tracks of all three railroads, burning the wood-work, and laying waste the country around; but the further results of the expedition were unfavorable.  They were pursued and harassed by a small body of cavalry under General W. H.F.  Lee, and, on their return in the direction of Reams’s Station, were met near Sapponey Church by a force of fifteen hundred cavalry under General Hampton.  That energetic officer at once attacked; the fighting continued furiously throughout the entire night, and at dawn the Federal horse retreated in confusion.  Their misfortunes were not, however, ended.  Near Reams’s, at which point they attempted to cross the Weldon Railroad, they were met by General Fitz Lee’s horsemen and about two hundred infantry under General Mahone, and this force completed their discomfiture.  After a brief attempt to force their way through the unforeseen obstacle, they broke in disorder, leaving behind them twelve pieces of artillery, and more than a thousand prisoners, and, with foaming and exhausted horses, regained the Federal lines.

Such was the result of an expedition from which General Grant probably expected much.  The damage done to Lee’s communications was inconsiderable, and did not repay the Federal commander for the losses sustained.  The railroads were soon repaired and in working order again; and the Federal cavalry was for the time rendered unfit for further operations.

It was now the end of June, and every attempt made by General Grant to force Lee’s lines had proved unsuccessful.  It was apparent that surprise of the able commander of the Confederate army was hopeless.  His works were growing stronger every day, and nothing was left to his great adversary but to lay regular siege to the long line of fortifications; to draw lines for the protection of his own front from attack; and, by gradually extending his left, reach out toward the Weldon and Southside Railroads.

To obtain possession of these roads was from this time General Grant’s great object; and all his movements were shaped by that paramount consideration.

VII.

THE SIEGE OF RICHMOND BEGUN.

The first days of July, 1864, witnessed, at Petersburg, the commencement of a series of military manoeuvres, for which few, if any, precedents existed in all the annals of war.  An army of forty or fifty thousand men, intrenched along a line extending finally over a distance of nearly forty miles, was defending, against a force of about thrice its numbers, a capital more than twenty miles in its rear; and, from July of one year to April of the next, there never was a moment when, to have broken through this line, would not have terminated the war, and resulted in the destruction of the Confederacy.