He knew that the day was waning fast and that the dark was due in some
degree to the setting sun, and not wholly to the smoke and ashes.
Yet the fury of the battle was sustained. The southern left maintained
the ground that it had gained, and in the center and right it could not
be driven back. It became obvious to Grant that Lee was not to be beaten
in the Wilderness. His advance suffered from all kinds of disadvantages.
In the swamps and thickets he could mass neither his guns nor his cannon.
Communications were broken, the telegraph wires could be used but little
and as the twilight darkened to night he let the attack die.
Harry was back with the commander-in-chief, when the great battle of the
Wilderness, one of the fiercest ever fought, sank under cover of the
night. It was not open and spectacular like Gettysburg, but it had a
gloomy and savage grandeur all its own. Grant had learned, like the
others before him, that he could not drive headlong over Lee, but sitting
in silence by his campfire, chewing his cigar, he had no thought, unlike
the others, of turning back. Nearly twenty thousand of his men had
fallen, but huge resources and a President who supported him absolutely
were behind him and he was merely planning a new method of attack.
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