Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/83

 — not once, but repeatedly, that it really embarrassed me to listen to him, although, fortunately, he was content to do the talking without expecting sympathetic echoes from me. He dwelt upon the disregard of some of his wishes by those superiors as a public wrong, and denounced as criminal their efforts to force him into the offensive before he was completely ready. Nor did he hesitate to expatiate upon his plans for future operations, and this with scarcely concealed self-appreciation. He evidently believed that he was destined to play the most prominent part and reach the greatest distinction among all the Union generals. He unfolded to me his conception of the grand strategy by which the triumph of the North could be assured, coupling it with a broad intimation that Halleck and Stanton would have to be got out of the way, leaving me to infer that, after this was done, the next necessary step was to put him in the former's place. Talk of this kind was so regularly repeated by him that I could not help concluding that he was anxious to impress me with his greatness and to have that impression reflected in the Tribune. There was a correspondent attached to his headquarters, W. D. Bickham, who did that sort of work for him very willingly in the columns of the Cincinnati Commercial. But the more “Old Rosey,” as the puffer in question had nicknamed him, tried to make me help in pointing him out as the great and only hope of the country, the less I was inclined to gratify him, and the smaller grew my faith in his fitness to command a large army and lead it to victory. Notwithstanding his transparent vanity and love of approbation, he tried to make me — and, for that matter, everybody else, including his superiors — believe that he disliked publicity and shrank especially from newspaper notoriety.

His principal justification of the inaction of his command was that, as long as he stood still, he held Bragg fast in his front, and prevented the sending of reinforcements from him to General Johnston in his efforts to foil Grant in the capture of Vicksburg. He explained to me at length