"proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer."
Finally he sought to turn Lee's right flank. June 8, the battle of Cold Harbor followed this movement. The Union forces were shot down in the mire and brush by Lee's troops, now snugly in out of the wet, behind the Cold Harbor defences. One historian says that in twenty minutes ten thousand Yankee troops were killed; though Badeau, whose accuracy in counting dead has always been perfectly marvellous, admits only seven thousand in all.
Grant now turned his attention towards Petersburg, but Lee was there before him and intrenched, so the Union army had to intrench. This only postponed the evil day, however.
Things now shaped themselves into a siege of Richmond, with Petersburg as the first outpost of the besieged capital.
On the 3Oth of July, eight thousand pounds of powder were carefully inserted under a Confederate fort and the entire thing hoisted in the air, leaving a huge hole, in which, a few hours afterwards, many a boy in blue met his death, for in the assault which followed the explosion the Union soldiers were mowed down by the concentrated fire of the Confederates. The Federals threw away four thousand lives here.
On the 18th of August the Weldon Railroad
