d William G. Greene has just presented a kind
letter in regard to yourself, addressed to me by our other friends Yates,
Hatch, and Dubois.

I doubt whether your present position is more painful to you than to
myself. Grateful for the patriotic stand so early taken by you in this
life-and-death struggle of the nation, I have done whatever has appeared
practicable to advance you and the public interest together. No charges,
with a view to a trial, have been preferred against you by any one; nor do
I suppose any will be. All there is, so far as I have heard, is General
Grant's statement of his reasons for relieving you. And even this I have
not seen or sought to see; because it is a case, as appears to me, in
which I could do nothing without doing harm. General Grant and yourself
have been conspicuous in our most important successes; and for me to
interfere and thus magnify a breach between you could not but be of evil
effect. Better leave it where the law of the case has placed it. For me to
force you back upon General Grant would be forcing him to resign. I cannot
give you a new command, because we have no forces except such as already
have commanders.

I am constantly pressed by those who scold before they think, or without
thinking at all, to give commands respectively to Fremont, McClellan,
Butler, Sigel, Curtis, Hunter, Hooker, and perhaps others, when, all else
out of the way, I have no commands to give them. This is now your case;
which, as I have said, pains me not less than it does you. My belief is
that the permanent estimate of what a general does in the field is fixed
by the "cloud of witnesses" who have been with him in the field, and that,
relying on these, he who has the right needs not to fear.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, AUGUST 16, 1863.

GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, New York:

Your despatch of this morning is just received, and I fear I do not
perfectly understand it.

My view of the principle is that every soldier obtained voluntarily leaves
one less to be obtained by draft. The only difficulty is in applying the
principle properly. Looking to time, as heretofore, I am unwilling to
give up a drafted man now, even for the certainty, much less for the mere
chance, of getting a volunteer hereafter. Again, after the draft in any
district, would it not make trouble to take any drafted man out and put a
volunteer in--for how shall i