Yours very truly,

Abraham Lincoln.

GIFT OF SOME RABBITS

To Michael Crock. 360 N. Fourth St., Philadelphia.

Executive Mansion, Washington, April 2, 1862.

My dear sir:-Allow me to thank you in behalf of my little son for your present of white rabbits.  He is very much pleased with them.

Yours truly,

Abraham Lincoln.

INSTRUCTION TO SECRETARY STANTON.

Executive Mansion, April 3, 1862.

The Secretary of War will order that one or the other of the corps of General McDowell and General Sumner remain in front of Washington until further orders from the department, to operate at or in the direction of Manassas Junction, or otherwise, as occasion may require; that the other Corps not so ordered to remain go forward to General McClellan as speedily as possible; that General McClellan commence his forward movements from his new base at once, and that such incidental modifications as the foregoing may render proper be also made.  A. Lincoln.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL McCLELLAN.

Washington, April 6, 1862.

General G. B. McCLELLAN: 

Yours of 11 A. M. today received.  Secretary of War informs me that the forwarding of transportation, ammunition, and Woodbury’s brigade, under your orders, is not, and will not be, interfered with.  You now have over one hundred thousand troops with you, independent of General Wool’s command.  I think you better break the enemy’s line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once.  This will probably use time as advantageously as you can.

A. Lincoln, President

TO GENERAL G. B. McCLELLAN.

Washington, April 9, 1862

Major-general McCLELLAN.

My dear sir+—­Your despatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.

Blenker’s division was withdrawn from you before you left here, and you knew the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought, acquiesced in it certainly not without reluctance.

After you left I ascertained that less than 20,000 unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defense of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this even to go to General Hooker’s old position; General Banks’s corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was divided and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  This presented (or would present when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Washington.  My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the Commanders of corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected.  It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.