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do more, at Chattanooga, than to threaten an advance, and try to detain the force now in Thomas's front.
Sherman will be instructed, whilst left with these large discretionary powers, to take no extra hazard of losing his army, or of getting it crippled too much for efficient service in the spring.’
The same letter contained an exposition of Grant's plan of campaign for the following spring.
‘I look upon the next line for me to secure to be that from Chattanooga to Mobile; Montgomery and Atlanta being the important intermediate points.
To do this, large supplies must be secured on the Tennessee river, so as to be independent of the railroad from here’ (Nashville) ‘to the Tennessee, for a considerable length of time. Mobile would be a second base.
The destruction which Sherman will do to the roads around Meridian will be of material importance to us, in preventing the enemy from drawing supplies from Mississippi, and in clearing that section of all large bodies of rebel troops. . . . I do not look upon any points, except Mobile in the south, and the Tennessee river in the north, as presenting practicable starting-points from which to operate against Atlanta and Montgomery.’1
The grand movements dictated to Sherman, months
1 Grant then went on to say: ‘hey are objectionable as starting-points, to be all under one command, from the fact that the time it will take to communicate from one to the other will be so great. But Sherman or McPherson, either one of whom could be intrusted with the distant command, are officers of such experience and reliability, that all objections on this score, except that of enabling the two armies to act as a unit, would be removed.’ Further and interesting discussions occurred, at this time, between Grant and the generalin-chief, relative to Banks's Red river campaign, then in contemplation, and to the operations east of the Alleghanies. But I omit these subjects at present, as they pertain so closely to the themes of a future volume.
New York Appleton 1885.
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