"
When in Washington I had not met General Grant, because he was in the
West up to the time of my leaving, but on a journey to and from
Washington he stopped at Pittsburgh to make the necessary arrangements
for his removal to the East. I met him on the line upon both occasions
and took him to dine with me in Pittsburgh. There were no dining-cars
then. He was the most ordinary-looking man of high position I had ever
met, and the last that one would select at first glance as a
remarkable man. I remember that Secretary of War Stanton said that
when he visited the armies in the West, General Grant and his staff
entered his car; he looked at them, one after the other, as they
entered and seeing General Grant, said to himself, "Well, I do not
know which is General Grant, but there is one that cannot be." Yet
this was he. [Reading this years after it was written, I laugh. It is
pretty hard on the General, for I have been taken for him more than
once.]
In those days of the war much was talked about "strategy" and the
plans of the various generals. I was amazed at General Grant's freedom
in talking to me about such things. Of course he knew that I had been
in the War Office, and was well known to Secretary Stanton,[21] and
had some knowledge of what was going on; but my surprise can be
imagined when he said to me:
"Well, the President and Stanton want me to go East and take command
there, and I have agreed to do it.
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