It was immediately after this that Grant was given the supreme command; and at the close of March, Whitman, who foresaw the real meaning of the task of crushing Lee, wrote of it thus: "O mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times; the awful loads and trains and boat-loads of poor, bloody and pale, and wounded young men again.... I see all the little signs--getting ready in the hospitals, etc. It is dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I have myself seen: the arrival of the wounded after a battle; and the scenes on the field too; and I can hardly believe my own recollections. What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men, but a lot of devils and butchers, butchering one another."[409] A week later, describing the frightful sufferings of the soldiers, and the callous selfishness of their attendants, he says: "I get almost frightened at the world".[410] Again, two days after: "I have been in the midst of suffering and death for two months, worse than ever. The only comfort is that I have been the cause of some beams of sunshine upon their suffering and gloomy souls and bodies too."[411] And he adds: "Oh, it is terrible, and getting worse, worse, worse".[412] Rumours spread in the city of the probable character of Grant's campaign; and as he realised more and more fully what would be its inevitable cost, a sort of terror took hold of him. Yet he believed in Grant, as well as in Lincoln.[413] And hating war as he did, he could not see any other course possible now than to complete its work. He was solemnly ready to take his part in those ranks of men converted, as it were, into "devils and butchers," if need be, if he could feel assured that he was more use to America upon the field than in the wards among the sick and dying. Meanwhile, he shared the old mother's anxiety about George, who was always in the thick of the fighting. News, both true and false, was arriving; and his letters are always seeking to support the old woman's faith, and to give her the plain truth with all the hope that might be. He was kept very closely occupied now in the hospitals; and especially at Armory Square, where some 200 desperate cases were collected;[414] men who had lain on the field, or otherwise unattended, until their wounds and amputations had mortified. He had always made a rule of going where he was most needed. But now he began to suffer severely from what he describes as fulness in the head, to have fits of faintness, and to be troubled with sore throat.