Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty. I received the
assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the
Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the
latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept
the assignment offered. I understood afterwards that he refused to
serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both.
Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army. Sherman
ranked him as a brigadier-general. All of them ranked me in the old
army, and Sherman and Buell did as brigadiers. The worst excuse a
soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the
commander he is ordered to report to.

On the 23d of March I was back in Washington, and on the 26th took up my
headquarters at Culpeper Court-House, a few miles south of the
headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.

Although hailing from Illinois myself, the State of the President, I
never met Mr. Lincoln until called to the capital to receive my
commission as lieutenant-general. I knew him, however, very well and
favorably from the accounts given by officers under me at the West who
had known him all their lives. I had also read the remarkable series of
debates between Lincoln and Douglas a few years before, when they were
rival candidates for the United States Senate. I was then a resident of
Missouri, and by no means a "Lincoln man" in that contest; but I
recognized then his great ability.

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had
never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be
conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them: but that
procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the
people at the North and Congress, WHICH WAS ALWAYS WITH HIM, forced him
into issuing his series of "Military Orders"--one, two, three, etc. He
did not know but they were all wrong, and did know that some of them
were. All he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the
responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed,
pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering
such assistance. Assuring him that I would do the best I could with the
means at hand, and avoid as far as possible annoying him or the War
Department, our first interview ended.

The Secretary of War I had met once before only, but felt that I knew
him better.

While c