paper, one hundred and sixty thousand men, but in reality less than fifty thousand, from which, if there be deducted the troops on detached duty, it will appear that he had forty thousand men with which to defend forty miles of intrenchments.

These were the forlorn hope of the rebellion. Corralled between the two great Union armies, in the restricted space between the James and the Neuse and the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, it was manifest that the end was near. It only remains to show how in the last wrestle these men comported themselves, and how when they at last broke down under a burden too heavy to bear, the fabric of the revolt which they had for four years upheld on their bayonets, fell with a crash that resounded through the world.

II.

LEE'S INITIATIVE.

The glories of spring-tide that adorned the hills and vales of beautiful Virginia, and made her woods vocal with the song of birds, brought no vernal promise to the sad army of wearied and half-famished men that lay in the trenches of Petersburg. They knew that the sun that thawed the frost from the roads did but make paths on which the adversary, with whom they could no longer hope to cope, would move to their destruction. There was one consoling reflection to them, however: the end was near. And, after all their fatigues and privations, even this was welcome. Yet it was an army of high mettle and of great traditions, and it could not do otherwise than prepare to go down with honor.

In the situation in which Lee found himself there was but one course open to him whereby he might hope to prolong the contest. This was to abandon the effort to defend Richmond and retire to an interior line, either in the direction of

Lynchburg or Danville, where uniting with the forces of Johnston he might, by maintaining a defensive system, cause the Union army to undertake a long and costly campaign. This would indeed have been to give up the Confederate capital, but with a re-enforcement of twenty thousand men Lee could have shown that the capital was at his headquarters.

Now, waiving the ethical question of the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the cause whereof Lee was the military head, it was manifestly his duty as a soldier to maintain the struggle as long as possible. The turns of fortune in war are infinitely various, and many an army has come out of a seemingly desperate strait triumphant. A Southern writer has indeed averred that Lee intended to surrender before evacuating Richmond. If so, he was guilty of the murder of every one of his soldiers that fell after that intent was formed. But it is not by the standard of such men's pusillanimous instincts that the soul of a great commander is to be judged. Lee, beyond a doubt, never meant to surrender until he was compelled to surrender.

It is now certain that at this time the Confederate commander had fully resolved to adopt the course of evacuating Petersburg and Richmond and effecting a junction with the forces of Johnston on the Danville line. Preparations for the intended movement were begun early in the month of March: Johnston was to refuse his left if Sherman advanced; flatboats were collected for bridging the affluents of the Roanoke; rations were to be accumulated at Amelia Courthouse, and the line of retreat and columns of march were arranged. Before he could put this purpose into execution, however, it was necessary for Lee to assume the offensive against Grant -not so much in obedience to the rule of art that prescribes a vigorous stroke of offence as the best mask for a withdrawal, but for a special reason which it is important here to indicate because it has not hitherto been understood.

In the plan of retreat which Lee had marked out for his army he did not purpose moving by the north bank of the Appomattox, but by the south side, which is much the shorter

line to Amelia Courthouse, which was the point of concentration of his columns on the Danville railroad. The direct route. to that place is by what is known as the Cox road, which leaves Petersburg above the Boydton plankroad and runs due west, following the line of the Appomattox. But by the gradual extension of the left of the Army of the Potomac towards the Boydton plankroad, the flank of the Union line approached so near the Cox road as to make Lee's withdrawal thereby a very perilous operation. He resolved, therefore, to strike a sudden blow, and to give this blow such a direction that it would be necessary for Grant to withdraw his left, which would completely relieve Lee's proposed line of retreat. This object he supposed would be best realized by striking the contrary flank from that on which he wished the effect to be produced. Accordingly, he planned to break through the right of the Union line hard by where that flank rested on the Appomattox east of Petersburg. Special considerations of a topographical character indicated Fort Steadman as the most advantageous point of attack.

The project of assaulting the Union front at all was bold. The Army of the Potomac lay ensconced in its lines of contravallation. A cordon of redoubts of a powerful profile and armed with the heaviest metal, studded this line. Infantry parapets, amply manned, stretched from work to work. Covering the fronts of approach were labyrinthine acres of abatis, while all the appliances of ditches, entanglements, and chevaux de frise lent their aid to make defence sure and assault folly. But plans in war are sometimes successful on account of their very boldness; and Lee's purpose was to seize Fort Steadman and the neighboring works, crown the commanding ground in rear of this part of the Federal line and lay hold of the military railway to City Point. If Grant turned to fight him in this position, he was prepared to receive battle, but if Grant should make a detour towards City Point to recover his communications, the Confederate commander designed, instead of awaiting attack, to withdraw immediately. In any event, Lee counted that the blow struck at Grant's

right would cause the retirement of his left flank, where was the greater accumulation of force, and that thus the Cox road would be rendered entirely free. The morning of the 25th of March was appointed for the attack. It was to be made by two divisions under Gordon; but to render it as forcible as possible, all the additional troops available (about twenty thousand men) were disposed ready to support it.

The opposing lines were, at the locality of Fort Steadman, very close-that work being on a considerable salient: so that the interval was not above one hundred and fifty yards. This part of the line was garnished by troops of the Ninth Corps. In the gray dawn the Confederate column of attack, having previously formed, moved out noiselessly from the works. The space to be overpassed being not great, a rush of a few moments brought the Confederates to the Union intrenchments, which must have been guarded with little vigilance; for Fort Steadman was surprised and taken by a coup de main. Of the garrison of the Fort, which was the Fourteenth New York foot-artillerists, many were taken prisoners and the rest fled. The Third brigade of the First division of the Ninth Corps met a similar fate. The guns of the captured redoubt were immediately turned by the Confederates on the neighboring works, and in consequence batteries Nine, Ten, and Eleven, on its flanks, were abandoned by the Union troops and occupied by the enemy.

Thus far the triumph; but it was destined to be shortlived. To rift open the system of Union works it was necessary that the wedge thus entered should be driven home; or, in other words, it was needful that the storming-party should be followed up and sustained by a powerful column to pass beyond and seize the commanding crest in rear of the Federal line. Till this was done nothing was gained; for in the system of fortification on which the Federal line was constructed, a partial break in the line was not an irretrievable loss-each work being so well commanded by those on its flanks that to make any one point tenable by an enemy every thing on its right and left must be cleared.

It is well known that there was great dereliction of duty on the part of the supporting columns; for Gordon's attack was left almost wholly unsupported, notwithstanding that Lee had massed in the vicinity all his available force. Those who had gone forward then made a feeble attempt against Fort Hascall, the work next on the left of Fort Steadman. They could, however, make no impression on this; and no sooner had they rallied on Fort Steadman than they found themselves not only subjected to a terrible artillery fire, but in turn assailed by the troops of the Ninth Corps brought forward to meet the emergency. The counter-assault was made by Hartranft's division; and it now needed little to determinə the Confederates to retire. Yet to withdraw was less easy than it had been to advance, for the lines of retreat were so covered by the cross-fire of artillery directed from all the adjacent works that the Confederates found themselves corralled in the narrow space between the two lines, and about two thousand preferred to give themselves up as prisoners rather than brave the deadly perils of the rain of fire.

The primal stroke had, indeed, been brilliant, but not being pushed to a conclusion, it left no solid advantage to the enemy, while it entailed a loss that could be ill afforded by Lee. This embraced not alone the captures above noted, but a heavy sacrifice in killed and wounded-probably not less than twenty-five hundred, which was the aggregate of the Union casualties.

Nor was this affair unaccompanied by some positive military advantages to the Union side. Employing that manoeuvre which in fencing is known as the riposte or parry and thrust, General Meade threw forward the whole line of the Sixth and Second corps, which were to the left of the Ninth, and the troops succeeded in wresting from the Confederates their strongly-intrenched picket-line, which gave ground that was of value in the subsequent assaults.

Admirably as Lee's plan was laid, admirably as it was adapted to effect the desired end of relieving the pressure upon his right, the failure of the execution was most signal. This