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is all the rage,” Sherman heard from his senator brother John the following week. “He is subjected to the disgusting but dangerous process of being lionized. He is followed by crowds, and is cheered everywhere.” The senator was worried about the effect all this might have on the man at whom it was directed. “While he must despise the fickle fools who run after him, he, like most others, may be spoiled by this excess of flattery. He may be so elated as to forget the uncertain tenure upon which he holds and stakes his really well-earned laurels.” Sherman, though he was pleased to note that his brother added: “He is plain and modest, and so far bears himself well,” was quick to jump to his friend’s defense, wherein he coupled praise with an admonition. “Grant is as good a leader as we can find,” he replied. “He has honesty, simplicity of character, singleness of purpose, and no hope or claim to usurp civil power. His character, more than his genius, will reconcile armies and attach the people. Let him alone. Don’t disgust him by flattery or importunity. Let him alone.”
    Let him alone, either then or later, was the one thing almost no one in Washington seemed willing to do; except Lincoln, who assured Grant that he intended to do just that, at least in a military sense. “Theparticulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to know,” he was to tell him presently, on the eve of commitment, and even at their first interview, before the general left for Tennessee, he had told him (according to Grant’s recollection of the exchange, years later) “that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted … 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 to issue 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 someone who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed.”
    Welcome though this was to hear, Grant was no doubt aware that the President had said similar things to previous commanders (John C. Frémont, for example, whom he told: “I have given you carte blanche. You must use your own judgment, and do the best you can.” Or McClellan, who quoted his assurances after Antietam: “General, you have saved the country. You must remain in command and carry us through to the end. I pledge myself to stand between you and harm”) only to jerk the rug from under their feet a short time later, when their backs were turned; Lincoln had never been one to keep a promise any longer than he believed the good of the country was involved. However, in this case he supplemented his private with public remarks to the same effect. “Grant is the first
general
I have had,” he was reported to be saying. “I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me.” To a friend who doubted that Grant should be given so free a rein, he replied: “Do you hire a man to do your work and then do it yourself?” To another, who remarked that he was looking well these days, he responded with an analogy. “Oh, yes, I feel better,” he laughed, “for now I’m like the man who was blown up on a steamboat and said, on coming down, ‘It makes no difference to me; I’m only a passenger.’ ”
    Partly Lincoln’s ebullience was the result of having learned, if not the particulars, then at any rate certain features of Grant’s plan. Of its details, an intimate said later that they “were communicated only to Grant’s most important or most trusted subordinates” — Meade, Butler, and Sigel, of course, along with Sherman and Banks. “To no others, except to members of his personal staff, did Grant impart a knowledge of his plans; and, even among these, there were some with whom he was reticent.” The President and