| Sunday, July 13, 1862.Washington, DC.
| Lincoln calculates strength of Army of Potomac on paper and
sends figures to Gen. McClellan for explanation. Records show 160,000 men sent
to army on peninsula. Lincoln counted 86,500 when with army on 8th and
9th—five days ago. Returns show 23,500 killed, wounded, and missing.
"Have you any more perfect knowledge of this than I have?" Abraham Lincoln to George B.
McClellan, 13 July 1862, CW,
5:322-23. President Lincoln writes to Major General John E. Wool
regarding the welfare of some soldiers. Lincoln explains, "Two ladies are here
now representing that there are four hundred sick soldiers in Baltimore,
without shelter or any accommodations. Please have this looked into by the
proper officers, and the evil corrected, if it really exists. At the same,
time, if it is within your authority, I would be glad all the well soldiers
should be gathered in and sent to their Regiments forthwith." Abraham
Lincoln to John E. Wool, 13 July 1862, John E. Wool Papers, (Vault) Box 1,
Folder 6, New York State Library, Albany, NY. President Lincoln,
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and Secretary of State William H. Seward
travel by "carriage" to attend the funeral of the Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton's "infant child" James. Welles recalled, "It was on this occasion and
on this ride that [Lincoln] first mentioned . . . the subject of emancipating
the slaves by proclamation . . . He dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance,
and delicacy of the movement, said he had given it much thought and had about
come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential
for the salvation of the Union." Gideon Welles,
Diary of Gideon Welles (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1911), vol. 1, 70; Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman,
Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 175. Receives James W. White,
Robert H. McCurdy, and Frederick S. Winston, committee with invitation from
patriotic bodies in New York to attend mass meeting. White
to Lincoln, 14 July 1862, Abraham Lincoln
Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. |