Also, when you have completed your best preparations, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga--no doubts, no reserve; and I tell you that it was this that made us act with confidence.

I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come--if alive.
My only points of doubt were as to your knowledge of grand strategy, and of books of science and history; but I confess your common-sense seems to have supplied all this.
Now as to the future.

Do not stay in Washington.

Halleck is better qualified than you are to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy.

Come out West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley; let us make it dead-sure, and I tell you the Atlantic slope and Pacific shores will follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the main trunk! We have done much; still much remains to be done.