It was the only policy which promised to result in Federal success.  Pitched battles had been tried for nearly three years, and in victory or in defeat the Southern army seemed equally unshaken and dangerous.  This fact was now felt and acknowledged even by its enemies.  “Lee’s army,” said a Northern writer, referring to it at this time, “is an army of veterans:  it is an instrument sharpened to a perfect edge.  You turn its flanks—­well, its flanks are made to be turned.  This effects little or nothing.  All that we reckon as gained, therefore, is the loss of life inflicted on the enemy.”  With an army thus trained in many combats, and hardened against misfortune, defeat in one or a dozen battles decided nothing.  General Grant seems to have understood this, and to have resolutely adopted the programme of “attrition”—­coldly estimating that, even if he lost ten men to General Lee’s one, he could better endure that loss, and could afford it, if thereby he “crushed the rebellion.”

The military theory of the Federal commander having thus been set forth in his own words, it remains to notice his programme for the approaching campaign.  He had hesitated between two plans—­“one to cross the Rapidan below Lee, moving by his right flank; the other above, moving by his left.”  The last was abandoned, from the difficulty of keeping open communication with any base of supplies, and the latter adopted.  General Grant determined to “fight Lee between Culpepper and Richmond, if he would stand;” to advance straight upon the city and invest it from the north and west, thereby cutting its communications in three directions; and then, crossing the James River above the city, form a junction with the left of Major-General Butler, who, moving with about thirty thousand men from Fortress Monroe, at the moment when the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan, was to occupy City Point, advance thence up the south side of James River, and reach a position where the two armies might thus unite.

It is proper to keep in view this programme of General Grant.  Lee completely reversed it by promptly moving in front of his adversary at every step which he took in advance; and it will be seen that the Federal commander was finally compelled to adopt a plan which does not seem to have entered his mind, save as a dernier ressort, at the beginning of the campaign.

On the morning of the 4th of May, General Grant commenced crossing the Rapidan at Germanna and other fords above Chancellorsville, and by the morning of the 5th his army was over.  It appears from his report that he had not anticipated so easy a passage of the stream, and greatly felicitated himself upon effecting it so successfully.  “This I regarded,” he says, “as a great success, and it removed from my mind the most serious apprehension I had entertained, that of crossing the river in the face of an active, large, well-appointed, and ably-commanded army.”  Lee had made no movement to dispute the passage of