A lantern burns dimly before the tent of Colonel Valois on the night
of July 21, 1864. Within the lines of Atlanta there is commotion.
Myriad lights flicker on the hills. A desperate army at bay is
facing the enemy. Seven miles of armed environment mocks the caged
tigers behind these hard-held ramparts. Facing north and east,
the gladiators of the morrow lie on their arms, ready now for the
summons to fall in, for a wild rush on Sherman's pressing lines.
It is no holiday camp, with leafy bowers and lovely ladies straying
in the moonlight. No dallying and listening to Romeos in gray and
gold. No silver-throated bugles wake the night with "Lorena." No
soft refrain of the "Suwanee River" melts all the hearts. It is
not a gala evening, when "Maryland, my Maryland," rises in grand
appeal. The now national "Dixie" tells not of fields to be won.
It is a dark presage of the battle morrow. Behind grim redan and
salient, the footsore troops rest from the day's indecisive righting.
The foeman is not idle; all night long, rumbling trains and busy
movements tell that "Uncle Billy Sherman" never sleeps. His blue
octopus crawls and feels its way unceasingly. The ragged gray ranks,
whose guns are their only pride, whose motto is "Move by day; fight
always," are busy with the hum of preparation.

It is a month of horror. North and South stand aghast at the
unparalleled butchery of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The
awful truth that Grant has paved his bloody way to final victory
with one hundred thousand human bodies since he crossed the
Rapidan, makes the marrow cold in the bones of the very bravest.
Sixty thousand foes, forty thousand friends, are the astounding
death figures. As if the dark angel of death was not satisfied with
a carnage unheard of in modern times, Johnston, the old Marshal
Ney of the Confederacy, gives way, in command of the Southern army