He suggested that if Lee was
going that way we would follow him. My reply was that we did not want
to follow him; we wanted to get ahead of him and cut him off, and if he
would only stay in the position he (Meade) believed him to be in at that
time, I wanted nothing better; that when we got in possession of the
Danville Railroad, at its crossing of the Appomattox River, if we still
found him between the two rivers, all we had to do was to move eastward
and close him up. That we would then have all the advantage we could
possibly have by moving directly against him from Petersburg, even if he
remained in the position assigned him by the engineer officer.
I had held most of the command aloof from the intrenchments, so as to
start them out on the Danville Road early in the morning, supposing that
Lee would be gone during the night. During the night I strengthened
Sheridan by sending him Humphreys's corps.
Lee, as we now know, had advised the authorities at Richmond, during the
day, of the condition of affairs, and told them it would be impossible
for him to hold out longer than night, if he could hold out that long.
Davis was at church when he received Lee's dispatch. The congregation
was dismissed with the notice that there would be no evening service.
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