during the second half of 1863, especially at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, "conscription and volunteering had brought enough new men into the armies almost to make up the losses sustained in the summer and fall campaigning." Southern morale had definitely suffered during the second half of 1863, but, at this point, the decline did not appear to be a decisive factor. Finally, during the remaining year and a half of the war, the Confederate "economy became more self-sufficient, and the administration of government became more centralized and uniform." In short, clearly, the South "had retained the capability to not only preserve its own existence, but in doing so to threaten its adversary's determination to continue to struggle." Thus far, the Union armies had achieved only "limited successes.'

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Moreover, the Union armies had initially been successful in penetrating deeply into Southern territory when they had been able to utilize strategically positioned rivers as lines of communications. Their problems dramatically intensified, however, when the river lines of communications ceased to be available and the Union armies were forced to rely upon rail communications. As the Federal armies were compelled to increasingly depend upon these fragile rail lines, the Confederates resorted more and more to raiding the Union rear in order to disrupt the Union advance. The first of these raids had been applied to General Buell's advance on Chattanooga during the summer of 1862, following the Union capture of Corinth, Mississippi. Later in 1862, advances by Generals Rosecrans and Grant had been halted by extensive and systematic use of Confederate cavalry raids against Union rail lines of communications. Indeed, "it had taken about a year and a half to advance the one hundred airline miles from Nashville to Chattanooga and another half year to consolidate the gain." Certainly, this experience did not offer great hope to those Union generals forced to rely upon rail lines to support the conquest of the remainder of the South. Indeed, the most successful western theater commander, General Grant, became convinced that there existed "almost insuperable obstacles to supplying the Union armies over great distances by railroad." The enemy had shown that he could destroy the railroad as he retreated, forcing the Union armies to rebuild the rail

lines as they slowly followed. Of course, the Confederates could still utilize their own interior rail lines of communications to shift troops to threatened theaters, thereby forcing the Union commanders to constantly guard against a sudden Confederate troop concentration and counter-offensive. Furthermore, the Confederate cavalry and guerrilla raiders could cut the rail lines behind the advancing Federals as soon as the latter reconstructed them, thereby forcing them to detach large bodies of troops to protect the railroads linking the army with its source of supply. The same problems were encountered in defending territory already occupied against Southern raiders, thereby forcing the detachment of more troops from the field armies. Already, the Union army "employed a third of its soldiers garrisoning territory and guarding communications." These considerations, combined, eventually stalled the Union advance. Moreover, the problem would be increasingly exacerbated with the capture and occupation of additional territory and the lengthening of communication lines, especially now that water lines of communications were no longer available and only rail lines provided avenues for deeper penetrations into the Deep South. In short, it appeared that Southern raiding forces "were too formidable" and the logistical problems which had earlier immobilized Generals Buell, Grant, and Rosecrans raised serious questions concerning the ability of the Union armies to conquer a region as vast as the Confederacy. Thus, if, as many feared, the Union armies could not annihilate the Southern armies on the battlefield, capture them, as at Fort Donelson or at Vicksburg, or seize and permanently occupy the territory upon which they depended to sustain themselves, how was the Confederacy to be defeated and the rebellion crushed? This was the dilemma which confronted both the Federal high command and the theater commanders in the winter of 1863-1864.36

CHAPTER VI

Winter 1864-Summer 1864

Ulysses S. Grant, the officer who had already emerged as the hero of the war in the western theater, would now emerge as the architect of the new strategy which would break the military stalemate between the United and Confederate States. During the winter of 1864, Congress revived the rank of Lieutenant General, previously held permanently only by George Washington and by brevet by Winfield Scott. In early March, 1864, General Grant was promoted to the revived rank on a permanent basis. Consequently, as the United States Army's ranking officer, General Grant became the new General-in-Chief, while the former General-in-Chief, Henry Halleck, was appointed to the newly created subordinate post of Chief of Staff. Major General William T. Sherman succeeded General Grant in command of the Union armies in the west. Already, for over a year and a half, however, General Grant and his close colleague, General Sherman, had reflected upon the problems of vulnerability of overland lines of communications and occupied territory to enemy raids. Consequently, by the time of his promotion, General Grant's ideas regarding a new strategic approach had matured.'

General Grant concluded that the primary goal of Union military operations should be the destruction of the Confederacy's principal field armies: General Lee's army, located in northern Virginia, and the Southern forces situated in northern Georgia. The General was, however, realistic about the improbability of annihilating these enemy armies in a single battle. As such, General Grant agreed with his predecessors that the most promising way to end the rebellion was to deprive the Confederacy of the resources necessary to sustain its field armies. Hence, Grant retained the naval blockade component of the earlier Union strategies which had consistently sought to isolate the South from overseas maritime commerce. In addition, the Union forces would continue to occupy the entire Mississippi Valley, thus

severing one segment of the Confederacy's internal communications network and, thereby, contributing to the further isolation of the South. The maritime and continental isolation of the Confederacy was, in turn, still designed to compel the South to rely upon and eventually exhaust its domestic war-making resources. It will be recalled that, when General Scott had originally suggested his plan in 1861, he had intended that this should be the exclusive element of Federal war strategy and, upon the establishment of the maritime and continental blockade, the Union forces should wait for it to strangle the rebellion. It had been President Lincoln and General Scott's successor, General McClellan, who had decided to expand the continental component of Federal war strategy to include the seizure and permanent occupation of a number of significant locations throughout the South. Like General Scott, the President and General McClellan had believed that, when enough military pressure was applied, pro-Union moderates in the South would displace the secessionists and return the South to the Union. It will be further recalled that, by late 1862, Mr. Lincoln and General McClellan's successor as General-in-Chief, General Halleck, agreed to escalate the limited military strategy heretofore pursued, which had, in turn, been predicated upon the existence of powerful pro-Union elements in the South. Recognizing that the Union Party in the South was powerless against the secessionists, the Federal high command opted to progressively conquer the entire South, thereby, gradually weakening and, eventually, eliminating the South's capacity to resist Washington's will and compelling the Southerners to sue for peace. This national military strategy, in turn, had been combined with the subsequent formal announcement of lenient peace terms, designed, in turn, to induce the Southerners to abandon their struggle for independence and rejoin the Union. The new General-in-Chief, General Grant, remained committed to defending that portion of the South which had already been occupied during the first three years of the war. In accord with the assumptions underpinning his predecessor's strategy, this would continue to permit the Union forces to utilize the resources of these captured areas, while, simultaneously, denying those resources to the enemy. But beyond main