This involved a complete change of method. The campaign against
Richmond, from the crossing of the Rapidan and battle of the Wilderness,
to Cold Harbor, and the change of base to City Point, occupied a period
of about six weeks of almost constant swift marching and hard fighting.
The siege of Petersburg was destined to involve more than nine months of
mingled engineering and fighting. The Confederate army forming the
combined garrisons of Richmond and Petersburg numbered about seventy
thousand. The army under Grant, though in its six weeks' campaign it had
lost over sixty thousand in killed, wounded, and missing, was again
raised by the reinforcements sent to it, and by its junction with
Butler, to a total of about one hundred and fifty thousand. With this
superiority of numbers, Grant pursued the policy of alternately
threatening the defenses of Lee, sometimes south, sometimes north of the
James River, and at every favorable opportunity pushing his siege-works
westward in order to gradually gain and command the three railroads and
two plank roads that brought the bulk of absolutely necessary food and
supplies to the Confederate armies and the inhabitants of Petersburg and
Richmond. It is estimated that this gradual westward extension of
Grant's lines, redoubts, and trenches, when added to those threatening
Richmond and Petersburg on the east, finally reached a total development
of about forty miles.
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