On the 3d of May, General Meade was ordered to cross the Rapidan, and on the following day the passage was effected without opposition. The army entered that desolate region called The Wilderness, and the soldiers, borrowing speech from the Odyssey, might have exclaimed,—
"We went, Ulysses (such was thy command),
Through the lone thicket and the desert land."
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
Wherein Captain Galligasken follows the Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, and the illustrious Soldier announces that he shall fight it out on that Line, if it takes all Summer.
The river was safely crossed, and the anxiety which the lieutenant general had felt in regard to this movement was removed. It was an entire success. The army train consisted of four thousand wagons, and it required no little accurate calculation to dispose of it with the available roads, without subjecting any portion of it to the liability of capture. Formed in single line, the procession of teams, allowing forty feet to each, would extend about thirty miles, or nearly half way to Richmond. It would require a man of great ability to conduct such a train even ten miles, in a time of profound peace, without throwing it into confusion. The nicest system and the closest coöperation were necessary, in order to keep it in a place of safety, and to prevent its movements from being impeded. Of course this train could not be extended on a single line. It was a part of the calculation of the commanding general to keep this immense procession in a place of safety, and yet have it when and where it was wanted.
But the wagons were only a small part of Grant's solicitude. His army was composed of about one hundred and thirty thousand men—equal to the population of a large city. To have marched this vast body on a holiday excursion from the Rapidan to the James, with no hostile foe to dispute its passage, would be regarded as a stupendous undertaking even for a skilful person. Wellington once observed that there were very few generals in Europe who could march an army of a hundred thousand men through Hyde Park gate without throwing them into confusion. But this vast army on its southern march was to be kept well in hand, and all its movements and positions known to one man. It was to be swung round, marched and countermarched, as a child handles a toy. It required a man of genius to control this cumbrous machine, independently of fighting battles with it. In the hands of an incompetent man, its very numbers would have been its greatest element of weakness.