The rebels have lost all confidence, and are already morally defeated. This army has learned to believe that it is sure of victory. Even our officers have ceased to regard Lee as an invincible military genius.... Rely upon it, the end is near as well as sure.
In the eventful weeks of that early summer Dana became an observer for Grant as well as for the government. It was evident to Dana that the great soldier, and not Washington, must decide what was to be done. In a despatch from Washington, whither he had returned at Grant’s request, Dana said to the general:
Until you direct positively and explicitly what is to be done, everything will go on in the fatal way in which it has gone on for the past week.
Longstreet’s Confederates were coming down the Shenandoah Valley, and Grant, taking heed of Dana’s significant message, sent Sheridan to dispose of them. Then, as Grant himself was stationed in front of Petersburg, Dana resumed his activities in the office at Washington.
“It has fallen to the lot of no other American,” says General Wilson, “to serve as the confidential medium of communication between the army and the government and between the government and the general-in-chief, as it did to Dana during the War of the Rebellion.”
One pleasant errand which fell to Dana was the delivery to Sheridan, after his victory over Early at Cedar Creek, of his promotion to major-general. This entailed a journey on horseback through the Valley of Virginia, and the constant danger of capture by Mosby’s guerrillas; but Dana, who greatly admired Sheridan, was glad to take the chance.
When the news came to Washington of the fall of Richmond, in April, 1865, Secretary Stanton sent Dana to the Confederate capital to gather up its archives. Many of these historically valuable papers had been removed and scattered, but Dana collected what he could and sent them to Washington. He wanted to be present with Grant at Lee’s surrender, but fate kept him in Richmond, for Lincoln was there, and needed him. When at last he got away, Grant had left Appomattox. Dana joined him en route, and together they reached Washington on the day before the President’s assassination.
It was on the day of his arrival that Dana went to the President to ask him whether it would be well to order the arrest of Jacob Thompson, a Confederate commissioner who was trying to go from Canada to Europe through Maine. Lincoln returned the historic reply:
“No, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run!”
A few hours after the President’s death, however, Stanton ordered Dana to obtain Thompson’s arrest.