William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

Now, it is an interesting fact that, at the time the problem of the Virginia campaign first came before the mind of General Grant in a definitive shape (which was shortly before he came East, and while he was still a major-general), he was so strongly impressed with the weight of the considerations adverse to the adoption of the overland route, that he committed himself to a very decided expression of opinion against it, and, in an official communication addressed to Washington, urged a coast movement south of the James River. General Grant argued that, as there was at hand a sufficiency of troops to form two armies equal each in strength to the single force of Lee, Washington, that vexatious element, should be eliminated from the problem, by assigning to it a defending army capable of making it quite secure; and that the other army, formed into a powerful column of active operations, should be transferred to a point on the seaboard, there to act against the communications of Richmond.

Without seeking to draw any inference favorable to this plan from the experience of the other plan of campaign actually adopted by the lieutenant-general, there are sufficient reasons to authorize the assertion that it was of the two much the preferable method. In a country so favorable to defensive warfare as is Virginia, the true theory of action for the party upon whom is placed the burden of the offensive, is, while acting on the aggressive strategically, to seek to secure the advantage of a tactical defensive—that is, to so threaten the vital lines of the enemy as to compel him to fight for their tenure or recovery. As regards Richmond, an operation from the coast by the James or south of it, is the only method in which the army can be speedily, effectively, and without loss, applied in the realization of this principle. This fact is sufficient to determine its immense advantage over the overland movement.

By what inspiration of his own, or by what influence of others, it was that General Grant renounced a plan of campaign thus recommended by soundest military reasoning, and which, while he was yet at the West, he had himself strongly