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General-in-Chief, "Now, if General Meade can complete his work, so gloriously prosecuted thus far, by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee's army, the rebellion will be over.' Meanwhile, on July 6-7, Lee's defeated army arrived at Williamsport, Maryland, on the north bank of the swollen Potomac River. Lacking bridges, the Confederates had no choice but to entrench themselves with their backs to the river as they hastily attempted to improvise a bridge over which to cross to safety. Meanwhile, both the President and the General-in-Chief urged General Meade to follow up the victory at Gettysburg and destroy the retreating Confederate army. With General Lee's army at Williamsport and no route of escape immediately available, Mr. Lincoln felt that the destruction of the Confederate army was virtually certain. On July 12, the Army of the Potomac cautiously approached Lee's position. As Kenneth Williams observed,

... Meade could have held a strong defensive position with a part of his command, while he crossed sufficient force over the Potomac― keeping the two parts within supporting distance—to seize the south bank of the river and make bridging impossible for Lee. Such a maneuver seems to turn on the location of Meade's pontoons. After the army had crossed into Maryland in June the bridges were dismantled and shipped to Washington for safe keeping. On July 5, forseeing their use in the pursuit of Lee, Meade wisely telegraphed General Benham, "Put your bridge trains and troops in motion at once for Harper's Ferry." Four days later Benham, at his ordered destination after overcoming many difficulties, reported, "The two bridges are in the canal, and ready to be towed anywhere they may be needed up the river." Thus Meade had the ability to move a part of his army over the river. What an aggressive commander could have accomplished by throwing part of his superior force to the other side of the Potomac can be imagined.62 But, unfortunately for the Union cause, General Meade, having only a little over a week earlier witnessed the futility of frontally assaulting an enemy in a prepared position, concluded that General Lee's position was too strong to be attacked. Thus, on the night of July 13-14, Lee's army escaped over the river and began the trek up the Shenandoah Valley. Meade crossed the Potomac on July 17 and by July 22, his main body was just east of the Manassas Gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even after Lee crossed the Potomac to Virginia, General Halleck told the

Commander of the Army of the Potomac, "to pursue and lacerate the Army of Northern Virginia (Lee's force), keeping between the enemy and Washington and living off the country." General Meade did send a portion of his army through the gap in an effort to hit Lee's flank as his force passed west of the Blue Ridge, but again Lee managed to slip away. By late July, 1863, the Confederates had crossed the mountains farther to the south and had taken up a position around Culpepper, Virginia. Meanwhile, the Army of the Potomac took up a position a few miles to the northeast on the north side of the Rappahannock River. The two armies would remain in these positions for about a month and a half.63

Assessing the results of the Gettysburg Campaign, the President was extremely critical of General Meade's handling of operations following his battlefield victory in Pennsylvania. Immediately following the Battle of Gettysburg, the President had observed that General Meade's activities appeared "to be connected with a purpose to cover Baltimore and Washington, and to get the enemy across the river again without a further collision, and they do not appear connected with a purpose to prevent his crossing and to destroy him.' " On July 14, upon learning that the Confederates had successfully escaped across the Potomac to Virginia, Mr. Lincoln disgustedly observed, "We had them within our grasp. We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours. And nothing I could say or do could make the army move.'" Indeed, President Lincoln felt that in missing "the best opportunity we have had since the war began,' " General Meade failed to ""appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape ... the war will be prolonged indefinitely,'" Possibly, however, in his zeal to capitalize upon the strategic possibilities opened by Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, the President was too optimistic concerning the Union ability to overcome the tactical realities obstructing prospects for the annihilation of General Lee's army by the Army of the Potomac at Williamsport. Conversely, General Meade seemed to see only these tactical realities and ignored both inviting tactical and strategic possibilities beckoning an aggressive effort to destroy Lee while he was caught in an extremely disadvantageous position.64

Although the President was visibly and understandably disappointed with the outcome of the Gettysburg Campaign, on balance, the high command's strategy emphasizing the conquest of territory in the region west of the Appalachians, especially the Mississippi Valley, while, simultaneously, reducing the importance of the Virginia theater and awaiting a mistake by Lee, had yielded large dividends. During the last days of June and the first week of July, the Confederates had been maneuvered out of most of middle Tennessee and now held only Chattanooga and the eastern portion of the state. Simultaneously, the North celebrated the fourth of July, 1863 with the surrender of Vicksburg and one of the Confederacy's principal field armies. This success was immediately followed by the surrender of Port Hudson, Louisiana, thus completing the Union occupation of the entire Mississippi Valley. Finally, in the east, Lee had committed the type of operational and tactical mistakes in launching and conducting the Gettysburg Campaign which the high command had hoped for. Operationally, Lee had erred by launching his preemptive invasion of the North based, in part, upon the mistaken assumption that the Army of the Potomac would again, soon move south of the Rappahannock River. Tactically, at Gettysburg, on July 3, Lee had frontally thrown a significant portion of his army against the Union center with predictably disastrous results. As news of the Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and in middle Tennessee successively broke, the morale of the Northern people soared, while that of the Southerners plummeted dramatically. Yet, notwithstanding these great victories, the North still had many months of bloody sacrifice remaining before the Southerners would abandon their quest for independence and the victories of July, 1863 would be complete.65

CHAPTER V

Summer 1863-Winter 1864

By midsummer, 1863, in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation and against the background of vigorous Federal efforts to recruit blacks into the Union Army, Northern newspaper editors and politicians increasingly focused upon the issue of reconstruction. Conservative opinion "denied the right of any state to leave the Union." Accordingly, just as “no state can commit treason . . . and no state can give its citizens authority to commit treason," the present conflict was viewed by Conservatives as a "struggle not to reduce the states to submission, but to compel the obedience of rebellious individuals." Meanwhile, notwithstanding the fact that the rebels were acting on behalf of the states and that citizens loyal to the United States had been displaced, the states themselves remained full members of the Union. They still possessed "full rights as states" and, upon their liberation, they should not be looked at or "governed as territories." Rather, upon liberation, the people of the states "should of their own motion proceed to reorganize the state government on the basis of the state constitution which existed prior to the outbreak of the war." Moreover, as one Conservative politician put it, “multitudes of magistrates, state and Federal functionaries, are ready to resume their functions the moment the rebel military duress is removed.' Conversely, Radical opinion, in the words of one Radical newspaper, held that,

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the revolt of a State against the authority of the general government destroys its political rights under the Constitution, and reduces its territory to the condition of the unorganized public domain. It forfeits all its rights. . . . There is no longer a State of South Carolina, a State of Georgia, etc. The territories and their inhabitants still exist, and the general government has lost none of its rights of superior jurisdiction over them. . . . It is equally clear that the seceded States can never come back into the Union until they have been reorganized and reofficered in all their departments. Every vestige of their treason must be repudiated . Having framed Constitutions, it will be competent for

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