al of about one hundred and fifty thousand. With this
superiority of numbers, Grant pursued the policy of alternately
threatening the defenses of Lee, sometimes south, sometimes north of the
James River, and at every favorable opportunity pushing his siege-works
westward in order to gradually gain and command the three railroads and
two plank roads that brought the bulk of absolutely necessary food and
supplies to the Confederate armies and the inhabitants of Petersburg and
Richmond. It is estimated that this gradual westward extension of
Grant's lines, redoubts, and trenches, when added to those threatening
Richmond and Petersburg on the east, finally reached a total development
of about forty miles. The catastrophe came when Lee's army grew
insufficient to man his defensive line along this entire length, and
Grant, finding the weakened places, eventually broke through it,
compelling the Confederate general and army to evacuate and abandon both
cities and seek safety in flight.

The central military drama, the first two distinctive acts of which are
outlined above, had during this long period a running accompaniment of
constant under-plot and shifting and exciting episodes. The Shenandoah
River, rising northwest of Richmond, but flowing in a general northeast
course to join the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, gives its name to a valley
twenty to thirty miles wide, highly fertile and cultivated, and having
throughout its length a fine turnpike, which in ante-railroad days was
an active commercial highway between North and South. Bordered on the
west by the rugged Alleghany Mountains, and on the east by the single
outlying range called the Blue Ridge, it formed a protected military
lane or avenue, having vital relation to the strategy of campaigns on
the open Atlantic slopes of central Virginia. The Shenandoah valley had
thus played a not unimportant part in almost every military operation of
the war, from the first battle of Bull Run to the final defense of
Richmond.

The plans of General Grant did not neglect so essential a feature of his
task. While he was fighting his way toward the Confederate capital, his
instructions contemplated the possession and occupation of the
Shenandoah valley as part of the system which should isolate and
eventually besiege Richmond. But this part of his plan underwent many
fluctuations. He had scarcely reached City Point when he became aware
that General Lee, equally alive to the advantages o