Sen. Browning (Ill.) at White House for long talk about war conditions and elections. Browning, Diary.

Lincoln writes to Attorney General Edward Bates regarding a communication from Missouri's provisional Governor Hamilton R. Gamble. Gamble asked Lincoln whether the state or the federal government controls the troops that Gamble "raised." Lincoln writes, "Instead of settling one dispute by deciding the question, I should merely furnish a nest full of eggs for hatching new disputes." Lincoln concludes, "[T]he offer of the Secretary of War to let Gov. Gamble make vacancies, and he, the Secretary, to ratify the making of them, ought to be satisfactory." Hamilton R. Gamble to Abraham Lincoln, 31 October 1861; Hamilton R. Gamble to Henry W. Halleck, October 1862; Hamilton R. Gamble to Abraham Lincoln, 17 November 1862, all in Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Abraham Lincoln to Edward Bates, 29 November 1862, CW, 5:515-16.