CHAPTER XXXVI.
"THE LAND OF DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH."
It is essential to a clear understanding of the events, directly preceding the fall of the Confederacy, to pause here and glance at the means with which that result was so long delayed, but at last so fully accomplished.
From official northern sources, we learn that General Grant crossed the Rapidan with three corps, averaging over 47,000 men. Therefore, he must have fought the battles of the Wilderness with at least 140,000 men. At that time the total strength of General Lee's morning report did not show 46,000 men for duty. Between the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, Grant was re-enforced to the extent of near 48,000 picked men; and again at Cold Harbor with near 45,000 more. Northern figures admit an aggregate of 97,000 re-enforcement between the Rapidan and the James! In that time, Lee, by the junction of Breckinridge and all the fragments of brigades he could collect, received less than 16,000 re-enforcement; and even the junction with Beauregard scarcely swelled his total additions over 20,000.
Grant's army, too, was composed of the picked veterans of the North—for his Government had accepted large numbers of hundred-day men for local and garrison duty, that all the seasoned troops might be sent him. Yet with an aggregate force of 234,000 men, opposed to a total of less than 63,000, General Grant failed signally in the plan, or plans of his campaign—losing in twenty-six days, and nine heavy fights and several skirmishes, seven men for one of General Lee's!
Can any candid thinker analyze these results and then believe Grant a strategist—a great soldier—anything but a pertinacious fighter? Can one realize that anything but most obstinate bungling could have swung such an army round in a complete circle—at a loss of over one-half of its numbers—to a point it could have reached in twenty-four hours, without any loss whatever? For the soldiers of the North, in this disastrous series of blunders, fought with constancy and courage. Beaten day after day by unfailing troops in strong works, they ever came again straight at those impregnable positions, against which obstinate stolidity, or blind rage for blood, drove them to the slaughter. Hancock's men especially seemed to catch inspiration from their chivalric leader. Broken and beaten at the Wilderness—decimated at Spottsylvania, they still were first in the deadly hail of Cold Harbor—breaking our line and holding it for a moment. Sedgwick and Warren, too—though the victim of unjust prejudice, if not of conspiracy—managed their corps with signal ability, in those ceaseless killings into which Grant's "strategy" sent them.
Nor was the immense superiority of numbers already shown, all. For this main advance—like every other of General Grant's—had co-operating columns all around it. Add to the men under his immediate command, those of the adjunct forces under his inspiration—Butler, 35,000, Hunter, 28,000 and Sigel, 10,000—and there foots up a grand total of 307,000 men!
We may, therefore, consider that General Lee, in the summer campaign of 1864, kept at bay and nullified the attack of 307,000 men with scarcely one-fifth their number; not exceeding 63,000![1] ]
While Grant was engaged in his pertinacious failures to flank Lee, General Sheridan—whose fame as a cavalry leader was already in the mouths of men in such pet names as "Little Phil" and "Cavalry Sheridan"—made a raid of considerable proportions toward Richmond. Flanking Lee upon the right, he proceeded over the North and South Anna, damaging the railroads at Beaver Dam and Ashland stations. Thence he moved toward Richmond, but was met at Yellow Tavern by General Stuart with a small body of his cavalry and a hastily-collected force of infantry. A sharp engagement resulted in forcing the enemy off; when he passed down the James to Turkey Island, where he joined Butler's forces.
But the fight had one result far more serious to the South—the death of General J. E. B. Stuart—the gallant and popular leader of Confederate cavalry; so ill to be spared in those days of watchful suspense to come, when General Lee keenly felt the loss of "the eyes of the army."