re taken. On the 21st the Confederates attacked, and
obtained a certain amount of success, killing, wounding, and capturing
2400 men. Petersburg was shelled day and night, and almost continuous
fighting went on. Nevertheless, up to the middle of October the
positions of the armies remained unaltered. On the 27th of that month
the Federals made another general attack, but were repulsed with a loss
of 1500 men. During the next three months there was little fighting, the
Confederates having now so strengthened their lines by incessant toil
that even General Grant, reckless of the lives of his troops as he was,
hesitated to renew the assault.

But in the South General Sherman was carrying all before him. Generals
Hood and Johnston, who commanded the Confederate armies there, had
fought several desperate battles, but the forces opposed to them were
too strong to be driven back. They had marched through Georgia to
Atlanta and captured that important town on the 1st of September, and
obtained command of the network of railways, and thus cut off a large
portion of the Confederacy from Richmond. Then Sherman marched south,
wasting the country through which he marched, and capturing Savannah on
the 21st of September.

While he was so doing, General Hood had marched into Tennessee, and
after various petty successes, was defeated, after two days' hard
fighting, near Nashville. In the third week in January, 1865, Sherman
set out with 60,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry from Savannah, laying
waste the whole country--burning, pillaging, and destroying. The town of
Columbia was occupied, sacked, and burned, the white men and women and
even the negroes being horribly ill-treated.

The Confederates evacuated Charleston at the approach of the enemy,
setting it in flames rather than allow it to fall into Sherman's hands.
The Federal army then continued its devastating route through South
Carolina, and at the end of March had established itself at Goldsboro,
in North Carolina, and was in readiness to aid Grant in his final attack
on Richmond.

Lee, seeing the imminence of the danger, made an attack upon the enemy
in front of Petersburg, but was repulsed. He had now but 37,000 men with
which to oppose an enemy of nearly four times that strength in front of
him, while Sheridan's cavalry, 10,000 strong, threatened his flank, and
Sherman with his army was but a few days' march distant. There was
fierce fighting on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of