The enemy is obstinate, and seems to have found the last ditch We have lost no organization, not even a company, while we have destroyed and captured one division, one brigade, and one regiment entire of the enemy. U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General.

Several days were now spent in endeavoring to find some weak spot in the rebel line. The army was employed in constant movement from one portion of the line to another. At every point the Confederates had skillfully met movement by movement. Finding that all attempts to carry the position was hopeless, Grant resolved to turn it by a flank movement, and immediately commenced preparations to do so. The enemy discovering his plans attacked his right, and delayed the movement until the night of the 20th of May, when moving by the left, the army took up its march for Richmond.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM SPOTTSYLVANIA TO PETERSBURG.

Notwithstanding the desperate defense of the enemy, Grant was not disheartened or shaken in his purpose; with dogged perseverance he followed up one battle with another. Though he failed to fight it out on "that line all summer," the character of the man and the secret of his power was revealed in those words, and we find him again and again turning the Confederates from their entrenchments, and compelling them to secure another and still another line of defense.

The magnitude of such an undertaking is hardly understood. It is stated, by Abbott, that Grant's "vast army of one hundred thousand men-infantry, artillery, cavalry and baggage train-would fill in a continuous line of march, any road to its utmost capacity for a distance of 100 miles. In this march the immense army crowded the whole region over a breadth of ten to fifteen miles; all the public roads, cross roads and wood paths were traversed. One mind presided over these operations, as day after day, night after night, through darkness, through forests, through morasses, over streams and rivers, storming entrenchments, and fighting their way against a determined foe of a hundred thousand men, the Union troops pressed resistlessly on.

"General Lee was continually watching his opportunity to strike General Grant by a flank attack on his long line of march. But the foresight of General Grant, and the

heroism of his officers and soldiers, averted every danger. The foe made several attacks during the day, but in all he was repulsed. Our troops were now within forty miles of Richmond. In the race for the rebel metropolis, there was no time to be lost."

On the 21st Grant's advance reached the North Anna River; here he found the rebels gathered in force and

WINFIELD S. HANCOCK.

strongly entrenched. Hancock, who was in the advance, immediately opened upon the foe with a furious cannonade, following it up with a charge, driving the enemy from the entrenchments. The fol

lowing day the whole army crossed at different points with but little fighting.

By the 25th the entire army was in a strong position, stretching out about four miles on the south side of the river, with its base of supplies at Port Royal, about thirty miles below Fredericksburg. A reconnoissance sent out showed that the Confederates were so strongly entrenched, that their works could not be carried without great loss of life. Under cover of a strong demonstration against the foe General Grant withdrew, recrossed the river and marched down its northeastern bank to the Pamunkey, which is formed by a union of the North and South Anna.

Early Friday morning General Grant took possession of Hanover Ferry on the Pamunkey River, sixteen miles

from Richmond, making his base of supplies at the White House, but a few miles distant. His military strategy in this march from the Rapidan has ever excited the wonder and admiration of military critics; all the efforts of the able and experienced Lee, with an army nearly equal in number under his command--and as many more at Richmondto oppose this steady and unfaltering advance, were baffled.

On Sunday, the 29th, the entire army with all its baggage train, had crossed the Pamunkey in safety. On Wednesday morning, June 1, the advance cavalry force had reached Cold Harbor. General Sheridan was placed in command there with orders to hold the place at all hazards, and the promise of infantry re-inforcements before nightfall. Foiled in every attack by day, the rebels renewed it in the night, only to meet with disappointment; the struggle had been desperate, our soldiers losing two thousand men.

Posting his troops in line General Grant presented an unbroken front extending from Bethesda Church to Cold Harbor, a distance of eight miles. Assaults were continually made at various parts of the line by the foe, none of which met with any success; the National forces retaining their position.

General Grant was now on the ground made memorable during the "seven days" fight, under McClellan; he was in front of the formidable outer line of entrenchments erected for the defense of Richmond, behind which were not only Lee's veteran soldiers, but the garrison of Richmond had been called from the inner works to reinforce him. Without delay Grant determined to test the strength of these works. An assault was ordered to be made by the Sixth and Eighteenth Corps; while General Burnside attacked the left, the first line of works was carried

and held. The record of the day's fighting was like that

previously described; charges made with bravery and patriotism that feared not death; this was met by a courage as fearless as it was misplaced. In every instance the assault had failed. Thus nearly a week passed away; each day was like the preceding one, a day of frequent skirmishing, of con

stant practice of sharp

shooters, and incessant cannonading.

All this time the Union General was maturing plans for the most extraordinary movements of this or any other campaign, the transfer by flank of his entire army from the Chickahominy to the south side of the James. By obtaining twenty-four hours the start of the Confederates, he hoped to be able to seize a position to the south of Richmond, tapping the railroads concentrating at Petersburg, and in the event of defeating Lee, to prevent his retreat to the Carolinas, where he might be able to continue the conflict indefinitely. Abbott has graphically described this "change of base " as follows:

"On Sunday morning. June the 12th, the army, veiled from observation by its earthworks and by clouds of skirmishers, quietly commenced its march from its entrenchments. For miles these entrench. ments were within reach of the enemy's guns, Unseen and unsuspected in the movements, this majestic host of a hundred and fifty