“I don't believe that story.”
“Neither do I. I'm only telling you what I read.”
“I think Butler had better stay in the navy.”
“But he isn't a sailor; he's a major-general of volunteers.”
“Well, there's no telling how he might cut up on dry land. He'd better keep his sea legs on and stay where if he gets whipped he can't run.”
The veterans from the Keystone State had not lost faith in “Little Mac.” They contended that McClellan had been handicapped just at a moment when he was “about to execute a coup de main that would prove a coup de grâce to the Southern Confederacy!” Meade was the second choice of the Pennsylvanians. His splendid victory over Lee at Gettysburg had brought him into the front rank. He had won the gratitude of the whole North, Copperheads excepted. Checking Lee's advance Northward, whipping the rebel army and compelling the defeated Confederacy to “about face” and put for home, gave Gen. Meade a big place in the hearts of the soldiers and the loyal people of the Keystone State. Surely the patriots of the North had good cause to rejoice on the eighty-seventh anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. On that day Grant's victorious army raised the stars and stripes over the rebel fortifications at Vicksburg, and the Mississippi was opened to the sea; and Lee's army of Northern Virginia was retreating from the scene of its unsuccessful attack on Meade's army at Gettysburg.
Within forty-eight hours after the Union troops had crossed the Rapidan under the direction of Gen. Grant, there was not a soldier in the Army of the Potomac but what felt that the lieutenant-general meant business. The official records on file at Washington show that during that two days' terrible struggle in the Wilderness—May 5 and 6, 1864—the loss sustained by the Army of the Potomac was 13,948, of which 2,261 were killed, 8,785 wounded and 2,902 taken prisoners or missing. Then came Spottsylvania, with an aggregate Union loss of 13,601. The total loss sustained by the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the James and by Sheridan's operations in the valley, from May 1, 1864, to the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, is given in official compilations at 99,772—14,601 killed, 61,452 wounded and 23,719 missing. In the meantime the Federal forces operating in Virginia captured 81,112 Confederates, and Lee's killed and wounded are believed to have been equal to Grant's, but the “scattering” of the rebels after Richmond fell, and the destruction of Confederate records, made it impossible to arrive at the exact figures.
As already stated, the veterans of the Army of the Potomac were satisfied that Grant was a fighting man. During the period beginning with the opening skirmish in the Wilderness, and continuing down to the end of the conflict at Appomattox, there was not wanting evidence of Grant's determination to “fight his men” for all they were worth whenever opportunity presented for hammering the rebels. There was no going back this time. It was “On to Richmond” in earnest. The Army of the Potomac was ready to be led against the enemy. There was general rejoicing all along the line when the command was given, “By the left flank, forward!” and the Federals moved toward Spottsylvania instead of retreating across the Rapidan, as President Lincoln said any previous commander of the Army of the Potomac would have done at the close of such a battle as that fought in the Wilderness.
In Richardson's “Personal History of U. S. Grant,” it is stated that in the rebel lines it was believed that our army was falling back at the close of the conflict in the Wilderness. The account continues:
Gordon said to Lee: “I think there is no doubt but that Grant is retreating.”