inridge, who drove the enemy across the Shenandoah, captured six pieces of artillery, and nearly one thousand stand of small arms, and inflicted upon him a heavy loss; Sigel abandoning his hospitals and destroying the larger portion of his train. This signal defeat of Sigel was the occasion of his removal, and the appointment of Hunter to take command of the forces with a larger design, reaching to Lynchburg and Charlottesville, the operations of which, however, were reserved for another month. The secondary parts of the operations of the month of May against Richmond having thus failed, Gen. Grant, despite his expressed determination to fight all summer on the line he held at Spottsylvania, proposed a movement to the North Anna River, by which he hoped to flank the little army of Lee, that he no longer could hope, even by the "hammering" process, to beat in the open field. Previous, however, to the commencement of this movement, he made an assault, on the 19th May, on Ewell's line, with the view of turning Lee's left; but this failed, and the Federals returned to their camps after a heavy loss. On the night of the 21st the movement to the North Anna was commenced. Gen. Lee was thus necessarily obliged to evacuate his position on the Po, and, by an admirable movement, took up a new position between the North and South Anna Rivers before Grant's army had reached its new destination. Foiled again, and finding his agile adversary again in his path, Grant found it necessary, on the 24th May, to make another flank movement, by recrossing the North Anna, and marching easterly towards the Pamunkey. To cover his plans, an attack was made on Lee's left, while a portion of Sheridan's cavalry tore up the Central Railroad. But the great Confed erate was fully master of the situation, and could not be easily blinded. He comprehended Grant's tactics; he was as prompt in his movements; and he was far more skilful in his strategy than the Federal commander. Accordingly, no sooner did Grant's army, on the 28th, arrive at Hanovertown, on the Pamunkey, fifteen miles northeast of Richmond, than it was found the Confederates were in line of battle, from Atlee's Station, on the railroad, ten or eleven miles north of Richmond to Shady Grove, eight or nine miles north-northeast of the capital. The next day, Grant's forces were across the Pamunkey, marching towards Richmond; and reinforcements from Butler's army, on the James River, were arriving at White House, which once formed the Federal base of supplies. The singular fortune of war had again made the Peninsula a deadly battle-ground. One month had hardly elapsed since the campaign had begun; and its record of carnage in this brief time was unsurpassed, while, on the other hand, never, in such a space, had such a sum of glory been achieved as that which now illuminated the arms of Lee. When he stood in array against Grant at the Rapidan, his force was not more than fifty thousand men. It was this force which had compelled Grant, after the SPLENDID GENERALSHIP OF LEE. 525 fighting at the Wilderness and around Spottsylvania Court-house, to wait six days for reinforcements from Washington before he could move, and had baffled his favourite plan of reaching Richmond. Lee never received a single item of reinforcement until the 23d of May. At Hanover Junction, he was joined by Pickett's division of Longstreet's corps, one small brigade of Early's division of Ewell's corps, which had been in North Carolina with Hoke, and two small brigades, with a battalion of artillery under Breckinridge. The force under Breckinridge, which Grant estimated at fifteen thousand, did not exceed two thousand muskets. When he fell back to the lines immediately about Richmond, Gen. Lee was joined there by Hoke's division from Petersburg; but at the same time Breckinridge's force had to be sent back into the Shenandoah Valley, and Ewell's corps, with two battalions of artillery, had to be detached under Gen. Early's command to meet the demonstrations of Hunter upon Lynchburg. This counterbalanced all reinforcements. The foregoing statement shows, indeed, that the disparity of forces between the two armies in the beginning of the campaign was never lessened after they reached the vicinity of Richmond and Petersburg, but, on the contrary, was largely increased. It has well been asked, by a commentator on these remarkable facts: "What would have been the result, if the resources in men and munitions of war of the two commanders had been reversed?" The fact was that Grant, notwithstanding his immense preponderance of men and material, had, after losses almost equalling Lee's numbers, utterly failed in his design of defeating the heroic Army of Northern Virginia away 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 Peninsular scheme of McClellan. The Northern public, however, professed to find occasion of exultation in the reflection that he was within a few miles from Richmond, without considering that Lee's army was as much a protection there as a hundred miles away, and that Grant had only by a monstrous circuit, reached a point, where, ascending the waters of Virginia, he might have landed at the very beginning of the campaign without loss or opposition. It was a remarkable exhibition of the gaseous nonsense of New York that a mob of twenty-five thousand persons should have assembled in that city "to render the thanks of the nation to Gen Grant" for a feat which was, simply and at once, absurd, disastrous, shocking, and contemptible. CHAPTER XXXII. POSITION OF THE ARMIES AROUND RICHMOND, JUNE 1, 1864.—MANŒUVRES FOR POSITION.— BATTLE OF COLD HARBOUR.-EASY REPULSE OF THE ENEMY.-GRANT DECIDES TO CROSS THE RIVER, AND ATTEMPT THE SOUTH SIDE OF RICHMOND.—WHY GEN. LEE DID NOT ATTEMPT TO ATTACK HIM IN THE MOVEMENT.-BATTLES OF PETERSBURG.-TWO ATTACKS OF THE ENEMY REPULSED.—BUTLER ADVANCES HIS POSITION, AND IS DRIVEN BACK.—GRANT TURNS HIS ATTENTION FROM THE FORTIFICATIONS TO THE RAILROADS.-DEMONSTRATIONS ON THE WELDON AND DANVILLE ROADS.-DEFEAT OF SHERIDAN'S EXPEDITION ON THE RAILROADS NORTH OF RICHMOND.-OPERATIONS WEST OF THE BLUE RIDGE.-HUNTER'S MOVEMENT.-HE CAPTURES STAUNTON.-HE ADVANCES UPON LYNCHBURG. HE IS DE FEATED, AND DRIVEN INTO WESTERN VIRGINIA.-GEN. JOHN MORGAN'S EXPEDITION INTO KENTUCKY.-ITS DISASTROUS CONCLUSION.-PARTICULARS OF THE MURDER OF GEN. MOR- QUESTIONS AS TO THE STRENGTH OF WASHINGTON.-RESULTS OF EARLY'S EXPEDITION.-ITS THE first of June, 1864, found the position of the two armies around Richmond as follows: Grant was between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey, with his left thrown forward to Mechanicsville, his right withdrawn to White House, and his reserve massed in rear of his left, and Richmond somewhat behind his left flank. Lee was posted from Atlee's Station, extending on his left to Gaines' Mill, with outposts as far as Coal Harbour. His position conformed to that of 1862; and, indeed, the whole Confederate line of battle was on ground occupied by both the armies at that time. On falling back to Richmond it had been the first concern of Gen. Lee to secure positions he knew, from the battles of 1862, to be good ones. BATTLE OF COLD HARBOUR. 527 He, accordingly, sent forward to the right Kershaw's and Hoke's divisions of Anderson's corps, with orders to occupy the eminences around Gaines' Mill and Cold Harbour. This position had been previously carried by some Federal cavalry. But on arrival of Hoke's division, shortly afterwards reinforced by McLaws', the Confederates obtained possession of the desired posts. At the same time Breckinridge and Mahone, of Hill's corps, were equally successful in gaining certain advanced positions. On the 2d June, as Grant continued to develop his left flank, the Confederates were put in motion on a parallel line, while Early, commanding Ewell's corps, swung round, late in the afternoon, and took the enemy in flank, drove him from two lines of entrenchments, and inflicted great loss. Meanwhile Breckinridge, supported by Wilcox, proceeded, under orders from Lee, to attack the advanced Federals, now on the extreme right at Turkey Hill, and there succeeded in driving them away. Thus another important position was obtained by Lee; this hill commanding the approaches from the north and east to the line of the Chickahominy. Meanwhile Grant was getting his troops into position for a decisive action. Early in the morning of June the 3d, his army, now extending from Tolopatomy Creek, across the road from Cold Harbour to the Chickahominy, advanced in full line of battle, upon the Confederates. BATTLE OF COLD HARBOUR. The Federal line of battle ran in the following order, from right to left: Burnside, Warren, Smith, Wright, and Hancock. The latter was opposed by Breckinridge's command on Lee's extreme right; Ewell's corps held the extreme left opposite Burnside; and Hill's corps was in reserve. The attack was led by Hancock, who momentarily carried the position held by Breckinridge's troops, but was severely repulsed, as this part of the line was reinforced by Milligan's Florida brigade, and the Maryland battalion. This was the only corps of the enemy that came in contact with the Confederate works. The two corps on the right of Hancock were repulsed; and Warren and Burnside staggered on the line of the rifle-pits. The fact was that Grant, in testing the question, whether Lee's army had or had not been demoralized by its experience from the Rapidan to the James, found his own army so incapable, that he was compelled to withdraw it in sheer despair. He "mounted his horse and rode along the lines to ascertain from the different commanders the actual state of things in their immediate front. He returned leisurely, absorbed in thought, and it was evident that the attempt would not be renewed." Of the results of the day, he wrote: "Our loss was heavy, while that of the enemy, I have reason to believe, was comparatively light." The fact was that the report of the adjutant-general at Washington showed a loss of seven thousand five hundred men in three days' operations on the Chickahominy, the greater portion of which occurred, of course, in the general action of the 3d of June. For several days after the battle of Cold Harbour there was comparative quiet, and some unimportant skirmishes. During the night of the 5th Grant withdrew his right wing about two miles, and placed it behind a swamp, which protected both the flank and front of that portion of his army. The severe experience of the 3d satisfied him that Richmond could. not be carried by a coup de main, and could no longer be approached with advantage from the north. On this side lay a difficult river and five miles. of earthworks, stretched to the Confederate capital. Here, too, the enemy had to hold the Fredericksburg railroad, a long, vulnerable line, which would exhaust much of his strength to guard, and which would have to be protected to supply his army-a situation which would have left open to the Confederates all their lines of communication on the south side of the James. A full survey of all the ground satisfied Grant that he could not operate with advantage north and east of Richmond; he determined to make another movement by Lee's left flank, throw his army over James River, and seize Petersburg, hoping thus to cut off all the Confederate supplies, except by the canal; while his cavalry could be sent to Charlottesville and Gordonsville, to break up the railroad connection between Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley and Lynchburg. On the 12th June, Grant completed his preparations to abandon the late field of operations about the Chickahominy, cross the James River, and occupy the south side towards Petersburg. To do this he had to make another movement round Lee's right, extending as far as Bottom's Bridge, and march down the Chickahominy as far as the next crossings at Long's and Jones' bridges. The movement was effected with skill. On June 13, the advance had reached Wilcox's landing on the James, near Charles' City Court-house, and the next day Grant's whole army was safely transferred to the opposite shore. He Gen. Lee did not attack Grant on his movement to the James. was probably unable to do so. Richmond and Petersburg had both to be guarded, not only against the Army of the Potomac, but also that of Butler, who had come up the river in heavy force to co-operate with Grant; while an important detachment of Confederate force, as we shall see, had to be ready to move towards Lynchburg to meet the advance of a third army in that direction. It had been the expectation of Grant to make an easy capture of Petersburg, which Butler had previously failed to take, laying the blame of defeat on his subordinate, Gillmore. But he found that Lee had anticipated him in this new plan of operations; that Petersburg was well able to withstand a siege; that additional fortifications had |