ler and more compact, their generals were better
chosen and better supported. Operating generally on the defensive and
fighting behind breastworks whenever it was possible, it was all the
more necessary to bring overwhelming forces to bear against them, in
order to ensure their final overthrow. In addition to the defective
organization and inefficient staff arrangements which have been
mentioned, neither the Union government nor the Union generals ever
made provisions, or seemed to understand the necessity, for a
sufficient preponderance of force, to neutralize the advantages which
the Confederate armies enjoyed, when fighting on the defensive, or to
render victory over them reasonably certain.

Looking back over the long series of partial victories, vexatious
delays and humiliating failures, and considering the inadequate
organization and defective staff arrangements for which Grant was
mainly responsible, it is evident that the terrible losses in the Union
army in the overland campaign were due quite as frequently to the
latter causes as to incompetency or lack of vigor on the part of the
subordinate commanders. The blind grapplings in the forests of the
Wilderness could not be helped, when both armies were marching through
it, for they could not see each other through the tangled underbrush
till they were almost face to face, but it is now certain that if the
marches of the Union army corps had been properly timed and properly
conducted, they could have reached the open country before the
Confederate corps could have engaged them. But when the senseless
assaults of fortified positions, which occurred in endless succession,
from Spottsylvania Court House to Petersburg are considered, it will be
impossible to find sufficient excuse for them. They were in nearly
every case the direct result of defective staff arrangements and the
lack of proper prevision. In a few instances they were due to positive
incompetency on the part of subordinate commanders, while on several
notable occasions there was a woeful lack of responsible oversight and
supervision on the part of those whose duty it should have been to
exercise both. Before the campaign was half over it had come to be an
axiom among both officers and men that a well-defended rifle trench
could not be carried by a direct attack without the most careful
preparation nor even then without fearful loss. Such undertakings were
far too costly, and far too frequently ended in f