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CHAPTER XIV.

HE RECEIVES THE SURRENDER OF LEE

[JULY, 1864 - APRIL, 1865.]

ITH the siege of Petersburg opens a new chap

ter in the campaign. The scope of this biography does not require from me a full description of the events of the beleaguerment: the limits of my volume certainly forbid it. I am not writing military annals, but am pursuing the question, What did Grant do in the civil war? for the purpose of illustrating his qualities as a general. I shall therefore content myself with characterizing, rather than detailing, the operations from the beginning of July till the spring campaign was opened, by Grant's order from City Point, of the 24th of March, 1865.

Petersburg is at the head of sloop navigation on the Appomatox, one of the affluents of the James, and derives its military importance from being a fortress advanced twenty-two miles from the flank of Richmond, and from being the focus of all the railroads from the south and south-west which converge towards the Confederate capital, except the Danville Road, which finds its terminus directly in Richmond itself. Both cities are in the same strategic series, being, in fact, but the right and left of the same great

line. The bastions and connecting parapets in which Richmond lies unassailable connect themselves with similar defences in front of its chief dependency. Petersburg not only constitutes the right of Lee's fortified position, but, from its relations to the railroads, is the chief source of subsistence and supplies to the whole Army of Northern Virginia. I am not concerned with the works of the capital, except to indicate their connection with those of its advanced stronghold, and to note that the system is of such extent and magnitude that the complete investment of the whole is admitted to be impracticable.

The problem of the campaign was to secure such a fortified position in front of Petersburg that it must either fall by the severance of its communications or by assault. The accomplishment of either of these results was not merely a step to the downfall of Richmond, but the dissolution of all that remained to the Confederacy in Virginia of political importance and military power. The entire strength of the enemy was rallied to prevent it; the entire strength of the Union army was put forth to achieve it.

By the 1st of July, Lee had perfected the fortifications of Petersburg. Butler, at Bermuda Hundred, finds himself confronted by a line of redans, connected by powerful infantry parapets stretching from the horseshoe bend of the James (which forms the peninsula of Dutch Gap) to the northern bank of the Appomattox, opposite Petersburg: these effectually secured the Petersburg and Richmond Railroad from the raids of the Army of the James. Crossing now to the south side of the Appomattox, works of a similar char

acter commence before the right of the Army of the Potomac, extend along its entire front, and, stretching far beyond the Union left to Hatcher's Run, completely infold Petersburg on the east and south.

Grant did not design the complete investment of this elongated line; but the communications of the enemy were not entirely closed, nor was the connection of the two cities severed, even at the final catastrophe. It was not a siege like Vicksburg; which, it will be remembered, was completely hemmed in, so that a courier could not enter without encountering our works, nor the enemy leave without storming our defences. The investment of Petersburg was the controverted question between the two belligerents; and Grant, at the outset, was obliged to assume a unique attitude towards it, which would secure to him every advantage he could compass, without a complete beleaguerment.

By the time the enemy had constructed the works I have described, Grant had stretched, for two miles and a half, a series of redoubts connected by embankments, and had advanced embrasured batteries for storming facilities. His right was the Appomattox; and the labor of the campaign, and the war problem to be solved, was to push and develop this inchoate investment to the left. The relation of the Potomac army to the strongholds of the enemy was not that of an anaconda, but a watch-dog, attempting not to strangle, but to spring on the victim. In selecting this attitude, Grant was controlled by the following considerations: 1. He required fortified lines which could be defended by a tithe of his army, and which

could relieve the great mass of it from the pent-up duties of a regular siege. 2. He wished to operate against the communications of the foe in two modes, -either by extending his intrenched lines to the left, and actually cut and hold the enemy's railroads in the neighborhood of Petersburg; or to project movable columns to a distance, for the purpose of captur ing and occupying the keys and intersections of the whole system of railroads, which were too remote to be reached by any prolongation of our works. 3. Grant wished his army left free to seize every advantage for its own welfare, or for the annoyance of the enemy, which might at any moment be presented at any point of the thirty or forty miles of line which Lee was obliged to guard. I should note, in connection with this last consideration, that, in addition to our two main armies on the south side of the James, Gen. Foster had effected a lodgement at Deep Bottom, within ten miles of Richmond, on the north bank of the same river: Foster's lines were connected by pontoons with Bermuda Hundred. Grant must adapt his plans to the possibilities which might lie dormant in that peculiar post. 4. He must be prepared for an assault, not only on Petersburg, but also on Richmond.

A glance at these considerations will disclose the rationale of the various movements during the summer, autumn, and winter which followed: it will show, moreover, their relation to a systematized plan adopted when the investment was commenced; it will relieve them from seeming confusion, and from the imputation of being spasmodic, accidental, tentative. With this guidance, turn your attention to the

series of engagements which were fought to extend our lines over communications in the vicinage of Petersburg. The nucleus from which our works grew into such tremendous power and magnitude was the intrenchments which we captured from the enemy by our sanguinary assault: they, at first, covered only the Norfolk Road, which, as a communication, was comparatively worthless to the foe. Every successive step towards the left was the price of blood and the reward of victory. It was by what is called a "sharp affair," that Hancock extended our lines to the Jerusalem Plank-road, and connected with Griffin, who held a fortified position still farther to the left. We were thus carried within three miles of that great channel of communication with the fruitful region of the Confederacy upon the shores of the Southern Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The name of the Weldon Railroad has fairly become romantic, and will through all time recall the ferocious encounters of embattled hosts. When Warren finally intrenched himself athwart it, he held his dear-earned highway by repelling assaults from the select brigades of an army determined to tear it from his grasp. The gap between the Weldon and the Jerusalem Plank-road was gained by a severe engagement. For the Boydton Plank-road, still farther to the left, which had become of importance to Petersburg since the capture of the Weldon Road, another battle was fought. Peeples's Farm and Poplar Spring Church recall the bloody struggle of Griffin's division, and Forts Keene and Wheaton are the monuments of his success. The South-side Road now became the bone of contention: