In this first day's movement he did not uncover Washington. Burnside was still lying on the north bank of the Rappahannock. It was understood in the army that the Ninth Corps was to be a reserve to protect the capital. So, perhaps, Lee understood it. But at nightfall, on the 4th, the shelter-tents were folded, and the men of the Ninth, with six days' rations in their haversacks, were on the march along the forest-road, lighted only by the stars, joining the main army at Germanna Ford on the morning of the 5th.
The movement from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor was made in thirty days. It was a series of movements by the left flank, in part to get between Lee and his southern communications, and in part to force him to abandon strong positions.
The movements were:—
From Culpepper to Wilderness.
From Wilderness to Spottsylvania.
From Spottsylvania to the North Anna.
From the North Anna to Cold Harbor.
From Cold Harbor to Petersburg.
It was thirty days of continuous marching, or fighting, building defences and bridges, opening roads, establishing new bases of supplies, through a country densely wooded, and crossing four large rivers, besides numerous smaller streams, to find always the enemy upon the other side, prepared to give desperate battle.
It was early in the morning on the 4th of May when the reveille sounded for the last time over the hills and dales of Culpepper. The last cups of coffee were drunk, the blankets folded, and then the army, which through the winter had lain in camp, moved away from the log huts, where many a jest had been spoken, many a story told,—where, through rain and mud, and heat and cold, the faithful and true-hearted men had kept watch and ward through the long, weary months,—where songs of praise and prayer to God had been raised by thousands who looked beyond the present into the future life.
So rapid was the march that the Second Corps reached Chancellorsville before night, having crossed the Rapidan at Ely's Ford. The Sixth and Fifth Corps crossed at Germanna Ford, without opposition, and before night the Army of the Potomac was upon the southern side of that stream, where it was joined by the Ninth Corps the next morning.
General Grant's quarters for the night were in an old house near the ford. Lights were to be put out at nine o'clock. There were the usual scenes of a bivouac, and one unusual to an army. The last beams of daylight were fading in the west. The drummers were beating the tattoo. Mingled with the constant rumbling of the wagons across the pontoons, and the unceasing flow of the river, was a chorus of voices,—a brigade singing a hymn of devotion. It was the grand old choral of Luther, Old Hundred.
"Eternal are thy mercies, Lord,
Eternal truth attends thy word;
Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore,
Till suns shall rise and set no more."
Many soldiers in that army were thinking of home,—not only of loved ones, and of associations full of sweet and tender memories, but of a better abiding-place, eternal in the heavens. To thousands it was a last night on earth.
Early in the morning of the 5th Generals Meade and Grant, with their staffs, after riding five miles from Germanna Ford, halted near an old mill in the Wilderness. General Sheridan's cavalry had been pushing out south and west. Aides came back with despatches.