secure in that great and important stronghold. The way being thus clear of the enemy, every attention was given to carrying the road forward and into Chattanooga, and January 14 that desirable end was obtained. About this time Colonel D. C. McCallum, a railroad officer of large experience, was ordered here from the East by yourself, and arrived shortly afterwards with a large corps of mechanics and laborers.

February 4, by order of Lieutenant-General (then major-general) Grant, he was directed to relieve Mr. J. B. Anderson of his railroad duties and assume charge as general manager of all U. s. Military Railroads in the Military Division of the Mississippi. Colonel McCallum at once entered upon his duties with great alacrity and energy. He doubled and quadrupled the force of men at work upon the road, and as soon as the way was clear bridged the Tennessee at Loudon and reopened the road to Knoxville. At the same time he set to work vigorously upon the Tennessee and Alabama road, and by the middle of March he reported it open and ready for business. Thus my connections to the front were at last completed, and it but remained to use them effectually. From this time (February 1) the work at this depot became vastly increased. Instead of providing merely for the Army of the Cumberland, to which duty you had called me, I now found the Armies of Tennessee and of the Ohio also looking to me for supplies. I could get estimates from neither of them; neither had I the right to ask for them; yet for animals, clothing, camp equipage, quartermaster's stores, and all current quartermaster's supplies, except funds, they all called freely on me and on this depot for subsistence, ordnance, and all other stores, and we were expected to meet their calls. In anticipation of this I had already put in large estimates for everything at Louisville and Cincinnati, and, in anticipation of the spring campaign, not set about accumulating supplies here on a basis of 60,000 animals and 150,000 men to last the army as a six months' supply from and after May 1, 1864. My estimates at both places were honored with commendable promptness in most things, and to Brigadier General Robert Allen, at Louisville, especially, I am peculiarly indebted for the magnificent style in which he at once proceeded to place the whole available resources of the Northwest at my command under his direction. His chief officer of river transportation, Colonel L. B. Parsons, Saint Louis, Mo., crowded the Cumberls and barges, and throughout the winter and spring the entire energies of the depot here were taxed to their utmost to receive and handle the stores heaped in upon us. For weeks together my levee thronged with transports of all sorts, and force of at least 3,000 men and from 400 to 500 teams were kept constantly at work--day and night, Sundays and week days--in transferring the supplies to my various depots and store-houses. My estimate is that, for three months or more together, I received and handled daily an average of from 2,000 to 3,000 tons of freight exclusive of the amount arriving here by railroad.

This vast influx of freight soon overflowed all the store-houses then here. The chief ware-houses in town available for such purposes were next taken possession of and filled, but still it became necessary to provide large additional storage elsewhere, or else allow the public stores to suffer from exposure. In anticipation of this, I had already ordered the construction of three large ware-houses on the line of our respective railroads here, one called the forage house, on the line of the Northwestern Railroad, 1,709 feet long by an average of 140 feet wide, one story high; the bread shed, or Eaton Depot, on the line of the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad, 600 feet long by 112 feet wide, one story high, and the Taylor Depot, 517 feet long by 190 feet wide, one story high, with an extensive