This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [209]
Richmond was not actually the goal, despite all of the “On to Richmond” slogans. It was necessary to move toward it, to threaten it, to compel the Confederacy to spend its lifeblood in defense of it — and if, at last, the city could in fact be taken, that would be well and good; but for the Army of the Potomac the only objective that now had any real meaning was the opposing Army of Northern Virginia. Lean, swift, and deadly, that army had frustrated every Federal offensive that had ever been launched in Virginia. It had been elusive and unpredictable, and it had moved across the war-torn landscape like a whiplash; now it must be pinned down and compelled to fight when and where the northern commander chose, with never a chance for one of those quick, furious strokes of reprisal which, always before, had restored strategic control to Lee. Quite simply, the function of the Army of the Potomac now was to fight, even if it half destroyed itself in the process. It it never lost contact with its enemy, and fought hard as long as that enemy remained in its front, it would do its part and the war finally would end with the United States one nation.
The real area of decision was in the West. The Confederacy had been fragmented already; it was crowded into the area east of the Mississippi and south of the Tennessee highlands, and now the North had the strength — if it used it right — to drive down into the Deep South, cutting the remnant of the southern nation into bits and stamping the independent life out of each severed piece. Sherman had seen it, and when Grant became lieutenant general Sherman wrote him an impassioned plea: “For God’s sake and your country’s sake, come out of Washington!” He went on in words that showed his own conception of the strategic task that remained to be done:
“Come west; take to yourself the whole Mississippi valley. Let us make it dead-sure, and I tell you the Atlantic and Pacific shores will follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the main trunk.… Here lies the seat of the coming empire; and from the west when our task is done we will make short work of Charleston and Richmond and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic.”1
Grant had to stay in the East, but Sherman had seen it. The fight in Virginia would be essentially a holding operation. Lee must be kept so busy that he could not send help to any other part of the Confederacy, and his army must be made to fight so constantly that it could never again seize the initiative, upset Federal strategy, and threaten a new invasion of the North. If this could be done, victory would be won. The difficulty was that it would mean for the Army of the Potomac an unbroken round of hard, bitter fighting — more fighting than it had had in all of its experiences, without a letup or a breathing spell, an eternity of combat in which no one would be allowed to stop to count the cost.
The men of the Army of the Potomac did not understand any of this as the spring campaign got under way. They marched down to the crossings of the Rapidan on a spring day when the May sunlight was bright, and the wild flowers sparkled along the roadside and the dogwood blossoms lit the gloomy forests, and as the long columns moved down to the river the sunlight glinted on musket barrels and bayonets and trundling brass cannon, and the movement of armed men looked like a vast pageant of immeasurable significance. On the plain above the river the long lines were ranked in brigade and division front, mounted officers gesturing with their