To illustrate how dependent was the commander of the Army of the Potomac upon Lincoln I give another despatch, sent by the President to Hooker when the latter proposed to make a dash upon Richmond while Lee was moving his army westward towards the Shenandoah Valley. "If left to me, I would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it. If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile your communications, and with them your army, would be ruined. I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him and fret him." A few days later Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?" But Hooker made no attempt to do so, and merely followed Lee northward through Virginia and Maryland into Pennsylvania, keeping on the "inside track," as Mr. Lincoln suggested, between the Confederate army and Washington. Before the battle of Gettysburg, which ended the most aggressive campaign of the Confederates, a long-standing feud between Hooker and Halleck became so acute that the President saw that one or the other of them must be relieved. Hooker, in a fit of irritation because Halleck had declined to comply with some unimportant request, asked to be relieved from the command, and the President selected George G. Meade to succeed him. A few days later the battle of Gettysburg was fought. The vain ambition of Lee and Davis to raise the Confederate flag over Independence Hall and establish the head-quarters of the Confederate government in Philadelphia was dissipated and Lee fell back, leaving two thousand six hundred killed, twelve thousand wounded, and five thousand prisoners. Lincoln's military instincts taught him that the war could be practically ended there if the advantages gained at Gettysburg were properly utilized, and so implored Meade to renew his attack. But Meade held back, Lee escaped, and for once the President lost his patience. In the intensity of his disappointment he wrote Meade as follows: