This expedition was ordered before Grant took command of all the armies. It was one of the many foolish blunders with the results of which the great Federal commander had to reckon and wrestle when he came into his own. As the spring of 1864 approached something happened which was of more importance to the Federal cause than any battle could be, or the success of any campaign. Congress and the administration recognized Grant as the great leader that he was, and gave him that authority of command which alone he needed in order to make an end of the struggle. On the twenty-sixth of February a bill passed by Congress revived the grade of lieutenant general in the army. Grant was promptly nominated for that office, and confirmed in it by the Senate on the second day of March. On the third he was ordered to Washington, and on the ninth Mr. Lincoln delivered to him his commission as lieutenant general, with authority to direct the operations of all the Federal armies in whatever part of the country they might be stationed. Oddly enough in thus bringing to the front and giving command to the only general who had shown adequate capacity to direct the war to a successful conclusion, the administration still retained as its adjutant general that conspicuously incapable person, General Halleck, who had done more than all other men and all other influences combined to interfere with Grant's work in the war, to prevent him from accomplishing the ends he sought in behalf of his country, and to fritter away the fruits of his victories after he had won them. The shade of Winfield Scott still held in mortmain its strange influence over the Washington authorities. And General Grant's personal memoirs--though they make no complaint of this absurdity--very clearly show, that in the gigantic combinations which he was now called upon to make, he was often seriously embarrassed by this continuance of an authority to interfere in many ways with his plans. The advent of Grant to the command of all the armies in the field wrought a revolution instantly and conspicuously in the conduct of the war. He had no sympathy whatever with the "pepper box policy." From the very beginning he had clearly seen that the strength of the Southern Confederacy lay in the fighting capacity of its armies. He had clearly seen that the problems of this war were not mainly geographical--that the occupation of this, that or the other position was of small consequence, except in so far as it tended to weaken the tremendous fighting force of that "best infantry on earth" which was defending Richmond on the one hand, and threatening Washington on the other.