Before this appointment of General-in-chief was given to General Grant, and he came to the East to take charge of the armies in Virginia, he had brought to a successful conclusion a dramatic campaign, of which Chattanooga was the centre.  In September, 1863, General Rosecrans, who had occupied Chattanooga, was defeated some twenty miles to the south on the field of Chickamauga, a defeat which was the result of too much confidence on the part of the Federal commander, who in pressing his advance had unwisely separated the great divisions of his army, and of excellent skill and enterprise on the part of the Confederate commander, General Bragg.  If the troops of Rosecrans had not been veterans, and if the right wing had not been under the immediate command of so sturdy and unconquered a veteran as General Thomas, the defeat might have become a rout.  As it was, the army retreated with some discouragement but in good fighting force, to the lines of Chattanooga.  By skilful disposition of his forces across the lines of connection between Chattanooga and the base of supplies, General Bragg brought the Federals almost to the point of starvation, and there was grave risk that through the necessary falling back of the army to secure supplies, the whole advantage of the previous year’s campaign might be lost.  Grant was placed in charge of the forces in Chattanooga, and by a good management of the resources available, he succeeded in reopening the river and what became known as “the cracker line,” and in November, 1863, in the dramatic battles of Lookout Mountain, fought more immediately by General Hooker, and of Missionary Ridge, the troops of which were under the direct command of General Sherman, overwhelmed the lines of Bragg, and pressed his forces back into a more or less disorderly retreat.  An important factor in the defeat of Bragg was the detaching from his army of the corps under Longstreet which had been sent to Knoxville in a futile attempt to crush Burnside and to reconquer East Tennessee for the Confederacy.  This plan, chiefly political in purpose, was said to have originated with President Davis.  The armies of the West were now placed under the command of General Sherman, and early in 1864, Grant was brought to Virginia to take up the perplexing problem of overcoming the sturdy veterans of General Lee.

The first action of Grant as commander of all the armies in the field was to concentrate all the available forces against the two chief armies of the Confederacy.  The old policy of occupying outlying territory for the sake of making a show of political authority was given up.  If Johnston in the West and Lee in the East could be crushed, the national authority would be restored in due season, and that was the only way in which it could be restored.  Troops were gathered in from Missouri and Arkansas and Louisiana and were placed under the command of Sherman for use in the final effort of breaking through the centre of the Confederacy, while in the East nothing was neglected on the part of the new administration to secure for the direction of the new commander all resources available of men and of supplies.