By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg was sealed. Grant had ordered an assault in force at six o'clock Monday morning, but the Confederates abandoned their works in the gray dawn and our troops met little resistance in taking over the town. "General Meade and I," says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs," "entered Petersburg on the morning of the third and took a position under cover of a house which protected us from the enemy's musketry which was flying thick and fast there. As we would occasionally look around the corner, we could see ... the Appomattox bottom ... packed with the Confederate army.... I had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and fleeing men and I hoped to capture them soon." "Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested. He was a better follower than a fighter. He had followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond, without ever attacking him. "On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will cut off his retreat by occupying the Danville railroad and capture him. He must get to his food to keep his troops alive. We will get between him and his food." With constant fighting this was done. By Wednesday, April 5, the Union lines were drawn about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered by Meade's slowness, was urgent that Grant should come to the front. He sent message after message to that effect to Grant on Wednesday. A scout in gray uniform was entrusted with the second message. He was made up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was Tom Strong. He had put on his disguise at Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention to receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and said: "You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you chew tobacco?" Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't. "Well, you may have to begin the habit today. You're to take this message to General Grant. If you're caught, chew it--and swallow it quick." He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked like a small package of chewing-tobacco, but it contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which Sheridan's message was written. The ride from the left flank to the center was not without danger. Tom, duly provided with the password, could go by any Union forces without difficulty, but the country swarmed with Confederates, some of them deserters, many of them straggling detachments cut off from the main army and seeking to rejoin it, all of them more than ready to capture a Union soldier and his horse.