direction of Lynchburg, where his communications would have remained
open with the south and west. If driven from that point, the
fastnesses of the Alleghanies were at hand; and, contemplating
afterward the possibility of being forced to take refuge there, he
said: "With my army in the mountains of Virginia, I could carry on
this war for twenty years longer." That spectacle was lost to the
world--Lee and his army fighting from mountain fastness to mountain
fastness--and the annals of war are not illustrated by a chapter so
strange. That Lee was confident of his ability to carry on such a
struggle successfully is certain; and Washington had conceived the
same idea in the old Revolution, when he said that if he were driven
from the seaboard he would take refuge in West Augusta, and thereby
prolong the war interminably.

To return from these speculations to the narrative of events. General
Grant remained in front of Lee until the 12th of June, when, moving
again by his left flank, he crossed the Chickahominy, proceeded in
the direction of City Point, at which place the Appomattox and James
Rivers mingle their waters, and, crossing the James on pontoons,
hastened forward in order to seize upon Petersburg. This important
undertaking had been strangely neglected by Major-General Butler,
who, in obedience to General Grant's orders, had sailed from Fortress
Monroe on the 4th of May, reached Bermuda Hundred, the peninsula
opposite City Point, made by a remarkable bend in James River, and
proceeded to intrench himself. It was in his power on his arrival to
have seized upon Petersburg, but this he failed to do at that time,
and the appearance of a force under General Beauregard, from the
south, soon induced him to give his entire attention to his own
safety. An attack by Beauregard had been promptly made, which nearly
resulted in General Butler's destruction. He succeeded, however, in
retiring behind his works across the neck of the Peninsula, in which
he now found himself completely shut up; and so powerless was his
situation, with his large force of thirty thousand men, that General
Grant wrote, "His army was as completely shut off ... as if it had
been in a bottle strongly corked."

The attempt of General Grant to seize upon Petersburg by a surprise
failed. His forces were not able to reach the vicinity of the place
until the 15th, when they were bravely opposed behind impromptu works
by a body of local troops, who fought l