ming the functions of the Executive or in acting without
advising with him.... He was very timid, and it was impossible
for him to avoid interfering with the armies covering the capital
when it was sought to defend it by an offensive movement against
the army defending the Confederate capital. The enemy would not
have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field."

Stanton was unteachable. He never learnt where control ended and
disabling interference began. In the very critical month of August,
'64, he interfered with Hunter to such an extent that this patriotic
general had to tell Grant "he was so embarrassed with orders from
Washington that he had lost all trace of the enemy." Nor was that the
end of Stanton's interference with the operations in the Shenandoah
Valley. Lincoln's own cipher letter to Grant on the third of August
shows what both these great men had to suffer from the weak link
in the chain between them.

I have seen your despatch in which you say, "I want Sheridan put
in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put
himself south of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever
the enemy goes, let our troops go also." This, I think, is exactly
right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the
despatches you may have received from here, even since you made
that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the
head of any one here of "putting our army _south_ of the enemy,"
or of "following him to the _death_" in any direction. I repeat
to you it will neither be done or attempted unless you watch it
every day, and hour, and force it.

The experts of the loyal North were partly comforted by knowing that
Davis and his ministers had interfered with Jackson, that during
the present campaign they made a crucial mistake about Johnston,
and that they failed to give Lee the supreme command until it was
too late. But no Southern Secretary went quite so far as Stanton,
who actually falsified Grant's order to Sheridan at the crisis
of the Valley campaign in October. Here are Grant's own words:
"This order had to go through Washington, where it was intercepted;
and when Sheridan received what purported to be a statement of
what I wanted him to do it was something entirely different."

Nor was Stanton the only responsible civilian to interfere with Grant.
There was no government press censorship--perhaps, in this peculiar
war, there could not be one. So t