248 
THE OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA. 
had been in a bottle strongly corked.” Grant reached Petersburg June 
15th ; he was held on that day by the local troops ; but on the 16th he 
found that Lee, who had crossed the Potomac at Drury’s Bluff, was again 
in front of him. 
Lee began to draw a regular line of earthworks around the city to the 
east and south, when he was furiously attacked, 16th, 17th, and 18th, 
and 21st and 22nd, all to no purpose. The Federals lost some 8,000 men 
for nothing, just as the Russians wasted their men in 1877 against the 
works of Plevna, and they had to adopt the course which the Russians 
also had to fall back upon, i.e., by a regular siege invest the long line of 
fortifications, and, by extending their own lines westward, cut off their 
opponents from their resources in the south. 
The leaguer of Richmond was singular ; an army of 40,000 or 50,000 
men, intrenched along a line extending finally over a distance of nearly 
forty miles, was defending against a force of about thrice its number, a 
capital more than twenty miles in its rear, and from July of one year 
till April of the next, the Federals would have ruined the confederacy 
at any moment by breaking this line. 
We must pass over the incidents of the investment, such as the 
explosion of the great mine in July. Nor can we dwell on Early’s 
attempt to turn the tables on the Federals by issuing from the valley, and 
crossing the Potomac and threatening Washington; nor on the celebrated 
campaign at the close of the year, when Sheridan took the command of 
the unionist troops in the Shenandoah Valley, and, driving the seceders 
before him, devastated the country to such an extent that, so far from 
its being the provision store of Richmond, “a crow that wanted 
to fly up the valley would have to bring his supplies with him.” Nor 
Avere these all the misfortunes of the Confederates. By the end of the 
year 1864, Sherman’s operations in Georgia were a heavy pressure on 
their almost exhausted resources. Johnston and Hood were driven from 
the Tennessee to Atlanta, that town was depopulated by Sherman, who 
then marched almost unresisted to Savannah, and thence, capturing 
Charleston en route , to Goldsboro’ in North Carolina, where he 
threatened Lee’s retreat from Virginia. 
The position of affairs was desperate, but in February Lee might have 
still retreated south by Amelia Court House, and, joining Johnston, have 
prolonged the war in the Gulf States. The civil authorities prevented 
the execution of this plan, and still the fighting round Richmond con¬ 
tinued, and the hail of missiles from the numerous Federal batteries 
fell upon the half-manned trenches. But by March, Grant’s works had 
extended towards the Southside Railway, from Petersburg to Danville, 
and, after failing to break the enemy’s centre by an attack, March 25th, 
Lee felt that the final struggle was at hand. He prepared to cope with 
the Federal movement against the Southern line by taking up a position 
at Five Forks, and made a fierce assault on the enemy, March 31st. He 
was repulsed, Sheridan took Five Forks, April 1st, and seized the South- 
side Road, and so feeble was the force now defending the works before 
Petersburg, that Grant carried them April 2nd. 
Lee now had to retreat, and evacuated the place in the night, and 
moved on Amelia Court House, where he expected a train with provisions, 
but this train by mistake had passed on to Richmond, and he found 
himself without supplies. 
On the night of April 5th he moved towards Lynchburg, but on his 
flank was Sheridan’s large cavalry force. At Appomattox Court House 
