, who had rightly won for himself the name of "Unconditional
Surrender" Grant.

On the night of May 4, 1864, his army entered upon the campaign which,
after many months, was to end the war. It divided itself into two parts.
For the first six weeks there was almost constant swift marching and
hard fighting, a nearly equally matched contest of strategy and battle
between the two armies, the difference being that Grant was always
advancing, and Lee always retiring. Grant had hoped to defeat Lee
outside of his fortifications, and early in the campaign had expressed
his resolution "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer";
but the losses were so appalling, 60,000 of his best troops melting away
in killed and wounded during the six weeks, that this was seen to be
impossible. Lee's army was therefore driven into its fortifications
around the Confederate capital and then came the siege of Richmond,
lasting more than nine months, but pushed forward all that time with
relentless energy, in spite of Grant's heavy losses.

In the West, meanwhile, General William T. Sherman, Grant's closest
friend and brother officer, pursued a task of almost equal importance,
taking Atlanta, Georgia, which the Confederates had turned into a city
of foundries and workshops for the manufacture and repair of guns; then,
starting from Atlanta, marching with his best troops three hundred miles
to the sea, laying the country waste as they went; after which, turning
northward, he led them through South and North Carolina to bring his
army in touch with Grant.

Against this background of fighting the life of the country went on. The
end of the war was approaching, surely, but so slowly that the people,
hoping for it, and watching day by day, could scarcely see it. They
schooled themselves to a dogged endurance, but there was no more
enthusiasm. Many lost courage. Volunteering almost ceased, and the
government was obliged to begin drafting men to make up the numbers of
soldiers needed by Grant in his campaign against Richmond.

The President had many things to dishearten him at this time, many
troublesome questions to settle. For instance, there were new loyal
State governments to provide in those parts of the South which had again
come under control of the Union armies--no easy matter, where every man,
woman and child harbored angry feelings against the North, and no matter
how just and forbearing he might be, his plans were sure to be thwar