Executive Mansion, Washington, October 15, 1863.

Major-general Meade, Army of Potomac: 

On the 4th instant you telegraphed me that Private Daniel Hanson, of Ninety-seventh New York Volunteers, had not yet been tried.  When he shall be, please notify me of the result, with a brief statement of his case, if he be convicted.  Gustave Blittersdorf, who you say is enlisted in the One hundred and nineteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers as William Fox, is proven to me to be only fifteen years old last January.  I pardon him, and you will discharge him or put him in the ranks at your discretion.  Mathias Brown, of Nineteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers, is proven to me to be eighteen last May, and his friends say he is convicted on an enlistment and for a desertion both before that time.  If this last be true he is pardoned, to be kept or discharged as you please.  If not true suspend his execution and report the facts of his case.  Did you receive my despatch of 12th pardoning John Murphy?

A. Lincoln.

[The Lincoln papers during this time have a suspended execution on almost every other page, I have omitted most of these D.W.]

TELEGRAM TO T. W. SWEENEY.

War department, Washington, D. C., October 16, 1863.

Thomas W. Sweeney, Continental, Philadelphia: 

Tad is teasing me to have you forward his pistol to him.

A. Lincoln.

TELEGRAM TO T. C. DURANT.

Washington, D. C., October 16, 1863.

T. C. Durant, New York: 

I remember receiving nothing from you of the 10th, and I do not comprehend your despatch of to-day.  In fact I do not remember, if I ever knew, who you are, and I have very little conception as to what you are telegraphing about.

A. Lincoln.

COMMENT ON A NOTE.

New York, October 15, 1863.

Dear sir:  On the point of leaving I am told, by a gentleman to whose statements I attach credit, that the opposition policy for the Presidential campaign will be to “abstain from voting.”  J.

[Comment.] More likely to abstain from stopping, once they get at it, until they shall have voted several times each.

October 16. 
A. L.

TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

Executive Mansion, Washington,
October 16, 1863.

Major general Halleck: 

I do not believe Lee can have over 60,000 effective men.

Longstreet’s corps would not be sent away to bring an equal force back upon the same road; and there is no other direction for them to have come from.