opposing lines in this part of the ground remained substantially the same in position to the close of the war." The losses on the Union side, from the beginning to the end of the assaults on the enemy's lines, reached ten thousand. Those on the enemy's side have never been known, the policy of the Confederates having been to conceal losses; but there is no reason to doubt, from the accounts of observers on the field, that they were very great. The regular investment and siege of Petersburg now began, a siege characterized by many engagements, and lasting over so long a period, that the most cursory account of it demands its formal initiation in a special chapter.*

* Following the events narrated, General Smith, from having been apparently high in Grant's favor, fell suddenly and unaccountably from that estate. It would have been singular if he or any one else had then been able to reach a rational conclusion as to the change among the many possible explanations of it which then offered themselves for choice. But it is remarkable that now, in the light with which documents and the evidence in General Smith's own book, "From Chattanooga to Petersburg," have flooded the subject, he should have failed to discover at least one cause of the animus to which he owed his unfortunate experience, although he says that, at the very time referred to, Grant had charged him with having, by his strictures on Meade, whipped him over Meade's shoulders. If Grant were able to conceive so great a dislike as he exhibited for Warren, merely because of Warren's objectionable habit of making suggestions to modify the plans of his superiors, it is easy to understand what deep offence he must have received at remarks which, however unintentionally, struck at the very root of his own procedures. He had a personal purpose to serve in re-exalting, after having taken steps to dispose of Butler, who had great political influence, and another in withdrawing his favor from General Smith; and deeply politic and quietly vindictive as he could on occasions be, he was able, in this case, to subserve his ends by a Machiavelian combination, which included his resentment and personal interests (then perilously at stake from the popular feeling about the army's losses), under the most convenient cloak lent by circumstances as adventitious as it is possible to imagine.

CHAPTER XXIV.

PRELIMINARY TO THE SIEGE.

As, before the Army of the Potomac can settle down to its attempt to invest Petersburg, the loose threads produced by the interaction of the contending forces have to be gathered in, so too must the historian of events relating to them attend to a description of these before the regular narrative of the siege can begin.

Immediately following the last heavy fighting on the 18th of June, in the vain attempt to carry the defences of Petersburg by assault, the two sides, as already mentioned, remained to the end of the siege in substantially the same positions on the right of the field as that in which they had found themselves when those severe conflicts had ceased. In the evening of the 19th the two divisions of the three composing the Sixth Corps, which had been sent to Burmuda Hundred on the occasion when they had crossed the James, rejoined the Army of the Potomac. On the 20th the various corps of the army were posted, counting from right to left, in the following order, the Eighteenth, Sixth, Second, Ninth, and Fifth. On the following day the Second and Sixth were withdrawn from between the Eighteenth and Ninth, the Eighteenth and Ninth closing in together their left and right flanks respectively, while the Second marched to the left and took position there in the general line of development to the west, and the Sixth was ordered to take position, nearly at right-angles to it, facing the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, distant then from the left-extension of the Army of the Potomac by about three

miles. This movement constituted the first attempt at extension of the left flank towards the west. It implies that the right was already strong enough in its temporary works to admit of being stripped in a measure of troops for their projection towards the left. That was the general procedure to the end of the siege, looking to the capture of the enemy's sources of supplies in his railroads. The immediate objective on this occasion was the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad. But so little was known at this time of the enemy's capacity of resistance, that it was hoped by General Meade that the first attempt to extend the line towards the left might result in reaching the Appomattox above Petersburg. In point of fact, however, the lines of contravallation never reached near that point. This was the critical one for the enemy. As the attacking lines passed on the south of Petersburg from east to west, threatening the railroads from Richmond and Petersburg towards the west and south, they were held off by the enemy with most strenuous exertions, as the prime condition of his being able to sustain the siege for any length of time.

The Second Corps came into position on the left of the Fifth during the day of the 21st of June, the Sixth Corps, on the left-rear of the Second Corps, during the night. During the day a division of the Second Corps made a reconnoissance in force towards the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad. The enemy had a signal advantage at this period over the Army of the Potomac, from the fact that he necessarily had perfect knowledge of the country, which, being heavily wooded, was dangerous to a hostile force attempting to penetrate it. On the 22d of June the Second Corps, resting its right on the left of the Fifth, swung forward its left, to close in towards the enemy's works, at the same time that the Sixth, nearly at right-angles to it, was moving

towards the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, when, owing to the difficulty, on account of the wooded character of the country, of keeping up knowledge of the intervening space between the left of the Second and the right of the Sixth, and also on account of the left of the Second not being sufficiently on its guard against a counter-movement by the enemy, the Confederate general, A. P. Hill, bore down into the open space between the two corps with three divisions, and attacking the right of the Sixth Corps with one division, he launched the other two on the left-rear of the Second Corps. This, from left to right, was represented by the divisions of Barlow, Mott, and Gibbon, the last being next to the left of the Fifth Corps. Barlow's division, naturally the first struck, recoiled towards the position which it had held before the corps was pivoted on its right, losing a great many prisoners. Mott, having time to take in the situation, fell back to better advantage, and therefore with smaller loss. Gibbon's division, whose flank was thus left naked to the enemy's advance towards its left-rear, suffered the greatest loss in prisoners. The enemy retired with his spoils, and the Second Corps did not regain its advanced position until the next morning. then finally made secure by the right of the Sixth Corps, facing the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, joining the left flank of the Second Corps, facing Petersburg. The refused part of the line was now about a mile and a half from the railroad. But the railroad still remained in the enemy's possession, and so continued for some time, as General Wilson who had, on the 22d, been sent on a cavalry raid, found to his cost in attempting at its enforced conclusion to return to the Army of the Potomac across that route.

The line was

The reader will remember that, in the chapter on cooperative columns, it was mentioned that, on the 7th of June, Sheridan had gone on an expedition to destroy the

enemy's railroad communications north of Richmond, and, if possible, to join Hunter at Charlottesville, and uniting forces with him, to return to the Army of the Potomac ; but that he was unable to do so, Hunter having perforce beaten a retreat from Lynchburg north by the way of the Kanawha Valley, leaving the Shenandoah Valley open to an advance by Early, which he soon made on Washington; an advance which would have resulted in the capture of the city on the 12th of July, but for the opportune sending and arrival there of two divisions of the Sixth Corps, and that of a part of the Nineteenth, just come by sea from New Orleans. The order of precedence, growing out of priority of date in the initiation of the respective enterprises undertaken requires us to take up at this point the further movements of Sheridan until he rejoined the Army of the Potomac.

General Sheridan, with two of his three divisions of cavalry, having left the army at Cold Harbor, on the 7th of June, with ample subsistence and a pontoon-train, proceeded along the north bank of the North Anna, his intended destination being Charlottesville, and his mission the destruction of the Central Virginia and the Richmond and Fredericksburg Railroads and return with the army of General Hunter. On the evening of the 10th he crossed the North Anna at Trevylian Station, on the Central Virginia Railroad, Generals Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee only a few miles distant from him with their cavalry, one towards the northwest and the other towards the east. On the morning of the IIth severe encounters between the respective forces, with varying success, took place, the final advantage remaining with Sheridan. Learning by night the futility of trying to join forces with Hunter, Sheridan concluded to return to the Army of the Potomac by the way of Spottsylvania and the White House. Incidentally to so doing, he effected, on the 12th, considerable railroad destruction, and his advance