loss could easily be made up, but Lee's would be irrepa rable. His hope was to a large extent disappointed. He had to do with a greater general than himself, who, with his men, knew every inch of a tangled country. In the engagements which now followed, Grant's men were constantly being hurled against chosen positions, entrenched and with the new device of wire entanglements in front of them. "I mean," he wrote, "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." It took summer, autumn, winter, and the early spring. Once across the Rapidan he was in the tract of scrubby jungle called the Wilderness. He had hoped to escape out of this unopposed and at the same time to turn Lee's right by a rapid march to his own left. But he found Lee in his way. On May 5 and 6 there was stubborn and indecisive fighting, with a loss to Grant of 17,660 and to Lee of perhaps over 10,000-from Grant's point of view something gained. Then followed a further movement to the left to outflank Lee. Again Lee was to be found in the way in a chosen position of his own near Spottsylvania Court House. Here on the five days from May 8 to May 12 the heavy fighting was continued, with a total loss to Grant of over 18,000 and probably a proportionate loss to Lee. Another move by Grant to the left now caused Lee to fall back to a position beyond the North Anna River, on which an attack was made but speedily given Further movements in the same general direction, but without any such serious fighting-Grant still endeavouring to turn Lee's right, Lee still moving so as to cover Richmond-brought Grant by the end of the month to Cold Harbour, some ten miles east by north of Richmond, close upon the scene of McClellan's misadventures. Meanwhile Grant had caused an expedition under General Butler to go by sea up the James, and to land a little south of Richmond, which, with the connected fortress of Petersburg, twenty-two miles to the south of it, had only a weak garrison left. Butler was a man with remarkable powers of self-advertisement; he had now a very good chance of taking Petersburg, but his expedition

up.

failed totally. From June 1 to June 3 Grant was occupied on the most disastrous enterprise of his career, a hopeless attack upon a strong entrenched position, which, with the lesser encounters that took place within the next few days, cost the North 14,000 men, against a loss to the South which has been put as low as 1,700. It was the one battle which Grant regretted having fought. He gave up the hope of a fight with Lee on advantageous conditions outside Richmond. On June 12 he suddenly moved his army across the James to the neighbourhood of City Point, east of Petersburg. Lee must now stand siege in Richmond and Petersburg. Had he now marched north against Washington, Grant would have been after him and would have secured for his vastly larger force the battle in the open which he had so far vainly sought. Yet another disappointment followed. On July 30 an attempt was made to carry Petersburg by assault immediately after the explosion of an enormous mine. It failed with heavy loss, through the fault of the amiable but injudicious Burnside, who now passed into civil life, and of the officers under him. The siege was to be a long affair. In reality, for all the disappointment, and in spite of Grant's confessed mistake at Cold Harbour, his grim plan was progressing. The force which the South could? ill spare was being worn down, and Grant was in a position in which, though he might have got there at less cost, and though the end would not be yet, the end was sure.. His army was for the time a good deal shaken, and the estimation in which the West Point officers held him sank low. His own determination was quite unshaken, and, though Lincoln hinted somewhat mildly that these enormous losses ought not to recur, his confidence in Grant was unabated, too.

People in Washington who had watched all this with alternations of feeling that ended in dejection had had another trial to their nerves early in July. The Northern General Sigel, who commanded in the lower part of the Shenandoah Valley, protecting the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, had marched southward in June in pursuance

of a subsidiary part of Grant's scheme, but in a careless and rather purposeless manner. General Early, detached by Lee to deal with him, defeated him; outmanœuvred and defeated General Hunter, who was sent to supersede him; overwhelmed with superior force General Lew Wallace, who stood in his way further on; and upon July II appeared before Washington itself. The threat to Washington had been meant as no more than a threat, but the garrison was largely made up of recruits; reinforcements to it sent back by Grant arrived only on the same day as Early, and if that enterprising general had not wasted some previous days there might have been a chance that he could get into Washington, though not that he could hold it. As it was he attacked one of the Washington forts. Lincoln was present, exhibiting, till the officers there insisted on his retiring, the indifference to personal danger which he showed on other occasions too. The attack was soon given up, and in a few days Early had escaped back across the Potomac, leaving in Grant's mind a determination that the Shenandoah Valley should cease to be so useful to the South.

Sherman set out from Chattanooga on the day when Grant crossed the Rapidan. Joseph Johnston barred his way in one entrenched position after another. Sherman, with greater caution than Grant, or perhaps with greater facilities of ground, manœuvred him out of each position in turn, pushing him slowly back along the line of the railway towards Atlanta, the great manufacturing centre of Georgia, one hundred and twenty miles south by east from Chattanooga. Only once, towards the end of June at Kenesaw Mountain, some twenty miles north of Atlanta, did he attack Johnston's entrenchments, causing himself some unnecessary loss and failing in his direct attack on them, but probably thinking it necessary to show that he would attack whenever needed. Johnston has left a name as a master of defensive warfare, and doubtless delayed and hampered Sherman as much as he could. Jefferson Davis angrily and unwisely sent General Hood to supersede him. This less prudent officer gave

battle several times, bringing up the Confederate loss before Atlanta fell to 34,000 against 30,000 on the other side, and being, by great skill on Sherman's part, compelled to evacuate Atlanta on September 2.

By this time there had occurred the last and most brilliant exploit of old Admiral Farragut, who on August 5 in a naval engagement of extraordinarily varied incident, had possessed himself of the harbour of Mobile, with its forts, though the town remained as a stronghold in Confederate hands and prevented a junction with Sherman which would have quite cut the Confederacy in two.

Nearer Washington, too, a memorable campaign was in process. For three weeks after Early's unwelcome visit, military mismanagement prevailed near Washington. Early was able to turn on his pursuers, and a further raid, this time into Pennsylvania, took place. Grant was too far off to exercise control except through a sufficiently able subordinate, which Hunter was not. Halleck, as in a former crisis, did not help matters. Lincoln, though at this time he issued a large new call for recruits, was unwilling any longer to give military orders. Just now his political anxieties had reached their height. His judgment was never firmer, but friends thought his strength was breaking under the strain. On this and on all grounds he was certainly wise to decline direct interference in military affairs. On August 1 Grant ordered General Philip H. Sheridan to the Shenandoah on temporary duty, expressing a wish that he should be put "in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy or follow him to the death." Lincoln telegraphed to Grant, quoting this despatch and adding, "This I think is exactly right; but please look over the despatches you may have received from here even since you made that order and see if there is any idea in the head of any one here of putting our army south of the enemy or following him to the death in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day and hour and force it." Grant now came to Hunter's army and gently

placed Sheridan in that general's place. The operations of that autumn, which established Sheridan's fame and culminated in his final defeat of Early at Cedar Creek on October 19, made him master of all the lower part of the valley. Before he retired into winter quarters he had so laid waste the resources of that unfortunate district that Richmond could no longer draw supplies from it, nor could it again support a Southern army in a sally against the North.

In the month of November Sherman began a new and extraordinary movement, of which the conception was all his own, sanctioned with reluctance by Grant, and viewed with anxiety by Lincoln, though he maintained his absolute resolve not to interfere. He had fortified himself in Atlanta, removing its civil inhabitants, in an entirely humane fashion, to places of safety, and he had secured a little rest for his army. But he lay far south in the heart of what he called "Jeff Davis' Empire," and Hood could continually harass him by attacks on his communications. Hood, now supervised by Beauregard, was gathering reinforcements, and Sherman learnt that he contemplated a diversion by invading Tennessee. Sherman determined to divide his forces, to send Thomas far back into Tennessee with sufficient men, as he calcu lated, to defend it, and himself with the rest of his army to set out for the eastern sea-coast, wasting no men on the maintenance of his communications, but living on the country and “making the people of Georgia feel the weight of the war." He set out for the East on November 15. Hood, at Beauregard's orders, shortly marched off for the North, where the cautious Thomas awaited events within the fortifications of Nashville. At Franklin, in the heart of Tennessee, about twenty miles south of Nashville, Hood's army suffered badly in an attack upon General Schofield, whom Thomas had left to check his advance while further reinforcements came to Nashville. Schofield fell back slowly on Thomas, Hood rashly pressing after him with a small but veteran army now numbering 44,000. Grant and the Washington author