bring all their resources to bear on the point in danger, adding:  “With proper alacrity in this respect I would have no objection to seeing the enemy get through.”  This characteristic phrase throws the strongest light both on Grant’s temperament, and on the mastery of his business at which he had arrived.  Under such generalship, an army’s lines are a trap into which entrance is suicide.

The assault was made with great spirit at half-past four on the morning of March 25.  Its initial success was due to a singular cause.  The spot chosen was a favorite point for deserters to pass into the Union lines, which they had of late been doing in large numbers.  When Gordon’s skirmishers, therefore, came stealing through the darkness, they were mistaken for an unusually large party of deserters, and they over-powered several picket-posts without firing a shot.  The storming party, following at once, took the trenches with a rush, and in a few minutes had possession of the main line on the right of the fort, and, next, of the fort itself.  It was hard in the semi-darkness to distinguish friends from foes, and for a time General Parke was unable to make headway; but with the growing light his troops advanced from every direction to mend the breach, and, making short work of the Confederate detachments, recaptured the fort, opening a cross-fire of artillery so withering that few of the Confederates could get back to their own lines.  This was, moreover, not the only damage the Confederates suffered.  Humphreys and Wright, on the Union left, rightly assuming that Parke could take care of himself, instantly searched the lines in their front to see if they had been essentially weakened to support Gordon’s attack.  They found they had not, but in gaining this knowledge captured the enemy’s intrenched picket-lines in front of them, which, being held, gave inestimable advantage to the Union army in the struggle of the next week.

Grant’s chief anxiety for some time had been lest Lee should abandon his lines; but though burning to attack, he was delayed by the same bad roads which kept Lee in Richmond, and by another cause.  He did not wish to move until Sheridan had completed the work assigned him in the Shenandoah valley and joined either Sherman or the army at Petersburg.  On March 24, however, at the very moment Gordon was making his plans for next day’s sortie, Grant issued his order for the great movement to the left which was to finish the war.  He intended to begin on the twenty-ninth, but Lee’s desperate dash of the twenty-fifth convinced him that not a moment was to be lost.  Sheridan reached City Point on the twenty-sixth.  Sherman came up from North Carolina for a brief visit next day.  The President was also there, and an interesting meeting took place between these famous brothers in arms and Mr. Lincoln; after which Sherman went back to Goldsboro, and Grant began pushing his army to the left with even more than his usual iron energy.