To George B. McClellan1Jump to section
Major-General McClellan: Your three dispatches of yesterday in relation to the affair, ending with the statement that you completely succeeded in making your point, are very gratifying. The later one of 6:15 p.m., suggesting the probability of your being overwhelmed by 200,000, and talking of where the responsibility will belong, pains me very much. I give you all I can, and act on the presumption that you will do the best you can with what you have, while you continue, ungenerously I think, to assume that I could give you more if I would. I have omitted and shall omit no opportunity to send you reenforcements whenever I possibly can.
A. LINCOLN
Annotation
[1] OR, I, XI, III, 259; copy. DLC-McClellan Papers. In the absence of the original telegram, the received copy in the McClellan Papers establishes satisfactorily that the Official Records are in error in printing as a part of this telegram the postscript properly belonging to Lincoln's dispatch to McClellan on June 28, infra. McClellan's telegram to Stanton of June 25, 6:15 P.M., reads in part as follows: ``. . . I incline to think Jackson will attack my right and rear. The rebel force is stated at 200,000, including Jackson and Beauregard. I shall have to contend against vastly superior odds if these reports be true; but this army will do all in the power of men to hold their position and repulse any attack.
``I regret my great inferiority in numbers, but feel that I am in no way responsible for it, as I have not failed to represent repeatedly the necessity of re-enforcements;