Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

My relations with General Grant began in May, 1863. On the 5th of that month, immediately after crossing the Mississippi River in the Vicksburg campaign, he requested my appointment to duty on his staff. He had never seen me at the time, and made the application on the recommendation of General James H. Wilson, his inspector-general. I was then a captain serving on the staff of General T. W. Sherman, in Banks's campaign against Port Hudson. My orders did not reach me till the 27th of May, just as the assault on Port Hudson was beginning. I was wounded in that assault, and unable to report to General Grant in person until the following February. I thus first saw him at Nashville, where he had established his headquarters, after the battle of Chattanooga.

Our relations at once became more than cordial. I was still on crutches, and he gave me a desk in his own room at headquarters, threw open his entire official correspondence to me, and delighted from the first to tell me all the details of his battles and campaigns. The bill creating the grade of lieutenant-general was then before Congress, and I had carried messages to him presaging its success. He discussed the subject freely, told me he felt no anxiety for the promotion, and would take no step to secure it; but, if it came, he would do his best to fulfill the higher duties it imposed. If otherwise, he would neither be disappointed nor in any way less devoted to the cause he served.

On the 3d of March he was ordered to Washington, and on the 11th assumed command of the armies of the United States. He at once assigned me to duty as military secretary, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel on his staff. I remained with him in this capacity till the end of the war; went through the Wilderness campaign and the siege of