General James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox

Passing through Richmond, I called to report to Secretary of War Seddon, who referred to affairs in Mississippi, stating that the department was trying to collect an army at Jackson, under General Joseph E. Johnston, sufficient to push Grant away from his circling lines about Vicksburg. He spoke of the difficulty of feeding as well as collecting an army of that magnitude in Mississippi, and asked my views.

The Union army under General Rosecrans was then facing the Confederate army under General Bragg in Tennessee, at Murfreesboroa and Shelbyville.

I thought that General Grant had better facilities for collecting supplies and reinforcements on his new lines, and suggested that the only prospect of relieving Vicksburg that occurred to me was to send General Johnston and his troops about Jackson to reinforce General Bragg's army; at the same time the two divisions of my command, then marching to join General Lee, to the same point; that the commands moving on converging lines could have rapid transit and be thrown in overwhelming numbers on Rosecrans before he could have help, break up his army, and march for Cincinnati and the Ohio River; that Grant's was the only army that could be drawn to meet this move, and that the move must, therefore, relieve Vicksburg.

It was manifest before the war was accepted that the only way to equalize the contest was by skilful use of our interior lines, and this was so impressed by two years experience that it seemed time to force it upon the Richmond authorities. But foreign intervention was the ruling idea with the President, and he preferred that as the easiest solution of all problems.

The only objection offered by the Secretary was that