Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it. —GENERAL ULYSSES GRANT SENDING SHERIDAN TO FIGHT JEB STUART’S CAVALRY1 THE UNION ARMY HAD A SURFEIT OF MAJOR GENERALS but not a single three-star general. The rank of lieutenant general had fallen into disuse after November 1861, when seventy-five-year-old Winfield Scott retired as commanding general. George Washington had been the only permanent US lieutenant general; Scott had held the rank by brevet. On February 26, 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed a law reviving the rank. The Confederacy boasted more than a dozen lieutenant generals, but Lincoln wanted to appoint just one: Ulysses S. Grant. The Senate swiftly confirmed Lincoln’s nomination of Grant. As commander of all Union armies, Grant was now one of the three most powerful men in the Union, along with Lincoln and War Secretary Edwin Stanton. While Scott had remained in Washington, Grant chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac in northern Virginia—to be close to the action and to insulate himself from the inevitable second-guessing by Lincoln and Stanton.
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