g of thousands of
camp-fires, over all the plain. Hillside, valley, nook, and dell,
threw up its flickering light. Long trains of white canvas wagons
disappeared in the distant gloom.

"At three A. M., the reveille, the roll of innumerable drums, and the
blow of bugles sounded, and as morning brightened, dark masses of
armed men stood in long line. With the first beams of the sun peering
over the landscape, they moved from the hills. Disjointed parts were
welded together, regiments became brigades, brigades grew into
divisions, and divisions became corps. The sunlight flashed from a
hundred thousand bayonets and sabres." Thus in a few hours a great
city of male inhabitants, numbering over the tenth of a million,
disappeared. By night-time, in a rapid march, Grant was in
headquarters in a deserted house near the Germania Ford. There
Carleton noticed the general's simple style of living. Unostentatious
in all his habits, he smoked constantly, often whittling a stick while
thinking, and wasting no words. Grant had stolen a march upon Lee, and
was as near Richmond as were the Confederates, who must attack him in
flank and retard him if possible. Knowing every road and bridle-path
in the Wilderness, Lee, having drawn all the resources of the
Confederacy east of Georgia into his lines, had gathered an army the
largest and the most complete he had yet commanded. He must now cut up
Grant's host; or, if unable to do so, even without defeat, must begin
a march which meant some American Saint Helena as its end.

The campaign which followed in that densely wooded part of Virginia, a
few miles west of the former battle-field of Chancellorsville, had not
been paralleled for hardship during the whole war. In the ten days
succeeding May 4th, when the army broke camp at Culpeper and Brandy
Station, there had been a march of eighteen miles, the crossing of the
Rapidan with hard fighting on May 5th, and on the 6th, the great
battle in the Wilderness, among the trees from which the foe could
hardly be distinguished. On the 7th, there was fighting all along the
line, with the night march after Spottsylvania, and on Sunday, the
8th, under the burning sun, a sharp fight by the Fifth Corps. On the
9th, another terrific battle followed, in which three corps were
engaged, one of them, the Sixth, losing its noble commander,
Sedgwick, with a score or two of able officers. On the 10th, in the
afternoon, a pitched battle was fought all along the l