Washington, April 9. 1862
Major-General
McClellan.
My Dear Sir.
Your despatches
complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me,
do pain me very much.
Blenker's Division
was withdrawn from you before you left here; and you know the pressure under
which I did it, and, as I thought acquiesced in it — certainly not without
reluctance.
After you left, I
ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single
field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defense of Washington,
and Manassas Junction; and part of this even, was to go to Gen. Hooker's old
position. Gen. Bank's corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted
and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strausburg, and could not leave it
without again exposing the upper Potomac, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
This presented (or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a
great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahanock, to and sack
Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all
the commanders of Army Corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It
was precisely this that induced drove me to detain McDowell.
I do not forget
that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction;
but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for
it, of course I was not satisfied. I was constrained to substitute something
for it myself. And now allow me to ask “Do you really think I should permit the
line from Richmond, via Manassas Junction, to this city to be entirely
open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand
unorganized troops?” This is a question which the country will not allow me to
evade.
There is a curious
mystery about the number of the troops now with you. When I telegraphed
you on the 6th saying you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just
obtained from the Secretary of War, a statement, taken as he said, from your
own returns, making 108.000 then with you, and en route to you. You now
say you will have but 85.000 when all en route to you shall have reached
you. How can the discrepancy of 23.000 be accounted for?
As to Gen. Wool's
command, I understand it is doing for you precisely what a like number of your
own would have to do, if that command was away.
I suppose the whole
force which has gone forward for you, is with you by this time; and if so, I
think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will
relatively gain upon you – that is, he will gain faster by fortifications
and reinforcements, than you can by re-inforcements alone.
And, once more let
me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am
powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always
insisted, that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at
or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty – that
we would find the same enemy, and the same, or equal, entrenchments, at either
place. The country will not fail to note – is now noting – that the present
hesitation to move upon an entrenched enemy, is but the story of Manassas
repeated.
I beg to assure you
that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling
than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious
judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.
Yours very truly
A. Lincoln
SOURCE: The Abraham Lincoln
Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
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