[Illustration: General Ulysses S. Grant, President, 1869-77.] [Illustration: Bvt. Maj.-Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes, President, 1877-81.] [Illustration: Maj.-Gen. James A. Garfield, President, March to September, 1881.] [Illustration: Bvt. Brig.-Gen. Benjamin Harrison, President, 1889-93.] [Illustration: Brevet Major William McKinley, President, 1897-1901.] THE INVESTMENT OF PETERSBURG After the disastrous clash of the two armies at Cold Harbor, Grant remained a few days in his entrenchments trying in vain to find a weak place in Lee's lines. The combatants were now due east of Richmond, and the Federal general realized that it would be impossible at this time to attain the object for which he had struggled ever since he crossed the Rapidan on the 4th of May--to turn Lee's right flank and interpose his forces between the Army of Northern Virginia and the capital of the Confederacy. His opponent, one of the very greatest military leaders the Anglo-Saxon race has produced, with an army of but little more than half the number of the Federal host, had successfully blocked the attempts to carry out this plan in three great battles and by a remarkable maneuver on the southern bank of the North Anna, which had forced Grant to recross the river and which will always remain a subject of curious interest to students of the art of war. In one month the Union army had lost fifty-five thousand men, while the Confederate losses had been comparatively small. The cost to the North had been too great; Lee could not be cut off from his capital, and the most feasible project was now to join in the move which heretofore had been the special object of General Butler and the Army of the James, and attack Richmond itself. South of the city, at a distance of twenty-one miles, was the town of Petersburg. Its defenses were not strong, although General Gillmore of Butler's army had failed in an attempt to seize them on the 10th of June. Three railroads converged here and these were main arteries of Lee's supply. Grant resolved to capture this important point. He sent General W. F. Smith, who had come to his aid at Cold Harbor with the flower of the Army of the James, back to Bermuda Hundred by water, as he had come, with instructions to hasten to Petersburg before Lee could get there. Smith arrived on the 15th and was joined by Hancock with the first troops of the Army of the Potomac to appear, but the attack was not pressed and Beauregard who, with only two thousand men, was in desperate straits until Lee should reach him, managed to hold the inner line of trenches.