back both wings of his army, clinging with
his centre to the river bank. Thus check-mating Grant in a way to make
his head swim! Grant after crossing the river, on both our right and
left, suddenly found he had got his army cut in two, and he _got out of
that_, just as quickly as he could, and gave the North Anna line up as a
bad job.

We were moving in one direction, or another, about the Junction, for
seven or eight days. This North Anna business was far more a matter of
brains between the Generals, than brawn between the men. Some sharp
fighting, on points right and left, but that was all! General Lee simply
"horn swaggled" General Grant, and that was the end of it! We were out
one day on the "Doswell Farm," and got under a pretty sharp infantry
fire, and fired a few shots, then General Rodes' skirmishers charged,
and drove them off, and we saw no more of them.

Along about the 29th or 30th of May, we got on the march again; this
time through the "Slashes of Hanover." It was an all-night march, and a
most uncomfortable one. The rain had been pouring, and long sections of
the road were under water. I think we waded for miles, that dark night,
through water from an inch to a foot deep. And the mud holes! after a
time our gun wheels went up to the hub, and we had to turn to, there in
the dark, and prize our guns out; nearly lift them bodily out of the
mud. I suppose we did not go more than five or six miles, in that
all-night march, and by the time day dawned we were as wet, and muddy,
as the roads, and felt as _flat_, and were tired to death. We halted for
an hour or two to rest; then pushed on, all day.

In the late afternoon (this I think was May 31st) we took our guns into
position, on the far edge of a flat, open field. Two hundred yards in
front of us, in the edge of a wood, was a white frame Church, which,
some of the fellows, who knew this neighborhood, told us was "Pole Green
Church." They also told us that the Pamunkey River was about a mile in
front of us. We heard artillery in various directions, but saw no enemy,
and did not know anything of what was going on, except where we were. It
was quiet there; so we went to sleep, and were undisturbed during the
night.

The next morning, we found that infantry had formed right and left of
us, and we were in a line of battle stretching across this extensive
field. About eleven o'clock skirmishers began to appear, in the woods,
in front of us. They thickened up,