The first week in April saw the changes in the organization of the Twenty-third Corps which I have indicated. On the 3d I was relieved of staff duty and assigned to the third division, with orders to proceed at once to Bull's Gap and take temporary command of the corps whilst General Stoneman should hasten to Kentucky to prepare the cavalry corps for active service. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. iii. pp. 245, 259, 268.] I think the change was agreeable to Stoneman, for he was most at home with mounted troops and liked that service. Schofield's permanent assignment to the Twenty-third Corps was made on April 4th by the President, though the general had still to await for some time the action of the Senate on the confirmation of his promotion. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. iii. p. 258.] His enemies were still persistent, and even succeeded in obtaining a report of the Senate committee against his confirmation. General Sherman wrote to his brother, the senator, in behalf of his subordinate;[Footnote: _Id_., pp. 332, 343.] but it was not till General Grant was back in Washington and used his powerful personal influence that the confirmation was finally secured after the campaign had opened. It seemed at one time that not even the manifest mischief of deranging the organization of the army, as deliberately settled by both Grant and Sherman, would overcome the political hostility arrayed against him. This was without any reasonable foundation. Although Schofield was not given to political discussion, my closeness to him enabled me to know that he was an earnestly loyal man whose heart was warmly engaged in the National cause. He believed in emancipation as a right and politic war measure, and in fighting the rebellion vigorously till it should be conquered. He had made enemies among the Kansas politicians because he tried to prevent the war on that frontier from degenerating into a vendetta when murder and robbery should take the place of civilized warfare. Some influential radicals in Missouri were hostile because he held the scales even between them and the conservative Union men.