GRANT'S HEADQUARTERS,
City Point, July 19,
1864 – 10 a. m.
(Received
8.30 p. m.)
His Excellency A. LINCOLN,
President of the United States:
In my opinion there ought to be an immediate call for, say,
300,000 men to be put in the field in the shortest possible time. The presence
of this number of re-enforcements would save the annoyance of raids, and would
enable us to drive the enemy from his present front, particularly from
Richmond, without attacking fortifications. The enemy now have their last men
in the field. Every depletion of their army is an irreparable loss. Desertions
from it are now rapid. With the prospect of large additions to our force these
desertions would increase. The greater number of men we have the shorter and
less sanguinary will be the war. I give this entirely as my views and not in
any spirit of dictation, always holding myself in readiness to use the material
given me to the best advantage I know how.
U. S. GRANT,
Lieutenant-General.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
XXXVII, Part II (Serial No. 71), page 384.
A slightly different formatted copy of this letter also appears in James
Grant Wilson’s General Grant’s Letters to a Friend 1861-1880, p. 36; James H. Wilson, The Life of John A. Rawlins, p. 434-5
No comments:
Post a Comment