"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all."
CHAPTER XX.
TO PETERSBURG.
June, 1864.
General Grant had tried to break Lee's lines at Cold Harbor, and had been repulsed with great loss. The Richmond newspapers were jubilant. "He is floundering in the swamps of Chickahominy. He has reached the graveyard of Yankee armies," said they.
The newspapers opposed to the war and in sympathy with the Rebellion, in the North, made Cold Harbor an occasion for glorifying General McClellan, their candidate for the Presidency.
"Grant is a butcher. He has sacrificed a hundred thousand lives. He acts under Lincoln's orders. Elect McClellan, and we shall have peace."
The army was dejected, but did not lose heart. It had been repulsed, had lost many brave men, but it had pushed Lee from the Wilderness to Richmond.
I conversed freely with the soldiers, and rarely found one who had not full confidence in the ability of General Grant. Round their bivouac fires the history of the Army of the Potomac was freely discussed. The old soldiers, who had fought in the first Cold Harbor battle, remembered how twenty-seven thousand men held Lee at bay on that ground through the long hours of the first of the seven days' fight in front of Richmond; how McClellan kept sixty thousand men on the south bank of the Chickahominy, inactive,—sending a brigade to their aid when too late to be of use. They recalled the scenes of those terrible demoralizing days,—how McClellan kept out of harm's way. When the battle was raging on the north bank of the Chickahominy he was south of it; when Sumner was holding Savage Station, McClellan was across White Oak Swamp; when Glendale was fought, and the Rebels under Hill routed, McClellan was at Malvern, and while Magruder was madly pushing his troops on to be slaughtered at Malvern, McClellan was on board a gunboat; how in the night the whole army was ordered away from a victorious field, from an impregnable position, while Lee was fleeing towards Richmond! Soldiers who had come later into the service remembered the failure at Fredericksburg and the retreat from Chancellorsville, and in contrast saw that Grant had pluck. It is a quality of character which soldiers admire. They could also see that there was system in his movements. They sometimes spoke of him as the Grand Flanker. "He'll flank Lee out of Richmond yet; see if he don't," said a soldier.
If Grant had failed to move Lee from his position in a direct attack, Lee also had failed to drive Grant from the junction of the roads at old Cold Harbor,—an important point, as, by opening the railroad from White House, he could easily bring up his supplies. His army was intact,—not divided, as McClellan's had been by the dark and sluggish Chickahominy.
"What will Grant do?" was a question often discussed around the mess-tables of brigadiers, colonels, and captains,—by men who were bound to obey all orders, but who nevertheless had their own ideas as to the best method of conducting the campaign. The Lieutenant-General had the whole plan of operations settled for him many times. It was amusing to see the strategic points indicated on the maps.