Life was happy at the White House now. The President had been re-elected and it was clear that long before his second term was over, he would have won a victorious peace. The South was still fighting with all the energy brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness of which they believe, but after all the energy was that of despair. Grant was now in supreme command of the Union forces, East and West. He had been commissioned Lieutenant-General and put in command March 17, 1864. In commemoration of this event, the turning point in the great struggle, Lincoln had had a photograph of himself taken. But two copies of it were printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One he gave Grant. Here is the one given Grant.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The new Lieutenant-General was hammering away at Richmond. The Mississippi, now under Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah and Charleston, had been captured. And in this same month of November, 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to Grant in the United States army, cut loose from Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before and began his famous march to the sea, with Savannah as his destination. He illustrated his own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it was hell in Sherman's time, what word can describe the horror of it in our day? He swept with sword and fire a belt of fertile country, sixty miles wide, from Atlanta to the sea. He found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare and blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary of the Confederacy and before the next month ended he had made his country a Christmas present of the remaining chief Southern seaport, Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln: "I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was worth a dollar a pound in those days.
Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward from Savannah, forced the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, and joined Union forces advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North Carolina, March 23. Six days later Grant began the final campaign against the Confederacy. Six days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:
"Tom, would you like to see some more fighting?"
"Yes, Mr. President; very much."
"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess there'll be some to see before long near Richmond. I've had you ordered from special service at the White House to special service with the Lieutenant-General. Here's the order and here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't wonder if he put you on his staff."
"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"
"The best way to thank anybody is to do well the work he gives you to do. Good-by, my son, and good luck."