With public opinion keen, critical, and watchful, the great duel reopened in Virginia and Georgia in May, 1864. Grant attacked with an army of 120,000 men; Lee returned the blow with a force of about 60,000 seasoned and resolute soldiers. From May 3 to June 12 the two great generals fought over the tangled thickets and sandy ridges which extend from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor near Richmond, where McClellan had failed in 1862. Grant failed in every attempt to defeat his foe, and he lost in that short period about 54,000 brave men--an army almost equal in numbers to that which they opposed. The people and the papers of the North were demanding the removal of their last general; United States bonds and paper money were a drug on the stock market; it was reported that Grant was drinking deeply. Lincoln knew that to remove his general would be tantamount to surrender, for B. F. Butler, then on the lower James, would be the only and last resort, and Lee would make short work of that remarkable commander. There was a little encouragement in the fighting of Sherman against Joseph E. Johnston, who was yielding more and more of northern Georgia to his rival. But June and July, 1864, were the darkest hours of the Union cause and of Lincoln, its champion. Lee now felt himself secure in his position near Malvern Hill, and expected daily to hear of the removal of his antagonist. But Grant, to the surprise of all, performed the greatest feat of his military career by safely placing all his army, still 120,000 strong, on the south side of the James River, where there were no intrenchments and no other obstacles to their marching upon Petersburg, the key to Richmond. This was done with incredible facility, June 16, 17, and 18, while Lee quietly waited for the enemy to attack him once more. While Lee thus rested on his arms, Grant carried his army through the open country east of Petersburg. Too late, June 18, the Confederate commander hastened all his forces to the new scene of war. Grant had played an incomparable ruse, and the Union army entered, with returning faith in its leader, upon the last phase of its great task--the ruin of Lee.