At Lafayette all our armies will be together, and if Johnston stands at Dalton we must attack him in position. Thomas feels certain that he has no material increase of force, and that he has not sent away Hardee, or any part of his army. Supplies are the great question. I have materially increased the number of cars daily. When I got here, the average was from sixty-five to eighty per day. Yesterday the report was 193; to-day, 134; and my estimate is that 145 cars per day will give us a day's supply and a day's accumulation.

McPherson is ordered to carry in wagons twenty days' rations, and to rely on the depot at Ringgold for the renewal of his bread. Beeves are now being driven on the hoof to the front; and the commissary, Colonel Beckwith, seems fully alive to the importance of the whole matter.

Our weakest point will be from the direction of Decatur, and I will be forced to risk something from that quarter, depending on the fact that the enemy has no force available with which to threaten our communications from that direction.

Colonel Comstock will explain to you personally much that I cannot commit to paper.

I am, with great respect,

W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.

At no point in the history of the war is correspondance fuller or more unique. Grant and Sherman enter into it with a spirit that is altogether unusual, and they evince a determination to agree that is remarkable. Both are full of original suggestions; both are considerate; both feel the newness and gravity of responsibilities; both prove that they are men for the situation. The confidence between the two crops out in every line they write. There is no assumption

on the part of either, but a freedom that borders on brotherhood, and a similarity of aim that shows almost a twin genius.

Ahead of them was something to deter an ordinary mortal. One was embarking on a trial which had proven the official death of distinguished Generals. The other was equally to try the unsolved. Fame or disgrace was in the pathway of each. Had there been jealousy, or feeling, or assumption, on the part of either, the future might have wept for their respective fates, and for the fates of their armies and the country. But both rose as responsibilities thickened. They had long since learned the beauty and necessity of co-operative work. They both realized to the fullest that they and the existing situation were outcrops of a sentiment which their united efforts had engendered and cultivated. Their present positions were due to the fact that a single will should dominate military projects and events. Hence they were to be one, or nothing. The chief would condescend till the subordinate was his equal; the subordinate would co-operate till he stood abreast of his chief. Rank would make no link to be broken by jealousy or selfishness. As the duties were common so should the fame be. There was entire recognition of individual and official strengths and weaknesses. Sherman knew how to trust; Grant how to confide. The one believed he could never draw on the other wrongfully. As the sequel proves, neither were to be disappointed. Their strifes were as one strife. There never was an exaction that fulfillment did not follow; there never was a responsibility that was not shared equally. Nothing was vain between these two great minds. Would that it were our province to follow both through the histories they were then about to make! But this privilege is denied, except where those histories touch and overlap,

as they often do. Yet in following Sherman we may, nay must, see much of his chief, for, as already stated, there is coincidence of duty and of purpose, and the work of one was to supplement that of the other. There may be two lives written, but they must be merged in the same glorious

cause.

CHAPTER XI.

CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA.

We have already mentioned that combination of circumstances, military, political and otherwise, which persistently and inevitably led to the concentration of martial command in the hands of a single general. We have also feebly sketched the considerations which led to the choice of Grant as the man best fitted for the supreme post of General in Chief.

Grant's promotion meant the promotion of Sherman. His dispatch to Sherman at Vicksburg to hasten to Nashville indicated Grant's purpose. Before Grant left Washington to return to Nashville, he notified the authorities of his desire to appoint Sherman to the command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, and thus make him his (Grant's) successor in the West. He further expressed his desire to entrust Sherman with the campaign which was, in his judgment, to be fought out in Georgia.

Much as Sherman had impressed himself on Grant, great as the confidence was which existed between them, close as their consensus was as to military objects and methods, able as Sherman had proved himself at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and in his Knoxville and Meridian campaigns, yet Grant's proposition suggested inquiry in administration circles. Halleck admired Sherman but doubted his ability to command the entire Western armies. Lincoln questioned Grant, but was disposed to yield to his judgment. There

were others who doubted if he had sufficiently fought down the charges of insanity made against him at Paducah when he astounded the newspaper idiots with the information that 200,000 men would be required to conquer and retain Kentucky and Tennessee. But Grant was firm; so firm indeed, as to almost make it a condition that Sherman should be thus honored and given the opportunity of fighting an independent command. In the end he had his way, and the same order which placed him in command of all the armies, placed Sherman in charge of the Military Division of the Mississippi.

Let us now see what manner of man this Sherman was, who was so pre-eminently trusted by his superior and so highly honored by his Government. Badeau thus paints him as he and Grant sat at their Nashville interview, on March 17, 1864 :-"Sherman was tall, angular and spare, as if his superabundant energy had consumed his flesh; sandy haired, sharp featured; his nose prominent, his lips thin, his grey eyes flashing fire as fast as lightning on a summer's night; his whole face mobile as an actor's, and revealing every shade of thought or emotion that flitted across his active mind; his manner pronounced; his speech quick, decided, loud. His words were distinct; his ideas clear, rapid, coming indeed almost too fast for utterance, but in dramatic, brilliant form, so that they got full development, while an eager gesticulation illustrated and enforced his thought simultaneously with speech itself. Boiling over with ideas, crammed full of feeling, discussing every subject and pronouncing on all; provoking criticism and contradiction and admiration by turns; striking ideas out of the flintiest mind; sympathetic; suggestive to himself as well as to others; starting new notions constantly in his own brain, and following them up, no matter how far nor whither they led; witty, eloquent,