Happily, also, the same unity had lately been imported into the conduct of the war by the appointment of General Grant in March, 1864, to the grade of Lieutenant-General and his nomination to the office of General-in-Chief. Aside from the approved good qualities of that commander, the stroke was most just and wise, for in truth for three years the war had been without a head. Since the time when, for a brief period, McClellan had exercised the functions of General-in-Chiefa period during which he had outlined but had had no opportunity to execute a comprehensive system of operations an incredible incoherence prevailed in the general conduct of the

It is true that since that time General Halleck had exercised the functions of a central military director at Washington. But his office was the shadow of a name. He could not get himself obeyed by the commanders in the field, and when he did actually intervene it was commonly only to entail disaster. In point of fact, as General Halleck's last annual official report had clearly shown, operations were directed sometimes by the President, with or without the approval of his military counsellors, sometimes by one or another of his military counsellors, without the approval of the President, and sometimes by the general in the field without the approval of any one. In this lamentable state of facts, it is not wonderful that the results thus far achieved fell far short of the army's lavish expenditure of blood. "The armies in the East and West," in Grant's pithy phrase, acted independently and without concert, like a baulky team, no two ever pulling together." Indeed, between the armies in the two zones, there had hitherto been such lack of combination of effort that the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the West had commonly found themselves in their extremest crisis at the moment when the other, being reduced to inaction, left the Confederate force to concentre on the vital point. And in truth the wonder was not that

the war was not already brought to a close: rather the wonder was that so much should have been accomplished.

But now Grant commanded "all the armies of the United States," and he was at once able, with all the resources of the country at his call, with near a million men in the field, and a generous and patriotic people at his back, to enter upon a comprehensive system of combined operations. The task before him was plain. Strategetic positions now played but a secondary rôle: armies had become objectives. In the West the successor of Bragg lay, recruiting his army after its rude bout at Chattanooga, in secure camp at Dalton, on the railroad to Atlanta. His presence at that point was simply designed to cover from further incursion the broad State of Georgia, as Lee's army behind the Rapidan was planted there for the shielding of Virginia: and both of these forces had now obviously been thrown mainly on the defensive. It was the primary scope of the two great campaigns of the year to project the Union armies respectively upon the natural line of retreat chosen by their antagonists, and, in so doing, to force the latter to give decisive battle: the battle resulting in their defeat, would drive these armies from their lines of supplies, or else quite disperse them, leaving, in either event, the cities they covered to their assailants, who would thus capture Richmond in Virginia, and, in Georgia, Atlanta, the Richmond of the West.

Raised to the supreme command, Lieutenant-General Grant committed the care of the Mississippi Valley, and all the armies between the Alleghanics and the great river, to Major-General Sherman. The campaign against Lee he determined to direct personally, and in this view he established his head-quarters with the Army of the Potomac, the immediate command of which, however, continued in the hands of General Meade. The few weeks that remained until the season favorable for military operations should arrive, were filled up with manifold activities, and by the opening of May

all needed preparations had been completed. Then Grant gave the word "Forward," and the army in Virginia and the army in Tennessee, unleashed, joyfully entered upon those grand campaigns that will form the subject-matter of this and the succeeding chapter.

II.

THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.

On Tuesday, the 3d of May, 1864, knowing that the Army of the Potomac must soon move, and being desirous of chronicling a campaign to which in advance a surpassing public interest attached, I left Washington and proceeded by the Orange and Alexandria Railroad to Culpepper Courthouse. General Grant had established his head-quarters in a house in that dilapidated and war-worn old Virginia town, and in the evening I was received by him. It proved that I was just in time to witness the opening of the campaign, for orders had been issued for the army to move at midnight, and the commander was then giving the final touches to his preparations. His maps were before him, and he spoke with confidence of the future. He was to cross the Rapidan, turn the Confederate right, and then throw his army between Lee and Richmond.

Lee's army lay behind the Rapidan a stream which had never been crossed by the Union army save to be quickly recrossed. The three Confederate corps were positioned en échelon behind that river-Ewell's corps guarding its course; Hill's corps lying around Orange Courthouse, and Longstreet's corps being encamped about Gordonsville. The journals of the time amused their readers with most absurd speculations regarding Lee's lines, which were pictured as another Torres Vedras. But in reality the works on the Rapidan were of the simplest kind, and were not designed as a battle-line. Lee knew perfectly well that a direct passage of the Rapidan