the same direction. Stripped here,
as we are here, it will be all we can do to prevent them crossing the
Potomac at Harper's Ferry or above. We have about 20,000 of McDowell's
force moving back to the vicinity of Front Royal, and General Fremont, who
was at Franklin, is moving to Harrisonburg; both these movements intended
to get in the enemy's rear.

One more of McDowell's brigades is ordered through here to Harper's Ferry;
the rest of his force remains for the present at Fredericksburg. We are
sending such regiments and dribs from here and Baltimore as we can spare
to Harper's Ferry, supplying their places in some sort by calling in
militia from the adjacent States. We also have eighteen cannon on the
road to Harper's Ferry, of which arm there is not a single one yet at that
point. This is now our situation.

If McDowell's force was now beyond our reach, we should be utterly
helpless. Apprehension of something like this, and no unwillingness to
sustain you, has always been my reason for withholding McDowell's force
from you. Please understand this, and do the best you can with the force
you have.

A. LINCOLN.

HISTORY OF CONSPIRACY OF REBELLION

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

MAY 16, 1862

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

The insurrection which is yet existing in the United States and aims at
the overthrow of the Federal Constitution and the Union, was clandestinely
prepared during the Winter of 1860 and 1861, and assumed an open
organization in the form of a treasonable provisional government at
Montgomery, in Alabama on the 18th day of February, 1861. On the 12th day
of April, 1861, the insurgents committed the flagrant act of civil war by
the bombardment and the capture of Fort Sumter, Which cut off the hope of
immediate conciliation. Immediately afterward all the roads and avenues to
this city were obstructed, and the capital was put into the condition of
a siege. The mails in every direction were stopped and the lines of
telegraph cut off by the insurgents, and military and naval forces which
had been called out by the government for the defense of Washington were
prevented from reaching the city by organized and combined treasonable
resistance in the State of Maryland. There was no adequate and effective
organization for the public defense. Congress had indefinitely adjourned.
There was no time to convene them. It became necessary for me to choose
whether, using only the existing means, age