o Grant's headquarters, where we bunked down the best we
could during the night. Some of the staff heard of our evening's adventure
and gave the news to the press, and the next morning before breakfast all
the parties were present to apologize to Grant that they did not recognize
him, as we were out of our own jurisdiction and in that of the Army of the
Cumberland; but Grant in his modest way satisfied them that he had no
complaint. However, there poured in on him for all of us complimentary
tickets and invitations to almost everything in Nashville.

After breakfast we all assembled in a large room at headquarters to hear
what General Grant had to say to us. He took up with us the plan for a
winter campaign. He proposed himself to take about 30,000 of the troops
concentrated at Chattanooga and transport them by the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers to New Orleans, and there take with him the troops of General Canby
and go thence to Mobile and attack that place. General Sherman was to go
to Memphis, gather up all the forces along the Mississippi River,
including the troops at Vicksburg and Natchez, together with the
Seventeenth Corps, and march from Vicksburg to Meridian and thence join
Grant at Mobile. I was to take the Sixteenth Corps, which was then located
on the line of the Nashville and Decatur road, together with about 10,000
cavalry that General William Sooy Smith had concentrated near Nashville,
and sweep down through Alabama, Northern Mississippi, and Western
Tennessee, attacking any forces of the enemy that might be met, and
destroying all the railroads and provisions that had been stored in that
country, this with a view of making it difficult for any of the
confederate armies to again occupy the territory, so as to enable Sherman
and Grant, when the spring and summer campaign came on, to utilize all the
Union troops that had been occupying that country. After the plans were
all made and all the arrangements agreed upon, General Grant reported them
to Washington, but President Lincoln objected because he was afraid, if we
took so many troops from Chattanooga, that Longstreet, who was occupying
Eastern Tennessee with his Army, would return to Chattanooga or Middle
Tennessee and undo all we had accomplished in the Battle of Chattanooga.
Grant had no fear of this, but he made up his mind to go immediately to
East Tennessee and take the forces there under General Foster, attack and
defeat Longstreet, and then come back a