Of Hooker I saw but little during the war.  I had known him very well before, however.  Where I did see him, at Chattanooga, his achievement in bringing his command around the point of Lookout Mountain and into Chattanooga Valley was brilliant.  I nevertheless regarded him as a dangerous man.  He was not subordinate to his superiors.  He was ambitious to the extent of caring nothing for the rights of others.  His disposition was, when engaged in battle, to get detached from the main body of the army and exercise a separate command, gathering to his standard all he could of his juniors.

Hancock stands the most conspicuous figure of all the general officers who did not exercise a separate command.  He commanded a corps longer than any other one, and his name was never mentioned as having committed in battle a blunder for which he was responsible.  He was a man of very conspicuous personal appearance.  Tall, well-formed and, at the time of which I now write, young and fresh-looking, he presented an appearance that would attract the attention of an army as he passed.  His genial disposition made him friends, and his personal courage and his presence with his command in the thickest of the fight won for him the confidence of troops serving under him.  No matter how hard the fight, the 2d corps always felt that their commander was looking after them.

Sedgwick was killed at Spottsylvania before I had an opportunity of forming an estimate of his qualifications as a soldier from personal observation.  I had known him in Mexico when both of us were lieutenants, and when our service gave no indication that either of us would ever be equal to the command of a brigade.  He stood very high in the army, however, as an officer and a man.  He was brave and conscientious.  His ambition was not great, and he seemed to dread responsibility.  He was willing to do any amount of battling, but always wanted some one else to direct.  He declined the command of the Army of the Potomac once, if not oftener.

General Alfred H. Terry came into the army as a volunteer without a military education.  His way was won without political influence up to an important separate command—­the expedition against Fort Fisher, in January, 1865.  His success there was most brilliant, and won for him the rank of brigadier-general in the regular army and of major-general of volunteers.  He is a man who makes friends of those under him by his consideration of their wants and their dues.  As a commander, he won their confidence by his coolness in action and by his clearness of perception in taking in the situation under which he was placed at any given time.

Griffin, Humphreys, and Mackenzie were good corps commanders, but came into that position so near to the close of the war as not to attract public attention.  All three served as such, in the last campaign of the armies of the Potomac and the James, which culminated at Appomattox Court House, on the 9th of April, 1865.  The sudden collapse of the rebellion monopolized attention to the exclusion of almost everything else.  I regarded Mackenzie as the most promising young officer in the army.  Graduating at West Point, as he did, during the second year of the war, he had won his way up to the command of a corps before its close.  This he did upon his own merit and without influence.