OBITUARY NOTICES. 
475 
those three great fortresses, Taylor, Jefferson, and Pickens, 
and keep them safe. Meigs answered that he was only a 
captain and could not command the majors who were there. 
Here Seward broke in with, ‘ I understand how that is ; 
Captain Meigs must be promoted.’ ‘ But there is no va¬ 
cancy,’ answered the modest captain. 
“Mr. Seward, however, made light of all difficulties and 
told the President if he wanted this thing done to put it in 
Meigs’ charge. ‘When Pitt wanted to conquer Canada,’ 
Seward said, ‘he sent for a young man whom he had noticed 
in the society of London and told him to take Quebec; to 
ask for the necessary means and do it, and it was done.’ 
Would the President do this now? Two days afterward 
Meigs was about starting for church when * * * he was 
called to prepare a plan for relieving Fort Pickens, which 
was submitted that day to the President.” 
He was promoted to the rank of colonel of infantry and 
during the same year was raised to that of brigadier general, 
already referred to, and was appointed Quartermaster Gen¬ 
eral of the United States Army, in which capacity a large 
part of the enormous expenditure of the whole civil war 
passed through his hands. I cannot enter into details, which 
are, nevertheless, an important part of our military history, 
but General Meigs disbursed what now seems a hardly credi¬ 
ble amount—I have understood from him, something ap¬ 
proaching one thousand millions of dollars—I do not say 
without a suspicion of his integrity (for that goes without 
saying), but with such almost unequalled knowledge of the 
technical difficulties imposed in Government accounts, that 
of this prodigious sum I have heard it mentioned that not 
ten dollars was disallowed at the Treasury. 
Throughout the continuance of the civil war he adminis¬ 
tered the difficult duties of this most responsible position not 
only with success of the kind I have just mentioned, but in 
other ways. I will only allude to one, and for this again 
quote as my authority Lincoln’s private secretaries, who, in 
their “ Life,” say : 
“ In September, 1863, General Meigs brought two army 
corps, numbering some 20,000 men, from the Rapidan to 
Washington, thence by railway through Cincinnati to the 
