Lincoln's counter attack.

wausaubob

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The war looked stalled in June and July of 1864. Henry J. Raymond needed some good news to print. He got it.
First, the long advocated closing of Mobile Bay began around August of 1864, producing the famous, "Darn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," quote attributed to David Farragut. This was the first sign that the Republicans were not quite finished.
Farragut was, of course, a Virginian and a lifetime naval officer. Co-operating with Farragut was none other than Gordon Granger.
On page 243 of The West Point History of the Civil War, Simon and Schuster 2014, is the delightful Bulldog on the Right Track political cartoon.
Grant, depicted as a bulldog, is sitting on the Weldon railroad, while McClellan urges Lincoln to call off the bulldog, and Lincoln replies that he thinks it best to let the bulldog have full swing, while Davis and Lee, depicted as smaller dogs, cower in the Richmond doghouse. Warren got to the Weldon railroad about August 17, 1864, and the cartoon appeared sometime during the political campaign that summer and fall.
Then in Georgia, Sherman swung his entire command, save for Slocum's corp, around to the west and south of Atlanta, cutting off the city so completely that Hood could not remove his boxcars, and had to destroy them and their contents.
Sherman just missed conquering the city of Atlanta while the Democrats were convening in Atlanta.
The quote from Sherman is, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won." which, to me, seems a political statement.
Then Lincoln and Grant saw another opportunity in the Shenandoah Valley. Phil Sheridan was given an overwhelming force, in Wright's and Crooks corps, and the XIX corp, and a very strong cavalry force.
The odds of anything going wrong were pretty low, even if Sheridan encountered tactical difficulties, which he did.
But who was Sheridan? He was a New Yorker, son of a Catholic, immigrant Irish family, who had worked his way up from obscurity to command. Whether he was a nice guy or not was irrelevant. If Sheridan won a battle it was a clear demonstration that not all the Irish were opposed to the war.
So was Lincoln really thinking he was not going to win around August 23, 1864, or was he just thinking about what Grant had most likely advised, that even if McCellan wins, there will still be 4 months to win the war?
Did McClellan have a rough idea of were Sherman was at in Georgia and did Lincoln have a good idea that McClellan was going to seriously modify the Emancipation Proclamation in order to encourage southern states to abandon the Confederacy, which would make the war in the western theater unwinnable?
 
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