ended our lines
southwestward till they touched Dinwiddie Court House, thirty miles from
City Point. The Rebels fell back with but little skirmishing, until we
faced northward and reached out toward their idolized Southside Railway;
then they grew uneasy, and, as a hint of their opposition, fought us the
sharp battle of Quaker Road on Thursday. Still, we reached farther and
farther, marvelling to find that, with his depleted army, Lee always
overmatched us at every point of attack; but on Friday we quitted our
intrenchments on the Boydtown plank-road, and made a bold push for the
White Oak road. This is one of the series of parallel public ways
running east and west, south of the Southside, the Vaughan road being
the first, the Boydtown plank-road the second, and the old Court-House
road the third. It became evident to the Rebels that we had two direct
objects in view: the severing of their railway, and the occupation of
the "Five Forks." The latter is a magnificent strategic point. Five good
roads meet in the edge of a dry, high, well-watered forest, three of
them radiating to the railway, and their tributaries unlocking all the
country. Farther south, their defences had been paltry, but they
fortified this empty solitude as if it had been their capital. Upon its
principal road, the "White Oak," aforenamed, they had a ditched
breastwork with embrasures of logs and earth, reaching east and west
three miles, and this was covered eastward and southeastward by
rifle-pits, masked works, and felled timber; the bridges approaching it
were broken; all the roads picketed, and a desperate resolve to hold to
it averred. This point of "Five Forks" may be as much as eight miles
from Dinwiddie Court House, four from the Southside road, and eighteen
from Humphrey's, the nearest of our military railway stations. A crooked
stream called Gravelly Run, which, with Hatcher's, forms Rowanty Creek,
and goes off to feed the Chowan in North Carolina, rises near "Five
Forks," and gives the name of Gravelly Run Church to a little Methodist
meeting-house, built in the forest a mile distant. That meeting-house is
a hospital to-night, running blood, and at "Five Forks" a victor's
battle-flags are flying.

The Fifth Army Corps of General Warren, has had all of the flank
fighting of the week to do. It lost five or six hundred men in its
victory of Thursday, and on Friday rested along the Boydtown plank-road,
at the house of one Butler, chiefly, whic