Telegram To General U. S. Grant. [Washington] July 17. 1864. 11.25 A.M.
Lieutenant-General Grant, City Point, Va.:

In your dispatch of yesterday to General Sherman, I find the following, to wit:

"I shall make a desperate effort to get a position here, which will hold the enemy without the necessity of so many men."

Pressed as we are by lapse of time I am glad to hear you say this; and yet I do hope you may find a way that the effort shall not be desperate in the sense of great loss of life.

A. LINCOLN, President.