alarmed me.  I had armed without authority a lot of negroes and organized them into a company to guard the Corinth contraband camp.  It had been severely criticised in the army, and I thought this act of mine had partly to do with my call to Washington; however, upon reaching there and reporting to the President, I found that he recollected his conversation on the Pacific House stoop; that he was, under the law, to fix the eastern terminus of the Pacific Road; and, also, that he was very anxious to have the road commenced and built, and desired to consult me on these questions.  He finally fixed the terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa.

In the discussion of the means of building the road I thought and urged that no private combination should be relied on, that it must be done by the government.  The President frankly said that the government had its hands full.  Private enterprise must do the work, and all the government could do was to aid.  What he wished to know of me was, what was required from the government to ensure its commencement and completion.  He said it was a military necessity that the road should be built.

From Washington I proceeded to New York, and after consulting there with the parties who had the question before them, the bill of 1864 was drawn.  In due time it passed, and under it the Union and Central Pacific Railroads, constituting one continuous line, were built.

In the fall of 1864, and after the fall of Atlanta, and while on my return from City Point, where I had been to visit General Grant for a couple of weeks, the commander-in-chief sent me back by way of Washington to see the President.

While the President referred to the Pacific Road, its progress and the result of my former visit, he gave it very little thought, apparently, and his great desire seemed to be to get encouragement respecting the situation around Richmond, which just then was very dark.  People were criticising Grant’s strategy, and telling him how to take Richmond.  I think the advice and pressure on President Lincoln were almost too much for him, for during my entire visit, which lasted several hours, he confined himself, after reading a chapter out of a humorous book (I believe called the Gospel of Peace), to Grant and the situation at Petersburg and Richmond.

After Atlanta, my assignment to a separate department brought the country between the Missouri River and California under my command, and then I was charged with the Indian campaigns of 1865 and 1866.  I travelled again over all that portion of the country I had explored in former years, and saw the beginning of that great future that awaited it.  I then began to comprehend its capabilities and resources, and in all movements of our troops and scouting parties I had reports made upon the country—­its resources and topography; and I myself, during the two years, traversed it east and west, north