The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox Read Online Free PDF

the concentration of your forces at once. Preserve a profound secrecy of what you intend doing, and start at the earliest possible moment.”
    Such, then, was the nature of the offensive Grant intended to launch in the West, with Sherman bearing the main tactical burden. Similarly in the East, in accordance with his general plan “to concentrate all the force possible against the Confederate armies in the field,” he planned for Meade to move in a similar manner, similarly assisted by a diversionary attack on the enemy rear. But he wanted it made clear from the start that this was to be something more than just another “On to Richmond” drive, at least so far as Meade himself was concerned. “Lee’s army will be your objective point,” his instructions read. “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.”
    If past experience showed anything, it clearly showed that in Virginia almost anything could happen. Moreover, with Lee in opposition, that
anything
was likely to be disastrous from the Federal point of view. Four of the five offensives so far launched against him — those by McClellan, by Pope, by Burnside, by Hooker — had broken inblood and ended in headlong blue retreat, while the fifth — Meade’s own, the previous fall — had managed nothing better than a stalemate; which last, in the light of Grant’s views on the need for unrelenting pressure, was barely preferable to defeat. Numerical odds had favored the Union to small avail in those encounters, including Hooker’s three-to-one advantage, yet that was a poor argument against continuing to make them as long as possible. Just now, as a result of the westward detachments in September, the Army of the Potomac was down to fewer than one hundred thousand men. By way of lengthening the odds, Grant proposed to bring unemployed Ambrose Burnside back east to head a corps of four newly raised divisions which would rendezvous at Annapolis, thus puzzling the enemy as to their eventual use, down the coast or in Virginia proper, until the time came for the Rapidan crossing, when they would move in support of the Army of the Potomac, raising its strength to beyond 120,000 effectives, distributed among fifteen infantry and three cavalry divisions.
    Such assurance as this gave was by no means certain. Lee was foxy. No mere numerical advantage had served to fix him in position for slaughter in the past. But Grant had other provisions in mind for securing that result, involving the use of the other two eastern armies. In the West, the three mobile forces had three separate primary assignments: going for Johnston, taking Mobile, riding herd on Transmississippi rebels. In the East, all three were to have the same objective from the start.
    Posted in defense of West Virginia and the Maryland-Pennsylvania frontier, the smallest of these three armies was commanded by Major General Franz Sigel; “I fights mit Sigel” was the proud boast of thousands of soldiers, German-born like himself, who had been drawn to the colors by his example. This force was not available for use elsewhere, since its left lay squarely athwart the northern entrance to the Shenandoah Valley, that classic avenue of Confederate invasion exploited so brilliantly two years ago by Stonewall Jackson, who had used it to play on Lincoln’s fears, thereby contributing largely to the frustration of McClellan’s drive on Richmond at a time when the van of his army could hear the hours struck by the city’s public clocks. To Grant, however, the fact that Sigel’s 26,000 troops were not considered withdrawable, lest another rebel general use the Valley approach to serve him as Stonewall had served Little Mac, did not mean that this force was not usable as part of the drive on the Virginia capital and the gray army charged with its defense. It seemed to him, rather, that a movement up the Valley by a major portion of Sigel’s command would serve even better than an immobile guard, posted across its northern