Smith wrote for Lincoln's eye a letter charging that Butler, having seen Grant in his cups, had blackmailed him, and this interpretation has found a place in history; but Grant had weathered charges of that kind before without a whimper when he had fewer friends; he had no need to fear them now. We cannot credit the result to such a threat by Butler, unless we shall assume, as some have thought, so slimy is the trail of this old quarrel, that there could be no infamy which he would not embrace, and even then we cannot think that Grant, as happened later, should become his friend and write about him kindly in his book; for Grant was not mean-spirited. Smith's punishment can be accounted for on other grounds. His temper sentenced him to exile if Butler was to stay; and besides, he had whipped Grant over Meade's shoulders by tactlessly abusing Meade to Grant for the disaster at Cold Harbor, for which he must have known that Grant was himself to blame.

It is far more likely that Butler's neck was saved by Lincoln, who, with his reëlection in the balance, feared to let loose upon the voters of the north a Douglas Democrat with a war record, a grievance, and a poisoned tongue. Later Butler was ordered to New York to guard against election riots, and subsequently, after his fiasco at Fort Fisher, he was sent home to Lowell "for the good of the service," Grant

writing Stanton on January 4, 1865, "In my absence General Butler necessarily commands, and there is a lack of confidence felt in his military ability, making him an unsafe commander for a large army. His administration of the affairs of his department is also objectionable."

CHAPTER XXI

SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS

EVEN as Lincoln penned his gloomy memorandum of August 23, the skies were clearing. Farragut's operations at Mobile, which had been going on for weeks, were already crowned with victory, though the news had not come North. On September 2, while the Democrats in their convention at Chicago were resolving that the war had been a failure, Sherman was entering Atlanta, whence he had driven Hood the day before, leading into the rebel stronghold with hardly any loss the army he led out of Chattanooga four months before, thus tearing out of the Confederacy its chief manufacturing center and dépôt of supplies. On September 3, Lincoln, by proclamation, summoned the people of the North to offer thanks to God for Union triumphs at Atlanta and Mobile.

Up to the time that Grant came East, the cavalry had been held in some contempt by the commanders of the Army of the Potomac, available for picket duty and for little else. "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" was a Service jest. But Grant drafted Sheridan to transform Meade's cavalry into a fight

ing force, and Sheridan, unknown east of the Alleghanies except for the assault on Missionary Ridge, had startled Meade by telling him that the mounted men should be concentrated to fight the rebel horse instead of doing routine guard and picket duty for the infantry. When Meade asked who would protect the transportation trains, cover the front of moving infantry columns, and secure their flanks from intrusion, he had another shock from the pugnacious little Irishman, he was only thirty-three, stood five feet five, and weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds,

who said that with 10,000 mounted men he could make it so lively for the rebel cavalry that the flanks and rear of the Army of the Potomac would require little or no defense, and that moving columns of infantry should take care of themselves. He hoped to defeat the enemy in a general engagement and move where he pleased, breaking Lee's communications and destroying his resources.

Meade later had a peppery interview with Sheridan, in which the young man told him he could whip J. E. B. Stuart, the Confederate cavalry leader, if Meade would only let him try. When Meade reported it to Grant, Grant's only comment was, "Did he say so? Then let him go out and do it!" Whereupon Sheridan went out, and on the 11th of May, at Yellow Tavern, within six miles of Richmond,

whipped Stuart's forces and killed Stuart himself, inflicting on the Confederate mounted troops the worst defeat that had befallen them. Then Sheridan made an independent raid, broke up the railroads that connected Lee with Richmond, and frightened the Confederate Capital, penetrating its outer fortifications, though that was not his aim.

Early, returning from his raid on Maryland, controlled at Winchester the fertile Valley of the Shenandoah, to which the rebel army looked for food that fall, and Grant picked Sheridan to operate against him, though Stanton had objected to putting Sheridan in command of the department because he was too young. "I see you played around the difficulty," Lincoln said to Grant, "by picking Sheridan to command the boys in the field." "I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field with instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death," Grant wired to Stanton. "Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go, also "; and Lincoln, seeing the dispatch, wrote back: “This, I think, is exactly right as to how our forces should move; but please look over the dispatches you may have received from here ever since you made that order, and discover if you can that there is any idea in the head of any one here of 'putting our army south of the enemy' or of 'following him to the death' in