WAR DEPARTMENT, June, 28, 1862

Major-general Burnside, Newbern: 

We have intelligence that General McClellan has been attacked in large force and compelled to fall back toward the James River.  We are not advised of his exact condition, but the President directs that you shall send him all the reinforcements from your command to the James River that you can safely do without abandoning your own position.  Let it be infantry entirely, as he said yesterday that he had cavalry enough.

Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

War department, Washington city, June 28, 1862.

Major-general McCLELLAN: 

Save your army, at all events.  Will send reinforcements as fast as we can.  Of course they cannot reach you to-day, to-morrow, or next day.  I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed reinforcements.  I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did not send them as fast as I could.  I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself.  If you have had a drawn battle, or a repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in Washington.  We protected Washington, and the enemy concentrated on you.  Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops could have gotten to you.  Less than a week ago you notified us that reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us.  It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the government is to blame.  Please tell at once the present condition and aspect of things.

A. LINCOLN

TO SECRETARY SEWARD.

Executive Mansion, June 28, 1862

Hon.  W. H. Seward.

My dear sir:—­My view of the present condition of the war is about as follows: 

The evacuation of Corinth and our delay by the flood in the Chickahominy have enabled the enemy to concentrate too much force in Richmond for McClellan to successfully attack.  In fact there soon will be no substantial rebel force anywhere else.  But if we send all the force from here to McClellan, the enemy will, before we can know of it, send a force from Richmond and take Washington.  Or if a large part of the western army be brought here to McClellan, they will let us have Richmond, and retake Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, etc.  What should be done is to hold what we have in the West, open the Mississippi, and take Chattanooga and East Tennessee without more.  A reasonable force should in every event be kept about Washington for its protection.  Then let the country give us a hundred thousand new troops in the shortest possible time, which, added to McClellan directly