nd so avoided all trouble."--New York _Herald_, September 11,
1863.]

[Footnote 907: James B. Fry, _New York and the Conscription_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 908: _The Public Record of Horatio Seymour_, p. 153.]

This letter was neither gracious nor candid. While dealing in columns
of figures to prove the inaccuracy of the enrolment, it concealed the
fact that, although urged to cooeperate with the enrolling officers, he
had ignored their invitation to verify the enrolment. In menacing
tones, too, he intimated "the consequences of a violent, harsh policy,
before the constitutionality of the Act is tested." It was evident he
had given much thought to the question, but his prolixity betrayed the
feeling of an official who, conscious of having erred in doing nothing
in anticipation of riot and bloodshed, wished now to make a big
showing of duty performed.

Lincoln's reply not only emphasised the difference between the
political aptitude of himself and Seymour, but marked him as the more
magnanimous and far the greater man. The President raised no issue as
to enrolments, wasted no arguments over columns of figures, and
referred in nowise to the past. He briefly outlined a method of
verification which quickly established,--what might have been shown in
June had the Governor given the matter attention,--an excess of 13,000
men enrolled in the Brooklyn and New York districts. Although he would
be glad, said Lincoln, to facilitate a decision of the Court and
abide by it,[909] he declined longer to delay the draft "because time
is too important.... 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 produces an army which will soon
turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they
are not sustained by recruits as they should be."[910]

[Footnote 909: The constitutionality of the Conscription Act of March
3, 1863, was affirmed by the United States Circuit Courts of
Pennsylvania and Illinois.]

[Footnote 910: _The Public Record of Horatio Seymour_, p. 156.]

When the drawing was resumed on August 19, 10,000 infantry and three
batteries of artillery, picked troops from the Army of the Potomac,
beside a division of the State National Guard, backed the Governor's
proclamation counselling submission to the execution of the law. In
this presence the draf