William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[528] the invasion, it was, with the Nineteenth Corps, returned to the Shenandoah Valley. Here General Sheridan soon afterwards took command, and opened a brilliant campaign, to the details of which I shall shortly return.

In this enterprise, General Lee founded his expectations less on what might be accomplished directly by the expeditionary force, than on the effect he supposed this menace to Washington would have on the army beleaguering Petersburg. He reasoned that as General Grant was a man who believed in overwhelming numbers, he would find himself, after the detachment of a sufficient force to meet the column of invasion, so reduced in strength that he would remove his remaining corps altogether from Petersburg.¹ The siege would thus be raised and Richmond relieved.

But Lee's reasoning was falsified by the fact. The opportune arrival of the Nineteenth Corps from New Orleans enabled Grant to provide a sufficient force to meet Early by the detachment of a single corps, the loss of which had no sensible influence on operations against Petersburg. There is little doubt that at an earlier period of the war the result would have been very different and would have fully met Lee's expectations. As it was, it required all General Grant's moral firmness to withstand the severe pressure brought upon him by the Administration to remove his army from the James River to the front of Washington. The persistency which has been often pointed out as that commander's distinguishing trait was never so happily illustrated.

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