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 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."]

Worried and weakened by this Democratic opposition to the Draft, and the
threatened consequent delays and dangers to the success of the Union
Cause, and depressed moreover by the defeat of the National forces under
Rosecrans at Chickamauga; yet, the favorable determination of the Fall
elections on the side of Union and Freedom, and the immense majorities
upholding those issues, together with Grant's great victory (November,
1863) of Chattanooga--where the three days of fighting in the
Chattanooga Valley and up among the clouds of Lookout Mountain and
Mission Ridge, not only effaced the memory of Rosecrans's previous
disaster, but brought fresh and imperishable laurels to the Union Arms
--stiffened the President's backbone, and that of Union men everywhere.