Saturday, March 14, 2015

Brigadier-General John A. Rawlins to Mary Emeline Hurlburt Rawlins, April 13, 1864


Culpepper C. H., Va., April 13, 1864.

. . . What I wrote yesterday of my confirmation is perhaps true, but the declared reasons, from a subsequent conversation with General Wilson, I am satisfied are not the correct ones . . . The investigation will affect only the officer named as the subject of it. They have passed over the confirmation of other staff appointments for the present, simply to enable them to get through the investigation of this case in quiet . . . I see nothing wrong in this at all. As I wrote, however, it is more on your account than my own that I should feel badly.

The General will be back from Annapolis to-morrow. This will finish up his visits to points of rendezvous for the troops, until he has tried with Lee the merits of their respective armies. You see, I have no doubt, much in the newspapers as to the plan of coming campaigns. For these of course we care little, but you know my opinion of General William F. Smith, who has altogether a different plan from that of the General, and feels very badly that Grant don't fall into his views . . . We have not communicated his plans to either General Wilson or General Smith. Of one thing the country can be assured, the General does not mean to scatter his army and have it whipped in detail. No such calamity as this will happen to us, I am certain. If I have ever been of signal service to General Grant, it has been in my constant, firm advocacy of massing large forces against small ones, in other words, of always having the advantage of numbers on our side. Such is the General's notion of battles. . . .

SOURCE: James H. Wilson, The Life of John A. Rawlins, p. 415-6

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