Sherman sought permission of Grant to cut loose from his old line of supplies and seek an outlet on the Atlantic. About the 1st of November Grant gave his consent and blessing, and the preparation began in earnest. The wonderful thing which Jefferson Davis or no other person ever expected to occur Sherman now did : cut his own communications.

The railroad from Atlanta to Chattanooga was destroyed, many of the bridges which he had himself rebuilt were burned, and now it became a necessity to destroy all that part of Atlanta which could be of military advantage to the enemy after his departure. With his army of sixty-five thousand men, including five thousand five hundred cavalry organized into two corps or wings under O. O. Howard and H. W. Slocum, and the cavalry under Judson C. Kilpatrick, on the 16th of November, Sherman began his memorable march to the sea. The distance from Atlanta to Savannah is about three hundred miles. On the 21st of December he took possession of the latter place, Hardee, with a considerable force, having escaped from it towards Charleston during the preceding night. This wonderful march had been made with a loss of two or three hundred men, and a desolate track thirty or forty miles wide, including the two great railroads connecting Atlanta with Savannah and Charleston, marked where the "Confederacy" had again been cut in two.

CHAPTER XXV.

BEGINNING OF THE END-SHERMAN IN NORTH CAROLINA-FALL OF CHARLESTON-MR. LINCOLN'S COUNCIL WITH HIS GREAT CAPTAINS-FIVE FORKS-FALL OF RICHMOND-SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON-END OF THE WAR-CLOSING SCENES IN THE LIFE OF MR. LINCOLN-DEATII-THE NATION IN SORROW.

RANT had driven the rebel army from the Rap

GR

idan to Richmond. His loss had been great, but he could afford to lose two men to Lee's one. And even this would not represent the relative strength and resources of the two contending forces, by a great deal. The boastful and arrogant rebel leaders now began to feel how puny was their power in comparison with the skillfully handled and almost inexhaustible resources of the Government. The strong man was fixing a death grasp on the Rebellion. Its vital center had been torn asunder, and another onset would crush the reptile's head.

Petersburg, about twenty miles from Richmond, was considered the key to that place. It was a railroad center, was the direct way of connection with Wilmington and Charleston, and when it fell Richmond would be no longer tenable. Against this point Grant directed the greater part of his attention. during the fall and winter of 1864. But his great

army made slow progress. Lee not only held with great skill his long defensive works, but also occasionally sallied forth, striking his foe with telling effect. As the winter wore on, however, courage and hope died in the rebels. The army under Lee was rapidly melting away. Its numerical strength was always greatly exaggerated, and especially towards the end, when a handful of brave men in their strong intrenchments kept at bay Grant's vast army. Lee not only held his position at Petersburg and Richmond, but also in the fall of 1864 actually withdrew a part of his force for quite a pretentious sortie towards Washington and into Pennsylvania. This was, however, of little consequence, and Grant sent Sheridan, who finally cleared the Shenandoah Valley, and after becoming master of all the country north of Richmond, early in the spring joined Grant to take part in the final scenes of the Rebellion.

Sherman had in the mean time been instructed to move north to co-operate with the army around Richmond, and Thomas was ordered to operate in the same direction with his cavalry from East Tennessee. It had, perhaps, been a part of Grant's and Sherman's original plan, as discussed together soon after Grant was placed in command of all the armies, to push Sherman's force from Atlanta to the Gulf, but circumstances after the fall of Atlanta caused the General-in-Chief, as well as Sherman, to turn his thoughts towards the Atlantic Ocean. He at first thought that Sherman should follow up and defeat Hood before starting on this expedition, but when

he saw that he could give Thomas the necessary strength, he fell into Sherman's view that the favorable moment had arrived for the march through the country to the coast. This reached, he seemed to think the proper way for Sherman to join him was by the sea. Looking to this end he set to work to capture Wilmington, and this being done the Atlantic coast was clear of rebel control at all points in his way. But Sherman did not think it best to break the discipline of his army by a sea voyage, correctly believing that he could better serve the cause by marching overland. To this view Grant finally assented, too; and after conducting affairs in a lively and thorough manner in Savannah for a month, Sherman set out, towards the close of January, for Goldsboro, North Carolina.

In the meantime, pressed by necessity, Jefferson Davis had again called Joseph E. Johnston to the front, and put him in command of all the forces south of Virginia to operate against Sherman. But the most he could do was to keep out of Sherman's way. The Union army made a considerable bend to the interior, far enough to take in and destroy Columbia. Hardee also evacuated Charleston, and on the 18th of February, 1865, General Gillmore entered that city.

At Bentonville a considerable battle was fought, and throughout the march there was almost constant skirmishing. Still Sherman pursued his way, leaving desolation behind him, as he had done in Georgia. On the 21st of March he reached Goldsboro, where he found Schofield, whom Grant had sent, with over

twenty thousand men, from Wilmington. Leaving the army in the command of Schofield, Sherman went on to General Grant's head-quarters at City Point on the James River, nine miles from Petersburg, where on the 27th he met President Lincoln, General Grant, and Admiral David D. Porter, in council.

The 10th of April was fixed upon as the day for a general movement for the last struggle. Lee's line of defense was now thirty miles long, a length he had been compelled to take by Grant's repeated attempts to turn his right. The whole number of muskets actually guarding this line on the last day of March did not exceed a thousand to the mile. The most wonderful thing in all this bloody contest between Grant and Lee was the holding of this long line, even if it was well fortified, against the vast army before it. Grant knew the character of the heroic men on the inside, and preferred to wait until the moment came, which he knew would come, when he could take it without great loss of life among his own men. Lee did not share Mr. Davis's opinion that Richmond was absolutely essential to the life of the Rebellion, and would have abandoned it before it was too late to unite all their forces to overwhelm Sherman in his march through South Carolina. He saw the time was not far distant when Richmond would have to be abandoned. On the 2d of March, 1865, he sent a letter to Grant asking an interview for the purpose of determining if the controversy, as he termed it, could not be settled by a convention.