Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/339

 The Monument to General Robert E, Lee, 331

page the quick resource, the commanding authority, the unconquer- -able tenacity of the Confederate General. Grant could not drive him from those lines ; but tlie commander of a greatly superior army can never find it hard to turn his adversary's position, especially if, by means of a fleet and convenient rivers, he can shift his base as easily as write a dispatch. Yet Lee always divined every turning moment, and always placed his army in time across the path of its adversary.

In the succession of bloody battles ending with the slaughter of Cold Harbor, he everywhere won the substantial fruits as well as the honors of victory, and between the Wilderness and the Chicka- hominy, in twenty-eight days he inflicted on Grant a loss of 60,000 men — an appalling number, equal to the strength of Lee's own army at the beginning of the campaign.

Try to conceive the intense strain of those twenty-eight days. Jackson is no longer by Lee's side, Longstreet has been stricken down severely wounded on the first day. Suppose a single moment of hesitation in the commander, a single false interpretation of ob- scure and conflicting appearances, a failure at any hour of the day or night to maintain in their perfect balance all those high faculties which we see united in Lee, and what would have availed the valor of those matchless Confederate soldiers? Can we wonder that they loved him, can we wonder that, like Scipio's veterans, they were ready to die for him, if he would only spare himself? Thrice in this campaign did they give him this supreme proof of personal devotion.

Of the seige of Petersburg I have only time to say that in it for nine months the Confederate commander displayed every art by which genius and courage can make good the lack of numbers and resources. But the increasing misfortunes of the Confederate arms on other theatres of war gradually cut off" the supply of men an^ means. The Army of Northern Virginia ceased to be recruited. It ceased to be adequately fed. It lived for months on less than one- third rations. It was demoralized, not by the enemy in its front, but by the enemy in Georgia and the Carolinas. It dwindled to 35,000 men holding a front of thirty-five miles ; but over the enemy it still cast the shadow of its great name. Again and again, by a bold offensive, it arrested the Federal movement to fasten on its commu- nications. At last, an irresistible concentration of forces broke through its long, thin line of battle. Petersburg had to be aban- doned. Richmond was evacuated. Trains bearing supplies were intercepted, and a starving army, harassed for seven days by inces-