him, but which upon the arrival of Schofield he was forced to abandon.  On March 23, 1865, Sherman took possession of the town and railway junction of Goldsborough between Raleigh and New Berne.  From Savannah to Goldsborough he had led his army 425 miles in fifty days, amid disadvantages of ground and of weather which had called forth both extraordinary endurance and mechanical skill on the part of his men.  He lay now 140 miles south of Petersburg by the railway.  The port of New Berne to the east of him on the estuary of the Neuse gave him a sure base of supplies, and would enable him quickly to move his army by sea to Petersburg and Richmond if Grant should so decide.  The direction in which Johnston would now fall back lay inland up the Neuse Valley, also along a railway, towards Greensborough, some 150 miles south-west of Petersburg; Greensborough was connected by another railway with Petersburg and Richmond, and along this line Lee might attempt to retire and join him.

All this time whatever designs Lee had of leaving Richmond were suspended because the roads in that weather were too bad for his transport; and, while of necessity he waited, his possible openings narrowed.  Philip Sheridan had now received the coveted rank of Major-General, which McClellan had resigned on the day on which he was defeated for the Presidency.  The North delighted to find in his achievements the dashing quality which appeals to civilian imagination, and Grant now had in him, as well as in Sherman, a lieutenant who would faithfully make his chief’s purposes his own, and who would execute them with independent decision.  The cold, in which his horses suffered, had driven Sheridan into winter quarters, but on February 27 he was able to start up the Shenandoah Valley again with 10,000 cavalry.  Most of the Confederate cavalry under Early had now been dispersed, mainly for want of forage in the desolated valley; the rest were now dispersed by Sheridan, and the greater part of Early’s small force of infantry with all his artillery were captured.  There was a garrison in Lynchburg, 80 or 90 miles west of Richmond, which though strong enough to prevent Sheridan’s cavalry from capturing that place was not otherwise of account; but there was no Confederate force in the field except Johnston’s men near enough to co-operate with Lee; only some small and distant armies, hundreds of miles away with the railway communication between them and the East destroyed.  Sheridan now broke up the railway and canal communication on the north-west side of Richmond.  He was to have gone on south and eventually joined Sherman if he could; but, finding himself stopped for the time by floods in the upper valley of the James, he rode past the north of Richmond, and on March 19 joined Grant, to put his cavalry and brains at his service when Grant judged that the moment for his final effort had come.