Pemberton knew the ground—the scene of the campaign. Its every natural adaptation of advantage or defense was to him as a thing ingrained in his consciousness and every denizen of the country about him was the friend of his army and his cause. Grant was in a strange land, without accurate knowledge of its topography or of its natural difficulties of approach or opportunities of defense, and concerning which such knowledge could be acquired only by the exercise of infinite patience, by unremitting toil, and constant investigation. Its inhabitants looked upon him as an invader come to despoil their country—to lay waste their homes. Among them all, his army had no friend, his cause no advocate. But, while position and natural advantage was with Pemberton, the ability to command armies, the genius of concentration, to decide quickly and accurately, to design with daring boldness and to execute with celerity and rapidity; the tenacity of purpose that, come what will, can not be bent or turned aside, and the grim determination that rises in some men—God’s chosen few—supreme above every let or hindrance—were with Grant. And it was this ability to command, more than all other things, that finally enabled him to wrest the great prize from the hands of Pemberton and the Confederacy, and give it into the keeping of the Union. The campaign was Grant’s—his alone—in conception and in execution, from the beginning to the end. Its details his government did not know. For a time even its immediate object was unknown in Washington. Its design was without successful military precedent. His most trusted general was opposed to it. But Grant saw and understood. The day he crossed his army at Bruinsburg he was “born again.” He caught a vision that inspired him. He was transformed. There came to him a confidence that thenceforth was never shaken—a faith in which there was no flaw. Less than two years before he had doubtfully asked himself whether he could hope ever to command a division, and if so, whether he could command it successfully. Now he knew he could command an army; that he could plan campaigns, and that he could execute them with high skill and matchless vigor. He had found himself.