August 20, 1863
President Lincoln responds to Springfield attorney James C. Conkling, who is organizing a Union rally: “Your letter of the 14th. is received. I think I will go, or send a letter–probably the latter.” President Lincoln had never returned to Springfield, Illinois since leaving in February 1861.
President Lincoln writes Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton: “Since leaving the Telegraph office it has occurred to me that it might be well to have Gen. Lockwood send down to us, the two men he mentions as just arrived from Fredericksburg.” General Lockwood had wired General George Meade: “A gentleman of the highest respectability . . . has ridden into town to report information just received from Fredericksburg by two men from that place, one a Unionist, the other a secessionist. These men agree in reporting Lee’s army very much disorganized.”
Later, President Lincoln, accompanied by Secretary of War Stanton , General James Wadsworth, General John H. Martindale, General Montgomery Meigs, and General John G. Barnard, takes a boat ride on Potomac River to visit new fort on Rosier’s Bluff in Virginia. Barnard was hief engineer of the Department of Washington – in charge of the city’s defenses.
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 
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