Instructed, as well as warned, by the events of the previous summer, the President now resolved on a combined attempt by two strong columns. On the 21st of October he sent Major-General John A. McClernand to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, with confidential orders, authorizing him to raise troops for an expedition, under his command, to move against Vicksburg from Cairo or Memphis as a place of rendezvous, and "to clear the Mississippi River and open navigation to New Orleans." Perhaps because of the confidence still felt in Grant by the President himself, although within narrowing limits, Grant was not to share the fate of McClellan, of Buell, and of so many others. The secret orders were not made known to him, yet it was settled that he was to retain the command of his department, while the principal active operations of the army within its limits were to be conducted by another. Even for this consideration it is rather more than likely he was indebted in a great degree to the exceptional advantage he enjoyed in having at all times at the seat of government, in the person of Washburne, a strong and devoted party of one, upon whose assistance the government daily found it convenient to lean. A few days later, on the 31st of October, Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks was sent to New York and Boston, with similar orders, to collect in New England and New York a force for the co-operating column from New Orleans. On the 8th of November this was followed by the formal order of the President assigning Banks to the command of the Department of the Gulf, including the State of Texas. This assignment was wholly unexpected by Banks. It was, indeed, unsought and unsolicited, and the first offer, from the President himself, came as a surprise. At the close of Pope's campaign, when the reorganized Army of the Potomac, once more under McClellan, was in march to meet Lee in Maryland, Banks had been forced, by injuries received at Cedar Mountain, to give up the command of the Twelfth Army Corps to the senior division commander, Brigadier-General A. S. Williams. As soon as this was reported at headquarters, McClellan created a new organization under the name of the "Defences of Washington," and placed Banks in command.