rs No. 118 of June 27, 1865, which divided the whole
territory of the United States into nineteen departments and five
military divisions, the second of which was the military division
of the "Mississippi," afterward changed to "Missouri," Major-
General W. T. Sherman to command, with, headquarters at St. Louis,
to embrace the Departments of the Ohio, Missouri, and Arkansas.

This territorial command included the States north of the Ohio
River, and the States and Territories north of Texas, as far west
as the Rocky Mountains, including Montana, Utah, and New Mexico,
but the part east of the Mississippi was soon transferred to
another division. The department commanders were General E. O. C.
Ord, at Detroit; General John Pope, at Fort Leavenworth; and
General J. J. Reynolds, at Little Rock, but these also were soon
changed. I at once assumed command, and ordered my staff and
headquarters from Washington to St. Louis, Missouri, going there in
person on the 16th of July.

My thoughts and feelings at once reverted to the construction of
the great Pacific Railway, which had been chartered by Congress in
the midst of war, and was then in progress. I put myself in
communication with the parties engaged in the work, visiting them
in person, and assured them that I would afford them all possible
assistance and encouragement. Dr. Durant, the leading man of the
Union Pacific, seemed to me a person of ardent nature, of great
ability and energy, enthusiastic in his undertaking, and determined
to build the road from Omaha to San Francisco. He had an able
corps of assistants, collecting materials, letting out contracts
for ties, grading, etc., and I attended the celebration of the
first completed division of sixteen and a half miles, from Omaha to
Papillon. When the orators spoke so confidently of the
determination to build two thousand miles of railway across the
plains, mountains, and desert, devoid of timber, with no
population, but on the contrary raided by the bold and bloody Sioux
and Cheyennes, who had almost successfully defied our power for
half a century, I was disposed to treat it jocularly, because I
could not help recall our California experience of 1855-'56, when
we celebrated the completion of twenty-two and a half miles of the
same road eastward of Sacramento; on which occasion Edward Baker
had electrified us by his unequalled oratory, painting the glorious
things which would result from uniting the Western co