an end of the tremendous resisting power of Robert E. Lee. In that resisting power he, first of all men, saw clearly that the vitality of the Confederate cause had its being.
In order that he might destroy that, he had not only concentrated a mightily superior force against it, and arranged to keep the strength of his own army up to its maximum by heavy reinforcement after every battle loss, but he had also ordered all the Federal armies in other parts of the country to carry on such operations as should continually occupy every Confederate force and forbid Lee to reinforce the Virginia army from any quarter as its numbers should decline by reason of battle losses.
Grant directed Sherman to begin the Atlanta campaign simultaneously with the beginning of the year’s work on the Rapidan. He ordered Thomas to hold East Tennessee, and to operate in such fashion as to occupy all the Confederate forces there. He ordered the Federal armies west of the Mississippi to abandon their wasteful operations in that quarter, concentrate in New Orleans, and move at once upon Mobile, in order to prevent Lee from drawing troops from the Far South.
He filled the valley of Virginia with forces sufficient to compel Lee to keep a strong army corps there, instead of calling it to his assistance in Northern Virginia. He sent Butler to the James River region below Richmond, by way of compelling Lee to keep strong detachments at Richmond and Petersburg, which otherwise he might have called to his assistance in the crucial struggle with the Army of the Potomac.
As one looks back at all this, and clearly discerns Grant’s purpose and the means he used for its accomplishment, it is easy to see that both Lee and the Confederate cause were doomed in the very hour of Grant’s passage across the Rapidan. The only chance of any other issue lay in the remote possibility that the sixty thousand men of the Army of Northern Virginia should inflict a decisive and destructive defeat upon the one hundred and thirty thousand men of the Army of the Potomac at the outset of the campaign, and in that way bring hopeless discouragement at the North to their aid.
This they did not succeed in doing at the Wilderness, and when, after two days’ battling there, Grant moved by his left flank to Spottsylvania Court House to join battle again, there was scarcely a veteran in the Virginia army who did not fully understand that the beginning of the end had come. Yet not one of them flinched from the further fighting because of its manifest hopelessness. Not one of them lost the courage of despair in losing hope. Perhaps there was no part of the titanic struggle which so honourably distinguished those men of the South as did that campaign in which they doggedly fought on after they had come to understand that their fighting was futile.
It is natural enough that men should be brave when the lure of hope and the confident expectation of victory beckon them to the battle front, but only men of most heroic mould may be expected to fight with still greater desperation after all doors of hope are closed to them.
From that hour when Grant moved from the Wilderness to Spottsylvania till the end came, nearly a year later, these men of the South did, and dared, and endured for love of honour alone, with no hope to inspire them, no remotest chance of ultimate success as the reward of their valour. Theirs was a pure heroism, untouched, untainted, unalloyed.
After two days of such fighting as bulldogs do, the struggle in the Wilderness ended with no decisive advantage on either side. Grant had secured possession of roads leading out of the Wilderness. On the other hand Lee had succeeded in completely baffling his adversary’s strategic purpose, and was still in full possession of that region in his own rear which Grant had hoped to seize upon with decisive effect. Grant’s losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners greatly exceeded Lee’s; but as an offset, he could afford to lose more heavily than the Confederates, not only because his force outnumbered Lee’s by more than two to one, but also because he could repair all his losses by reinforcement, while Lee had no such resource.
Baffled, but not beaten, Grant decided, on the evening of the 7th of May, to move to the left, passing out of the Wilderness and taking up a new position – strong both for attack and defence – on a line of hills near Spottsylvania Court House. It was his hope to possess himself of this position before Lee should discover his purpose, and to that end he began his march after nightfall, pushing strong columns forward by all available roads, while still ostentatiously holding his positions in the Confederate front, as if to renew the battle in the Wilderness the next morning.
But his wily adversary anticipated the movement, and discovered it almost as soon as it was begun. Lee sent his cavalry and a considerable force of infantry to fell trees across the roads and otherwise obstruct the march of Grant’s column. Meanwhile, with his main body, he moved in haste to Spottsylvania Court House. The head of his column reached that point in advance of Grant, and promptly seized upon the coveted line of hills which the men, accustomed to such work, proceeded hastily to fortify, fighting, meanwhile, with such of the Federal commands as had come up to dispute their possession of the strategic position.
It was during this preliminary struggle that a certain little hill in front of the main ridge fell into hot dispute. Its possession by the Federals would greatly weaken the Confederate line, and it was deemed essential by the Confederate commanders present to secure it at all hazards, while the Federals, seeing the importance of the little hill, concentrated the fire of twenty guns upon it, sweeping its top as with a broom, whenever a Confederate force, large or small, showed itself there.
Three times Confederate infantry were advanced to the crest, and three times they were driven back by a storm of cannon shot before they could throw up a dozen shovelfuls of earth.
Kilgariff, again detached with his two guns, sat upon his horse, looking on at all this and wondering what the result would be. Presently a brigade of North Carolinians moved up into line just in front of him, at the moment when the third of the charging bodies was hurled back, baffled, beaten, and broken into fragments.
Just then the chief of artillery of the corps with which Kilgariff was temporarily serving rode up and said to him: —
“Do you want your opportunity for distinction and a commission?”
“I want all the opportunity I can get to render service,” was Kilgariff’s answer.
“Then take your guns to the crest of that hill and stay there!” fairly shouted the officer.
Kilgariff fully realised the desperate character of the attempt, and the practical certainty that his guns, his men, and his horses would be quickly swept off the face of the earth when he should appear upon that shell-furrowed hilltop. But he had no thought of faltering. On the contrary, just as he gave the order, “Forward,” a whimsical thought occurred to him. “The general need not have been at the trouble to order us to ‘stay there.’ We’ll stay there, whether we wish to or not. The enemy will take care of that.” Then came the more serious thought that unless he could bring his guns into battery almost instantly upon reaching the hilltop, the slaughter of his horses might prevent the proper placing of the pieces. So, at a full run, he carried the guns up the slope, shouting the orders, “Fire to the front! In battery!” at the moment of coming within sight of the Federal guns, less than half a thousand yards away, and already partially protected by a hastily constructed earthwork.
Fortunately, the men of Captain Pollard’s battery were perfect in drill to their very finger tips, and their alert precision brought the guns into position within a second or two, and the twelve-pounders were bellowing before the horses began falling just in the rear.
Kilgariff ordered the horses and caissons to be retired a little way down the hill, for the sake of such protection as the ground afforded, but scarcely one of the animals lived to enjoy such protection even briefly.
Meantime, Kilgariff, dismounted now (for his horse had been the first to fall), stood there working his two utterly unsupported guns under the fiercely destructive fire of a score of pieces on the enemy’s side. His men fell one after
