g ranks could
never be renewed; but not made good in quality; for many of the best
were dead. The wastage of material is hardly worth considering on
the Northern side; for it could always be made good, superabundantly
good. But the corresponding wastage on the Southern side was unrenewed
and unrenewable. Food, clothing, munitions, medical stores--it was
all the same for all the Southern armies: desperate expedients,
slow starvation, death.

Consternation reigned at Richmond on the twelfth of June, the day
the fitful firing ceased around Cold Harbor. There was danger in
the Valley, where Hunter had won success at Staunton, and where
Crook's and Averell's Union troops were expected to arrive from West
Virginia. Sheridan, too, was off on a twenty-day raid. He cut the
Virginia Central rails at Trevilian, did much other damage between
Richmond and the Valley, and, toward the end of June, rejoined Grant,
who had reached the James nearly a fortnight before. Always trying
to overlap Lee's extending right, Grant closed in on Petersburg
with the Army of the Potomac while the Army of the James held fast
against Richmond. This part of the front then remained comparatively
quiet till the end of July.

But the beleaguered Confederates made one last sortie out of the
Valley and straight against Washington. At the beginning of July
the Valley was uncovered owing to the roundabout flank march that
Hunter was forced to make back to his base for ammunition. The
enterprising Jubal Early took advantage of this with some veteran
troops and made straight for Washington. On the ninth Lew Wallace
succeeded in delaying him for one day at the Monocacy by an admirably
planned defense most gallantly carried out with greatly inferior
numbers and far less veteran men. This gave time for reinforcements
to pour into Washington; so that on the twelfth, Early, finding
the works alive with men, had to retreat even faster than he came.

In the meantime Grant's extreme right wing was steadily pressing
the invasion of Georgia, where we left Sherman and Johnston face
to face at Kenesaw in June. Here again the beleaguered Confederates
had been making desperate raids or sorties, trying to cut Sherman
off from his base in Tennessee and keep back the Federal forces
in other parts of the river area. "Our Jack Morgan," whom we left
as a prisoner of war after his Ohio raid of '63, had escaped in
November, fought Crook and Averell for Saltville and Wytheville
in