with you and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85,000 when
all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of
23,000 be accounted for?

"As to General Wool's command,[12] I understand it is doing for you
precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that
command was away.

"I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by
this time. And if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a
blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you,--that is, he
will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by
reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable
to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do
me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same
enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place. The country
will not fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to
move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.

"I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in
greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to
sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can.
But you must act."

McClellan, in consternation and almost despair at the repeated pruning
of his force, now begged for at least a part of McDowell's corps, which,
he said on April 10, was "indispensable;" "the fate of our cause depends
upon it." Accordingly Franklin's division was sent to him; and then,