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