Seymour, by promising to "have this Draft
suspended and stopped," did something toward quieting the Riots, but it
was not until the Army of the Potomac, now following Lee's retreat, was
weakened by the sending of several regiments to New York that the
Draft-rioting spirit, in that city, and to a less extent in other
cities, was thoroughly cowed.

[In reply to Gov. Seymour's appeal for delay in the execution of
the Draft Law, in order to test its Constitutionality, Mr. Lincoln,
on the 7th of August, said he could not consent to lose the time
that would be involved in obtaining a decision from the U. S.
Supreme Court on that point, and proceeded: "We are contending with
an Enemy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can
reach into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into a
slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used.

"This system produces an Army which will soon turn upon our now
victorious soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be
sustained by recruits as they should be.

It produces an Army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side,
if we first waste time to re-experiment with the Volunteer system,
already deemed by Congress, and palpably, in fact, so far exhausted
as to be inadequate; and then more time to obtain a Court decision
as to whether a law is Constitutional which requires a part of
those not now in the Service to go to those who are already in it,
and still more time to determine with absolute certainty that we
get those who are to go, in the precisely legal proportion to those
who are not to go.

"My purpose is to be in my action Just and Constitutional, and yet
Practical, in performing the important duty with which I am
charged, of maintaining the Unity and the Free principles of our
common Country."]

Worried and weakened by this Democratic opposition to the Draft, and the
threatened consequent delays and dangers to the success of the Union
Cause, and depressed moreover by the defeat of the National forces under
Rosecrans at Chickamauga; yet, the favorable determination of the Fall
elections on the side of Union and Freedom, and the immense majorities
upholding those issues, together with Grant's great victory (November,
1863) of Chattanooga--where the three days of fighting in the
Chattanooga Valley and up among the clouds of L