Now that he had come into supreme command it was his first thought so to organize and coördinate all the operations of all the armies as to make them tend to the accomplishment of one supreme purpose--namely, the breaking and crushing of the Confederate power of resistance. As that power of resistance was centered chiefly in the Army of Northern Virginia, and in the genius of Robert E. Lee, Grant's grand combinations were all directed toward the destruction of that army, and the baffling of that genius. As has been said already Grant was preëminently a man of practical common sense, and to his mind military problems were like any others that present themselves to the human mind--that is to say, they were problems, to be solved by the use of the means at command in the most effective way that could be thought of. War was to him like any other business. He knew that the administration had at its command, in men, money and materials, resources immeasurably superior to those which the South could control. It was his purpose to avail himself of that superiority in every way possible. In all that involved considerations of humanity or courtesy he had the delicate sentiments of a tender-hearted and generous man. But in the conduct of war he did not permit sentiment for one moment to interfere with common sense. The strategy with which he undertook to fight the war out to a finish was simple. His "objective" was always the army opposed to him, and not merely a geographical position. In all his orders to all his lieutenants he emphasized this incessantly. In order to end the war he must crush the Confederate armies, and to that effect he instructed Sherman and every other commander under his orders. Grant established his headquarters in Virginia in order that he might give personal direction to the operations of the Army of the Potomac. He did this with a most delicate consideration for Meade, who had direct command of the Army of the Potomac, and whose devotion and capacity he trusted implicitly, as he has himself testified in his memoirs. It was his simple plan of campaign first to prevent Lee's reinforcement from any quarter, and secondly to hurl all the force he could concentrate against the Army of Northern Virginia for the purpose of destroying the resisting power of that army. In his judgment it was more important to cripple Lee than to capture Richmond. And in his judgment, also, to cripple Lee was to make the capture of Richmond easy and certain. In order that Lee might not be reinforced, Grant began by issuing orders for vigorous operations in every other part of the Confederacy. He ordered Banks to withdraw from his wasteful cotton-seeking expedition up the Red river, to return to New Orleans, and to move thence against Mobile. He ordered Sherman to press back the Confederates in northern Georgia toward Atlanta, directing him to seize that town, and push on to the Gulf, thus again cutting in twain what remained of the Confederacy.