in great loss to Grant. The artillery firing was constant through the forenoon, but Lee was too strongly entrenched to be driven.

As soon as there was a lull in the roar of battle, I improved the opportunity to visit the hospitals. There were long lines of ambulances bringing in the wounded, who were laid beneath the trees. Unconscious men were upon the tables, helpless in the hands of the surgeons, to wake from a dreamless sleep with a limb gone, a bleeding stump of a leg or arm. Horrid the gashes where jagged iron had cut through the flesh, severing arteries and tendons in an instant. Heads, hands, legs, and arms mangled and dripping with blood, -human blood! There were moans, low murmurings, wrenched from the men against their wills. Men were babbling, in their delirium, of other scenes, dim recollections, which were momentary realities. To be with them and not do for them, to see suffering without power to alleviate, gives painful tension to nerves, even though one may be familiar with the scenes of carnage.

I turned from the scene all but ready to say, "Anything to stay this terrible destruction of human life." But there were other thoughts, of retributive justice, of sighs and groans, scourged backs, broken hearts, partings of mothers from their children, the coffle train, and the various horrors of the accursed system of slavery, the cause of all this "wounding and hurt." I remembered that it was a contest between eternal right and infernal wrong; that He who is of infinite love and tenderness, in His war against rebellion, spared not His only begotten Son; and thus consoled and strengthened, I could wish the contest to go on till victory should crown our efforts, and a permanent peace be the inheritance of our children.

THE

CHAPTER XVIII.

GETTING READY FOR A NEW MOVEMENT.

HE morning after the disastrous attack at Cold Harbour was hot and sultry. The horses around General Grant's headquarters were restless from the flies, and were stamping their feet. I was sitting near the commander-in-chief, who looked careworn and weary.

"Is that musketry?" he asked.

"No, it is the horses," some one answered.

"I reckon I am demoralised, for I can't tell it from distant musketry. Ever since we reached the Wilderness there has been scarcely an hour in which I have not heard the report of guns. We are all of us tired and the army must have a period of rest."

I passed over to General Meade's tent and was received with a cheerful good-morning. Noticing a map of Virginia spread upon the table, I said, "General Meade, may I make a suggestion?"

"Thus far, since crossing the Rapidan, the Army has advanced wholly by its left flank; why not make a movement by the right flank?" "Well, what advantage will you gain by such a movement?"

"You are down to the swamp of the Chickahominy. The ground northwest of Richmond is high, dry, and healthful, and, if reports are correct, the Confederate defences are much less formidable in that direction.

66

Yes, that is correct, but how will you supply the army?"

"You will have the railroad to Gordonsville, and that to Fredericksburg and Belle Plain."

"But will it not take a full corps to prevent Lee from destroying them?"

He stopped a moment, then drew his finger across the map from Cold Harbour to Petersburg and said:

"What would you say to choosing that line of approach instead?" "I see it, general," I replied, the line of the James, the advantages of water carriage instead of railroad, flashing over me. Putting the re

mark of General Grant in connection with that significant movement of General Meade's finger, led me to think there would be no movement for several days.

Mounting my horse I hastened to the White House, stepped on board a steamer, and made my way to Washington for a few days' rest after the hardships of the campaign. I did not then know that General Grant,

before starting from Culpeper, had thought of such a possible contingency; nor did I then know that word had been sent to Washington three days before for the pontoons to be sent to the James.

The march from Spottsylvania to Cold Harbour had been through a section that had not before been visited by Union infantry. The coming of the troops was hailed with joy by the coloured people; with lowering brows by the few old men remaining in the dilapidated farmhouses No young men were to be seen; they were all in the Confederate Army or in nameless graves upon the many battle-fields. At the crossing of the Ny I found quarters at a farmhouse owned by a feeble, forceless, gray. bearded, black-eyed man. There was constitutionally a want of starch in his physical organisation. He was free and frank, but shiftless. He owned eighty acres of land, two negroes, an old horse, and a rickety cart. His house was mean, but it was charmingly located, overlooking the broad valley of the Mattapony, and surrounded by locusts and magnolias. Nature had done a great deal towards making it a paradise, but the owner had been an indifferent steward. Lying upon the grass beneath the trees, I fell into conversation with the proprietor. "This is Caroline County, I believe."

"Yes, sir, this is old Caroline, a county which has sold more negroes down south than any other in Virginia."

"I was not aware of that; but I remember now a negro song which I used to hear. The burden of it was,

"I wish I was back in old Caroline.'"

"Quite likely, for the great business of the county has been niggerraising, and it has been our curse. I never owned only old Peter and his wife. I wish I did n't own them, for they are old and I have got to support them; but how in the world I am to do it I don't know, for the soldiers have stripped me of everything."

"Do you mean the Union soldiers?"

Yes, and ours (rebels) also. First, my boys were conscripted. I kept them out as long as I could, but they were obliged to go. Then they took my horses. Then your cavalry came and took all my corn and stole my meat, and ransacked the house, seized my flour, killed my pigs and chickens, and here I am stripped of everything."

"It is pretty hard, but your leaders would have it so." "I know it, sir, and we are getting our pay for it."

It was frankly spoken, and was the first admission I had heard from Southern lips that the South was suffering retribution for the crime of Secession. It probably did not enter his head that the selling of slaves,

the breaking up of families, the sundering of heart-strings, the cries and tears and prayers of fathers and mothers, the outrages, the whippings, scourgings, branding with hot irons, were also crimes in sight of Heaven.