ood was trying to keep Sherman off Atlanta Grant was trying
to make a breach at Petersburg. Grant gave Meade "minute orders
on the 24th [of July] how I wanted the assault conducted," and
Meade elaborated the actual plan with admirable skill except in one
particular--that of the generals concerned. Burnside was ordered
to use his corps for the assault, and he chose Ledlie's division to
lead. The mine was on an enormous scale, designed to hold eight tons
of powder, though it was only charged with four, and was approached
by a gallery five hundred feet long. On the twenty-ninth Grant
brought every available man into proper support of Burnside, whose
other three divisions were to form the immediate support of Ledlie's
grand forlorn hope.

In the early morning of the thirtieth the mine blew up with an
earthquaking shock; the enemy round it ran helter-skelter to the
rear; a crater like that of a volcano was formed; and a hundred
and sixty pieces of artillery opened a furious fire on every square
inch near it. Ledlie's division rushed forward and occupied the
crater. But there the whole maneuver stopped short; for everything
hinged on Ledlie's movements; and Ledlie was hiding, well out of
danger, instead of "carrying on." After a pause Confederate
reinforcements came up and drove the leaderless division back.
"The effort," said Grant, "was a stupendous failure"; and it cost
him nearly four thousand men, mostly captured.

August was a sad month for the loyal North. It was then, as we
have seen, that Lincoln had to warn Grant about the way in which
his orders were being falsified in Washington. It was then that
Sherman asked for reinforcements, so as to be up to strength before
and after the taking of Atlanta. And it was then that Halleck warned
Grant to be ready to send some of his best men north if there should
be serious resistance to the draft. Nor was this all. Thurlow Weed,
the great election agent, told Lincoln that the Government would
be defeated; which meant, of course, that the compromised and
compromising Peace Party would probably be at the helm in time
to wreck the Union. With so many of the best men dead or at the
front the whole tone of political society had been considerably
lowered--to the corresponding advantage of all those meaner elements
that fish in troubled waters when the dregs are well stirred up.
There were sinister signs in the big cities, in the press, and
in financial circles. The Union dollar on