...ntirely defensive policy would have exposed us to a certain, though slow process of exhaustion. We would have had not only to defend our northern frontier, on a line from the Chesapeake bay, up the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, across the Upper Valley of the Shenandoah, and through Western Virginia, Middle Tennessee, and Northern Alabama and Mississippi, but also the entire coasts of Chesapeake bay and t...