y on the defensive.

The appointment of General Grant to the command of all the armies was
not only the beginning of a new _regime_, but the adoption of a new
idea,--that Lee's army was the objective point, rather than the city of
Richmond.

"The power of the Rebellion lies in the Rebel army," said General Grant
to the writer one evening in June last. We had been conversing upon Fort
Donelson and Pittsburg Landing. One by one his staff officers dropped
off to their own tents, and we were alone. It was a quiet, starlit
night. The Lieutenant-General was enjoying his fragrant Havana cigar,
and was in a mood for conversation, not upon what he was going to do,
but upon what had been done. He is always wisely reticent upon the
present and future, but agreeably communicative upon what has passed
into history.

"I have lost a good many men since the army left the Rapidan, but there
was no help for it. The Rebel army must be destroyed before we can put
down the Rebellion," he continued.[I]

There was a disposition at that time on the part of the disloyal press
of the North to bring General Grant into bad odor. He was called "The
Butcher." Even some Republican Congressmen were ready to demand his
removal. General Grant alluded to it and said,--

"God knows I don't want to see men slaughtered; but we have appealed to
arms, and we have got to fight it out."

He had already given public utterance to the expression,--"I intend to
fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer."

Referring to the successive flank movements which had been made, from
the Rapidan to the Wilderness, to Spottsylvania, to the North Anna, to
the Chickahominy, to Petersburg, he said,--

"My object has been to get between Lee and his southern communications."

At that time the Weldon Road was in the hands of the enemy, and Early
was on a march down the Valley, towards Washington. This movement was
designed to frighten Grant and send him back by steamboat to defend the
capital; but the Sixth Corps only was sent, while the troops remaining
still kept pressing on in a series of flank movements, which resulted in
the seizure of the Weldon Road. That was the most damaging blow which
Lee had received. He made desperate efforts to recover what had been
lost, but in vain. It was the beginning of the end. Then the public
generally could see the meaning of General Grant's strategy,--that the
Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and all the terrible battles which had