wish and in­ter­est, but that your de­ci­sion may be at least a very well- con­sid­ered one.

I un­der­stand that Sen­ator [William K.] Se­bas­tian, of Arkansas, thinks of of­fer­ing to re­sume his place in the Sen­ate. Of course the Sen­ate, and not I, would de­cide whether to ad­mit or re­ject him. Still I should feel great in­ter­est in the ques­tion. It may be so pre­sent­ed as to be one of the very great­est na­tion­al im­por­tance; and it may be oth­er­wise so pre­sent­ed as to be of no more than tem­po­rary per­son­al con­se­quence to him.

The Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion ap­plies to Arkansas. I think it is valid in law, and will be so held by the courts. I think I shall not re­tract or re­pu­di­ate it. Those who shall have tast­ed ac­tu­al free­dom I be­lieve can nev­er be slaves or quasi-​slaves again. For the rest, I be­lieve some plan sub­stan­tial­ly be­ing grad­ual eman­ci­pa­tion would be bet­ter for both white and black. The Mis­souri plan re­cent­ly adopt­ed, I do not ob­ject to on ac­count of the time for end­ing the in­sti­tu­tion; but I am sor­ry the be­gin­ning should have been post­poned for sev­en years, leav­ing all that time to ag­itate for the re­peal of the whole thing. It should be­gin at once, giv­ing at least the new-​born a vest­ed in­ter­est in free­dom which could not be tak­en away. If Sen­ator Se­bas­tian could come with some­thing of this sort from Arkansas, I, at least, should take great in­ter­est in his case; and I be­lieve a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual will have scarce­ly done the world so great a ser­vice. See him if you can, and read this to him; but charge him not to make it pub­lic for the present. Write me again.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM FROM GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR. AL­BANY, Au­gust 1, 1863. Recvd 2 P.M.

TO THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES:

I ask that the draft be sus­pend­ed in this State un­til I can send you a com­mu­ni­ca­tion I am prepar­ing.

HO­RA­TIO SEY­MOUR.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Au­gust 1, 1863. 4 P.M.

HIS EX­CEL­LEN­CY GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR, Al­bany, N.Y.:

By what day may I ex­pect your com­mu­ni­ca­tion to reach me? Are you anx­ious about any part ex­cept the city and vicin­ity?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 3, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER (or who­ev­er may be in com­mand of the mil­itary de­part­ment with head­quar­ters at Fort Mon­roe, Va.):

If Dr. Wright, on tri­al at Nor­folk, has been or shall be con­vict­ed, send me a tran­script of his tri­al and con­vic­tion, and do not let ex­ecu­tion be done up­on him un­til my fur­ther or­der.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL N. P. BANKS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 5,1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL BANKS:

While I very well know what I would be glad for Louisiana to do, it is quite a dif­fer­ent thing for me to as­sume di­rec­tion of the mat­ter. I would be glad for her to make a new con­sti­tu­tion, rec­og­niz­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion, and adopt­ing eman­ci­pa­tion in those parts of the State to which the procla­ma­tion does not ap­ply. And while she is at it, I think it would not be ob­jec­tion­able for her to adopt some prac­ti­cal sys­tem by which the two races could grad­ual­ly live them­selves out of their old re­la­tion to each oth­er, and both come out bet­ter pre­pared for the new. Ed­uca­tion for young blacks should be in­clud­ed in the plan. Af­ter all, the pow­er or el­ement of “con­tract” may be suf­fi­cient for this pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od, and by its sim­plic­ity and flex­ibil­ity may be the bet­ter.

As an an­ti­slav­ery man, I have a mo­tive to de­sire eman­ci­pa­tion which proslav­ery men do not have but even they have strong enough rea­son to thus place them­selves again un­der the shield of the Union, and to thus per­pet­ual­ly hedge against the re­cur­rence of the scenes through which we are now pass­ing.

Gov­er­nor She­pley has in­formed me that Mr. Du­rant is now tak­ing a reg­istry, with a view to the elec­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion in Louisiana. This, to me, ap­pears prop­er. If such con­ven­tion were to ask my views, I could present lit­tle else than what I now say to you. I think the thing should be pushed for­ward, so that, if pos­si­ble, its ma­ture work may reach here by the meet­ing of Congress.

For my own part, I think I shall not, in any event, re­tract the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion: nor, as ex­ec­utive, ev­er re­turn to slav­ery any per­son who is free by the terms of that procla­ma­tion, or by any of the acts of Congress.

If Louisiana shall send mem­bers to Congress, their ad­mis­sion to seats will de­pend, as you know, up­on the re­spec­tive Hous­es, and not up­on the Pres­ident.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 7, 1863.

HIS EX­CEL­LEN­CY HO­RA­TIO SEY­MOUR, Gov­er­nor of New York:

Your com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the 3rd in­stant has been re­ceived and at­ten­tive­ly con­sid­ered.

I can­not con­sent to sus­pend the draft in New York, as you re­quest, be­cause, among oth­er rea­sons, time is too im­por­tant.

By the fig­ures you send, which I pre­sume are cor­rect, the twelve dis­tricts rep­re­sent­ed fall in­to two class­es of eight and four re­spec­tive­ly. The dis­par­ity of the quo­tas for the draft in these two class­es is cer­tain­ly very strik­ing, be­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween an av­er­age of 2200 in one class and 4864 in the oth­er. As­sum­ing that the dis­tricts are equal one to an­oth­er in en­tire pop­ula­tion, as re­quired by the plan on which they were made, this dis­par­ity is such as to re­quire at­ten­tion. Much of it, how­ev­er, I sup­pose will be ac­count­ed for by the fact that so many more per­sons fit for sol­diers are in the city than are in the coun­try who have too re­cent­ly ar­rived from oth­er parts of the Unit­ed States and from Eu­rope to be ei­ther in­clud­ed in the cen­sus of 1860, or to have vot­ed in 1862. Still, mak­ing due al­lowance for this, I am yet un­will­ing to stand up­on it as an en­tire­ly suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion of the great dis­par­ity.

I shall di­rect the draft to pro­ceed in all the dis­tricts, draw­ing, how­ev­er, at first from each of the four dis­tricts–to wit, the Sec­ond, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth–on­ly, 2200 be­ing the av­er­age quo­ta of the oth­er class. Af­ter this draw­ing, these four dis­tricts, and al­so the Sev­en­teenth and Twen­ty-​ninth, shall be care­ful­ly re- en­rolled; and, if you please, agents of yours may wit­ness ev­ery step of the pro­cess. Any de­fi­cien­cy which may ap­pear by the new en­rol­ment will be sup­plied by a spe­cial draft for that ob­ject, al­low­ing due cred­it for vol­un­teers who may be ob­tained from these dis­tricts re­spec­tive­ly dur­ing the in­ter­val; and at all points, so far as con­sis­tent with prac­ti­cal con­ve­nience, due cred­its shall be giv­en for vol­un­teers, and your Ex­cel­len­cy shall be no­ti­fied of the time fixed for com­menc­ing the draft in each dis­trict.

I do not ob­ject to abide a de­ci­sion of the Unit­ed States Supreme Court, or of the judges there­of, on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the draft law. In fact, I should be will­ing to fa­cil­itate the ob­tain­ing of it. But I can­not con­sent to lose the time while it is be­ing ob­tained. We are con­tend­ing with an en­emy who, as I un­der­stand, drives ev­ery able-​bod­ied man he can reach in­to his ranks, very much as a butch­er drives bul­locks in­to the slaugh­ter-​pen. No time is wast­ed, no ar­gu­ment is used. This pro­duces an army which will soon turn up­on our now vic­to­ri­ous sol­diers al­ready in the field, if they shall not be sus­tained by re­cruits as they should be. It pro­duces an army with a ra­pid­ity not to be matched on our side if we first waste time to re-​ex­per­iment with the vol­un­teer sys­tem, al­ready deemed by Congress, and pal­pa­bly, in fact, so far ex­haust­ed as to be in­ad­equate; and then more time to ob­tain a court de­ci­sion as to whether a law is con­sti­tu­tion­al, which re­quires a part of those not now in the ser­vice to go to the aid of those who are al­ready in it; and still more time to de­ter­mine with ab­so­lute cer­tain­ty that we get those who are to go in the pre­cise­ly le­gal pro­por­tion to those who are not to go. My pur­pose is to be in my ac­tion just and con­sti­tu­tion­al, and yet prac­ti­cal, in per­form­ing the im­por­tant du­ty with which I am charged, of main­tain­ing the uni­ty and the free prin­ci­ples of our com­mon coun­try.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL U.S. GRANT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 9, 1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL GRANT:

I see by a despatch of yours that you in­cline quite strong­ly to­ward an ex­pe­di­tion against Mo­bile. This would ap­pear tempt­ing to me al­so, were it not that in view of re­cent events in Mex­ico I am great­ly im­pressed with the im­por­tance of re-​es­tab­lish­ing the na­tion­al au­thor­ity in west­ern Texas as soon as pos­si­ble. I am not mak­ing an or­der, how­ev­er; that I leave, for the present at least, to the gen­er­al-​in-​chief.

A word up­on an­oth­er sub­ject: Gen­er­al Thomas has gone again to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Val­ley, with the view of rais­ing col­ored troops. I have no rea­son to doubt that you are do­ing what you rea­son­ably can up­on the same sub­ject. I be­lieve it is a re­source which if vig­or­ous­ly ap­plied now will soon close the con­test. It works dou­bly, weak­en­ing the en­emy and strength­en­ing us. We were not ful­ly ripe for it un­til the riv­er was opened. Now, I think at least one hun­dred thou­sand can and ought to be rapid­ly or­ga­nized along its shores, re­liev­ing all white troops to serve else­where. Mr. Dana un­der­stands you as be­liev­ing that the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion has helped some in your mil­itary op­er­ations. I am very glad if this is so.

Did you re­ceive a short let­ter from me dat­ed the 13th of Ju­ly?

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 10, 1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS:

Yours of the 1st was re­ceived two days ago. I think you must have in­ferred more than Gen­er­al Hal­leck has in­tend­ed, as to any dis­sat­is­fac­tion of mine with you. I am sure you, as a rea­son­able man, would not have been wound­ed could you have heard all my words and seen all my thoughts in re­gard to you. I have not abat­ed in my kind feel­ing for and con­fi­dence in you. I have seen most of your despatch­es to Gen­er­al Hal­leck–prob­ably all of them. Af­ter Grant in­vest­ed Vicks­burg I was very anx­ious lest John­ston should over­whelm him from the out­side, and when it ap­peared cer­tain that part of Bragg’s force had gone and was go­ing to John­ston, it did seem to me it was ex­act­ly the prop­er time for you to at­tack Bragg with what force he had left. In all kind­ness let me say it so seems to me yet. Find­ing from your despatch­es to Gen­er­al Hal­leck that your judg­ment was dif­fer­ent, and be­ing very anx­ious for Grant, I, on one oc­ca­sion, told Gen­er­al Hal­leck I thought he should di­rect you to de­cide at once to im­me­di­ate­ly at­tack Bragg or to stand on the de­fen­sive and send part of your force to Grant. He replied he had al­ready so di­rect­ed in sub­stance. Soon af­ter, despatch­es from Grant abat­ed my anx­iety for him, and in pro­por­tion abat­ed my anx­iety about any move­ment of yours. When af­ter­ward, how­ev­er, I saw a despatch of yours ar­gu­ing that the right time for you to at­tack Bragg was not be­fore, but would be af­ter, the fall of Vicks­burg, it im­pressed me very strange­ly, and I think I so stat­ed to the Sec­re­tary of War and Gen­er­al Hal­leck. It seemed no oth­er than the propo­si­tion that you could bet­ter fight Bragg when John­ston should be at lib­er­ty to re­turn and as­sist him than you could be­fore he could so re­turn to his as­sis­tance.

Since Grant has been en­tire­ly re­lieved by the fall of Vicks­burg, by which John­ston is al­so re­lieved, it has seemed to me that your chance for a stroke has been con­sid­er­ably di­min­ished, and I have not been press­ing you di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly. True, I am very anx­ious for East Ten­nessee to be oc­cu­pied by us; but I see and ap­pre­ci­ate the dif­fi­cul­ties you men­tion. The ques­tion oc­curs, Can the thing be done at all? Does prepa­ra­tion ad­vance at all? Do you not con­sume sup­plies as fast as you get them for­ward? Have you more an­imals to- day than you had at the bat­tle of Stone’s Riv­er? And yet have not more been fur­nished you since then than your en­tire present stock? I ask the same ques­tions as to your mount­ed force.

Do not mis­un­der­stand: I am not cast­ing blame up­on you; I rather think by great ex­er­tion you can get to East Ten­nessee; but a very im­por­tant ques­tion is, Can you stay there? I make no or­der in the case–that I leave to Gen­er­al Hal­leck and your­self.

And now be as­sured once more that I think of you in all kind­ness and con­fi­dence, and that I am not watch­ing you with an evil eye.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 11.1863.

HIS EX­CEL­LEN­CY HO­RA­TIO SEY­MOUR, Gov­er­nor of New York:

Yours of the 8th, with Judge-​Ad­vo­cate-​Gen­er­al Wa­ter­bury’s re­port, was re­ceived to-​day.

Ask­ing you to re­mem­ber that I con­sid­er time as be­ing very im­por­tant, both to the gen­er­al cause of the coun­try and to the sol­diers in the field, I beg to re­mind you that I wait­ed, at your re­quest, from the 1st un­til the 6th in­st., to re­ceive your com­mu­ni­ca­tion dat­ed the 3d. In view of its great length, and the known time and ap­par­ent care tak­en in its prepa­ra­tion, I did not doubt that it con­tained your full case as you de­sired to present it. It con­tained the fig­ures for twelve dis­tricts, omit­ting the oth­er nine­teen, as I sup­pose, be­cause you found noth­ing to com­plain of as to them. I an­swered ac­cord­ing­ly. In do­ing so I laid down the prin­ci­ple to which I pur­pose ad­her­ing, which is to pro­ceed with the draft, at the same time em­ploy­ing in­fal­li­ble means to avoid any great wrong. With the com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­ceived to-​day you send fig­ures for twen­ty-​eight dis­tricts, in­clud­ing the twelve sent be­fore, and still omit­ting three, for which I sup­pose the en­rol­ments are not yet re­ceived. In look­ing over the fuller list of twen­ty-​eight dis­tricts, I find that the quo­tas for six­teen of them are above 2000 and be­low 2700, while, of the rest, six are above 2700 and six are be­low 2000. Ap­ply­ing the prin­ci­ple to these new facts, the Fifth and Sev­enth dis­tricts must be added to the four in which the quo­tas have al­ready been re­duced to 2200 for the first draft; and with these four oth­ers just be added to those to be re-​en­rolled. The cor­rect case will then stand: the quo­tas of the Sec­ond, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Sev­enth, and Eighth dis­tricts fixed at 2200 for the first draft. The Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al in­forms me that the draw­ing is al­ready com­plet­ed in the Six­teenth, Sev­en­teenth, Eigh­teenth, Twen­ty-​sec­ond, Twen­ty-​fourth, Twen­ty-​sixth, Twen­ty- sev­enth, Twen­ty-​eighth, Twen­ty-​ninth, and Thir­ti­eth dis­tricts. In the oth­ers, ex­cept the three out­stand­ing, the draw­ing will be made up­on the quo­tas as now fixed. Af­ter the first draft, the Sec­ond, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Sev­enth, Eighth, Six­teenth, Sev­en­teenth, Twen­ty-​first, Twen­ty-​fifth, Twen­ty-​ninth, and Thir­ty-​first will be en­rolled for the pur­pose and in the man­ner stat­ed in my let­ter of the 7th in­st. The same prin­ci­ple will be ap­plied to the now out­stand­ing dis­tricts when they shall come in. No part of my for­mer let­ter is re­pu­di­at­ed by rea­son of not be­ing re­stat­ed in this, or for any oth­er cause.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL J. A. Mc­CLER­NAND.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 12, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Mc­CLER­NAND.

MY DEAR SIR:–Our friend William G. Greene has just pre­sent­ed a kind let­ter in re­gard to your­self, ad­dressed to me by our oth­er friends Yates, Hatch, and Dubois.

I doubt whether your present po­si­tion is more painful to you than to my­self. Grate­ful for the pa­tri­ot­ic stand so ear­ly tak­en by you in this life-​and-​death strug­gle of the na­tion, I have done what­ev­er has ap­peared prac­ti­ca­ble to ad­vance you and the pub­lic in­ter­est to­geth­er. No charges, with a view to a tri­al, have been pre­ferred against you by any one; nor do I sup­pose any will be. All there is, so far as I have heard, is Gen­er­al Grant’s state­ment of his rea­sons for re­liev­ing you. And even this I have not seen or sought to see; be­cause it is a case, as ap­pears to me, in which I could do noth­ing with­out do­ing harm. Gen­er­al Grant and your­self have been con­spic­uous in our most im­por­tant suc­cess­es; and for me to in­ter­fere and thus mag­ni­fy a breach be­tween you could not but be of evil ef­fect. Bet­ter leave it where the law of the case has placed it. For me to force you back up­on Gen­er­al Grant would be forc­ing him to re­sign. I can­not give you a new com­mand, be­cause we have no forces ex­cept such as al­ready have com­man­ders.

I am con­stant­ly pressed by those who scold be­fore they think, or with­out think­ing at all, to give com­mands re­spec­tive­ly to Fre­mont, Mc­Clel­lan, But­ler, Sigel, Cur­tis, Hunter, Hook­er, and per­haps oth­ers, when, all else out of the way, I have no com­mands to give them. This is now your case; which, as I have said, pains me not less than it does you. My be­lief is that the per­ma­nent es­ti­mate of what a gen­er­al does in the field is fixed by the “cloud of wit­ness­es” who have been with him in the field, and that, re­ly­ing on these, he who has the right needs not to fear.

Your friend as ev­er,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, AU­GUST 16, 1863.

GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR, New York:

Your despatch of this morn­ing is just re­ceived, and I fear I do not per­fect­ly un­der­stand it.

My view of the prin­ci­ple is that ev­ery sol­dier ob­tained vol­un­tar­ily leaves one less to be ob­tained by draft. The on­ly dif­fi­cul­ty is in ap­ply­ing the prin­ci­ple prop­er­ly. Look­ing to time, as hereto­fore, I am un­will­ing to give up a draft­ed man now, even for the cer­tain­ty, much less for the mere chance, of get­ting a vol­un­teer here­after. Again, af­ter the draft in any dis­trict, would it not make trou­ble to take any draft­ed man out and put a vol­un­teer in–for how shall it be de­ter­mined which draft­ed man is to have the priv­ilege of thus go­ing out, to the ex­clu­sion of all the oth­ers? And even be­fore the draft in any dis­trict the quo­ta must be fixed; and the draft must be post­poned in­def­inite­ly if ev­ery time a vol­un­teer is of­fered the of­fi­cers must stop and re­con­struct the quo­ta. At least I fear there might be this dif­fi­cul­ty; but, at all events, let cred­its for vol­un­teers be giv­en up to the last mo­ment which will not pro­duce con­fu­sion or de­lay. That the prin­ci­ple of giv­ing cred­its for vol­un­teers shall be ap­plied by dis­tricts seems fair and prop­er, though I do not know how far by present statis­tics it is prac­ti­ca­ble. When for any cause a fair cred­it is not giv­en at one time, it should be giv­en as soon there­after as prac­ti­ca­ble. My pur­pose is to be just and fair, and yet to not lose time.

A. LIN­COLN

To J. H. HACK­ETT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON Au­gust 17, 1863.

JAMES H. HACK­ETT, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR:–Months ago I should have ac­knowl­edged the re­ceipt of your book and ac­com­pa­ny­ing kind note; and I now have to beg your par­don for not hav­ing done so.

For one of my age I have seen very lit­tle of the dra­ma. The first pre­sen­ta­tion of Fal­staff I ev­er saw was yours here, last win­ter or spring. Per­haps the best com­pli­ment I can pay is to say, as I tru­ly can, I am very anx­ious to see it again. Some of Shake­speare’s plays I have nev­er read, while oth­ers I have gone over per­haps as fre­quent­ly as any un-​pro­fes­sion­al read­er. Among the lat­ter are Lear, Richard III., Hen­ry VI­II., Ham­let, and es­pe­cial­ly Mac­beth. I think noth­ing equals Mac­beth. It is won­der­ful.

Un­like you gen­tle­men of the pro­fes­sion, I think the so­lil­oquy in Ham­let com­menc­ing “Oh, my of­fense is rank,” sur­pass­es that com­menc­ing “To be or not to be.” But par­don this small at­tempt at crit­icism. I should like to hear you pro­nounce the open­ing speech of Richard III. Will you not soon vis­it Wash­ing­ton again? If you do, please call and let me make your per­son­al ac­quain­tance.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN

TO F. F. LOWE.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 17, 1863.

HON. P. F. LOWE, San Fran­cis­co, Cal.:

There seems to be con­sid­er­able mis­un­der­stand­ing about the re­cent move­ment to take pos­ses­sion of the “New Al­maden” mine. It has no ref­er­ence to any oth­er mine or mines.

In re­gard to mines and min­ers gen­er­al­ly, no change of pol­icy by the Gov­ern­ment has been de­cid­ed on, or even thought of, so far as I know.

The “New Al­maden” mine was pe­cu­liar in this: that its oc­cu­pants claimed to be the le­gal own­ers of it on a Mex­ican grant, and went in­to court on that claim. The case found its way in­to the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States, and last term, in and by that court, the claim of the oc­cu­pants was de­cid­ed to be ut­ter­ly fraud­ulent. There­upon it was con­sid­ered the du­ty of the Gov­ern­ment by the Sec­re­tary of the In­te­ri­or, the At­tor­ney-​Gen­er­al, and my­self to take pos­ses­sion of the premis­es; and the At­tor­ney-​Gen­er­al care­ful­ly made out the writ and I signed it. It was not ob­tained sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, al­though I sup­pose Gen­er­al Hal­leck thought it had been, when he tele­graphed, sim­ply be­cause he thought pos­ses­sion was about be­ing tak­en by a mil­itary or­der, while he knew no such or­der had passed through his hands as gen­er­al-​in-​chief.

The writ was sus­pend­ed, up­on ur­gent rep­re­sen­ta­tions from Cal­ifor­nia, sim­ply to keep the peace. It nev­er had any di­rect or in­di­rect ref­er­ence to any mine, place, or per­son, ex­cept the “New Al­maden” mine and the per­sons con­nect­ed with it.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 21, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, War­ren­ton, Va.:

At this late mo­ment I am ap­pealed to in be­half of William Thomp­son of Com­pa­ny K, Third Mary­land Vol­un­teers, in Twelfth Army Corps, said to be at Kel­ly’s Ford, un­der sen­tence to be shot to-​day as a de­sert­er. He is rep­re­sent­ed to me to be very young, with symp­toms of in­san­ity. Please post­pone the ex­ecu­tion till fur­ther or­der.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 22, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Please send me if you can a tran­script of the record in the case of Mc­Quin and Bell, con­vict­ed of mur­der by a mil­itary com­mis­sion. I tele­graphed Gen­er­al Strong for it, but he does not an­swer.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. GRIM­SLEY.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 24, 1863.

MRS. ELIZ­ABETH J. GRIM­SLEY, Spring­field, Ill.:

I mail the pa­pers to you to-​day ap­point­ing John­ny to the Naval school.

A. LIN­COLN

TO CRIT­ICS OF EMAN­CI­PA­TION

To J. C. CON­KLING.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 26, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CON­KLING.

MY DEAR SIR:–Your let­ter invit­ing me to at­tend a mass meet­ing of un­con­di­tion­al Union men, to be held at the cap­ital of Illi­nois, on the 3d day of Septem­ber, has been re­ceived. It would be very agree­able for me thus to meet my old friends at my own home, but I can­not just now be ab­sent from here so long as a vis­it there would re­quire.

The meet­ing is to be of all those who main­tain un­con­di­tion­al de­vo­tion to the Union, and I am sure that my old po­lit­ical friends will thank me for ten­der­ing, as I do, the na­tion’s grat­itude to those oth­er no­ble men whom no par­ti­san mal­ice or par­ti­san hope can make false to the na­tion’s life.

There are those who are dis­sat­is­fied with me. To such I would say: You de­sire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we ob­tain it? There are but three con­ceiv­able ways:

First–to sup­press the re­bel­lion by force of arms. This I am try­ing to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a sec­ond way is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If you are you should say so plain­ly. If you are not for force nor yet for dis­so­lu­tion, there on­ly re­mains some imag­in­able com­pro­mise.

I do not be­lieve that any com­pro­mise em­brac­ing the main­te­nance of the Union is now pos­si­ble. All that I learn leads to a di­rect­ly op­po­site be­lief. The strength of the re­bel­lion is its mil­itary, its army. That army dom­inates all the coun­try and all the peo­ple with­in its range. Any of­fer of terms made by any man or men with­in that range, in op­po­si­tion to that army, is sim­ply noth­ing for the present; be­cause such man or men have no pow­er what­ev­er to en­force their side of a com­pro­mise, if one were made with them.

To il­lus­trate: Sup­pose refugees from the South and peace men of the North get to­geth­er in con­ven­tion, and frame and pro­claim a com­pro­mise em­brac­ing a restora­tion of the Union. In what way can that com­pro­mise be used to keep Lee’s army out of Penn­syl­va­nia? Meade’s army can keep Lee’s army out of Penn­syl­va­nia, and, I think, can ul­ti­mate­ly drive it out of ex­is­tence. But no pa­per com­pro­mise to which the con­trollers of Lee’s army are not agreed can at all af­fect that army. In an ef­fort at such com­pro­mise we would waste time, which the en­emy would im­prove to our dis­ad­van­tage; and that would be all.

A com­pro­mise, to be ef­fec­tive, must be made ei­ther with those who con­trol the rebel army, or with the peo­ple, first lib­er­at­ed from the dom­ina­tion of that army by the suc­cess of our own army. Now al­low me to as­sure you that no word or in­ti­ma­tion from that rebel army, or from any of the men con­trol­ling it, in re­la­tion to any peace com­pro­mise, has ev­er come to my knowl­edge or be­lief. All charges and in­sin­ua­tions to the con­trary are de­cep­tive and ground­less. And I promise you that if any such propo­si­tion shall here­after come, it shall not be re­ject­ed and kept a se­cret from you. I freely ac­knowl­edge my­self to be the ser­vant of the peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the bond of ser­vice, the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, and that, as such, I am re­spon­si­ble to them.

But, to be plain: You are dis­sat­is­fied with me about the ne­gro. Quite like­ly there is a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween you and my­self up­on that sub­ject. I cer­tain­ly wish that all men could be free, while you, I sup­pose, do not. Yet, I have nei­ther adopt­ed nor pro­posed any mea­sure which is not con­sis­tent with even your view, pro­vid­ed you are for the Union. I sug­gest­ed com­pen­sat­ed eman­ci­pa­tion; to which you replied you wished not to be taxed to buy ne­groes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy ne­groes, ex­cept in such way as to save you from greater tax­ation to save the Union ex­clu­sive­ly by oth­er means.

You dis­like the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, and per­haps would have it re­tract­ed. You say it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. I think dif­fer­ent­ly. I think the Con­sti­tu­tion in­vests its com­man­der-​in-​chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are prop­er­ty. Is there, has there ev­er been, any ques­tion that by the law of war, prop­er­ty, both of en­emies and friends, may be tak­en when need­ed? And is it not need­ed when­ev­er it helps us and hurts the en­emy? Armies, the world over, de­stroy en­emies’ prop­er­ty when they can­not use it, and even de­stroy their own to keep it from the en­emy. Civ­ilized bel­liger­ents do all in their pow­er to help them­selves or hurt the en­emy, ex­cept a few things re­gard­ed as bar­barous or cru­el. Among the ex­cep­tions are the mas­sacre of van­quished foes and non-​com­bat­ants, male and fe­male.

But the procla­ma­tion, as law, ei­ther is valid or is not valid. If it is not valid it needs no re­trac­tion. If it is valid it can­not be re­tract­ed, any more than the dead can be brought to life. Some of you pro­fess to think its re­trac­tion would op­er­ate fa­vor­ably for the Union, why bet­ter af­ter the re­trac­tion than be­fore the is­sue? There was more than a year and a half of tri­al to sup­press the re­bel­lion be­fore the procla­ma­tion was is­sued, the last one hun­dred days of which passed un­der an ex­plic­it no­tice that it was com­ing, un­less avert­ed by those in re­volt re­turn­ing to their al­le­giance. The war has cer­tain­ly pro­gressed as fa­vor­ably for us since the is­sue of the procla­ma­tion as be­fore.

I know, as ful­ly as one can know the opin­ions of oth­ers, that some of the com­man­ders of our armies in the field, who have giv­en us our most im­por­tant vic­to­ries, be­lieve the eman­ci­pa­tion pol­icy and the use of col­ored troops con­sti­tute the heav­iest blows yet dealt to the re­bel­lion, and that at least one of those im­por­tant suc­cess­es could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black sol­diers.

Among the com­man­ders who hold these views are some who have nev­er had any affin­ity with what is called “Abo­li­tion­ism,” or with “Re­pub­li­can Par­ty pol­itics,” but who hold them pure­ly as mil­itary opin­ions. I sub­mit their opin­ions are en­ti­tled to some weight against the ob­jec­tions of­ten urged that eman­ci­pa­tion and arm­ing the blacks are un­wise as mil­itary mea­sures, and were not adopt­ed as such in good faith. You say that you will not fight to free ne­groes. Some of them seem will­ing to fight for you; but no mat­ter. Fight you, then, ex­clu­sive­ly, to save the Union. I is­sued the procla­ma­tion on pur­pose to aid you in sav­ing the Union. When­ev­er you shall have con­quered all re­sis­tance to the Union, if I shall urge you to con­tin­ue fight­ing, it will be an apt time then for you to de­clare you will not fight to free ne­groes. I thought that in your strug­gle for the Union, to what­ev­er ex­tent the ne­groes should cease help­ing the en­emy, to that ex­tent it weak­ened the en­emy in his re­sis­tance to you. Do you think dif­fer­ent­ly? I thought that what­ev­er ne­groes can be got to do as sol­diers, leaves just so much less for white sol­diers to do in sav­ing the Union. Does it ap­pear oth­er­wise to you? But ne­groes, like oth­er peo­ple, act up­on mo­tives. Why should they do any­thing for us if we will do noth­ing for them? If they stake their lives for us they must be prompt­ed by the strongest mo­tive, even the promise of free­dom. And the promise, be­ing made, must be kept.

The signs look bet­ter. The Fa­ther of Wa­ters again goes un­vexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North­west for it; nor yet whol­ly to them. Three hun­dred miles up they met New Eng­land, Em­pire, Key­stone, and Jer­sey, hew­ing their way right and left. The sun­ny South, too, in more col­ors than one, al­so lent a help­ing hand. On the spot, their part of the his­to­ry was jot­ted down in black and white. The job was a great na­tion­al one, and let none be slight­ed who bore an hon­or­able part in it And while those who have cleared the great riv­er may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that any­thing has been more brave­ly and well done than at Anti­etam, Murfrees­boro, Get­tys­burg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Un­cle Sam’s web-​feet be for­got­ten. At all the wa­tery mar­gins they have been present; not on­ly on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid riv­er, but al­so up the nar­row, mud­dy bay­ou, and wher­ev­er the ground was a lit­tle damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Re­pub­lic–for the prin­ci­ple it lives by and keeps alive–for man’s vast fu­ture–thanks to all.

Peace does not ap­pear so dis­tant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keep­ing in all fu­ture time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no suc­cess­ful ap­peal from the bal­lot to the bul­let, and that they who take such ap­peal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can re­mem­ber that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-​poised bay­onet, they have helped mankind on to this great con­sum­ma­tion; while I fear there will be some white ones un­able to for­get that with ma­lig­nant heart and de­ceit­ful speech they have striv­en to hin­der it.

Still, let us not be over-​san­guine of a speedy, fi­nal tri­umph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dili­gent­ly ap­ply the means, nev­er doubt­ing that a just God, in His own good time, will give us the right­ful re­sult.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO JAMES CON­KLING. (Pri­vate.) WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, D. C., Au­gust 27.1863.

HON. JAMES CON­KLING.

MY DEAR CON­KLING:–I can­not leave here now. Here­with is a let­ter in­stead. You are one of the best pub­lic read­ers. I have but one sug­ges­tion–read it very slow­ly. And now God bless you, and all good Union men.

Yours as ev­er,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY STAN­TON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 26, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR SIR:-In my cor­re­spon­dence with Gov­er­nor Sey­mour in re­la­tion to the draft, I have said to him, sub­stan­tial­ly, that cred­its shall be giv­en for vol­un­teers up to the lat­est mo­ment, be­fore draw­ing in any dis­trict, that can be done with­out pro­duc­ing con­fu­sion or de­lay. In or­der to do this, let our mus­ter­ing of­fi­cers in New York and else­where be at, once in­struct­ed that when­ev­er they muster in­to our ser­vice any num­ber of vol­un­teers, to at once make re­turn to the War De­part­ment, both by tele­graph and mail, the date of the muster, the num­ber mus­tered, and the Con­gres­sion­al or en­rol­ment dis­trict or dis­tricts, of their res­idences, giv­ing the num­bers sep­arate­ly for each dis­trict. Keep these re­turns dili­gent­ly post­ed, and by them give full cred­it on the quo­tas, if pos­si­ble, on the last day be­fore the draft be­gins in any dis­trict.

Again, I have in­formed Gov­er­nor Sey­mour that he shall be no­ti­fied of the time when the draft is to com­mence in each dis­trict in his State. This is equal­ly prop­er for all the States. In or­der to car­ry it out, I pro­pose that so soon as the day for com­menc­ing the draft in any dis­trict is def­inite­ly de­ter­mined, the gov­er­nor of the State, in­clud­ing the dis­trict, be no­ti­fied there­of, both by tele­graph and mail, in form about as fol­lows:

___________________________________

___________________________1863.

Gov­er­nor of ___________________________________ _____________________________________

You are no­ti­fied that the draft will com­mence in the____________ _______________________dis­trict, at _________ on the ___________ day _____________ 1863, at ________ A.M. of said day.

Please ac­knowl­edge re­ceipt of this by tele­graph and mail. ____________________________ ____________________________

This no­tice may be giv­en by the Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al here, the sub-​provost-​mar­shal-​gen­er­als in the States, or per­haps by the dis­trict provost-​mar­shals.

When­ev­er we shall have so far pro­ceed­ed in New York as to make the re-​en­rol­ment spe­cial­ly promised there prac­ti­ca­ble, I wish that al­so to go for­ward, and I wish Gov­er­nor Sey­mour no­ti­fied of it; so that if he choose, he can place agents of his with ours to see the work fair­ly done.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 27. 1863.

HIS EX­CEL­LEN­CY HO­RA­TIO SEY­MOUR,

Gov­er­nor of New York:

Yours of the 21st, with ex­hibits, was re­ceived on the 24th.

In the midst of press­ing du­ties I have been un­able to an­swer it soon­er. In the mean­time the Provost Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al has had ac­cess to yours, and has ad­dressed a com­mu­ni­ca­tion in re­la­tion to it to the Sec­re­tary of War, a copy of which com­mu­ni­ca­tion I here­with en­close to you.

In­de­pen­dent­ly of this, I ad­dressed a let­ter on the same sub­ject to the Sec­re­tary of War, a copy of which I al­so en­close to you. The Sec­re­tary has sent my let­ter to the Provost-​Mar­shal Gen­er­al, with di­rec­tion that he adopt and fol­low the course there­in point­ed out. It will, of course, over­rule any con­flict­ing view of the Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al, if there be such.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

P. S.-I do not mean to say that if the Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al can find it prac­ti­ca­ble to give cred­its by sub­dis­tricts, I over­rule him in that. On the con­trary, I shall be glad of it; but I will not take the risk of over-​bur­den­ing him by or­der­ing him to do it. A. L.

Abra­ham Lin­coln

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 27, 1863 8.30 P. M.

GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD, St. LOUIS:

I have just re­ceived the despatch which fol­lows, from two very in­flu­en­tial cit­izens of Kansas, whose names I omit. The se­vere blow they have re­ceived nat­ural­ly enough makes them in­tem­per­ate even with­out there be­ing any just cause for blame. Please do your ut­most to give them fu­ture se­cu­ri­ty and to pun­ish their in­vaders.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL G. G. MEADE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 27, 1863 9 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, War­ren­ton, Va.:

Wal­ter, Ri­onese, Folan­cy, Lai, and Kuhn ap­pealed to me for mer­cy, with­out giv­ing any ground for it what­ev­er. I un­der­stand these are very fla­grant cas­es, and that you deem their pun­ish­ment as be­ing in­dis­pens­able to the ser­vice. If I am not mis­tak­en in this, please let them know at once that their ap­peal is de­nied.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO F. C. SHER­MAN AND J. S. HAYES.

WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 27, 1863.

F. C. SHER­MAN, May­or, J. S. HAVES, Comptroller, Chica­go, Ill.:

Yours of the 24th, in re­la­tion to the draft, is re­ceived. It seems to me the Gov­ern­ment here will be over­whelmed if it un­der­takes to con­duct these mat­ters with the au­thor­ities of cities and coun­ties. They must be con­duct­ed with the gov­er­nors of States, who will, of course, rep­re­sent their cities and coun­ties. Mean­while you need not be un­easy un­til you again hear from here.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 28, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER, Fort Mon­roe, Va. :

Please no­ti­fy, if you can, Sen­ator Bow­den, Mr. Segar, and Mr. Chan­dler, all or any of them, that I now have the record in Dr. Wright’s case, and am ready to hear them. When you shall have got the no­tice to them, please let me know.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL CRAW­FORD.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 28, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL CRAW­FORD, Rap­pa­han­nock Sta­tion, Va.:

I re­gret that I can­not be present to wit­ness the pre­sen­ta­tion of a sword by the gal­lant Penn­syl­va­nia Re­serve Corps to one so wor­thy to re­ceive it as Gen­er­al Meade.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO L. SWETT.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Au­gust 29, 1863.

HON. L. SWETT, San Fran­cis­co, Cal.: If the Gov­ern­ment’s rights are re­served, the Gov­ern­ment will be sat­is­fied, and at all events it will con­sid­er.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C. Au­gust 29, 1863.

MRS. A. LIN­COLN, Manch­ester, N. H.:

All quite well. Fort Sumter is cer­tain­ly bat­tered down and ut­ter­ly use­less to the en­emy, and it is be­lieved here, but not en­tire­ly cer­tain, that both Sumter and Fort Wag­ner are oc­cu­pied by our forces. It is al­so cer­tain that Gen­er­al Gilmore has thrown some shot in­to the city of Charleston.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO J. C. CON­KLING.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 31, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CON­KLING, Spring­field, Ill.:

In my let­ter of the 26th in­sert be­tween the sen­tence end­ing “since the is­sue of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion as be­fore” and the next, com­menc­ing “You say you will not fight, etc.,” what fol­lows be­low my sig­na­ture here­to.

A. LIN­COLN.

“I know as ful­ly as one can know the opin­ions of oth­ers that some of the com­man­ders of our armies in the field, who have giv­en us our most im­por­tant suc­cess­es, be­lieve the eman­ci­pa­tion pol­icy and the use of col­ored troops con­sti­tute the heav­iest blow yet dealt to the re­bel­lion, and that at least one of those im­por­tant suc­cess­es could not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of black sol­diers. Among the com­man­ders hold­ing these views are some who have nev­er had any affin­ity with what is called abo­li­tion­ism, or with Re­pub­li­can par­ty pol­itics, but who hold them pure­ly as mil­itary opin­ions. I sub­mit these opin­ions as be­ing en­ti­tled to some weight against the ob­jec­tions, of­ten urged, that eman­ci­pa­tion and arm­ing the blacks are un­wise as mil­itary mea­sures and were not adopt­ed as such in good faith.”

TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Au­gust 31, 1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS:

Yours of the 22d was re­ceived yes­ter­day. When I wrote you be­fore, I did not in­tend, nor do I now, to en­gage in an ar­gu­ment with you on mil­itary ques­tions. You had in­formed me you were im­pressed through Gen­er­al Hal­leck that I was dis­sat­is­fied with you, and I could not blunt­ly de­ny that I was with­out un­just­ly im­pli­cat­ing him. I there­fore con­clud­ed to tell you the plain truth, be­ing sat­is­fied the mat­ter would thus ap­pear much small­er than it would if seen by mere glimpses. I re­peat that my ap­pre­ci­ation of you has not abat­ed. I can nev­er for­get whilst I re­mem­ber any­thing, that about the end of last year and the be­gin­ning of this, you gave us a hard-​earned vic­to­ry, which, had there been a de­feat in­stead, the na­tion could hard­ly have lived over. Nei­ther can I for­get the check you so op­por­tune­ly gave to a dan­ger­ous sen­ti­ment which was spread­ing in the North.

Yours, as ev­er,

A. LIN­COLN

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK.

Au­gust 31, 1863

It is not im­prob­able that re­tal­ia­tion for the re­cent great out­rage at Lawrence, in Kansas, may ex­tend to in­dis­crim­inate slaugh­ter on the Mis­souri bor­der, un­less avert­ed by very ju­di­cious ac­tion. I shall be obliged if the gen­er­al-​in-​chief can make any sug­ges­tions to Gen­er­al Schofield up­on the sub­ject.

A. LIN­COLN.

PO­LIT­ICAL MO­TI­VAT­ED MIS­QUO­TA­TION IN NEWS­PA­PER

TELE­GRAM TO J. C. CON­KLING.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 3, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CON­KLING, Spring­field, Ill.:

I am mor­ti­fied this morn­ing to find the let­ter to you botched up in the East­ern pa­pers, tele­graphed from Chica­go. How did this hap­pen?

A. LIN­COLN.

OR­DER CON­CERN­ING COM­MER­CIAL REG­ULA­TIONS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 4, 1863.

Or­dered, That the ex­ec­utive or­der dat­ed Novem­ber 21, 1862, pro­hibit­ing the ex­por­ta­tion from the Unit­ed States of arms, am­mu­ni­tion, or mu­ni­tions of war, un­der which the com­man­dants of de­part­ments were, by or­der of the Sec­re­tary of War dat­ed May 13, 1863, di­rect­ed to pro­hib­it the pur­chase and sale, for ex­por­ta­tion from the Unit­ed States, of all hors­es and mules with­in their re­spec­tive com­mands, and to take and ap­pro­pri­ate for the use of the Unit­ed States any hors­es, mules, and live stock de­signed for ex­por­ta­tion, be so far mod­ified that any arms hereto­fore im­port­ed in­to the Unit­ed States may be re-​ex­port­ed to the place of orig­inal ship­ment, and that any live stock raised in any State or Ter­ri­to­ry bound­ed by the Pa­cif­ic Ocean may be ex­port­ed from, any port of such State or Ter­ri­to­ry.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO J. SEGAR.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C.. Septem­ber 5, 1863.

HON. JOSEPH SEGAR, Fort Mon­roe, Va.:

I have just seen your despatch to the Sec­re­tary of War, who is ab­sent. I al­so send a despatch from Ma­jor Hayn­er of the 3d show­ing that he had no­tice of my or­der, and stat­ing that the peo­ple were ju­bi­lant over it, as a vic­to­ry over the Gov­ern­ment ex­tort­ed by fear, and that he had al­ready col­lect­ed about $4000 of the mon­ey. If he has pro­ceed­ed since, I shall hold him ac­count­able for his con­tu­ma­cy. On the con­trary, no dol­lar shall be re­fund­ed by my or­der un­til it shall ap­pear that my act in the case has been ac­cept­ed in the right spir­it.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON. D. C. Septem­ber 6, 1863.

MRS. A. LIN­COLN, Manch­ester, Vt.:

All well and no news ex­cept that Gen­er­al Burn­side has Knoxville, Ten.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO SEC­RE­TARY STAN­TON.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 6, 1863. 6 P.M.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR, Bed­ford, Pa.:

Burn­side has Kingston and Knoxville, and drove the en­emy across the riv­er at Loudon, the en­emy de­stroy­ing the bridge there; cap­tured some stores and one or two trains; very lit­tle fight­ing; few wound­ed and none killed. No oth­er news of con­se­quence.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO F. C. SHER­MAN AND J. S. HAYES.

WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 7, 1863.

Yours of Au­gust 29 just re­ceived. I sup­pose it was in­tend­ed by Congress that this gov­ern­ment should ex­ecute the act in ques­tion with­out de­pen­dence up­on any oth­er gov­ern­ment, State, city, or coun­ty. It is, how­ev­er, with­in the range of prac­ti­cal con­ve­nience to con­fer with the gov­ern­ments of States, while it is quite be­yond that range to have cor­re­spon­dence on the sub­ject with coun­ties and cities. They are too nu­mer­ous. As in­stances, I have cor­re­spond­ed with Gov­er­nor Sey­mour, but Not with May­or Opdyke; with Gov­er­nor Curtin, but not with May­or Hen­ry.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR JOHN­SON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 8, 1863. 9.30

HON. AN­DREW JOHN­SON, Nashville, Tenn.:

Despatch of yes­ter­day just re­ceived. I shall try to find the pa­per you men­tion and care­ful­ly con­sid­er it. In the mean­time let me urge that you do your ut­most to get ev­ery man you can, black and white, un­der arms at the very ear­li­est mo­ment, to guard roads, bridges, and trains, al­low­ing all the bet­ter trained sol­diers to go for­ward to Rose­crans. Of course I mean for you to act in co-​op­er­ation with and not in­de­pen­dent­ly of, the mil­itary au­thor­ities.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 9, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, War­ren­ton, Va.:

It would be a gen­er­ous thing to give Gen­er­al Wheaton a leave of ab­sence for ten or fif­teen days, and if you can do so with­out in­jury to the ser­vice, please do it.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL WHEATON.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Septem­ber 10, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL WHEATON, Army of Po­tomac:

Yes­ter­day at the in­stance of Mr. Blair, sen­ator, I tele­graphed Gen­er­al Meade ask­ing him to grant you a leave of ab­sence, to which he replied that you had not ap­plied for such leave, and that you can have it when you do ap­ply. I sup­pose it is prop­er for you to know this.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GOV­ER­NOR JOHN­SON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, SEPTEM­BER, 11, 1863

HON. AN­DREW JOHN­SON.

MY DEAR SIR:–All Ten­nessee is now clear of armed in­sur­rec­tion­ists. You need not to be re­mind­ed that it is the nick of time for rein­au­gu­rat­ing a loy­al State gov­ern­ment. Not a mo­ment should be lost. You and the co-​op­er­at­ing friends there can bet­ter judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I on­ly of­fer a few sug­ges­tions. The rein­au­gu­ra­tion must not be such as to give con­trol of the State and its rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Congress to the en­emies of the Union, driv­ing its friends there in­to po­lit­ical ex­ile. The whole strug­gle for Ten­nessee will have been prof­it­less to both State and na­tion if it so ends that Gov­er­nor John­son is put down and Gov­er­nor Har­ris put up. It must not be so. You must have it oth­er­wise. Let the re­con­struc­tion be the work of such men on­ly as can be trust­ed for the Union. Ex­clude all oth­ers, and trust that your gov­ern­ment so or­ga­nized will be rec­og­nized here as be­ing the one of re­pub­li­can form to be guar­an­teed to the State, and to be pro­tect­ed against in­va­sion and do­mes­tic vi­olence. It is some­thing on the ques­tion of time to re­mem­ber that it can­not be known who is next to oc­cu­py the po­si­tion I now hold, nor what he will do. I see that you have de­clared in fa­vor of eman­ci­pa­tion in Ten­nessee, for which may God bless you. Get eman­ci­pa­tion in­to your new State gov­ern­ment con­sti­tu­tion and there will be no such word as fail for your cause. The rais­ing of col­ored troops, I think, will great­ly help ev­ery way.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL A. E. BURN­SIDE.

WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 11, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Cum­ber­land Gap:

Yours re­ceived. A thou­sand thanks for the late suc­cess­es you have giv­en us. We can­not al­low you to re­sign un­til things shall be a lit­tle more set­tled in East Ten­nessee. If then, pure­ly on your own ac­count, you wish to re­sign, we will not fur­ther refuse you.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 11, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, War­ren­ton, Va.:

It is rep­re­sent­ed to me that Thomas Ed­ds, in your army, is un­der sen­tence of death for de­ser­tion, to be ex­ecut­ed next Mon­day. It is al­so said his sup­posed de­ser­tion is com­prised in an ab­sence com­menc­ing with his falling be­hind last win­ter, be­ing cap­tured and paroled by the en­emy, and then go­ing home. If this be near the truth, please sus­pend the ex­ecu­tion till fur­ther or­der and send in the record of the tri­al.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Septem­ber 12, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEAD, War­ren­ton, Va.:

The name is “Thomas Ed­ds” not “Ed­dies” as in your despatch. The pa­pers left with me do not des­ig­nate the reg­iment to which he be­longs. The man who gave me the pa­pers, I do not know how to find again. He on­ly told me that Ed­ds is in the Army of the Po­tomac, and that he fell out of the ranks dur­ing Burn­side’s mud march last win­ter. If I get fur­ther in­for­ma­tion I will tele­graph again.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO H. H. SCOTT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 13, 1863.

Dr. WILLIAM H. H. SCOTT, Danville, Ill.:

Your niece, Mrs. Kate Sharp, can now have no dif­fi­cul­ty in go­ing to Knoxville, Tenn., as that place is with­in our mil­itary lines.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO J. G. BLAINE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 25, 1863.

J. G. BLAINE, Au­gus­ta, Me.: Thanks both for the good news you send and for the send­ing of it.

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION SUS­PEND­ING WRIT OF HABEAS COR­PUS, SEPTEM­BER 15, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States has or­dained that the priv­ilege of the writ of habeas cor­pus shall not be sus­pend­ed un­less when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire it; and:

Where­as a re­bel­lion was ex­ist­ing on the third day of March, 1863, which re­bel­lion is still ex­ist­ing; and:

Where­as by a statute which was ap­proved on that day it was en­act­ed by the Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States in Congress as­sem­bled that dur­ing the present in­sur­rec­tion the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, when­ev­er in his judg­ment the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire, is au­tho­rized to sus­pend the priv­ilege of the writ of habeas cor­pus in any case through­out the Unit­ed States or any part there­of; and:

Where­as, in the judg­ment of the Pres­ident, the pub­lic safe­ty does re­quire that the priv­ilege of the said writ shall new be sus­pend­ed through­out the Unit­ed States in the cas­es where, by the au­thor­ity of the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, mil­itary, naval, and civ­il of­fi­cers of the Unit­ed States, or any of them, hold per­sons un­der their com­mand or in their cus­tody, ei­ther as pris­on­ers of war, spies, or aiders or abet­tors of the en­emy, or of­fi­cers, sol­diers, or sea­men en­rolled or draft­ed or mus­tered or en­list­ed in or be­long­ing to the land or naval forces of the Unit­ed States, or as de­sert­ers there­from, or oth­er­wise amenable to mil­itary law or the rules and ar­ti­cles of war or the rules or reg­ula­tions pre­scribed for the mil­itary or naval ser­vices by au­thor­ity of the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, or for re­sist­ing a draft, or for any oth­er of­fense against the mil­itary or naval ser­vice

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, do here­by pro­claim and make known to all whom it may con­cern that the priv­ilege of the writ of habeas cor­pus is sus­pend­ed through­out the Unit­ed States in the sev­er­al cas­es be­fore men­tioned, and that this sus­pen­sion will con­tin­ue through­out the du­ra­tion of the said re­bel­lion or un­til this procla­ma­tion shall, by a sub­se­quent one to be is­sued by the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, be mod­ified or re­voked. And I do here­by re­quire all mag­is­trates, at­tor­neys, and oth­er civ­il of­fi­cers with­in the Unit­ed States and all of­fi­cers and oth­ers in the mil­itary and naval ser­vices of the Unit­ed States to take dis­tinct no­tice of this sus­pen­sion and to give it full ef­fect, and all cit­izens of the Unit­ed States to con­duct and gov­ern them­selves ac­cord­ing­ly and in con­for­mi­ty with the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States and the laws of Congress in such case made and pro­vid­ed.

In tes­ti­mo­ny where­of I have here­un­to set my hand and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed, this fif­teenth day of Septem­ber, A.D. 1863, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica the eighty-​eighth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 13, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK:

If I did not mis­un­der­stand Gen­er­al Meade’s last despatch, he posts you on facts as well as he can, and de­sires your views and those of the Gov­ern­ment as to what he shall do. My opin­ion is that he should move up­on Lee at once in man­ner of gen­er­al at­tack, leav­ing to de­vel­op­ments whether he will make it a re­al at­tack. I think this would de­vel­op Lee’s re­al con­di­tion and pur­pos­es bet­ter than the cav­al­ry alone can do. Of course my opin­ion is not to con­trol you and Gen­er­al Meade.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. SPEED.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Septem­ber 16, 1862.

MRS. J. F. SPEED, Louisville, Ky.:

Mr. Hol­man will not be jos­tled from his place with my knowl­edge and con­sent.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 16, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, War­ren­ton, Va.:

Is Al­bert Jones of Com­pa­ny K, Third Mary­land Vol­un­teers, to be shot on Fri­day next? If so please state to me the gen­er­al fea­tures of the case.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 17, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

Ma­jor Haynor left here sev­er­al days ago un­der a promise to put down in writ­ing, in de­tail, the facts in re­la­tion to the mis­con­duct of the peo­ple on the east­ern shore of Vir­ginia. He has not re­turned. Please send him over.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 17, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Head­quar­ters Army of Po­tomac:

Yours in re­la­tion to Al­bert Jones is re­ceived. I am ap­pealed to in be­half of Richard M. Abrams of Com­pa­ny A, Sixth New Jer­sey Vol­un­teers, by Gov­er­nor Park­er, At­tor­ney-​Gen­er­al Frel­inghuy­sen, Gov­er­nor Newell, Hon. Mr. Mid­dle­ton, M. C., of the dis­trict, and the mar­shal who ar­rest­ed him. I am al­so ap­pealed to in be­half of Joseph S. Smith, of Com­pa­ny A, Eleventh New Jer­sey Vol­un­teers, by Gov­er­nor Park­er, At­tor­ney-​Gen­er­al Frel­inghuy­sen, and Hon. Mar­cus C. Ward. Please state the cir­cum­stances of their cas­es to me.

A. LIN­COLN.

RE­QUEST TO SUG­GEST NAME FOR A BA­BY

TELE­GRAM TO C. M. SMITH.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 18, 1863.

C.M. SMITH, Esq., Spring­field, Ill.:

Why not name him for the gen­er­al you fan­cy most? This is my sug­ges­tion.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. ARM­STRONG.

WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 18, 1863.

MRS. HAN­NAH ARM­STRONG, Pe­ters­burg, Ill.:

I have just or­dered the dis­charge of your boy William, as you say, now at Louisville, Ky.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GOV­ER­NOR JOHN­SON. (Pri­vate.) EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 19.1863.

HON. AN­DREW JOHN­SON.

MY DEAR SIR:–Here­with I send you a pa­per, sub­stan­tial­ly the same as the one drawn up by your­self and men­tioned in your despatch, but slight­ly changed in two par­tic­ulars: First, yours was so drawn as that I au­tho­rized you to car­ry in­to ef­fect the fourth sec­tion, etc., where­as I so mod­ify it as to au­tho­rize you to so act as to re­quire the Unit­ed States to car­ry in­to ef­fect that sec­tion.

Sec­ond­ly, you had a clause com­mit­ting me in some sort to the State con­sti­tu­tion of Ten­nessee, which I feared might em­bar­rass you in mak­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion, if you de­sire; so I dropped that clause.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

[In­clo­sure.]

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C.,

Septem­ber 19, 1863.

HON. AN­DREW JOHN­SON, Mil­itary Gov­er­nor of Ten­nessee:

In ad­di­tion to the mat­ters con­tained in the or­ders and in­struc­tions giv­en you by the Sec­re­tary of War, you are here­by au­tho­rized to ex­er­cise such pow­ers as may be nec­es­sary and prop­er to en­able the loy­al peo­ple of Ten­nessee to present such a re­pub­li­can form of State gov­ern­ment as will en­ti­tle the State to the guar­an­ty of the Unit­ed States there­for, and to be pro­tect­ed un­der such State gov­ern­ment by the Unit­ed States against in­va­sion and do­mes­tic vi­olence, all ac­cord­ing to the fourth Sec­tion of the fourth ar­ti­cle of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN

MIL­ITARY STRAT­EGY

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON D.C. Septem­ber 19, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK:

By Gen­er­al Meade’s despatch to you of yes­ter­day it ap­pears that he de­sires your views and those of the gov­ern­ment as to whether he shall ad­vance up­on the en­emy. I am not pre­pared to or­der, or even ad­vise, an ad­vance in this case, where­in I know so lit­tle of par­tic­ulars, and where­in he, in the field, thinks the risk is so great and the promise of ad­van­tage so small.

And yet the case presents mat­ter for very se­ri­ous con­sid­er­ation in an­oth­er as­pect. These two armies con­front each oth­er across a small riv­er, sub­stan­tial­ly mid­way be­tween the two cap­itals, each de­fend­ing its own cap­ital, and men­ac­ing the oth­er. Gen­er­al Meade es­ti­mates the en­emy’s in­fantry in front of him at not less than 40,000. Sup­pose we add fifty per cent. to this for cav­al­ry, ar­tillery, and ex­tra-​du­ty men stretch­ing as far as Rich­mond, mak­ing the whole force of the en­emy 60,000.

Gen­er­al Meade, as shown by the re­turns, has with him, and be­tween him and Wash­ing­ton, of the same class­es, of well men, over 90,000. Nei­ther can bring the whole of his men in­to a bat­tle; but each can bring as large a per­cent­age in as the oth­er. For a bat­tle, then, Gen­er­al Meade has three men to Gen­er­al Lee’s two. Yet, it hav­ing been de­ter­mined that choos­ing ground and stand­ing on the de­fen­sive gives so great ad­van­tage that the three can­not safe­ly at­tack the two, the three are left sim­ply stand­ing on the de­fen­sive al­so.

If the en­emy’s 60,000 are suf­fi­cient to keep our 90,000 away from Rich­mond, why, by the same rule, may not 40,000 of ours keep their 60,000 away from Wash­ing­ton, leav­ing us 50,000 to put to some oth­er use? Hav­ing prac­ti­cal­ly come to the mere de­fen­sive, it seems to be no econ­omy at all to em­ploy twice as many men for that ob­ject as are need­ed. With no ob­ject, cer­tain­ly, to mis­lead my­self, I can per­ceive no fault in this state­ment, un­less we ad­mit we are not the equal of the en­emy, man for man. I hope you will con­sid­er it.

To avoid mis­un­der­stand­ing, let me say that to at­tempt to fight the en­emy slow­ly back in­to his en­trench­ments at Rich­mond, and then to cap­ture him, is an idea I have been try­ing to re­pu­di­ate for quite a year.

My judg­ment is so clear against it that I would scarce­ly al­low the at­tempt to be made if the gen­er­al in com­mand should de­sire to make it. My last at­tempt up­on Rich­mond was to get Mc­Clel­lan, when he was near­er there than the en­emy was, to run in ahead of him. Since then I have con­stant­ly de­sired the Army of the Po­tomac to make Lee’s army, and not Rich­mond, its ob­jec­tive point. If our army can­not fall up­on the en­emy and hurt him where he is, it is plain to me it can gain noth­ing by at­tempt­ing to fol­low him over a suc­ces­sion of in­trenched lines in­to a for­ti­fied city.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 20, 1863.

MRS. A. LIN­COLN, New York:

I nei­ther see nor hear any­thing of sick­ness here now, though there may be much with­out my know­ing it. I wish you to stay or come just as is most agree­able to your­self.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C, Septem­ber 21, 1863.

MRS. A. LIN­COLN. Fifth Av­enue Ho­tel. New York:

The air is so clear and cool and ap­par­ent­ly healthy that I would be glad for you to come. Noth­ing very par­tic­ular, but I would be glad to see you and Tad.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 21, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK:

I think it very im­por­tant for Gen­er­al Rose­crans to hold his po­si­tion at or about Chat­tanooga, be­cause if held from that place to Cleve­land, both in­clu­sive, it keeps all Ten­nessee clear of the en­emy, and al­so breaks one of his most im­por­tant rail­road lines. To pre­vent these con­se­quences is so vi­tal to his cause that he can­not give up the ef­fort to dis­lodge us from the po­si­tion, thus bring­ing him to us and sav­ing us the la­bor, ex­pense, and haz­ard of go­ing far­ther to find him, and al­so giv­ing us the ad­van­tage of choos­ing our own ground and prepar­ing it to fight him up­on. The de­tails must, of course, be left to Gen­er­al Rose­crans, while we must fur­nish him the means to the ut­most of our abil­ity. If you con­cur, I think he would bet­ter be in­formed that we are not push­ing him be­yond this po­si­tion; and that, in fact, our judg­ment is rather against his go­ing be­yond it. If he can on­ly main­tain this po­si­tion, with­out more, this re­bel­lion can on­ly eke out a short and fee­ble ex­is­tence, as an an­imal some­times may with a thorn in its vi­tals.

Yours tru­ly, A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL A. E. BURN­SIDE

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Septem­ber 21, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Greenville, Tenn.:

If you are to do any good to Rose­crans it will not do to waste time with Jones­boro. It is al­ready too late to do the most good that might have been done, but I hope it will still do some good. Please do not lose a mo­ment.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL A. E. BURN­SIDE

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Septem­ber 21, 1863. 11 A.M.

GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Knoxville, Tenn.:

Go to Rose­crans with your force with­out a mo­ment’s de­lay.

A. LIN­COLN,

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS

WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 21, 1863. 12.55 PM.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga:

Be of good cheer. We have un­abat­ed con­fi­dence in you, and in your sol­diers and of­fi­cers. In the main you must be the judge as to what is to be done. If I were to sug­gest, I would say, save your army by tak­ing strong po­si­tions un­til Burn­side joins you, when, I hope, you can turn the tide. I think you had bet­ter send a couri­er to Burn­side to hur­ry him up. We can­not reach him by tele­graph. We sup­pose some force is go­ing to you from Corinth, but for want of com­mu­ni­ca­tion we do not know how they are get­ting along. We shall do our ut­most to as­sist you. Send us your present po­si­tions.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS. [Ci­pher.] WAR DE­PART­MENT, Septem­ber 22, 1863.8.30 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Tenn.:

We have not a word here as to the where­abouts or con­di­tion of your army up to a lat­er hour than sun­set, Sun­day, the 20th. Your despatch­es to me of 9 A.M., and to Gen­er­al Hal­leck of 2 P. M., yes­ter­day, tell us noth­ing lat­er on those points. Please re­lieve my anx­iety as to the po­si­tion and con­di­tion of your army up to the lat­est mo­ment.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO O. M. HATCH AND J. K. DUBOIS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON. Septem­ber 22, 1863.

HON. O. M. HATCH, HON. J. K. DUBOIS, Spring­field, Ill.:

Your let­ter is just re­ceived. The par­tic­ular form of my despatch was joc­ular, which I sup­posed you gen­tle­men knew me well enough to un­der­stand. Gen­er­al Allen is con­sid­ered here as a very faith­ful and ca­pa­ble of­fi­cer, and one who would be at least thought of for quar­ter­mas­ter-​gen­er­al if that of­fice were va­cant.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 22, 1863.

MRS. A. LIN­COLN, Fifth Av­enue House, New York:–Did you re­ceive my despatch of yes­ter­day? Mrs. Cuth­bert did not cor­rect­ly un­der­stand me. I di­rect­ed her to tell you to use your own plea­sure whether to stay or come, and I did not say it is sick­ly and that you should on no ac­count come. So far as I see or know, it was nev­er health­ier, and I re­al­ly wish to see you. An­swer this on re­ceipt.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 23,1863. 9.13 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Tenn:

Be­low is Bragg’s despatch as found in the Rich­mond pa­pers. You see he does not claim so many pris­on­ers or cap­tured guns as you were in­clined to con­cede. He al­so con­fess­es to heavy loss. An ex­changed gen­er­al of ours leav­ing Rich­mond yes­ter­day says two of Longstreet’s di­vi­sions and his en­tire ar­tillery and two of Pick­ett’s brigades and Wise’s le­gion have gone to Ten­nessee. He men­tions no oth­er.

“CHI­CA­MAU­GA RIV­ER, SEPTEM­BER 20. “GEN­ER­AL COOP­ER, Ad­ju­tant-​Gen­er­al: “Af­ter two days’ hard fight­ing we have driv­en the en­emy, af­ter a des­per­ate re­sis­tance, from sev­er­al po­si­tions, and now hold the field; but he still con­fronts us. The los­es are heavy on both sides, es­pe­cial­ly in our of­fi­cers………….. BRAX­TON BRAGG

A. LIN­COLN

PROCLA­MA­TION OPEN­ING THE PORT OF ALEXAN­DRIA, VIR­GINIA, SEPTEM­BER 24, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as, in my procla­ma­tion of the twen­ty-​sev­enth of April, 1861, the ports of the States of Vir­ginia and North Car­oli­na were, for rea­sons there­in set forth, placed un­der block­ade; and where­as the port of Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia, has since been block­ad­ed, but as the block­ade of said port may now be safe­ly re­laxed with ad­van­tage to the in­ter­ests of com­merce:

Now, there­fore, be it known that I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed Sates, pur­suant to the au­thor­ity in me vest­ed by the fifth sec­tion of the act of Congress, ap­proved on the 13th of Ju­ly, 1861, en­ti­tled “An act fur­ther to pro­vide for the col­lec­tion of du­ties on im­ports, and for oth­er pur­pos­es,” do here­by de­clare that the block­ade of the said port of Alexan­dria shall so far cease and de­ter­mine, from and af­ter this date, that com­mer­cial in­ter­course with said port, ex­cept as to per­sons, things, and in­for­ma­tion con­tra­band of war, may from this date be car­ried on, sub­ject to the laws of the Unit­ed States, and to the lim­ita­tions and in pur­suance of the reg­ula­tions which are pre­scribed by the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury in his or­der which is ap­pend­ed to my procla­ma­tion of the 12th of May, 1862.

In wit­ness 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 twen­ty-​fourth day of Septem­ber in the year of our Lord one thou­sand eight hun­dred and six­ty-​three, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​eighth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Septem­ber 24, 1863. 10 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Term.:

Last night we re­ceived the rebel ac­counts, through Rich­mond pa­pers, of your late bat­tle. They give Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Hood as mor­tal­ly wound­ed, and Brigadiers Pre­ston Smith, Wof­ford, Walthall, Helm of Ken­tucky, and DesMer killed, and Ma­jor-​Gen­er­als Pre­ston, Cle­burne, and Gregg, and Brigadier-​Gen­er­als Ben­ning, Adams, Burm, Brown, and John [B. H.] Helm wound­ed. By con­fu­sion the two Helms may be the same man, and Bunn and Brown may be the same man. With Burn­side, Sher­man, and from else­where we shall get to you from forty to six­ty thou­sand ad­di­tion­al men.

A. LIN­COLN

MRS. LIN­COLN’S REBEL BROTH­ER-​IN-​LAW KILLED

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, SEPTEM­BER 24, 1863

MRS. A. LIN­COLN, Fifth Av­enue Ho­tel, New York:

We now have a tol­er­ably ac­cu­rate sum­ming up of the late bat­tle be­tween Rose­crans and Braag. The re­sult is that we are worsted, if at all, on­ly in the fact that we, af­ter the main fight­ing was over, yield­ed the ground, thus leav­ing con­sid­er­able of our ar­tillery and wound­ed to fall in­to the en­emy’s hands., for which we got noth­ing in turn. We lost in gen­er­al of­fi­cers one killed and three or four wound­ed, all brigadiers, while, ac­cord­ing to the rebel ac­counts which we have, they lost six killed and eight wound­ed: of the killed one ma­jor-​gen­er­al and five brigadiers in­clud­ing your broth­er-​in-​law, Helm; and of the wound­ed three ma­jor-​gen­er­als and five brigadiers. This list may be re­duced two in num­ber by cor­rec­tions of con­fu­sion in names. At 11.40 A.M. yes­ter­day Gen­er­al Rose­crans tele­graphed from Chat­tanooga: “We hold this point, and I can­not be dis­lodged ex­cept by very su­pe­ri­or num­bers and af­ter a great bat­tle.” A despatch leav­ing there af­ter night yes­ter­day says, “No fight to-​day.”

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL Mc­CAL­LUM.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 25, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL Mc­CAL­LUM, Alexan­dria, Va.:

I have sent to Gen­er­al Meade, by tele­graph, to sus­pend the ex­ecu­tion of Daniel Sul­li­van of Com­pa­ny F, Thir­teenth Mas­sachusetts, which was to be to-​day, but un­der­stand­ing there is an in­ter­rup­tion on the line, may I beg you to send this to him by the quick­est mode in your pow­er?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Septem­ber 25, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Army of Po­tomac:

Ow­ing to the press in be­half of Daniel Sul­li­van, Com­pa­ny E, Thir­teenth Mas­sachusetts, and the doubt; though small, which you ex­press of his guilty in­ten­tion, I have con­clud­ed to say let his ex­ecu­tion be sus­pend­ed till fur­ther or­der, and copy of record sent me.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 25, 1863.

MY DEAR GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS:

We are send­ing you two small corps, one un­der Gen­er­al Howard and one un­der Gen­er­al Slocum, and the whole un­der Gen­er­al Hook­er.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly the re­la­tions be­tween Gen­er­als Hook­er and Slocum are not such as to promise good, if their present rel­ative po­si­tions re­main. There­fore, let me beg–al­most en­join up­on you–that on their reach­ing you, you will make a trans­po­si­tion by which Gen­er­al Slocum with his Corps, may pass from un­der the com­mand of Gen­er­al Hook­er, and Gen­er­al Hook­er, in turn re­ceive some oth­er equal force. It is im­por­tant for this to be done, though we could not well ar­range it here. Please do it.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Septem­ber 28, 1863. 8 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga., Tenn.:

You can per­haps com­mu­ni­cate with Gen­er­al Burn­side more rapid­ly by send­ing tele­grams di­rect­ly to him at Knoxville. Think of it. I send a like despatch to him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C, Septem­ber 30, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD, Saint Louis, Mo.:

Fol­low­ing despatch just re­ceived:

“Union Men Driv­en out of Mis­souri.” “Leav­en­worth, Septem­ber 29, I863.

“Gov­er­nor Gam­ble hav­ing au­tho­rized Colonel Moss, of Lib­er­ty, Mis­souri, to arm the men in Plat­te and Clin­ton Coun­ties, he has armed most­ly the re­turned rebel sol­diers and men wider bonds. Moss’s men are now driv­ing the Union men out of Mis­souri. Over one hun­dred fam­ilies crossed the riv­er to-​day. Many of the wives of our Union sol­diers have been com­pelled to leave. Four or five Union men have been mur­dered by Colonel Moss’s men.”

Please look to this and, if true, in main or part, put a stop to it.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO F. S. CORKRAN.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Septem­ber 30, 1863.

HON. FRAN­CIS S. CORKRAN, Bal­ti­more, Md.: MRS. L. is now at home and would be pleased to see you any time. If the grape time has not passed away, she would be pleased to join in the en­ter­prise you men­tion.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL TYLER

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Oc­to­ber 1, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL TYLER, Bal­ti­more:

Take care of col­ored troops in your charge, but do noth­ing fur­ther about that branch of af­fairs un­til fur­ther or­ders. Par­tic­ular­ly do noth­ing about Gen­er­al Vick­ers of Kent Coun­ty.

A. LIN­COLN.

Send a copy to Colonel Bir­ney. A. L.

TO GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, OC­TO­BER 1, 1863

GEN­ER­AL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD:

There is no or­ga­nized mil­itary force in avowed op­po­si­tion to the Gen­er­al Gov­ern­ment now in Mis­souri, and if any shall reap­pear, your du­ty in re­gard to it will be too plain to re­quire any spe­cial in­struc­tion. Still, the con­di­tion of things, both there and else­where, is such as to ren­der it in­dis­pens­able to main­tain, for a time, the Unit­ed States mil­itary es­tab­lish­ment in that State, as well as to re­ly up­on it for a fair con­tri­bu­tion of sup­port to that es­tab­lish­ment gen­er­al­ly. Your im­me­di­ate du­ty in re­gard to Mis­souri now is to ad­vance the ef­fi­cien­cy of that es­tab­lish­ment, and to so use it, as far as prac­ti­ca­ble, to com­pel the ex­cit­ed peo­ple there to let one an­oth­er alone.

Un­der your re­cent or­der, which I have ap­proved, you will on­ly ar­rest in­di­vid­uals, and sup­press as­sem­blies or news­pa­pers, when they may be work­ing pal­pa­ble in­jury to the mil­itary in your charge; and in no oth­er case will you in­ter­fere with the ex­pres­sion of opin­ion in any form, or al­low it to be in­ter­fered with vi­olent­ly by oth­ers. In this you have a dis­cre­tion to ex­er­cise with great cau­tion, calm­ness, and for­bear­ance.

With the mat­ter of re­mov­ing the in­hab­itants of cer­tain coun­ties en masse, and of re­mov­ing cer­tain in­di­vid­uals from time to time, who are sup­posed to be mis­chievous, I am not now in­ter­fer­ing, but am leav­ing to your own dis­cre­tion.

Nor am I in­ter­fer­ing with what may still seem to you to be nec­es­sary re­stric­tions up­on trade and in­ter­course. I think prop­er, how­ev­er, to en­join up­on you the fol­low­ing: Al­low no part of the mil­itary un­der your com­mand to be en­gaged in ei­ther re­turn­ing fugi­tive slaves or in forc­ing or en­tic­ing slaves from their homes; and, so far as prac­ti­ca­ble, en­force the same for­bear­ance up­on the peo­ple.

Re­port to me your opin­ion up­on the avail­abil­ity for good of the en­rolled mili­tia of the State. Al­low no one to en­list col­ored troops, ex­cept up­on or­ders from you, or from here through you.

Al­low no one to as­sume the func­tions of con­fis­cat­ing prop­er­ty, un­der the law of Congress, or oth­er­wise, ex­cept up­on or­ders from here.

At elec­tions see that those, and on­ly those, are al­lowed to vote who are en­ti­tled to do so by the laws of Mis­souri, in­clud­ing as of those laws the re­stric­tions laid by the Mis­souri con­ven­tion up­on those who may have par­tic­ipat­ed in the re­bel­lion.

So far as prac­ti­ca­ble, you will, by means of your mil­itary force, ex­pel guer­ril­las, ma­raud­ers, and mur­der­ers, and all who are known to har­bor, aid, or abet them. But in like man­ner you will re­press as­sump­tions of unau­tho­rized in­di­vid­uals to per­form the same ser­vice, be­cause un­der pre­tense of do­ing this they be­come ma­raud­ers and mur­der­ers them­selves.

To now re­store peace, let the mil­itary obey or­ders, and those not of the mil­itary leave each oth­er alone, thus not break­ing the peace them­selves.

In giv­ing the above di­rec­tions, it is not in­tend­ed to re­strain you in oth­er ex­pe­di­ent and nec­es­sary mat­ters not falling with­in their range.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL S. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C. OC­TO­BER 2, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD:

I have just seen your despatch to Hal­leck about Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Blunt. If pos­si­ble, you bet­ter al­low me to get through with a cer­tain mat­ter here, be­fore adding to the dif­fi­cul­ties of it. Mean­time sup­ply me the par­tic­ulars of Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Blunt’s case.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO COLONEL BIR­NEY. [Ci­pher.] WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Oc­to­ber 3, 1863.

COLONEL BIR­NEY, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

Please give me, as near as you can, the num­ber of slaves you have re­cruit­ed in Mary­land. Of course the num­ber is not to in­clude the free col­ored.

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION FOR THANKS­GIV­ING, OC­TO­BER 3, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

The year that is draw­ing to­wards its close has been filled with the bless­ings of fruit­ful fields and health­ful skies. To these boun­ties, which are so con­stant­ly en­joyed that we are prone to for­get the source from which they come, oth­ers have been added which are of so ex­traor­di­nary a na­ture that they can­not fail to pen­etrate and soft­en even the heart which is ha­bit­ual­ly in­sen­si­ble to the ev­er-​watch­ful prov­idence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civ­il war of un­equalled mag­ni­tude and sever­ity which has some­times seemed to in­vite and pro­voke the ag­gres­sions of for­eign states; peace has been pre­served with all na­tions, or­der has been main­tained, the laws have been re­spect­ed and obeyed, and har­mo­ny has pre­vailed ev­ery­where ex­cept in the the­atre of mil­itary con­flict; while that the­atre has been great­ly con­tract­ed by the ad­vanc­ing armies and navies of the Union. The need­ful di­ver­sion of wealth and strength from the fields of peace­ful in­dus­try, to the na­tion­al de­fense has not ar­rest­ed the plough, the shut­tle, or the ship: The axe has en­larged the bor­ders of our set­tle­ments, and the mines, as well of, iron and coal as of the pre­cious met­als, have yield­ed even more abun­dant­ly than hereto­fore. Pop­ula­tion has steadi­ly in­creased, notwith­stand­ing the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the bat­tle-​field; and the coun­try, re­joic­ing in the con­scious­ness of aug­ment­ed strength and vig­or, is per­mit­ted to ex­pect a con­tin­uance of years, with large in­crease of free­dom.

No hu­man coun­sel hath de­vised, nor hath any mor­tal hand worked out these great things. They are the gra­cious gifts of the Most High God, who, while deal­ing with us in anger for our sins, hath nev­er­the­less re­mem­bered mer­cy.

It has seemed to me fit and prop­er that they should be rev­er­ent­ly, solemn­ly, and grate­ful­ly ac­knowl­edged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole Amer­ican peo­ple. I do, there­fore, in­vite my fel­low-​cit­izens in ev­ery part of the Unit­ed States, and al­so those who are at sea, and those who are so­journ­ing in for­eign lands, to set apart and ob­serve the last Thurs­day of Novem­ber next as a day of thanks­giv­ing and prayer to our benef­icent Fa­ther who dwelleth in the heav­ens. And I rec­om­mend to them that, while of­fer­ing up the as­crip­tions just­ly due to Him for such sin­gu­lar de­liv­er­ances and bless­ings, they do al­so, with hum­ble pen­itence for our na­tion­al per­verse­ness and dis­obe­di­ence, com­mend to His ten­der care all those who have be­come wid­ows, or­phans, mourn­ers, or suf­fer­ers in the lamentable civ­il strife in which we are un­avoid­ably en­gaged, and fer­vent­ly im­plore the in­ter­po­si­tion of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the na­tion, and to re­store it, as soon as may be con­sis­tent with di­vine pur­pos­es, to the full en­joy­ment of peace, har­mo­ny, tran­quil­li­ty, and union.

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 third day of Oc­to­ber, in the year of our Lord one thou­sand eight hun­dred and six­ty-​three, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​eighth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. M. SCHOFIELD.

WASH­ING­TON D.C., OC­TO­BER 4, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD, St. Louis, Mo.:

I think you will not have just cause to com­plain of my ac­tion.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Oc­to­ber 4, 1863. 11.30 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Tenn.:

Yours of yes­ter­day re­ceived. If we can hold Chat­tanooga and East Ten­nessee, I think the re­bel­lion must dwin­dle and die. I think you and Burn­side can do this, and hence do­ing so is your main ob­ject. Of course to great­ly dam­age or de­stroy the en­emy in your front would be a greater ob­ject, be­cause it would in­clude the for­mer and more, but it is not so cer­tain­ly with­in your pow­er. I un­der­stand the main body of the en­emy is very near you, so near that you could “board at home,” so to speak, and men­ace or at­tack him any day. Would not the do­ing of this be your best mode of coun­ter­act­ing his raid on your com­mu­ni­ca­tions? But this is not an or­der. I in­tend do­ing some­thing like what you sug­gest when­ev­er the case shall ap­pear ripe enough to have it ac­cept­ed in the true un­der­stand­ing rather than as a con­fes­sion of weak­ness and fear.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO C. D. DRAKE AND OTH­ERS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 5, 1863.

HON. CHARLES D. DRAKE AND OTH­ERS, Com­mit­tee.

GEN­TLE­MEN:-Your orig­inal ad­dress, pre­sent­ed on the 30th ult., and the four sup­ple­men­tary ones pre­sent­ed on the 3d in­st., have been care­ful­ly con­sid­ered. I hope you will re­gard the oth­er du­ties claim­ing my at­ten­tion, to­geth­er with the great length and im­por­tance of these doc­uments, as con­sti­tut­ing a suf­fi­cient apol­ogy for not hav­ing re­spond­ed soon­er.

These pa­pers, framed for a com­mon ob­ject, con­sist of the things de­mand­ed and the rea­sons for de­mand­ing them.

The things de­mand­ed are

First. That Gen­er­al Schofield shall be re­lieved, and Gen­er­al But­ler be ap­point­ed as Com­man­der of the Mil­itary De­part­ment of Mis­souri.

Sec­ond. That the sys­tem of en­rolled mili­tia in Mis­souri may be bro­ken up, and na­tion­al forces he sub­sti­tut­ed for it; and

Third. That at elec­tions per­sons may not be al­lowed to vote who are not en­ti­tled by law to do so.

Among the rea­sons giv­en, enough of suf­fer­ing and wrong to Union men is cer­tain­ly, and I sup­pose tru­ly, stat­ed. Yet the whole case, as pre­sent­ed, fails to con­vince me that Gen­er­al Schofield, or the en­rolled mili­tia, is re­spon­si­ble for that suf­fer­ing and wrong. The whole can be ex­plained on a more char­ita­ble, and, as I think, a more ra­tio­nal hy­poth­esis.

We are in a civ­il war. In such cas­es there al­ways is a main ques­tion, but in this case that ques­tion is a per­plex­ing com­pound– Union and slav­ery. It thus be­comes a ques­tion not of two sides mere­ly, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, say­ing noth­ing of those who are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not with­out slav­ery; those for it with­out, but not with; those for it with or with­out, but pre­fer it with; and those for it with or with­out, but pre­fer it with­out.

Among these, again, is a sub­di­vi­sion of those who are for grad­ual, but not for im­me­di­ate, and those who are for im­me­di­ate, but not for grad­ual ex­tinc­tion of slav­ery.

It is easy to con­ceive that all these shades of opin­ion, and even more, may be sin­cere­ly en­ter­tained by hon­est and truth­ful men. Yet, all be­ing for the Union, by rea­son of these dif­fer­ences each will pre­fer a dif­fer­ent way of sus­tain­ing the Union. At once, sin­cer­ity is ques­tioned, and mo­tives are as­sailed. Ac­tu­al war coin­ing, blood grows hot and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old chan­nels in­to con­fu­sion. De­cep­tion breeds and thrives. Con­fi­dence dies, and uni­ver­sal sus­pi­cion reigns. Each man feels an im­pulse to kill his neigh­bor, lest he be killed by him. Re­venge and re­tal­ia­tion fol­low. And all this, as be­fore said, may be among hon­est men on­ly. But this is not all. Ev­ery foul bird comes abroad, and ev­ery dirty rep­tile ris­es up. These add crime to con­fu­sion. Strong mea­sures deemed in­dis­pens­able, but harsh at best, such men make worse by mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion. Mur­ders for old grudges, and mur­ders for self, pro­ceed un­der any cloak that will best serve for the oc­ca­sion.

These caus­es am­ply ac­count for what has oc­curred in Mis­souri, with­out as­crib­ing it to the weak­ness or wicked­ness of any gen­er­al. The news­pa­per files, those chron­iclers of cur­rent events, will show that the evils now com­plained of were quite as preva­lent un­der Fre­mont, Hunter, Hal­leck, and Cur­tis, as un­der Schofield. If the for­mer had greater force op­posed to them, they al­so had greater force with which to meet it. When the or­ga­nized rebel army left the State, the main Fed­er­al force had to go al­so, leav­ing the de­part­ment com­man­der at home rel­ative­ly no stronger than be­fore. With­out dis­parag­ing any, I af­firm with con­fi­dence that no com­man­der of that de­part­ment has, in pro­por­tion to his means, done bet­ter than Gen­er­al Schofield.

The first spe­cif­ic charge against Gen­er­al Schofield is, that the en­rolled mili­tia was placed un­der his com­mand, where­as it had not been placed un­der the com­mand of Gen­er­al Cur­tis. The fact is, I be­lieve, true; but you do not point out, nor can I con­ceive, how that did, or could, in­jure loy­al men or the Union cause.

You charge that, Gen­er­al Cur­tis be­ing su­per­seded by Gen­er­al Schofield, Franklin A. Dick was su­per­seded by James O. Broad­head as Provost-​Mar­shal Gen­er­al. No very spe­cif­ic show­ing is made as to how this did or could in­jure the Union cause. It re­calls, how­ev­er, the con­di­tion of things, as pre­sent­ed to me, which led to a change of com­man­der of that de­part­ment.

To re­strain con­tra­band in­tel­li­gence and trade, a sys­tem of search­es, seizures, per­mits, and pass­es, had been in­tro­duced, I think, by Gen­er­al Fre­mont. When Gen­er­al Hal­leck came, he found and con­tin­ued the sys­tem, and added an or­der, ap­pli­ca­ble to some parts of the State, to levy and col­lect con­tri­bu­tions from not­ed rebels, to com­pen­sate loss­es and re­lieve des­ti­tu­tion caused by the re­bel­lion. The ac­tion of Gen­er­al Fre­mont and Gen­er­al Hal­leck, as stat­ed, con­sti­tut­ed a sort of sys­tem which Gen­er­al Cur­tis found in full op­er­ation when he took com­mand of the de­part­ment. That there was a ne­ces­si­ty for some­thing of the sort was clear; but that it could on­ly be jus­ti­fied by stern ne­ces­si­ty, and that it was li­able to great abuse in ad­min­is­tra­tion, was equal­ly clear. Agents to ex­ecute it, con­trary to the great prayer, were led in­to temp­ta­tion. Some might, while oth­ers would not, re­sist that temp­ta­tion. It was not pos­si­ble to hold any to a very strict ac­count­abil­ity; and those yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion would sell per­mits and pass­es to those who would pay most and most read­ily for them, and would seize prop­er­ty and col­lect levies in the aptest way to fill their own pock­ets. Mon­ey be­ing the ob­ject, the man hav­ing mon­ey, whether loy­al or dis­loy­al, would be a vic­tim. This prac­tice doubt­less ex­ist­ed to some ex­tent, and it was, a re­al ad­di­tion­al evil that it could be, and was, plau­si­bly charged to ex­ist in greater ex­tent than it did.

When Gen­er­al Cur­tis took com­mand of the de­part­ment, Mr. Dick, against whom I nev­er knew any­thing to al­lege, had gen­er­al charge of this sys­tem. A con­tro­ver­sy in re­gard to it rapid­ly grew in­to al­most un­man­age­able pro­por­tions. One side ig­nored the ne­ces­si­ty and mag­ni­fied the evils of the sys­tem, while the oth­er ig­nored the evils and mag­ni­fied the ne­ces­si­ty; and each bit­ter­ly as­sailed the oth­er. I could not fail to see that the con­tro­ver­sy en­larged in the same pro­por­tion as the pro­fessed Union men there dis­tinct­ly took sides in two op­pos­ing po­lit­ical par­ties. I ex­haust­ed my wits, and very near­ly my pa­tience al­so, in ef­forts to con­vince both that the evils they charged on each oth­er were in­her­ent in the case, and could not be cured by giv­ing ei­ther par­ty a vic­to­ry over the oth­er.

Plain­ly, the ir­ri­tat­ing sys­tem was not to be per­pet­ual; and it was plau­si­bly urged that it could be mod­ified at once with ad­van­tage. The case could scarce­ly be worse, and whether it could be made bet­ter could on­ly be de­ter­mined by a tri­al. In this view, and not to ban or brand Gen­er­al Cur­tis, or to give a vic­to­ry to any par­ty, I made the change of com­man­der for the de­part­ment. I now learn that soon af­ter this change Mr. Dick was re­moved, and that Mr. Broad­head, a gen­tle­man of no less good char­ac­ter, was put in the place. The mere fact of this change is more dis­tinct­ly com­plained of than is any con­duct of the new of­fi­cer, or oth­er con­se­quence of the change.

I gave the new com­man­der no in­struc­tions as to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sys­tem men­tioned, be­yond what is con­tained in the pri­vate let­ter af­ter­wards sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pub­lished, in which I di­rect­ed him to act sole­ly for the pub­lic good, and in­de­pen­dent­ly of both par­ties. Nei­ther any thing you have pre­sent­ed me, nor any­thing I have oth­er­wise learned, has con­vinced me that he has been un­faith­ful to this charge.

Im­be­cil­ity is urged as one cause for re­mov­ing Gen­er­al Schofield; and the late mas­sacre at Lawrence, Kansas, is pressed as ev­idence of that im­be­cil­ity. To my mind that fact scarce­ly tends to prove the propo­si­tion. That mas­sacre is on­ly an ex­am­ple of what Gri­er­son, John Mor­gan, and many oth­ers might have re­peat­ed­ly done on their re­spec­tive raids, had they cho­sen to in­cur the per­son­al haz­ard, and pos­sessed the fiendish hearts to do it.

The charge is made that Gen­er­al Schofield, on pur­pose to pro­tect the Lawrence mur­der­ers, would not al­low them to be pur­sued in­to Mis­souri. While no pun­ish­ment could be too sud­den or too se­vere for those mur­der­ers, I am well sat­is­fied that the pre­vent­ing of the threat­ened re­me­di­al raid in­to Mis­souri was the on­ly way to avoid an in­dis­crim­inate mas­sacre there, in­clud­ing prob­ably more in­no­cent than guilty. In­stead of con­demn­ing, I there­fore ap­prove what I un­der­stand Gen­er­al Schofield did in that re­spect.

The charges that Gen­er­al Schofield has pur­pose­ly with­held pro­tec­tion from loy­al peo­ple and pur­pose­ly fa­cil­itat­ed the ob­jects of the dis­loy­al are al­to­geth­er be­yond my pow­er of be­lief. I do not ar­raign the ve­rac­ity of gen­tle­men as to the facts com­plained of, but I do more than ques­tion the judg­ment which would in­fer that those facts oc­curred in ac­cor­dance with the pur­pos­es of Gen­er­al Schofield.

With my present views, I must de­cline to re­move Gen­er­al Schofield. In this I de­cide noth­ing against Gen­er­al But­ler. I sin­cere­ly wish it were con­ve­nient to as­sign him a suit­able com­mand. In or­der to meet some ex­ist­ing evils I have ad­dressed a let­ter of in­struc­tions to Gen­er­al Schofield, a copy of which I en­close to you.

As to the en­rolled mili­tia, I shall en­deav­or to as­cer­tain bet­ter than I now know what is its ex­act val­ue. Let me say now, how­ev­er, that your pro­pos­al to sub­sti­tute na­tion­al forces for the en­rolled mili­tia im­plies that in your judg­ment the lat­ter is do­ing some­thing which needs to be done; and if so, the propo­si­tion to throw that force away and to sup­ply its place by bring­ing oth­er forces from the field where they are ur­gent­ly need­ed seems to me very ex­traor­di­nary. Whence shall they come? Shall they be with­drawn from Banks, or Grant, or Steele, or Rose­crans? Few things have been so grate­ful to my anx­ious feel­ings as when, in June last, the lo­cal force in Mis­souri aid­ed Gen­er­al Schofield to so prompt­ly send a large gen­er­al force to the re­lief of Gen­er­al Grant, then in­vest­ing Vicks­burg and men­aced from with­out by Gen­er­al John­ston. Was this all wrong? Should the en­rolled mili­tia then have been bro­ken up and Gen­er­al Her­ron kept from Grant to po­lice Mis­souri? So far from find­ing cause to ob­ject, I con­fess to a sym­pa­thy for what­ev­er re­lieves our gen­er­al force in Mis­souri and al­lows it to serve else­where. I there­fore, as at present ad­vised, can­not at­tempt the de­struc­tion of the en­rolled mili­tia of Mis­souri. I may add that, the force be­ing un­der the na­tion­al mil­itary con­trol, it is al­so with­in the procla­ma­tion in re­gard to the habeas cor­pus.

I con­cur in the pro­pri­ety of your re­quest in re­gard to elec­tions, and have, as you see, di­rect­ed Gen­er­al Schofield ac­cord­ing­ly. I do not feel jus­ti­fied to en­ter up­on the broad field you present in re­gard to the po­lit­ical dif­fer­ences be­tween Rad­icals and Con­ser­va­tives. From time to time I have done and said what ap­peared to me prop­er to do and say. The pub­lic knows it all. It obliges no­body to fol­low me, and I trust it obliges me to fol­low no­body. The Rad­icals and Con­ser­va­tives each agree with me in some things and dis­agree in oth­ers. I could wish both to agree with me in all things, for then they would agree with each oth­er, and would be too strong for any foe from any quar­ter. They, how­ev­er, choose to do oth­er­wise; and I do not ques­tion their right. I too shall do what seems to be my du­ty. I hold who­ev­er com­mands in Mis­souri or else­where re­spon­si­ble to me and not to ei­ther Rad­icals or Con­ser­va­tives. It is my du­ty to hear all, but at last I must, with­in my sphere, judge what to do and what to for­bear.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN.

AP­PROVAL OF THE DE­CI­SION OF THE COURT IN THE CASE OF DR. DAVID M. WRIGHT.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, AD­JU­TANT-​GEN­ER­ALS OF­FICE,

WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 8, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL J. G. FOS­TER, Com­mand­ing De­part­ment of Vir­ginia and North Car­oli­na, Fort Mon­roe, Va.

SIR:–The pro­ceed­ings of the mil­itary com­mis­sion in­sti­tut­ed for the tri­al of David Wright, of Nor­folk, in Spe­cial Or­ders Nos. 195, 196, and 197, of 1863, from head­quar­ters De­part­ment of Vir­ginia, have been sub­mit­ted to the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States. The fol­low­ing are his re­marks on the case:

Up­on the pre­sen­ta­tion of the record in this case and the ex­am­ina­tion there­of, aid­ed by the re­port there­on of the Judge-​Ad­vo­cate-​Gen­er­al, and on full hear­ing of coun­sel for the ac­cused, be­ing spec­ified that no prop­er ques­tion re­mained open ex­cept as to the san­ity of the ac­cused, I caused a very full ex­am­ina­tion to be made on that ques­tion, up­on a great amount of ev­idence, in­clud­ing all ef­fort by the coun­sel for ac­cused, by an ex­pert of high rep­uta­tion in that pro­fes­sion­al de­part­ment, who there­on re­ports to me, as his opin­ion, that the ac­cused, Dr. David M. Wright, was not in­sane pri­or to or on the 11th day of Ju­ly, 1863, the date of the homi­cide of Lieu­tenant San­born; that he has not been in­sane since, and is not in­sane now (Oct. 7, 1863). I there­fore ap­prove the find­ing and sen­tence of the mil­itary com­mis­sion, and di­rect that the ma­jor-​gen­er­al in com­mand of the de­part­ment in­clud­ing the place of tri­al, and where­in the con­vict is now in cus­tody, ap­point a time and place and car­ry such sen­tence in­to ex­ecu­tion.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Oc­to­ber 8, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Army of Po­tomac:

I am ap­pealed to in be­half of Au­gust Blit­ters­dorf, at Mitchell’s Sta­tion, Va., to be shot to-​mor­row as a de­sert­er. I am un­will­ing for any boy un­der eigh­teen to be shot, and his fa­ther af­firms that he is yet un­der six­teen. Please an­swer. His reg­iment or com­pa­ny not giv­en me.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 8, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Army of Po­tomac:

The boy tele­graphs from Mitchell’s Sta­tion, Va. The fa­ther thinks he is in the One hun­dred and nine­teenth Penn­syl­va­nia Vol­un­teers. The fa­ther signs the name “Blit­ters­dorf.” I can tell no more.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 12, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Army of Po­tomac:

The fa­ther and moth­er of John Mur­phy, of the One hun­dred and nine­teenth Penn­syl­va­nia Vol­un­teers, have filed their own af­fi­davits that he was born June 22, 1846, and al­so the af­fi­davits of three oth­er per­sons who all swear that they re­mem­bered the cir­cum­stances of his birth and that it was in the year 1846, though they do not re­mem­ber the par­tic­ular day. I there­fore, on ac­count of his ten­der age, have con­clud­ed to par­don him, and to leave it to your­self whether to dis­charge him or con­tin­ue him in the ser­vice.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO W. S. ROSE­CRANS. [Ci­pher.] WAR DE­PART­MENT, Oc­to­ber 12, 1863.8.35 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Term.:

As I un­der­stand, Burn­side is men­aced from the west, and so can­not go to you with­out sur­ren­der­ing East Ten­nessee. I now think the en­emy will not at­tack Chat­tanooga, and I think you will have to look out for his mak­ing a con­cen­trat­ed drive at Burn­side. You and Burn­side now have him by the throat, and he must break your hold or per­ish I there­fore think you bet­ter try to hold the road up to Kingston, leav­ing Burn­side to what is above there. Sher­man is com­ing to you, though gaps in the tele­graph pre­vent our know­ing how far he is ad­vanced. He and Hook­er will so sup­port you on the west and north­west as to en­able you to look east and north­east. This is not an or­der. Gen­er­al Hal­leck will give his views.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL G. G. MEADE.

WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 12, 1863. 9 A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE: What news this morn­ing? A despatch from Rose­crans, leav­ing him at 7.30 P.M. yes­ter­day, says: “Rebel ru­mors that head of Ewell’s col­umn reached Dal­ton yes­ter­day.”

I send this for what it is worth.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO WAYNE McVEIGH.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 13, 1863.

McVEIGH, Philadel­phia:

The en­emy some days ago made a move­ment, ap­par­ent­ly to turn Gen­er­al Meade’s right. This led to a ma­neu­ver­ing of the two armies and to pret­ty heavy skir­mish­ing on Sat­ur­day, Sun­day, and Mon­day. We have fre­quent despatch­es from Gen­er­al Meade and up to 10 o’clock last night noth­ing had hap­pened giv­ing ei­ther side any marked ad­van­tage. Our army re­port­ed to be in ex­cel­lent con­di­tion. The tele­graph is open to Gen­er­al Meade’s camp this morn­ing, but we have not trou­bled him for a despatch.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO THUR­LOW WEED.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 14, 1863.

HON. THUR­LOW WEED.

DEAR SIR:–I have been brought to fear re­cent­ly that some­how, by com­mis­sion or omis­sion, I have caused you some de­gree of pain. I have nev­er en­ter­tained an un­kind feel­ing or a dis­parag­ing thought to­ward you; and if I have said or done any­thing which has been con­strued in­to such un­kind­ness or dis­par­age­ment, it has been mis­con­strued. I am sure if we could meet we would not part with any un­pleas­ant im­pres­sion On ei­ther side.

Yours as ev­er, A. LIN­COLN.

TO L. B. TODD.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Oc­to­ber 15, 1863.

L. B. TODD, Lex­ing­ton, Ky.:

I send the fol­low­ing pass to your care.

A. LIN­COLN.

AID TO MRS. HELM, MRS. LIN­COLN’S SIS­TER

WASH­ING­TON, D. C.. Oc­to­ber 15, 1863.

To WHOM IT MAY CON­CERN:

Al­low MRS. Robert S. Todd, wid­ow, to go south and bring her daugh­ter, MRS. Gen­er­al B. Hardin Helm, with her chil­dren, north to Ken­tucky.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Oc­to­ber 15, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER, Fort Mon­roe, Va.:

Post­pone the ex­ecu­tion of Dr. Wright to Fri­day the 23d in­stant (Oc­to­ber). This is in­tend­ed for his prepa­ra­tion and is fi­nal.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEADE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 15, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL MEADE, Army of Po­tomac:

On the 4th in­stant you tele­graphed me that Pri­vate Daniel Han­son, of Nine­ty-​sev­enth New York Vol­un­teers, had not yet been tried. When he shall be, please no­ti­fy me of the re­sult, with a brief state­ment of his case, if he be con­vict­ed. Gus­tave Blit­ters­dorf, who you say is en­list­ed in the One hun­dred and nine­teenth Penn­syl­va­nia Vol­un­teers as William Fox, is proven to me to be on­ly fif­teen years old last Jan­uary. I par­don him, and you will dis­charge him or put him in the ranks at your dis­cre­tion. Math­ias Brown, of Nine­teenth Penn­syl­va­nia Vol­un­teers, is proven to me to be eigh­teen last May, and his friends say he is con­vict­ed on an en­list­ment and for a de­ser­tion both be­fore that time. If this last be true he is par­doned, to be kept or dis­charged as you please. If not true sus­pend his ex­ecu­tion and re­port the facts of his case. Did you re­ceive my despatch of 12th par­don­ing John Mur­phy?

A. LIN­COLN.

[The Lin­coln pa­pers dur­ing this time have a sus­pend­ed ex­ecu­tion on al­most ev­ery oth­er page, I have omit­ted most of these D.W.]

TELE­GRAM TO T. W. SWEENEY.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Oc­to­ber 16, 1863.

THOMAS W. SWEENEY, Con­ti­nen­tal, Philadel­phia:

Tad is teas­ing me to have you for­ward his pis­tol to him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO T. C. DU­RANT.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Oc­to­ber 16, 1863.

T. C. DU­RANT, New York:

I re­mem­ber re­ceiv­ing noth­ing from you of the 10th, and I do not com­pre­hend your despatch of to-​day. In fact I do not re­mem­ber, if I ev­er knew, who you are, and I have very lit­tle con­cep­tion as to what you are tele­graph­ing about.

A. LIN­COLN.

COM­MENT ON A NOTE.

NEW YORK, Oc­to­ber 15, 1863.

DEAR SIR: On the point of leav­ing I am told, by a gen­tle­man to whose state­ments I at­tach cred­it, that the op­po­si­tion pol­icy for the Pres­iden­tial cam­paign will be to “ab­stain from vot­ing.” J.

[Com­ment.] More like­ly to ab­stain from stop­ping, once they get at it, un­til they shall have vot­ed sev­er­al times each.

Oc­to­ber 16. A. L.

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 16, 1863.

MA­JOR GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK:

I do not be­lieve Lee can have over 60,000 ef­fec­tive men.

Longstreet’s corps would not be sent away to bring an equal force back up­on the same road; and there is no oth­er di­rec­tion for them to have come from.

Doubt­less, in mak­ing the present move­ment, Lee gath­ered in all avail­able scraps, and added them to Hill’s and Ewell’s corps; but that is all, and he made the move­ment in the be­lief that four corps had left Gen­er­al Meade; and Gen­er­al Meade’s ap­par­ent­ly avoid­ing a col­li­sion with him has con­firmed him in that be­lief. If Gen­er­al Meade can now at­tack him on a field no worse than equal for us, and will do so now with all the skill and courage which he, his of­fi­cers, and men pos­sess, the hon­or will be his if he suc­ceeds, and the blame may be mine if he fails.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

CALL FOR 300,000 VOL­UN­TEERS, OC­TO­BER 17, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as the term of ser­vice of a part of the Vol­un­teer forces of the Unit­ed States will ex­pire dur­ing the com­ing year; and where­as, in ad­di­tion to the men raised by the present draft, it is deemed ex­pe­di­ent to call out three hun­dred thou­sand vol­un­teers to serve for three years or dur­ing the war, not, how­ev­er, ex­ceed­ing three years:

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, and Com­man­der-​in-​Chief of the Army and Navy there­of, and of the mili­tia of the sev­er­al States when called in­to ac­tu­al ser­vice, do is­sue this my procla­ma­tion, call­ing up­on the gov­er­nors of the dif­fer­ent States to raise, and have en­list­ed in­to the Unit­ed States ser­vice, for the var­ious com­pa­nies and reg­iments in the field from their re­spec­tive States, the quo­tas of three hun­dred thou­sand men.

I fur­ther pro­claim that all the vol­un­teers thus called out and du­ly en­list­ed shall re­ceive ad­vance pay, pre­mi­um, and boun­ty, as hereto­fore com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the gov­er­nors of States by the War De­part­ment through the Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al’s of­fice, by spe­cial let­ters.

I fur­ther pro­claim that all vol­un­teers re­ceived un­der this call, as well as all oth­ers not hereto­fore cred­it­ed, shall be du­ly cred­it­ed and de­duct­ed from the quo­tas es­tab­lished for the next draft.

I fur­ther pro­claim that if any State shall fail to raise the quo­ta as­signed to it by the War De­part­ment un­der this call, then a draft for the de­fi­cien­cy in said quo­ta shall be made in said State, or in the dis­tricts of said State, for their due pro­por­tion of said quo­ta, and the said draft shall com­mence on the 5th day of Jan­uary, 1864.

And I fur­ther pro­claim that noth­ing in this procla­ma­tion shall in­ter­fere with ex­ist­ing or­ders, or with those which may be is­sued for the present draft in the States where it is now in progress, or where it has not yet been com­menced.

The quo­tas of the States and dis­tricts will be as­signed by the War De­part­ment through the Provost-​Mar­shal-​Gen­er­al’s of­fice, due re­gard be­ing had for the men hereto­fore fur­nished, whether by vol­un­teer­ing or draft­ing; and the re­cruit­ing will be con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with such in­struc­tions as have been or may be is­sued by that de­part­ment.

In is­su­ing this procla­ma­tion, I ad­dress my­self not on­ly to the gov­er­nors of the sev­er­al States, but al­so to the good and loy­al peo­ple there­of, in­vok­ing them to lend their cheer­ful, will­ing, and ef­fec­tive aid to the mea­sures thus adopt­ed, with a view to re­in­force our vic­to­ri­ous army now in the field, and bring our need­ful mil­itary op­er­ations to a pros­per­ous end, thus clos­ing for­ev­er the foun­tains of sedi­tion and civ­il war.

In wit­ness where­of, I have here­un­to set my hand and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed…………………

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN. By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., Oc­to­ber 17, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL FOS­TER, Port Mon­roe, Va.:

It would be use­less for Mrs. Dr. Wright to come here. The sub­ject is a very painful one, but the case is set­tled.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO W. B. THOMAS

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., OC­TO­BER 17, 1863

HON. WILLIAM B. THOMAS, Philadel­phia, Pa.

I am grate­ful for your of­fer of 100,000 men, but as at present ad­vised I do not con­sid­er that Wash­ing­ton is in dan­ger, or that there is any emer­gen­cy re­quir­ing 60 or 90 days men.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO J. WILLIAMS AND N. G. TAY­LOR.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Oc­to­ber 17, 1863.

JOHN WILLIAMS AND N G. TAY­LOR, Knoxville, Tenn.:

You do not es­ti­mate the hold­ing of East Ten­nessee more high­ly than I do. There is no ab­so­lute pur­pose of with­draw­ing our forces from it, and on­ly a con­tin­gent one to with­draw them tem­porar­ily for the pur­pose of not los­ing the po­si­tion per­ma­nent­ly. I am in great hope of not find­ing it nec­es­sary to with­draw them at all, par­tic­ular­ly if you raise new troops rapid­ly for us there.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO T. C. DU­RANT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON CITY, Oc­to­ber 18, 1863.

T. C. DU­RANT, New York:

As I do with oth­ers, so I will try to see you when you come.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, Oc­to­ber 19, 1863.9. A.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Chat­tanooga, Tenn:

There has been no bat­tle re­cent­ly at Bull Run. I sup­pose what you have heard a ru­mor of was not a gen­er­al bat­tle, but an “af­fair” at Bris­tow Sta­tion on the rail­road, a few miles be­yond Man­as­sas Junc­tion to­ward the Rap­pa­han­nock, on Wednes­day, the 14th. It be­gan by an at­tack of the en­emy up­on Gen­er­al War­ren, and end­ed in the en­emy be­ing re­pulsed with a loss of four can­non and from four to sev­en hun­dred pris­on­ers.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL R. C. SCHENCK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 21, 1863.2.45

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

A del­ega­tion is here say­ing that our armed col­ored troops are at many, if not all, the land­ings on the Patux­ent Riv­er, and by their pres­ence with arms in their hands are fright­en­ing qui­et peo­ple and pro­duc­ing great con­fu­sion. Have they been sent there by any or­der, and if so, for what rea­son?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL R. C. SCHENCK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 22, 1863.1.30 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

Please come over here. The fact of one of our of­fi­cers be­ing killed on the Patux­ent is a spec­imen of what I would avoid. It seems to me we could send white men to re­cruit bet­ter than to send ne­groes and thus in­au­gu­rate homi­cides on punc­tilio.

Please come over.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL H. W. HAL­LECK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 24, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK:

Tak­ing all our in­for­ma­tion to­geth­er, I think it prob­able that Ewell’s corps has start­ed for East Ten­nessee by way of Abing­don, march­ing last Mon­day, say from Meade’s front di­rect­ly to the rail­road at Char­lottesville.

First, the ob­ject of Lee’s re­cent move­ment against Meade; his de­struc­tion of the Alexan­dria and Or­ange Rail­road, and sub­se­quent with­draw­al with­out more mo­tive, not oth­er­wise ap­par­ent, would be ex­plained by this hy­poth­esis.

Sec­ond­ly, the di­rect state­ment of Sharpe’s men that Ewell has gone to Ten­nessee.

Third­ly, the Irish­man’s [North­ern Spy in Rich­mond] state­ment that he has not gone through Rich­mond, and his fur­ther state­ment of an ap­peal made to the peo­ple at Rich­mond to go and pro­tect their salt, which could on­ly re­fer to the works near Abing­don.

Fourth­ly, Gra­ham’s state­ment from Mar­tins­burg that Im­bo­den is in re­treat for Har­rison­burg. This last match­es with the idea that Lee has re­tained his cav­al­ry, send­ing Im­bo­den and per­haps oth­er scraps to join Ewell. Up­on this prob­abil­ity what is to be done?

If you have a plan ma­tured, I have noth­ing to say. If you have not, then I sug­gest that, with all pos­si­ble ex­pe­di­tion, the Army of the Po­tomac get ready to at­tack Lee, and that in the mean­time a raid shall, at all haz­ards, break the rail­road at or near Lynch­burg.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO E. B. WASH­BURNE.

(Pri­vate and Con­fi­den­tial.)

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 26, 1863.

HON. E. B. WASH­BURNE.

MY DEAR SIR:–Yours of the 12th has been in my hands sev­er­al days. In­closed I send the leave of ab­sence for your broth­er, in as good form as I think I can safe­ly put it. With­out know­ing whether he would ac­cept it. I have ten­dered the col­lec­tor­ship at Port­land, Maine, to your oth­er broth­er, the gov­er­nor.

Thanks to both you and our friend Camp­bell for your kind words and in­ten­tions. A sec­ond term would be a great hon­or and a great la­bor, which, to­geth­er, per­haps I would not de­cline if ten­dered.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY CHASE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Oc­to­ber 26, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF THE TREA­SURY.

MY DEAR SIR:–The writ­er of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing let­ter is one of Mrs. Lin­coln’s nu­mer­ous cousins. He is a grand­son of “Mil­liken’s Bend,” near Vicks­burg–that is, a grand­son of the man who gave name to Mil­liken’s Bend. His fa­ther was a broth­er to MRS. Lin­coln’s moth­er. I know not a thing about his loy­al­ty be­yond what he says. Sup­pos­ing he is loy­al, can any of his re­quests be grant­ed, and if any, which of them?

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

End of this Project Guten­berg Etext of The Writ­ings of Lin­coln, v6 By Abra­ham Lin­coln