The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

404 THE LIFE, PUBLIC SERVICES, AND
the draft to proceed in all the districts, drawing, however, at first from
each of the four dist ricts-to wit, the Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighthonly, 2,200 being the average quota of the other class. After this drawing,
tlhesc four districts, and also the Seventeenth and Twenty-nintlh,. shall be
carefully re-enrolled; and, if you please, agents of yours may witness
every step of the process. Any deficiency which may appear by the new
enrolment will be supllpliedl by a special draft for that object, allowing due
credit for volunteers wheo may be obtained from these districts respectively
during the interval; and at all points, so far as consistent with practical
convenience, due credits shall be given for volunteers, and your Excellency shall be notified of the time fixed for commencing a draft in each
district.
I do not object to abide a decision of the United States Supreme Court,
or (of the Judges thereof, on the constitutionality of the draft law. In
fact, I should be willing to filacilitate the obtaining of it. But I cannot
consent to lose the time whliile it is being obtained. We are contending
with an enenly who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he
can reach into his ranks, very nmich as a butcher drives bullocks into a
slauglhter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used. Tllis produces
an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in
the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they should be. It
produces an arnmy with a rapidity not to be matched on our side, if we first
waste time to re-exl)eriment with the volunteer system, already deemed
by Congress, and palpably, in fact, so far exhausted as to be inadequate;
and then more time to obtain a Court decision as to whether a law is constitutional which requires a part of those not now in the service to go to
the aid of those who are already in it; and still more time to determine
with absolute certainty that we get those who are to go in the precisely
legal proportion to those who are not to go. My purpose is to be in my
action just and constitutional, and yet plractical, in performing the important duty with which I am charged, of maintaining the unity and the free
principles of our common country.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
On the 8th Governor Seymour replied, reasserting the
unfairness and injustice of the enrolments, and expressing
his regret at the President's refusal to postpone the draft.
He also sent a voluminous statement, prepared by JudgeAdvocate Waterbury, designed to sustain the position he
had previously assumed. To this the President thus replied: