NY Times 4-23-1864
150 years ago this week a Northern paper expressed surprise that General Grant would focus his attention on the worn-out Virginia theater. After all, the new Commander-in-Chief of all the Union armies was from out west, where most the momentum was in 1863.
From The New-York Times April 23, 1864:
THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.; THE CAMPAIGN TOWARD RICHMOND. Grant Against Lee.
WASHINGTON, Thursday, April 21, 1864.
The outlines of the Summer campaign are assuming a form that belies all the anticipations of the military critics. Nothing has been more confidently expected than that the main opera- tions would continue on the grand strategic lines of the Southwest, where the magnificent territorial conquests of the Summer and Winter of 1863 remain to be completed and crowned by an advance from Chattanooga into the States of the Gulf. Indeed, he would have been a bold prophet who would, two months ago, have predicted that the restricted, and it was thought, exhausted, battle ground of Virginia — the Flanders of our war — would resume the old military primacy it held during the early stages of the war, and all other armies would be held in abeyance and forced to send their tributary troops to swell the Army of the Potomac, and that the conqueror of the Mississippi, now the General-in-Chief of all the armies of the union, would transfer his tent to the banks of the Rapidan.
Yet such is the simple statement of the actual situation. When NAPOLEON was carrying on simultaneous operations in Italy and Germany, the army into which he threw the reinforcement of his presence became immediately the principal army; the other and its operations became subordinate and subsidiary. So, had GRANT remained at Chattanooga, as was expected, the Summer battle-fields would have been in Tennessee; but having vaulted into Virginia, the Army of the Potomac is now the cynosure of all eyes. The present preparations give promise that a series of operations will soon be initiated, the most formidable, the most exciting and the most intense of the war — the most formidable in respect to the proportions of the contending forces, the most exciting on account of the skill of the two great players pitted against each other, and the most intense and obstinate on account of the immediate stake at issue, and the vastness of the ulterior results that must come from this colossal passage at arms.
Gen. GRANT aims to take Richmond and destroy the army of LEE, which is, and has been the head and front of all the power and prestige of the rebel cause. …
