ertained 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.

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