of staff, who had been sent to Cairo, soon after the troops left there, to receive all reports from the front and to telegraph the substance to the St. Louis headquarters.  Cairo was at the southern end of the telegraph wire.  Another line was started at once from Cairo to Paducah and Smithland, at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland respectively.  My dispatches were all sent to Cairo by boat, but many of those addressed to me were sent to the operator at the end of the advancing wire and he failed to forward them.  This operator afterwards proved to be a rebel; he deserted his post after a short time and went south taking his dispatches with him.  A telegram from General McClellan to me of February 16th, the day of the surrender, directing me to report in full the situation, was not received at my headquarters until the 3d of March.

On the 2d of March I received orders dated March 1st to move my command back to Fort Henry, leaving only a small garrison at Donelson.  From Fort Henry expeditions were to be sent against Eastport, Mississippi, and Paris, Tennessee.  We started from Donelson on the 4th, and the same day I was back on the Tennessee River.  On March 4th I also received the following dispatch from General Halleck: 

Maj.-Gen.  U. S. Grant, Fort Henry: 

You will place Maj.-Gen. C. F. Smith in command of expedition, and remain yourself at Fort Henry.  Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and positions of your command?

H. W. Halleck, Major-General.

I was surprised.  This was the first intimation I had received that General Halleck had called for information as to the strength of my command.  On the 6th he wrote to me again.  “Your going to Nashville without authority, and when your presence with your troops was of the utmost importance, was a matter of very serious complaint at Washington, so much so that I was advised to arrest you on your return.”  This was the first I knew of his objecting to my going to Nashville.  That place was not beyond the limits of my command, which, it had been expressly declared in orders, were “not defined.”  Nashville is west of the Cumberland River, and I had sent troops that had reported to me for duty to occupy the place.  I turned over the command as directed and then replied to General Halleck courteously, but asked to be relieved from further duty under him.

Later I learned that General Halleck had been calling lustily for more troops, promising that he would do something important if he could only be sufficiently reinforced.  McClellan asked him what force he then had.  Halleck telegraphed me to supply the information so far as my command was concerned, but I received none of his dispatches.  At last Halleck reported to Washington that he had repeatedly ordered me to give the strength of my force, but could get nothing out of me; that I had gone to Nashville, beyond the limits of my command, without his authority, and