Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President. Autograph letter signed ("A. Lincoln") as President, to "Hon. Sec. of State" [William H. Seward], Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., 24 November l863, One page, 8vo, on printed Executive Mansion stationery, small blank portion at lower right-hand corner torn away. FOUR DAYS AFTER DELIVERING HIS ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG, A CONCERNED LINCOLN RECEIVES NEWS OF THE SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE "My dear Sir A despatch from [Genl.] Foster at Cincinnati, received half an hour ago, contains one from [Genl. Orlando B.] Wil[l]cox at Cumberland Gap, without date, saying 'fighting going on at Knoxville today.' The want of date makes the time of fighting uncertain, but I rather think it means yesterday the 23rd." A vivid demonstration of the close attention paid by Lincoln to the telegraphic despatches which poured into Washington from the nation's scattered battlefronts; Lincoln visited the telegraph office frequently, unannounced, at all hours of the day and night, sometimes remaining for extended periods, particularly when a battle was approaching or in progress. (See the detailed account by David H. Bates Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, New York, l907). The East Tennessee campaigns, to which this interesting little letter refers, had long been of particular interest to President Lincoln. "In the early part of the war there was nothing Lincoln desired more desperately than the liberation of East Tennessee. It was intolerable to him that the strongest Union area in the South should be controlled by the Confederacy. Although his motives for wanting it freed were political, he always tried to argue that there were great military benefits to be derived from seizing Knoxville and cutting the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, thus getting, as he said, between the rebels and their 'hog and hominy' (T. Harry Williams Lincoln and His Generals, New York, l952, pp.47-48). Military success in the region proved elusive, though, until the fall of Vicksburg allowed Grant to move eastwards with his army, in the Chattanooga campaign, which was reaching its successful climax at this time. Burnside had occupied Knoxville in early September. Willcox's division garrisoned the mountain passes from West Virginia. In early November, Jefferson Davis ordered General James Longstreet, with a force of l0,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, to move against Burnside in Knoxville. In a series of small skirmishes Burnside was loosely bottled up in Knoxville by the Confederates. On November 23, the day before the present letter, Lincoln had written Seward to pass on a despatch from Burnside in Knoxville saying that he "can hold the place, that he is not closely invested" (Basler, vii, 29). Longstreet, who was not equipped for a seige operation, planned an assault against the town's southernmost redoubt, Fort Sanders. In the meantime, Union forces under Grant at Lookout Mountain and Thomas at Missionary Ridge won resounding victories over Bragg's Confederate Army on the 25th, the day after this present letter, thus seizing Chattanooga and driving the main rebel force back into Georgia. Grant then sent Sherman to relieve Burnside, but Longstreet's assault on Knoxville, made on the 29th, had already been repulsed when he arrived, and Longstreet retreated back toward Virginia. "This is one of the most important gains of the war," Lincoln exulted to John Nicolay. "Now if this Army of the Potomac was good for anything --if the officers had anything in them -- if the Army had any legs, they could...catch Longstreet. Can anybody doubt, if Grant was here in command that he could catch him?" (Nicolay memorandum, quoted by Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None, New York, l977, p. 398. Published, from a copy in the Robert Todd Lincoln papers, in Collected Works, ed. Roy P. Basler, vii, 30.