now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of Richmond.  Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable, as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel, extending from the hub toward the rim, and this whether you move directly by the chord, or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely.  The chord-line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Haymarket, and Fredericksburg, and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac by Aquia Creek, meet you at all points from Washington.  The same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way.  The gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the following distances from Harper’s Ferry, to wit:  Vestal’s, five miles; Gregory’s, thirteen; Snicker’s, eighteen; Ashby’s, twenty-eight; Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton’s, fifty-three.  I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your knowledge, and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread of you.  The gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish.  For a great part of the way you would be practically between the enemy and both Washington and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest number of troops from here.  When, at length, running to Richmond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so, turn and attack him in the rear.  But I think he should be engaged long before such point is reached.  It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it.  This letter is in no sense an order.

     Yours truly, A. LINCOLN. 
     MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN.

Throughout the entire war President Lincoln was always keenly solicitous for the welfare of the Union soldiers.  He knew that upon them everything depended; and he felt bound to them not only by official relations, but by the tenderer ties of human interest and love.  In all his proclamations and public utterances he gave the fullest credit to the brave men in the field, and claimed for them the country’s thanks and gratitude.  His sympathy for the soldiers was as tender as that of a woman, and his tears were ever ready to start at the mention of their hardships, their bravery, their sufferings and losses.  Nothing that he could do was left undone to minister to their comfort in field or camp or hospital.  His most exacting cares were never permitted to divert his thoughts from them, and his anxious and tender sympathy included all whom they held dear.  Said Mr. Riddle, in a speech in Congress in 1863:  “Let not the distant mother, who has given up a loved one to fearful death, think that the President does not sympathize with her sorrow, and would not have been glad—­oh, how glad—­to so shape events as to spare the sacrifices.  And let not fathers and mothers