I therefore advised that the Valley campaign be terminated north of
Staunton, and I be permitted to return, carrying out on the way my
original instructions for desolating the Shenandoah country so as to
make it untenable for permanent occupation by the Confederates. I
proposed to detach the bulk of my army when this work of destruction
was completed, and send it by way of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad
through Washington to the Petersburg line, believing that I could
move it more rapidly by that route than by any other. I was
confident that if a movement of this character could be made with
celerity it would culminate in the capture of Richmond and possibly
of General Lee's army, and I was in hopes that General Grant would
take the same view of the matter; but just at this time he was so
pressed by the Government and by public-opinion at the North, that he
advocated the wholly different conception of driving Early into
eastern Virginia, and adhered to this plan with some tenacity.
Considerable correspondence regarding the subject took place between
us, throughout which I stoutly maintained that we should not risk, by
what I held to be a false move, all that my army had gained. I being
on the ground, General Grant left to me the final decision of the
question, and I solved the first step by determining to withdraw down
the valley at least as far as Strasburg, which movement was begun on
the 6th of October.

The cavalry as it retired was stretched across the country from the
Blue Ridge to the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, with orders to
drive off all stock and destroy all supplies as it moved northward.
The infantry preceded the cavalry, passing down the Valley pike, and
as we marched along the many columns of smoke from burning stacks,
and mills filled with grain, indicated that the adjacent country was
fast losing the features which hitherto had made it a great magazine