Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1895-09-21
GRANTS PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
The Great Work Of Closing the Rebellion

The Great Work OF Closing the Rebellion
UnfOIded by Col. Fred ID. Grant.
CINCINNATI, Sept. 1.-THE twenty
seventh annual session of the Society
of the Army of the Tennessee began
at 10 a. M yesterday with an unusually
large attendance. Over 100 officers of
high rank were registered. The morn
ing session was devoted to reports and
routine business. In the afternoon the
distinguished visitors and their ladies
attended a reception at Fort Thomas,
in Kentucky, rendered by Commandant
Cochran and other army officers. The
battalion drill was followed by lunch
con, at which many women from Gin
cinnati, Newport and Covington as
sisted. Gen. D. d. Henderson reported
Se4, 600 secured for the Sherman monu-
ment at Washington, and 500 900 prom
ised by the G. A. r.
A brilliant array of decorations in
the bright Auditorium theater of Odd
Fellows templehouse, filed with en-
thusiastic mem bers of the Army of the
Tennessee and their friends, describes
the beginning of the night meeting of
the twenty-seventh reunion. Gov. Nc
Kinley delivered an eloquent welcome
for the state Of Ohio.
Ex-Congressnan John A. Caldwell,
mayor of Cincinnati, spoke the well
come for the Queen City. The presi-
dent Gen. Greenville M. Dodge, re-
sponded for the society, after which
Col. Frederick D. Grant made the ora
ton of the evening. Col Fred Grants
annual address was unusually interest
ing. 1t outlined Gen. Grants plan of
campaign for closing the war, and
described the order in which Gen.
Grant would have narrated the story
in the second volume of his memoirs
had his life been spared. Upon being
appointed acknowledgement and as
suming command, Gen. Grant had an
interview with President Lincoln, who
wanted some one to take the response
bility of action and call upon him for
supplies, the president pledging the
full powers of the government in rem
dering all assistance possible.
Gen. Grant then planned movements
for all of the armies to move at oHce.
He regarded the army of the James as
the left wing, the army of the Poto-
mac as the center, and the troops ope-
rating under Sherman, of which the
army of the Tennessee was a most i'm
portant part, as the right wing, all
other troops being cooperative col
umns. By continuously hammering
against the confederate armies he pro-
posed to destroy both them and their
sources of supply.
COL Grant compared the movement
of the army of the Potomac to that of
Napoleon in the Russian campaign,
while the plan in reference to the
whole army resembled that adopted by
the allies in their campaign against
France in 1914. He outlined how the
confederates had concentrated their
troops east of the Mississippi into the
armies of Lee and Johnston, how Gen.
Grant placed himself with the army
of the Potomac where the greatest
opposition was expected, sent Sherman
against tombstone and Sheridan
through the Shenandoah valley. On
May the army of the Potomac moved,
and on May all were moving. BY
May II the southern troops were forced
to act entirely on the defensive, and
the union lines had been considera bly,
advanced. 1t was at the end of the
first week of this campaign that Gen.
Grant wrote: ST propose to fight it out
on this line if it takes all summer"
The second phase of the plan was to
keep the enemy within the besieged
cities-Richmond, Petersburg and At
lanta-and actively engage the outside
troops to drive all the smaller COM
mands to the south, to devastate the
country from which supplies were
drawn and to destroy those who gath
cred these supplies.