GRANT'S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
As the month of April neared its end Grant prepared to execute the
plans he had so laboriously formed, and for which he had given to all
his lieutenants in every quarter of the country orders as minute as
they could be made without risk of leaving any lieutenant embarrassed
for want of liberty of action in the event of an emergency.
For the sake of a clear understanding let us state again in brief
outline his scheme of operation. His fundamental conception was that
in order to conquer the Confederacy he must destroy its armies in the
field, and especially Lee's army, which had been from the first the
chief source and center of danger to the Federal cause, both by reason
of its superb fighting quality, and by reason of the masterful genius
of Lee that directed it. Grant's first care, therefore, was so to
employ all the subsidiary forces in all quarters of the South as to
prevent the sending of any reinforcements to Lee.
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.
General Grant has himself explained the immediate strategy employed by
him in his campaign in northern Virginia. He had his choice between
two courses,--either to move continuously by his own left flank around
Lee's right, thus keeping always at his back that great system of
waterways beginning in the Rappahannock and Potomac, and stretching on
to Fortress Monroe and the James, and maintaining at all times in his
rear a perfect and unassailable base of communications and supplies;
or, on the other hand, to move by his own right flank around Lee's
left, as Hooker had tried to do, thus threatening the Confederate
communications, and forcing Lee, as it were, into a pocket. Should
he adopt this second course, however, he must carry with him all
that he needed of ammunition and food supplies, and expose his own
communications to possible rupture at any hour by daring operations
on the part of the Confederate forces. He determined, therefore, to
move by his own left, assailing Lee's right and keeping the waterways
always at his back.
The plan was simple and effective. It is true that it left some
advantages to Lee--unmolested communications and short lines of
march--but these were more than offset by the other considerations
involved. From beginning to end of the struggle Grant found no occasion
to change his method in the least.