mand the railroad running east and west,
and the troops from one or other of the armies to hold important points
on the southern road, the only east and west road that would be left in
the possession of the enemy. This would cut the Confederacy in two
again, as our gaining possession of the Mississippi River had done
before. Banks was not ready in time for the part assigned to him, and
circumstances that could not be foreseen determined the campaign which
was afterwards made, the success and grandeur of which has resounded
throughout all lands.

In regard to restoring officers who had been relieved from important
commands to duty again, I left Sherman to look after those who had been
removed in the West while I looked out for the rest. I directed,
however, that he should make no assignment until I could speak to the
Secretary of War about the matter. I shortly after recommended to the
Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty. I received the
assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the
Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the
latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept
the assignment offered. I understood afterwards that he refused to
serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both.
Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army. Sherman
ranked him as a brigadier-general. All of them ranked me in the old
army, and Sherman and Buell did as brigadiers. The worst excuse a
soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the
commander he is ordered to report to.

On the 23d of March I was back in Washington, and on the 26th took up my
headquarters at Culpeper Court-House, a few miles south of the
headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.

Although hailing from Illinois myself, the State of the President, I
never met Mr. Lincoln until called to the capital to receive my
commission as lieutenant-general. I knew him, however, very well and
favorably from the accounts given by officers under me at the West who
had known him all their lives. I had also read the remarkable series of
debates between Lincoln and Douglas a few years before, when they were
rival candidates for the United States Senate. I was then a resident of
Missouri, and by no means a "Lincoln man" in that contest; but I
recognized then his great ability.

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he h