Herald on the (Broadway) warpath
Lee’s army should be demolished by then.
The following is said to be an editorial published in the New York Herald apparently sometime around the First of August. It shows the importance of the Virginia theater in the northern public’s view of the war, the overestimate of the rebel army strength, and presumably an overly optimistic view of the time necessary to minimally train new recruits. And the Herald doesn’t even mind that President Lincoln has dictatorial powers as long as Lee’s army gets crushed and the Union gets restored. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch August 23, 1862:
The Herald on the “Fresh Start.”
[From the New York Herald.]
President Lincoln has the confidence of the country. No man doubts his honesty or his patriotism. Down to the recent seven days bloody battles near Richmond he may, perhaps, have shared with the whole people of the North the belief that this war in a week or two would be substantially ended; but those memorable seven days have convinced him, as they have convinced the North and all our loyal States, that we had vastly underrated the numbers of the rebel army and exaggerated our own. But if, in anticipation of a crowning victory at Richmond, the energies and vigilance of the Administration in regard to our army were slackened, the severe disappointment which followed has brought its compensating reaction. It has taught us — Government and people — that while our war like means, resources, and facilities are absolutely overwhelming, they go for nothing unless we bring them to bear in superior strength against the active forces of this rebellion.
‘our modest and unpretending President’ (early 1861 image)
Here, then, government and people, we take a new departure, and enter upon a new campaign equal to the full measure of the great work before us. The whole strength of the rebellion is now staked upon its great army in Virginia. We have only to demolish that army in order to end the war. Granted that it is an army of three hundred thousand men; we see no reason why it should be permitted to hold Virginia beyond the 1st of October.President Lincoln has the power and the means to put to flight and disperse this defiant rebel army within the next sixty days. Congress has invested him with absolute authority over the men, money, means, and facilities of the nation of every kind for a brief and overwhelming campaign. At this moment no monarch in Christendom, not even the Emperor of Russia, possesses a more ample range of authority than our modest and unpretending President. This authority has been bestowed upon him to save the life and restore the health and integrity of the nation. With the free and full consent of our twenty-three millions of loyal people, Congress has given to President Lincoln these powers, means, and responsibilities of a temporary dictator; and our loyal people look to him with confidence for the most beneficent results to the country and to mankind in the speedy restoration of the Union.
The new campaign opens with every promise of success. The Government appears at length to be fully impressed with the pervading spirit of our loyal States; and our worthy President, fully realizing the dangers and demands of the crisis, and the means and great advantages within his grasp, is proceeding to business in the most satisfactory way. The great issue in his hands is the life or death of the nation and its popular institutions; and the reward that invites him on in his path of duty is a place in the affections of mankind second only to that of Washington.
You can read about the political cartoon at the Library of Congress.
One of the great things about Civil War Daily Gazette is its maps. You can get a much more accurate estimate of Lee’s numbers and the location of his army 150 years ago today there.
You can read about the following map at Wikimedia Commons.
Old Dominion just one of 34 United States, albeit one with a large rebel army that needs to be crushed.
