aken for an unusually large party of deserters, and they
over-powered several picket-posts without firing a shot. The storming
party, following at once, took the trenches with a rush, and in a few
minutes had possession of the main line on the right of the fort, and,
next, of the fort itself. It was hard in the semi-darkness to
distinguish friends from foes, and for a time General Parke was unable
to make headway; but with the growing light his troops advanced from
every direction to mend the breach, and, making short work of the
Confederate detachments, recaptured the fort, opening a cross-fire of
artillery so withering that few of the Confederates could get back to
their own lines. This was, moreover, not the only damage the
Confederates suffered. Humphreys and Wright, on the Union left, rightly
assuming that Parke could take care of himself, instantly searched the
lines in their front to see if they had been essentially weakened to
support Gordon's attack. They found they had not, but in gaining this
knowledge captured the enemy's intrenched picket-lines in front of them,
which, being held, gave inestimable advantage to the Union army in the
struggle of the next week.

Grant's chief anxiety for some time had been lest Lee should abandon his
lines; but though burning to attack, he was delayed by the same bad
roads which kept Lee in Richmond, and by another cause. He did not wish
to move until Sheridan had completed the work assigned him in the
Shenandoah valley and joined either Sherman or the army at Petersburg.
On March 24, however, at the very moment Gordon was making his plans for
next day's sortie, Grant issued his order for the great movement to the
left which was to finish the war. He intended to begin on the
twenty-ninth, but Lee's desperate dash of the twenty-fifth convinced him
that not a moment was to be lost. Sheridan reached City Point on the
twenty-sixth. Sherman came up from North Carolina for a brief visit next
day. The President was also there, and an interesting meeting took place
between these famous brothers in arms and Mr. Lincoln; after which
Sherman went back to Goldsboro, and Grant began pushing his army to the
left with even more than his usual iron energy.

It was a great army--the result of all the power and wisdom of the
government, all the devotion of the people, all the intelligence and
teachableness of the soldiers themselves, and all the ability which a
mighty war had developed in the