Seddon's replies are also interesting. On June 29 he wrote Lee two letters, in one of which he referred to a letter of the 28th instant, "relative to the necessity of obtaining a supply of railroad iron," and said: "I agree with you as to the only mode of accomplishing it and have already taken active measures to remove the iron from the less important roads. I shall have to encounter injunctions and vexatious litigations, but the necessity, in my judgment is too imperative to allow hesitation in disregarding such proceedings so far as they would prevent immediate command of iron.” 1

In spite of this imperative use of all the resources of the Confederacy available at Richmond and vicinity for the repairs of the Danville Railroad, it remained out of commission certainly as late as July 31.2 At least ten miles of it south of Meherrin Station had not then been repaired. How much longer it was lost to the Confederacy and how bitterly the deprivation was felt is not altogether a matter of conjecture. John Tyler, a son or near relative of a former president of the United States, writing from Richmond to General Sterling Price, July 9, 1864, acknowledging the damage done both by Sheridan's raid and mine, bears unwilling witness to the thoroughness with which Wilson and Kautz "succeeded in cutting all our communications with the provisioning states of Georgia and Alabama," which brought the Confederate people to "actual want and starvation," from which "the

'O. R. Serial No. 81, p. 701; No. 82, p. 754.

Read in this connection Lee, Davis and Seddon, O. R. Serial No. 88, p. 1194.

O. R. Serial No. 82, p. 692.

army itself cannot altogether escape." This the writer feared "more than the muskets and cannon

of the enemy. Our situation in Georgia under Johnston is similar to that here, but he is nearer provisions and is in less danger of starvation. Flour here is now commanding in market $400 per barrel and everything else in proportion. Many in and out of Richmond must starve to death this coming winter." 1

Perhaps the grimmest evidence that "starvation -literal starvation-was doing its deadly work" in breaking down the Confederacy is found in the "Reminiscences of General John B. Gordon." That sturdy and determined fighter, whom no one will accuse of weakness or exaggeration, frankly declares that many of Lee's men were so weakened and poisoned by unsound and insufficient food that wounds which would have hardly been reported at the beginning of the war afterward often caused blood poisoning and death. In illustration he told how a man made sick at night by eating parched corn would call out the next morning: "Hello, General, I'm all right now, and if you will have the commissary issue me a good mess of minced hay for breakfast, I'll be ready for the next fight." Quoting one of the surgeons, he declared, "famine oppressed them everywhere." A quarter of a pound of rancid bacon and a little cornmeal was the ordinary ration, but even that failed when the railroads broke down or were destroyed, and the bacon, meal and flour were left piled up beside the tracks in the southwest.2

'O. R. Serial No. 82, p. 758.

2 Gordon's "Reminiscences of the Civil War," pp. 381, 419.

Mrs. Burton Harrison, in her happily written reminiscences of the dark days in Richmond, confirms the above, and it is now well known that my deep cut into the vitals of the Confederacy was the beginning of that "terrible disaster" feared by Lee and which followed in the spring after a hard winter had sapped the strength and morale of his army. It is also an interesting fact that the work of destroying the resources and communications of the Confederacy, thus successfully begun in Virginia by Hunter, Sheridan, and myself, was thoroughly completed and the last blow struck by troops under my command in March and April, 1865, during the final campaign through the states of Alabama and Georgia.

Measuring then the success of my operations in south Virginia by the severity of the distress and injury inflicted upon the enemy, it is apparent that my blow struck home against the vitals of the Confederacy and made it more than probable that if Sheridan had united with either Hunter or myself, Lynchburg would have been captured and the railroads south of the James would have been destroyed beyond the hope of repair. With this done. our victorious return to the Army of the Potomac 1 would have enabled it not only to occupy the railroads south and west of Richmond and Petersburg permanently, but would have made it feasible for Grant to end the war nearly a year earlier than he did.

It should be noted that the cavalry operations by which the railroads around Richmond and Petersburg were so seriously interrupted have been com1O. R. Serial No. 70, pp. 650, 652.

monly called raids, but the military student will regard them as serious and necessary parts of a general campaign, which should have compelled the evacuation of both those cities. That they fell short of this expectation was certainly due, first, to Grant's scattering instead of concentrating the forces available for their execution; second, to the failure of the infantry confronting Petersburg to extend its lines across both the country and railroads to the Appomattox; and, third, to Sheridan's failure, with or without orders, to follow Hampton from the hour he disappeared from his front north of the James, to the left of our army, where it would have been easy for Sheridan to keep open the road for my return to a junction with the Army of the Potomac.

XX

RESTING AND REFITTING DIVISION ON THE

JAMES

Charges of Richmond newspapers-Meade asks for explanations-Serious epoch-Early crosses Potomac and threatens Washington-Sheridan in command against him-Wilson goes to Sheridan's assistance-Interview with Stanton at Washington-Covers Sheridan's rear from Winchester to Halltown-Affair at Kearneyville -Revisits Antietam battlefield-Return to Valley of Virginia.

We had hardly got back and received the congratulations of our friends when a Richmond newspaper was sent me by General Grant claiming to contain a correct account of my captured headquarters wagon and of the articles found in it. It also printed a note from Dana, written in such a characteristically bad hand that it could not be deciphered, and hence as published made nothing but nonsense. It alleged that a service of church plate had been found among my effects, along with a lot of wines and delicacies, on which they charged me with being "a highwayman, a wine-bibber, and a modern Sardanapalus." Grant and my friends considered these denunciations as the best evidence that our