"That’s what the Union would need in the painful spring and summer of 1864, which Gallagher calls the low point of the war for the U.S. government because civilian morale had plummeted. All eyes were on the coming presidential election. The Democrats were angling to nominate Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who ran as a War Democrat but whose party’s platform called for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy that could permit the survival of slavery. Against this backdrop, the Confederacy didn’t need to defeat the Union forces; it needed merely to hang on. The Union’s will to fight might well succumb to exhaustion. Lincoln and Grant both understood this. Grant had planned to return to the West, but the public was clamoring for him to face Lee head-on. Half a dozen Union offensives in Virginia had already failed, and although from a purely military perspective the war in the West was just as important, the Eastern theater produced the greatest political reverberations... The key moment came early in the campaign. As soon as Grant’s army had crossed the river, and as his men moved through a forest dense with underbrush known as the Wilderness, Lee pressed the attack. Lee was outnumbered nearly 2-1 and did not want to let the battle get onto open ground. The rebels charged and the woods quickly filled with smoke. Wounded men were immolated as fire swept through the forest. The Battle of the Wilderness proved to be a ghastly two-day affair that prefigured more horrors to come. At the end of the battle, the Army of the Potomac had 18,000 casualties, and it looked like another defeat in Virginia. But when Grant rode his horse to a crossroads, he turned south, not north. His men let out a cheer. Grant would not retreat back toward Washington as so many other generals had done after previous battles. He pressed on, toward Spotsylvania Court House."