I want you to push matters as rapidly as possible, and to do all you can to put two handsome divisions of your own corps at Cairo, ready to embark up the Tennessee River by the 20th or 30th of April at the very furthest.

I wish it could be done quicker; but the promise of those thirty-days furloughs in the States of enlistment, though politic, is very unmilitary.

It deprives us of our ability to calculate as to time; but do the best you can.

Hurlbut can do nothing till A.J.Smith returns from Red River.

I will then order him to occupy Grenada temporarily, and to try and get those locomotives that we need here.