ever led to victory, and his very name inspired confidence of success. News comes to the Navy Department, via Memphis and Cairo, that Mobile has surrendered. I do not credit it. Sheridan has pushed up the Valley to New Market.

E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

HDQRS. MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
Atlanta, Ga., September 20, 1864- 1 p. m.

General GRANT:

City Point:

Colonel Porter is just come, and I have read your letter with much interest; I will send East my official report, and will write fully by Colonel Porter. In the mean time all is well, and I can watch your movements with interest. I hear that General Sheridan is now fighting.

W. T. SHERMAN,

Major-General.

HDQRS. MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
Atlanta, Ga., September 20, 1864.

Lieutenant General U. S. GRANT,

Commanding Armies of the United States, City Point, Va.:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge at the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel Porter, of your letter of September 12, and accept with thanks the honorable and kindly mention of the services of this army in the great cause in which we are well engaged. I send by Colonel Porter all official reports which are completed, and will, in a few days, submit a list of names I deem worthy of promotion. I think we owe it to the President to save him the invidious task of election among a vast number of worthy aspirants, and have ordered my army commanders to prepare their lists with great care and to express their preferences based upon claims of actual capacity and services rendered. These I will consolidate and submit in such a form that if mistakes are committed they will at least be sanctioned by the best contemporaneous evidence of merit, for I know that vacancies do not exist equal in number to that of the officers that really deserve promotion.

As to the future, I am pleased to know your army is being steadily re-enforced by a good class of men, and I hope it will go on until you have a force that is numerically double that of your antagonist, so that with one part on you can watch him and with the other you can push out boldly from your left flank, occupy the South Shore [Side] Railroad, compel him to attack you in position, or accept on your own terms. We ought to ask our country for the largest possible armies that can be raised, as so important a thing as the "self-existence of a great nation" should not be left to the fickle chances of war. Now what Mobile is shut out to the commerce of our enemy it calls for no further effort on our part, unless the capture of the city can be followed up by the occupation of the whole Alabama River and the railroad across to Columbus, Ga., when that place would at once become a magnificent auxiliary to my farther progress into Georgia, but until General Canby is much re-