Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/540

 534 Southern Historical Society Papers.

days of hopeless effort, that Lee's position could not be carried, General Grant began his movement to the North Anna.

General Lee had received no reinforcements since the beginning of the campaign, except the two absent brigades of Ewell's corps, mentioned before. He telegraphed to General Breckinridge, after the victory ot the latter over Siegel at New Market on May i6th, to come to him with his division, and Pickett's division was moving to him from North Carolina and Petersburg.

Grant left his dead unburied in large numbers both at the Wilder- ness and Spotsylvania Courthouse, and many thousand muskets scat- tered through the woods. The Confederates being in possession of these battlefields, the Ordnance officers were instructed to collect the materials of war left thereon. Among other things, they obtained more than one hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds of lead in bullets, which were recast in Richmond and fired again at the enemy before the close of the campaign.

The head of Pickett's division reached the army as we began the march to the North Anna, and Breckinridge's division from the Val- ley, about two thousand seven hundred strong, was added to the Army of Northern Virginia at Hanover Junction on the 24th of May.

When General Grant's troops, on the morning of May 23d, reached the north bank of the North Anna, he found the Army of Northern Virginia in position on the south side. Not much force was wasted in preventing the crossing of the Federal forces. Warren's corps crossed un our left at Jericho ford, without opposition, and Hancock soon overcame the few men left in the old earthworks at the bridge. Once on the south side it was another matter. General Grant found General Lee's centre near the river; his right reposed on the swamps and his left thrown back obliquely towards the Little river behind him. He discovered, at a heavy cost of lite, that in his position he could make no progress in attempting to force it. In fact one onslaught on our right was repulsed by merely doubling the line of skirmishers in front of the division (Rodes's) attacked. The Federal commander says in his report : " Finding the enemy's position on the North Anna stronger than either of his previous ones, I with- drew on the night of the 26th to the north bank of the North Anna." Says the chronicler of the Army of the Potomac: " The annals of war seldom present a more effective checkmate than was thus given by Lee."

But it would be a mistake, in estimating General Lee as a soldier,