The Overland Campaign May 4-June 15, 1864 (The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War)
The new commander soon showed his talents as a strategist. Although President Lincoln and Grant’s predecessors had attempted to take advantage of superior Northern manpower and materiel through coordinated action, Grant enforced cooperation with orders for simultaneous offensives by Union forces across the board. Even departments with defensive missions, he figured, could carry out their tasks best by advancing, thus not only keeping the initiative but also diverting scarce Confederate troops from more critical points. The primary objective of these operations would be the destruction of the South’s armies and resources to make war. In the West, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman would lead three armies from Chattanooga, Tennessee, into Georgia, breaking up General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee and inflicting all possible damage to the Confederate infrastructure. Once he had extricated himself from a secondary campaign into Louisiana, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks would capture Mobile, Alabama, one of the South’s last two major ports, and then drive northeast to hook up with Sherman.
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