NP: June 22, 1864 Richmond Examiner: A Change of Base for Grant?

Editor’s Note: This article was transcribed by Jackie Martin.

     Mr. Lincoln declares that the war shall last three years more—but the duration of the war is not dependent on the wishes or the declaration of Mr. LINCOLN.  It is more intimately connected with the movements of GRANT and LEE, than with all other sublunary things combined.  Just at this moment these are far more interesting and uncertain than ever before.  Contrary to the expectations which prevailed in Petersburg twenty-four hours since, but conformably to our own calculation, GRANT has not assaulted again.  In fact, the same phenomenon witnessed thrice elsewhere, has reappeared at Petersburg:  the affair which GRANT intended to be merely preliminary—the introductory skirmish—has exhausted, the pluck of his army.  To this Gargantua of battle, the blood of twenty-five or thirty thousand men, is a simple whetter of the appetite.  Unfortunately it surfeits the mere delicate stomach of his Dutch-Irish-Negroe-Yankee host.  The “thinking bayonet” doubtless, reflects, that if he could not get into Petersburg on Friday night, when BEAUREGARD held it with a handful, there is the less chance to do so when he has probably been re-inforced, and when he is certainly prepared.

So there has been no battle.  But there is the likelihood of another change of base.  It has been found that the army of GRANT, when beaten, will refuse to be butchered again on the field where the dead lie.  Transported to another place, they will oblige both generals in command by another hetacomb.  It is stated, with much appearance of authenticity, that the enemy has constructed a bridge across the James at Deep Run, three miles below Chaffin’s farm, and gives many indications of a return to the northern bank.  It is quite possible, but it is far more probable, that he should now extend his line and attack both Richmond and Petersburg at once or commence siege operations against Chaffin’s and Drewry’s Bluffs simultaneously.  But we fear to trust ourselves in speculation on what is at once so ill-determined and so important.  It is sufficient to point it out as the most interesting fact in the military horizon at the present moment.¹

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