The gaunt man, Abraham Lincoln, lives his days.
For a while the sky above him is very dark.
There are fifty thousand dead in these last, bleak months
And Richmond is still untaken.
                             The papers rail,
Grant is a butcher, the war will never be done.
The gaunt man’s term of office draws to an end,
His best friends muse and are doubtful.
Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body
By the beginning of August 1864 Lincoln began to suspect that he was going to lose re-election and the Union was going to lose the War. Grant, at an immense cost in blood, had pushed Lee back to Richmond and Petersburg, but both cities still were controlled by the Confederates and Lee’s army was still a force to be reckoned with. The North was still reeling from Early’s victories in the Shenandoah, his daring raid on Washington and his burning of Chambersburg on July 30. In the West the Confederate Army of Tennessee still clung to Atlanta, and the Confederacy still controlled almost all of its heartland. The War seemed to be entering a stalemate, and if it remained so until November, Lincoln would be a one term president and the Union would be permanently sundered. With that on his mind, Lincoln sent a warning telegram to Grant. Lincoln never lost his faith in Grant, but clearly he wanted Grant to understand that unless victories were forthcoming the Union was in peril. Ironically, in this telegram Lincoln approves Sheridan being place in command in the Shenandoah, and it was Sheridan’s string of victories in the fall that probably ensured Lincoln’s re-election:
Office U.S. Military Telegraph
War Department
Washington, D.C. August 3, 1864
Lieut. Genl. Grant City-Point, Va.
I have seen your despatch in which you say “I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself South of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also.” This, I think, is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may have receved [sic] from here, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here, of “putting our army South of the enemy” or of following him to the death” in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.
A. Lincoln
Columbia has her sons, given over to principlesof freedom.
“Get there firstest with the mostest.” Nathan Bedford Forrest
We haven’t had that spirit here since 1945.
It was a year-plus of butchery on both sides.
Where will you find such men in 2021? Not at any woke admiral/general factory or the politicized Pentagon.
Pershing’s command of the AEF 1917 to 1918 was similarly aggressive and successful.