June 23 — In camp, and resting. We have been on forced marches, and sometimes marching day and night, ever since the morning of the ninth of June, and in the meantime we had a few hard fights. Now for a glance at the two armies that were facing each other near Cold Harbor and growling a little when we left the Chickahominy on a chase after General Sheridan’s crack cavalry. General Grant has stopped his sledge-hammer thumping business at the front door and has made a wonderful leap by the left flank, and is now trying to gain admittance to Richmond by the back way, and has settled down in siege order in front of Petersburg, twenty-two miles south of Richmond.
I heard that when General Grant arrived in front of Petersburg, as is usual of late he found General Lee in his front, ready for business at the old stand. The world may ask, but the great question will never be answered, why all this bloody fighting, waste of energy, and sinews of war, sacrifice of human life and vast treasures, merely to make a lodgment in front of Petersburg, which could have been accomplished without much fighting and sacrificial butchery of thousands of soldiers. ‘Tis said that General Grant lost about sixty thousand men, killed, wounded, prisoners, and strayed, on the north side of the James since the fifth of May, the date of the opening of the campaign in the Wilderness.
The bulk of General Grant’s army crossed the James River about the 1th of June, at or near Bermuda Hundred, about sixteen miles below Richmond.
