I would rather be defeated with the soldier vote behind me than to be...

[David Lockmiller]

(03-16-2020 06:50 AM)AussieMick Wrote:  Great post, David.

Thank you, AussieMick.

In "Team of Rivals," Doris Kearns Goodwin covered the Battle of the Wilderness in only one page (#620) but included references to more relevant information. And, for whatever reason, she referred to Henry Wing only as an anonymous "reporter." I know that hearing the words from Grant to Lincoln at that moment must have meant a very great deal to President Lincoln and the occasion also led to an important friendship between the two men.

One of the "Team of Rivals" references is made to Schuyler Colfax and his account of related events that was published in "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished Men of His Time," at pages 337-38:

The [Sunday, May 8, 1864] morning after the bloody Battle of the Wilderness [May 5-7, 1864], I saw him walk up and down the Executive Chamber, his long arms behind his back, his dark features contracted still more with gloom; and as he looked up, I thought his face the saddest one I had ever seen. He exclaimed: "Why do we suffer reverses after reverses? Could we have avoided this terrible, bloody war! Was it not forced upon us! Is it ever to end! But he quickly recovered, and told me the sad aggregate of those days of bloodshed. Of course it is perfectly well known that the Battle of the Wilderness, however, then claimed as a drawn battle, was, on the contrary, a bloody reverse to our arms, our loss in killed and wounded alone being fifteen thousand more than the Confederates. Hope beamed on his face as he said, "Grant will not fail us now; he says he will fight it out on that line, and this is now the hope of our country."

I italicized the last sentence because these words must have been spoken by Lincoln at a later date than Sunday, May 8, 1864. Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote on page 620 of her book: [Lincoln's] spirits rose further when he read the words in Grant's famous dispatch on May 11, 1864: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."