On the morning of the 31st of March the force of the enemy which afterward attacked our cavalry in front of Dinwiddie had dealt rather roughly with General Warren's command, and repulsed his effort to gain the White Oak Road. It is not important to refer to this except that the lieutenant-general's report speaks disparagingly of General Warren in connection with this affair, which doubtless influenced the action of both these officers in the events of the following day. When the enemy had withdrawn from his front General Warren pushed up, and took possession of the White Oak Road, just where the right of Lee's fortified lines protecting Petersburg ends, three or four miles to the east of Five Forks, and in the rear, of course, of the enemy's troops at Dinwiddie, which, it will be seen, were thus cut off from the main body of their army. While carrying on this operation on their own account, General Grant wished to take advantage of their adventurous isolation to throw the Fifth Corps upon them

To carry

and annihilate them. out this design, General Warren was ordered, through General Meade, to move his command as stated in the dispatch of the lieutenant-general to General Sheridan; the movement by the Boydton Plank Road being against the enemy's flank, and that by Boisseau's house directly upon their rear.

It would be tedious to follow the course of General Warren's narrative of the obstacles he encountered in attempting to comply with this order, and the civilian reader will be glad to be spared a full discussion as to whether they might have been overcome; but some of the difficulties he found seem almost incompatible with the condition of active warfare in which we were supposed to be. Fancy, for instance, a command so near to the enemy that it "could not be roused by drums or bugle calls, or loud commands, with safety," and yet which could not be roused by other means in less than an hour and a half! Fancy critical movements expected at any moment the enemy within earshot, and a