John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[300] necessary that you should know all these particulars. I leave for New York to-night to remain until after New Year's. Dana to Grant, December 21, 1863-6 P. M.

This was one of the most interesting despatches Dana ever sent, for it not only shows that the President, the Secretary of War, tie General-in-Chief, and General Grant were at that time in accord with reference to several of the leading generals and their employment, but that they all favored Grant's suggestion as submitted by Dana for a campaign against Mobile. This plan was originally brought forward by W. F. Smith, and as it promised to keep a great part of Grant's army usefully employed in cleaning up the Confederate forces and capturing the Confederate strongholds in the Middle South, it received Grant's entire approval. It is believed that this plan of operations contained the germ of the “March to the Sea,” as it would cut that part of the Confederacy east of the Mississippi in two again, and, if followed by a vigorous campaign from central Alabama, would have taken Atlanta in the rear, compelled the abandonment of northern Georgia, and rendered the Chattanooga-Atlanta campaign of the next year unnecessary. It is important because it also shows, when taken with Halleck's despatch of the next day to Grant,¹ that Halleck would not permit Grant to carry out his plan for a campaign in Alabama till Longstreet was driven entirely from east Tennessee. As Longstreet was an able and very deliberate man, slow to move and hard to beat, he took his own time to get out of east Tennessee. Even then he retired only in the face of overwhelming numbers. Sherman and Thomas, who took no part in the campaign north of Knoxville, gathered their forces deliberately into a powerful. army in front of Chattanooga.