It is essential to a clear understanding of the events, directly preceding the fall of the Confederacy, to pause here and glance at the means with which that result was so long delayed, but at last so fully accomplished.

From official northern sources, we learn that General Grant crossed the Rapidan with three corps, averaging over 47,000 men. Therefore, he must have fought the battles of the Wilderness with at least 140,000 men. At that time the total strength of General Lee's morning report did not show 46,000 men for duty. Between the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, Grant was re-enforced to the extent of near 48,000 picked men; and again at Cold Harbor with near 45,000 more. Northern figures admit an aggregate of 97,000 re-enforcement between the Rapidan and the James! In that time, Lee, by the junction of Breckinridge and all the fragments of brigades he could collect, received less than 16,000 re-enforcement; and even the junction with Beauregard scarcely swelled his total additions over 20,000.

Grant's army, too, was composed of the picked veterans of the North—for his Government had accepted large numbers of hundred-day men for local and garrison duty, that all the seasoned troops might be sent him. Yet with an aggregate force of 234,000 men, opposed to a total of less than 63,000, General Grant failed signally in the plan, or plans of his campaign—losing in twenty-six days, and nine heavy fights and several skirmishes, seven men for one of General Lee's!

Can any candid thinker analyze these results and then believe Grant a strategist—a great soldier—anything but a pertinacious fighter? Can one realize that anything but most obstinate bungling could have swung such an army round in a complete circle—at a loss of over one-half of its numbers—to a point it could have reached in twenty-four hours, without any loss whatever? For the soldiers of the North, in this disastrous series of blunders, fought with constancy and courage. Beaten day after day by unfailing troops in strong works, they ever came again straight at those impregnable positions, against which obstinate stolidity, or blind rage for blood, drove them to the slaughter. Hancock's men especially seemed to catch inspiration from their chivalric leader. Broken and beaten at the Wilderness—decimated at Spottsylvania, they still were first in the deadly hail of Cold Harbor—breaking our line and holding it for a moment. Sedgwick and Warren, too—though the victim of unjust prejudice, if not of conspiracy—managed their corps with signal ability, in those ceaseless killings into which Grant's "strategy" sent them.

Nor was the immense superiority of numbers already shown, all. For this main advance—like every other of General Grant's—had co-operating columns all around it. Add to the men under his immediate command, those of the adjunct forces under his inspiration—Butler, 35,000, Hunter, 28,000 and Sigel, 10,000—and there foots up a grand total of 307,000 men!

We may, therefore, consider that General Lee, in the summer campaign of 1864, kept at bay and nullified the attack of 307,000 men with scarcely one-fifth their number; not exceeding 63,000![1]

While Grant was engaged in his pertinacious failures to flank Lee, General Sheridan—whose fame as a cavalry leader was already in the mouths of men in such pet names as "Little Phil" and "Cavalry Sheridan"—made a raid of considerable proportions toward Richmond. Flanking Lee upon the right, he proceeded over the North and South Anna, damaging the railroads at Beaver Dam and Ashland stations. Thence he moved toward Richmond, but was met at Yellow Tavern by General Stuart with a small body of his cavalry and a hastily-collected force of infantry. A sharp engagement resulted in forcing the enemy off; when he passed down the James to Turkey Island, where he joined Butler's forces.

But the fight had one result far more serious to the South—the death of General J. E. B. Stuart—the gallant and popular leader of Confederate cavalry; so ill to be spared in those days of watchful suspense to come, when General Lee keenly felt the loss of "the eyes of the army."

During the whole fight the sharp and continuous rattle of carbines, broken by the clear boom of field artillery, was distinctly heard in Richmond; and her defenseless women were long uncertain what the result would be. They knew nothing of the force that was attacking, nor of that which was defending their homes; every man was away save the aged and maimed—and the tortures of doubt and suspense were added to the accustomed strain of watching the end of the fight. When the news came there was deep thankfulness; but it was solemn and shadowed from the sorrow that craped the victory.

Meantime, General Sigel had threatened the Valley with a heavy force; but, in mid-May he had been met by General Breckinridge and was defeated with such loss of men and munitions, that he retreated precipitately across the Shenandoah. The co-operation of Sigel was virtually at an end.

But the more important co-operation had been equally unsuccessful. Simultaneously with Grant's passage of the Rapidan, General Butler, with an army of 35,000 men and a fleet of iron-clads, double-enders, gunboats and transports sufficient for a war with England, sailed up the James. This force was intended to proceed direct to Richmond, or to march into undefended Petersburg, as the case might seem best to warrant. The land forces disembarked at Bermuda Hundred and, after fortifying heavily on the line of Howlett's House, made serious demonstrations direct on Drewry's Bluff. Butler supposed that, the defenses being entirely uncovered by the drain of men for Lee's army, he could carry them with ease. In this hope he relied much upon the powerful aid of the fleet; but Admiral Lee, ascending in a double-ender, lost his pioneer-boat, the "Commodore Jones" and very nearly his own flag-ship, by a torpedo, opposite Signal Station. This stopped the advance of the fleet, as the river was supposed to be sown with torpedoes.

Nowise daunted, General Butler—like the true knight and chivalrous leader his entire career proves him to be—drew his line closer round the coveted stronghold. But on the 16th of May, Beauregard sallied out and struck the hero of New Orleans so suddenly and so sharply that he drove him, with heavy loss and utter demoralization, clear from his advanced lines to Bermuda Hundred. Only the miscarriage of a part of the plan, entrusted to a subordinate general, saved Butler's army from complete destruction.

As it was, he there remained "bottled up," until Grant's peculiar strategy had swung him round to Petersburg; and then the "bottle-imp" was released.

Seeing himself thus foiled on every hand—his magnificent plans utterly crushed, and his immense numbers unavailing—Grant struck into new combinations. Hunter had already penetrated into West Virginia as far as Staunton; and hounding on his men with the savagery of the bloodhound, was pushing on for Lynchburg and the railroad lines of supply adjacent to it. Grant at once detached Sheridan with a heavy force, to operate against the lines from Gordonsville and Charlottesville.

Simultaneously he, himself, was to strike a resistless blow at Petersburg; and thus with every avenue of supply cut off, the leaguered Capital must soon—from very weakness—drop into eager hands stretched out to grasp her.

On the 16th and 17th June, there were sharp and heavily-supported attacks upon portions of the Confederate line before Petersburg. The expectation evidently was to drive them in by sheer weight; for it was known only that part of Lee's forces had crossed the river, and the line was one of immense extent—requiring three times his whole force to man it effectively.

But, as ever before, General Grant underrated his enemy; and, as ever before, his cherished theory of giving six lives for one to gain his point failed. Both attacks were heavily repulsed. Still holding to that theory, however, Grant attacked the whole Confederate front at dawn of the 18th. Driven back with heavy slaughter, the men were again sent in. Four times that day they rallied and came well up to the works; and four times they were sent back reeling and bleeding. Even Grant's obstinacy could not drive them again into certain destruction; and the assault on Petersburg had failed utterly, at the cost of 14,000 men for the experiment.

On that same day, Hunter was driven back from an assault on Lynchburg, and sent in disgraceful rout through West Virginia.

Hampton, too, had done his share as ever in the long war. He had caught Sheridan at Trevellian's Station, and compelled him to retreat and entirely abandon his part of Grant's new programme; and a little later he came upon Kautz and Wilson—in a railroad raid below Petersburg—and defeated them disastrously, capturing their trains, artillery and a large proportion of their men.

Thus, by July, these rough and repeated lessons had taught even General Grant that hammering with flesh and blood upon earthworks was too costly; that barn-burning and railroad-tearing cavalry were not effectual to reduce the city that had so laughed to scorn his brilliant tactics of the left flank!

A more disgusted, if not a wiser man, he sat down and fortified for a regular siege; as fully convinced as ever that the blood of the soldiers was the seed of the war; as fixed in his theory that he could spare seven lives for one and gradually by this fearful "swapping, with boot," reduce the capital he had failed to win by soldierly methods or skillful combination.

And the southern people felt that was the test to be applied to them now. Bayonet and steel, rapine and torch had failed; but now the process of pulverizing was to come. "Southern blood!" was General Grant's war-cry—"Southern blood by the drop, if it take rivers of ours. Southern lives by the score—and we can well pay for them with the hundred!"

And, looking the alternative squarely in the face, the southern people for the last time girded their loins for the shock; feeling they could do what men might and when they could no longer do—they could die!

Once more the tide of battle had rolled away from Richmond; but it surged up, redder and rougher, against her sister city. And staunch little Petersburg braced herself to meet its advancing waves—ever offering to them her dauntless breast and ever riding above them, breathless but victorious. Old men with one foot in the grave—boys with one foot scarce out of the cradle, stood side by side, with the bronzed veterans of Lee's hundred fights. Women sat quiet, the shells of Grant's civilized warfare tearing through their houses and through the hospitals. And fearless for themselves, they worked steadily on, nursing the wounded and the sick; giving from their daily-decreasing store with self-forgetfulness; encouraging the weak by their presence and their courage.

But not alone the fierce sounds immediately around them claimed the attention of the people of the Capital. From North Georgia came the hoarse echo of renewed strife; and they felt, in sober truth, more immediate anxiety for the result there than at their own doors. Inured to danger and made familiar with its near approach, the people of Virginia looked calmly forward to the most fearful shock of battle, if it was nothing more. They knew the crushing force of Grant's numbers, but the danger was tangible and they could see a possible issue out of it, through blood and sacrifice. But they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be death—and death from inanition!

The people knew and felt this fully. They were perfectly aware that, should Atlanta fall and the enemy penetrate to our rear lines of communication, the cause was lost. We might make a fierce resistance for the moment; but without supplies, all organized plan must cease. And the wildest hope indulged in that event was the possibility of a detached and guerrilla warfare that would make the country untenable.

Therefore, every eye w............