oy
soldiers of every hue. This brings us to consider

HOW RICHMOND WAS TAKEN.

General Grant, fresh from his great success at Vicksburg and
Chattanooga, having shown that he had military genius of a high order,
was created Lieutenant-General, and appointed to the command of all the
armies of the Union in the field. It was the beginning of a new
_regime_. Up to that time there had been little concert of action
between commanders. The armies lacked a head. The President, General
Halleck, Secretary Stanton, had ideas of their own upon the best methods
and plans for conducting the war. Department commanders worked at cross
purposes. Each officer in the field naturally looked upon his sphere of
action as the most important of all, and each had his own plan of
operations to lay before the Secretary of War. A million men were
tugging manfully at the Car of Freedom, which was at a stand-still, or
moved only by inches, because they had no head. But when the President
appointed General Grant to the command, he gave up his own plans, while
General Halleck became a subordinate. The department commanders found
all their plans set aside. There was not merely concert of action, but
unity of action, under the controlling force of an imperial will.

In the article entitled "The May Campaign in Virginia," the movements of
the Army of the Potomac, from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor, are given. It
is not intended in the present article to dwell in detail upon all the
subsequent movements of that army and its allies, the Armies of the
James and the Shenandoah. Volumes are needed to narrate the operations
around Petersburg,--the battles fought on the 18th and 19th of June east
of that city,--the struggles for the Weldon Railroad,--the movements
between the James and the Appomattox, and north of the James,--the
failure in the springing of the mine,--the march of the Fifth Corps to
Stony Creek,--the battles between the Weldon Road and Hatcher's
Run,--the many contests, sharp, fierce, and bloody, between the opposing
lines, whenever an attempt was made by either army to erect new
works,--the fights on Hatcher's Run,--the attack upon Fort Harrison,
north of the James,--the successive attempts of each commander to break
the lines of the other, ending with the Fort Stedman affair, the last
offensive effort of General Lee. The new campaign which was inaugurated
the next day after the attack on Fort Stedman compelled the Rebel chief
to stand wholl