Mr. Lincoln continued into the next week with the troubling thoughts of General Meade's failures. General after general had continued to disappoint him. He wrote a dispatch to General Halleck for General Meade of his concerns saying "I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it...I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our latest successes, have ended the war...Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it." The letter was never sent.
When I talked to the president, he seemed more depressed than usual. At one point he said he told John Nicolay, one of his secretaries, if he had gone up to Gettysburg he could have licked them rebel boys himself.
The president also wrote an unusual dispatch to General Grant, telling his top general that the commander-in-chief had doubted Grant's plan of taking Vicksburg and wanted now to let the general know "you were right and I was wrong." As part of that plan General Grant had actually boasted that he was going to dine in Vicksburg by celebrating the 4th of July in fine dining fashion.
The Vicksburg Daily Citizen newspaper had gotten wind of the boast and suggested that "the way to cook a rabbit was is 'to first catch the rabbit.'" When they did take the city on the 4th, Union soldiers printed the message "General Grant has caught the rabbit."
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