cceeds the glory is hers."

General Wade, then chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the
War, was consulted in the matter. He recognized it at once as the
right move and openly and boldly approved the plan. Every effort was
made to hasten the completion of the gunboats. As soon as they were
finished, which was not until February, action was commenced on the
Tennessee line. Mr. Wade at the same time, made it known to Hon. Wm.
Pitt Fessenden, chairman of the Finance Committee in the Senate, that
there was then a movement on foot, to be executed as soon as the
gunboats, then building at St. Louis, were ready, which would satisfy
the entire country and astound the world; and he so reassured the
Senate that they calmly waited until the time arrived for the
execution of the plan.

Colonel Thomas A. Scott was sent to the West to make all things ready
and expedite the movement.

He gave his orders from one point to another, so that when General
Halleck, who was then in military command, was notified by Mr. Lincoln
that the whole force was to be moved from the Mississippi up the
Tennessee river he stood ready for the movement. In February, 1862,
the armies moved up the Tennessee, then to Fort Donelson, and then
back up the Tennessee to Hamburgh, and two miles from there they
fought the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, as pointed out in my plan.
Had the movement been strictly carried out from the foot of the Muscle
Shoals, in Alabama, Vicksburgh could have been reduced, or Mobile, and
the whole thing ended in the spring of 1862 as easily as in 1865, and
with the same result. In a recent publication General Sherman has
admitted this fact. At the fall of Fort Henry the country was
thoroughly aroused as it never had been before. It was clearly seen
that the end was approaching. Richmond was then within reach through
Tennessee. For this General McClellan had been waiting. Before this no
power on earth could have captured Richmond, and no one knew this
better than General McClellan. When the National armies had penetrated
into the heart of the South, within two miles of the Memphis and
Charleston railroad, the result was plain to every mind.

The old flag displayed in the presence of a million of slaves, who had
before been necessarily on the side of their owners, made the fact
doubly secure. All hearts were jubilant, and Roscoe Conkling then
offered his celebrated resolutions in the House of Representatives to
ascertain who i