Summary:
In September, 1862, General Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland and threatened Pennsylvania. In this dispatch, Union General George McClellan writes Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin with instructions on calling out and using militia to meet the invasion. McClellan suggests concentrating troops in the Chambersburg area.

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ANDREW G. CURTIN,
Governor of Pennsylvania:

September 10, 1862

Everything that we can learn induces me to believe that the information you have received is substantially correct. I think the enemy are checked in the directions of Baltimore and Gettysburg. You should concentrate all the troops you can in the vicinity of Chambersburg, not entirely neglecting Gettysburg. I will follow them up as rapidly as possible, and do all I can to check their movements into Pennsylvania. Call out the militia, especially mounted men, and do everything in your power to impede the enemy by the action of light troops; attack them in flank, destroying their trains and any property which must inevitably come into their possession. You may be sure that I will follow them as closely as I can, and fight them whenever I can find them. It is as much my interest as yours to preserve the soil of Pennsylvania from invasion, or, failing in that, to destroy any army that may have the temerity to attempt it.

GEO. B. McCLELLAN,
Maj.-Gen.

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Bibliographic Information : Letter Reproduced from The War of The Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 19, Serial No. 28, Pages 248-249, Broadfoot Publishing Company, Wilmington, NC, 1997.