ained
authority for service, and I offered him a division, but he declined
it for the reason, as I understood it, that he had at one time
commanded a corps. He is now in the United States service,
commanding the Seventeenth Infantry. General McCook obtained a
command under General Canby, in the Department of the Gulf, where he
rendered good service, and he is also in the regular service,
lieutenant-colonel Tenth Infantry.

I returned to Nashville from Cincinnati about the 25th of March,
and started at once, in a special car attached to the regular
train, to inspect my command at the front, going to Pulaski,
Tennessee, where I found General G. M. Dodge; thence to Huntsville,
Alabama, where I had left a part of my personal staff and the
records of the department during the time we had been absent at
Meridian; and there I found General McPherson, who had arrived from
Vicksburg, and had assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee.
General McPherson accompanied me, and we proceeded by the cars to
Stevenson, Bridgeport, etc., to Chattanooga, where we spent a day
or two with General George H. Thomas, and then continued on to
Knoxville, where was General Schofield. He returned with us to
Chattanooga, stopping by the way a few hours at Loudon, where were
the headquarters of the Fourth Corps (Major-General Gordon
Granger). General Granger, as usual, was full of complaints at the
treatment of his corps since I had left him with General Burnside,
at Knoxville, the preceding November; and he stated to me
personally that he had a leave of absence in his pocket, of which
he intended to take advantage very soon. About the end of March,
therefore, the three army commanders and myself were together at
Chattanooga. We had nothing like a council of war, but conversed
freely and frankly on all matters of interest then in progress or
impending. We all knew that, as soon as the spring was fairly
open, we should have to move directly against our antagonist,
General Jos. E. Johnston, then securely intrenched at Dalton,
thirty miles distant; and the purpose of our conference at the time
was to ascertain our own resources, and to distribute to each part
of the army its appropriate share of work. We discussed every
possible contingency likely to arise, and I simply instructed each
army commander to make immediate preparations for a hard campaign,
regulating the distribution of supplies that were coming up by rail
from Nashville as equ