before I went to Washington, for the evidence of
it was sometimes too plain to be ignored. Yet it did seem to me
passing strange to sit in my office about noon, where I had been
all the day before, and learn from the New York papers what orders
I had issued on that previous day! Upon inquiry I was told that
that was only a matter of routine, and a rule of long standing.
But I mildly indicated that such a practice did not meet my approval,
and that I wished it changed, which was finally done, as explained
in a previous chapter. But even then I had no means of knowing
whether an order sent to me in the name of the Secretary of War
had ever been seen by him, or whether it was the work of the adjutant-
general, or the product of some joint operations of two or more of
the several chiefs, each of whom had the Secretary's authority to
do such things. At length the Secretary, though with evidently
serious misgivings respecting some deep ulterior purpose of mine,
consented that I might have an officer of the adjutant-general's
department, whom I knew, in my own office, to keep me informed of
what I was to do, and, if possible, what orders I might actually
receive from the Secretary himself, and what from the several other
heads of that hydra called the War Department.

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

After that change things went on much better; but it was at best
only an armed truce, with everybody on guard, until the end of that
administration, and then it came very near culminating in a pitched
battle at the very beginning of the next. By what seemed at the
time a very sharp trick, but which may possibly have been only the
natural working of the vicious system, I was made to appear to the
new Secretary of War as having failed promptly to give effect to
an order authorized by his predecessor, but on which no authentic
marks of _his_ authority appeared, only such as might indicate that
it came from another source. But if it was a trick, it signally
failed. A few candid words from one soldier to another, even if
that other had not been a solider all his life, were quite sufficient
to dissipate that little cloud which at first had threatened a
storm. Then sunlight began to appear; and when, in due time, by
the operation of some natural laws, and some others happily enacted
by Congress, certain necessary changes came about, the sky over
the War Department became almost cloudl