Grant said: "I now find, after thirty days of trial, the enemy
deems it of the first importance to run no risks with the armies
they now have. Without a greater sacrifice of human life than I
am willing to make all cannot be accomplished that I had designed
outside of the city [of Richmond]. I have therefore resolved upon
the following plan," which, in one word, involved a complete
change from a series of pitched battles to a long-drawn open
siege.

The battles lasted thirty days, the siege three hundred.
Therefore, from this time on for the next ten months, Lee had to
keep his living shield between Grant's main body and the last
great stronghold of the fighting South, while the rising tide of
Northern force, commanding all the sea and an ever-increasing
portion of the land, beat ceaselessly against his front and
flanks, threw out destroying arms against his ever-diminishing
sources of supply, and wore the starving shield itself down to
the very bone.

Grant's losses--forty thousand killed and wounded--were all made
good by immediate reinforcement; as was his other human wastage
from sickness, straggling, and desertion: made good, that is, in
the quantities required to wear out Lee, whose thinning ranks
could never be renewed; but not made good in quality; for many of
the best were dead. The wastage of material is hardly worth
considering on the Northern side; for it could always be made
good, superabundantly good. But the corresponding wastage on the
Southern side was unrenewed and unrenewable. Food, clothing,
munitions, medical stores--it was all the same for all the
Southern armies: desperate expedients, slow starvation, death.