NASHVILLE, TENN., April 7, 1864 - 10 a. m.

Lieutenant-General GRANT,

Culpeper Court-House:

I will instruct Steele. shreveport is the grand doorway to Texas, and the key of the entire Southwest. Alexandria is next. To hold both Steele will want all the available troops now in Kansas and Missouri. I had sent for my 10,000 under A. J. Smith to return to Vicksburg and thence up Yazoo to Grenada. We must do this to underact the effect of our cavalry weakness as against Forrest, and I suppose you will want Banks to turn his whole attention against Mobile. In time we should have a brigade and depot of supplies at Pensacola, a point I propose to reach by a raid aimed at West Point and Columbus, ga., at some future day. I think you should give Steele all the troops in Kansas and Missouri, leaving Rosecrans and Curtis to manage the militia and civil matters.

W. T. SHERMAN,

Major-General.

CULPEPER, VA., April 7, 1864 - 7.30 p. m.

(Received 9.30 a. m., 8th.)

Major General W. T. SHERMAN,

Nashville, Tenn.,

I have ordered all the troops that can be spared from the States west of the Ohio to be sent to you. You can send them to Steele or where you think best. Rosecrans report he can send no troops. I have an inspector there, however, to see. If possible, I will send Steele some from there. I will make provision at Pensacola for supplying a cavalry force.

U. S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

NASHVILLE, TENN., April 7, 1864.

Major General H. W. HALLECK,

Chief of Staff:

GENERAL: I gave General Rawlins, at Cincinnati, a memorandum,* which I would like you to see. Arkansas has no real connection with this command. all the territory lying west of the Mississippi forms one military command. The active fighting force should be united under, say, Steele, on Red River; Shreveport, especially, which covers all Arkansas and Missouri, and is the great doorway to and from Texas. The abolition of all departments and arrangements of the entire army into three military divisions, right, center, and left, would simplify the game of war very much. The mere indications from the General-in-Chief for our respective objective points and lines of operations would leave him only to fix the time of general movements, when each would assistant the other and the enemy could not escape defeat on one or more of the lines. Each of the grand divisions should control the territory to its rear, to prevent the drain of our troops beyond our control, for the care of our wounded,

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*Not found.

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