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494 Grant's early services. [1343-62 In the correspondence which both preceded and followed this episode, it had been pointed out by Buell, and was, after examination, accepted and repeated by Halleck, that the true line of operations was neither against Bowling Green nor Columbus, but between these two points, up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, which, flowing out of Tennessee northward through Kentucky, emptied themselves into the Ohio river less than fifteen miles apart, at Paducah and Smithland. Still neither general showed any disposition to remove his ambitious gaze from his separate objective. It remained for a subordinate officer to seize the golden opportunity which led to victory and fame. On the day before President Lincoln's telegram, Halleck had directed General Grant at Cairo to make a reconnaissance and demonstration with land forces and gun-boats, both towards Columbus, the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, and the less important rebel defences of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers. Grant's resources for carrying out this order were quite as limited and defective as those which caused his superiors so much hesitation and delay ; but he accepted his task cheerfully, and performed it promptly ; and, from the date of this reconnaissance, the military problem which Buell and Halleck had discussed in theory without coming to agreement, and without any prospect of action for some months to come, was by him taken up with enthusiasm, and rapidly solved in practice. Ulysses S. Grant, born in 1822, graduated from the military school at West Point in 1843, and won a brevet captaincy for gallant behaviour in two storming assaults during the Mexican War. He resigned in 1854, having reached the grade of full captain. At the President's first call for troops he assisted in drilling a company at his home in Galena, Illinois, and for some weeks performed clerical duty on the governor's staff at Springfield. In a letter to the Adjutant-General of the Army at Washington, he applied for service, stating that he felt himself competent to command a regiment; but receiving no reply, accepted from the governor the command of the 21st Illinois regiment of three- years' volunteers, and, having immediately performed active duty at several points in Missouri, was soon promoted to be Brigadier-General. Since the beginning of September, 1861, he had been in command of the important post at Cairo. It was he who had seized Paducah, and after- ward under Fremont's orders led the expedition to attack and break up a Confederate camp at Belmont on the Mississippi, opposite Columbus, an engagement beginning with victory, and ending with something very near defeat, in which Grant barely escaped capture by the enemy. The joint reconnaissance made by land forces and gun-boats, under command of General Grant and Commodore Foote, between the 9th and the 19th of January, 1862, convinced both these commanders of the practicability of breaking through the Confederate defensive line on the Tennessee river. Grant visited St Louis and laid his views before