“U.  S. GRANT, Lieut.-General.”

When I had read and pondered this, I determined to ride over to General Grant’s headquarters on Gravelly Run, and get a clear idea of what it was proposed to do, for it seemed to me that a suspension of operations would be a serious mistake.  Mounting a powerful gray pacing horse called Breckenridge (from its capture from one of Breckenridge’s staff-officers at Missionary Ridge), and that I knew would carry me through the mud, I set out accompanied by my Assistant Adjutant-General, Colonel Frederick C. Newhall, and an escort of about ten or fifteen men.  At first we rode north up the Boydton plank-road, and coming upon our infantry pickets from a direction where the enemy was expected to appear, they began to fire upon us, but seeing from our actions that we were friends, they ceased, and permitted us to pass the outposts.  We then struggled on in a northeasterly direction across-country, till we struck the Vaughn road.  This carried us to army headquarters, which were established south of Gravelly Run in an old cornfield.  I rode to within a few yards of the front of General Grant’s tent, my horse plunging at every step almost to his knees in the mud, and dismounted near a camp-fire, apparently a general one, for all the staff-officers were standing around it on boards and rails placed here and there to keep them from sinking into the mire.

Going directly to General Grant’s tent, I found him and Rawlins talking over the question of suspending operations till the weather should improve.  No orders about the matter had been issued yet, except the despatch to me, and Rawlins, being strongly opposed to the proposition, was frankly expostulating with General Grant, who, after greeting me, remarked, in his quiet way:  “Well, Rawlins, I think you had better take command.”  Seeing that there was a difference up between Rawlins and his chief, I made the excuse of being wet and cold, and went outside to the fire.  Here General Ingalls met me and took me to his tent, where I was much more comfortable than when standing outside, and where a few minutes later we were joined by General Grant.  Ingalls then retired, and General Grant began talking of our fearful plight, resulting from the rains and mud, and saying that because of this it seemed necessary to suspend operations.  I at once begged him not to do so, telling him that my cavalry was already on the move in spite of the difficulties, and that although a suspension of operations would not be fatal, yet it would give rise to the very charge of disaster to which he had referred at City Point, and, moreover, that we would surely be ridiculed, just as General Burnside’s army was after the mud march of 1863.  His better judgment was against suspending operations, but the proposition had been suggested by all sorts of complaints as to the impossibility of moving the trains and the like, so it needed little argument to convince him, and without further discussion he said, in that manner which with him meant a firmness of purpose that could not be changed by further complainings, “We will go on.”  I then told him that I believed I could break in the enemy’s right if he would let me have the Sixth Corps; but saying that the condition of the roads would prevent the movement of infantry, he replied that I would have to seize Five Forks with the cavalry alone.