l at last he strikes the earth, and with a terrible
rebound in the soft spongy needles Mr. "Yank" lies still, while
Griffith and his men take to their heels. It was not known positively
whether he was killed or not, but one thing Lieutenant Griffith and
his men were sure of--one Yankee, at least, had been given a long ride
in midair.

After Grant's repulse at Cold Harbor he gave up all hopes of reaching
Richmond by direct assault and began his memorable change of base.
Crossing the James River at night he undertook the capture of
Petersburg by surprise. It appears from contemporaneous history that
owing to some inexcusable blunders on our part Grant came very near
accomplishing his designs.

To better understand the campaign around Petersburg it is necessary to
take the reader back a little way. Simultaneous with Grant's advance
on the Rapidan an army of thirty thousand under the Union General
B.F. Butler was making its way up the James River and threatening
Petersburg. It was well known that Richmond would be no longer tenable
should the latter place fall. Beauregard was commanding all of North
Carolina and Virginia on the south side of the James River, but his
forces were so small and so widely scattered that they promised little
protection. When Lee and his veterans were holding back Grant and the
Union Army at the Wilderness, Brocks Cross Roads, and Spottsylvania
C.H., Beauregard with a handful of veterans and a few State troops was
"bottling up Butler" on the James. What Kershaw had been to Lee at the
Wilderness, McGowan at Spottsylvania, General Hagood was to General
Beauregard on the south side around Petersburg. General Beauregard
does not hesitate to acknowledge what obligations he was under to the
brave General Hagood and his gallant band of South Carolinians at the
most critical moments during the campaign, and it is unquestioned that
had not General Hagood come up at this opportune moment, Petersburg
would have fallen a year before it did.

General Beauregard fought some splendid battles on the south side, and
if they had not been overshadowed by the magnitude of Lee's from the
Wilderness to the James, they would have ranked in all probability
as among the greatest of the war. But from one cause and then another
during the whole campaign Beauregard was robbed of his legitimate
fruits of battle.

The low, swampy nature of the country below Richmond, especially
between the James and the Chickahominy, prev