The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 2 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

His second fundamental idea was to fight the Confederate armies in the open field rather than assail them in defensive works at the points of chief strategic importance.

Certain writers for the press have severely criticized the great Federal commander for having wasted thousands of lives in his march overland upon Richmond instead of transferring his army to the front of that city by water as he might easily have done without the loss of a man. This criticism is ignorant in the extreme, but as its conclusions persist in spite of Grant's own, and many other intelligent replies, it seems necessary to say again that his purpose was not to reach the front of Richmond, but to encounter, and if possible, to crush Lee's army in the field. It is perfectly true that he might have placed the Army of the Potomac in front of Richmond and Petersburg without any battling or any loss of life, just as McClellan had done in 1862. But in that case his task would have been to assail the greatest general of the Confederate army, the greatest engineer of modern times, and the strongest fighting force of the South in positions of their own choosing, defended by the most formidable defensive works that ingenuity could construct. It was Grant's idea, and a perfectly sound one, that he could not afford this—that this was the longest and most difficult instead of the shortest and easiest road to the accomplishment of his military purposes. He had two men to Lee's one; he could get two more for the asking where Lee could not get another one. He wisely decided, therefore, that if possible he would compel Lee to fight in the open field, instead of confronting him in defensive works. It was not certain that he could compel Lee to this course. But it was his purpose to do so if possible, and in the end he succeeded in achieving that possibility.

Rightly interpreted, there was no greater strategy in all the war than this. Yet nothing has been more misunderstood or more injuriously reported. In his uncertainty as to whether Lee would accept battle in the open field, or would fall back upon Richmond and defend that city behind strong earthworks, Grant prepared himself for either contingency. He ordered Butler, with a strongly reinforced army, to move up the southern side of James river, supported by the gunboats, and to establish himself in an unassailable position, from which, in case of Lee's declining battle in the open, he might threaten or assail the southern and eastern defenses of the Confederate capital, while Grant, with the Army of the Potomac, might fall upon that city from the North, thus bringing to bear against Lee a combined force three or four times as great as his own.

But his strong hope was that Lee would accept battle in the field, and that the Confederate general might be so far crippled there by the assaults of overwhelming numbers as to be far less formidable in his final defense of Richmond than he must be if forced back to that position by maneuvering and without fighting.

If there was any error or miscalculation in General Grant's plan for the destruction of the Confederacy and the ending of the war, that error was in underestimating the tremendous fighting force of the Army of Northern Virginia, under command of Robert E. Lee. Grant had never met Lee in battle, and had learned of his capacity and of the resisting power of the army under his command only by hearsay. These were so much greater than anything else of the kind that had been known in the war that Grant's mistake, if he made any mistake, was surely pardonable. He had reckoned rightly in supposing that Sherman could deal successfully with Johnston, could take Atlanta, and could push his army thence to the sea, again cutting in twain what remained of the Confederacy. Perhaps he had not fully appreciated the resisting capacity of Lee with his Army of Northern Virginia. Perhaps he had a trifle too confidently reckoned upon numbers as a means of crushing that force. At any rate in his tremendous campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg, he did not conquer it or crush it. So far indeed did he fail to do this, that after Lee had retired to Richmond and Petersburg and there confronted Grant's enormously reinforced army, the Confederate general was able to reinforce Early in the valley and send him on an expedition northward which threw Washington again into a panic, and for a time threatened the compulsory withdrawal of a part of Grant's forces from the siege of Richmond and Petersburg.

In all his plans Grant calculated, as he had an entire right to do, upon an enormous superiority of force, whether measured by the number of men under his command, or by the extent of equipment, or by the perfection of his supply departments or by the limitless reinforcement which he was privileged to call to his aid, where his adversary was forbidden by strenuous circumstance, to add a single brigade or regiment or company or man to his fighting force.

It was his plan to hurl against Lee a force so overwhelming that in the ordinary calculations of war it should crush him completely. To that end he ordered Meade on the twenty-seventh of April to advance with his entire army from the position he occupied near Bull Run to the Rappahannock. On the same day he ordered Burnside, who lay at Annapolis with 20,000 men, to advance and occupy Meade's former position, thus bringing to bear the whole of the forces in northern Virginia as a column of offense against Lee.

At the same time Grant ordered Butler to push up on the south side of the James river, and secure a strong and threatening position in rear of the Richmond defenses. Reinforcements were held ready to go to Butler's aid in the event that Lee should fall back upon the defenses of the Confederate capital.

On the same day Sherman was directed from Grant's headquarters to mass his forces and begin that splendid advance against Johnston and Atlanta, which was intended first to neutralize and then to destroy the only great Confederate army other than Lee's which remained in the field. Other and minor operations were ordered from the Valley of Virginia, from West Virginia, from eastern Tennessee, from New Orleans and from other points, all of which were intended to accomplish two purposes—one of them the interruption of Confederate communications, and the other to prevent the sending of any reinforcements to Lee.

General Grant has himself frankly stated in his "Memoirs," page 419, that "to get possession of Lee's army was the first great object. With the capture of his army Richmond would necessarily follow." Here we have the purpose of the campaign in a nutshell. If General Grant could have succeeded in capturing Lee's army or destroying it in the field, there is no possible doubt whatever that Richmond would have followed, as he said, and the Confederate resistance would have ended early in the summer of 1864. For Sherman's operations against Johnston, Atlanta and the far South were completely successful, as we shall see hereafter. The resisting capacity of the Confederacy was prolonged solely through the fact that Grant's hope of quickly capturing or destroying Lee's army was baffled for the time, and postponed to another year.