ant-General's
commission which made him Commander-in-Chief of all the Union armies--a
commission such as no one else had held since Washington. On April
9, 1865, Grant received the surrender of Lee at Appomattox; and
the four years war was ended by a thirteen months campaign.

Victor of the River War in '63, Grant moved his headquarters from
Chattanooga to Nashville soon before Christmas. He then expected
not only to lead the river armies against Atlanta in '64 but, at
the same time, to send another army against Mobile, where it could
act in conjunction with the naval forces under Farragut's command.

He consequently made a midwinter tour of inspection: southeast to
Chattanooga, northeast to Knoxville and Cumberland Gap, northwest to
Lexington and Louisville, thence south, straight back to Nashville.
This satisfied him that his main positions were properly taken and
held, and that a well-concerted drive would clear his own strategic
area of all but Forrest's elusive cavalry.

It was the hardest winter known for many years. The sticky clay
roads round Cumberland Gap had been churned by wheels and pitted by
innumerable feet throughout the autumn rains. Now they were frozen
solid and horribly encumbered by debris mixed up with thousands
upon thousands of perished mules and horses. Grant regretted this
terrible wastage of animals as much in a personal as in a military
way; for, like nearly all great men, his sympathies were broad
enough to make him compassionate toward every kind of sentient
life. No Arab ever loved his horse better than Grant loved his
splendid charger Cincinnati, the worthy counterpart of Traveler,
Lee's magnificent gray.

Summoned to Washington in March, Grant, after one scrutinizing
look at the political world, then and there made up his steadfast
mind that no commander-in-chief could ever carry out his own plans
from any distant point; for, even in his fourth year of the war,
civilian interference was still being practiced in defiance of naval
and military facts and needs, and of some very serious dangers.

Lincoln stood wisely for civil control. But even he could not resist
the perverting pressure in favor of the disastrous Red River Expedition,
against which even Banks protested. Public and Government alike
desired to give the French fair warning that the establishment of
an Imperial Mexico, especially by means of foreign intervention,
was regarded as a semi-hostile act. There were two entire