efficiency of such works as numerically equivalent to more than a third increase of troops, and in another, to more than quadrupling them, a statement, doubtless, inad

vertent.

Moving by night, the Army of the Potomac had, by daylight of the 27th of May, regained the northern bank of the North Anna. Southeast was the direction of the renewed line of march. A division of the Sixth Corps, followed by the rest of the Sixth Corps, and then by the Second, both preceded by two divisions of General Sheridan's cavalry, and followed by one division of it as rearguard, while the Fifth and Ninth followed roads further to the left, represents the first order of march adopted for the renewed advance. Now the aim of the advancing army is to cross the Pamunkey. We have passed going south the western branches of the Mattapony, the Ny and Po, the Ta and the Mat. As the army, having crossed and re-crossed the North Anna, is now about to cross the Pamunkey, which is formed by the confluence of the North Anna and the South Anna, it is evident that it is sidling off towards the southeast between the Mattapony and the Pamunkey.

The cavalry, preceding the advanced division of the Sixth Corps, arrived in the morning of the 27th of May at Hanovertown, crossed the Pamunkey there and uncovered the fords in the vicinity. Before noon of the 28th the Fifth Corps crossed at the same place. Soon after noon of the 28th the Second Corps and two divisions of the Sixth crossed the river four miles above Hanovertown. The Ninth Corps crossed at Hanovertown, but not until the middle of the night of the 28th. Lee having been moving on parallel lines with Grant, was now again athwart his path on the roads to Richmond. Here occurred battles along Totopotomoy Creek and at Cold Harbor, the account of which

will be postponed while following for a moment the course of closely-related simultaneous events, traced in outline in the next chapter; events which had either the effect of influencing from a distance the fortunes of the past battlefields and the approaching one, or of bringing personally upon the present scene actors who have not before appeared.

CHAPTER XXI.

CO-OPERATIVE COLUMNS.

ACCORDING to prearrangement, the armies of Banks in the Southwest, of Sherman in the Middle States, of Sigel in the Valley of the Shenandoah, and of Butler on the James, had started with the Army of the Potomac at virtually the same time, the 4th of May, generally at exactly the same time. No extended reference to Banks's and Sherman's armies is permissible here, but the operations of Sigel's and Butler's armies, being intimately related to those of the Army of the Potomac, must at this point receive notice. Butler's force, called the Army of the James, consisted of the Tenth and Eighteenth Corps, respectively commanded by Generals Q. A. Gilmore and Wm. F. Smith, commonly known as "Baldy" Smith, and of a cavalry corps, commanded by General A. V. Kautz. Why these men, or indeed any military men, should have been under the immediate command of General B. F. Butler is explicable only by the fact of Butler's political influence, and that political influence, irrespective of individual merit, is the funeral pyre of modern society, upon which is sacrificed at intervals the highest interests of nations.

Under orders, Butler concentrated his infantry at Yorktown and Gloucester, on the York River, as a feint of going up that river to join Grant's army moving south. In the night of the 4th of May, the same day that the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan, Butler's troops slipped down the York River on transports, and under escort of a naval force, under Rear-Admiral S. P. Lee, passed into and