bank of the river by the unusually high water.  He camped close by it, and received strenuous telegrams urging him to attack.  But he did not,[46] and on the night of July 13 the Southern general successfully placed the Potomac between himself and his too tardy pursuer.  Bitter then was the resentment of every loyal man at the North.  For once the President became severe and sent a dispatch of such tenor that General Meade replied by an offer to resign his command.  This Mr. Lincoln did not accept.  Yet he was too sorely pained not to give vent to words which in fact if not in form conveyed severe censure.  He was also displeased because Meade, in general orders, spoke of “driving the invaders from our soil;” as if the whole country was not “our soil”!  Under the influence of so much provocation, he wrote to General Meade a letter reproduced from the manuscript by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay.  It is true that on cooler reflection he refrained from sending this missive, but it is in itself sufficiently interesting to deserve reading:—­“I have just seen your dispatch to General Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command because of a supposed censure of mine.  I am very grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you.  But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it.  I have been oppressed nearly ever since the battle of Gettysburg by what appeared to be evidences that yourself and General Couch and General Smith were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle.  What these evidences were, if you please, I hope to tell you at some time when we shall both feel better.  The case, summarily stated, is this:  You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours.  He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him.  You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg, while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure without attacking him.  And Couch and Smith,—­the latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg, but he did not arrive.  At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty-five miles, if so much; and Couch’s movement was very little different.