My stay at General Halleck’s headquarters was exceedingly agreeable, and my personal intercourse with officers on duty there was not only pleasant and instructive, but offered opportunities for improvement and advancement for which hardly any other post could have afforded like chances.  My special duties did not occupy all my time, and whenever possible I used to go over to General Sherman’s division, which held the extreme right of our line in the advance on Corinth, to witness the little engagements occurring there continuously during the slow progress which the army was then making, the enemy being forced back but a short distance each day.  I knew General Sherman very well.  We came from near the same section of country in Ohio, and his wife and her family had known me from childhood.  I was always kindly received by the General, and one day he asked me if I would be willing to accept the colonelcy of a certain Ohio regiment if he secured the appointment.  I gladly told him yes, if General Halleck would let me go; but I was doomed to disappointment, for in about a week or so afterward General Sherman informed me that the Governor of Ohio would not consent, having already decided to appoint some one else.

A little later Governor Blair, of Michigan, who was with the army temporarily in the interest of the troops from his State, and who just at this time was looking around for a colonel for the Second Michigan Cavalry, and very anxious to get a regular officer, fixed upon me as the man.  The regiment was then somewhat run down by losses from sickness, and considerably split into factions growing out of jealousies engendered by local differences previous to organization, and the Governor desired to bridge over all these troubles by giving the regiment a commander who knew nothing about them.  I presume that some one said to the Governor about this time, “Why don’t you get Sheridan?” This, however, is only conjecture.  I really do not know how my name was proposed to him, but I have often been told since that General Gordon Granger, whom I knew slightly then, and who had been the former colonel of the regiment, first suggested the appointment.  At all events, on the morning of May 27, 1862, Captain Russell A. Alger—­recently Governor of Michigan —­accompanied by the quartermaster of the regiment, Lieutenant Frank Walbridge, arrived at General Halleck’s headquarters and delivered to me this telegram: 

(By Telegraph.)
“Military Dept of Michigan,
“Adjutant-general’s office,
“Detroit, May 25, 1862.

General orders no. 148.

“Captain Philip H. Sheridan, U. S. Army, is hereby appointed Colonel of the Second Regiment Michigan Cavalry, to rank from this date.

“Captain Sheridan will immediately assume command of the regiment.

“By order of the Commander-in-Chief,
“JNO.  Robertson,
“Adjutant-General.”