Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

‘ [48] and open up a new base of supplies. My object now in sending a staff-officer to you is not so much to suggest operations for you, as to get your views, and to have plans matured by the time everything can be got ready.’

To invite the views of Sherman on the campaigns and plans of the future was to set fire to an imagination crowded with thick-coming fancies, and to open the flood-gates of an eloquence which never lacked language to embody all that his genius conceived. His reply covered the whole ground: touched upon the strategy of Grant in front of Richmond; discussed the capture of Wilmington and the topography of its waters; considered the value of Mobile and the possibility of Southern independence; proposed reinforcements for Meade and campaigns for Canby; glanced at the side movemints of Price and Rosecrans; treated of Hood's army and the Appalachicola river; but nevertheless narrowed itself down to a definite answer to Grant's inquiry and a positive plan for his own army, which did not differ materially from that suggested by the general-in-chief.

In regard to Mobile, he partly adopted the new view of Grant. ‘Now that Mobile is shut out to the commerce of our enemy, it calls for no further effort on our part, unless the capture of the city can be followed by the occupation of the Alabama river and the railroad to Columbus, when that place would be a magnificent auxiliary to my further progress into Georgia.’ But Savannah, he said, ‘once in our possession, and the river open to us, I would not hesitate to cross the state of Georgia with sixty thousand men, hauling some stores and depending ’