rail within nine days. In the meantime, Grant was promoted to command of the western armies and quickly replaced Rosecrans with George H. Thomas. Garfield was ordered to report to Washington, where he was promoted to major general. According to historian Jean Edward Smith, Grant and Garfield had a "guarded relationship" since Grant promoted Thomas, rather than Garfield, to command of the Army of the Cumberland after Rosecrans's dismissal. Congressional career Election in 1862; Civil War years While he served in the Army in early 1862, friends of Garfield approached him about running for Congress from Ohio's newly redrawn and heavily Republican 19th district. He worried that he and other state-appointed generals would receive obscure assignments and running for Congress would allow him to resume his political career. That the new Congress would not hold its first regular session until December 1863 allowed him to continue his war service for a time. Home on medical leave, he refused to campaign for the nomination, leaving that to political managers who secured it at the local convention in September 1862 on the eighth ballot. In the October general election, he defeated D.B. Woods by a two-to-one margin for a seat in the 38th Congress. Days before his Congressional term began, Garfield lost his eldest daughter, three-year-old Eliza, and became anxious and conflicted, saying his "desolation of heart" might require his return to "the wild life of the army." He also assumed that the war would end before his joining the House, but it had not, and he felt strongly that he belonged in the field, rather than in Congress. He also thought he could expect a favorable command, so he decided to see President Lincoln. During their meeting, Lincoln recommended he take his House seat, as there was an excess of generals and a shortage of administration congressmen, especially those with knowledge of military affairs. Garfield accepted this recommendation and resigned his military commission to do so. Garfield met and befriended Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who saw Garfield as a younger version of himself. The two agreed politically and both were part of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. Once he took his seat in December 1863, Garfield was frustrated at Lincoln's reluctance to press the South hard. Many radicals, led in the House by Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens, wanted rebel-owned lands confiscated, but Lincoln threatened to veto any bill that