e 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.

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln took office for the second time as
President of the United. States. There was one new and striking
feature in the simple ceremonial, the presence of a battalion of negro
troops in his escort. This time, though he would say no sanguine word,
it cannot have been a long continuance of war that filled his thoughts,
but the scarcely less difficult though far happier task of restoring
the fabric of peaceful society in the conquered South. His
difficulties were now li