ust have been
misunderstood. This closed to the Confederate authorities the last
avenue of hope of any compromise by which the alternative of utter
defeat or unconditional surrender might be avoided.

Early in March, General Lee visited Richmond for conference with Mr.
Davis on the measures to be adopted in the crisis which he saw was
imminent. He had never sympathized with the slight Congress had intended
to put upon Mr. Davis when it gave him supreme military authority, and
continued to the end to treat his President as commander-in-chief of the
forces. There is direct contradiction between Mr. Davis and General Lee
as to how Davis received this statement of the necessities of the
situation. Mr. Davis says he suggested immediate withdrawal from
Richmond, but that Lee said his horses were too weak for the roads in
their present condition, and that he must wait. General Lee, on the
other hand, is quoted as saying that he wished to retire behind the
Staunton River, from which point he might have indefinitely protracted
the war, but that the President overruled him. Both agreed, however,
that sooner or later Richmond must be abandoned, and that the next move
should be to Danville.

But before he turned his back forever upon the lines he had so stoutly
defended, Lee resolved to dash once more at the toils by which he was
surrounded. He placed half his army under the command of General John B.
Gordon, with orders to break through the Union lines at Fort Stedman
and take possession of the high ground behind them. A month earlier
Grant had foreseen some such move on Lee's part, and had ordered General
Parke to be prepared to meet an assault on his center, and to have his
commanders ready to bring all their resources to bear on the point in
danger, adding: "With proper alacrity in this respect I would have no
objection to seeing the enemy get through." This characteristic phrase
throws the strongest light both on Grant's temperament, and on the
mastery of his business at which he had arrived. Under such generalship,
an army's lines are a trap into which entrance is suicide.

The assault was made with great spirit at half-past four on the morning
of March 25. Its initial success was due to a singular cause. The spot
chosen was a favorite point for deserters to pass into the Union lines,
which they had of late been doing in large numbers. When Gordon's
skirmishers, therefore, came stealing through the darkness, they were
mist