The committee did not believe that the selection of General Meade for the command of the Army of the Potomac was a fortunate one, and doubted his ability to properly control his subordinates. While there is no reference to the matter in their report on this subject, it is a fact that they recommended the removal of General Meade from command, and the re-instatement of Hooker. On the 4th of March, 1864, Mr. Chandler and Mr. Wade called upon the President, and told him that they believed it to be their duty, impressed as they were with the testimony the committee had taken, to lay a copy of it before him, and in behalf of the army and the country demand the removal of General Meade, and the appointment of some one more competent to command. The President asked what general they could recommend; they said that for themselves they would be content with General Hooker, believing him to be competent, but not being advocates of any particular officer, they would say that if there was any one whom the President considered more competent, then let him be appointed. They added that "Congress had appointed the committee to watch the conduct of the war; and unless this state of things should be soon changed it would become their duty to make the testimony public which they had taken, with such comments as the circumstances of the case seemed to require." General Meade was not removed, but General Grant was, within a week, given command as general-in-chief, and assumed personal direction of the movements of the Army of the Potomac. During 1864 and 1865 the committee (besides considering many minor matters) also investigated, with care: 1. The disastrous assault upon Petersburg on July 30, 1864; their report exonerated General Burnside from the responsibility for the repulse, and held that the disaster was attributable to the interference with his plans of General Meade, whose course in the matter was severely censured. 2. The unsuccessful expedition of 1864 up the Red river in Louisiana, which the committee (Mr. Gooch dissenting) emphatically condemned. 3. The first Fort Fisher expedition, the committee, in its report, approving of General Butler's course in withdrawing from the projected assault. During the inquiry into the Petersburg fiasco, the sub-committee were in session at General Grant's headquarters, and Mr. Chandler was his guest, renewing there an early acquaintance and laying the foundations of their future close friendship. Some incidents of their intercourse were characteristic.