The Great Conspiracy, Complete

by John Alexander Logan

While the debate proceeded, President Lincoln watched it with careful interest. Other matters, however, had, since the Battle of Chattanooga, largely engrossed his attention.

The right man had at last been found—it was believed—to control as well as to lead our Armies. That man was Ulysses S. Grant. The grade of Lieutenant General of the Army of the United States—in desuetude since the days of Washington, except by brevet, in the case of Winfield Scott,—having been especially revived by Congress for and filled by the appointment and confirmation of Grant, March 2, 1864, that great soldier immediately came on to Washington, received his commission at the hands of President Lincoln, in the cabinet chamber of the White House, on the 9th, paid a flying visit to the Army of the Potomac, on the 10th, and at once returned to Nashville to plan future movements.

On the 12th, a General Order of the War Department (No. 98) was issued, relieving Major-General Halleck, "at his own request," from duty as "General-in-Chief" of the Army, and assigning Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant to "the command of the Armies of the United States," "the Headquarters of the Army" to be in Washington, and also with Lieutenant-General Grant in the Field, Halleck being assigned to "duty, in Washington, as Chief-of-staff of the Army, under the direction of the Secretary of War and the Lieutenant-General commanding."

By the same order, Sherman was assigned to the command of the "Military Division of the Mississippi," composed of the Departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Arkansas; and McPherson to that of the Department and Army of the Tennessee.

On the 23rd of March, Grant was back again at Washington, and at once proceeded to Culpepper Court-house, Virginia, where his Headquarters in the field were, for a time, to be.

Here he completed his plans, and reorganized his Forces, for the coming conflicts, in the South-west and South-east, which were to result in a full triumph to the Union Arms, and Peace to a preserved Union.

It is evident, from the utterances of Mr. Lincoln when Vicksburg fell, that he had then become pretty well satisfied that Grant was "the coming man," to whom it would be safe to confide the management and chief leadership of our Armies. Chattanooga merely confirmed that belief—as indeed it did that of Union men generally. But the concurrent judgment of Congress and the President had now, as we have seen, placed Grant in that chief command; and the consequent relief to Mr. Lincoln, in thus having the heavy responsibility of Army-control, long unwillingly exercised by him, taken from his own shoulders and placed upon those of the one great soldier in whom he had learned to have implicit faith,—a faith earned by steady and unvaryingly successful achievements in the Field—must have been most grateful.

Other responsibilities would still press heavily enough upon the President's time and attention. Questions touching the Military and Civil government of regions of the Enemy's country, conquered by the Union arms; of the rehabilitation or reconstruction of the Rebel States; of a thousand and one other matters, of greater or lesser perplexity, growing out of these and other questions; besides the ever pressing and gigantic problems involved in the raising of enormous levies of troops, and prodigious sums of money, needed in securing, moving, and supplying them, and defraying the extraordinary expenses growing out of the necessary blockade of thousands of miles of Southern Coast, and other Naval movements; not to speak of those expenditures belonging to the more ordinary business transactions of the Government.

But chief of all things claiming his especial solicitude, as we have seen, was this question of Emancipation by Constitutional enactment, the debate upon which was now proceeding in the Senate. That solicitude was necessarily increased by the bitter opposition to it of Northern Copperheads, and by the attitude of the Border-State men, upon whose final action, the triumph or defeat of this great measure must ultimately depend.

Many of the latter, were, as has already been shown in these pages, loyal men; but the loyalty of some of these to their Country, was still so questionably and so thoroughly tainted with their worshipful devotion to Slavery—although they must have been blind indeed not to have discovered, long ere this, that it was a "slowly-dying cause"—that they were ever on the alert to delay, hamper, and defeat, any action, whether Executive or Legislative, and however necessary for the preservation of the Union and the overthrow of its mortal enemies, which, never so lightly, impinged upon their "sacred Institution."