This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [206]
The army tended to be suspicious of Grant when he established his headquarters near Meade’s. Peppery little General Rawlins, Grant’s chief of staff, found the suspicion freely expressed. Officers of the Potomac army would admit that the western troops had done well enough, but would always add: “Well, you have never met Bobby Lee and his boys; it would be quite different if you had.” If any of Grant’s people expressed optimism about the coming campaign in Virginia, someone was sure to wag his head and say: “Well, that may be, but mind you, Bobby Lee is just over the Rapidan.”4
Grant did not have a great deal of time in which to pull this army together; just six weeks from the moment he pitched his tents along the Rapidan to the day when the great offensive would start. They were busy weeks. There were reviews, to let the troops have a look at the new general-in-chief and to let him have a look at them; there was an endless bustle of reorganization and re-equipping, a tightening up of details, a ruthless combing out of the snug, comfortable forts around Washington so that more combat men could be added to the army — this latter a move that was highly popular with the veterans, who rejoiced to see the big heavy artillery regiments deprived of their soft assignments, given muskets, and told to soldier it along with everybody else. Grant reorganized his cavalry, bringing hard little Phil Sheridan in from the West to turn the cavalry corps into a fighting organization. As April wore away, the effect of all of this began to be felt, and the army displayed a quiet new confidence. Lee might be just over the Rapidan, but there was a different feeling in the air; maybe this spring it would be different.
Maybe it would; what a general could do would be done. But in the last analysis everything would depend on the men in the ranks, and both in the East and in the West the enlisted man was called on that winter to give his conclusive vote of confidence in the conduct of the war. He gave his vote in the most direct way imaginable — by re-enlisting voluntarily for another hitch.
Union armies in the Civil War did not sign up for the duration. They enlisted by regiments, and the top term was three years. This meant — since the hard core of the United States Army was made up of the volunteers who had enlisted in 1861 — that as the climactic year of 1864 began the army was on the verge of falling apart. Of 956 volunteer infantry regiments, as 1863 drew to a close 455 were about to go out of existence because their time would very soon be up. Of 158 volunteer batteries, 81 would presently cease to exist.5
There was no way on earth by which these veterans could be made to remain in the army if they did not choose to stay. If they took their discharges and went home — as they were legally and morally entitled to do — the war effort would simply collapse. New recruits were coming in but because Congress in its wisdom had devised the worst possible system for keeping the army up to strength, the war could not be won without the veterans. Enlistments there were, in plenty; and yet — leaving out of consideration the fact that raw recruits could not hope to stand up to the battle-trained old-timers led by Lee and Johnston — they were not doing the army very much good. Heavy cash bounties were offered to men who would enlist; when cities, states, and Federal government offers were added up, a man might get as much as a thousand dollars just for joining the army. This meant that vast numbers of men were enlisting for the money they would get and then were deserting as quickly as possible — which was