Grant then had Lee fairly caught. His only possible chances of prolonging the contest lay in taking refuge in the mountains or joining his forces with the remnants of Hood's army which had been gathered together and again entrusted with other troops to the command of General Joseph Johnston. Had it been possible to do this, nothing practical would have been achieved, for he had less than 30,000 effective men and Johnston's whole force did not amount to much more than 30,000, while Grant, Sherman and Sheridan together had a quarter of a million men under arms. From a military standpoint Lee knew that the situation was hopeless, but until the authorities who had placed him in the field gave up the cause he felt in duty bound to continue the fight to the bitter end. Had the Union army been his only opponent, it is possible that he might have succeeded in escaping the rings of steel which Grant was daily riveting around him. But he had to fight hunger, and from the day that Sheridan mastered the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman cut off all supplies from the South starvation stared him in the face.
Meanwhile, his troops, though almost reduced to skeletons and clothed in rags, confidently believed that in spite of everything he would find some way of leading them out of Grant's clutches and, inspired by this implicit faith, they hurled themselves again and again upon the masses of troops which were steadily closing around them. But though they frequently checked the advancing columns and sometimes even threw them back, inflicting heavy losses and taking many prisoners, the blue lines soon crept forward again, closing up gap after gap with a resistless tide of men. At last the road to the west leading toward the mountains beyond Lynchburg alone remained open. But to avail himself of this Lee knew that he would have to abandon Petersburg and Richmond and he hesitated to take this step; while Grant, seeing the opening and fearing that his opponent would take advantage of it, strained every nerve to get his troops into a position where they could block the road.
Such was the condition of affairs at the end of March, 1865, but neither the starving soldiers in the Confederate trenches nor the people of Richmond or Petersburg imagined that the end was desperately near. While "Marse Robert," as Lee's men affectionately called him, was in command they felt that no real danger could come nigh them, and their idol was outwardly as calm as in the hour of his greatest triumph.
Chapter XXIX. — At Bay
It would be impossible to imagine a more hopeless situation than that which had confronted Lee for many months. To guard the line of intrenchments stretching around Petersburg and Richmond for more than thirty-five miles, he had less than 30,000 effective men, and starvation and disease were daily thinning their impoverished ranks; the soldiers were resorting to the corn intended for the horses, and the cavalry were obliged to disperse through the country seeking fodder for their animals in the wasted fields; the defenders of the trenches, barefooted and in rags, lay exposed to the cold and wet, day and night; there were no medicines for the sick and no great supply of ammunition for the guns.
Perhaps no one but Lee fully realized to what desperate straits his army had been reduced. Certainly his opponents were ignorant of the real condition of affairs or they would have smashed his feeble defenses at a blow, and the fact that he held over a hundred thousand troops at bay for months with a skeleton army shows how skillfully he placed his men.
But though his brilliant career threatened to end in defeat and disaster, no thought of himself ever crossed Lee's mind. Regardless of his own comfort and convenience, he devoted himself day and night to relieving the suffering of his men, who jestingly called themselves "Lee's Miserables," but grimly stuck to their posts with unshaken faith in their beloved chief who, in the midst of confusion and helplessness, remained calm and resourceful, never displaying irritation, never blaming anyone for mistakes, but courageously attempting to make the best of everything and finding time, in spite of all distractions, for the courtesy and the thoughtfulness of a gentleman unafraid.
His letters to his wife and children during these perilous days reveal no anxiety save for the comfort of his men, and no haste except to provide for their wants. At home his wife—confined to an invalid's chair—was busily knitting socks for the soldiers, and to her he wrote in the face of impending disaster: