tuart followed hard, made an exhausting
sweep round Sheridan's flank, and faced him on the eleventh at
Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond. Here the tired and
outnumbered Confederates made a desperate attempt to stem Sheridan's
advance. But Stuart, the hero of his own men, and the admiration
of his generous foes, was mortally wounded; and his thinner lines,
overlapped and outweighed, gave ground and drew off. Richmond had
no garrison to resist a determined attack. But Sheridan, knowing he
could not hold it and having better work to do, pushed on southeast
to Haxall's Landing, where he could draw much-needed supplies from
Butler, just across the James. With the enemy aggressive and alert
all round him, he built a bridge under fire across the Chickahominy,
struck north for the Army of the Potomac, and reported his return
to Grant at Chesterfield Station--halfway back to Spotsylvania--on
his seventeenth day out.

In the course of this great raid Sheridan had drawn off the Confederate
cavalry; fought four successful actions; released hundreds of Union
prisoners and taken as many himself; cut rails and wires to such an
extent that Lee could only communicate with Richmond by messenger;
destroyed enormous quantities of the most vitally needed enemy
stores, especially food and medical supplies; and, by penetrating
the outer defenses of Richmond, raised Federal prestige to a higher
plane at a most important juncture.

Meanwhile Sherman, whose own main body included a hundred thousand
men, had started from Chattanooga at the same time as Grant from
Culpeper Court House. In Grant's opinion "Johnston, with Atlanta,
was of less importance only because the capture of Johnston and
his army would not produce so immediate and decisive a result in
closing the rebellion as would the possession of Richmond, Lee, and
his army." Sherman's organization, supply and transport, engineers,
staff, and army generally were excellent. So skillful, indeed,
were his railway engineers that a disgusted Confederate raider
called out to a demolition party: "Better save your powder, boys.
What's the good of blowing up this one when Sherman brings duplicate
tunnels along?"

Sherman had double Johnston's numbers in the field. But Johnston,
as a supremely skillful Fabian, was a most worthy opponent for this
campaign, when the Confederate object was to gain time and sicken
the North of the war by falling back from one strongly prepared
position to a