Let the world know that Grant in entering upon his great campaign, in
the first days of May, 1864, had to do so against the greatest
disadvantages. The country south of the Rappahannock was against him.
The fact of Lee's acting ever on the defensive was against him. The
woods and the rivers were against him. All Virginia, from the Rapidan
to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork. The Confederates knew
every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing
creek of their own homes. The battlefield was theirs, to begin with;
it must be taken from them or remain theirs forever. To take a
battlefield of their own from Virginians has never been a pleasing
task to those who did it--or more frequently tried to do it and did
not!

It remained for Grant and his tremendous Union army to undertake this
herculean task. He moved into the Wilderness and fought a two-days'
battle of the greatest severity. The contest of the fifth and sixth of
May were murderous in character. The National losses in these two days
in killed, wounded and missing were not less than 14,000; those of the
Confederates were almost as great. In this struggle General Alexander
Hays was killed; Generals Getty, Baxter and McAlister were wounded,
and scores of under-officers, with thousands of brave men, lost their
lives or limbs. Now it was that Lee is reported to have said to his
officers, with a serious look on his iron face: "Gentlemen, at last
the Army of the Potomac has a head."

On the seventh of May there was not much fighting. It is said that in
the lull Grant's leading commanders thought he would recede, as his
predecessors had done, and that not a few of them gave it as their
opinion that he should do so. It is said that when coming to the