Letter to George Meade (July 14, 1863)

Contributing Editors for this page include Susan Segal

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#87 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents

Annotated Transcript

“Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.”

On This Date

HD Daily Report, July 14, 1863

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Posted at YouTube by “Understanding Lincoln” participant, Susan Segal, October 18, 2013

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How Historians Interpret

“In one of the harshest passages Lincoln ever penned, he told Meade how much his failure to attack Lee would hurt the Union cause: “I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasureably because of it.” This stinging letter Lincoln filed away with the endorsement: “To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed.” But he did tell the general, “The fruit seemed so ripe, so ready for plucking, that it was very hard to lose it.”

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 30 (PDF), 3353.

“Lee’s escape made the president frantic, because he believed that Lee had been within Meade’s ‘easy grasp’ and to have ‘closed upon him would,’ he stated, ‘in connection with our late successes, have ended the war.’ With the Confederates’ back to the river, Lincoln’s expected that Lee’s army could have been destroyed and that ‘such destruction was perfectly easy.’ The president believed that victory was ‘certain’ and confided to his secretary: ‘We had them in our grasp. We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours.’”

Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 425.

“Like his committee counterparts, Lincoln did not take defeat or missed opportunity lightly. He, too, was convinced that George Meade had missed the opportunity of the war in allowing Lee’s escape after Gettysburg. His anger and grief were obvious to many who saw him in the aftermath of that battle. At a July [14], 1863, cabinet meeting, he complained bitterly to Gideon Welles, ‘there is bad faith somewhere. Meade has been pressed and urged, but only one of his generals was for an immediate attack…. What does it mean, Mr. Welles? Great God! What does it mean.’”

Bruce Tap, “Amateurs at War: Abraham Lincoln and the Committee on the Conduct of the War,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 23, no. 2 (2002): 1-18.

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Executive Mansion, Washington

July 14, 1863

Major General Meade

I have just seen your despatch to Gen. Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command, because of a supposed censure of mine. I am very—very—grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you. But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it. I had been oppressed nearly ever since the battles at Gettysburg, by what appeared to be evidences that yourself, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle. What these evidences were, if you please, I hope to tell you at some time, when we shall both feel better. The case, summarily stated is this. You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. And Couch and Smith! The latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg; but he did not arrive. At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty five miles, if so much. And Couch’s movement was very little different.

Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasureably because of it.

I beg you will not consider this a prossecution, or persecution of yourself. As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why.