Meade ordered an attack by the balance of our lines. General Hancock, the only one who received the order in time to make the attack before dark, drove the enemy from his intrenched line and held it." Warren, at this point, was within seven miles of Richmond. Birney's division of Hancock's corps the next day carried a portion of the enemy's outer intrenchments. General Sheridan, late in the afternoon, perceiving a force of rebel cavalry at Cold Harbor, in our rear, which proved to be Fitz Lee's division, attacked and, after a hard fight, routed it together with Clingman's brigade of infantry which came to Lee's support. Sheridan remained in possession of the place, reporting, at dark, that he had a considerable number of prisoners, and that there were many rebel dead and wounded on the field.* The contest was renewed with greater numbers the next day, June 1st, when General Grant, having brought down Wright's corps by the rear to the left, where it was joined by General W. F. Smith's command, just arrived from General Butler's department, ordered these forces to sieze and occupy the ground at Cold Harbor, which, being a point of vital importance on the road from our base of supplies at White House, was resolutely disputed by the enemy. Warren, Burnside, and Hancock were held in readiness to advance in their respective points. "The attack," said General Grant, in a dispatch the next day, "was made with spirit about 5 P. M., continuing until after dark, and resulting in our carrying the enemy's works on the right of the Sixth Corps, where we still hold them, and also the first line in front of Smith. The latter, however, were commanded in the rear, which made those carried untenable. The enemy made repeated assaults on

* Dispatch from General Grant communicated by Sec

retary Stanton, June 2d, 1864.

+ Stanton's dispatch of June 2d.

each of the corps not engaged in the main assault, but were repulsed with loss in every instance. Several hundred prisoners were taken. During the night the enemy made several assaults to regain what they had lost, but failed." Our loss in this engagement was estimated at 2,000 killed and wounded. There were no operations the next day, but on the following the contest was renewed, General Grant ordering a general attack on the enemy's lines. Hancock's corps was brought in the night from the right to the extreme left, the order of the army corps from the right now being Burnside, Warren, Smith, Wright, Hancock. The line ran nearly parallel with that of the Chickahominy, at a distance of a mile and a-half to two miles and a-half north of it, the enemy directly in front holding the north bank of the river. Breckinridge's command, it is said, occupied the enemy's right, with Beauregard on the right centre, Longstreet on the left centre, Ewell on the left, and Hill in reserve. The assault was made by our whole line about 4 in the morning. "We drove the enemy," says General Grant, in a dispatch at 3 o'clock of that day, "within his intrenchments at all points, but without gaining any decisive advantage. Our troops now occupy a position close to the enemy, at some places within fifty yards, and are remaining. Our loss was not severe, nor do I suppose the enemy to have lost heavily. We captured over 300 prisoners, mostly from Breckinridge." A late official report that day accredited by Secretary Stanton, estimated the number of our killed and wounded at about 3,000. Colonel Hassell of the Thirty-sixth Wisconsin; Colonel Porter of the Eighth New York Heavy Artillery; Colonel Morris of the Sixty-sixth New York were among the killed. General R. O. Tyler was seriously wounded, threatening the loss of a foot. The main fighting in this action * Army and Navy Journal, June 11th, 1864.

tirely successful, the departure being a surprise to the enemy, and the march so skillfully conducted and with such celerity, that they were unable to offer any resistance. On Monday evening the advance reached Wilcox's Landing, and on Tuesday the whole force crossed the James at Powhatan Point on pontoons, prepared by General Butler for the purpose. General Smith's troops were at the same time coming up the river. In briefly reviewing the movement, General Grant, in a dispatch, says: "Our forces drew out from within fifty yards of the enemy's intrenchments at Cold Harbor, made a flank movement of about fifty-five miles' march, crossing the Chickahominy and James Rivers, the latter 2,000 feet wide and eighty-four feet deep at the point of crossing, without the loss of a wagon or piece of artillery, and only about 150 stragglers picked up by the enemy. In covering this move, Warren's corps and Wilson's cavalry had frequent skirmishing with the enemy, each losing from fifty to sixty killed and wounded, but inflicting an equal if not greater loss upon the enemy.

The motives and promise of the strategy of General Grant were thus summed up by an acute army correspondent frequently cited in these pages. "This splendid stroke," wrote Mr. Swinton, comparable only to Moreau's passage of the Rhine and flank march on Ulm, stands to-day an accomplished fact: the Army of the Potomac, taken up, as in the arms of a giant, is transported from the Chickahominy and planted south of the James River and south of Richmond. Now begins a new act in the grand war drama. We shall operate on new and unattempted lines, looking to new and hitherto unattainable results. I think there are few military men who do not now feel that the present position of the Army of the Potomac gives us reason to indulge brighter hopes. of ultimate success than has been possible at any time

since the war began. The south side is the true line of operation against Richmond looking to great ulterior results. Of the three cardinal maxims of strategy, the most important of all prescribes to operate on the enemy's communications without endangering your own.' Now, the operations of the Virginia campaign have been conducted under circumstances that made it impossible to apply this principle. General Grant has aimed assiduously to bring on a great decisive field fight with the hope of crushing the rebel army. But from the nature of the country, its prodigious facilities for defence, and the skill of the opposing General, this has been impossible. We gained victories; we steadily pushed the enemy back, and in an unparalleled campaign of twenty-nine days, forced Lee from the Rapidan to the front of Richmond. But no decisive results were accomplished. Lee's army is an army of veterans; it is an instrument sharpened to a perfect edge. You turn its flanks; well, its flanks are made to be turned; that effects little or nothing. All that we can reckon as gained, therefore, is the loss of life inflicted on the enemy, and of having reached a point thus near the objective; but no brilliant military results. In loss of life we were undoubtedly suffering more severely than the rebels; I think we may fairly say in the proportion of five to their three. Now it is obvious that we could not have long stood thus. Whatever preponderance of numbers we might have would soon disappear— would soon become an equality, and presently an inferiority. The rebel army might have been worn away by attrition; but we should ourselves have been exhausted in the process. The hammer would have been broken on the anvil.

"By the present move a new order of operation begins. We not only threaten the communications of the enemy, we plant ourselves across his com

munications. The communications of the rebel army are the great lines of railroad by Petersburg and Danville and their connections. Richmond, as a city, Richmond as a military centre, is strictly dependent on these lines for its supplies. Cut it off from these and you have a tourniquet around its throat. It may have a month's supplies, or three months', or six months', but these exhausted and it must succumb. If Lee allows himself to be shut up within Richmond, therefore, the problem reduces itself to a repetition of Vicksburg over again. Will he do so? That is a question. But this is the pitiless alternative to which Lee is now reduced: to stay in Richmond and suffer the fatal lines of circumvallation to be drawn around him, or to come out of his works and give battle. Now a fair field-fight is precisely what the Army of the Potomac invites and welcomes; it will gladly give the rebels man for man, and engage to defeat them withal. If Lee is unwilling to run this risk, he retires within the defences of Richmond, and we then hold precisely the relations held by the allies to Napoleon defending Paris in 1814. It was in vain then that that consummate master put forth a generalship that recalled the splendors of the first great Italian campaign; in

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vain he threw his masses on different points of the investing line. If Lee is not a better general than Napoleon, he can hardly hope for a much better fate. With the Army of the Potomac planted at or north of Petersburg, we there tap the great railroad line connecting Richmond with the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf States. When there, Grant may be able to throw his left across the Danville road, and in this case Richmond is isolated. If his plan does not contemplate so great a development of front, he will at least provide for the effectual destruction of the latter road; and this, as well as the destruction of the Western (Lynchburg) road and the James River Canal, will be an easy prey to our cavalry, which, under the hands of Sheridan, has almost put the rebel cavalry out of existence. The reduction of Fort Darling is an incidental piece of work, which will be gladly contended for by some of the able engineering heads of the Army of the Potomac. In the mean time we have a perfectly secure and convenient base, the James River, to which all the transportation lately at White House has been forwarded."*

*Correspondence New York Times, June 18th, 1864.

line, and Lynchburg on the Tennessee line, flanking the other on the west, the supplies of Richmond would be cut off, and its fall or surrender be secured. At least, nothing could save it but the thorough destruction by Lee of Grant's