Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[637] in his kindness of heart and delicacy toward me, a stranger, had, partly from these motives, yielded to my plan of movement up the James, when his own unbiassed judgment would have dictated a different course, and thinking perhaps, also, that he might have desired to give General Smith a separate command, if it would not interfere with mine, I sent General Smith, at his own request, to General Grant, bearing a letter in which I took leave to say that if a movement upon the enemy in North Carolina was intended, as I was inclined to believe was the case because of the fact that the quartermaster had been called upon to furnish transportation for two and a half millions of rations to that State, any disposition of the troops under my command which he might think best in the interests of the service, would be most agreeable to me, and that I should be happy to co-operate with him in any such movement.¹

I received from General Grant a generous and considerate reply to my letter, in which he assured me that no operations in North Carolina were intended, and that it was his wish that with all the forces of the Army of the James that could be spared from other duty, and such additional troops as had been ordered to report to me at Fortress Monroe, I should seize upon City Point and act directly in concert with the Army of the Potomac, with Richmond as the objective point.²

On the 21st of April, Lieutenant-Colonel Dent, of General Grant's staff, came to Fortress Monroe as bearer of a letter and memorandum of instructions.³ Before his arrival Plymouth, which General Grant desired should be held at all hazards, had fallen; but everything else for which they provided had already been done.

From my conversation with Grant and from his reiterated instructions that I was to “intrench and fortify at City Point and Bermuda Hundred;” that “our new base was to be established there ;” that “I was to obtain a footing as far up the south side of the James as I could, in co-operation with the navy;” that “if I could reach the James above Richmond, with my left resting on the south bank, he would join me there,” i. e., on the north bank of the James, thus scooping Richmond out of the Confederacy; that “that might be advisable, anyhow;” that I should “make an attack on the city only in case” I heard of his advance on that side, “or the enemy ”