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 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 Manaasas Junction to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than 20,000 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 100,000 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 enroute to you shall have reached you.  How can this discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for?

As to General 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 to 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 reinforcements 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 noting now—­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.

TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

Executive Mansion, Washington, April 9, 1862.

Major-general Halleck, Saint Louis, Mo.:  If the rigor of the confinement of Magoffin (Governor of Kentucky) at Alton is endangering his life, or materially impairing his health, I wish it mitigated as far as it can be consistently with his safe detention.

A. Lincoln.

Please send above, by order of the President.  John Hay.

PROCLAMATION RECOMMENDING THANKSGIVING FOR VICTORIES,