GENERAL GRANT’S CHANGE OF BASE.
From the 5th till the 14th of June, General Grant occupied himself in building defensive works, receiving and placing reinforcements, distributing supplies, and preparing for a movement across the Chickahominy and the James rivers, in pursuance of his design of extending his lines of circumvallation around Petersburg, and of pushing Lee nearer and nearer to the interior rebel works.
On the 12th of June the enemy’s line extended from Bottom’s Bridge along the Chickahominy, confronting that of Grant at every point. That night the National forces began to move, crossing the Chickahominy at Long’s Bridge and at Jones’s Bridge, and marching for Wilcox’s wharf on the James river. A portion of the troops went by transports from White House to Bermuda Hundred, General Butler’s headquarters. On Wednesday, the 15th, the entire army was on the south side of the James river, having lost, in the skirmishing incident to this important movement, only about four hundred men. White House had been abandoned as a base, the railroad leading thither being taken up and all the supplies there accumulated brought safely away. The distance traversed was fifty-five miles.
By this change of base General Grant’s army was augmented by a junction with General Butler’s, and by alliance with the United States naval forces on the James river. He had possessed himself, moreover, with a healthier tract of country in which to operate, and he had narrowed the scene of his operations. His dispositions for other and cooperative campaigns had been wisely made—as shown in other chapters of this narrative—so that he had now nothing to fear from rebel invasion of the North. Lee’s attention would now be concentrated on Petersburg and Richmond, and it was evident that the close of the struggle could not long be deferred.