From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
November 22
Has mathematics ever been more
grim? In the first 30 days of the 1864 campaign between the principal army of
the North, the Army of the Potomac, under the command of Ulysses S. Grant and
the principal army of the South, the Army of Northern Virginia, under the
command of Robert E. Lee, the North lost 50% more than did the enemy, and yet
there was sense in the awful arithmetic propounded by the President. 'If the
same battle were to be fought over again, every day, through a week of days, with
the same relative results,’ observed the President a few months earlier, ‘the
army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, the Army of the Potomac
would still be a mighty host, the war would be over, the Confederacy gone. No
general yet found can face the arithmetic, but the end of the war will be at
hand when he shall be discovered.'
‘Do the best you can, leaving
others to talk of you as they will.'
- Anonymous
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