onists at first confronted near Dalton, but by a series of flanking movements which he was able to make with his superior force, General Sherman followed the retreat of Johnston from the 4th of May until he reached Atlanta the following July, timidly consuming two months in traversing less than one hundred miles, the rate of speed being not quite two miles per day and meanwhile suffering severe punishment in all battles fought during his advance.
On reaching the vicinage of Richmond and Petersburg the Federal commander, after making desperate efforts in vain to break Lee’s lines for three days in June, began a plan of intrenchments from which to conduct the slow siege of the Confederate capital, on a line of operations which not only took all the summer, but exhausted the succeeding winter. President Lincoln saw the situation. His best general—the best at least, for the present stage of the war, had "hammered" Lee for months, only to wear out the splendid army which had begun the spring movement, in getting again on the ground from which Lee and Jackson had driven McClellan two years before, Butler had been bottled up on the James by Beauregard, Sigel defeated in the valley by Breckinridge, and after all, Grant’s army had been compelled to intrench and await reinforcements on the ground most unfavorable for assault on the Confederate capital. Mr. Swinton, the historian, says "so gloomy was the military outlook after the action of the Chickahominy (second Cold Harbor, June 2), and to such a degree, by consequence, had the moral spring of the public mind become relaxed, that there was at this time great danger of a collapse of the war." And besides all this, the Democratic National Union convention was about to assemble. The President looked over the despairing field, and complying with the request of his deeply impressed Congress appointed for the first time since the war began a day of public prayer for the suppression of the rebellion.
