The history of this conflict, truthfully written, will show this.  The archives of the State Department, when one day made public, will show how deeply the Government was affected by the want of military success, and to what resolutions the Executive had in consequence come.  Had not success elsewhere come to brighten the horizon, it would have been difficult to have raised new forces to recruit the Army of the Potomac, which, shaken in its structure, its valor quenched in blood, and thousands of its ablest officers killed and wounded, was the Army of the Potomac no more.”

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Swinton, in his able and candid “Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac.”]

The campaign of one month—­from May 4th to June 4th—­had cost the Federal commander sixty thousand men and three thousand officers—­numbers which are given on the authority of Federal historians—­while the loss of Lee did not exceed eighteen thousand.  The result would seem an unfavorable comment upon the choice of the route across the country from Culpepper instead of that by the James.  General McClellan, two years before, had reached Cold Harbor with trifling losses.  To attain the same point had cost General Grant a frightful number of lives.  Nor could it be said that he had any important successes to offset this loss.  He had not defeated his adversary in any of the battle-fields of the campaign; nor did it seem that he had stricken him any serious blow.  The Army of Northern Virginia, not reenforced until it reached Hanover Junction, and then only by about nine thousand men under Generals Breckinridge and Pickett, had held its ground against the large force opposed to it; had repulsed every assault; and, in a final trial of strength with a force largely its superior, had inflicted upon the enemy, in about an hour, a loss of thirteen thousand men.

These facts, highly honorable to Lee and his troops, are the plainest and most compendious comment we can make upon the campaign.  The whole movement of General Grant across Virginia is, indeed, now conceded even by his admirers to have been unfortunate.  It failed to accomplish the end expected from it—­the investment of Richmond on the north and west—­and the lives of about sixty thousand men were, it would seem, unnecessarily lost, to reach a position which might have been attained with losses comparatively trifling, and without the unfortunate prestige of defeat.

VI.

FIRST BATTLES AT PETERSBURG.

General Lee remained facing his adversary in his lines at Cold Harbor, for many days after the bloody struggle of the 3d of June, confident of his ability to repulse any new attack, and completely barring the way to Richmond.  The Federal campaign, it was now seen, was at an end on that line, and it was obvious that General Grant must adopt some other plan, in spite of his determination expressed in the beginning of the campaign, to “fight it out on that line if it took all the summer.”  The summer was but begun, and further fighting on that line was hopeless.  Under these circumstances the Federal commander resolved to give up the attempt to assail Richmond from the north or east, and by a rapid movement to Petersburg, seize upon that place, cut the Confederate railroads leading southward, and thus compel an evacuation of the capital.