A few words in reference to the topography of the country and the situation will show this.  Petersburg is twenty-two miles south of Richmond, and is connected with the South and West by the Weldon and Southside Railroads, which latter road crosses the Danville Railroad, the main line of communication between the capital and the Gulf States.  With the enemy once holding these roads and those north of the city, as they were preparing to do, the capital would be isolated, and the Confederate Government must evacuate Virginia.  In that event the Army of Northern Virginia had also nothing left to it but retreat.  Virginia must be abandoned; the Federal authority would be extended over the oldest and one of the largest and most important members of the Confederacy; and, under circumstances so adverse, it might well be a question whether, disheartened as they would be by the loss of so powerful an ally, the other States of the Confederacy would have sufficient resolution to continue the contest.

These considerations are said to have been fully weighed by General Lee, whose far-reaching military sagacity divined the exact situation of affairs, and the probable results of a conflict so unequal as that which General Grant now forced upon him.  We have noticed, on a preceding page, his opinions upon this subject, expressed to a confidential friend as far back as 1862.  He then declared that the true line of assault upon Richmond was that now adopted by General Grant.  As long as the capital was assailed from the north or the east, he might hope with some reason, by hard fighting, to repulse the assault, and hold Richmond.  But, with an enemy at Petersburg, threatening with a large force the Southern railroads, it was obviously only a question of time when Richmond, and consequently Virginia, must be abandoned.

General Lee, we repeat, fully realized the facts here stated, when his adversary, giving up all other lines, crossed James River to Petersburg.  Lee is said, we know not with what truth, to have coolly recommended an evacuation of Richmond.  But this met with no favor.  A powerful party, including both the friends and enemies of the Executive, spoke of the movement as a “pernicious idea.”  If recommended by Lee, it was speedily abandoned, and all the energies of the Government were concentrated upon the difficult task of holding the enemy at arm’s length south of the Appomattox and in Charles City.

In a few weeks after the appearance of the adversaries opposite each other at Petersburg, the lines of leaguer and defence were drawn, and the long struggle began.  General Grant had crossed a force into Charles City, on the north bank of James River, and thus menaced Richmond with an assault from that quarter.  His line extended thence across the neck of the Peninsula of Bermuda Hundred, and east and south of Petersburg, where, day by day, it gradually reached westward, approaching nearer and nearer to the railroads feeding