September, and immediately made preparations for organizing the full quota of troops which the State had been called upon to furnish for the national service. The invasion of the State by the Confederate troops had torn the mask from the designs of the secessionists, and it was no longer possible to favor them openly. A strong pressure was, however, still exerted, in more or less secrecy, to keep men out of the Union army, to encourage their enlistment in the Confederate army, and to obstruct the operations of the Union authorities. The young men had nearly all been seduced into the rebel service, at first by the cry that they must fight for their State, and next by the cry that they must fight for slavery, under the name of "the South," against their State. Recruiting for the Union army went on very slowly, and meanwhile, at Bowling Green and Nashville, Polk and Zollicoffer were gathering large bodies of rebel troops to invade and hold Kentucky.

Brigadier-General Anderson, finding his health, already delicate, unequal to the demands made upon his strength by the cares and responsibilities of his position under these trying circumstances, asked the War Department to relieve him from command. His request was complied with, and on the 7th of October he was relieved by Brigadier-General Sherman, then in command of a brigade at Lexington.

General Sherman at once set to work with great energy to organize his department, and prepare the troops for the task before them.

The quota of volunteers which Kentucky was called upon to raise was forty thousand, and with these General Sherman was expected by the War Department to defend the State and drive the enemy from her soil. They were raised very slowly, and but few reinforcements came from any quarter. At the close of October, Sherman had succeeded in collecting and organizing a force of nine thousand men at Lexington, and ten thousand in front of Louisville. The enemy had at the same time about fifteen thousand at Bowling Green, under Buckner, and a strong force at Cumberland Gap, under Zollicoffer. Bowling Green is the key to the military possession of Cen

tral Kentucky, and Cumberland Gap to that of Eastern Kentucky.

General McClellan, who succeeded to the chief command of the army on the 1st of November, immediately adopted a general plan of campaign, in which the operations in the Department of the Cumberland were subordinate to and formed a co-operative part of those of the principal army on the Potomac; but the people, the press, and the Administration had become impatient of the general inactivity of our forces, and were clamoring for their advance. On the 16th of October, the Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, accompanied by Brigadier-General Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant-General of the Army, visited General Sherman at Louisville, for the purpose of ascertaining, in a personal interview, the precise condition and prospect of affairs in this quarter. Sherman shared the objections entertained by Lieutenant-General Scott, and now by Major-General McClellan, to what the former termed " a little war," and believed, with them, with all the ardor of his temperament, in the necessity of concentrated and decisive movements by armies large enough not merely to undertake a successful advance, but to finish the war. He did not, however, as General McClellan seems to have done, overlook the importance of schooling his troops by minor operations, and keeping up their spirits by minor successes; but he looked further ahead than was agreeable in a subordinate commander. Short views, generally the happiest, are often the wisest; but it is not always possible for a man of powerful nervous organization, and strong perceptions of cause and effect, to take short views. He frequently sees the future too clearly to contemplate the present with calmness. So it was now with Sher

man.

The secretary of war asked him how many troops he would require in his department. Sherman replied, "Sixty thousand to drive the enemy out of Kentucky; two hundred thousand to finish the war in this section." Convinced of the inutility of advancing against the enemy until our strength would render success decisive as well as reasonably certain, while defeat

would not be irreparable, and aware of the ease with which the enemy, driven out of Kentucky, could concentrate and recuperate in Tennessee, and calling to his aid the vast reserves then at his command, would finally compel us hastily to summon to the field at the eleventh hour, and concentrate upon an advanced and exposed position, a much larger force than would have been required in the first instance; perceiving these things clearly and sharply, he could not sympathize with, or even comprehend the spirit of his superiors, who were all for present success, and for trusting to-morrow entirely to the future. On the other hand, the secretary of war and the adjutantgeneral could not understand Sherman, nor see the utility of a delay which they regarded as merely temporizing. Looking only at the force of the enemy then actually in arms in Sherman's immediate front, they considered that he vastly overestimated the obstacles with which he would have to contend. Calculations of difficulties generally seem to earnest men, not thoroughly familiar with the subject-matter, to spring from timidity or want of zeal. In a few days the report of the adjutant-general, embracing full particulars of the condition of all the Western armies, as shown by this inspection, was given to the public in all the newspapers. In referring to General Sherman, General Thomas simply stated that he had said he would require two hundred thousand men. Great excitement and indignation was occasioned in the popular mind by this announcement. A writer for one of the newspapers declared that Sherman was crazy. Insanity is hard to prove; harder still to disprove, especially when the suspicion rests upon a difference of opinion; and then the infirmities of great minds are always fascinating to common minds. The public seized with avidity upon the anonymous insinuation, and accepted it as an established conclusion.

On the 12th of November, Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell was ordered by Major-General McClellan to relieve Brigadier-General Sherman from the command of the Depart ment of the Cumberland; and the latter was ordered to report to Major-General Halleck, commanding the Department of the

West. General Buell was at once strongly reinforced, so as to enable him to take the offensive during the latter part of winter.

These events embody the same useful lesson of tolerance for the conflicting opinions of others that has been pointedly taught us again and again during this war. At this distance of time, Sherman's views seem scarcely so extraordinary as they did to the public in 1861. Many more than two hundred thousand men have been required to hold permanently Kentucky and Tennessee; for, indeed, here as elsewhere, we have had to contend not alone against the force which the enemy has actually had in the field at any given time, but against that force augmented by the whole able-bodied male population behind it.

Fortunately, indeed, under a powerful nervous organization, in spite of the workings of a myriad of irritable fibres, there lay at the bottom the germs of a patience that was to render the genius of Sherman still useful to the republic.

Although thus suffering in the popular estimation and in the confidence of the War Department, General Sherman did not altogether lose the hold he had so long maintained upon the respect of his brother officers. The general-in-chief thought he might still be useful in a subordinate capacity, although he had failed to give satisfaction in command of an important department. Major-General Halleck, to whom he now reported, considered him competent to the charge of the rendezvous for volunteers at the Benton Barracks, near St. Louis, and assigned him to that duty. With the monotonous and endless details of such a camp, Sherman was occupied during the winter of 1861.

General Halleck's command was the largest in extent of any of the departments, as organized at the time, and was considered by the general-in-chief as only inferior in importance to that of the Potomac, to which his personal attention was given. It embraced two distinct theatres of operations, extending from the line of the Cumberland River westward towards Kansas, and divided by the Mississippi River. Of these, the chief in

importance was east of the Mississippi. The enemy held Columbus on the Mississippi, Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee, and Bowling Green in the adjoining Department of the Cumberland. These positions gave him the control of Western and Central Kentucky, and each of them was strongly fortified and occupied in large force. Major-General Leonidas Polk commanded at Columbus, Brigadier-Gen eral John B. Floyd at Fort Donelson, and Brigadier-General Simon B. Buckner at Bowling Green. The Cumberland was the dividing line between the Department of the Ohio, commanded by General Buell, and the Department of the West. It was determined to endeavor to break through the centre of the enemy's long line by ascending the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, aided by a flotilla of gunboats which had been prepared at Cairo and at St. Louis, under the command. of Captain A. H. Foote, of the navy. To Brigadier-General Ulysses S. Grant, then commanding at Paducah, was assigned the chief direction of the movement. Very little was known of this officer. He had graduated at West Point in 1843, had served in the Fourth Infantry until 1854, when having risen to the grade of captain, he resigned his commission and settled in private life, in Illinois, as a surveyor. On the breaking out of the war, having offered his services to Governor Yates in any capacity in which he could be useful, he was for some time engaged in assisting the adjutant-general of the State in organizing the three months' volunteers. On the organization of the three years' troops, he accepted the colonelcy of the Sixty-Third Illinois regiment, and exhibited such marked efficiency in its instruction and discipline, that he was soon commissioned as a brigadier-general of volunteers. He had commanded the brigade engaged in the demonstration against Belmont, Missouri, on the 7th of November, 1861.

Suddenly the gloom of that dark winter, during which our large armies slept, our small forces encountered defeat, and the signs of anarchy gathered ominously from every quarter, was broken by a victory. Fort Henry was taken by Brigadier-General Grant on the 6th February, 1862. On