Lincoln wrote him on April 9:
"After you left I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized
men, without a single field-battery, were all you designed to be left
for the defense of Washington and Manassas Junction; and part of this,
even, was to go to General Hooker's old position. General Banks's corps,
once designed for Manassas Junction, was divided and tied up on the line
of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again
exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. This
presented (or would present when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a
great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and
sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the
judgment of all the commanders of corps, be left entirely secure, had
been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.
"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave
Banks at Manassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up and
nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I was
constrained to substitute something for it myself."
"And now allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line
from Richmond _via_ Manassas Junction to this city to be entirely open,
except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand
unorganized troops? This is a question which the country will not allow
me to evade.
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