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and admonished the citizens to submit to the execution of the law of Congress. On August 19 the draft was resumed and continued with entire peacefulness. It was operated generally throughout the country, and, although it did not actually furnish many soldiers to the army, owing to the numerous exemptions under the statute and the large number of those drafted who paid the commutation money, it stimulated enlistments by inducing States, counties, cities and towns to add to the government bounty other bounties sufficient to prevail upon men to volunteer and fill the respective quotas. 1 5 Ten days after the battle of Gettysburg, as we have already seen, Lee with his army crossed the Potomac into Virginia. Meade followed leisurely. A campaign of manœuvres ensued with skirmishes and combats but no general battle. Lincoln had lost confidence in Meade’s power of aggression. “I have no faith that Meade will attack Lee,” he said; “nothing looks like it to me. I believe he can never have another as good opportunity as that which he trifled away. Everything since has dragged with him.” 2 On September 21, Lincoln unbosomed himself to Welles. “It is the same old story of the Army of the Potomac,” he said. “Imbecility, inefficiency—don’t want to do—is defending the Capital.… Oh it is terrible, terrible, this weakness, this indifference of our Potomac generals, with such armies of good and brave men.” 3 On October 16, Lincoln gave Meade a warrant for action. “If General Meade,” he wrote in a letter to Halleck, “can now attack

Note 1. IV, 330. [back]

Note 2. July 26. Welles’s Diary, I, 383. Taking everything into account this is hardly inconsistent with Lincoln’s letter to Halleck, O. R., XXVII, Pt. I, 105; see Pennypacker, 223. [back]

Note 3. Welles’s Diary, I, 439; see O. R., XXIX, Pt. II, 207. [back]

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