In regard to restoring officers who had been relieved from important commands to duty again, I left Sherman to look after those who had been removed in the West while I looked out for the rest.  I directed, however, that he should make no assignment until I could speak to the Secretary of War about the matter.  I shortly after recommended to the Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty.  I received the assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept the assignment offered.  I understood afterwards that he refused to serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both.  Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army.  Sherman ranked him as a brigadier-general.  All of them ranked me in the old army, and Sherman and Buell did as brigadiers.  The worst excuse a soldier can make for declining service is that he once ranked the commander he is ordered to report to.

On the 23d of March I was back in Washington, and on the 26th took up my headquarters at Culpeper Court-House, a few miles south of the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.

Although hailing from Illinois myself, the State of the President, I never met Mr. Lincoln until called to the capital to receive my commission as lieutenant-general.  I knew him, however, very well and favorably from the accounts given by officers under me at the West who had known him all their lives.  I had also read the remarkable series of debates between Lincoln and Douglas a few years before, when they were rival candidates for the United States Senate.  I was then a resident of Missouri, and by no means a “Lincoln man” in that contest; but I recognized then his great ability.

In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them:  but that procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the people at the North and Congress, which was always with him, forced him into issuing his series of “Military Orders”—­one, two, three, etc.  He did not know but they were all wrong, and did know that some of them were.  All he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering such assistance.  Assuring him that I would do the best I could with the means at hand, and avoid as far as possible annoying him or the War Department, our first interview ended.

The Secretary of War I had met once before only, but felt that I knew him better.