ess.
His works were growing stronger every day, and nothing was left to
his great adversary but to lay regular siege to the long line of
fortifications; to draw lines for the protection of his own front from
attack; and, by gradually extending his left, reach out toward the
Weldon and Southside Railroads.

To obtain possession of these roads was from this time General Grant's
great object; and all his movements were shaped by that paramount
consideration.

VII.

THE SIEGE OF RICHMOND BEGUN.

The first days of July, 1864, witnessed, at Petersburg, the
commencement of a series of military manoeuvres, for which few, if
any, precedents existed in all the annals of war. An army of forty or
fifty thousand men, intrenched along a line extending finally over
a distance of nearly forty miles, was defending, against a force of
about thrice its numbers, a capital more than twenty miles in its
rear; and, from July of one year to April of the next, there never
was a moment when, to have broken through this line, would not
have terminated the war, and resulted in the destruction of the
Confederacy.

A few words in reference to the topography of the country and the
situation will show this. Petersburg is twenty-two miles south of
Richmond, and is connected with the South and West by the Weldon and
Southside Railroads, which latter road crosses the Danville Railroad,
the main line of communication between the capital and the Gulf
States. With the enemy once holding these roads and those north of the
city, as they were preparing to do, the capital would be isolated, and
the Confederate Government must evacuate Virginia. In that event the
Army of Northern Virginia had also nothing left to it but retreat.
Virginia must be abandoned; the Federal authority would be extended
over the oldest and one of the largest and most important members of
the Confederacy; and, under circumstances so adverse, it might well be
a question whether, disheartened as they would be by the loss of so
powerful an ally, the other States of the Confederacy would have
sufficient resolution to continue the contest.

These considerations are said to have been fully weighed by General
Lee, whose far-reaching military sagacity divined the exact situation
of affairs, and the probable results of a conflict so unequal as
that which General Grant now forced upon him. We have noticed, on
a preceding page, his opinions upon this subject, expressed to a
confid