plete control and at the same time, without saying so directly, to restrict the functions and activities of the President and the Secretary of War to supplying men, money, and material for carrying on the struggle, while the actual work in the field should be supervised by the new general-in-chief, and all subordinate army commanders should take their orders and carry on their operations solely under his direction.

Notwithstanding the particulars, which reached me from time to time, both while in Washington and before I went there, I always felt that the conspiracies to which I have alluded were more or less fictitious, but I am now persuaded that for a while at least they were promoted by various elements of discontent in and out of Congress, as well as in and out of the army. Fortunately, the lieutenant generalcy was not only a constitutional but an eminently practical solution of the country's more pressing difficulties. Knowing the modesty, patriotism, and unquestioning sense of subordination which controlled Grant in all his actions, and feeling assured that the men and influences surrounding him would be managed if not dominated hereafter as heretofore by his strong, aggressive, and patriotic chief-of-staff, I had no sort of doubt that the entire army would be confined henceforth to the duty of sustaining the civil government in all its branches, while it would be called upon to put forth at the same time its best efforts to overthrow and suppress the slaveholders' rebellion. The country accepted this plan as a happy solution of its most pressing difficulties, and for the immediate future gave but little heed to illegal and quixotic schemes

for getting control of the Government. This view of the matter was loyally accepted by the leading newspapers as well as by the leading congressmen and governors, and the new era began with an immediate restoration of hope and confidence in which I fully shared. While the new plans necessarily developed themselves but slowly, the measures, as they became known, relieved my mind of all apprehension, and when the hour came to give up my office in Washington and to rejoin Grant in the field I went most willingly and with every confidence that both the civil and military crises had been successfully passed and that the Government provided for in the Constitution would surely and within a reasonable time triumph over all its enemies and opposers whomsoever.

XIV

COMMANDING THIRD CAVALRY DIVISION

General plan of campaign-Report to Meade-Relieve Kilpatrick-Confirmation delayed-Spencer carbinesPosition of opposing armies.

The Lieutenant General's plan for the spring campaign was not only most resolute, but as simple and direct as it was wise. Lee's army was the objective of the Army of the Potomac. Major General George G. Meade was in immediate command, reënforced by the Ninth Corps under Burnside, all under the personal supervision of General Grant. "Wherever Lee goes there you will go also," summarized his terse instructions to Meade. As aid to this aggressive forward movement against the main army of the Confederacy under command of its greatest general, Grant had also the Army of the James, twenty-three thousand men, under Major General Benjamin F. Butler, composed of Butler's own troops and those of Major General Quincy A. Gillmore, from the south Atlantic coast. This army, under the immediate command of Major General William Farrar Smith, was ordered to operate on the south side of the James, with Richmond for its objective. The armies of Meade and Butler were to become a unit in the event of the success of the

latter in forcing the enemy into the entrenchments of Richmond. Coöperative offensive action of all our armies in the field, east or west, as far as possible, was provided for and insisted upon. Especially important as an aid of the principal movements against Lee and Richmond, respectively, was the march against Lynchburg and the Tennessee and Virginia Railroad to be made by a column of ten thousand or twelve thousand men moving out from Beverly under Major General E. O. C. Ord, and another column, principally cavalry, moving in concert from Charlestown, West Virginia, under Major General George Crook. It will be observed that Grant, as was characteristic and proper, reserved to himself much the hardest job. The campaign began early in May, 1864, and was pressed with varying fortunes not only through the spring but "all summer," and until the successful end, about one year later, at Appomattox. From various causes, chiefly Lee's generalship, which was foreseen, but largely from the inefficiency and lack of coöperation among his own subordinates, which, if foreseen, could not be adequately reckoned with in advance, Grant, in his initial eastern campaign, met with many cruel, almost heartbreaking, losses and disappointments. Men cast in a less sturdy mold would have yielded, and turned back in defeat as did all his predecessors. But to every reverse and failure he opposed an iron obstinacy and steadiness of purpose, ever resolutely and increasingly greater with the failures and obstacles to be overcome.1

My part in this epoch-making campaign, while 10. R. Serial No. 60, pp. 758, 794, 798, 803, 827-9, 1017.

relatively unimportant, was, nevertheless, shaped in accordance with the immediate personal wishes and direction of General Grant. On the 28th of March, 1864, shortly after he took the field, he wrote Halleck from Culpeper Court House, Virginia, saying, among other things:

I think General Wilson should be relieved from duty in the Cavalry Bureau as soon as it is possible to find an officer to succeed him. I cannot suggest an officer to take his place.1

On April 6 he telegraphed Halleck:

Is General Wilson to come here? If he can be spared from the Cavalry Bureau, he is much wanted to command a cavalry division. I would like to know the decision of the Secretary of War in this matter as soon as possible, so that the cavalry command can be arranged.2

To which Halleck replied next day:

General Wilson has been relieved and directed to report to the Lieutenant General for assignment to duty.3

It is also an interesting and strange coincidence in my fairly eventful career that while the fall before, about the time Grant was urging my promotion to brigadier general to command cavalry, and Rosecrans was asking my detail to command an engineer regiment, Major General Butler, commanding the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, without my knowledge or concurrence wired General Grant:

Don't think me importunate, but for the good of the service can you not send me Brigadier General J. H. 10. R. Serial No. 60, p. 753.

* Ib., p. 809.

Ib., pp. 815-816.