Hunt down the Yankees
A reason for the South to take the offensive right away
Strike the northern armies before they can train the 600,000 new recruits
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch August 18, 1862:
The New Yankee army.
The desperate efforts of the Lincoln Government to create another invading army of colossal proportions should be met by the most prompt action of our armies now in the field. These immense levies will only be formidable if we give them time by drill and discipline to be transformed into soldiers. At present they are unaccustomed to the use of arms, and, in the field, their large numbers would only be an element of confusion and weakness. But the experience of the last year has shown that the very same materials which were dispersed like chaff before the whirlwind on the red fields of Manassas can be converted, by systematic training into fighting men of no ordinary character. Whatever we have to do in neutralizing the enemy’s advantage of fresh numbers must be done now, by instant, energetic, and decisive action. The North has everything to gain, we everything to lose by delay. We may as well assume at once that the men called for by Lincoln will be forthcoming.–Whether they will be worth anything to his cause depends upon whether we at once hunt down his armies already in the field, or permit them to become the nucleus of another and more immense aggregation of physical power.
