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

[390] an incompetent, or inefficient, or unmanageable lieutenant, he never relented, nor was willing to be embarassed by the same cause again. The officers who had failed to satisfy his expectations or demands were often men with strong political or personal influence, and sometimes were able to induce the government to assign them to less important positions than those from which they had been removed; but Grant never consented that those whom he had once dismissed from his plans should be given a place where their action would be of consequence to him again. As has been shown, he always supported his great commanders if they wanted a change in their own subalterns, even to the disregard of rank or seniority; for he regarded harmony between a chief and his subordinates as among the most imperative of military necessities, and made every effort to arrive at this relation with his own lieutenants. If he found it unattainable, for whatever cause — no ability, or experience, or accomplishment, or character, atoned. He refused to employ an instrument with which he had found himself unable to accomplish his designs.

On the 27th of February, he said to Canby: ‘I am extremely anxious to hear of your forces getting to the interior of Alabama. I send Grierson, an experienced cavalry commander, to take command of your cavalry. . . . . Forrest seems to be near Jackson, Mississippi; and if he is, none but the best of our cavalry commanders will get by him. Thomas was directed to start a cavalry force from Eastport, Mississippi, as soon after the 20th of February as possible, to move on Selma, Alabama, which would tend to ward Forrest off. He promised to start it ’