But a new and far less fortunate era was about to open upon General Smith’s career.  Grant’s work in the west had reached its close, and his extraordinary success had secured for him the full rank of Lieutenant General, with the command of all the armies of the United States.  It at once became known to me, and to others serving at that time on his staff; that it was from the first, and till he went east to take charge of his new duties, Grant’s intention to assign Smith to the command of the Army of the Potomac.  He had come to trust his intelligence,—­his judgment and his extraordinary coup d’oeil implicitly, and to regard him as a strategist of consummate ability.  He made no concealment of his confidence in him, nor of his intentions in his behalf, and there can be but little doubt that he would have carried those intentions into effect could he have done so without injustice to others.  But it is also true that after going to the eastern theatre of war and conferring with the President, Secretary Stanton, General Meade and General Butler, the Lieutenant General completely changed his mind, not only as to the proper plan of campaign for the army of the Potomac, which he had not previously visited or studied, but as to the disposition to be made of Smith and the other leading generals.  In all this he had the sagacious advice and support of General Rawlins, his Chief of Staff and doubtless of other influential persons.  Exactly why he did so, or what were the details of the argument which brought him to his final conclusions, is still one of the most interesting unsettled questions of the war.  The general argument has already been indicated in the comprehensive language of Rawlins and that was doubtless strengthened by Mr. Lincoln, whose homely but astute reasoning convinced him that the better and safer line of operations was overland against Lee’s army wherever it might be encountered, and not through a widely eccentric movement by water to a secondary base on the James River and thence against Richmond.

It is also doubtless true that finding Meade, who had shown himself to be a prudent and safe commander, if not a brilliant one, not only favorable to the overland route, but deservedly well thought of by the President, the cabinet and the army, while Smith, on the other hand, if not openly opposed to this plan of operations, was somewhat persistent as was his custom, in favoring a campaign from the lower James, or even from the sounds of North Carolina, Grant reached the conclusion that it would be better to retain Meade in immediate command of the principal army, and to place Smith over all the troops that could be mobilized from Fortress Monroe in Butler’s department.  Whatever may have been the open or secret influences at work, or the reasoning based upon the facts, this was Grant’s first decision, but it is to be observed that the plan as adopted was afterwards fatally modified by permitting Butler, notwithstanding his partiality