The next morning it was discovered that the Confederates had retired to their intrenchments, and were not seeking battle. Then Grant gave the order that was decisive, and revealed to the Army of the Potomac that it had a new spirit over it. The order was, "Forward to Spottsylvania!" No more turning back, no more resting on a doubtful result. "Forward!" to the finish. But Lee, controlling shorter lines, was at Spottsylvania beforehand, and had seized the roads and fortified himself. Here again was bloody fighting of a most determined character, lasting several days. Here Hancock, by a daring assault, captured an angle of the enemy's works, with a large number of guns and prisoners; and it was held, despite the repeated endeavors of the enemy to recapture it. Here General Sedgwick was killed. Here Upton made a famous assault on the enemy's line and broke through it, want of timely and vigorous support preventing this exploit from making an end of Lee's army then and there. But the Union losses at Spottsylvania, while not so large as in the Wilderness, were very heavy, and made a painful impression upon the people of the North. Undoubtedly Grant was disappointed by the failure to vanquish his opponent. Undoubtedly Lee was disappointed by his failure to repulse the Union army in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania as he had done formerly at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, when it had come into the same territory. Each had underestimated the other's quality. From Spottsylvania, on the 11th of May, after six days of continuous fighting, with an advance of scarcely a dozen miles, and an experience of checks and losses that would have disheartened any one but the hero of Vicksburg, he sent this bulletin to the War Department: "We have now ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting. The result to this time is much in our favor. But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. We have lost to this time 11 general officers killed, wounded, and missing, and probably 20,000 men.... I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The indomitable spirit of the last sentence electrified the country. It did take all summer, and all winter, too,--eleven full months from the date of this dispatch, and more, before General Lee, driven into Richmond, forced to evacuate the doomed city, his escape into the South cut off, his soldiers exhausted, ragged, starving, reinforcements out of the question, surrendered at Appomattox the Army of Northern Virginia, the reliance of the Confederacy, to the general whom he expected to defeat by his furious assault in the Wilderness. CHAPTER XIV FROM SPOTTSYLVANIA TO RICHMOND