for Smith, as shown by his recent request for his re-assignment to his department, to take the field in person, with Smith commanding one of his army corps and Gillmore the other.  In other words, Grant was not altogether a free agent, though the government had ostensibly given him a free hand.  Of course, Smith knew that in any case he could not be permitted to make all the plans, even if he held the first subordinate command, and it is always possible that he had not specially endeared himself to the leading officers of the eastern armies, but there can hardly be a doubt that he would have given efficient and loyal support to Grant without reference to the plan of operations which it might be found necessary to adopt.

Without pausing here to recapitulate the arguments for and against the line and general plan of operations actually selected by General Grant, or to consider further his choice of subordinate commanders, it may he well to call attention to the fact that the organization and arrangements made by him for the control and co-operation of the forces in Virginia, are now generally regarded by military critics as having been nearly as faulty as they could have been.  It will he remembered that Meade, with a competent staff had immediate command of the Army of the Potomac, but was followed closely wherever he went by General Grant and his staff.  At the same time Burnside, with the Ninth Corps, having an older commission than Meade, and having been once in command of the Army of the Potomac, was for reasons which must be regarded as largely sentimental, permitted to report directly to and receive his orders directly from Grant, while Butler with two army corps operating at first at a considerable distance and later in a semi-detached and less independent manner, made his reports to and received his instructions directly from Grant’s headquarters.

This arrangement, as might have been foreseen, was fatal to coherent and prompt co-operative action, and the result was properly described by Grant himself as comparable only to the work of a “balky team.”  It was in the nature of things impossible to make either the armies or the separate army-corps work harmoniously and effectively together.  The orders issued from the different headquarters were necessarily lacking in uniformity of style and expression, and failed to secure that prompt and unfailing obedience that in operations extending over so wide and difficult a field was absolutely essential, and this was entirely independent of the merits of the different generals or the peculiarities of their Chiefs of Staff and Adjutants General.  The forces were too great; they were scattered too widely over the field of operations; the conditions of the roads, the width of the streams and the broken and wooded features of the battle fields were too various, and the means of transport and supply were too inadequate to permit of simultaneous and synchronous movements, even if they had been intelligently provided for, and the generals had uniformly done their best to carry them out.