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cers of his staff bid good-bye to President Lincoln and started by special train from City Point to the front.

The military railroad connecting headquarters with the camps south of Petersburg was a surface road, built up hill and down dale, and its undulations were so emphasized, that a train moving along it looked in the distance like a fly crawling over a corrugated washboard. The general sat down near the end of the car, drew from his pocket the flint and slow match that he always carried, which unlike a match never missed fire in a gale of wind, and was soon wreathed in the smoke of the inevitable cigar. I took a seat near him with several other officers of the staff, and he at once began to talk over his plans in detail. They had been discussed in general terms before starting out from City Point.

For a month or more, General Grant's chief apprehension had been that Lee might suddenly pull out from his intrenchments, and fall back into the interior, where he might unite with General Joe Johnston against Sherman and force our army to follow him to a great distance from its present base. General Grant had been sleeping with one eye open and one

The reader is referred to the September CENTURY for articles on the siege of Petersburg, the last event described there being the Confederate sortie and repulse at Fort Stedman on March 25th. In order to bring the first half of General Horace Porter's paper within the limits of the present magazine article, many interesting details, including those of the fighting at

roads were getting in good condition for the movement of troops, that is, as good as could be expected, through a section of country in which the dust in summer was generally so thick that the army could not see where to move, and the mud in winter was so deep that it could not move anywhere. On the train General Grant said: "The President is one of the few visitors I have had who has not attempted to extract from me a knowledge of my plans. He not only never asks them, but says it is better he should not know them, and then he can be certain to keep the secret."

When we reached the end of the railway, we rode down the Vaughn road, and went into camp for the night in a field just south of that road, close to Gravelly Run (see map, page 128). That night (March 29th), the army was disposed in the following order from right to left: Weitzel in front of Richmond, with a portion of the Army of the James, Parke and Wright holding our works in front of Petersburg, Ord extending to the intersection of Hatcher's Run and the Vaughn road, Humphreys stretching beyond Dabney's Mill, Warren on the extreme left reaching as far as the junction of the Vaughn road and the Boydton Five Forks, have been necessarily omitted. The paper will be given entire in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," a work now being published by subscription, by the Century Co., in thirty-two parts-or four volumes-containing THE CENTURY war series in permanent and greatly extended and embellished form.

- EDITOR.

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plank-road, and Sheridan at Dinwiddie Court House. The weather had become cloudy, and towards evening rain began to fall. It fell in torrents during the night and continued with but little interruption all the next day. The country was densely wooded, and the ground swampy, and by the evening of the 30th whole fields had become beds of quicksand in which horses sank to their bellies, and the bottoms of the roads seemed to be falling out. The men began to feel that if any one in after years should ask them whether they had been through Virginia, they could say, "Yes, in a number of places." The roads had become sheets of water; and it looked as if the saving of that army would require the services not of a Grant but ofa Noah. While standing in front of the general's tent on the morning of the 30th, discussing the situation with several others of the staff, General Sheridan turned in from the Vaughn road with his escort and came up to our headquarters camp. He dismounted, entered General Grant's tent, and had a long interview. The general informed Sheridan that he had intended to send him a corps of infantry that day, but the condition of the roads prevented, and that he hoped he could feel the enemy the next day, and if possible seize Five Forks with his cavalry. The next morning, the 31st, Sheridan reported that the enemy had been hard at work intrenching at Five Forks and to a point about a mile west of there. Lee had been as prompt as Grant to recognize Five Forks as a strategic point of great importance, and, to protect his right, had sent Pickett there with a large force of infantry and nearly all the cavalry. The rain continued during the night of the 30th, and the weather was cloudy and dismal on the morning of the 31st.

General Grant had anticipated that Warren would be attacked that morning and had warned him to be on the alert. Warren advanced his corps to develop with what force the enemy held the White Oak road and to try to drive him from it; but before he had gone far, he met with a vigorous assault. When news came of the attack, General Grant directed me to go to the spot and look to the situation of affairs there. Upon meeting him afterwards, about 1 o'clock, as he was riding out to Warren's command he directed me to go to Sheridan and explain what was taking place in Warren's and Humphreys's front, and have a full understanding with him as to further operations in his vicinity. I rode rapidly

NOTE TO THE PROFILES OF GENERAL GRANT: On being asked for the history of these portraits (which, it will be noticed, were taken during General Grant's second term as President), Colonel Frederick D. Grant replied: "The taking of the photographs in profile was the occasion of my father's shaving for the second time that I ever knew of. My mother had asked him VOL. XXXV.-20.

down the Boydton plank-road, and hearing heavy firing in the direction of the Five Forks road, hurried on in that direction by way of the Brooks road.

I found Sheridan a little north of Dinwiddie Court House, and gave him an account of matters on the left of the Army of the Potomac. He said he had had one of the liveliest days in his experience, fighting infantry and cavalry with only cavalry, but that he was concentrating his command on the high ground just north of Dinwiddie, and would hold that position at all hazards. He begged me to go to General Grant at once and urge him to send him the Sixth Corps, because it had been under him in the Shenandoah Valley, and its people knew his people and were familiar with his way of fighting. I told him, as had been stated to him before, that the Sixth Corps was next to our extreme right, and that the only one which could reach him by daylight was the Fifth. I started soon after for General Grant's headquarters, then at Dabney's Mill, a distance of about eight miles, reached there at 7 o'clock P. M., and gave the general a full description of Sheridan's operations. He at once telegraphed the substance of my report to Meade, and preparations soon after began looking to the sending of the Fifth Corps to report to Sheridan. This proved to be one of the busiest nights of the whole campaign. Generals were writing dispatches and telegraphing from dark till daylight. Staff-officers were rushing from one headquarters to another, wading through swamps, penetrating forests and galloping over corduroy roads, engaged in carrying instructions, getting information, and making extraordinary efforts to hurry up the movement of the troops.

The next morning, April 1st, General Grant said to me: "I wish you would spend the day with Sheridan's command, and send me a bulletin every half-hour or so, advising me fully as to the progress being made. You know my views, and I want you to give them to Sheridan fully. I hope there may now be an opportunity of fighting the enemy's infantry outside of its fortifications."

I set out with half a dozen mounted orderlies to act as couriers in transmitting field bulletins. Captain Hudson, of our staff, went with me. After traveling again by way of the Brooks road, I met Sheridan about 10 A. M., on the Five Forks road, not far from J. Boisseau's house. General Warren, who had accompanied to have a profile taken so that she might send it to Rome to have a cameo cut. Thinking that she wanted a profile of his features, he got shaved and had these pictures taken, very much to the disgust of my mother, who did not accept them for the cameo, but waited until his beard grew out again, and then had another profile taken for the purpose."- EDITOR.

(FROM THE PAINTING BY E. L. HENRY, OWNED BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB, NEW YORK.)

GENERAL GRANT'S HEADQUARTERS, CITY POINT.

Crawford's division, arrived at II o'clock and reported in person to Sheridan.

A few minutes before noon, Colonel (afterwards General) Babcock, of General Grant's staff, came over from headquarters, and said to Sheridan: "General Grant directs me to say to you, that if in your judgment the Fifth Corps would do better under one of the division commanders, you are authorized to relieve General Warren, and order him to report to him, General Grant, at headquarters." General Sheridan replied, in effect, that he hoped such a step as that might not become necessary, and then went on to speak of his plan of battle.

The enemy's earth-works were parallel to the White Oak road and about a mile and three-quarters in length, with an angle formed by running a line back about one hundred yards from the main line and at right angles to it. The Fifth Corps was to wheel to the left and make its attack upon the "angle," and then moving westward sweep down in rear of the enemy's intrenched line. The cavalry, principally dismounted, was to deploy in front of the enemy's line and engage his attention, and, as soon as it heard the firing of our infantry, to make a vigorous assault upon his works.

The Fifth Corps had borne the brunt of the infantry fighting ever since the army had moved out on the 29th, and the gallant men who composed it were eager once more to cross bayonets with their old antagonists. But the movement was slow, the required formation seemed to drag, and Sheridan, chafing with impatience and consumed with anxiety, became as restive as a racer when he nears the line, and is struggling to make the start. He made every possible appeal for promptness; he dismounted from his horse, paced up and down, struck the clenched fist of one hand into the palm of the other, and fretted like a caged tiger.

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