In a few days, Mr. Secretary Cameron, and Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas, came to Louisville, in a hurry to have the new department commander beat the rebels and secure Kentucky to the Union. Sherman knew war, almost intuitively; he knew the resources and the spirit of the rebels, and the military characteristics of Kentucky, and of Tennessee behind it. "How many troops," asked the Secretary of War, "do you require in your department?" "Sixty thousand," answered Sherman, "to drive the enemy out of Kentucky; two hundred thousand to finish the war in this section." This seems to have struck the two inquirers as sheer nonsense; and in the adjutant-general's report, which--as if to help the rebels to as full information as possible--was at once printed in all the newspapers, with full particulars of the state of the armies at the west, Sherman's estimate was barely announced, without explanation or comment. All those persons who understood less of war than Sherman, now at once set him down for a man of no sense or judgment. A disreputable newspaper correspondent, enraged at Sherman for some reason, seized the opportunity to set afloat a story that Sherman was actually crazy, and the lie was really believed by multitudes all over the United States. The war-prophet was misunderstood and despised again, even more remarkably than when he foretold a long war, before Bull Run. Sherman's official superiors so far sympathised with this clamor as to supersede him by Gen. Buell, and to send him to Gen. Halleck, who had faith enough left in him to put him in charge of the recruiting rendezvous at Benton Barracks, St. Louis. Here he remained, hard at work on mere details, all winter. When Grant, having taken Fort Henry, came down the Tennessee, and turning about, ascended the Cumberland, to attack Donelson, Gen. Sherman was ordered to Paducah, to superintend the sending forward of supplies and reinforcements, a duty which he performed with so much speed and efficiency, that Gen. Grant reported himself "greatly indebted for his promptness."