Selected Correspondance of Abraham Lincoln 1863 Letter To Governor Seymour
by Abraham Lincoln
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
August 7, 1863.
HIS EXCELLENCY HORATIO SEYMOUR, Governor of New York:
Your communication of the 3rd instant has been received and
attentively considered.
I cannot consent to suspend the draft in New York, as you request,
because, among other reasons, time is too important.
By the figures you send, which I presume are correct, the twelve
districts represented fall into two classes of eight and four
respectively. The disparity of the quotas for the draft in these two
classes is certainly very striking, being the difference between an
average of 2200 in one class and 4864 in the other. Assuming that
the districts are equal one to another in entire population, as
required by the plan on which they were made, this disparity is such
as to require attention. Much of it, however, I suppose will be
accounted for by the fact that so many more persons fit for soldiers
are in the city than are in the country who have too recently arrived
from other parts of the United States and from Europe to be either
included in the census of 1860, or to have voted in 1862. Still,
making due allowance for this, I am yet unwilling to stand upon it as
an entirely sufficient explanation of the great disparity.
I shall direct the draft to proceed in all the districts, drawing,
however, at first from each of the four districts--to wit, the
Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth--only, 2200 being the average quota
of the other class. After this drawing, these four districts, and
also the Seventeenth and Twenty-ninth, 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 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.