of the Cumberland, to embrace Kentucky, Tennessee, etc., and that he wanted help, and that the President had offered to allow him to select out of the new brigadiers four of his own choice.  I had been a lieutenant in Captain Anderson’s company, at Fort Moultrie, from 1843 to 1846, and he explained that he wanted me as his right hand.  He also indicated George H. Thomas, D. C. Buell, and Burnside, as the other three.  Of course, I always wanted to go West, and was perfectly willing to go with Anderson, especially in a subordinate capacity:  We agreed to call on the President on a subsequent day, to talk with him about it, and we did.  It hardly seems probable that Mr. Lincoln should have come to Willard’s Hotel to meet us, but my impression is that he did, and that General Anderson had some difficulty in prevailing on him to appoint George H. Thomas, a native of Virginia, to be brigadier-general, because so many Southern officers, had already played false; but I was still more emphatic in my indorsement of him by reason of my talk with him at the time he crossed the Potomac with Patterson’s army, when Mr. Lincoln promised to appoint him and to assign him to duty with General Anderson.  In this interview with Mr. Lincoln, I also explained to him my extreme desire to serve in a subordinate capacity, and in no event to be left in a superior command.  He promised me this with promptness, making the jocular remark that his chief trouble was to find places for the too many generals who wanted to be at the head of affairs, to command armies, etc.

The official order is dated: 

[Special Order No. 114.]
Headquarters of the army
Washington, August 24, 1881.

The following assignment is made of the general officers of the volunteer service, whose appointment was announced in General Orders No. 82, from the War Department

To the Department of the Cumberland, Brigadier-General Robert
Anderson commanding: 

Brigadier-General W. T. Sherman,
Brigadier-General George H. Thomas.

By command of Lieutenant-General Scott: 
E. D. Townsend, Assistant adjutant-General.

After some days, I was relieved in command of my brigade and post by Brigadier General Fitz-John Porter, and at once took my departure for Cincinnati, Ohio, via Cresson, Pennsylvania, where General Anderson was with his family; and he, Thomas, and I, met by appointment at the house of his brother, Larz Anderson, Esq., in Cincinnati.  We were there on the 1st and 2d of September, when several prominent gentlemen of Kentucky met us, to discuss the situation, among whom were Jackson, Harlan, Speed, and others.  At that time, William Nelson, an officer of the navy, had been commissioned a brigadier-general of volunteers, and had his camp at Dick Robinson, a few miles beyond the Kentucky River, south of Nicholasville; and Brigadier-General L. H. Rousseau had another camp at Jeffersonville,