Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[292] tenfold greater dangers, he put the principle to the test. No army in modern times had ever made a similar attempt. Napoleon, indeed, as he tersely said, made war support war, but it was on a different plan from Grant's. The great Corsican forced the cities and towns that he conquered to furnish him supplies; but he did it deliberately, and in advance; he made his arrangements according to a system of forced requisitions, and through the authorities; he never plunged into a hostile region with no more supplies than his army carried in their haversacks. This may, indeed, have been done for a day or two, on a forced march, or for a special object, but never at the outset of a campaign which was expected to endure for weeks, and in which a force greater than his own was sure to be encountered. Yet such operations were infinitely more feasible in the rich and cultivated plains of Europe, than among the sparsely settled wilds of Mississippi.

The people of the country, of course, suffered greatly in this campaign. The system of foraging was very simple. There was no time for elaborate requisitions. Parties of men were dispatched each night, as well as often during the march by day, who scoured the country for miles on each side of the main column of march; these visited every planta tion and farmhouse, ransacked every barn, worked every mill, seized every animal; they were always supposed to be under command of officers, but it often happened that squads of men were without this restraint. There was, however, not much time for pillage; the movements were too rapid, and the danger of capture to stragglers too imminent, for any great amount of plundering: indeed, the constant