American History and Government

armies in front of them constantly enough to do so that neither could send aid to the other.

Battle of

bor.

497. The Wilderness and Spottsylvania. - Grant's army facing Lee numbered one hundred and fifty thousand men. General Butler was coming up the James toward Richmond with thirty thousand more. Lee had only seventy-five thousand men to meet these forces. In May, Grant's army entered the Wilderness, the region between the Rapidan and the James. Here (from May 5 to 18) there were several days of terrible fighting in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. Grant's purpose was to get between Lee's army and Richmond. By skillful generalship Lee prevented this. Every time Grant attempted to take his army around to attack one side of Lee's, the Confederate commander fell back to a new line of defense. By these flanking movements Grant pressed Lee back to the defenses of Richmond, and he then resolved to resort Cold Har- again to a direct attack in front. On June 4, 1864, at Cold Harbor, the very center of Lee's fortifications, Grant made a last desperate effort to win the Confederate position by assault. Within twenty minutes the Union army was repulsed with terrible slaughter, losing eight thousand men. This campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor witnessed the bloodiest fighting of the war. After the second day's fighting in the Wilderness Grant sent President Lincoln Grant hammers his famous telegram, "I propose to fight it out on this away in the Wilder- line if it takes all summer." He meant that he would hammer and batter Lee's lines until he broke through by sheer fighting force and weight of numbers. The "hammering process" meant assaulting and fighting in the open. Lee was using fortifications and more military strategy. It was costing Grant two or three men to Lee's one. Within less than six weeks Grant had lost nearly forty thousand men; Lee not half so many.

ness.

498. Early's Raid in the Shenandoah. Lee now tried again to relieve Richmond by threatening Washington. He sent General Jubal Early with a force of twenty thousand men to

menace the Federal capital, hoping Grant would withdraw a part of his army from Richmond for the defense of Washington. Early went down the Shenandoah, defeated a Federal force at Monocacy River under General Lew Wallace (July 9), and pushed on within a few miles of Washington. The people in Washington were again frightened, but forces from Grant's army came up in time to prevent Early's capturing the city. Early sent a raid into Pennsyl

vania and burned Chambersburg in retaliation, as he said, for General Hunter's destruction of private property in the Shenandoah valley.

Washington and the North were uneasy while Confederate forces were in the Shenan

Sheridan

doah valley. Grant now defeats

the Shen

PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN.

A famous Union general of the Civil War. Born in Albany, New York, March 6, 1831; died Aug. 5, 1888. Graduated at West Point, 1853; fought at Perryville, Stone River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor; won renown in the Shenandoah campaign against General Early, 1864; was Grant's chief lieutenant in bringing about the final surrender of Lee at Appomattox, April, 1865. His "Memoirs" tell his war history.

Early and ordered Sheridan to lays waste drive Early out, and to andoah lay waste the Shenan- valley. doah valley, — "to destroy what he could not consume." He wanted to prevent the valley from being used for future raids and to destroy it as a granary of supplies for the Confederate armies. Sheridan defeated Early near Winchester (on Opequon Creek, September 19, 1864) and again at Fisher's Creek two days later. The Confederates retreated up the valley, and Sheridan made a "barren waste" of the country for miles around. He utterly destroyed grain, forage, barns, agricultural tools, and drove off all the stock. Two thousand barns and seventy mills filled with grain were thus destroyed. It was said that a crow flying over the valley would be obliged to carry his own dinner.

Battle of
Cedar
Creek.

Ride.

Early was soon out of supplies and had to fight for his rations. He planned to surprise the Union army. At Cedar Creek (October 19, 1864), by an unexpected onset, his men hurled the Union troops back in confused retreat, Sheridan's almost in a stampede. Sheridan was absent in Winchester, twenty miles away. By his famous ride he came dashing to the scene of battle just in time to reform and encourage the troops and save the day. “Come on, boys, we are all right," he shouted, as he galloped along the line waving his hat. "We'll whip them yet and sleep in our old quarters to-night." Sheridan stemmed the tide, turned defeat into victory, and with the battle of Cedar Creek ended forever the Confederate raids in the Shenandoah valley.

With Washington safe, the North relieved from all fear of further invasion, and Grant tightening the coils around Lee at Petersburg and Richmond, we leave the forces in the East near the close of 1864.

POLITICS: ELECTION OF 1864

499. Opposition to the War. In the summer of 1864, when Grant seemed unable to defeat Lee and capture Richmond, and before Sherman had captured Atlanta, opposition to the war in the North seemed stronger than ever. A great debt was piling up, taxation was becoming heavy, United States stocks were selling at forty cents on the dollar, drafting was about to be renewed, thousands of lives were being sacrificed, the Confederate armies were not defeated, and the people were unable to see the end. Horace Greeley wrote to President Lincoln that the whole American people were anxious for peace, peace on almost "Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace; shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood."

any terms."