Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer to Richmond than the enemy is, by the route that you can and he must take.  Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march?  His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord.  The roads are as good on yours as on his.

You know I desired, but did not order, you to cross the Potomac below instead of above the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge.  My idea was, that this would at once menace the enemy’s communications, which I would seize if he would permit.  If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications.  If he should prevent our seizing his communications, and move toward Richmond, I would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track.  I say “try;” if we never try, we shall never succeed.  If he makes a stand at Winchester, moving neither north or south, I would fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him.  This proposition is a simple truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment.  In coming to us he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive.  We should not so operate as to merely drive him away.  As we must beat him somewhere or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near to us than far away.  If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he again being within the entrenchments of Richmond.

[And, indeed, the enemy was let back into Richmond and it took another two years and thousands of dead for McClelland cowardice—­if that was all that it was.  I still suspect, and I think the evidence is overwhelming that he was, either secretly a supporter of the South, or, what is more likely, a politician readying for a different campaign:  that of the Presidency of the United States.]

Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable, as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel extending from the hub toward the rim, and this whether you move directly by the chord or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely.  The chord line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Hay Market, and Fredericksburg; and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac, by Aquia Creek, meet you at all points from Washington; the same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way.