MAJOR-GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:
Please come over here. The fact of one of our officers being killed on the Patuxent is a specimen of what I would avoid. It seems to me we could send white men to recruit better than to send negroes and thus inaugurate homicides on punctilio.
Please come over.
A. LINCOLN. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, October 24, 1863.
MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:
Taking all our information together, I think it probable that Ewell's corps has started for East Tennessee by way of Abingdon, marching last Monday, say from Meade's front directly to the railroad at Charlottesville.
First, the object of Lee's recent movement against Meade; his destruction of the Alexandria and Orange Railroad, and subsequent withdrawal without more motive, not otherwise apparent, would be explained by this hypothesis.
Secondly, the direct statement of Sharpe's men that Ewell has gone to Tennessee.