GENERAL:  Your interesting letter of the 12th inst. is just received.  I have never felt any uneasiness for your safety, but I have felt great anxiety to know just how you were progressing.  I knew, or thought I did, that, with the magnificent army with you, you would come out safely somewhere.

To secure certain success, I deemed the capture of Wilmington of the greatest importance.  Butler came near losing that prize to us.  But Terry and Schofield have since retrieved his blunders, and I do not know but the first failure has been as valuable a success for the country as the capture of Fort Fisher.  Butler may not see it in that light.

Ever since you started on the last campaign, and before, I have been attempting to get something done in the West, both to cooperate with you and to take advantage of the enemy’s weakness there—­to accomplish results favorable to us.  Knowing Thomas to be slow beyond excuse, I depleted his army to reinforce Canby, so that he might act from Mobile Bay on the interior.  With all I have said, he has not moved at last advices.  Canby was sending a cavalry force, of about seven thousand, from Vicksburg toward Selma.  I ordered Thomas to send Wilson from Eastport toward the same point, and to get him off as soon after the 20th of February as possible.  He telegraphed me that he would be off by that date.  He has not yet started, or had not at last advices.  I ordered him to send Stoneman from East Tennessee into Northwest South Carolina, to be there about the time you would reach Columbia.  He would either have drawn off the enemy’s cavalry from you, or would have succeeded in destroying railroads, supplies, and other material, which you could not reach.  At that time the Richmond papers were full of the accounts of your movements, and gave daily accounts of movements in West North Carolina.  I supposed all the time it was Stoneman.  You may judge my surprise when I afterward learned that Stoneman was still in Louisville, Kentucky, and that the troops in North Carolina were Kirk’s forces!  In order that Stoneman might get off without delay, I told Thomas that three thousand men would be sufficient for him to take.  In the mean time I had directed Sheridan to get his cavalry ready, and, as soon as the snow in the mountains melted sufficiently, to start for Staunton, and go on and destroy the Virginia Central Railroad and canal.  Time advanced, until he set the 28th of February for starting.  I informed Thomas, and directed him to change the course of Stoneman toward Lynchburg, to destroy the road in Virginia up as near to that place as possible.  Not hearing from Thomas, I telegraphed to him about the 12th, to know if Stoneman was yet off.  He replied not, but that he (Thomas) would start that day for Knoxville, to get him off as soon as possible.

Sheridan has made his raid, and with splendid success, so far as heard.  I am looking for him at “White House” to-day.  Since about the 20th of last month the Richmond papers have been prohibited from publishing accounts of army movements.  We are left to our own resources, therefore, for information.  You will see from the papers what Sheridan has done; if you do not, the officer who bears this will tell you all.