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sessed with the notion that the Army of the Poto-mac had never had its full fighting power drawnout. Perhaps he may have shared to some extentin the feeling to which another western general,of much smaller calibre, John Pope , gave such ob-jectionable expression two years before, when hedeclared his contempt for “ certain expressions he

found much in vogue, such as bases of „

Manoeuvring

supplies and lines of retreat.” In some- vs. hammer-what similar mood Grant is said to mg-have spoken slightingly of grand tactics. We aretold that shortly before the battle of the Wilder-ness, when Meade was saying that he proposed tomanoeuvre thus and so, Grant interrupted him withthe exclamation, “ Oh, I never manoeuvre! ” 1 Thisanecdote harmonizes with the popular conceptionof Grant as a general who achieved success by“ continuous hammering ” rather than by strategi-cal or tactical devices.

Yet if Grant really said that he never manoeu-vred, he must have been speaking very carelessly,for he certainly did manoeuvre a great deal, andto very good purpose. His campaign in the rearof Vicksburg was a series of splendid strategicmanoeuvres, and it showed how military skill canachieve a vast result without great loss of life. So,too, with the Chattanooga campaign, it abounded1 Swinton’s Army of the Potomac , p. 440.