The artillery fire was kept up so continuously that it was impossible for the Confederates to retreat, and equally impossible for re-enforcements to join them. They all therefore fell captives into our hands. This effort of Lee cost him about 4,000 men, and resulted in their killing, wounding and capturing about 2,000 of ours.—[“ Grant's Memoirs," Vol. 11, p. 433.

Now came the last Confederate attempt to escape, and its failure. General Grant had issued orders to his commanders to be drawing in around Petersburg, and be within supporting distance when this should happen, as it must. And the very night that the successful Confederate assault was made upon Fort Stedman, these orders had been issued and were being responded to with alacrity. On the morning of Wednesday, the 29th of March, the advance movement was to be made, and at 9 A. M. Gencral Grant and his staff took the cars from City Point for the front, eighteen miles distant. President Lincoln was there, having come down to confer with his generals in regard to this critical movement. General Sherman had also left his army in North Carolina, and hurried up from Wilmington for such a conference, and returned. The President accompanied General Grant to the train, and as he stepped on board, the President stood grasping the iron rod at the rear of the car, and saying: "I wish I could go with you." The cavalry under Cook and Merritt moved off in two columns, and at night reached Dinwiddie Courthouse. The infantry under Warren, Humphreys, Ord, Wright and Parke, and in this order from left to right, extended without a break from Dinwiddie Courthouse to the Appomattox. Lee was at Five Forks, where several roads intersected, and was posted as follows: Ewell commanded the garrison in Richmond; Longstreet below that city, north of the James, and across the river nearly to Petersburg; Gordon was at Petersburg, and Hill south and west of that place. From the night of the 29th to the morning of the 31st, the rain fell in such torrents as to make it impossible to move wheeled vehicles except as corduroyed roads were laid in front of them. Sheridan, however, during the 30th had advanced from Dinwiddie Courthouse toward Five Forks, where he found the enemy in force. Lee had stripped the Petersburg entrenchments as much as he could with safety, and obtained on the 31st a force of about 20,000, chiefly the divisions of Pickett and Johnston, to meet the threatened attack. This extension of his lines toward Five Forks had weakened Lec's left, and it was the discovery of it which led Wright and Parke to report that they could assault successfully.-[Draper's "Civil War," Vol. III, p. 570.

It was these attacks made by Grant and Sheridan upon the Confederates, March 31 and April 1, which were the most critical of the campaign, and caused them both the

most anxiety. The danger was that infantry enough could not be brought up in time to support Sheridan's cavalry. There were 10,000 of them, "natty fellows, with tightfitting uniforms, short jackets, and small magazine carbines, swarming through the pine thickets and dense undergrowth, and looking as if they had been especially equipped for crawling through knot-holes." They could sweep over the country for any distance around, and leave their horses behind and fight as infantry, and hold a large infantry force at bay for a considerable time, but with the advantages of the solid infantry organizations, and the abundant artillery which such an organization usually possesses, they are at a great disadvantage, as Sheridan now found, when so many of the latter were massed before him, and his own infantry supports so slow in coming up. He probably never had harder work, or experienced more anxiety in all his military service, and the result was the highest tribute that could be paid, not only to his dauntless courage and desperate fighting, but to his quick perceptions and just judgment, and complete self-control, which made no mistakes in this critical campaign, and which has led military critics to regard it as one of the best planned and best fought battles of the war.

On the morning of that last day of March, the enemy was reported as entrenching themselves at Five Forks, near Dinwiddie Courthouse. General Grant had ordered up the infantry to support Sheridan, but the weather was so bad, and such was the difficulty in moving infantry and artillery, that they were slow in reaching him, and before they did reach him he found himself vigorously resisted. General Grant hurried to the front, and dispatched General Porter, one of his staff, to Sheridan, to inform him what was being done for his support. General Porter reached Sheridan, who said that he had had "one of the liveliest days in his experience, fighting infantry and cav

alry with cavalry only, but that he was concentrating his command on the high ground just north of Dinwiddie, and would hold that position at all hazards." But he begged Porter to go back to General Grant at once, and urge him to send the Sixth Corps "because it had been under him in the battles in the Valley of Virginia, and knew his way of fighting." This corps, however, could not be spared, and he was promised the Fifth.

The night of March 31 was spent by Grant, Meade and Sheridan in hastening preparations for the battle of the next day, when Grant hoped for an opportunity of "fighting the enemy's infantry outside of its fortifications." The assault was made by the Fifth Corps, which had borne the brunt of the fighting ever since the movement began. After desperate fighting and heavy loss, the earthworks were carried with a rush. Sheridan had been chafing with impatience, dismounting his horse, and pacing up and down, saying: "This battle must be fought and won before the sun goes down. All the conditions may be changed by morning and we have only a few hours of sunlight left. My cavalry are fast using up their ammunition, and if the attack is delayed they will soon have none left." More officers were sent off to hurry up the columns, and it was 9 o'clock before the formation was complete, the order for assault given, and the struggle for the entrenched lines begun. Here was to be encountered the same intrepid fighter who made such desperate charges upon our lines at Gettysburg, and whom Sheridan had found it so difficult to drive out of the Shenandoah valley. It was then that Sheridan called for his crimson-and-white battle flag, and in his cheery, bantering way led his troops-" Come on, men! Go at 'em! They are getting ready to run!"-and turned the tide of battle in their favor. "That line of weather-beaten veterans moved right along the slope toward the woods, whence batteries

were mowing them down with a steady swing that boded no good to Pickett's command, carthworks or no earthworks," while he himself on his favorite black horse, Rienzi, that carried him from Winchester to Cedar creek, which Buchanan Read has made famous for all time as "Sheridan's Ride," had dashed on over the very earthworks of the destructive" Angle," and plunged into a crowd of prisoners who had thrown away their arms and were hiding there for shelter. That was the end of the war so nearly reached, as the whole army understood it, and as General Porter says: "Sheridan had that day fought one of the most interesting technical battles of the war, almost perfect in conception, brilliant in execution, strikingly dramatic in its incidents, and productive of important results."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Surrender of the Two Principal Confederate Armies-Negotiations for Surrender-Difficulties in the Way Made Unconditional-Magnanimity of the Union Commanders-Its Appreciation by the Confederates-No More Fighting-The Relief of the South—The Joy of the North.

He had staked

The time had come for Lee's surrender. everything upon this last battle and lost, when he withdrew all his troops from Petersburg and the neighboring forts, so long the stronghold of the Confederacy; abandoned Richmond, after destroying half the city, that he might gather force enough to sweep away Grant and Sherman from the pathway of his flight-when "flight had become impossible, and nothing remained to put a stop to the bloody slaughter, but to throw down their arms and become captives, and Ewell, with eleven of his general officers, including the ablest of them, and about all his gallant army that survived were prisoners, and in this battle more men were captured in actual conflict, without negotiation, than on any other field in America ;" and when Sheridan, the night before the surrender, had captured their last train of supplies, and Lee begged at once for rations, saying, "My own men have lived for the past few days principally upon parched corn, and we are badly in need of both rations and forage," the end had certainly come, not only to that long and terrible campaign against Richmond, but to the war. Within ten days after that battle of "Sailor's Creek," the whole army of Northern Virginia had surrendered to General Grant upon his own conditions, of "unconditional surrender," to be followed at once by the