ing. It is stated as half, and, again, as nearly two-thirds of that of the Federals. The Army of the Potomac had the death of the brave General Wadsworth to deplore.

May 7 neither general showed a disposition to attack. Grant decided to continue the movement by the left, and march by night to Spotsylvania Court House. His army started without knowing whether or not it had been beaten, but aware of the great slaughter; and when they came to the parting of the ways, the question in all minds arose, would the orders be to turn northward and recross the river? The columns filed to the right, the faces of the men were set towards Richmond, and Grant, in their estimation, was exalted. The soldiers sang and stepped forward with elastic tread. "The spirits of men and officers are of the highest pitch of animation," was the word which Dana sent Stanton.2 Grant rode by, and in spite of the darkness was recognized. The men burst out into cheers, swung their hats, clapped their hands, threw up their arms, and greeted their general as a comrade. They were glad that he was leading them onward to Richmond instead of ordering them to fall back to the camp which they had just abandoned.3

The Confederate soldiers, believing in their invincibility on their own soil, thought that Grant, like the other Federal generals, would give it up and fall back; and Lee at one time held the opinion that he was retiring on Fredericksburg. But the Confederate general was too sagacious to base his entire action on one supposition, and, surmising that Grant might move to Spotsylvania, he sent thither part of his force, which, having the shorter and easier line of march, reached there first, and took position across the path of the Union

1 Fitzhugh Lee, p. 332; Humphreys, p. 54.

2 O. R., vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 64.

3 Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. p. 372; H. Porter, Century Magazine, Jan. 1897, p. 347; Wilkeson, Recollections of a Private, p. 80; Grant's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 210.

4 G. C. Eggleston, Century War Book, vol. iv. p. 230, A Rebel's Recollec t.ons, p. 236; O. R., vol. xxxvi. part ii. p. 974.

CH. XXIII.]

BATTLES AT SPOTSYLVANIA

443

army. The armies coming in contact, there were several days of fighting; at times raging and bloody battles, again naught but skirmishing and the firing of sharpshooters. It was on a day of this desultory work when Sedgwick, the commander of the Sixth Corps, fell. He was mourned by both friend and foe. May 11 Grant sent his celebrated despatch to Halleck. "We have now ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting.. I ... propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." 2 After the furious battle the next day at the Salient "the bloody angle"- there was a lull, due principally to the heavy and constant rains, which made the roads deep with mud and impassable. It is true, however, that the Union army needed rest, and that Grant was desirous of reinforcements to fill the gaps in his ranks caused by his heavy losses. In these battles at Spotsylvania he was almost invariably the attacking party; he assailed in front the Confederates, whose intrenchments, defended by rifled muskets and by artillery throughout, quadrupled their strength. It is said that the hurling of his men against Lee in chosen and fortified positions was unnecessary, as the roads in number and in direction lent themselves to the operation of turning either flank of the Confederate army.3 "To assault' all along the line,' writes General Walker, 66 as was so often done in the summer of 1864, is the very abdication of leadership."4 But Grant was essentially an aggressive soldier, and an important feature of his plan of operations was, as he himself has stated it, "to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources until by mere attrition, if in no other way," the South should be subdued.5 Circum

1 See Life of Lee, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 334.

2 O. R., vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 4. The battles in the Wilderness as well as those at Spotsylvania are counted in this summing up.

Humphreys, pp. 71, 75.

4 Life of Hancock, p. 193. "Præsertim cum non minus esset imperatoris consilio superare quam gladio."- Cæsar, De Bello Civili, Comm. I. cap. lxxii.

5 Report of July 22, 1865, O. R. vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 13. The comment of

stances similar to the one which occurred in the Wilderness are to be noted. On May 10, and again on the 12th, at the fight at the "bloody angle," when the Confederates were on the verge of disaster, Lee rode to the head of a column, intending to lead a charge which he deemed might be necessary to save the day. On both occasions the soldiers refused to advance unless their general should go to the rear.1 Lee did not court danger, and was apparently reckless in the one case only after his lines had been broken, and in the other when the struggle for the Salient demanded the utmost from general and men. It is worthy of record that such incidents in the life of Lee did not take place until Grant came to direct the movements of the Army of the Potomac.

May 18 Grant attacked again, but failed to carry the Confederate intrenchments. On the next day a part of Lee's force in making a demonstration was met and repulsed. Several days later Grant crossed the North Anna River. Lee, concentrating his troops, interposed them between the two wings of the Union army, which were widely separated, and could reinforce neither the other without passing over the river twice. "Grant," write Nicolay and Hay, "was completely checkmated."2 Lee begrudged every step Grant took towards Richmond, and had planned now to assume the offensive, when he fell ill. He declared impatiently on his sick-bed in his tent, "We must strike them, we must never let them pass us again; "3 but before he had recovered sufficiently to take personal charge of an attack, Grant, "finding the enemy's posi

General Sherman in a despatch to Stanton from Kingston, Ga., is interesting. "If General Grant,” he said, “can sustain the confidence, the esprit, the pluck of his army, and impress the Virginians with the knowledge that the Yankees can and will fight them fair and square, he will do more good than to capture Richmond or any strategic advantage. This moral result must precede all mere advantages of strategic movements, and this is what Grant is doing. Out here the enemy knows we can and will fight like the devil, therefore he manœuvres for advantage of ground."—O. R., vol. xxxviii. part iv. p. 294. 1 Life of Lee, Long, pp. 338, 341; do. Fitzhugh Lee, p. 336.

2 Vol. viii. p. 389.

8 Fitzhugh Lee, p. 339.

CH. XXIII.]

BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR

445

tion on the North Anna stronger than either of his previous ones," withdrew, unmolested, to the north bank of the river. Meanwhile Butler, with an army, was moving up the James River, and, taking the Confederates by surprise, occupied, without opposition, City Point and Bermuda Hundred. It was in the chances that a skilful and daring general might have captured Petersburg or Richmond. Butler was neither, and dallied while Beauregard energetically gathered together the loose forces in North and South Carolina, and brought them to the defence of the two places. The result of his operations is thus accurately related by Grant: "His [Butler's] army, therefore, though in a position of great security, was as completely shut off from further operations directly against Richmond as if it had been in a bottle strongly corked."2

Marching forward, and fighting on the way, Grant, by June 2, had gone a considerable distance farther south, had reached the ground which one wing of McClellan's army had occupied in May and June, 1862, and was in position near the scene of Fitz John Porter's gallant fight of Gaines's Mill, almost in sight of the spires of the Confederate capital. Lee, about six miles from the exterior fortifications of Richmond, held a position naturally strong, which by intrenchments he had made practically impregnable. Flanking movements being apparently at an end, Grant, with unjustifiable precipitation, ordered an assault in front. This was made at 4.30 in the morning of June 3, and constituted the Battle of Cold Harbor, the greatest blemish on his reputation as a general. The order having at first been given for the attack on the afternoon of the 2d, and then postponed for the morrow, officers and men had a chance to chew upon it,

1 O. R., vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 21.

2 Report, July 22, 1865, ibid., p. 20. The expressive phrase was Barnard's. It was seized upon by the public as an excellent statement of Butler's military incapacity, and its wide dissemination caused Grant annoyance afterwards. See Personal Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 152.

3 "Never attack in front a position which admits of being turned.". Military Maxims of Napoleon (N. Y. 1845), p. 17.

and both knew that the undertaking was hopeless. Horace Porter, an aide-de-camp of Grant, relates that when walking among the troops on staff duty the evening before the battle, he noticed many soldiers of one of the regiments designated for the assault pinning on the backs of their coats slips of paper on which were written their names and home addresses, so that their dead bodies might be recognized on the field, and their fate be known to their families at the North.1

The soldiers sprang promptly to the assault. The history of Hancock's corps, the Second, is an epitome of the action. In about twenty-two minutes its repulse was complete.2 It had "lost over 3000 of its bravest and best, both of officers and men." The true story of the day is told by General Lee: At one part of the Confederate line the Federals were “repulsed without difficulty;" at another, having penetrated a salient, they were driven out "with severe loss," at still another their "repeated attacks . . . were met with great steadiness and repulsed in every instance. The attack extended to our extreme left . . . with like results." Thus he concluded his despatch: "Our loss to-day has been small, and our success, under the blessing of God, all that we could expect. The casualties in the Union army were probably 7000.5 Grant at that time regretted the attack, as he did also near the close of his life, when he gave expression to his perpetual regret in his Personal Memoirs. "No advantage whatever," he added, "was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained." After the Battle of Cold Harbor

1 Century Magazine, March, 1897, p. 720; see Recollections of a Private, Wilkeson, p. 128.

2 Life of Hancock, Walker, p. 222.

3 Memoranda of 2d Corps, O. R., vol. xxxvi. part i. p. 367.

4 Ibid., part iii. p. 869.

5 H. Porter, Century Magazine, March, 1897, p. 722; see also Humphreys, p. 182; Century War Book, vol. iv. p. 187.

• Century Magazine, March, 1897, p. 722; Century War Book, vol. iv. p. 229. But in a later expression of opinion Grant does not appear to advantage. —

7 Vol. ii. p. 276; also, J. R. Young, vol. ii. p. 304.