A. Torbert was in
command of the First Division, which was composed of three brigades;
Brigadier-General D. McM. Gregg, of the Second, consisting of two
brigades; and Brigadier-General J. H. Wilson was afterward assigned
to command the Third, also comprising two brigades: Captain Robinson,
a veteran soldier of the Mexican war, was chief of artillery, and as
such had a general supervision of that arm, though the batteries,
either as units or in sections, were assigned to the different
divisions in campaign.

Each one of my division commanders was a soldier by profession.
Torbert graduated from the Military Academy in 1855, and was
commissioned in the infantry, in which arm he saw much service on the
frontier, in Florida, and on the Utah expedition. At the beginning
of hostilities in April, 1861, he was made a colonel of New Jersey
volunteers, and from that position was promoted in the fall of 1862
to be a brigadier-general, thereafter commanding a brigade of
infantry in the Army of the Potomac till, in the redistribution of
generals, after Grant came to the East, he was assigned to the First
Cavalry Division.

Gregg graduated in 1855 also, and was appointed to the First
Dragoons, with which regiment, up to the breaking out of the war, he
saw frontier service extending from Fort Union, New Mexico, through
to the Pacific coast, and up into Oregon and Washington Territories,
where I knew him slightly. In the fall of 1861 he became colonel of
the Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, and a year later was made a
brigadier-general. He then succeeded to the command of a division of
cavalry, and continued in that position till the close of his
service, at times temporarily commanding the Cavalry Corps. He was
the only division commander I had whose experience had been almost
exclusively derived from the cavalry arm.

Wilson graduated in 1860 in the Topographical Engineers, and was
first assigned to duty in Oregon, where he remained till July, 1861.
In the fall of that year his active service in the war began, and he
rose from one position to another, in the East and West, till, while
on General Grant's staff, he was made a brigadier-general in the fall
of 1863 in reward for services performed during the Vicksburg
campaign and for engineer duty at Chattanooga preceding the battle of
Missionary Ridge. At my request he was selected to command the Third
Division. General Grant thought highly of him, and, expecting much
from his a