Not expecting to see you before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it.  The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to know.  You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon you.  While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know that these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine.  If there be anything wanting which is in my power to give, do not fail to let me know it.  And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you.

     Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN.

General Grant himself wrote, on this point:  “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 of 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 someone 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....  The President told me he did not want to know what I proposed to do.  But he submitted a plan of campaign of his own which he wanted me to hear and then do as I pleased about.  He brought out a map of Virginia on which he had evidently marked every position occupied by the Federal and Confederate armies up to that time.  He pointed out on the map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that the army might be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of these streams.  We would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the tributaries would protect our flanks while we moved out.  I listened respectfully, but did not suggest that the same streams would protect Lee’s flanks while he was shutting us up.”

General Horace Porter, for some time Grant’s chief of staff, says:  “The nearest Mr. Lincoln ever came to giving General Grant an order for the movement of troops was during Early’s raid upon Washington.  On July 10, 1864, he telegraphed a long despatch from Washington, which contained the following language:  ’What I think is that you should provide to retain your hold where you are, certainly, and bring the rest with you personally, and make a vigorous effort to defeat the enemy’s force in this vicinity.  I think there is really a fair chance to do this, if the movement is prompt.  This is what I think—­given upon your suggestion,—­and is not an order.’  Grant replied that on reflection he thought it would have a bad effect for him to leave City Point, then his headquarters, in front of Richmond and Petersburg; and the President was satisfied with the dispositions which Grant made for the repulse of Early without taking command against him in person.”