"The principle by which my conduct has been actuated through life would not suffer me in any great emergency to withhold any services I could render required by my country, especially in a case where its dearest rights are assailed by lawless ambition and intoxicated power." - WASHINGTON'S Acceptance of the Commission of Lieutenant-General. "I accept the commission with gratitude for the high honor conferred with the aid of the noble armies that have fought in so many battle-fields for our common country. It will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving upon me; and I know, if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men." — GRANT's Speech on receiving Commission as Lieutenant-General. CHAPTER VII. CLOSING THE GAPS. "I MUCH fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withdrawing confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness! Beware of rashness! but, with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories. "Yours very truly, "A. LINCOLN." This letter from Abraham Lincoln was written to a distinguished general placed at the head of the Army of the Potomac. No such caution was needed in Grant's case. He had little talk with regard to his own or another's military operations. "What shall I say to our people, when I return home, about the presidency?" asked one of those frisky politicians who consider their utterances as very important. Say nothing. I want nothing whatever said," was the reply of Grant; and the same reticence marked him in all affairs. A commission as major-general in the regular army, personal letters of thanks from the chief magistrate and the principal military and civil dignitaries, congressional and State honors, public eulogiums, presentations of swords from enthusiastic admirers, indicated that Grant now, as Washington before him, stood first in the hearts of his countrymen. The defeat of our army at Chickamauga — at times threatening to repeat the holocaust at Stone River- had so alarmed government, that Grant was summoned to grapple with a new emergency. The gaps through which invading bands of guerillas could break and overrun the adjacent loyal districts, and the precarious tenure by which some of the most important military positions in the border States were held, gave rise to much apprehension in their immediate localities, and general dissatisfaction everywhere. To close these dangerous gaps, and dislodge the enemy from the border line, was the exigency now before Grant. The consolidation of all forces east of the Mississippi and west of the Alleghanies placed two hundred thousand men at his disposal. His first business was to secure Chattanooga and relieve Burnside, now in an exceedingly embarrassing situation in Knoxville. At Chattanooga was an ill-supplied army, crowded within a small space, with Burnside two hundred miles away in one direction, and Sherman far distant in an opposite direction. Placing Thomas in the position of the commander lately so disastrously defeated, Grant's orders were, "Hold Chattanooga at all hazards." |