Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/565

 1864] The siege of Petersburg. 533 cannonade of the battle, and met fugitives and trains in confusion and flight. Galloping forward with an escort of twenty men, his presence and contagious enthusiasm succeeded in arresting the flight, rallying the disorganised regiments and brigades, and turning the tide of battle. Thereupon the retreating Federal army took the aggressive, not only repulsing further attack, but changing the defeat of the forenoon into a brilliant Federal victory. At nightfall it was the Confederate army which in its turn was overwhelmed and beaten, having lost over 1000 prisoners, and 24 Confederate guns, together with the 24 Federal guns it had taken in the morning. This victory at Cedar Creek, added to the previous destruction of provisions and forage, practically eliminated the Shenandoah Valley as a serious factor in the war. Detached Confederate raiding and further devastation by Federal troops went on for awhile, but there were no more invasions or important battles in that region. While Sherman was making his great march from the West through Georgia and the Carolinas toward Virginia, and while Sigel, Hunter, and Sheridan, after many fluctuations between defeat and victory, were gaining control of the Shenandoah Valley and rendering it untenable by the enemy's forces, Grant, with the Army of the Potomac, was steadily and patiently pushing forward the siege of Petersburg, twenty-two miles south of Richmond, upon which depended the fate of the Confederate capital and government. During the previous three years of the war two strong circles of fortifications had been built to defend Richmond on the Washington side. Since Grant brought the Army of the Potomac across the James river, the defences of Petersburg had been pushed forward by the Confederates, little by little, until, during the nine months of the siege which followed, the combined fortifications of Richmond and Petersburg stretched for a distance of about forty miles, extending in a circle from five miles north-west of Richmond to seven miles south-west of Petersburg. Grant, having failed to destroy Lee's army by hard marching and desperate fighting, now endeavoured, by cutting off its supplies, to force it either to capitulate or to abandon the two strongholds. Lee's supplies reached him partly from the north-west, but principally from the south and south-west of Richmond. The main task of the Federal army therefore was to seize the three railroads and two plank-roads centring at Petersburg. Grant pursued the policy, which his greatly superior numbers rendered possible, of threatening or attacking with his right wing north of the James, in order to compel Lee to withdraw forces from other points, and, by thus weakening his line, to enable Grant to push his investment westward. As a consequence there was kept up, throughout the remainder of the year, a double system of engineering and fighting, moves and counter-moves, assaults and repulses, both north and south of the James. This work went on somewhat languidly at times. Both armies had been greatly