Upon joining the Army of the Potomac Grant retained Meade, with whom he was pleased, in a somewhat anomalous position under him as commander of that army.  “Wherever Lee goes,” he told him, “there you will go too.”  His object of attack was, in agreement with the opinion which Lincoln had from an early date formed, Lee’s army.  If Lee could be compelled, or should choose, to shut himself up in Richmond, as did happen, then Richmond would become an object of attack, but not otherwise.  Grant, however, hoped that he might force Lee to give him battle in the open.  In the open or behind entrenchments, he meant to fight him, reckoning that if he lost double the number that Lee did, his own loss could easily be made up, but Lee’s would be irreparable.  His hope was to a large extent disappointed.  He had to do with a greater general than himself, who, with his men, knew every inch of a tangled country.  In the engagements which now followed, Grant’s men were constantly being hurled against chosen positions, entrenched and with the new device of wire entanglements in front of them.  “I mean,” he wrote, “to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”  It took summer, autumn, winter, and the early spring.  Once across the Rapidan he was in the tract of scrubby jungle called the Wilderness.  He had hoped to escape out of this unopposed and at the same time to turn Lee’s right by a rapid march to his own left.  But he found Lee in his way.  On May 5 and 6 there was stubborn and indecisive fighting, with a loss to Grant of 17,660 and to Lee of perhaps over 10,000—­from Grant’s point of view something gained.  Then followed a further movement to the left to out-flank Lee.  Again Lee was to be found in the way in a chosen position of his own near Spottsylvania Court House.  Here on the five days from May 8 to May 12 the heavy fighting was continued, with a total loss to Grant of over 18,000 and probably a proportionate loss to Lee.  Another move by Grant to the left now caused Lee to fall back to a position beyond the North Anna River, on which an attack was made but speedily given up.  Further movements in the same general direction, but without any such serious fighting—­Grant still endeavouring to turn Lee’s right, Lee still moving so as to cover Richmond—­brought Grant by the end of the month to Cold Harbour, some ten miles east by north of Richmond, close upon the scene of McClellan’s misadventures.  Meanwhile Grant had caused an expedition under General Butler to go by sea up the James, and to land a little south of Richmond, which, with the connected fortress of Petersburg, twenty-two miles to the south of it, had only a weak garrison left.  Butler was a man with remarkable powers of self-advertisement; he had now a very good chance of taking Petersburg, but his expedition failed totally.  From June 1 to June 3 Grant was occupied on the most disastrous enterprise of his career, a hopeless attack upon a strong entrenched position, which, with the lesser encounters that took