There are few months in the calendar of centuries that will have a more
conspicuous place in history than the month of May, 1864. It will be
remembered on account of the momentous events which have taken place
during the present military operations. It inaugurates one of the
greatest campaigns of history. We who are in it are amazed, not by its
magnitude merely, for there have been larger armies, heavier trains of
artillery, greater preparations, in European warfare,--but we are
overwhelmed by a succession of events unparalleled for rapidity. We
cannot fully comprehend the amount of endurance, the persistency, the
hard marching, the harder fighting, the unwearied, cheerful energy and
effort which have carried the Army of the Potomac from the Rappahannock
to the Chickahominy in thirty days, against the stubborn opposition of
an army of almost equal numbers. There has not been a day of rest,
scarcely an hour of quiet. Morning, noon, and midnight, the booming of
cannon and the rattling of musketry have echoed unceasingly through the
Wilderness, around the hillocks of Spottsylvania, along the banks of the
North Anna, and among the groves of Bethesda Church and Coal Harbor.
A brief _resume_ of the campaign, thus far developed, is all that can be
attempted in the space assigned me. I must pass by the efforts of
individuals, as heroic and soul-stirring as those of the old Cavaliers
renowned in story and song, where all the energies of life are centred
in one moment,--the spirited advance of regiments, the onset of
brigades; and the resistless charges of divisions. I can speak only of
the movements of corps, without dwelling upon those scenes which stir
the blood and fire the soul,--the hardihood, the endurance, the cool,
collected, reserved force, abiding the time, the calm facing of death,
the swift advance, the rush, the plunge into the thickest of the fight,
where hundreds of cannon, where fifty thousand muskets, fill the air
with iron hail and leaden rain!