hing victory, or a forced
retreat, drive him toward Richmond. Failing signally at the Wilderness,
he abandoned this original plan and took up the Fredericksburg line.
Here again the disastrous days of Spottsylvania foiled him completely;
and he struck for the Tappahannock and Fort Royal line. Lee's emphatic
repulse of his movement on the North Anna again sent Grant across the
Pamunkey; and _into the very tracks of McClellan two years
before_!

But there was one vast difference. McClellan had reached this base with
no loss. Grant, with all McClellan's experience to teach him, had not
reached this point at a cost of less than 70,000 men!

Had he embarked his troops in transports and sailed up the river, Grant
might have landed his army at the White House in twenty-four hours; and
that without the firing of a shot. But he had chosen a route that was
to prove him not only the greatest strategist of the age, but the most
successful as well. The difference of the two was simply this: he took
twenty-six days instead of one; he fought nine bloody engagements
instead of none; he made four separate changes in his digested plan of
advance; and he lost 70,000 men to gain a position a condemned general
had occupied two years before without a skirmish!

But the people of the North did not see this. They were only allowed
partial reports of losses and changes of plan; they were given
exaggerated statements of the damage done to Lee and of his dire
strait; and the fact of Grant's proximity to the Rebel Capital was made
the signal for undue and premature rejoicing. He was already
universally declared the captor of Richmond, by a people willing to
accept a fact with no thought of its cost; to accept a result for the
causes that produced it.

But Grant was now in a position when he could not afford to await the
slow course of siege operations. He could not allow time for the hubbub
at the North to die away and reflection to take its place. Blood to him
was no thicker than water; and he must vindicate the boasts of his
blind admirers--cost thousands of lives though it might. Once more he
marshaled his re-enforced ranks, only to hurl them into the jaws of
death. For though worn away by the fearful friction of numbers--melted
slowly in the fiery furnace of battle--the little Confederate force sat
behind its works, grim, defiant--dangerous as ever!

Could Grant crush out that handful by the pure weight of his fresh
thousands--could he l