"Soldiers, -The eyes of the whole country are looking with anxious hope to the blow you are about to strike in the most sacred cause that ever called men to arms. Remember your homes, your wives, and children; and bear in mind that the sooner your enemies are overcome, the sooner you will be returned to enjoy the benefits and blessings of peace. Bear with patience the hardships and sacrifices you will be called upon to endure. Have confidence in your officers and in each other. Keep your ranks on the march and on the battle-field, and let each man earnestly implore God's blessing, and endeavour by his thoughts and actions to render himself worthy of the favour he seeks. With clear conscience and strong arms, actuated by a high sense of duty, fighting to preserve the government and the institutions handed down to us by our forefathers, if true to ourselves, victory under God's blessing, must and will attend our efforts."

General Meade, however, retained only nominally the chief command, for henceforward all the operations of the Army of the Potomac were under the immediate direction and control of Lieutenant-General Grant.

He had three infantry corps of 30,000 each, distributed in four divisions. But at the end of April he was joined by General Burnside from Tennessee, whose forces, with the addition of the cavalry under General Sheridan, brought up the total number of his army to about 135,000 men. A separate division of 25,000 men was at the same time to act under General Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, and General Butler, with a body of 35,000 troops, was to Occupy the ground between the York and James rivers, and hold himself in readiness to co-operate with Grant at the proper

moment.

Richmond was defended by the army of Virginia, under the command of the veteran and well-tried soldier, General Lee. But to the south lay General Beauregard and his troops, who had quitted Charleston to protect the Confederate capital, and mustered 25,000 men. The defence of the Shenandoah Valley was entrusted to General Breckenridge, who had succeeded General Early.

Such was the strength and such the disposition of the hostile forces when Grant commenced his march upon Richmond by crossing the Rapidan with his left, on the night of the 3rd of May. His object was to reach, if possible, the Spottsylvania Court House, in the midst of the woods which cover the country to the south of Chancellorsville, before Lee could attack him. But the Confederate General was not to be taken unawares. He advanced to meet the coming tempest of war, and fiercely assaulted the Federal columns on the evening of the 5th of May-but with no decisive result. Next day the combat was renewed with increased fury; but in the mean time the Federals had been able to throw up intrenchments-which is always an easy matter in forest groundand thus they were better prepared than the day before to withstand the shock of the Confederate assault. The battle lasted the

whole day. General Longstreet fell, desperately wounded, and another Confederate General, Jenkins, was killed. The carnage on both sides was great, but neither of the combatants could rightfully claim the victory. But the Federal Government did, as usual, claim it, and President Lincoln issued a proclamation, stating that enough was known of the army operations to justify especial gratitude to God. He therefore recommended "that all patriots, at their homes, in their places of public worship, and wherever they might be, should unite in common thanksgiving and prayer to Almighty God."

In the mean time, General Butler had gone round by sea with a strong Federal force to the James River, where he landed, and crossing the Chickahominy, intrenched himself at Bermudalanding. He stated in his despatch to the Secretary of War that he had destroyed many miles of railroad, and got a position which, with proper supplies, he could hold against the whole of General Lee's army. He added in the characteristic language of an American, that he had " whipped" a portion of General Beauregard's force, "after a severe and well-contested fight."

Next day Lee did not attempt to attack, but stood on the defensive, while Grant pushed forward his left towards Spottsylvania Court House, where the chief roads of the district intersect each other. Lee's right, however, moved to intercept him, and drove back the advancing column of the Federals from the neighbourhood of the Court House.

We do not propose to give a detail of the bloody obstinate struggles which took place during the next ten days between the contending armies. In a letter received at Washington from one of the Federal Generals, he said, "Every body is fighting, and has been for eight days '."

In the result General Lee resolved to contract his line and draw closer to Richmond. To cover his real purpose he, on the 19th of May, made a feigned attack on the Federal right, but at the same time the great bulk of his army retired southward, and the whole Confederate force took up a strong position, not more than twenty miles from Richmond. His right was protected by a swamp, and his left by a rivulet, while his front was defended by intrench

1 We cannot give the amount of the killed on the side of the Federals during these engagements, but on the 16th of May the number of their wounded left under treatment at the temporary hospitals of

And this was exclusive of the losses of General Butler in the James River Peninsula and General Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley.

ments and works projecting forward like the convex curve of a bow.

General Grant, finding that the position of the Confederates was too strong to be attacked with any hope of success, moved towards the Pamunkey River on his left, and crossed it on the 27th and 28th of May, at a place called Hanover Town, distant about twelve miles from Richmond. This necessitated a corresponding change in General Lee's line, for his object was to interpose his army as a wall between the enemy and the Confederate capital, and make it impossible for Grant to attack Richmond without first encountering and defeating himself; and he had the advantage over the Federals that while they were obliged to move on a wider circle, he could, by describing a much smaller arc, always confront them,-with the defences of Richmond on his rear, on which he could fall back in case of need.

On the 1st of June, the Federal left made an unsuccessful attempt to turn General Lee's right near Coal Harbour, on the road from White House to Richmond-and on the 6th, General Grant again attacked him at the point where his lines crowned some eminences north of the Chickahominy-but he was compelled to retire with considerable loss. On the evening of the same day the Confederates became the assailants, and attacked Grant's left, but were equally unsuccessful. In fact, as a general rule throughout this terrible war, it has been found that the party who attacks his opponent fails. This, no doubt, is in a great measure due to the nature of the country-full of woods and natural means of defence-which enable an army to intrench itself strongly in a very short space of time. The consequence is that the assailant generally finds that he has to storm a kind of fortified camp in order to come to close quarters with the enemy.

General Grant now resolved upon a change of plan which took every body by surprise. He abandoned the line of the Chickahominy, and transferred his whole army to the south side of the James River. He might have gained the same point without the loss of a man, if instead of marching by land, and fighting a series of unsuccessful battles, he had embarked his troops on board ship and sailed from the neighbourhood of Washington to the peninsula. Like a wolf round a sheepfold he had been for weeks prowling round the forces of the Confederates-moving on the arc of a wide circle towards the south of Richmond, and he found himself at last, after a terrible waste of life, just where he might have been without the sacrifice of a single soldier. He was in hopes that by this manœuvre he might surprise Petersburg, against which he detached a body of 15,000 men, under General Baldy Smith; and the assault was so furiously made, that the outer works of the Confederates were carried by storm. But the Federals could penetrate no further, and although General Grant came up with his whole force, an attack by him on the inner lines of defence, on the 15th of June, was repulsed with heavy loss. He was obliged to retire, and

intrenched himself in a camp a mile and a half from Petersburgwhich was now regularly besieged.

In the mean time, General Sheridan had been detached from the army of the Potomac, and sent by Grant to operate in the Shenandoah Valley. Here Sigel had been severely beaten by Breckenridge, on the 15th of May, and driven back to Winchester with heavy loss.

Great exultation was felt in the Federal States by the news that the Confederate cruiser, "Alabama," which was long the terror of the merchantmen of the North, and had hitherto defied the utmost efforts of the United States' navy to capture her, had been destroyed on the 19th of June, in a naval engagement with the Federal ship "Kearsage," off Cherbourg, on the coast of France. The "Alabama," which was commanded by Captain Semmes, had put into Cherbourg for repairs, and the "Kearsage lay waiting for her outside. A French man-of-war followed the Alabama out of the port, to prevent a violation of international law, by the commencement of the combat too near shore-and the fight took place about nine miles from Cherbourg. It was short and decisive. The "Kearsage was defended by iron chains hanging over the bulwarks, upon which the shot from the "Alabama" could make no impression, and at the end of an hour from the beginning of the engagement, the "Alabama" was disabled, and in a sinking state. She soon afterwards went down with some of the crew on board, but many of them, together with Captain Semmes, and thirteen officers, were saved by the boats of an English steam yacht, the "Deerhound," which had accompanied the "Alabama" harbour, to be a spectator of the fight.

out of

It will be interesting to see what the financial condition of the United States is under the pressure of prolonged war, and we propose to give some extracts from a very able report drawn up in the early part of the present year, by Mr. Stuart, Her Majesty's Secretary of Legation at Washington, who derived his information from the reports presented to Congress, by Mr. Secretary Chase, for 1861, 1862, and 1863-and also from the report for 1860, of Mr. Chase's predecessor, Mr. Cobb :--

"The following will show the amount of the public debt, and of the interest paid thereon at the end of each of the last four financial years:-In 1860, the public debt was 13,299,733., bearing an interest of 650,3721.; in 1861, debt 18,658,6917., interest 821,3907.; in 1862, debt 105,587,5097., interest 2,708,4857.; and in 1863, debt 225,624,8837., interest 5,077,9971. The same statistics for the current year and for 1865, according to Mr. Chase's estimates for those years, will give the following results :-For 1864, public debt 346,397,6677., interest payable 12,148,8987.; for 1865, debt 458,302,9137., interest 17,533,4037.

"The following shows the receipts from all sources, including loans, and the expenditure during each of the years, those for 1864 and 1865 being, of course, only estimated as the probable amounts

by Mr. Secretary Chase-In 1860 the receipts were 16,651,1927., and the expenditure 15,905,9757.; in 1861, receipts 17,830,7807., expenditure 17,367,3177.; in 1862, receipts 119,894,3017., expenditure 117,215,9547.; in 1863, receipts 185,036,0727., expenditure 183,941,8137.; for 1864 the estimated receipts are 155,147,5367., the estimated expenditure 153,949,0677.; and for 1865, estimated receipts 42,471,5687., the estimated expenditure 154,376,8147. With regard to the returns for 1863, Mr. Chase explains that 37,183,0877., included in both receipts and expenditure, were borrowed for the payment of the existing funded and temporary debt, and were spent accordingly. The estimated receipts for 1865 do not include those which will be acquired from loans.

"It will now be interesting to show the extent to which Congress has provided the means required for the prosecution of the war, and how far the Secretary of the Treasury has availed himself of the extraordinary powers which have been entrusted to him. The calculation has been made easy by a table which Mr. Chase has annexed to his last report, giving a synopsis of the various Acts of Congress by which loans have been authorized, and showing the amounts authorized as well as those respectively issued in virtue of such Acts. Taking these collectively since the commencement of the war, it appears that during the period between July 1861 and March 1863, Congress authorized loans to the amount of 268,993,8391., exclusive of an unspecified amount of certificates of indebtedness, payable in one year from date, and bearing interest at the rate of 6 per cent. No less than 104,722,7927. of the above might be issued in United States legal tender notes bearing no interest, or in fractional currency; and the amount of such notes actually outstanding on June 30, 1863, appears to have been 84,433,2781., and on September 30, 1863, 86,760,837%. Of the interest-bearing debt raised during the same period by Mr. Chase, and outstanding on June 30, 1863, there was 122,532,9127., and on September 30, 1863, 145,595,6357. These sums include respectively 32,193,8897., and 32,221,4457. issued in certificates of indebtedness. The total amount of debt, therefore, actually raised from loans during the two years ending on June 30, 1863, and outstanding at that date, was 206,966,190%, and the addition made to it up to September 30, 1863, raised it at the latter date to 232,356,4727., and the entire outstanding debt at the same date to 250,947,3427.

"It has been seen that Mr. Secretary Chase estimates that on June 30 next the total debt will amount to 346,397,6677, an increase of 135,055,2367. during the current year; and that on June 30, 1865, it will amount to 458,302,9137., a further increase of 111,905,2467. The total amount added to the public debt during the four years ending on June 30, 1865, will be no less than 439,644,2227., according to Mr. Chase's present calculation.

"It remains to notice the small proportion, as compared with the expenditure or with the sums raised from loans, of the revenue of the country derived from taxation or from sources other than