It is interesting, as the War progressed, to trace the development of Lincoln's own military judgment. He was always modest in regard to matters in which his experience was limited, and during the first twelve months in Washington, he had comparatively little to say in regard to the planning or even the supervision of campaigns. His letters, however, to McClellan and his later correspondence with Burnside, with Hooker, and with other commanders give evidence of a steadily developing intelligence in regard to larger military movements. History has shown that Lincoln's judgment in regard to the essential purpose of a campaign, and the best methods for carrying out such purpose, was in a large number of cases decidedly sounder than that of the general in the field. When he emphasised with McClellan that the true objective was the Confederate army in the field and not the city of Richmond, he laid down a principle which seems to us elementary but to which McClellan had been persistently blinded. Lincoln writes to Hooker: "We have word that the head of Lee's army is near Martinsburg in the Shenandoah Valley while you report that you have a substantial force still opposed to you on the Rappahannock. It appears, therefore that the line must be forty miles long. The animal is evidently very slim somewhere and it ought to be possible for you to cut it at some point." Hooker had the same information but did not draw the same inference. Apart from Lincoln's work in selecting, and in large measure in directing, the generals, he had a further important relation with the army as a whole. We are familiar with the term "the man behind the gun." It is a truism to say that the gun has little value whether for offence or for defence unless the man behind it possesses the right kind of spirit which will infuse and guide his purpose and his action with the gun. For the long years of the War, the Commander-in-chief was the man behind all the guns in the field. The men in the front came to have a realising sense of the infinite patience, the persistent hopefulness, the steadiness of spirit, the devoted watchfulness of the great captain in Washington. It was through the spirit of Lincoln that the spirit in the ranks was preserved during the long months of discouragement and the many defeats and retreats. The final advance of Grant which ended at Appomattox, and the triumphant march of Sherman which culminated in the surrender at Goldsborough of the last of the armies of the Confederacy, were the results of the inspiration, given alike to soldier and to general, from the patient and devoted soul of the nation's leader.