Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/542

 536 Southern Historical Society Fapers.

General Grant, as soon as he crossed the Pamunkey, made ar- rangements to draw troops to him from Butler, who was lying in compulsory leisure, in his "'Bermuda bottle." His reinforcements received before the arrival of those can be fairly estimated at more than fifty thousand men. These came to him by Acquia creek, Port Royal and the White House on York river, and including these four divisions drawn from the Tenth and Eighteenth corps, Northern au- thorities put Grant's effectives from the beginning of the campaign up to the days of the Chickahominy conflict, at more than two hun- dred and twenty thousand men of all arms. In addition to the troops already mentioned, General Lee drew to himself Hoke's divi- sion of Beauregard's army at Petersburg, and was reinforced by Finnegan's Florida brigade and Keitt's South Carolina regiment. These bodies, amounting to between seven and eight thousand men, came to him on the Chickahominy. Our cavalry was also reinforced during the latter days in May by two regiments from South Carolina and a battalion from Georgia.

The victory of the 3d of June, at Cold Harbor, was perhaps the easiest ever granted to Confederate arms by the folly of Federal com ■ manders. It was a general assault along a front of six miles and a bloody repulse at all points, and a partial success at one weak salient, speedily crushed by Finnegan's Floridians and the Maryland batta- lion. The loss on the Federal side was conceded to be about thir- teen thousand; on our side it was about twelve hundred. When a renewal of the attack was ordered by General Grant in the forenoon, most of his troops refused to move, and says Swinton: " His immobile lines pronounced a silent, yet emphatic verdict against further slaughter." On the 4th of June we had a renewal of the painful scenes of Spotsylvania, with the dead and the dying assailants lying in front of our lines. On the 5th of June, General Grant asked per- mission to bury his dead. By that lime his wounded, who had lain so long under the summer's sun, were now counted with the dying, and the dying with the dead. General Grant lay in his lines until the night of the 12th of June. The notice here of his "resolution to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer" seeming now "to be sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought." On that day Sheridan was defeated by Hampton, whose force consisted of his own and Fitz. Lee's divisions, at Trevillian's depot. The main object of Sheridan's march towards Gordonsville was to make a junction with Hunter's and Crook's united corps, and bring it down to Grant's army. This operation being rendered impossible by Sheriddn's de-