William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[568] was necessary for him to constantly refuse his left and manoeuvre by his right. But this was to uncover the path by which Sherman might advance to unite with Grant. As this result, however, could not long be prevented, Johnston chose the former course and fell back in the direction of Raleigh, which was a judicious measure, since a junction of the two Confederate armies was now the governing desideratum. Pressing forward his advance, Sherman, the 23d of March, reached Goldsborough, North Carolina, where he united with the Federal columns that had moved out from Newbern and Wilmington. His course to Petersburg was then clear—the distance a hundred and fifty miles in a northerly direction. No immediate start, however, was made from Goldsborough, as well for the reason that his army had to be refitted as that General Grant feared if Sherman should then move any further on his way, Lee would abandon Petersburg and Richmond. This, as I have already intimated, was the thing now least desired, for the conditions were not such as to permit of an effective pursuit, and Grant, like Phocion, desired to have an army fitted for a long race—a race, the goal of which was the destruction of his adversary.

While from the direction of the south Sherman thus drew from the mountains to the sea a wall of bayonets that imprisoned the enemy between himself and the Army of the Potomac, Grant directed Sheridan to make a new raid, with a view to severing all the remaining communications of the Confederates—a necessary step in that plan of encircling and enclosing Lee which the lieutenant-general had devised as the preliminary to his premeditated blow.

Moving from Winchester the 27th of February, Sheridan galloped up the Valley of Virginia. With his superb column of ten thousand sabres, he little recked of any enemy he was likely to encounter. Early, indeed, still hovered about the Valley that had been so fatal to him; but what of force remained with him was but the shreds and patches of an army, numbering, perhaps, twenty-five hundred men. Foiling by his