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 supplied by a special draft
for that object, allowing due credit for volunteers who 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 the 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 facilitate the obtaining of it. But I cannot
consent to lose the time while it is being obtained. We are contending
with an enemy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can
reach into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into the
slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used. This 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 army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side if we first
waste time to re-experiment 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 practical, 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.

TO GENERAL U.S. GRANT.

EXECUTIVE MANSION WASHINGTON, August 9, 1863.

MY DEAR GENERAL GRANT:

I see by a despatch of yours that you incline quite strongly toward an
expedition against Mobile. This would appear tempting to me also, were it
not that in view of recent events in Mexico I am greatly impressed with
the importance of re-establishing the national authority in western Texas
as soon as possible. I am not making an order, however; that I leave, for
the prese