this route proved untenable, and General Grant was forced east and south, and adopted a new base at Port Royal and Tappahannock, on the Rappahannock River, which conformed in a measure to General McClellan's first plan of a march upon Richmond by way of Urbana. The next change Grant was compelled to make was, after finding how strong the Confederates were, as posted on the South Anna, to cross the Pamunkey and make his base at the White House, bearing thereafter still further east and south to the precise ground of McClellan's operations.

The significance of all these movements was, that Grant had utterly failed in his design of defeating Lee's army far from its base, and pushing the fragments before him down to Richmond, and had been forced to cover up his failure by adopting the derided scheme of McClellan. The event of the 12th of May at Spottsylvania Courthouse had settled the question whether he could beat Lee in the field and put him in a disastrous retreat. Unable to remove the obstacle on the threshold of his proposed campaign, nothing was left but to abandon it. Grant makes his way down the valley of the Rappahannock; turns aside to Hanover Junction, to find a repetition of Spottsylvania Courthouse; deflects to the head-waters of the York; and at last, by a monstrous circuit, reaches a point where he might have landed on the 1st of May, without loss or opposition. We may appreciate the amount of gaseous nonsense and truculent blackguardism of Yankee journals, when we find them declaring that these movements were a foot-race for Richmond, that Grant was across the last ditch, and that the end of the rebellion was immediately at hand.

CHAPTER II.

Grant essays the passage of the Chickahominy.-BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR.-A brilliant and extraordinary victory for the Confederates.-Grant's stock of expedients. -He decides to move to the south side of the James.-OPERATIONS IN WESTERN VIRGINIA. Shocking improvidence of the Richmond authorities.-Hunter captures Staunton.-Death of General Jones.-Grant's new combination.-Hunter's part. Sheridan's part.-THE BATTLES OF PETERSBURG.-Butler attempts to steal a march upon "the Cockade City."-Engagements of the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June.-Port Walthal Junction.-Defeat of Sheridan at Trevillian Station.-Defeat of Hunter near Lynchburg.-Morgan draws Burbridge into Kentucky.-Two affairs on the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad.-THE GREAT MINE EXPLOSION.-A scene of infernal horror.-Yankee comments on Grant's failures.-Great depression in the North.-Mr. Chase's declarations.-General Lee's sense of success. -His singular behavior.-THE SINKING OF THE PRIVATEER ALABAMA.-A Yankee trick of concealed armor.-The privateer service of the Confederates.-Interesting statistics.

WE return to the events on the Richmond lines. The position occupied by Grant, on Wednesday, June 1st, had been obtained after some fighting, and, by the enemy's own admission, had cost him two thousand men in killed and wounded. An important and critical struggle was now to ensue. Grant had secured a position, the importance of which was that it was the point of convergence of all the roads radiating, whether to Richmond, his objective point, or to White House, his base of supplies. He was now to essay the passage of the Chickahominy, and we were to have another decisive battle of Cold Harbor.

THE BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR.

There is good evidence that Grant's intention was to make it the decisive battle of the campaign. The movements of the preceding days, culminating in the possession of Cold Harbor -an important strategic point—had drawn the enemy's lines close in front of the Chickahominy, and reduced the military problem to the forcing of the passage of that river—a problem which, if solved in Grant's favor, would decide whether Richmond could be carried by a coup de main, if a decisive victory

should attend his arms, or, whether he should betake himself to siege operations or some other recourse.

Early on the morning of Friday, June 3d, the assault was made, Hancock commanding the left of the Yankee line of battle, and leading the attack. The first Confederate line was held by Breckinridge's troops, and was carried. The reverse was but momentary, for the troops of Milligan's brigade, and the Maryland battalion, soon dashed forward to retrieve the honors which the Yankees had snatched.

This engagement was on the right; Breckinridge's division, with Field's, constituting a part of Longstreet's corps. On the left, General Early engaged the enemy. On every part of the line the enemy was repulsed by the quick and decisive blows of the Confederates. Hancock's corps, the only portion of the Yankee army that had come in contact with the Confederate works, had been hurled back in a storm of fire; the Sixth Corps had not been able to get up further than within two hundred and fifty yards of the main works; while Warren and Burnside, on the enemy's right and right centre, were staggered on the lines of our rifle-pits. The decisive work of the day was done in a few minutes. Never were there such signal strokes of valor, such dispatch of victory. It was stated in the accounts of the Confederates, that fourteen distinct assaults of the enemy were repulsed, and that his loss was from six to seven thousand.* No wonder that the insolent assurance of the capture of Richmond was displaced in the Yankee newspapers by the ominous calculation, that Grant could not afford many such experiments on the intrenched line of the Chickahominy, and would have to make some other resort to victory.

The battle of Cold Harbor was sufficient to dispel the delusion of weakness and demoralization in Lee's army; for this derided army, almost in the time it takes to tell the story, had

* The lowest estimate of their own loss, in the Yankee newspapers, was five thousand; and the report of the adjutant-general at Washington stated the loss in three days' operations on the Chickahominy at seven thousand five hundred. Yet Grant dispatched to Washington: "Our loss was not severe, nor do I suppose the enemy to have lost heavily. We captured over three hundred prisoners, mostly from Breckinridge."

repulsed at every point the most determined assault of the enemy, and, in a few brief moments of a single morning, had achieved an unbroken circuit of victories. Grant and his friends were alike dismayed. The latter insisted that he should have half a million more of men to accomplish his work. "We should," said a Boston paper, "have a vigorous and overwhelming war, or else peace without further effusion of blood." A certain portion of the Yankee press maintained the unbroken lie, and told the story of an uninterrupted series of victories.

An object of most curious and constant interest in the war was the rivalry of the different routes to Richmond. McClellan had chosen the peninsular approach, while Mr. Lincoln dissented in favor of an advance from the Lower Rappahannock; Burnside had chosen Fredericksburg as his base; Hooker had acted on the same choice. Meade had selected. the Rapidan, as Pope had done before him. Grant came to his command, unembarrassed and untrammelled by the precedents and comments of others. He had hunted up the roads to Richmond, through the Wilderness and Spottsylvania Court-house, and avowed his unchangeable purpose to adhere to that as his true line. He had now wandered around to McClellan's old base. But the battle of July 3d decided that Richmond could no longer be approached with advantage from the north, and the disconcerted, shifting commander, with his stock of expedients well-nigh exhausted, found nothing now left for him but to transfer his entire army to the south side of the James River.*

* A Richmond paper (the Dispatch) made the following estimate of Grant's enormous losses up to the time of crossing the James; still leaving him, however, a tremendous force in hand, compared with Lee's numbers: "Grant had had first his own original army, 150,000; second, 25,000 veteran reinforcements; third, 40,000 hundred days' men; fourth, 20,000 from Butler-total, 225,000 men, under his own eye. Of these, he had lost 125,000 before he left Cold Harbor. He crossed the river with 110,000 men, and there united his operations with those of Butler, who had with him about 20,000 men, besides those he had sent to Grant."

OPERATIONS IN WESTERN VIRGINIA.

We have already referred to the failure in May of the operations in Western Virginia. They were to be enlarged by the augmentation of the Yankee forces by several thousand troops, drawn from the extreme Northwestern States, and by the appointment of General Hunter, an officer of higher rank, to command-the same Hunter, by the by, who inaugurated negro enlistments and miscegenation in the department of Beaufort, South Carolina, as early as the first winter of the

war.

This second combination in Western Virginia was imposing enough. Crook and Averill were refitting and preparing at Meadow Bluff for an advance on Staunton and Lynchburg; Hunter was organizing at Winchester heavy reinforcements for a second advance upon Lynchburg by way of Staunton; and Burbridge, in Kentucky, was getting ready to descend upon extreme Southwestern Virginia, so as to prevent any advance from that direction upon the rear of the combined armies about to move on Lynchburg.

It is almost incredible how inadequate the preparations of the Confederates were to meet these formidable enterprises of the enemy. Breckinridge, with the only army that could be called such, which we had west of the Blue Ridge, was ordered elsewhere, leaving nothing to confront some twenty-seven thousand troops but a few small brigades of inferior cavalry, about two regiments of infantry, and a small brigade (Vaughan's) of dismounted troops acting as infantry. To supply the place of Breckinridge, McCausland's little force, from Dublin, was sent to the front of Staunton, and General William E. Jones was ordered to take all the troops he could move from Southwestern Virginia to the same position in the lower valley. Accordingly, General Jones not only got together all the infantry west of the New River, but dismounted Vaughan's brigade of cavalry also, and took all to Staunton, leaving nothing in the extreme southwest but a few disjointed bodies of cavalry and Morgan's command to meet Burbridge, coming in from Kentucky.