who, refusing to yield, obtained aid from an adjacent brigade, which turned on the flank of the bravely-fighting Federals and forced them to retreat from the stubborn fight they had made.
At about the same hour of the closing day, Grant made assault on Ewell, along the western face of the great salient, a brigade of Sedgwick's corps attacking Dole's, in Ewell's center, and driving him from his works. The brigades of Daniel and Steuart then fell upon the flanks of Upton's Federal brigade, while those of Battle and Johnson met it in front. Upton tenaciously held against these what he had won; but when Gordon and Walker reinforced the attack on his flanks, he was compelled to retire with heavy loss. Ewell's guns, raking the front with furious fire, had prevented all attempts to reinforce the gallant Upton.
The Confederate right, under Early, was also attacked, several times, during the 10th, by Burnside's corps, on the Fredericksburg road. There the Confederate artillery had full play on the Federal lines, as they essayed to cross the broad fields in front, and Pegram and Cutts, with their big guns, easily repulsed all of Burnside's attacks. Gen. F. A. Walker, commenting on Grant's tactics, writes: "To assault 'all along the line,' as was often done in the summer of 1864, is the very abdication of leadership."
At 8:30 of the 11th, Grant dispatched to Halleck:
We have now ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting, the result to this time in our favor. But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. We have lost to this time eleven general officers, killed, wounded and missing, and probably 20,000 men. . . . I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer. The arrival of reinforcements here will be very encouraging to the men, and I hope they will be sent as fast as possible and in as great numbers. . . . I am satisfied the enemy are very shaky, and are only kept up to the mark by the greatest exertions on the part of their officers, and by keeping them intrenched in every position they take. Up to this time there is no indication of any portion of Lee's army being detached for the defense of Richmond.
It was the condition of his own army and of his own method of campaigning and not Lee's, that Grant thus described. He little knew, although what he had so recently encountered should have taught him, the spirit of the men that, under Lee, confronted him.
