The fallacy in all this lay in its failure to recognise Grant’s quality, in its assumption that he was another McClellan, another Pope, another Burnside, another Hooker. Between him and his predecessors there was this fundamental difference: they set out to force their way to Richmond by strategy and fighting, and when they found themselves outmanœuvred and badly damaged in battle, they gave up their aggressive attempts and contented themselves with operations for the defence of the Federal capital; Grant had set out to conquer or destroy Lee’s army by the use of a vastly superior force whose losses could be instantly made good by reinforcements, while Lee had nowhere any source from which to draw fresh troops, and when Grant found his first attempt baffled and his columns badly damaged in fight, he obstinately remained where he was, sent for reinforcements, and made his preparations to “fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Thus, in Grant’s character and temperament the Confederates had a totally new condition to meet. And there was another supremely important fact governing this campaign. Grant was the first commander of the Army of the Potomac who also and at the same time controlled all the other Federal armies in the field. These he directed with sole reference to his one supreme strategic purpose—the purpose, namely, of destroying the Army of Northern Virginia and making an end of the tremendous resisting power of Robert E. Lee. In that resisting power he, first of all men, saw clearly that the vitality of the Confederate cause had its being. In order that he might destroy that, he had not only concentrated a mightily superior force against it, and arranged to keep the strength of his own army up to its maximum by heavy reinforcement after every battle loss, but he had also ordered all the Federal armies in other parts of the country to carry on such operations as should continually occupy every Confederate force and forbid Lee to reinforce the Virginia army from any quarter as its numbers should decline by reason of battle losses. Grant directed Sherman to begin the Atlanta campaign simultaneously with the beginning of the year’s work on the Rapidan. He ordered Thomas to hold East Tennessee, and to operate in such fashion as to occupy all the Confederate forces there. He ordered the Federal armies west of the Mississippi to abandon their wasteful operations in that quarter, concentrate in New Orleans, and move at once upon Mobile, in order to prevent Lee from drawing troops from the Far South. He filled the valley of Virginia with forces sufficient to compel Lee to keep a strong army corps there, instead of calling it to his assistance in Northern Virginia. He sent Butler to the James River region below Richmond, by way of compelling Lee to keep strong detachments at Richmond and Petersburg, which otherwise he might have called to his assistance in the crucial struggle with the Army of the Potomac.