plenty of work would be cut out for him as soon as he was fully
recovered. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iv. p. 274.]
At the beginning of October he was ordered to take steamboat and go
to Cairo, where he would find special instructions. This dispatch
reached him on the 9th, and the same day he sailed for Cairo,
arriving there on the 16th, when he learned that an officer of the
War Department would meet him at Louisville. Hastening to Louisville
by rail, he met Mr. Stanton himself, who had travelled _incognito_
from Washington. The Secretary of War produced the formal orders
which had been drawn at the War Department creating the Division of
the Mississippi, which included Rosecrans's, Burnside's, and his own
departments, and put him in supreme command of all. [Footnote:
_Id_., p. 404.] The order was drawn in two forms, one relieving
Rosecrans and putting Thomas in command of the Department of the
Cumberland, and the other omitting this. After consultation with Mr.
Stanton, the order relieving Rosecrans was issued and Grant
published his own assumption of command. His staff had accompanied
him, on a hint contained in an earlier dispatch, and after a day
spent with the Secretary of War (October 18-19) he immediately
proceeded to Chattanooga. He was hardly able to mount a horse, and
when on foot had to get about on crutches.

It has been commonly assumed that the choice whether he would remove
Rosecrans was submitted to Grant as a personal question affecting
his relations with his subordinates, and that he decided it on the
ground of his dislike of Rosecrans. The records of the official
correspondence seem to me to show the fact rather to be that
Rosecrans's removal was thought best by the Secretary, the doubt
being whether Grant would prefer to retain him instead of meeting
the embarrassments incident to so important a change in the