dripping with foam. His presence restored confidence, and the army
steadily awaited the expected assault. It came, was repulsed, was
reciprocated. Early was halted, then pushed, then totally routed, and
his army nearly destroyed. It was one of the most signal and telling
victories of the war. In a month's campaign Sheridan had killed and
wounded 10,000 of the enemy and taken 13,000 prisoners.

[1865]

All this time the siege of Petersburg was sturdily pressed. In August,
Grant got possession of the Weldon Railroad, an important line running
south from Petersburg. During the next month fortifications on the
Richmond side of the James were carried and held. Through the winter
Grant contented himself with gradually extending his lines around
Petersburg, trying to cut Lee's communications, and preventing his
sending troops against Sherman. He had a death-grip upon the
Confederacy's throat, and waited with confidence for the contortions
which should announce its death.

The spring of 1865 found the South reduced to the last extremity. The
blockade had shut out imports, and it is doubtful if ever before so
large and populous a region was so far from being self-sustaining. Even
of food-products, save corn and bacon, the dearth became desperate.
Wheat bread and salt were luxuries almost from the first. Home-made
shoes, with wooden soles and uppers cut from buggy tops or old
pocketbooks, became the fashion. Pins were eagerly picked up in the
streets. Thorns, with wax heads, served as hairpins. Scraps of old metal
became precious as gold.

The plight of the army was equally distressing. Drastic drafting had
long since taken into the army all the able-bodied men between the ages
of eighteen and forty-five. Boys from fourteen to eighteen, and old men
from forty-five to sixty, were also pressed into service as junior and
senior reserves, the Confederacy thus, as General Butler wittily said,
"robbing both the cradle and the grave." Lee's army had been crumbling
away beneath the terrible blows dealt it by Grant. He received some
re-enforcements during 1864, but in no wise enough to make good his
losses. When he took the field in the spring of 1865, his total
effective force was 57,000. Grant's army, including Butler's and
Sheridan's troops, numbered 125,000.

Lee now perceived that his only hope lay in escaping from the clutches
of Grant and making a junction with Johnston's army in North Carolina.
Grant was on the watch fo