Johnston should be given as many or more men with which to
oppose Sherman.
To allow for Johnston's feeble strategy, Davis sent him 68,000 soldiers
to Dalton, Georgia, to meet Sherman's 100,000 and gave Lee 64,000 with
which to oppose Grant's 150,000 threatening to cross the Rapidan and
move directly on Richmond.
Socola had informed the War Department at Washington that the
Confederate Capital had been stripped of any semblance of an effective
garrison to fill the ranks of Lee and Johnston.
General Judson Kilpatrick was authorized to select three thousand picked
cavalry, dash suddenly on Richmond, capture it and release the 15,000
Union prisoners confined in its walls and stockades.
These prisoners Grant steadily refused to receive in exchange. In vain
Davis besought the Federal Government to take them home in return for
an equal number of Confederate prisoners who were freezing and dying in
the North.
Grant's logic was inexorable. Every Confederate prisoner exchanged and
sent back home meant a recruit to Lee's army. It was cruel to leave his
men to languish in beleaguered Richmond whose citizens were rioting in
the streets for bread, but he figured these prisoners as soldiers dying
in battle. The Confederate Government had no medicine for them.
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