CONTINUED FAILURE TO PURSUE ENEMY

Telegram to general H. W. Halleck.

Soldiers’ home, Washington, July 6 1863.7 P.M.,

Major-general Halleck: 

I left the telegraph office a good deal dissatisfied.  You know I did not like the phrase—­in Orders, No. 68, I believe—­“Drive the invaders from our soil.”  Since that, I see a despatch from General French, saying the enemy is crossing his wounded over the river in flats, without saying why he does not stop it, or even intimating a thought that it ought to be stopped.  Still later, another despatch from General Pleasonton, by direction of General Meade, to General French, stating that the main army is halted because it is believed the rebels are concentrating “on the road towards Hagerstown, beyond Fairfield,” and is not to move until it is ascertained that the rebels intend to evacuate Cumberland Valley.

These things appear to me to be connected with a purpose to cover Baltimore and Washington and to get the enemy across the river again without a further collision, and they do not appear connected with a purpose to prevent his crossing and to destroy him.  I do fear the former purpose is acted upon and the latter rejected.

If you are satisfied the latter purpose is entertained, and is judiciously pursued, I am content.  If you are not so satisfied, please look to it.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln.

RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,

July 7, 1863.

Fellow-citizens:—­I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call; but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called.  How long ago is it Eighty-odd years since, on the Fourth of July, for the first time in the history of the world, a nation, by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth “that all men are created equal.”  That was the birthday of the United States of America.  Since then the Fourth of July has had several very peculiar recognitions.  The two men most distinguished in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having penned it, and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate—­the only two of the fifty-five who signed it and were elected Presidents of the United States.  Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper, it pleased Almighty God to take both from this stage of action.  This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history.  Another President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence on the same day and month of the year; and now on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to