Let the world know that Grant in entering upon his great campaign, in the first days of May, 1864, had to do so against the greatest disadvantages.  The country south of the Rappahannock was against him.  The fact of Lee’s acting ever on the defensive was against him.  The woods and the rivers were against him.  All Virginia, from the Rapidan to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork.  The Confederates knew every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing creek of their own homes.  The battlefield was theirs, to begin with; it must be taken from them or remain theirs forever.  To take a battlefield of their own from Virginians has never been a pleasing task to those who did it—­or more frequently tried to do it and did not!

It remained for Grant and his tremendous Union army to undertake this herculean task.  He moved into the Wilderness and fought a two-days’ battle of the greatest severity.  The contest of the fifth and sixth of May were murderous in character.  The National losses in these two days in killed, wounded and missing were not less than 14,000; those of the Confederates were almost as great.  In this struggle General Alexander Hays was killed; Generals Getty, Baxter and McAlister were wounded, and scores of under-officers, with thousands of brave men, lost their lives or limbs.  Now it was that Lee is reported to have said to his officers, with a serious look on his iron face:  “Gentlemen, at last the Army of the Potomac has a head.”

On the seventh of May there was not much fighting.  It is said that in the lull Grant’s leading commanders thought he would recede, as his predecessors had done, and that not a few of them gave it as their opinion that he should do so.  It is said that when coming to the Chancellorsville House, he gave the command, “Forward, by the left flank,” thus demonstrating his purpose, as he said four days afterward in his despatch to the government, “to fight it out on that line if it took all summer,” the soldiers gave a sigh of relief, and many began to sing at the prospect of no more retreating.  General Sherman has recorded his belief that at this juncture Grant best displayed his greatness.

With the movement which we have just mentioned, the next stage in the campaign would bring both the Union and the Confederate armies to Spottsylvania Courthouse.  The distance that each had to march to that point was about the same.  It was at this juncture that the woods in which the two armies were moving, Grant to the left and Lee to the right, took fire and were burned.  When the Union advance came in sight of Spottsylvania, Warren, who commanded, found that the place had been already occupied by the vigilant enemy.  Hancock did not arrive in time to make an immediate attack, and Longstreet’s corps was able to get into position before the pressure of the Union advance could be felt.

At this juncture Sheridan, in command of the Federal cavalry, was cut loose from the Union army and sent whirling with irresistible speed and momentum entirely around the rear of the Confederate army, destroying railroads, cutting communication, burning trains and liberating prisoners, as far as the very suburbs of Richmond.