Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

The Union chief had, however, many excellent qualities for a soldier. He was taciturn, sturdy, plucky, not afraid of public responsibility or affected by public opinion. There was no ostentation in his position, and to an outsider he was not as showy as a corporal of the guard. Meade had a Solferino flag with a golden eagle in a silver wreath for his headquarters. When General Grant first saw it unfurled, as they broke camp for the Wilderness campaign, he is reported to have exclaimed, “What's this? Is imperial Caesar anywhere about here?”

Lee, who had campaigned against McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade, had now to measure swords with Grant. Sheridan, too, made his first bow in Virginia at this time. He had served with distinction under Halleck in the West, and when Grant asked for the best officer that could be found to be his chief of cavalry, Halleck suggested Sheridan, and his suggestion was instantly adopted. This officer graduated in 1853 at West Point, was a classmate of McPherson, Schofield, and Hood, had served in the Fourth Infantry-Grant's old regiment-and was thirty years of age when he first drew his sabre in Virginia in 1864.

The Federal Government laid at the feet of Grant its unbounded treasures. His Virginia army was increased to one hundred and eighteen thousand men of all arms and three hundred and eighteen cannon, as some authorities have it; but the report of the Union Secretary of War to the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress gave one hundred and forty-nine thousand one hundred and sixty men. Some idea of its vast proportions may be had by the statement that one hundred and eighteen thousand men, disposed for battle two ranks deep, would cover a front of thirty miles, while sixty-two thousand men, similarly disposed, would cover only sixteen miles. Grant says, in his Memoirs, his wagon train would have reached on a single road from the Rapidan to Richmond, sixty-five miles. To meet this grand “On to Richmond!” Lee had sixty-two thousand men and two hundred and twenty-four field guns.