South. One of them was once asked his
opinion of General Lee. He replied in his broken English: "O, Gen Lee a
ve'y good gen'l, ve'y good gen'l indeed; Gen Beaugar speak ve'y fav'ble
of Gen Lee." So, at last, did Halleck speak "ve'y fav'ble" of Grant.

But Gettysburg convinced Lee that he could toy with the Potomac army no
longer, and this was more than ever impossible after Grant took command.
Then Greek met Greek, and the death grapple began. At the Wilderness, at
Spottsylvania, and most mercilessly of all at Cold Harbor, Grant drove
his colossal battering-ram against Lee's gray wall, only to find it
solid as Gibraltar.

This struggle tested both commanders' mettle to the utmost. At the end
of the hammering campaign, after losing men enough to form an army as
large as Lee's, Grant's van was full twice as far from Richmond as
McClellan's had been two years before. Not once was Lee flanked, duped,
or surprised. As always hitherto, so now, his darling mode of defence
was offence,--to fight,--Grant's every blow being met with another
before it hit. Only once were Lee's lines forced straight back to stay.
Even then, at the Spottsylvania "bloody angle," the ground he lost
hardly sufficed to graveyard the Union men killed in getting it. In
swinging round to Petersburg, and again at the springing of the
Petersburg Mine, Grant thought himself sure to make enormous gains; but
Lee's insight into his purposes, and lightning celerity in checkmating
these, foiled both movements, giving the mine operation, moreover, the
effect of a deadly boomerang.

Spite of all this, the end of the Confederacy was in sight from the
moment of Grant's arrival at Petersburg. During the three years that Lee
and his indomitable aides and soldiers had been holding at bay brave and
perfectly appointed armies vastly outnumbering them, and twice boldly
assuming the offensive, with disaster indeed, yet with glory, two other
grand campaigns had been going on wherein the Confederacy had fared much
worse. The capture of New Orleans, of Island No. Ten, and of Vicksburg,
had let the Father of Waters again run "unvexed to the sea." A second
line of operations _via_ Murfreesborough, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and
Savannah, had divided the Confederacy afresh. Sherman's army, which had
achieved this, began on Feb. 1, 1865, to march northward from Savannah.

Bravery in camp and field and deathless endurance at home could not take
the place of bread. The blockade was, t