John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[200] General McClernand; and, inasmuch as certain Western newspapers had come out against Grant's continuance in command, it must be conceded that his fortunes not only then but up to the end of the Vicksburg campaign hung upon a slender thread. When it is recalled that it was in this period that the temperance people laid before the President the charge that Grant was drinking to excess and could not properly be intrusted with the command of a great army, it will be seen, notwithstanding the fact that the President had dismissed them with his famous question, “Can you tell me where Grant buys his liquor? for I would like to distribute a few barrels of the same brand among my other major-generals,” that the general was clearly in need of friends who could command the attention of both the President and the Secretary of War, and keep them correctly informed on all matters of importance connected with him and the forces under his command.

It was at this juncture that Dana came into Grant's military life as well as into great influence with the government. He had been at home only a few weeks when Stanton again summoned him to Washington, and on his arrival asked him to go to Grant's army for the purpose of reporting its daily proceedings and giving such information “as would enable Mr. Lincoln and himself to settle their minds as to Grant, about whom there were many doubts, and against whom there was some complaint.” ¹

Dana's ostensible function was to be a “special commissioner of the War Department to investigate and report upon the condition of the pay service in the Western armies,” but his real duty was to report daily what he might see and learn. There was never the least misunderstanding about this. Everybody of importance in that army, and especially at Grant's headquarters, understood the matter just