William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[405] had ever had in the field. Their intrinsic weakness lay in the fact that those reservoirs of strength from which armies must constantly draw to repair the never-ceasing waste of war were well-nigh exhausted; that the sustaining power of the rebellion—to wit, the moral energy of the people—had so declined, that what remained of arms-bearing population in the South evaded rather than courted service in the field. Still, the existing armies presented a formidable and unabashed front, and by skilful conduct they might yet hope to do much.

The immediate command of all the armies west of the Alleghany mountains, and east of the Mississippi River, was committed to Major-General W. T. Sherman, who was intrusted with the duty of acting against Johnston's force by a campaign having as its objective point Atlanta, the great railroad centre of the middle zone. The lieutenant-general then established his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, from where he designed to exercise general supervision of the movements of all the armies.

This act was of itself a recognition of that primacy of interest and importance which belonged to that army, but which appeared, for a time, to have passed from it to its more fortunate rival in the western theatre of operations. General Grant saw that the task assigned the Army of the Potomac was no less momentous now than ever; for it still confronted, in Virginia, the foremost army of the Confederacy, under the Confederacy's foremost military leader. After three years of colossal combat, that army, the head and front of all the hostile offending, still continued to cover Richmond—a point which had been the first objective of the army's efforts, and which, though originally of no marked military importance, had come to acquire the kind of value that attaches to a national capital. Bearing on its bayonets the fate of the Confederacy, the Army of Northern Virginia stood erect and defiant, defending Richmond—threatening Washington. No man but knew that so long as it held the field, the rebellion had lease of life.

It was the destruction of this force that General Grant now