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| Grant's soldiers digging potatoes—on the march to Cold Harbor, May 28, 1864: foraging a week before the bloodiest assault of the war. These boys of the Sixth Corps have cast aside their heavy accouterments, blankets, pieces of shelter-tent, and rubber blankets, and set cheerfully to digging potatoes from a roadside ‘garden patch.’ One week later their corps will form part of the blue line that will rush toward the Confederate works—then stagger to cover, with ten thousand men killed, wounded, or missing in a period computed less than fifteen minutes. When Grant found that he had been out-generated by Lee on the North Anna River, he immediately executed a flank movement past Lee's right, his weakest point. The Sixth Corps and the Second Corps, together with Sheridan's cavalry, were used in the flank movement and secured a more favorable position thirty-five miles nearer Richmond. It was while Sedgwick's |
