NP: July 7, 1864 Richmond Examiner: Additional from the North, July 2

Editor’s Note: This article was transcribed by Jackie Martin.

ADDITIONAL FROM THE NORTH.

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We are indebted to the courtesy of Captain Griggs, Fifty-seventh Virginia infantry, for a copy of the New York TIMES of the 2d.  Its news has been anticipated, but we get from it the following:

THE TIMES ON THE MILITARY SITUATION.

The New York TIMES thinks “the military situation never, on the whole, looked so STRONG and so hopeful, in a large survey, as at this moment.”  It argues that the “two great armies never were planted in positions at all comparable, as regards their advantageousness, to those occupied by them at this moment; Grant on the south bank of the James, while Lee’s army lies north of him, virtually confined to Richmond, while Sherman’s army is near the heart of Georgia, almost within sight of Atlanta.”  The TIMES continues:

Even if Grant does nothing for some time but stay where he is, and operate upon Lee’s communications with the splendid body of cavalry he now has with him, he must bear with great, far-reaching and finally fatal effect upon the enemy.  It is true that some of Grant’s combinations have lately miscarried as regards their real purpose.  Hunter’s orders undoubtedly were to seize, fortify, and hold Lynchburg; and the value of success in his essay would have been very great.  Had everything gone well, he would have wielded not only his own force, but would have been aided by Sheridan, by Crook and Averill, and by Wilson.  Had he succeeded in seizing Lynchburg with the force he had in hand, he could have quickly fortified and held it against any force Lee might send against him, just as Beauregard held Petersburg stoutly for a time against the attacks in force of the army of the Potomac.  But though Hunter’s army, and the bodies sent out to co-operate with him, did not accomplish their proper work, they yet did much service to their operations on the rebel communications, and much labour that will be of value as preliminary to future efforts.

If Lee has determined to hold his army where it now is, and to fight out the (illegible) the narrow strip of land, lying between the James river and the Appomattox, he will afford us the best opportunity we have ever yet had to operate against him easily, economically and effectively.  We have an admirable base at City Point, with a short and excellent line of communication with the front.  We are on good ground for the display of strategy, as well as for hard fighting.  We are in little or no danger of an offensive movement on the part of the enemy.  Militarily viewed, we may be said to be in the rear of Richmond; and we operate against it, for the first time, on the line  which all sagacious military men have always asserted to be by all odds the best of the lines of approach.¹

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