had already sent to his right all the troops that CHAP. IX. could be spared, and Sheridan had routed them. To relieve Sheridan and to take advantage of any weakness in Lee's extended front, Grant now ordered an assault all along the lines. The answers came in with electric swiftness and confidence: Wright said he would "make the fur fly"; Ord promised to go into the Confederate lines "like a hot knife into butter." The ground, however, in front of Ord was so difficult that Grant gave him no positive orders to assault, but, on the contrary, enjoined upon him great vigilance and caution. Similar instructions were given to Humphreys; Miles, of his corps, was ordered westward on the White Oak road to help Sheridan, and Wright and Parke were directed to attack at four o'clock on the morning of the 2d. Grant's principal anxiety was April, 1865. lest Lee should get away from Petersburg and overwhelm Sheridan on the White Oak road. Lee was thinking of nothing of the kind. The terrible blow his right had received seemed to have stunned him. He waited, with a fortitude not far from despair, for the attack which the morning was sure to bring, making what hasty preparations were in his power for the coming storm.

It came with the first glimmer of dawn. Wright, who had carefully studied the ground in his front, from the safe point of vantage he had gained the day of Gordon's ill-fated sortie, had selected the open space in front of Forts Fisher and Walsh as the weak point in the Confederate harness. Not that it was really weak, except in comparison with the almost impregnable works to right and left: the enemy's front was intersected by marshy rivulets; VOL. X.-12

CHAP. IX.

Humphreys, "The Virginia

a heavy abatis had to be cut away under musketry fire from the parapets and a rain of artillery from the batteries. It was a quarter to five before there Apl. 2, 1865. Was light enough to guide the storming columns; but at that instant they swarmed forward, rushing over the Confederate pickets with too much momentum to be delayed a minute, and, gaining the main works, made them their own after a brief but murderous conflict. In fifteen minutes Wright lost eleven hundred men. They wasted not an instant after this immense success. Some pushed on in the ardor of the assault across the Boydton road as far the South Side Railroad; the gallant Confederate general A. P. Hill rode unawares upon Campaign a squad of these skirmishers, and, refusing to surrender, lost his life at their hands. But the main body of the troops wisely improved their victory. A portion of them worked resolutely to the right, meeting strong resistance from the Confederates under Wilcox; the larger part re-formed with the celerity that comes from discipline and experience, and moved down the reverse of the captured lines to Hatcher's Run, where, about seven o'clock, having swept everything before them and made large captures of men and guns, they met their comrades of the Twenty-fourth Corps, whom they joined, facing about and marching over ground cleared of the enemy till the left closed in on the Appomattox River.

of '64 and

65," p. 365.

Parke also assaulted at the earliest light, meeting with a success on the outer line equally brilliant and important, capturing four hundred yards of intrenchments with many guns, colors, and prisoners. But there was in front of him an interior line,