been
fought, were according to a plan, which, if carried out, must end in
victory. The Richmond newspapers, which had ridiculed the campaign, and
had found an echo in the disloyal press of the North, began to discuss
the question of supplies; and to keep their courage up, they indulged in
boastful declarations that the Southside Railroad never could be taken.

The march of Sherman from Atlanta to Savannah and through South
Carolina, destroying railroads and supplies,--the taking of
Wilmington,--Sheridan's movement from Winchester up the Valley of the
Shenandoah, striking the James River Canal and the Central Railroad, and
then the transfer of his whole force from the White House to the left
flank of the Army of the Potomac,--were parts of a well matured design
to weaken Lee's army.

Everything was ready for the final blow. The forces of General Grant
were disposed as follows. The Army of the James, composed of the
Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Corps, and commanded by General Ord, was
north of the James River, its right flank resting near the old
battle-field of Glendale, and its left flank on the Appomattox. The
Ninth Army Corps--the right wing of the Army of the Potomac--was next in
line, then the Sixth, and then the Second, its left resting on Hatcher's
Run. The Fifth was in rear of the Second. The line thus held was nearly
forty miles in length, defended on the front and rear by strong
earthworks and abatis.

General Grant's entire force could not have been much less than a
hundred and thirty thousand, including Sheridan's cavalry, the force at
City Point, and the provisional brigade at Fort Powhatan. Lee's whole
force was not far from seventy thousand,--or seventy-five thousand,
including the militia of Richmond and Petersburg; but he was upon the
defensive, and held an interior and shorter line.

The work which General Grant had in hand was the seizure of the
Southside Railroad by an extension of his left flank. He had attempted
it once with the Fifth Corps, at Dabney's Mill, and had failed; but that
attempt had been of value: he had gained a knowledge of the country. His
engineers had mapped it, the roads, the streams, the houses. The fight
at Dabney's Mill was a random stroke,--a "feeling of the position," to
use a term common in camp,--which enabled him to detect the weak point
of Lee's lines. To comprehend the movement, it is necessary to
understand the geographical and topographical features of the countr